How Should Mac Apps Be Distributed?

Re:How Should Mac Apps Be Distributed? by atlbeer on Friday September 18, 2009 @12:07AM (#829631)

Simple proposal.. How about a zipping an application and merely naming it .appz (or just plain zip)

The only reason why Mac application can't be distributed like Windows .exe files is that Mac applications are actually directories. Excluding .pkg installers 99.99% of the time the .dmg file is merely just a container for the single .app directory.

Safari automatically unpacks .zip files by default on download. Where's the mystery here. Why bother with dmg in the first place

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Re:How Should Mac Apps Be Distributed? by blasdel on Friday September 18, 2009 @03:12AM (#829817)

This is already implemented on the iPhone.

The main reason they haven't done it on OS X is that it would be completely backwards-incompatible. They should have done it in Snow Leopard (an easy choice if your app uses GC), but if they did they didn't tell anyone. Instead they added optional zip/deflate compression to HFS, and used it for most of the system files.

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Re:How Should Mac Apps Be Distributed? by yason on Friday September 18, 2009 @02:57AM (#829805)

So, leeching your appz directly will cause no need for dmg?

(-:

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Re:How Should Mac Apps Be Distributed? by burke on Friday September 18, 2009 @02:30AM (#829778)

This would be a huge improvement, in my opinion. The only thing I would change is to rename .appz to .zapp :P

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Re:How Should Mac Apps Be Distributed? by blasdel on Friday September 18, 2009 @03:19AM (#829825)

Why do they need to be named differently at all? One is a directory, the other a file -- no ambiguity.

The Finder and LaunchServices are the only bits of code that care anyway.

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