... was when we convinced my university to let us drop VISE for our Mac software package. In truth, VISE has a lot of really great features, and it can create very flexible installers, but even those cannot save it from the absolutely puke-inducing interface for the installer creator and the bugs that riddled the software when I used it. The VISE installer creator is a prime example of what happens when developers do a lazy Carbon port.

It simply has way too many roots in Classic, and that results in a lot of confusing installation rules. You actually have to COPY AND PASTE a Unix shell script into a tiny little window to add that capability, for Christ's sake. You can't just select a text file.

Whenever a developer uses a VISE installer, that's automatically a strike against his product, in my opinion. If you've designed your product so poorly that you need to use VISE instead of Installer.app or drag-n-drop to get it installed properly, that's a sign of an application which will give you problems down the road.