Perhaps the programmers could do a better job so their product doesn't install multiple components all over the place. The components should remain in the Applications package file.
This is not recommended practice for every kind of components.
For example kexts go to special folders, caches go to special folders, sounds and fonts are installed to special folders, etc...
I agree, there are some programs (GarbageBand) that spreads large files everywhere (on the other hand, those same files can also be used by other programs). But the main difference is that preference files don't mess up your system the way Windows Registry Entries do. So Windows needs an uninstaller to undo the registry entries that programs do. You can delete a Mac app simply by dragging it from the Applications folder to your trash. However, you can't do that on Windows. Adding an uninstaller may make things more complicated because that feature would require an excessive number of updates to be compatible with programs outside of Apple's control. If such a feature is for Apple apps only, then people will complain that it is useless because it doesn't support the thousands of programs available. Most likely, there isn't such a feature in Snow Leopard.
Also, as if it weren't obvious, how many people uninstall/trash applications anyway? We're pretty much at a point where most people will never fill up their hard drives. I may be a neat freak, but I know I'm in the minority.
Then there's the reality that many people are Windows users and casual ones at that. They think when they delete a program (or just its shortcut, haha), that it's gone, even though remnants remain in the Registry. When they switch over to the Mac, they're unlikely to change their behavior and for the most part, trashing an app's icon in Mac OS X means it's gone. Thank goodness Apple doesn't litter the desktop with aliases like Microsoft does with shortcuts.
Preference files don't amount to much and most users never venture into the Library anyway, though it would certainly be nice if those files were erased when the application they're associated with was deleted. But then again, what if the user accidentally deleted an application? Would they want all their preferences to have been reset?
What needs a rethink is the installation process. Mounted disk images are cool, but they should really think up another way (besides just .pkgs), or simply present disk images differently (how, I don't know). Or as I and others have suggested, integrate Apple's Downloads application directory into the iTunes Store for easy installs and management of updates in iTunes (or Software Update).
Thanks so much Newton for this valuable insight. One thing I'd be very interested to know as a potential customer of SL when it comes out is whether it breaks major apps like those in Adobe's CS4. Have you any idea about that?
I am bummed by the long, long wait for ZFS — but i put the blame squarely on the CEO of Sun who 2 years ago made many of us believe that bootable ZFS was coming to Leopard. What was that guy thinking? Did he not grasp the technical problems involved in making that a reality? No wonder Jobs was pissed at him.
ZFS on timecapsules would be a pretty nice thing — but it doesn't seem as though we are going to see that any time soon. (Edit: actually I may be being too pessimistic about that.)
Is Snow Leopard being tied to EFI to thwart the Mac Clones/Hackintoshes?
What is going on in EFI with this new build?
thanks
No, EFI is nothing new about Snow Leopard. Nor is this about Hackintoshes. The Macs have used EFI since the move to Intel, three years ago. EFI never kept anyone from making clones or Hackintoshes. Snow Leopard's 64 bit security might, but that is just speculation. We'll have to see.
EFI is supposed to be much better than BIOS, but it should, since BIOS is 30 years old.
I can't even say that Wintel has been dragging its feet, here, because Vista uses EFI and few people use Vista. Or so I understand, as a non-Microsoft user.
Totally agree with your comment above in bold. OSX should be app-aware, properly uninstalling all pieces of apps. Ditto re excluding from time machine etc. It is just not enough to treat apps as if they were just a bunch of files lying around.
Back in 1997, Steve Jobs wanted developers to use Rhapsody, but they balked because it would have meant re-writing their applications in Cocoa and Objective C, So, Carbon API were born as a compromise. Carbon Apps often use installers like Windows has.
Apple, in Snow Leopard, is going all Cocoa API's or putting wrappers on Carbon API's to clean up later. Dragging and dropping packages should be the standard, but Carbon will be around for five years or so.
Since you have European flag in your menu bar, that may be the difference. The US setting does not allow you to display the date next to the time. I can click to see a drop-down with the date, but only the day can be displayed next to the time.
Thanks so much Newton for this valuable insight. One thing I'd be very interested to know as a potential customer of SL when it comes out is whether it breaks major apps like those in Adobe's CS4. Have you any idea about that?
