First, here is LifeHacker’s section on “Installing apps” on the Mac, making it sound like it should be common sense to anyone who knows how to use a mouse.

Installing apps

This may seem like somewhat of a no brainer for Mac veterans, but when you switch to a Mac from a PC, you may find the installation process of new applications a bit confusing at first. That’s because, in general, there’s absolutely nothing to it. When you download an application (generally in the form of a compressed .dmg file, which will mount as a drive when you open it), you’re pretty much done with the installation process. You can run an application (marked by the .app extension) from anywhere on your computer, and there’s really no installation to it. Broadly speaking, the installation of a new Mac app generally consists of moving the new application to your Applications folder. Many apps make this very simple, like the mounted Firefox .dmg above.

Unless you have your own system for arranging apps on your Mac, copying new apps to the Applications folder is a good practice. What you don’t want to do is forget to move the app from the .dmg folder to your hard disk.

I responded in the comments, with some info that might actually be helpful to switchers (and a requisite amount of snark):

[U]nfortunately, the issue of application installation needs to be emphasized yet again, in addition to the previous comments. Apple seriously needs to update their guidelines or make actual restrictions on how programs should be installed. Even though it’s supposed to just be drag-and-drop (i.e. drag a .app to the Applications folder), it’s never quite that simple. First of all, the .dmg paradigm is broken. Plain and simple, it just doesn’t make sense to normal people. Why should you have to mount a virtual drive (a completely foreign concept to people who have never mounted an actual drive to begin with), then copy an app from the virutal drive onto their regular drive, unmount, then delete the DMG? If I didn’t know what a DMG actually is, I would be terrified of unmounting/ejecting it (if I even knew I had to do that), much less throwing it away. What happens then? Does the program get thrown away too?

But even if you understand the mounting/unmounting situation, installing a program can still be difficult or confusing. I’d say about 60% of the programs I’ve downloaded/installed are simple .app’s, where I drop them manually into my Apps folder. However, there are some that come in .pkg (package) files. You don’t drag/drop those, you open them, which starts an installer, which will then copy the .app and associated files to Apps for you. But how do you know what is a .app and what is a .pkg? Well, I know from the icon, but many people wouldn’t. I have to wonder, how many people, who have been told time and time again that they just have to drag/drop into the Apps folder, drop those .pkg files into Applications, then run the installer everytime they try to open a program?

Finally, you get a myriad of installers that are somewhere in between simple drag/drop into Applications or a full-blown installer. Those are ones that might pop-up a simple install screen (like the Firefox screenshot above) to help guide you. But those are also confusing. What is that firefox window trying to tell me? Is it instructing me to drag the .app from the mounted disk into my Apps folder? Do I drag the FF icon in the pop-up to Apps? Is that little icon of the Apps folder in the pop-up just an icon, or is it a symbolic link to my actual Apps folder, so that I can just drag the FF icon to the Apps folder icon? Sometimes the mounted disk image has a symbolic link to my Apps folder, so in the mounted disk, I can drag the .app directly to the link. But if I didn’t know what a symbolic link was, I would be completely confused. Why can I see all my Apps from this disc image? What happens if I close and delete this disk image? Do I have to access my Apps folder via this disk to run my new application?

And don’t even get me started on uninstalling applications. Just drag/drop it into the trash? Ha, yeah right. 3rd party applications like Yank! or AppZapper [or AppCleaner] are essential if you actually want to delete programs from OS X.

As much shit as people give to Windows installers and uninstallers, I never had a problem with them. 95% of the time, Windows installers are simple executables that open a wizard where the user rarely has to do anything other than press “Next” a bunch of times. Then hopefully people will get rid of the installers after they’re done, but if they don’t, it’s not a big deal. At least it won’t mount any virtual drives whenever someone starts that program, or present them with many, ambiguous ways to install or copy or move the program. Only a limited number of Windows programs do you download the actual executable instead of an installer, and these are usually reserved for “power user” utilities like PuTTY and DVDShrink, so people using these should know how they work.

