I agree this is crazy. Windows really needs a central infrastructure for:
- program updates (polling for them, asking the user)
- user notifications (grouped, not with a zillion different icons)
- running tasks at certain times/conditions (yes, windows has this, but many apps nevertheless insist on running their own scheduler service)
- license server? (or at least, a way to launch these on demand, no need to run adobe/flex/matlab/bla license servers when the program is not running)
Right now, every program wants to install its own background process (some very bad ones want even more than one). This is very very annoying: programs that are not running at the moment shouldn't steal memory and CPU time by running something in the background.
It's too easy to turn your fresh windows installation into a ghetto. And it's not only fishy backwater programs that do this, the big commercial applications are just as guilty (yes, Adobe, I'm talking about you...).
Linux distributions and MacOSX have these things figured out for ages...
There is a way to launch services on demand. You can programmatically (and via sc.exe) query/stop/start services. It'd be no big deal for apps to start, check the license service, start if needed, and stop when exiting.
Are you saying the "high end" apps on Mac OS X don't install other processes for licensing?
Also, some of those license services allow floating licenses over the network -- maybe it's the same codebase?
Why do you think this is possible when you have basically rogue apps that will abuse any provided infrastructure? The only real way around it is to review every app and only allow trusted programs.
Since Linux distributions mainly distribute open source software, they can just unilaterally disable self-updating features in any applications that have them. But imagine the uproar if Microsoft or Apple tried to do that.
Last time I used OS X it didn't have program updates or user notifications figured out. I had to use Growl for the latter, and apps had to individually use Sparkle for the former, which is basically the same as the Windows situation. I agree that Windows should have centralized solutions for these problems, though.
Growl and Sparkle are the defacto standards for notifications and program updates on Mac. They are very nice because I can control how I am notified through Growl settings (no notifications) and apps tell me there is a new update when launching (or polling while use). A recent version of Sparkle has a new option that I think is genius, update on quit. This allows me to tell the app that when I quit it, install the update. That way I don't have to wait for the app to update and restart when I just want use the app for 5 minutes.
One problem with Growl is that if you don't have it installed, some apps provide their own notifications. Then when you don't want any notifications like me, you have to configure that in each app. So it is best to install Growl and disable notifications.
Now with the app store on Mac, Sparkle might not be used as much in the future because the app store will handle updates.
Overall, I think the OS X developer community has worked this out fairly well on their own.
- program updates (polling for them, asking the user)
- user notifications (grouped, not with a zillion different icons)
- running tasks at certain times/conditions (yes, windows has this, but many apps nevertheless insist on running their own scheduler service)
- license server? (or at least, a way to launch these on demand, no need to run adobe/flex/matlab/bla license servers when the program is not running)
Right now, every program wants to install its own background process (some very bad ones want even more than one). This is very very annoying: programs that are not running at the moment shouldn't steal memory and CPU time by running something in the background.
It's too easy to turn your fresh windows installation into a ghetto. And it's not only fishy backwater programs that do this, the big commercial applications are just as guilty (yes, Adobe, I'm talking about you...).
Linux distributions and MacOSX have these things figured out for ages...