Well sometimes you do want a disk image. I burn a lot of DVDs from
videos that I produce, and a disk image is the simplest way for
repetitive burning, and for storage they are in compressed form, so
you fit more on a DVD (when archiving).
I always assumed (in 10.1 days) that .dmg was the way OS X handled
stuff, but now I see a lot more zips, rars, tars etc (Windows
influence?). From a marketing point of view, .dmg is easier, as you
get the picture window, automatic opening in Safari, a pretty icon,
and if the developer is half reasonable, a Read Me which explains
what the thing does.
And of course you often have an installer or .pkg on the .dmg.
However my biggest bug bear is being presented with just a .pkg and
no Read Me - in which case I immediately dump it. I'm not installing
anything on my machine if I don't know what it does.
Far too many people since the inception of .dmg have omitted any form
of read me, and where there is one, it often only contains copyright
info and not a single sentence describing what the gizmo does, or a
complete version history with no mention of it's purpose.
Some developers seem to think we're psychic and know everything about
their software. I think if you spent all day every day on Version
Tracker you would still not know all of the plethora of software
there is out there now, most of it I presume made with Rb :-)
>> Enter Old Fogey Mode:
Of course, I suppose in this modern world this attitude of self-
importance is understandable, otherwise blogs would not exist. I
mean, with a choice of 8 billion people on the planet, why would I
want to read any one person's blog? Do I really care what they had
for breakfast?
Exit Old Fogey Mode<<
I used to see the point of disk images back when I needed to make
complete
floppy disk images. Why are the necessary now?
Tony Spencer
St Rémy de Provence (13) France
tonyspencer at fastmail dot net
Jef Raskin, the Mac's original project leader before Steve Jobs took
the role, and the "father of the Mac": "In 1979, I specified a long
list that covered most of the things we would do with it [the Mac]
though I missed four major uses: gambling, pornography, sending spam
and spreading viruses."
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