Given these problems alone, I have a hard time agreeing with the commonly held conception that Macs are so much more beginner friendly. I shutter at the thought of visiting a “Mac beginners” computer and finding it littered with DMGs that mount and unmount everytime they want to run a program.

My little rant was justified by several follow-up comments by other readers that showed I wasn’t completely off-base:

@joelion: this was a genius comment, i got a macbook last week and this answers (i think) all of my questions …

to folks who think the firefox installation is intuitive, i’d say that while the “installation info box” is cute, it left a good few things unanswered. i still didn’t get why there was this 3d rendering of a white rectangle with a firefox logo on it on my desktop …

Hey joelion -

I just bought a mac and I was going batty trying to install Firefox. Why is it mounted? What the heck do I do now? Dear god I was ready to return the thing and buy a Lenovo. Thanks for the big write up. Very appreciated.

@joelion: Thanks for going a little further into .pkg vs. .dmg installations – I’m sure it’ll be helpful to more than one reader

of course, some readers didn’t get it:

@Joe:
I see your point about .dmg files being weird but I think you’re seeing this as a one sided problem. There are way too many methods in the Windows world to installing an app, it could be

- a plain .exe with no install (if .dmg is confusing then .exe and the rest is too), like uTorrent
- InstallShield (the 3rd party tool)
- .msi (many different versions of MS’s tool that require a lot of developer time)
- InstallAnywhere (and the other 3rd party installers)

Each one of these has a different look & feel (although this might be slight), confusing the user experience. I agree that maybe .dmg files should be auto-ejected or auto-mounted but then I wonder about security and flexibility.

He says there are “way too many methods” to install an app in Windows. Despite his list of 4 “methods”, there are really only 2.

1. The “plain .exe” with no install, which I covered in my comment. This is where you simply download an .exe and can run it directly. I said this is mostly used for “power user apps” like PuTTY, and I think uTorrent fits this bill too. Nevertheless, I don’t think it’s necessarily confusing – it would be akin to downloading a .app directly on the Mac. The only “problem” I have with downloading .exe’s directly in Windows is that you then have to find a place for the .exe to live, usually involving creating a folder in “Program Files”, then manually creating shortcuts in your Quicklaunch bar and Start Menu, etc, etc. On the Mac, even if you download a .app, you can just move it directly to /Applications, which is nice.
2. InstallShield/.msi/InstallAnyware/3rd Part Installers – these are all basically the same. Different look-and-feels, maybe, but you’re still just pushing “Next” a bunch of times for the most part. They provide basically the functionality as .pkg on Mac, they just don’t look as good.
3. OK, there are at least 3 ways, if you include .zip files and other ways to package executables and installers. But that’s not the point!

It wasn’t my point to defend Windows’ installers – I don’t give a damn about how good or bad Windows installers are. And if your only defense for what installing on a Mac is like is “yeah, well, look how bad it is on Windows,” then you’ve lost the battle. Mac developers (and Apple) shouldn’t strive to be “better than Windows.” They should strive to be great, and the mess that Mac installers are in now is not great – in fact, it’s downright bad. Apple needs to step up on this issue and take control. It looks like it’s too late for Snow Leopard, so…. maybe in OS X 10.7? Wishful thinking, and anyways, we’ll be mostly done with the next Presidential election by the time that’s out – plenty of time for countless new Mac converts to get frustrated and confused on their shiny new machines.

I actually did have a good time though, and unsuriprsingly, the event was excellently run (no pun intended). There were >10,000 people signed up for the 10k, but everything went very smoothly, no waiting in huge lines or getting caught in crowds. It was chip-timed as all the big races are now, and as soon as you finish you give your chip to a dude with a computer, he scans it, and immediately prints out a result and time card for you. And it was also cool because we received our race packets in the mail last week, and they included the race t-shirt that everyone wore, which were bright orange and a nice, light silky material. That way, everyone who paid was wearing the same shirt, so it cuts down on “race bandits”, or those crazy people who like to run for the fun of it, and will enter a race without paying or getting a real result. Plus, it just looks cool to have thousands of people running through the trails in the English Garden wearing the same thing.