Apple did not break CS4; it merely decided not to issue 64 bit Carbon API's. Apple has been pushing developers into using Xcode ever since it moved to Intel, but Adobe balked, because Xcode isn't cross platform. Apple decided to pull the plug on Carbon so it would be obsolete in 5 years. Snow Leopard is getting rid of the compromises which were forced on NeXTstep back in 1997.
We ought to be happy that Apple is slowly pulling the plug on 32 bit Carbon Apps, even if it embarrasses Adobe. There are still lots of neat things in NeXTstep that Apple can implement now.
Quote:
I am bummed by the long, long wait for ZFS ? but I put the blame squarely on the CEO of Sun who 2 years ago made many of us believe that bootable ZFS was coming to Leopard. What was that guy thinking? Did he not grasp the technical problems involved in making that a reality? No wonder Jobs was pissed at him.
At the time Sun hadn't made ZFS into a boot file system. Leopard has ZFS in an experimental form. Snow Leopard should improve on that. But, lets be reasonable. The only hardware that needs ZFS is the servers, but that will change with time and ZFS gets to be the standard OS. HFS+ Journaling is getting a trifle old, but it isn't a problem for Apple yet.
Quote:
ZFS on time capsules would be a pretty nice thing ? but it doesn't seem as though we are going to see that any time soon.
This is one of those stealth upgrades. Apple is moving steadily toward ZFS, but there is no reason to rush things. There is a lot of work to do and only recently did Sun get ZFS to be its boot file system.
I suspect the pattern is that Apple made ZFS experimental in 10.5 and optional for servers in 10.6. 10.7 in 12 to 18 months make it standard on servers and optional in the consumer OS. 10.8 makes it the standard file system in two to three years.
This is not a big deal. There is no groundswell demanding this. Apple is merely solving problems before it becomes urgent to do so. I expect an explosion in Video on everyone's computer. As disc drives and home LAN's become ubiquitous, then all this data will need to be managed or it will get lost on our drives.
Back in 1997, Steve Jobs wanted developers to use Rhapsody, but they balked because it would have meant re-writing their applications in Cocoa and Objective C, So, Carbon API were born as a compromise. Carbon Apps often use installers like Windows has.
Apple, in Snow Leopard, is going all Cocoa API's or putting wrappers on Carbon API's to clean up later. Dragging and dropping packages should be the standard, but Carbon will be around for five years or so.
This is a pretty ridiculous statement--there's so many things wrong I don't know where to begin. Installers are not unique to Carbon, and in fact many Cocoa applications use them. As was stated earlier, Apple requires some components to be installed in certain places, outside of your application's bundle. Want to provide a contextual menu plug-in? Has to go into [~]/Library/Contextual Menu Items. Want to provide a QuickLook importer? Has to go into [~]/Library/QuickLook. Want to add an Input Method, WebKit plug-in, PreferencePane or ScreenSaver (all Foundation/AppKit/"Cocoa" based plug-ins)....have to install them in special folders. Some of those items will not work unless they are in /Library, so you need root priviledges to install them--something drag & drop install is not good for at all. Others don't require root privileges, but they won't be available to other users of the computer if you don't install them to /Library (what retarded software would want to install a QuickLook importer only for the current user instead of all users)? To make it available to all users you need root privileges. Then there's drivers and kernel modules, which require even more special handling.
Those are just the dynamic code modules. All kinds of applications, from iPhoto and Mail (Cocoa based applications) to Adium and Yahoo Messenger (also Cocoa) all have data in my ~/Library/Caches folder right now. How are those files supposed to be uninstalled?
Apple did not break CS4; it merely decided not to issue 64 bit Carbon API's. Apple has been pushing developers into using Xcode ever since it moved to Intel, but Adobe balked, because Xcode isn't cross platform. Apple decided to pull the plug on Carbon so it would be obsolete in 5 years. Snow Leopard is getting rid of the compromises which were forced on NeXTstep back in 1997.
We ought to be happy that Apple is slowly pulling the plug on 32 bit Carbon Apps, even if it embarrasses Adobe. There are still lots of neat things in NeXTstep that Apple can implement now.
It will be a while before Apple breaks 32-bit Carbon. iTunes is still Carbon in the latest Snow Leopard seeds, and in fact many parts of Cocoa still rely on Carbon underneath. NSMenu still uses internal Carbon classes like CoreUIMenu even in Snow Leopard (CoreUI is basically the Carbon HI APIs abstracted out).
