[HN Gopher] Intuition
___________________________________________________________________
Intuition
Author : zdw
Score : 28 points
Date : 2024-07-12 04:35 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (lmnt.me)
(TXT) w3m dump (lmnt.me)
| shreddit wrote:
| The "drag app to app folder" mechanic feels like the UAC prompt
| of windows. It's more like a "You are doing something
| substantial, are you sure of it?" thing for me. Never thought of
| it as unintuitive.
| gollum999 wrote:
| I always wondered why drag-and-drop in particular was what they
| chose. Why not just a "Confirm" button?
| lylejantzi3rd wrote:
| You don't have to anymore. If you run an application from a
| location other than /Applications, MacOS asks you if you want
| to move it. I've long wondered what the point of that was.
| Why not just let people do what they do with other files and
| leave it on their desktop.
|
| The next question is: can we execute an application directly
| from a zip file? Or do we need to invent something that
| allows for a folder structure, but is also downloaded in a
| single file?
| darklion wrote:
| > Why not just let people do what they do with other files
| and leave it on their desktop.
|
| Once upon a time, upon seeing a disk image open with an app
| icon, a certain quantity of people would choose to run the
| app straight off the disk image, likely not understanding
| the prompt to copy the app to the Applications folder.
|
| Then, sometime later, the disk image would be unmounted
| (e.g., system reboot) and suddenly the app they had
| "installed" disappeared.
|
| Rather than force everyone into mandatorily copying apps to
| the Applications folder, they added a dialog to suggest to
| the user where the app should go. I will say, though, I
| didn't realize it applied to _everything_ outside of the
| Applications folder. I thought it was only for apps run off
| of disk images.
| krackers wrote:
| >macOS asks you if you want to move it
|
| I think that's the individual applications themselves: as
| far as I know osx itself doesn't care where you run the app
| from (or maybe this was only added after 10.10?). You can
| even run the app directly from the disk image, which I
| often do to "try out" an app.
| Rohansi wrote:
| I've never used a Mac and agree that it is not intuitive. I can
| see that it is telling me to drag it into Applications but it
| doesn't explain why. The UAC prompt has some explanation to
| what is going on.
| wrs wrote:
| The author seems to make the assumption that manipulating a
| downloaded ZIP file is more "intuitive" than a disk image. I
| could have written the same article with the opposite assumption
| with equal validity. (Some apps arrive as a disk image INSIDE a
| ZIP file...no idea what those people are thinking.)
|
| There is a long MacOS history and evolution here starting with
| "you run the app from the floppy disk it lives on". The disk
| image with the handy Applications alias makes perfect sense as
| the end result of that evolution, if you just know what a disk
| image, an alias, and the Applications folder are. I mean, the
| arrow even literally tells you what to do. Unpack a ZIP file and
| it just sits there.
|
| There was a discontinuity in this history when the App Store was
| imported from sandboxed iOS device world where none of these
| mechanisms are present (well, now there's Files, but that's
| hardly the same). It tries to hide the entire mechanism from you
| and does a pretty good job -- just press "Get" and run the app
| from the Launcher, just like iOS.
|
| None of this is "intuitive" but some of it may be more or less
| familiar and/or make "obvious" use of mechanisms you are expected
| to understand (like folders, disk images, ZIP files, and the App
| Store).
|
| The message here may be that the prevalence of iOS means Mac
| users shouldn't be expected to understand folders and aliases.
| Maybe so, but there has to be some baseline knowledge of what the
| direct manipulation is manipulating, or the whole GUI exercise is
| pointless.
|
| (BTW, totally agree with Windows users being gun-shy,
| particularly if they've experienced the fragmentation-grenade
| style Windows installers that are still around after multiple
| decades of Microsoft trying to rein developers in...)
| comex wrote:
| With a zip file and Safari, the experience is this:
|
| 1. Click download on website
|
| 2. App appears in your Downloads folder (automatically unzipped
| and with the original zip file removed).
|
| For new users, that's definitely more intuitive than a disk
| image because you never have to interact with an intermediate
| format. You just download the app.
|
| You do probably still have to understand the concept that apps
| are like files and can be located in folders. Alternatively,
| you can launch the app via Spotlight. But if you try to launch
| the app from the downloads list, it will work, only to stop
| working in the future once the downloads list clears. Or if you
| try to use Mission Control, the app just won't show up there
| unless you move it to /Applications.
|
| This is more complicated than the App Store. But it's still
| simpler than disk images, where you still have to understand
| all of that, but _also_ have to understand the idea of disk
| images being mounted and ejected. Sure, Mac users who once used
| software distributed on physical disks may have an easier time
| with disk images, but most software has not been distributed
| that way for a very long time.
|
| Other browsers and operating systems make zip files more
| complicated.
|
| In Chrome on macOS, you have to double-click the zip file to
| unzip it. At that point you have the app in your Downloads
| folder, but the original zip file is also still there, so you
| have to manually discard it or leave it as clutter.
|
| In Windows, double-clicking a zip file makes Windows Explorer
| enter into the zip file, similar to disk images on macOS but
| without the mounting aspect. If you then try to double-click an
| exe file, you'll get a dialog that prompts you to "Extract all"
| or "Run", and recommends that you extract all. "Run" will
| extract just the selected file to a temporary directory and run
| it, which will often not work, explaining the recommendation.
| It works well enough, but the fact that a zip file acts like a
| folder in some ways but not others, and the existence of the
| semi-useless "Run" option, arguably creates a confusing mental
| model.
| wrs wrote:
| Sure -- my point is that all of these things are just
| automating somebody's idea of what steps users will have a
| hard time understanding, but users are different, so _any_ of
| these makeshift approaches will result in an article calling
| whatever steps are left "unintuitive". Only the App Store
| comes close to "solving" this, by reducing it to a single
| "Get" button that is completely magical.
|
| Don't forget the Installer message that asks if you want it
| to put the package in the Trash for you, and will
| automatically eject the disk image and put that in the Trash
| as well, without mentioning it. Yet another well-intentioned
| band-aid. (I actually find this "help" to be counter-
| intuitive because I do understand disk images, and I know
| read-only images can't have a Trash, so how could this
| actually do what it's saying?)
|
| BTW, speaking of hidden realities, remember the real reason
| apps have to be in ZIP files or disk images isn't the
| compression (HTTP is likely already compressing it), it's
| that Mac apps are, in reality, _folders_ not files, so you
| can't actually download them!
| dpc_01234 wrote:
| Dragging CD icon from the desktop to a Trash Bin to eject a CD-
| ROM - that made even more sense and was more intuitive.
|
| "Intuitive" and "easy to use" is 90% familiarity.
| josefrichter wrote:
| "Mounting a disk image" is the dumbest thing that apple ever came
| up with and failed to fix to this day. Just read that sentence
| out loud, none of it makes any sense to the famous "mere
| mortals".
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-07-16 23:01 UTC)