Portable Apps..?

[Scott Kane]

> I have to say I find it amusing that this "portable apps" 
> concept is being touted as "the next big thing".  In days of 
> old, virtually all Mac system 7/8 apps were "portable" -- it 
> didn't matter from which location they were run.  Then came 
> the push to follow the Windows lead of having assigned 
> locations for files that led to the designated 
> Application/Document/etc folders and users were expected to 
> follow the conventions.  Now the pendulum swings back the 
> other way and "portable apps" are a "new idea".

Same thing happened with DOS in the early days.
Most app's could be placed anywhere (we began coding
IBM PC's with two floppy drives.  One for the OS and
one for the compiler and IDE).  Then came languages
like Clipper where you had to not only place it in
the directory the developer indicated, but also modify
config.sys and autoexec.bat in order to run the
app's (Clipper was notorious for that).  Windows 3.1x
continued that tradition (of being anywhere on the
drive - except moving it would break the installation
of the program) until Win 9x.  Win 9x forced directories
to be in certain places.  While you could install anywhere
you could not move it once installed (at least not easily).
MS declared that the registry was the place to write for
configuration information - until Win 2K when they declared
you should no longer write to the registry (as the registry
became a huge bottleneck) but rather to the old Win 3.1x
ini files.  Microsoft are there own worst enemy.

Scott