Wednesday, April 4, 2007

What Google Desktop Installs

John Gruber:

I won’t install software like this on my main machine without knowing everything that’s going to be installed. So I installed Google Desktop on a test machine — an iMac G4 running Mac OS X 10.4.9. Before the installation, I used the Unix ls command to generate a list of every file on the startup drive. I ran the same command again after installation and searched for differences.

Gruber says that the installer does some nasty stuff like silently install an input manager and replace the mdimport tool in /System/Library/Frameworks/. Plus, it installs a kernel extension. I also installed it on a test Mac, and now I’m really glad that I did.

After a few minutes, it said it had finished indexing, although searching didn’t find any results. After rebooting, it started indexing again, although the keyboard shortcut (Command-Command) and the icon in the menu bar were no longer active. So, yeah, it’s beta.

I’m not a fan of “live” installers; I want to be able to download and archive the files that will be installed, so that I can see what they are, and also in case I later don’t want to install the current version.

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I don't like the sound of it. Does it come with an uninstall option, at least?

I opened the installer a second time, and it re-downloaded and re-installed the same version that I already had. Then, when it said Installation Complete, it offered up an Uninstall button.

Pierre Igot adds his thoughts:

When mounted, the “GoogleDesktop.dmg” image file is a volume that contains a single application called “Double Click to Install Google Desktop.app.” Oh dear.

When I quit the Google Updater application that I launched from the disk image, the disk image is automatically unmounted.

Thanks. At least it can't be any worse than Adobe... I hope:

http://snoozology.blogsome.com/2006/09/23/adobes-assault-on-my-sanity/

After running for about another day, I guess it got around to doing some more indexing. Searching works now, and it seems to be much faster than Spotlight. It still says it’s done indexing, but according to “top” and the sound of the hard disk, it’s furiously indexing, and “mdimport” has crashed ten times this morning in “InterceptedGetMetadataForFile()”.

I'm pretty disappointed in it. It's a wonderful addition to an XP PC, but on OSX it feels beta, and the web browser interface just feels wrong. Spotlight is slower (a little) yes, but it's also infinitely less annoying to me. That bezel that pops up: Crashed on me three times in one day (BTW, force quit is useless for it). Nope, not for me. The only thing I want is spotlight to have a Gmail importer, that doesn't require me downloading my mail via pop.

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