Snow Leopard+1 will certainly not prevent Carbon applications from running since Adobe has announced they will not release CS5 until late 2010. Adobe isn't the one to worry about anyway, Microsoft has not announced any plans to drop Carbon, and the day Macs can't run Microsoft Word and PowerPoint is the day Apple stops selling Macs to higher ed customers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Louis_Wheeler
At the time Sun hadn't made ZFS into a boot file system. Leopard has ZFS in an experimental form. Snow Leopard should improve on that. But, lets be reasonable. The only hardware that needs ZFS is the servers, but that will change with time and ZFS gets to be the standard OS. HFS+ Journaling is getting a trifle old, but it isn't a problem for Apple yet.
This is one of those stealth upgrades. Apple is moving steadily toward ZFS, but there is no reason to rush things. There is a lot of work to do and only recently did Sun get ZFS to be its boot file system.
I suspect the pattern is that Apple made ZFS experimental in 10.5 and optional for servers in 10.6. 10.7 in 12 to 18 months make it standard on servers and optional in the consumer OS. 10.8 makes it the standard file system in two to three years.
This is not a big deal. There is no groundswell demanding this. Apple is merely solving problems before it becomes urgent to do so. I expect an explosion in Video on everyone's computer. As disc drives and home LAN's become ubiquitous, then all this data will need to be managed or it will get lost on our drives.
ZFS is in Snow Leopard Server. In Snow Leopard Client it's read only. However IMHO there's not going to be any transition to ZFS for Mac OS X Client for years to come (e.g. not SL+1). Apple is still adding features to HFS+, e.g. the automatic compression support added for Snow Leopard (which is annoying as #*&! since it prevents you from opening your Snow Leopard files on Leopard). ZFS is still dreadfully slow, and there's nothing in there that can't be added to HFS+.
ZFS is in Snow Leopard Server. In Snow Leopard Client it's read only. However IMHO there's not going to be any transition to ZFS for Mac OS X Client for years to come (e.g. not SL+1). Apple is still adding features to HFS+, e.g. the automatic compression support added for Snow Leopard (which is annoying as #*&! since it prevents you from opening your Snow Leopard files on Leopard). ZFS is still dreadfully slow, and there's nothing in there that can't be added to HFS+.
Since I posted I did some reading and I think you are wrong about this. ZFS in Sl Client is likely to be read/write capable and with some kind of functionality built into Disk Utility. It won't be bootable, but it will be possible to partition your drive and have a small HFS+ partition for the System and a larger ZFS partition for your home directory. Indeed this is possible now though you have to use the terminal to format the ZFS partition, and the ZFS that works with the 10.5 kernel is stuck at build 119. (Leopard will likely never get beyond this ZFS build ? in other words the progress in ZFS that is being made in SL will likely not be backported. Or so I read.)
Given this progress I think we might just see a bootable ZFS option on SL+1, but very likely in SL+2.
Apple requires some components to be installed in certain places, outside of your application's bundle. Want to provide a contextual menu plug-in? Has to go into [~]/Library/Contextual Menu Items. Want to provide a QuickLook importer? Has to go into [~]/Library/QuickLook. Want to add an Input Method, WebKit plug-in, PreferencePane or ScreenSaver (all Foundation/AppKit/"Cocoa" based plug-ins)....have to install them in special folders. Some of those items will not work unless they are in /Library, so you need root priviledges to install them--something drag & drop install is not good for at all.
The correct solution is to install those things on the first run of your application, prompting for the user password if necessary.
Ever used an app that works with Growl? That's what happens there. It's very un-intrusive and subtle.
Hehe, its funny to see how little all of you know...
Is this a comment about SL content, installation process (I'm reading so much absolute crap that is stated as fact its remarkable), the "future" or something else? I have just been reading from the side lines - makes me shake my head in wonder!
P.S. I now understand how some of these folks have managed to post 100's or 1000's of messages - sometimes quickly. They think this is a chat instead of a forum for discussion.
5. Anything new in open/save dialogs? The ability to 'view by kind' would be really nice - imo it would be the most likely desirable sort for navigating in those.
Comments
Perhaps the programmers could do a better job so their product doesn't install multiple components all over the place. The components should remain in the Applications package file.
