Installing Software on the Mac

by David Risley on Oct 31, 2007 | 42 comments

Any Windows user getting his feet wet with Mac OS X might get a little confused when it comes to installing software. It is not complicated. Just different.

There is no start menu, and things do not tack onto the Dock automatically. So, it is easy to install something on the Apple and not be able to find the program you just installed. The Windows start menu is actually a really good idea, and I’m not sure why Apple didn’t put something similar into Mac OS – a place where ALL installed programs go no matter what. And then from there you can choose to dock it, put it on the desktop, etc. That’s not the Apple way, however.

A Newbie’s Experience

For example, I installed Netscape 9 on the Mac. Here is my story that I wrote as I was experiencing it:

I downloaded a DMG file. I double-click on the DMG and MacOS mounts the image and begins to run the installer. Cool. I run the installer and install Netscape 9. Since Netscape 9 is powered by the same engine as Firefox, I head on over to the Firefox Add-ons page and grab the FoxMarks extension – in my opinion one of the most valuable extensions available. Works like a charm. I then close Netscape. Now, I have this window open with the Netscape icon within it. This is the mounted disc image. I close that. Here is where the confusion was for me.
In Windows, when you install a program, it installs wherever you tell it to. Then, you can delete the original installer should you wish to. So, I wanted to remove the DMG disc image. I highlight it on my desktop and press the Delete key. Doesn’t work. OK, I guess Apple doesn’t think permitting the delete key on a desktop icon makes sense. To me it does. However, I drag it to the Trash icon in the Dock. OK, gone. Problem is now I have no visible trace of Netscape 9 being installed on my machine. Where the hell did it go? I use the Finder and look in Applications. It isn’t there. So, I end up going back to the installer and running it again. This time when I open Netscape, the icon appears in the Dock as usual when the program is running. I hit CONTROL and click on the icon and tell it to stay in the dock. I then back out and do everything I did again. Now, when I click that icon in the Dock it looks like it is re-mounting the image and bugging me about it. Why won’t the damn thing just run?
At this point, I am caught between thinking MacOS users are in a different frickin’ world and thinking I have a ways to go before I can use this. As a long-time Windows user, I’m sitting here feeling like a total newbie with Mac OSX Leopard.

I am happy to report that as I publish this post, I have installed enough to my Mac where I am now more or less used to this. Again, it’s not that the Mac is difficult to install stuff to. It most certainly is not. However, when a Windows user first tries it, it is likely to confuse them at first.

How To Install Programs

Now that I have installed several more apps to OS X, I am more used to what is going on. Again, it is definitely different than Windows and, quite frankly, not quite as user friendly. Here is the basic process:

Download the software you wish to install from the internet. Chances are it is going to be either a ZIP file or a DMG file. A ZIP file is a compressed file and a DMG file is an image file.
Double-click on the file you just downloaded. If it is a ZIP file, it will automatically decompress. If it is a DMG file, it will mount the disc image.
If an installer does not run automatically, run it by double-clicking on it. Some programs do not have installers. They simply decompress and you can just run it from there.
With ZIP files, usually it is going to decompress into the same folder as the ZIP file was in. And there the program sits. It will not tack itself to the Dock and this is where many people new to OS X might get confused in thinking the program did not actually install. What you need to do is drag and drop the icon for the program into the Applications folder in the Finder. Also, to allow for quick access to the application, run it so that it’s icon appears in the Dock. Then, hit CONTROL and click on the icon in the Dock and select “Keep in Dock”. It will then stay there as a shortcut even when the program is not running. You can also drag-and-drop any application to the Dock for creating a quick shortcut.
The same process is used for DMG files. The program is likely to be runnable directly from the disc image. However, in order to install the application and be able to run it without the image being mounted, you need to drag and drop the program from the disc image to the Applications folder. Some DMG downloads actually provide a little interface for dragging it to the Applications folder, but if it doesn’t you will need to remember to do it. After that, you can unmount the disc image by choosing “Eject” and still run the software. Use the same techniques above to make the program more accessible if you don’t feel like hunting it down in the Applications folder every time.

Creating a Desktop Icon

Aside from adding a program’s icon to the Dock or dragging it to the Applications folder, you can also create a desktop shortcut. In OS X, a shortcut is called an “alias”. To create an alias of one of your programs, for the following:

Open your Applications folder.
Find the application you want to make a shortcut for.
Right-click on it and select “Make Alias”. It will be created right there as a copy.
Drag and drop the alias from the Applications window onto the desktop.
From now on, double-clicking the icon on your desktop will launch the program.

