Sam Brown

#150 23rd August 2006 at 5am Article 3 Comments

Installing apps on a Mac is so ridiculously easy, open the packaged file be it a ZIP, DMG etc and drag the application icon into your Applications folder in your home directory. That’s it!

There are some Mac Developers out there making life so much easier by including a shortcut to your Applications folder within their apps package. Skype for example (above) does this. Once you have opened their Disk Image file (*.dmg) the process of dragging their Skype app icon onto their custom graphic shortcut to your Applications folder is a synch.

Call me picky, but I almost get frustrated when Developers do not do this. For example Newsfire is my favorite RSS reader for the Mac and the Developer, David Watanabe releases updates fairly regularly which is great! However, upon opening the latest Newsfire.dmg file you have to then go open your Hard Disk > Applications, get the Newsfire DMG to the forefront and drag it into the Applications folder.. a few more steps than is entirely necessary in my opinion.

So kudos to those who make this decision to include shortcuts within your Disk Images, a small but important step in showing the user how much you want them to love and experience your app!