I just bought a 2GB SanDisk Cruzer micro drive from Best Buy (on a killer $45 sale this week, at least in CO by the way), and it offers support for 'portable applications' for Windows (and I'm sure Linux too, though I admittedly don't follow the big penguin that closely). In case you aren't familiar: portable applications, in this context, mean that an app (again, on Windows) can be installed on one of these mobile drives as well as run from it, including preference files and the like (the actual spec is called U3, and SanDisk has a hand in it, in case you're curious). For example: one could install a copy of Firefox on this drive and run it on a public or work PC, with all browser history, preferences and bookmarks saved on the drive - not on the host PC (these applications all have to be custom-built, and the U3 board has to approve them into the fold). Setting aside any obligatory discussion about security, this is an absolutely killer ability for the mobile nerd in many of us.Now I know most Mac OS X applications can run fine from one of these drives; heck, I run a few myself, including utilities for my iPod which I simply store right on the iPod (yes, it can do that, as long as you turn on disk use from iTunes). But why hasn't the second half of this 'portable applications' concept caught on with the Mac OS Xiverse? This concept and these apps could rock everyone's world, from the mobile student to freelancers and even the techies who are supporting Macs for businesses big and small.
So where are they?
Is the Mac OS X community simply not as worried about leaving their Firefox browsing history lying around on public machines? I doubt it. Are developers just not interested? Not likely. Could this be an example of the Mac community lying down while a truly useful innovation is dangling in our faces? Instead of throwing down my speculation, I'd rather open this up for discussion. What say you, TUAW readers?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
10-12-2006 @ 7:13AM
Rom said...
How about here?
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10-12-2006 @ 7:14AM
Rom said...
Oops, did not read the instructions - sorry.
http://www.freesmug.org/portableapps/
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10-12-2006 @ 7:45AM
DiCE said...
Here is a Cross-Platform Portable Firefox i use it and it does what it says extensions, bookmarks, passwords and search plugins all portable and work on PC and Mac.
http://www.theplaceforitall.com/portablefirefox/
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10-12-2006 @ 8:08AM
David Chartier said...
#2: Rom, I took a look around that site and it looks interesting, but it seems to be a little low on information: do you know if those apps will store user data like preferences, email, chat logs, etc., *on* the thumb drive? Or are they still left lying around on the host Mac? That's one of the specific fundamentals that makes portable apps for Windows so cool, because Mac apps, afaik, have been able to run from external drives at least since Mac OS X's inception, and possibly even earlier with OS9.
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10-12-2006 @ 8:16AM
Louis Klaassen said...
As it stands now, the proper way to handle preferences in your application is to use NSUserDefaults or the carbon CFPreferences. This way, all applications will follow the way OS X would like to save preferences; as plists in your ~/Library/Preferences/ folder. It also allows for other applications to access other applications preferences because they all follow the same format, yet adding to the integrated OS X environment.
It is now considered bad design to implement your own preferences handler, and store the preferences file in whatever format it may be in whatever place it may land. Sometimes, however it is necessary to do this as the standard user defaults system doesn't quite encapsulate what your app needs to store, and in this case this is true.
The problem is, if every 'portable' app were to now start implementing their own preferences handler, the system of preferences in OS X would be disrupted. If this portable app thing were to go ahead, it would need the support of the Apple API for user defaults.
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10-12-2006 @ 8:21AM
dingo said...
umm... this is what .mac is for - and why i continue to pay my apple tax
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10-12-2006 @ 8:22AM
Mark said...
Just keep a copy of app zapper on the portable drive, and when you're done, fire it up and drag the icon of the program to it and uncheck the actual app file.
this will delete all preferences from the current computer.
it's as easy as that. Do it all the time.
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10-12-2006 @ 8:23AM
Joseph Crawford said...
Now all i need are one of these devices, i didnt know things advanced to running them on these devices completely, would love to have one on my keychain that i can plug in and have FireFox, Adium, etc. I just wish they were all x platform lol
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10-12-2006 @ 8:29AM
Rom said...
