Re: OT: Installing Apps
Re: OT: Installing Apps
- Subject: Re: OT: Installing Apps
- From: Neil Brewitt <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2008 08:55:29 +0100
On 10 Sep 2008, at 20:41, Steven W Riggins wrote:
I for one, being a Mac user since Feb, 1984, am dismayed at the
current state of delivering Mac software. My mom never, ever
figures out the drag to apps thing. But she does understand "Double
click to install" *for whatever reason*
(Scott, I realise you're saying that this is off topic but it's a user
experience design issue which both affects cocoa developers
(financially!) and can be affected by cocoa developers)
When I bought Microsoft Office X I found a folder on a CD. No
installer. I was confused, since coming from the windows world
everything had an installer. I had to read the readme and READ that I
should just drag and drop the directory to install on my HD -
something I hadn't done since the old Amiga days (and even then before
Amiga had an Installer app!).
The point is that that I had to read a help file is a usability
failure. I was new to macs but not to computers and I expected "press
button to install this" experience.
I was fortunate enough to work for Microsoft at the time and bumped
into Ben Waldman, an ex manager in the Mac BU (he may have been the
head of the Mac business unit actually). I asked him about this and he
said that it was his idea personally to have the drag and drop
install, because normal people didn't understand installers.
What is the right thing to do is what the majority of your target
audience are comfortable with and that generates the fewest support
incidents. If you're producing an IDE then probably a bells-and-
whistles installer is good but if you're making a cooking timer then
maybe mom would appreciate something simpler (like a physical one that
sits on the top of the cooker!).
As an aside, I've always found that the notion of "installing"
software is a foreign one to non-computer-literate users. Just think
of the experience on a mac - you put the dvd in, run the installer,
and then everything disappears. Few installers add stuff to the dock.
The user needs to know to fish around in an Applications
"folder" (whatever the hell a folder is) for something they might not
even know the name of. At least with drag and drop the user knows
where they've put stuff to actually use it.
Neil.
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