Note that all of this is based on Leopard, OS X 10.5. I am assuming it is the same for Tiger, but I honestly do not know at this point.

My Opinion

With Windows, the fact that you install a program and it automatically appears in the start menu just makes sense. Even with Linux, an installed program ends up on the top menu automatcally. So, I was suprised to see that this was not the case for OS X. Installing software on the Mac seems to have the easy tendency of resulting in programs scattered all over the computer with no central way of getting to them. And in order to make a central way of getting to it, the user has to do it themselves.

The Start menu in Windows was and is a really good idea – one that Apple should consider implementing in OS X. It doesn’t necessarily need to be done the same way, but the idea would be to have one CENTRAL repository for all installed software that is automatic and does not require the user to drag-and-drop anything in the Finder.

I admire the simplicity of OS X in this regard. You can drag and drop whole applications and not break anything. If you try that in Windows, most likely the entire application will break due to the Windows registry. So, there are definite benefits to having no registry. The issue is that there is a lack of continuity when you install programs to OS X and it leaves a little more to the user. There is no manual for OS X that comes with a Mac, so the least they can do is make the OS hold your hand a little bit so that you can’t lose an application that you just installed.

Like what you read?

If so, please join over 28,000 people who receive our exclusive weekly newsletter and computer tips, and get FREE COPIES of 5 eBooks we created, as our gift to you for subscribing. Just enter your name and email below:

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like...

