I’ve said before that I really like the ease and convenience of tools like apt, gems, darwinports, cpan, and portage which let you ask for an application and then simply install it along with any dependencies in one fell swoop.
Which brings me to today’s whiny rant: Apple. Now, i like Apple a lot, I think that their hardware is better, dollar for dollar AND bottom-line, than Dell and I think their OS and user environment is better than Windows for any task I can think of, and I absolutely love being able to run X and CLI programs from the *nix world. But why oh why, when iTunes says it’s time to update iTunes, do I have to go back in time by visiting a website, downloading the .dmg, and manually install the damn upgrade?! Why isn’t iTunes part of Software update, the way iPod and iSight are? Why doesn’t the damn thing use one of those aforementioned tools to do the update for me when I click “upgrade”? Why does this kind of thing slip through the cracks of the collective minds in Cupertino when they are thorough enough to patent the look and shape of products they might never make?
Grumble, grumble, grumble… This isn’t about me being too lazy to drag and drop the application, it’s about the existence of a better way that i use most of the time but isn’t available for iTunes. I realize that these tools have shortcomings with respect to non-gratis software, but iTunes is a giveaway, a loss leader, and the easier it is to install and upgrade, the better, especially since all upgrades to iTunes are essentially DRM enhancements or opening new vectors for cash flow into iTMS. Oh well, i’ve downloaded it now, and the drag and drop awaits.