This example shows one of the original sins. Not just of programming, or working in anything, but of the human condition. It’s called “assumption”, something that can even kill people. (I’ll focus solely on user experience though. From a user PoV.)

In this case, it goes like this: “I assume that the user has internet, it works 24/7, and at a reasonable rate.” But you see others, like:

• the connection, once established, won’t be interrupted.
• the process itself won’t be interrupted either. Power won’t go off, the user or system won’t kill it, and they’ll keep it on the foreground, staring at it.
• the system specs are enough to have the software running in a reasonable way. Disk, processing, memory, etc.
• the other software used by the user is fairly specific. It’s a specific version of a specific operating system, with a specific browser, and all libraries are already there.
• the file that the software needs is there, and the software will have permissions to read, write, and execute it.
• the user organises their files in a specific way.
• the user wants your update, because you didn’t screw it up.
• the user [knows|doesn’t know] how directories work; etc.

We could pull the full installer down to the South Pole slowly and conscientiously […] using robust, interrupt-tolerant tooling, with support for caching and resumption of paused or failed transfers.

Or just don’t use MacOS where it clearly isn’t supposed to work. Apple doesn’t care about you, they happily fuck you over. So use Linux.

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