Post A Comment Using Facebook

http://www.mcubedsw.com Martin Pilkington
” Easy decision, and it’s different from Tiger to Leopard (more like OS9 to OSX).”
The change from XP to Vista is more OS X 10.1 to 10.5 (at least in the time frame, in terms of technology the debate is wide open). The only thing close to OS 9 to OS X that MS has faced was DOS to Windows, but for a long time Windows was just built on top of DOS.
http://www.victorpanlilio.com Victor Panlilio
“I don’t use Vista. I’m not touching it until my computer can blast through it.”
According to PC World, the fastest notebook they’ve tested to date running Vista is… a MacBook Pro.
http://tinyurl.com/24a2cg
http://www.victorpanlilio.com Victor Panlilio
“Of course, you’ll still see a performance drop going to Leopard.”
It varies, some apps seem a tad faster under Leopard.
http://www.barefeats.com/leopard.html
http://tinyurl.com/2cbfr6
As more apps are rewritten to take advantage of Leopard’s new frameworks, app performance should improve, especially for 64-bit. Leopard is really a foundation for developers,
http://tinyurl.com/38kz8g
It also helps that every copy of Leopard ships with a full set of developer tools included.
Gabriel Unger
What I meant was once the computer I can actually afford (NOT $2500, I spend about $1000 every 2 years upgrading my rig) can blast through Vista, I’ll probably get it. It’ll be a lot cheaper by then, too.
Yeah every Digg reader and his dog saw that article. Mac lovers ate it up and missed a key point – that’s just the notebooks they tested, not the notebooks available, especially at the price range (insane in the case of the MacBook Pro). Get yourself a whitebox Asus, like a C90, and stick an X6800 in there for under $600. Spend a little more on some decent RAM, maybe 4GB, and you’re still under the price of the MacBook Pro and you’ve got yourself a notebook that can toss the Pro in the corner in terms of performance. In any case, you mentioning that article makes me think of the whole “smug zealot” thing…lol
http://www.victorpanlilio.com Victor Panlilio
“Get yourself a whitebox Asus, like a C90, and stick an X6800 in there for under $600″
And how am I supposed to put that in a ThinkTank Airport Accelerator photo backpack along with my 300mm f/2.8?
http://tinyurl.com/2y5nes
“you mentioning that article makes me think of the whole “smug zealot” thing”
Try an alternative explanation: the use case scenario is for a photographer who’ll need to process RAW images and needs a good portable screen to do preliminary edits on.
http://tinyurl.com/22ka5j
So your attempt to paint me as a zealot falls flat. It’s called grasping at straws.
http://www.victorpanlilio.com Victor Panlilio
“not the notebooks available, especially at the price range (insane in the case of the MacBook Pro)”
The “insane” falls under the category of “people who know the price of everything and the value of nothing” — as if by showing up with a bag full of cheap crap lenses I’m supposed to instill confidence in a client who’s paying me $200 an hour to shoot, and then expect him to squint at a crappy LCD to do approvals. Yeah, that’s the way to do it… not.
hitchface
Dude, nobody is doubting that the Mac does things well. You are failing to notice the limitations of your system though. Every computer has weak points, including the Almighty Mac.
http://www.victorpanlilio.com Victor Panlilio
“Every computer has weak points, including the Almighty Mac.”
That goes without saying. For example, the hard drive on a MacBook Pro is difficult to replace. On a Toshiba Satellite, Lenovo ThinkPad, or Dell Latitude, it’s often much easier. By day I work for a company of over 23,000 employees, with at least as many PCs, many of them portables. Rapid access to hardware internals is a big plus for our IT support staff.
Gabriel Unger
Lolz you mentioned the laptop article when talking about pure performance, and now we’re discussing what? Photography? And are you saying the C90 won’t fit into the backpack? It’s a 15.3″ notebook and most of those backpacks fit 15″ and 17″ laptops…I don’t really know what you’re getting at. I didn’t say the MacBook Pro wasn’t for you, but you were talking about performance and I absolutely destroyed that little Vista point with just one example of many. Spend $2500 on a laptop that wasn’t reviewed (there are a lot of them missing) and you’ll find a few that obviouslu outperform the Pro just by looking at the specs. Of course, you started talking about Mac computer performance, not MacOS (the main topic of this conversation) which further makes me consider just how objective you’re really being.
http://www.victorpanlilio.com Victor Panlilio
“once the computer I can actually afford (NOT $2500, I spend about $1000 every 2 years upgrading my rig”
Gabriel, I suggest you carefully re-read what you just wrote above. Let me put it this way. If I showed up on a shoot with an Asus laptop, the art director will not care that it’s cheap or outperforms a MacBook Pro, but he or she will certainly care about the quality of the LCD on which image approvals will be made, and right now, the MacBook Pro 15 with the LED-backlit screen has the best portable display available, period. If you had read the article cited in the second link, you would realize how foolish your entire post is, since you seem to equate “performance” with hardware specs, not including display colour accuracy and gamut. Now, since you’ve adopted a supercilious tone in addressing me, I will point out that if $1000 every two years is all you can afford on computer upgrades, perhaps you’re not making the best use of your time to earn income that might allow you to buy the finer things in life.
Gabriel Unger
I have no idea why we’re suddenly assuming that every person buying a laptop is a photographer and thus should buy a Mac for the reasons you elaborate upon. We are totally off-topic, but allow me to prove you wrong.
The Macbook Pro 15.4″ has an LCD that does up to 1440×900 native, and you can choose between glossy and non-glossy screens. All of this is driven by an 8600M GT-based graphics card. That’s all the information provided. Your silly source only compared the new Pro with others Pros…literally LED and CCFL, the difference between which is obvious. No mention of a non-Mac laptop.
The Asus C90 15.4″ packs an LCD that does up to 1680×1050 native on a Color Shine-certified LCD, driven by the same graphics card as the Pro (upgradeable to double the GDDR-RAM, though that is irrelevant when discussing color reproduction and contrast).