#4 David. I have not tried 'em except for Firefox and it does store its preferences on the USB thumbdrive.
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10-12-2006 @ 8:32AM
David Chartier said...
#6: umm... .Mac has nothing to do with whether I can go to campus with a portable thumb drive and run Firefox - with specific extensions or functionality that I need, or a blogging app like ecto - which carries personal information like access points and passwords.
I can't sit down at a Mac in a public lab on campus or at work and get at my .Mac-synced Transmit favorites if Transmit isn't installed on the system, now can I?
Apple isn't the solution to everything just cuz they have a lot of great ideas. The user community has a lot of killer ideas too, and .Mac is completely unrelated to what we're actually discussing.
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10-12-2006 @ 8:34AM
Twist said...
Instead of saving preferences "~/Library/Preferences/" perhaps they should save stuff to "(current volume)/Library/Preferences/" this way a single version of the application is all that developers would need to make and it would save its preferences to the same volume that it is running off of which will most likely be the boot volume for most users.
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10-12-2006 @ 8:39AM
James said...
Here's something I want to see more of: http://www.theplaceforitall.com/portablethunderbird/
Portable Apps using the same data store, but with the ability to run on OS X or Windows, depending on what you have to hand at the time. The same site has Firefox too: http://www.theplaceforitall.com/portablefirefox/
And for Joseph - http://www.freesmug.org/portableapps/adium/
David - I'm about to have one of those U3 drives delivered too, but my plan is to wipe the U3 stuff off it and use it as a pure data store. Most of the apps I use have portable versions already so my older non-U3 Cruzer micro will be hosting them.
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10-12-2006 @ 8:40AM
Pawe? Tkaczyk said...
Maybe it's because Macs are all about personal. Also, where I live (Poland) Macs are not so popular (I think it's the same everywhere but the States), so publicly available Macs are hard to come by. If it's a public computer, it will be a PC machine...
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10-12-2006 @ 8:43AM
Nick V said...
Reason it hasn't caught on #1: "Public" PC's are everywhere, Mac's are a bit more uncommon.
Reason #2: More Mac users have portibles they bring along anyway.
Reason #3: It has caught on just look at this page of them on MacUpdate.
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10-12-2006 @ 8:44AM
Nick V said...
I guess my URL got stripped on my last post. Anyway here is a MacUpdate page of Portible Apps:
http://macupdate.com/search.php?keywords=portable&os=macosx&button.x=15&button.y=12
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10-12-2006 @ 8:45AM
James said...
One other thing I forgot to mention: there are rumours that the "home on iPod" concept is coming back with Leopard. In short, you plug your iPod (or any other firewire drive) into any mac, and you log straight into your user account. If you want Apple to provide some portable innovation, David, that sounds like a good way for them do it...
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10-12-2006 @ 8:57AM
Red said...
Actually, since cocoa allows overriding of pre-linked binary code, and NSUserDefaults is cocoa... i think it would be quite possible to run a kind of sandbox application that hosts any Mac OS X compliant app to be portable in this way by overriding the location of the plist files to be on the mobile storage. Just my 2c
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10-12-2006 @ 8:59AM
ms said...
I've dealt with this "U3" before on my work PC, and let me tell you something: the application is _far_ more intrusive than useful. I consider it a bonus for the Mac platform that such applications aren't available.
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10-12-2006 @ 9:08AM
HervéS. said...
They are on slashdot ;-)
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/11/2148254&from=rss
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10-12-2006 @ 9:21AM
Zac said...
"In short, you plug your iPod (or any other firewire drive) into any mac, and you log straight into your user account."
All iPods made nowadays do not have firewire controllers in them, and therefore cannot interface with the computer via firewire. I doubt they'd make an exception just for iPods.
That being said, I doubt it'd work at all on a USB device. Therefore, the iPod concept's out.
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