A: Probably no, but with a slim chance that we might, and here’s my reason for saying that: It would require Apple to do something about it. Third party solutions are interesting. MacPorts is a start. But until Apple has the Mac OSX Software… Menubar item open an App (iApps?) that will fetch an iTunes-like storefront of available apps (like they are going to do with the iPhone software) Mom and Pop user are never going to know the third party app exists (you pointed this out, i think Bob pointed this out as well). I say possibly yes because as i said, they ARE doing this with the iPhone, at least according to what I read last. The reason I don’t think it would fly on the desktop App list is that it will require Apple to vet and keep track of apps. Software publishing would become their problem, and that’s an expensive and overhead I don’t think they want to incur. The iPhone will most likely have a pretty slim application base, relative to everything else. Face it, its a cool platform, but a limited one, fancy effects and all, and I’m curious what hoops developers will have to jump through (other than the ones already published) to get their app on board. Synaptic and Ubuntu work well because everybody uses a central system for publishing, ultimately somebody is controlling the feeds that get pushed to Synaptic, and while just about anybody can add applications, Apple couldn’t do things that way, the whole system would be full of wretched software (even worse than CS3…*shudders*) and one or two bad experiences and people would start to distrust it. Rating systems, download counts, in-line reviews, etc., might help this, but as a user of MacUpdate and VersionTracker I couldn’t see Apple running a similar service for an in-house software distribution system.

I think that most Mac users, some developers included, either miscalculate, or overlook the benefits of Packages. Even if your application is a completely self-contained drag and drop app, a package can be useful. As somebody mentioned above, most current software on Windows uses installers. People know this, they are comfortable with it, to an extent. They know they download a file, run it, it runs an installer, and eventually they get an icon on their desktop, or in their start menu, or by gosh sometimes the program opens all by itself when the installer is finished.

Apple’s simplified system is freaking sweet. The Bundle concept is one I love and cherish. But my mother could give a damn about bundles and how great they are as she is running the latest game she just downloaded from the disk image instead of dragging and dropping it. Same goes for my brother, and the rest of my family whom i have managed to convert and created the need for me to purchase ARD Unlimited to manage and keep up with (I was going to have to support them anyway, Windows or not, at least this way I can do it from my desk).

With Leopard especially, developers can use a tool (I used Iceberg and loved it), create a package, put it in a DMG, run the command in Terminal to make the package internet enabled, and the masses (those who use Safari at least) will now download the binary DMG, which will automatically extract its contents, delete itself, AND start the Package installer. 3 simple, single-window clicks later and the user’s app is ready to go. If you’re a zip or tgz fan and not a DMG fan you’re adding another double click to a user’s process, but that should be all. If a developer really wanted to be slick he could add a postflight script that gave an Applescript prompt to ask if the user would like to start the program now or just exit the installer. the DMG is gone, most windows users know that once they install an App they can safely delete the installer (many Mac users figure this out rather quickly as well, though i have encountered a particularly dumb user or two in my time).

As a systems administrator i _Love_ packages. I can’t get enough of them. I had a massive 288MB package with preflight and postflight scripts used to set up new systems in my old department at work. I’d start up a new machine, turn on Remote Administration, and go back to my desk. Push the package with ARD and reboot and that machine was good to go. At last count before i switched departments I was installing 10 or 12 apps, and setting 15 or 16 system preferences and tweaks with that, oh, and installed 25 printers and their appropriate drivers. Wasn’t much but saved me quite a bit of time when a load of new machines came in. That really has no bearing on this topic, but I wanted to demonstrate that I’m not a programmer but a sysadmin, and general geek. I know how to code, but i prefer web apps over Cocoa :) the other point i wanted to make is that as an Apple SysAdmin managing 40-50 machines, I got really good at making packages, be it to deploy settings, software, drivers, whatever, they are incredibly simple to make and learn the ins and outs of, and their payoff is incredible in terms of simplicity.

My rant has went on long enough. I’ll shut up now! :)

Seriously. Hard drives are big these days. A few plists plus or minus will be lost in the noise. The only exceptions are a) if you’re uninstalling because something broke and you think a fresh config will help, or b) if they have some nontrivial chunk of files associated with them (which is pretty rare; GarageBand comes to mind).

I could be wrong or missing something but I hate tracking down files and deleteing them manually just to delete a program.

I think this a tremendously interesting discussion and a project I would gladly contribute to.

You seem, however, to underestimate Apple concerning the installation procedure. As devs or at least power users most of us have disabled the “open safe files after download” option in Safari. Which, if enabled, does the following to DMG files: downloads them, mounts them, looks if it’s just the one application inside. If so, it copies the app into the folder which contains the disk image, unmounting and trashing the latter afterwards. All this without user interaction. Downloads stack bounces after app is unpacked.

This stops working as soon as people start cluttering their disk images with license files and readmes, but is a start. I also believe this was introduced in 10.5, as I hadn’t noticed it before.

As of now and IMHO it would be best to usability-wise package one’s app in a disk image, without any /Applications alias and license (which should be in the Installer or a first-run popup anyway). The Downloads stack and the automatic unpacking would take away the clumsiness of installing and still leave the user with the conscious decision to move the app to Applications.

This however does not address the dependency and search problem. I am not so new to programming itself and OS X, but just starting to poke around in the technologies. In the time I can spare from my MSc work, consider me wanting to help and most certainly following the discussion.

Enough spamming from me for now.