How the Zoom macOS installer does its job without you clicking ‘install’

I think this also shows how macOS has been training users to enter their password in random dialogs that have absolutely nothing that identifies them as being legit OS dialogs. The dialog that Zoom uses could very well be sending the credentials to a remote server, and the user would be none the wiser.

Note that in this case, it's still a legit OS dialog. Preflight scripts are very much built into the macOS pkg format, they're just not intended to be used like this.

I never understood why Apple still supports the pkg format. It seems a half-baked leftover from the 2000s and even then I was already surprised that there is no way to uninstall things through the macOS GUI. I am not sure if this has changed (I try to avoid pkg files and use Homebrew cask to uninstall such packages), but IIRC you had to list the files with pkgutil on the command-line, remove stuff by hand and then --forget the package.

They should just kill the format. Everything should just be drag to install, drag to trash to remove.