So we’re talking the next step up in terms of widescreen resolutions on the C90, driven by the same graphics card, the C90 has a top-of-the-line Color shine LCD, and you’re saying that LED backlighting makes all the difference and then some? Let’s just say I have my doubts on that one. The extreme upgrade in pixel density alone when going from a Pro to a C90 means that color reproduction itself is going to be better; unless Apple has somehow gotten their pixels to display more than one color at a time
I have never heard of someone focusing on LCD quality as much as this. Again, not everyone is a photographer. Most people just need their programs to run faster, and that has nothing to do with LCDs. If you buy a laptop from a company the people know about, you aren’t going to get some completely unacceptable LCD screen. I’ve recommended CCFL and LED (usually the Dell M1330) to my peers and I’ve seen them both. The LED-based screen looks great, but so do all the other CCFLs.
I’m in my senior year of high school. So sorry if my summer jobs don’t do it for you but I have college to pay for and activities to do. Instead of using my time to make money during the school year, I play sports every season, participate in FIRST Robotics, and am active in Boy Scouts (I’m a month from my Eagle Board of Review). Does it make sense that adults and adolescents have different priorities when it comes to spending money?
http://www.victorpanlilio.com Victor Panlilio
“Your silly source only compared the new Pro with others”
My “silly source” is a highly-respected resource site for professional photographers. It reviews equipment actually used in the industry. Now, if you’re not familiar with the professional photography market perhaps you should educate yourself before making comments about what professional photographers ought to use. Learn why Nikon ED or Canon L-series glass is far more expensive than Sigma or Tamron, why a Gretag Macbeth EyeOne is more accurate than a Pantone Huey, or why a ProFoto strobe is more consistent than an Alien Bee.
“adults and adolescents have different priorities when it comes to spending money”
Adults also have different priorities in choosing the best tools to get a job done, because their hourly rates are quite high, and they can’t afford to have equipment not work in front of a demanding client, or spend otherwise billable hours troubleshooting stuff that was cobbled together. As we already know from PC Magazine and Consumer Reports, Apple hardware scores the highest reliability marks. Not Dell. Not Asus. And if a photographer uses Aperture instead of Adobe Lightroom, well, Aperture only runs on Macs.
So you’re right — if your use case scenario is to spend less on hardware because you’re not earning income from it then it makes perfect sense to go with Asus or whatever, so long as you recognize that your time has no economic value. If your use case scenario is to minimize hardware downtime and use what’s most reliable because your clients accept no excuses, then you go buy the most reliable stuff you can afford — and buy backups regardless. Now, a Hasselblad H3D costs over $30,000. Even a MacBook Pro is chump change by comparison. And if the gear is all fully tax deductible, the price premium for the MacBook Pro is worth the extra credibility with clients, and peace of mind on assignment.
Besides, there’s one big advantage Mac portables have over Windows PCs: they wake from sleep much faster, which makes a huge difference when shooting on location and you’re trying to conserve battery power between card downloads.
“Again, not everyone is a photographer.”
Oh, that’s for sure. As one workshop instructor at the Nikon School reminded us, most “photographers” are in fact just “people with cameras.”
http://www.victorpanlilio.com Victor Panlilio
“I have no idea why we’re suddenly assuming that every person buying a laptop is a photographer”
If you’re familiar with use case scenarios for different professional fields, you’d recognize that “performance” is measured differently for each case. For example:
http://tinyurl.com/yt56bz
By definition, the Harvard IIC is composed of scientists with vastly varied backgrounds. The group thrives on differing perspectives which lead to novel approaches to both emerging and long-standing problems. A quick read of their project leads jumps from astronomers to biologists, neuroscientists, physicists, psychologists, mathematicians, and of course, computer scientists. It seems far-fetched that this group could agree on anything, but most do agree on one thing — the technology that will help them achieve their goals.”
Goodman says, “I’d say 95% of the people most directly involved with Harvard IIC choose Mac as their primary platform. It is funny; if you walk in here, you would think we were sponsored by Apple.”
I’m sure some of those scientists are photographers, too.
http://www.cyclelogicpress.com Partners in Grime
“make the OS hold your hand a little bit so that you can’t lose an application that you just installed”
Spotlight is your friend.
Jon
Thank holy bejesus….this post is precisely what I was looking for. Amazing that Apple provides all of these tips for PC-switchers, but neglects to mention your point…that the simple act of installing apps is markedly different and non-intuitive on a Mac! I’m stoked to be on a Mac now, but this was a bumpy beginning. Thanks for making me feel a bit less of an idiot after being an extremely capable Windows user (going back to Win 3.0!) !! Perfect post, David.
http://www.coastalglassdist.com/products/pilkington-glass.php John Redding
True story.
I used to work for a largish company where the users were 75% Windows, 25% Mac. The company make equipment and software for the printing industry, so a lot of the positions were mac-based, no way around it.
The helpdesk in the IT department had about 9 people, all PC guys. There was a campaign to get a Mac guy on helpdesk. The IT department resisted big time. So the battle went all the way up to the president.
He asked how many IT guys were helping the PC owners. 9 was the answer.
And how many for Mac? Zero.
So he says: “Well the answer should be that we get macs for everybody and layoff the whole PC helpdesk department”
The Mac guy was hired in a week.
http://www.laptopreviewsonline.com/ Laptopreviews
Your source only compared the new Pro with others Pros…literally LED and CCFL, the difference between which is obvious. No mention of a non-Mac laptop.