I thought this post was satire until about 75% of the way down..
That said, his point about installing programs is spot on for people from the Windows world. It makes sense in a UNIX-y way, but it's totally counterintuitive if you've come from Windows. I found it odd the first time, then grew to love it.
It is counterintuitive. Fortunately, after I got my Mac, the first few programs that I installed had a giant "Drag the Application Icon to your Applications Folder" message when I opened the .dmg file. After the first time, I got it. Admittedly, I thought it was kinda silly the first time I did it. But now I really like it.
I personally found it more intuitive than the windows method. You don't know how many people you hear about screwing up windows some way because they just thought deleting the folder in program files would be enough. Or thinking that the shortcut is the program and deleting it would uninstall it. All those explanatory message boxes that come up in windows comes from common mistakes and misconceptions that show up in user usability testing.
Mac: The application is a file. To get rid of it, just delete it like a file.
Windows: You have to run a program to install it, and run a program to uninstall it. Do it any other way and
The mac paradigm is a bit leaky although, with .pkg files and what not. The .dmg distribution method is a bit annoying, but it allows developers to add fancy graphics when people install their programs.
Ubuntu/Debian which is more UNIX-y than MacOS in some ways has none of this. Software installation and uninstallation is a breeze.
In my 2 months of experience with the Mac, I have found that the Mac is very appealing when it's new. It's beautiful, but sometimes it feels like Steve Jobs prefers form over function a bit too much.
He later happens onto one reason the process makes sense: uninstall just by deleting the application file. He is confused about how to install an app because there is no installation. You just put the program anywhere you want (the Applications folder thing is really just a suggestion) and double click to run. In fact, you can even run directly from the disk image, which Matt did without realizing at first that was what he had done.
So, the reason the Mac approach seems strange is because it makes the whole install/uninstall concept just go away altogether. Perhaps a suitable HN metaphor: it eliminates an onion.
Using a package manager or manually grabbing the files and building it IS basically like dragging files to an Applications folder.
You have all your files for an app in one known spot. That's all there is (excluding environment variables). What is non-unixy is installing a bunch of garbage into a registry (did I mention I hate registries?).
No, using a package manager where you select the app you want is NOT like dragging and dropping executables into some magic location on the filesystem.
Package management is modern UNIX-y. I'm talking about the process where you download a single file that contains an application (a disk image or a tarball, say) then perform a process to install the app (dragging or "./configure && make && install").
These OS X / UNIX techniques compared to Windows' "download an EXECUTABLE that does all the installation for you" is like night and day.
I think both install processes suck, in their own ways.
Mac does due to all the reasons listed by the article.
Win sucks (at least circa XP, I haven't touched Vista) in that each installer is often still inconsistent and unique in its own little annoying ways. Plus you have issues with apps putting shared files all over, in different directories, so uninstall is a mess. Mac install is better in that regard, since uninstall usually means dragging the .app to the trash.
Mac is equally inconsistent (contrast the drag-and-drop approach with, say, any Adobe installer). And you can't merely remove the App folder from the Applications directory: most applications write many preference files elsewhere.
That said, his point about installing programs is spot on for people from the Windows world. It makes sense in a UNIX-y way, but it's totally counterintuitive if you've come from Windows. I found it odd the first time, then grew to love it.