radiant.matrix

You know, I like Jeff Atwood — at least based on what I read on his Coding Horror blog — but I get really irritated at him when he tries to dissect the differences between Mac and Windows. The latest example of this is his post What’s Wrong with Setup.exe?. It’s not that his comments are wrong, per se — more that it’s fairly obvious that Jeff isn’t a Mac user.

Now, I’m far from a zealot. I use Windows both at home and at work, and also use a Mac notebook and an array of Linux machines. I like all of them, and all have their little frustrations. So what bothers me about Jeff’s Mac-related posts isn’t that he’s a Windows user, but rather that because he appears not to be a Mac user, he makes conclusions that are based entirely on supposition. As a result, his criticisms come off as anti-Mac attitude; I think this detracts from legitimate criticism of the Mac.

Let me focus primarily on the article in question. The process of installation Jeff quotes involves downloading a zipped disk image, mounting it, agreeing to a license, then dragging the application to the Applications folder. Irritatingly, Jeff makes it sound like this is the typical path for installing applications on the Mac, then proceeds to criticize it.

In reality, that’s pretty much the worst-case scenario of installation. Installation on the Mac does indeed have its share of problems — but they’re largely the same problems as Windows has. By far, the two most common installation methods on the Mac are:

1. Download a disk image (.dmg), mount it, drag the app to the Applications folder. Often, the .dmg contains a shortcut to the Applications folder so that one doesn’t have to go hunt it down.
2. Download an installer package (.pkg) and run it. Sometimes that package is inside a .dmg or .zip file. The .pkg system is analogous to the .msi packages on Windows.

The first method is a little bit annoying, but ends up being fewer steps (usually) than running an installer. It also means that you can “uninstall” by simply dragging the app to the trash. Windows users may find that system annoying, but it’s a subjective call — I personally like it, but it isn’t objectively better or worse than the installer-package approach.

The second method is basically identical to installation on Windows.

All that said, I do agree with Jeff that installation processes on all platforms deserve more attention than they usually get. After all, the install process is the first exposure one’s customer has with a piece of software. It seems sensible, therefore, to put some effort into making it a pleasant experience.

Still, I wish Jeff would refrain from focusing how the Mac seems to do things, since he doesn’t seem to have any significant experience with it. It’d have been better if he’d just focused on the general problem that software developers often don’t make installation simple, and not implied that somehow it was the Mac OS that caused the problem.