This is not recommended practice for every kind of components.
For example kexts go to special folders, caches go to special folders, sounds and fonts are installed to special folders, etc...
I agree, there are some programs (GarbageBand) that spreads large files everywhere (on the other hand, those same files can also be used by other programs). But the main difference is that preference files don't mess up your system the way Windows Registry Entries do. So Windows needs an uninstaller to undo the registry entries that programs do. You can delete a Mac app simply by dragging it from the Applications folder to your trash. However, you can't do that on Windows. Adding an uninstaller may make things more complicated because that feature would require an excessive number of updates to be compatible with programs outside of Apple's control. If such a feature is for Apple apps only, then people will complain that it is useless because it doesn't support the thousands of programs available. Most likely, there isn't such a feature in Snow Leopard.
Also, as if it weren't obvious, how many people uninstall/trash applications anyway? We're pretty much at a point where most people will never fill up their hard drives. I may be a neat freak, but I know I'm in the minority.
Then there's the reality that many people are Windows users and casual ones at that. They think when they delete a program (or just its shortcut, haha), that it's gone, even though remnants remain in the Registry. When they switch over to the Mac, they're unlikely to change their behavior and for the most part, trashing an app's icon in Mac OS X means it's gone. Thank goodness Apple doesn't litter the desktop with aliases like Microsoft does with shortcuts.
Preference files don't amount to much and most users never venture into the Library anyway, though it would certainly be nice if those files were erased when the application they're associated with was deleted. But then again, what if the user accidentally deleted an application? Would they want all their preferences to have been reset?
What needs a rethink is the installation process. Mounted disk images are cool, but they should really think up another way (besides just .pkgs), or simply present disk images differently (how, I don't know). Or as I and others have suggested, integrate Apple's Downloads application directory into the iTunes Store for easy installs and management of updates in iTunes (or Software Update).
I am bummed by the long, long wait for ZFS — but i put the blame squarely on the CEO of Sun who 2 years ago made many of us believe that bootable ZFS was coming to Leopard. What was that guy thinking? Did he not grasp the technical problems involved in making that a reality? No wonder Jobs was pissed at him.
ZFS on timecapsules would be a pretty nice thing — but it doesn't seem as though we are going to see that any time soon. (Edit: actually I may be being too pessimistic about that.)
Is Snow Leopard being tied to EFI to thwart the Mac Clones/Hackintoshes?
What is going on in EFI with this new build?
thanks
No, EFI is nothing new about Snow Leopard. Nor is this about Hackintoshes. The Macs have used EFI since the move to Intel, three years ago. EFI never kept anyone from making clones or Hackintoshes. Snow Leopard's 64 bit security might, but that is just speculation. We'll have to see.
EFI is supposed to be much better than BIOS, but it should, since BIOS is 30 years old.
I can't even say that Wintel has been dragging its feet, here, because Vista uses EFI and few people use Vista. Or so I understand, as a non-Microsoft user.
Totally agree with your comment above in bold. OSX should be app-aware, properly uninstalling all pieces of apps. Ditto re excluding from time machine etc. It is just not enough to treat apps as if they were just a bunch of files lying around.
Back in 1997, Steve Jobs wanted developers to use Rhapsody, but they balked because it would have meant re-writing their applications in Cocoa and Objective C, So, Carbon API were born as a compromise. Carbon Apps often use installers like Windows has.
Apple, in Snow Leopard, is going all Cocoa API's or putting wrappers on Carbon API's to clean up later. Dragging and dropping packages should be the standard, but Carbon will be around for five years or so.
Since you have European flag in your menu bar, that may be the difference. The US setting does not allow you to display the date next to the time. I can click to see a drop-down with the date, but only the day can be displayed next to the time.
Not being picky.. but thats the British flag..
Thanks so much Newton for this valuable insight. One thing I'd be very interested to know as a potential customer of SL when it comes out is whether it breaks major apps like those in Adobe's CS4. Have you any idea about that?
Apple did not break CS4; it merely decided not to issue 64 bit Carbon API's. Apple has been pushing developers into using Xcode ever since it moved to Intel, but Adobe balked, because Xcode isn't cross platform. Apple decided to pull the plug on Carbon so it would be obsolete in 5 years. Snow Leopard is getting rid of the compromises which were forced on NeXTstep back in 1997.
