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Comment by nmgycombinator | Hacker News Reader

> The idea being that I could then migrate more easily by copying the whole home directory, and thus all my apps that didn't require "installation" would come over.

Unrelated, but this is what I find so interesting and cool about the drag-and-drop to install method prevalent on macOS. People complain, but what I guess they don't realize is that all they're doing is moving a folder into their `Applications` folder and that the "wizard" way they're used to is far messier.

Granted, since I think it's up to the developers, they often seem to make the user drag and drop into the root `Applications` folder.

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That’s fine, but also just means the “real” installer just runs on first launch instead in those cases, whether that is to ask for permissions or setup launch scripts or copy files to more places

But just think about how much fun phone apps could have been if you first installed an installer and than than that downloaded an app to install the side components before launching a configuration program for installing that specific software suite

The problem with the macOS "just drag it to Applications" approach is the uninstall. Deleting the folder will not delete user data (what if it's damaged?), and it won't delete any system stuff the app created on the first run. A typical Windows installer is likely to do the former and will definitely do the latter.

I do agree that uninstallation can be hard on macOS. I think Apple just envisions a future where every app is self-contained and putting the app in the trash really does remove everything because it was all in there.

Maybe that's not realistic, though.

I still think there's something to be said about an installation/uninstallation process that relies purely on moving files around, no custom script execution.

The "drag it to Applications, move to Trash to remove" flow was invented decades ago, possibly even back in NeXTStep [0]. Application bundles are not meant to be writeable, user data cannot be written there. If Apple envisions a future change, they’re really terrible in implementing it.

[0] https://www.nextcomputers.org/files/manuals/nd/Concepts/Inst...

I suspect Apple has little incentive to fix it since if an app stores a bunch of data in ~/Library/Application Support and then you Trash the app, then your 256GB SSD (still standard even on a 'professional' laptop, in 2025) is that much more filled, eventually prompting you to curse yourself for not spending $400 in nearly-pure-profit to upgrade that to 1TB.

Just so you know, there is something about dragging that app bundle to /Applications that causes something to happen. Because if you `mv` it in the terminal, the app often doesn't work.

It's been a while since I did this, and I can't remember the details. Sorry. Someone else might.

There is a bit of magic going on in Finder with /Applications. It’s actually two folders, one in the system partition which you can’t write into and one in the data partition where anything you install goes.

There are three of them, two you've mentioned, and ~/Applications for each graphical user too.

Sadly though macOS never has and still doesn't do any magic for ~/Applications, such as showing your apps mixed in with the rest just by looking at "Applications." But yes, it does mix in the locked system apps such as Settings and Photos with the ones you have dropped into /Applications as though they're all in /Applications as they once were. I usually just add both folders to the sidebar, and forget which is which daily.

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