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December 21, 2006
Native installation concerns
Native installation concerns: Getting this into my blog's search engine... Nick Bradbury talks about the current user experience of installing OS-native code. In comments, "Khoji" nails a key concern of mine: "Actually, it is not just inexperienced users who hesitate to install programs on Windows. Many experienced users do too, because they know from painful experience that installing a new application can easily make their system start malfunctioning in strange and creative ways." Ryan Stewart and Aral Balkan both touch on Apollo implications. I think there's always great pressure in any architecture to add more development abilities, and the security implications of even a simple set of permissions always undergoes back-and-forth tussle between exploits and patches, so there seems to be natural evolutionary pressure for systems to become more complex, brittle, rulebound with time. This frequently leads to a refactoring, a simpler solution on an abstraction level above. Apollo abstracts away the ability to deeply manipulate your OS, and focuses more on the application itself. I think its time has come.
Posted by JohnDowdell at December 21, 2006 07:16 AM
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