> • Mounting and verification of DMG is slow (Zip CRC and Developer ID signatures give you verification too).

It takes a few seconds, hardly that much slower than opening a zip

>• "Nothing happens" after clicking DMG — user has to find DMG mount on a cluttered desktop

1) Unless you've really fobbed up your view settings, mounted drives show up, in alpha order, in the farthest right row.

2) DMG's have a bless value that makes them spawn a finder window on mount, the below command is run when my xcode spits out a new release build

    'bless --folder /Volumes/$Application --openfolder /Volumes/$Application'

>• Clicking app icon in the DMG window is tempting, but generally it's a no-no (some apps don't mind, but some ask to be moved to Applications, and some throw "error -13 read only volume" kind of errors).

Really a non-issue and only apps built on an old SDK should have this behavoir any more (more recent SDKs will let them shove things in /tmp while run from a mounted dmg)

>• User is expected to copy the app to Applications folder, with instructions given in form of non-localizable non-accessible text-in-image, and it's trickier when sidebar with shortcut to Applications folder is hidden (and remember "Applications" folder name is localized and sounds nothing like it in many languages).

The user also has to drag the zipped app to applications. You can also solve this "problem" by including a finder shortcut to the Applications folder in the the DMG. Finder automatically localizes the Application's folder alias because it's a special URI

>• User has to unmount and delete the DMG, but that gives non-obvious behavior when the app is running off the DMG.

User has to delete the .zip and sometimes a, now empty, folder.

>• It gets super confusing when user has pinned app in the Dock while it was running off the DMG

No it doesn't, the DMG is automatically mounted and the app run if they do this

> No it doesn't, the DMG is automatically mounted and the app run if they do this

It really does, especially if you're one of the 99.999% of users who deletes their dmg's after installing. Then you just see an app icon with a big (?) in the middle of it.

You're not "installing" if you just run it from the DMG, so your point is moot

The average Mac user is using Safari.

Mounting and verification is slow: Perhaps. Enough to matter?

Opening a DMG is a two-click operation from either the download progress bar on the top right, or two clicks (which visibly floats to the Downloads folder and bounces again when done). Hardly "finding DMG on a cluttered desktop". The mounted DMG pops to the front, at least on my system.

Many applications, if they detect they're running from a DMG, will offer to restart and copy themselves to the applications folder. This deals with the next 3 problems. Even then, it's possible to put text in the window saying "Drag this to the applications folder". It's a dance that anyone using a mac for a reasonable amount of time is familiar with.

I'd say, overall, the presentation on a DMG is so much better than an anonymous zip file dropping an anonymous app in the downloads folder.