iLife Installation S-U-C-K-S!!!
Just needing to vent here a bit. I bought iLife to start seriously doing home movies of our little rug rat and making nice DVDs for the grandparents.
I have a B&W G3 that I recently upgraded with a G4 accelerator card. (Because I finally gave up on the G4/5 machines and will now wait till the Intel machines before moving to an all new machine.) I boot off the original 6GB drive, have an extra internal drive, an external FireWire drive, and an external DVD burner.
Apple in their infinite wisdom REQUIRES that the iLife apps be installed on the OS X boot drive. Ugh! Even if I didn't have a dinky boot drive, I'd still want to partition things so that the OS, apps, and user data were on different volumes. It simplifies backups and protects from errors on one volume destroying too much.
Rather than return the software - which I probably couldn't do since it's open - I spent a few hours setting up symbolic links to trick the installer into thinking it was putting the apps on the boot drive, then setting up more links for GarageBand's library files, then putting more symbolic links back in the boot Applications folder so Software Update will work. Sheesh!
The apps work fine from the alternate drive. It's a fairly minimal amount of tweaking required to fool the installer. Why doesn't Apple make things friendlier?
Why not have a "Custom" install button that lets "advanced" users put the apps where they want. If Apple needs something in the boot Applications folder, put links/aliases to the real location; I think Apple is smart enough to write software to do that, they did write a whole OS after all.
*sigh*
There, I feel better now.
- Jasen.
I have a B&W G3 that I recently upgraded with a G4 accelerator card. (Because I finally gave up on the G4/5 machines and will now wait till the Intel machines before moving to an all new machine.) I boot off the original 6GB drive, have an extra internal drive, an external FireWire drive, and an external DVD burner.
Apple in their infinite wisdom REQUIRES that the iLife apps be installed on the OS X boot drive. Ugh! Even if I didn't have a dinky boot drive, I'd still want to partition things so that the OS, apps, and user data were on different volumes. It simplifies backups and protects from errors on one volume destroying too much.
Rather than return the software - which I probably couldn't do since it's open - I spent a few hours setting up symbolic links to trick the installer into thinking it was putting the apps on the boot drive, then setting up more links for GarageBand's library files, then putting more symbolic links back in the boot Applications folder so Software Update will work. Sheesh!
The apps work fine from the alternate drive. It's a fairly minimal amount of tweaking required to fool the installer. Why doesn't Apple make things friendlier?
Why not have a "Custom" install button that lets "advanced" users put the apps where they want. If Apple needs something in the boot Applications folder, put links/aliases to the real location; I think Apple is smart enough to write software to do that, they did write a whole OS after all.*sigh*
There, I feel better now.
- Jasen.
Comments
if you didn't put the ilife apps in the apps folder, software update wouldn't include them when looking for updating software.
secondly, come on. that's like asking microsoft to make Halo compatible with an Atari. i know you don't want to upgrade just yet, but you can't blame apple too much for catering their apps to today's average systems.
Originally posted by ipodandimac
if you didn't put the ilife apps in the apps folder, software update wouldn't include them when looking for updating software.
By placing symbolic links in the boot Applications folder to where the apps are actually installed, Software Update works fine. Apple is smart enough to come up with a way to track installed software other than FORCING it to be installed in a particular place.
secondly, come on. that's like asking microsoft to make Halo compatible with an Atari. i know you don't want to upgrade just yet, but you can't blame apple too much for catering their apps to today's average systems.
No, it's not that extreme. My machine runs the latest OS just fine. I've found posts from other people with current machines who prefer to partition their drives and have had the same frustration. Even Microsoft has drag-and-drop installation of Office. There is no technical reason (that I know of) that the iLife apps need to be tied to the boot drive - other than the Software Update issue.
It used to be quite common for people to have multiple drives/partitions with different things on them. With iLife Apple has taken to dictating how users will arrange their space. I don't like this.
- Jasen.
Originally posted by jasenj1
I have a B&W G3 that I recently upgraded with a G4 accelerator card.
That means you're half-screwed anyway; chances are e.g. GarageBand won't work, iPhoto won't have advanced photo editing, etc.
I boot off the original 6GB drive, have an extra internal drive, an external FireWire drive, and an external DVD burner.
This setup slows your computer down big time. Replace the 6GB drive with a new drive (I recommend Samsung for 3.5 inch SATA or IDE drives) and you'll experience some serious speed-ups, in addition to solving your actual problem. You can get a 120 GB hard drive around $80.
Apple in their infinite wisdom REQUIRES that the iLife apps be installed on the OS X boot drive.
While that is a questionable and unnecessary practice, it isn't a problem.
I'd still want to partition things so that the OS, apps, and user data were on different volumes. It simplifies backups and protects from errors on one volume destroying too much.
The "simplifies backups" part is true on Windows, but I fail to see how having a separate partition makes things easier on Mac OS X, where you have reinstall options such as "Archive and Install". There is simply no need for partitioning on Mac OS X, with the exception of wanting multi-boot.
The "destroying too much" argument is nonsensical. If your hard drive is screwed, it's screwed. Partioning it doesn't save you anything. All it does is cause slowdowns and space issues.
Originally posted by Aquatic
Plus, why is Software Update too stupid to find an application if it isn't in a certain place!? I kind of thought that would be fixed in um...10.1.
It's not fixed because apparently the problem doesn't affect anybody... this is the first I've heard of the installation "issue" with iLife '05. If it were a widespread thorn in Mac users' sides, I'm sure Apple would've addressed it.
Sorry to restate the obvious but a handful of users don't speak for all Mac users.
Originally posted by Aquatic
Plus, why is Software Update too stupid to find an application if it isn't in a certain place!?
I agree; it would be easy enough to fix using LaunchServices. Certainly something Apple should have done long ago.
Bug report #4173005 filed with Apple.
Not quite the same thing as the iLife situation, but I'm guessing that Apple knows this is an issue, and future iLife installers will allow more flexibility.
Originally posted by Aquatic
mikef this is a well-known issue with a variety of Apple apps. It even affects Sarai. I forget exactly what it was but some update or other pestered me because I moved Safari into its own folder where I keep all my browsers. I HATE HATE HATE that mentality, of the "Movies" for my movies, "My Documents" for docs, "Pictures" for pictures, crap. I want to do things my way. That's why I bought a Mac. There should be many ways of doing one thing!
But honestly, how many typical Mac users does it really affect?
I've just never given this problem any thought, I guess.