Arguably, the highlight of the race morning was walking out of the chute after the race, and being greeted with an ice cold Weissbier! Only in Germany!

And you gotta’ give it up for this guy, running the 1/2 marathon race, in full lederhosen, while pushing a stroller (but bucking the dress code!).

Hope everyone had fun – it was a good way to spend my last weekend in Germany. Time to cheer on Deutschland in the upcoming quarter-finals game with Argentina on Friday!

Update: Here I am hanging out with some of my Spanish friends after the race.

       

Inevitably, the topic of politics, and more specifically, American politics, came up. Hey, this should be fun, I thought – I’m up for a little Bush-bashing with a table full of drunk Frenchies! I was completely taken off guard, then, when the father challenged my positions on American policies and politics more severely than anyone else in Europe has. It’s not that he was an ardent Bush supporter or anything, but he was very hesitant to pass judgement on what was going on in America. He said that since he’s not in America and doesn’t know its people or is involved in its government, he is unwilling to criticize what he doesn’t know enough about. He was confident that Americans are able to take care of our own government by ourselves and democracy in action (or democracy inaction, as Jon Stewart is fond of noting) will prevail for the best solution.

I mentioned this to another French coworker, and he said that’s quite typical for French people. They are very opinionated and vocal about what goes on in France, but are generally very reserved about speaking out about politics in other countries where they are not fully informed of local situations. So mark this up as another typical European stereotype many American have that turns out to be flat wrong (in addition to my assumption that I would always be able to tell a Brit apart from and American, and certainly a German apart from a Brit, given their accents – both of which have been proven false). Remember that next time your Congressman tells you to pour your French wine down the toilet (that you already paid for, mind you) or that we should be eating patriotic Freedom Fries.

À votre santé, mon ami!

I took off work a little early and headed to Augustinerbrau Keller with my friend Andrew. It was a bit crowded, but we manged to find a place to stand for the 2 hours and peer over other’s shoulders while Deutschland beat up on Costa Rica, 4 to 2.

After a nice game of football, it’s time to fill up on some good Chinese food, where, of course, you must take the requisite picture with the enthusiastic group of Asian tourists decked out in native German soccer gear.

Afterwards, I headed to Marienplatz, Munich Center City, about 3 blocks from my apartment, where the victory celebration was in full swing. What was fun about the celebration though, was that it was more of a welcoming party for all countries and cultures, rather than a victory celebration for Germany on opening night.

Of course we had our German partiers:

But there were also contingents from Mexico:

Brazil:

various European countries:

and Iran:

And while wandering through the crowd I heard lots of people speaking English, many of them American English, I didn’t see a single US, England, or Australian flag….

Oh well – check out the rest of the pictures in the gallery, and check back later for more World Cup adventures, including a view from the Dutch perspective, as I visit Amsterdam next weekend!

This is what it looked like in the city Tuesday morning (I fogot my camera before leaving for work, but ganked this picture off of someone’s Flickr gallery)

But after 9 months of hearning nothing but complaining and excuses about the weather from all sorts of Germans, I finally got a rational and reasonable response yesterday at lunch. I asked a fellow engineer about snow in April, expecting to get the usual “oh no, this is highly unusual”, but instead got: “Well, I suppose there’s always the distinct probability of snow into April. I guess it’s just that most people are tired of the long winter, and wish for Spring to show up to get outdoors.” So, upon hearing that rationale, I decided to suck it up and return to my usual stoic disposition, and quit complaining about the weather myself.

I did get another shock on Tuesday morning, though. Upon seeing the snow outside, I checked my watch to see what the date was and was greeted with an unplesant message. Apparently as I was adjusting my watch last week for daylight savings time, I accidentally changed the day read-out to German abbreviations, instead of English. So on Tuesdays, or known as Dienstage over here, instead of “Tue”, I get this:

DIE!! AAAHH!

