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Is Emirates ID Card Only For Windows Users?

Magnus Nystedt | Nov 19, 2008 | Comments Comments

It seems that the Emiratesid.ae web site has been speeded up significantly. There is a button on there saying “Download Pre-Registration Application” and when you click it you download a 3.5MB Zip file. So far so good right? Well, I was a bit curious as to what that really was but I figured it was a PDF file since the Acrobat logo was displayed on the page.

So what’s the problem? Well an MSI file is a Windows Installer file so it’s only going to run in Windows, of course. Sure they could argue that “well, everyone has access to Windows”, or “even if you have a Mac, you can run Windows on your Mac.” To me it seems today, with advanced web technologies, I don’t see why this option is necessary.

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  • medopal
    Actually the company i work for has got us the app already unzipped, so no need for MSI.
    But still, the program you will need to open is a .exe (which is Windows executable)
    The application which runs (after double-clicking the exe) is a Java app!!

    The application should run on Mac with no problem, but unfortunately the guys had wrapped the JAR file inside an EXE file to make it easier to open for Windows users.

    So the solution would be if they can just give us the JAR (Java file) instead of the EXE, it will work easily.

    They have a good Suggestions system, maybe we can tell them to give a link to download the JAR file only.
  • Thanks Medopal, for spreading some light on this issue.

    I tried the suggestion system and all I could get was "error" after I had entered the info and clicked to Submit.

    Seems like they're making it unnecessarily complicated. Couldn't the Java run like an Applet in the web browser? What's the need for downloading it?
  • medopal
    actually it could be implemented as a web service, but will need lots of resources in this case.
    the application takes all your information (you will fill 6 pages) then the program print it out as a Barcode PDF.
    Its not the best practice, but i think they are limited in time. That could be the reason of making a quick small Java application.

    BTW, the application is so quick, they didnt even bother to encrypt the data in the fields!! So you can easily see the names of all the companies in a specific city in a text file!!
  • as mentioned in a previous thread on emiratesmac.com a Mac .app packaged version should be available for download in the coming few days !
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