Stanley A. Klein <sklein@cpcug.org> wrote:
Windows and Mac are fundamentally single user systems that have added capabilities for multiple users and are intended to be used with proprietary software. Those considerations lead to minimal dependencies among packages (each proprietary provider needs to control its own package, except for the OS), individual users serving as their own sysadmins, and similar factors. Any dependencies in the proprietary software are hidden from the user because the provider has compiled the dependencies into the binary code they supply.
The problem with this analysis is that the modern Mac is also a capable Unix system, and the "just put everything in a bundle" philosophy that served the Mac so well for so long is beginning to fail. While many Mac apps do still follow this, many more (perhaps the majority) are now Unix apps that have complex inter-package dependencies. Bill