Anyway, enough of that boring business. Not much else to report, but I did put up another photo album of my trip to the Starkbierfest last week at the Paulaner bier hall. Now the German’s aren’t going to get any awards for creativity when it comes to naming their beers. I’ve mentioned the most popular beers before – Helles, Weiss, and Dunkel. Those words literally mean “light”, “white”, and “dark” in English. Now to add to that list is a special brew made only once a year, Starkbier. Or, AKA known as “Strong beer”. How creative! Starkbierfest is kind of like the Spring version of Oktoberfest, but instead of everyone gathering at the carnival grounds, it’s up to each brewery to stage their own festivities at their own bierhalls. And as I mentioned, starkbier is only brewed once a year for this event, so you can’t get it any other time. That’s probably a good thing too, since it contains a good bit more alcohol that the other normal beers, and it’s drank in 1 Liter size steins of course. A couple/few of those will put you under the table for sure.I snagged a minute of video while I was there to give you a bit of a taste of the atmosphere. If you’ve ever wondered what 2000 drunk Germans (well, and a fair share of Americans, Brits, and Asians probably) looked like singing the original version of 99 Luftballoons, wonder no more!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snawRqdBCok

]]> http://joelion.com/2006/04/spring-time-is-bier-time/feed/ 0 http://joelion.com/2006/03/spring-is-hier/ http://joelion.com/2006/03/spring-is-hier/#comments Sun, 19 Mar 2006 17:04:35 +0000 Joe Lion http://joelion.com/archives/34 So I spent much of my last post complaining commenting on the weather around here. Well parhaps I spoke too soon because this weekend has been great, hinting that Spring may be around the corner. By great I mean it’s been sunny, at least, and temperatures have been above freezing. So I took advantage and went for a run in the English Garden and found almost all of Munich had the same idea. The park was full of people running, walking, riding, eating, but no nude-sunbathing (not yet, at least). The lakes are still frozen over, so while there is not ice hockey being played as there was last time I visited, there were groups of dogs enjoying the smooth lake to chase ducks and geese across the water!

For a little aside here, I’ll remind anyone who missed all my posts from last summer that when the weather is good here, most dining seems to take place outdoors. Between the time I got here in July and when the weather started going bad in November, probably 80% of my meals were outside, either in a garden or park, or in an outdoor seating area. Most cafes and restaraunts put tables all over the sidewalk or in adjacent squares to their location, and it makes for pleasant dining. Also, as I mentioned in the last post, European’s seem not to mind standing outside in freezing temperatures, as long as they had a group of people, and food and drinks. Well, with temperatures soaring into the low 40’s today, the cafes apparently have collectively decided it is time to break out the outdoor tables and chairs! As evident from this picture of a cafe at the end of our block, the locals seem to be more than happy to once again start eating outdoors again!

So anyway, I’ve added a new photo gallery of some recent snow and a very cold and snowy St. Patrick’s Day festival. Also, my brother Todd and his girlfriend Becca spent a week here in Muinch over their Spring Break. They left 70+ degree weather in Raleigh (and returned to 80+ degreesǃ∂.) to spend 8 days in the cold and snow. The first weekend of their trip, Southern Germany was slammed with the largest snow storm in 20 years, dumping over 20 inches of snow in downtown Munich. The snow made it a bit difficult to do all the normal tourist stuff, and we even made a foolish attempt at taking the Die Bahn (regional train) for a day trip to the Linderhof castle. I was thinking “what’s a little snow to a 50 ton train?” I failed to account for ice downing trees and debris on the tracks, and we ended up stranded for 6 hours in a Munich suburban train station before finding a cab back to town. By the next day the tracks were cleared, and they managed to escape to Vienna for a few days, where the weather was at least slightly warmer and there was considerably less snow.