We ought to be happy that Apple is slowly pulling the plug on 32 bit Carbon Apps, even if it embarrasses Adobe. There are still lots of neat things in NeXTstep that Apple can implement now.
I am bummed by the long, long wait for ZFS ? but I put the blame squarely on the CEO of Sun who 2 years ago made many of us believe that bootable ZFS was coming to Leopard. What was that guy thinking? Did he not grasp the technical problems involved in making that a reality? No wonder Jobs was pissed at him.
At the time Sun hadn't made ZFS into a boot file system. Leopard has ZFS in an experimental form. Snow Leopard should improve on that. But, lets be reasonable. The only hardware that needs ZFS is the servers, but that will change with time and ZFS gets to be the standard OS. HFS+ Journaling is getting a trifle old, but it isn't a problem for Apple yet.
ZFS on time capsules would be a pretty nice thing ? but it doesn't seem as though we are going to see that any time soon.
This is one of those stealth upgrades. Apple is moving steadily toward ZFS, but there is no reason to rush things. There is a lot of work to do and only recently did Sun get ZFS to be its boot file system.
I suspect the pattern is that Apple made ZFS experimental in 10.5 and optional for servers in 10.6. 10.7 in 12 to 18 months make it standard on servers and optional in the consumer OS. 10.8 makes it the standard file system in two to three years.
This is not a big deal. There is no groundswell demanding this. Apple is merely solving problems before it becomes urgent to do so. I expect an explosion in Video on everyone's computer. As disc drives and home LAN's become ubiquitous, then all this data will need to be managed or it will get lost on our drives.
Back in 1997, Steve Jobs wanted developers to use Rhapsody, but they balked because it would have meant re-writing their applications in Cocoa and Objective C, So, Carbon API were born as a compromise. Carbon Apps often use installers like Windows has.
Apple, in Snow Leopard, is going all Cocoa API's or putting wrappers on Carbon API's to clean up later. Dragging and dropping packages should be the standard, but Carbon will be around for five years or so.
This is a pretty ridiculous statement--there's so many things wrong I don't know where to begin. Installers are not unique to Carbon, and in fact many Cocoa applications use them. As was stated earlier, Apple requires some components to be installed in certain places, outside of your application's bundle. Want to provide a contextual menu plug-in? Has to go into [~]/Library/Contextual Menu Items. Want to provide a QuickLook importer? Has to go into [~]/Library/QuickLook. Want to add an Input Method, WebKit plug-in, PreferencePane or ScreenSaver (all Foundation/AppKit/"Cocoa" based plug-ins)....have to install them in special folders. Some of those items will not work unless they are in /Library, so you need root priviledges to install them--something drag & drop install is not good for at all. Others don't require root privileges, but they won't be available to other users of the computer if you don't install them to /Library (what retarded software would want to install a QuickLook importer only for the current user instead of all users)? To make it available to all users you need root privileges. Then there's drivers and kernel modules, which require even more special handling.
Those are just the dynamic code modules. All kinds of applications, from iPhoto and Mail (Cocoa based applications) to Adium and Yahoo Messenger (also Cocoa) all have data in my ~/Library/Caches folder right now. How are those files supposed to be uninstalled?
Lame statement.
Apple did not break CS4; it merely decided not to issue 64 bit Carbon API's. Apple has been pushing developers into using Xcode ever since it moved to Intel, but Adobe balked, because Xcode isn't cross platform. Apple decided to pull the plug on Carbon so it would be obsolete in 5 years. Snow Leopard is getting rid of the compromises which were forced on NeXTstep back in 1997.
We ought to be happy that Apple is slowly pulling the plug on 32 bit Carbon Apps, even if it embarrasses Adobe. There are still lots of neat things in NeXTstep that Apple can implement now.
It will be a while before Apple breaks 32-bit Carbon. iTunes is still Carbon in the latest Snow Leopard seeds, and in fact many parts of Cocoa still rely on Carbon underneath. NSMenu still uses internal Carbon classes like CoreUIMenu even in Snow Leopard (CoreUI is basically the Carbon HI APIs abstracted out).
