Re: spatial stuff detail

[John Siracusa <siracusa mindspring com>]

On Sep 21, 2003, at 5:44 PM, Ole Laursen wrote:
> What is it that those "app wrappers" give you? (I've never really used 
> a Mac so I don't know.)

Single-icon drag-installs are convenient and easy to understand.  They 
could even be considered "comforting", even to geeks.  I download and 
try out a lot of share/freeware apps for OS X.  Most of the time, I 
just leave them where they "land" on my system (after decompressing, 
which is usually handled by my web browser): a single icon on my 
desktop.  I double-click to try the app.  If I like it, I drag the icon 
to a more permanent location (e.g. /Applications).  If I don't like it, 
I drag it to the trash.

Lather, rinse, repeat.  No "installers", no "wizards", no 
"uninstallers", and no scary spray of files into unknown locations on 
my HD.  Just one (usually attractive ;) little icon on my desktop.  
Even my mother can understand that.  (Granted, she hasn't been trained 
by years of Windows use to think that there is little or no connection 
between icons and actual application installations... ;)

Like I said earlier, you can't make every app a drag-install.  But a 
heck of a lot of them can be, and they're nice enough that they're not 
worth giving up for the sake of the apps that don't fit into that mold.

-John