The weekend after they left, there was an early St. Patrick’s Day celebration downtown. I kind of overslept though the parade, but did make it to part of the after-parade party. A couple days of rain had cleaned out most of the snow, but by Sunday afternoon it was well below freezing again and the snow arrived just in time for the Irish jigs on the main stage. There was still a pretty good crowd, because one thing I’ve noticed about Europeans (taking experience from Munich, Austira and Prague though the past few months) is that they don’t mind standing around outside in freezing temperatures and horrid conditions, as long as they are with a big group of people and have something alcoholic to drink. In this case it was cold beer, but around Christmas the drink of choice was Gluwein, a very tasty heated, spicy red wine drink.

Since I got here last summer, I’ve heard from Germans how unusual all the weather has been. When it rained for a week in July, it was “oh no, this is highly unusual. We never get this much rain.” Then it got hot in August and we heard “this is very hot. It never get’s this hot usually.” The first snow came in November and there was “wow – we usually don’t get snow until Christmas. January and February is when we get the most snow.” When it snows for 10 days straight in January I hear “don’t worry. It never accumulates more than a couple centimeters in the city, and it’ll be over by the end of February.” So of course when we got almost 2 feet of snow in the 2nd week of March, the disclaimers were coming like crazy. I’m beginning to think Bavarians are in a constant state of denail, with their idea of perfect weather only existing in their own mind.

They may be telling the truth though. Here is what St. Patrick’s Day looked like in 2005:

And this year in 2006:

But weather aside, thinks are still going well. We have about 3.5 months left in Germany before heading home. I’ve been cutting back on the travel recently, but hope to get some more trips in when the weather turns a little nicer. But Alisha is making up for my lack of travel; in the past month and a half she’s spent time in Tuscany, Vienna, Australia, and is now on a 4-week stint in California. Check out the impressive schedule she has here.

I’m slowing trying to populate my video section, so here’s a short clip from the St. Patrick’s Day festival this weekend. Maybe one of these days I’ll get up the pictures and videos of or anniversary trip to Paris (hopefully before our 2nd anniversary arrives!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cgueupzy5AE

So for now, instead of recounting ad-nauseum one adventure or another that we’ve had, i’m just going to point out several new photo galleries that I’ve added or updated recently. I’ve written descriptions for each gallery, so I’ll just copy/paste those here too. Speaking of adventures, though, 2 galleries that are still missing are our Paris anniversary trip and a weekend trip I took to Prague last weekend. Beteween those two trips I have about 350 pictures, so I’ll have to figure out which ones I want to put online. So in the meantime, enjoy these!

