Installing Applications the Mac Way

This reminds of the recent Apple commercials on TV the past few months.

Being a Linux, Windows and former OS/2 user it took me a few weeks to figure out that the Mac way of installing applications is simply to drag-n-drop. Whoa, how original and inventive. This was not very intuitive to me at first since I had never installed anything in this manner on Linux, Windows or OS/2.

Now, the Mac way of installing applications makes the other platforms appear to be very non-intuitive and just plain dumb. Drag-n-drop has been with us for decades since the original Macintosh in the early 1980s and here it is 20-yrs later and the Mac still is the only OS that appears to 'get it'. This is another one of those things that Mac users just understand and can not quite relate to how Windows users have so many issues with installing applications.

I must say that after having struggled numerous times installing applications on Linux, Windows and OS/2 in the past, it makes the productivity killing task of installing anything appear to be a waste of time on the other platforms. Windows Vista does not even have this capability so I guess we'll have to wait another 5-years until Microsoft may copy this capability from the Mac which has had it now for almost two decades.

Boy am I glad that I took the plunge last month and became a Mac user. There are so many more features of Mac OS X that I have yet to discover and as soon as I do will post it here for future reference.