Re: OT: Installing Apps
Re: OT: Installing Apps
- Subject: Re: OT: Installing Apps
- From: "Ryan Ragona" <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2008 01:17:42 -0700
I agree with the general principle of moving away from 'Wizard' style
installers, but I'm not sure that the current implementation of dragging the
application into your applications folder is quite right either. It's very
simple, which is quite good. It's just a single step - also very good.
However - that step is a bit unintuitive.
I do find the newer installers that put a shortcut to your applications
folder inside the disk image to be much improved over having to actually
open up a new finder window, find your applications, and drag it there.
Perhaps a simple click and confirmation window would suffice to have the
file transfer *itself* to the applications window though? I think many users
would be more likely to figure that out the first time around, without
needing explicit instructions.
Ryan.
On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 12:55 AM, Neil Brewitt wrote:
>
> 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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