• Dachau – While Alisha’s parents were visiting, we visited the Nazi work camp in Dachau on a gray, cold Sunday afternoon, just northwest of Munich. They have preserved much of the camp and turned the main building into a museum chronicling the rise of Hitler and the Nazi’s after the end of WWI through WWII, the work and concentration camps, the liberation of camps by American forces and the beginnings of the Nuremberg trials where senior officials were put on trial for their crimes.The museum was filled with chilling pictures and reports from the atrocities that occurred in the camp and throughout the rest of Germany and the conquered territories. Dachau was the first labor camp for the Nazi party and served as a model for the rest of them – which when including the smaller and subsidiary camps, numbered in the thousands. Keep in mind, though, that while thousands of people died at Dachau, it was not a concentration camp where people were sent specifically for death.There are several pictures of the city of Munich, which was the Third Reich’s first headquarters, before they moved to Berlin. You can see a picture of a tall gothic looking building with a giant swastika flag draped off of the front. That is the Munich Rathaus, or City Hall. That building is only about 4 blocks from our apartment and is now at the heart of the tourist district in downtown Munich. Germany and Munich have come a long way since those days, though, and while you can find museums and memorials all over the country commemorating the victims of the Holocaust, the country and its citizens are one of the more progressive and forward thinking populations in the world.
• Ostpark Lauf – Quez, Alisha’s dad, and I took the occasion to join Alisha as international athletes by entering the Ostpark Lauf (East park race) on a very cold Saturday morning in late November. Alisha and her dad bravely entered the 10km race, but I opted for the 5k. Of course, I think their average paces were still faster than mine, but you’ll never know because this is one 5k time that I’m not going to publish! It was fun though, if you call running 3-6 miles in below 0 weather (below 0 Celsius, that is….). Of course, I used to consider running 4 times as far every day “fun” too, but that was many moons ago.
• Olympic Park – While Alisha’s parents were visiting we took them up to see the Olympic Park, which I’ve mentioned a couple times in my blog posts. Where the park sits now was actually a big pile of rubbish just after WWII – this is where they dumped all the concrete and debris from the war cleanup. Before the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, though, they decided to cover the debris with dirt and grass and turn the place into a park.Most of the pictures in this album were taken from atop the Olympic Tower which overlooks the park and the city. On a clear day you can see into the Alps, but unfortunately for us it was so foggy we could barely see to the center of the city. You can get a view of the top of the famous roof though – a single connected roof structure that spans all the major venues in the whole park.Any runners among you may be interested to know that the stadium in the pictures is where the famous 5km race occurred between American superstar Steve Prefontaine and the giant Finn Lasse Viren in the ‘72 Olympics (pictured above – Viren #228 and Prefontainte directly behind with the killer ’stache).You will also see a couple shots of the marble memorial in front of the park commemorating the 11 Israeli athletes and 2 German officers killed by Palestinian terrorists during the games. You can see the athlete’s dorms that you may recognize from some of the TV footage, also shown in more recent movies like “Pre”. This incident is also the subject of the new Spielburg film titled “Munich”.
• Lindau Bodensee – On our 1 year anniversary weekend in late October we took a quick trip to Lindau in southwest Germany, an island town on the Bodensee (lake). It’s a small, touristy town, and late October is not very busy for other tourists so we had the place to ourselves.The highlight of the weekend was a “4 countries ride” we did on Saturday, riding through 4 countries and making 5 border crossings. We set off from Lindau in Germany, crossed over into Austria for a while, zipped all the way through the tiny country of Liechtenstein into Switzerland, rode back up to the Bodensee, around to Austria, then back into Germany to finish. It was a fun ride with beautiful fall scenery. Even though we came to Lindau for on our Anniversary weekend, the “real” anniversary was the next weekend when we went to Paris – check out the other albums for that trip!
• Neuschwanstein Schloss – I made a trip with Alisha’s parents to the world famous Neuschwanstein castle, a couple hours south-west of Munich. Americans and other people around the world may be very familiar with the Neuschwanstein without even knowing it – it is the castle that Disney’s Magic Kingdom castle is modeled after!Even though the Neuschwanstein looks like an old medieval castle, it was actually built only 130 years ago by the flamboyant Bavarian king Ludwig II. Even after nearly bankrupting Bavaria with several projects as extravagant as the Neuschwanstein and being declared mentally unfit for rule by the country’s parliament, then drowning in a mysterious incident in the Starnbergsee near Munich, Ludwig II is apparently still the Bavarian and German peoples most popular king. The Neuschwanstein was Ludwig’s masterpiece, but he also commissioned and built The Residence in Munich and the castle Herrenchiemsee. Some of the pictures show a much smaller, yellow castle just down the hill from the Newschwanstein, right beside the Schwansee (Swan Lake), in fact. This was Ludwig’s Father’s castle, the Hohenschwangau.As you can see, it was snowing heavily on our trip, making travel to and from the castle gate somewhat treacherous. The guided tour we went on was somewhat disappointing in that we only saw 6-8 rooms. What’s less, pictures were “not allowed” inside, so the few shots from inside were hastily taken while the guide wasn’t looking. The castle exterior and how it is set into the rocky alps, overlooking Swan Lake and the alps on one side and the plains of Southern Germany on the other is magnificent.