Snow Leopard+1 will certainly not prevent Carbon applications from running since Adobe has announced they will not release CS5 until late 2010. Adobe isn't the one to worry about anyway, Microsoft has not announced any plans to drop Carbon, and the day Macs can't run Microsoft Word and PowerPoint is the day Apple stops selling Macs to higher ed customers.
At the time Sun hadn't made ZFS into a boot file system. Leopard has ZFS in an experimental form. Snow Leopard should improve on that. But, lets be reasonable. The only hardware that needs ZFS is the servers, but that will change with time and ZFS gets to be the standard OS. HFS+ Journaling is getting a trifle old, but it isn't a problem for Apple yet.
This is one of those stealth upgrades. Apple is moving steadily toward ZFS, but there is no reason to rush things. There is a lot of work to do and only recently did Sun get ZFS to be its boot file system.
I suspect the pattern is that Apple made ZFS experimental in 10.5 and optional for servers in 10.6. 10.7 in 12 to 18 months make it standard on servers and optional in the consumer OS. 10.8 makes it the standard file system in two to three years.
This is not a big deal. There is no groundswell demanding this. Apple is merely solving problems before it becomes urgent to do so. I expect an explosion in Video on everyone's computer. As disc drives and home LAN's become ubiquitous, then all this data will need to be managed or it will get lost on our drives.
ZFS is in Snow Leopard Server. In Snow Leopard Client it's read only. However IMHO there's not going to be any transition to ZFS for Mac OS X Client for years to come (e.g. not SL+1). Apple is still adding features to HFS+, e.g. the automatic compression support added for Snow Leopard (which is annoying as #*&! since it prevents you from opening your Snow Leopard files on Leopard). ZFS is still dreadfully slow, and there's nothing in there that can't be added to HFS+.
ZFS is in Snow Leopard Server. In Snow Leopard Client it's read only. However IMHO there's not going to be any transition to ZFS for Mac OS X Client for years to come (e.g. not SL+1). Apple is still adding features to HFS+, e.g. the automatic compression support added for Snow Leopard (which is annoying as #*&! since it prevents you from opening your Snow Leopard files on Leopard). ZFS is still dreadfully slow, and there's nothing in there that can't be added to HFS+.
Since I posted I did some reading and I think you are wrong about this. ZFS in Sl Client is likely to be read/write capable and with some kind of functionality built into Disk Utility. It won't be bootable, but it will be possible to partition your drive and have a small HFS+ partition for the System and a larger ZFS partition for your home directory. Indeed this is possible now though you have to use the terminal to format the ZFS partition, and the ZFS that works with the 10.5 kernel is stuck at build 119. (Leopard will likely never get beyond this ZFS build ? in other words the progress in ZFS that is being made in SL will likely not be backported. Or so I read.)
Given this progress I think we might just see a bootable ZFS option on SL+1, but very likely in SL+2.
Apple requires some components to be installed in certain places, outside of your application's bundle. Want to provide a contextual menu plug-in? Has to go into [~]/Library/Contextual Menu Items. Want to provide a QuickLook importer? Has to go into [~]/Library/QuickLook. Want to add an Input Method, WebKit plug-in, PreferencePane or ScreenSaver (all Foundation/AppKit/"Cocoa" based plug-ins)....have to install them in special folders. Some of those items will not work unless they are in /Library, so you need root priviledges to install them--something drag & drop install is not good for at all.
The correct solution is to install those things on the first run of your application, prompting for the user password if necessary.
Ever used an app that works with Growl? That's what happens there. It's very un-intrusive and subtle.
Amorya
Hehe, its funny to see how little all of you know...
Is this a comment about SL content, installation process (I'm reading so much absolute crap that is stated as fact its remarkable), the "future" or something else? I have just been reading from the side lines - makes me shake my head in wonder!
P.S. I now understand how some of these folks have managed to post 100's or 1000's of messages - sometimes quickly. They think this is a chat instead of a forum for discussion.
jOhn
It was basically saying in reference to what people are saying about Cocoa vs Carbon etc, they're all know-it-alls who really know very little.
I suppose you know more? Tell us.
I do know that a man can't serve two masters. Apple's spent a lot of effort working on Carbon that should now go to Cocoa and that makes me happy.
5. Anything new in open/save dialogs? The ability to 'view by kind' would be really nice - imo it would be the most likely desirable sort for navigating in those.
I believe this is now possible.
See here.