one of the main things people say about apple being better is how easy it is to install and uninstall things, but this article basically said that windows is better because you can't just copy programs already installed...

There's nothing inherent in Windows that says install-by-copy can't work (with a tidge more programming effort). It's just that Macintosh users, like RiscOS users of yore, wouldn't put up with the sort of treatment by their applications that Windows users just roll over and acquiesce to.

Peter

PS. yes, something that's just a plug-in for another application (Geiss, for instance) must need some kind of installer as it's never directly run by the user. But that doesn't apply to applications like Office, which could quite easily offer install-type tasks on first run (or first run after move).