Joined: Apr 25, 2006 Posts: 2315 Location: Montpellier, France
Posted: Mon Oct 09, 2006 1:56 pm Post subject: OS X rocks, Football Manager doesn't
Today I bought a wireless Bluetooth adpater to go with my wireless Mighty Mouse. Although I bought it at Geneva's Apple Center (ART Computer), it only came with a manual and software for Windows, and I was a bit worried that it wouldn't work. Well, a few seconds after plugging it in, it was completely recognized by the system and working ! That's true plug-and-play (not Microsoft plug-and-play)
I recently installed a demo of Football Manager 2007, which I rarely use (unlike my borther, who has the Windows demo and bothered me until I downloaded installed it on my Mac). When the time came to install, instead of the native Mac OS X Installer, I had to install it with ... a Java port of InstallShield Wizard !!! What can it do that the OS X Installer can't ! I was under the impression that FM had relatively good Mac support, but I guess I was mistaken
Last edited by Samwise on Tue Oct 10, 2006 9:40 am; edited 1 time in total
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Mon Oct 09, 2006 10:07 pm Post subject:
Well, as a user as well as a commerical Mac developer I can kind of see both sides of the coin...
Personally I still use Installer VISE for all my company's products as that's the only solution that can support OS 9 as well as OS X users with a single installer. The InstallShield stuff was from ZeroG IIRC which really was not that bad of an installer package.
For simple installers that don't really require graphical user interaction at install time, Apple's Installer.app has been very good. The problem really shows when you need to prompt the user to do things like choose an X11 server, a language, a power source type (240V vs. 120V). Prior to 10.4, the Apple installer was really not customizable to handle those types of things in an easy fashion without having to write all kinds of supporting applications, wish scripting, or trying to incorporate cocoajava. It really become a mess on 10.3 and earlier.
With Installer.app 2.0, Apple finally introduced ways to add in the little custom UI panels for making installation choices, serial number verification, and those kinds of things which are really desirable in some situations to have at install time.
For people who are supporting only 10.4 and higher, really Apple installer is the way to go
For those of us that need to support 10.3 and earlier the situation is a lot more muddled
ed
/why couldn't Apple deliver Installer.app 2.0 for 10.3?!
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2006 11:43 pm Post subject:
Oh I'm totally with you. I'm just playing devil's advocate
Really, everyone should go with Apple's Installer.app unless there's a reason not to, especially as they got rid of their licensing fees (IIRC there were licensing fees for the OS 9 Apple installer...if I'm wrong please correct me)
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum You cannot attach files in this forum You cannot download files in this forum
(IIRC there were licensing fees for the OS 9 Apple installer...if I'm wrong please correct me)