Dell User - Just switched - install question

[Heart Break Kid]

Hello Everybody!

Ok so heres the deal

I just ordered my 17" Powerbook recently and i was wondering about how the Mac OS runs. Specifically with instaling programs. Is it similar to windows where if you want to uninstall a program you go to controll pannels and add-remove? Is it different? Yes for those of you who didnt believe I just switched, that question ought to make you. lol

[rainman::|:|]

Installers can be either stand-alone programs written to install, they can be packages for Apple's Installer to open and install, or they can be disk images that you just drag and drop. Like, you download something, it uncompresses to a disk image, you drag the "X Application" folder to your Apps folder, and boom, you're good.

as for deleting a program, just drag it to the trash.

welcome to macintosh :)

pnw

[Heart Break Kid]

its that easy??
no way

so theres no add-remove progs
or control pannel?

i just have to throw the stuff in the recycle bin?

thats kinda simple
damn

lol

[Beej]

It is that simple for nearly everything. Ususally there will also be a file belonging to the app you are deleting in your /Library/Preferences folder, too, but it won't hurt to leave it there.

[Kid Red]

No add/remove programs. If you want to remove it, drag it to the trash. If you want to install, there's 2 methods, one is that the app is self contained and will be in a mounted disk (usually says "Darg this to your applications folder"). The second is to double click on the installer (sometimes shown with "pkg" extension). That's it, follow the on screen commands, usually OK/Continue/Agree/Continue, etc just keep hitting the blue button.

That's it. Most (if not all) apps will be installed in your /Applications folder. When you hate something, just drag it's folder to the trash :)

Welcome aboad.

[shadowfax]

Originally posted by Kid Red
No add/remove programs. If you want to remove it, drag it to the trash. If you want to install, there's 2 methods, one is that the app is self contained and will be in a mounted disk (usually says "Darg this to your applications folder"). The second is to double click on the installer (sometimes shown with "pkg" extension). That's it, follow the on screen commands, usually OK/Continue/Agree/Continue, etc just keep hitting the blue button.

That's it. Most (if not all) apps will be installed in your /Applications folder. When you hate something, just drag it's folder to the trash :)

Welcome aboad.

not ALL apps can be deleted by taking them to the trash. some programs do fairly obscure installs, particularly something like gimp-print, or norton antivirus (haven't used it, but so i understand). most apps are that easily deleted, but there are a very small number that don't. the ones that don't remove that easily usually have uninstallers. the catch is, they are the installers. to remove such an app, you have to run the installer again, and when the customize option comes, tell it to remove rather than to install. this is the case for packages quite frequently. disk image installs though (the most common), as has been mentioned, you just drag and drop to both install and remove. you'll get the hang of things very quickly, after you start using OS X. it took me a few days to jump into the swing of things with my 15" tibook :). when in doubt with any program, just check the readme file.

sorry kid red if i sounded like i was responding to you, i just quoted you to add on to what you are saying to the guy :).

Welcome to the good side of the force, heart break kid.

[Les Kern]

I just wanted to add a few things.
Never install Norton Utilities or Ant-Virus! Best to run from the CD or the application which is dragged and dropped from the CD to your Applications folder.
A GREAT place for tech help is http://www.macfixit.com. Apple polices their tech site, Macfixit doesnt.
Finally, welcome to Mac. You will find that other Mac users will go out of their way to help you, even to the point of doing research and follow ups. We live in a happy world.

[Rajj]

Originally posted by Heart Break Kid
Hello Everybody!

Ok so heres the deal

I just ordered my 17" Powerbook recently and i was wondering about how the Mac OS runs. Specifically with instaling programs. Is it similar to windows where if you want to uninstall a program you go to controll pannels and add-remove? Is it different? Yes for those of you who didnt believe I just switched, that question ought to make you. lol

First off, you are going to be flabbergasted when it arrives!!
System preferences is similar to control panel, but you can’t uninstall apps from there.
I suggest that you go to a Mac store and play with one them to get use to it!!
Congrads!! ;) :D

[shadowfax]

Originally posted by xrhajj


First off, you are going to be flabbergasted when it arrives!!

that's got to be the perfect word for this. good call. it captures that sense of "the most normal thing to happen right now would be if this thing's lid opened and it ate me alive." it's going to be absolutely out of this world, man. my 15.2 was!

[Rajj]

Originally posted by Shadowfax


that's got to be the perfect word for this. good call. it captures that sense of "the most normal thing to happen right now would be if this thing's lid opened and it ate me alive." it's going to be absolutely out of this world, man. my 15.2 was!

Thank you, I guess reading the dictionary every other day comes in handy!!;) :D

[MacBandit]

Originally posted by Les Kern
I just wanted to add a few things.
Never install Norton Utilities or Ant-Virus! Best to run from the CD or the application which is dragged and dropped from the CD to your Applications folder.
A GREAT place for tech help is http://www.macfixit.com. Apple polices their tech site, Macfixit doesnt.
Finally, welcome to Mac. You will find that other Mac users will go out of their way to help you, even to the point of doing research and follow ups. We live in a happy world.

The only problem with running it from the disc is that you are running a program without the latest updates. Without the latest updates Norton has even worse compatibility with X then the latest version has.

Best recommendation is to sell you Norton on eBay or use it for target practice.

[springscansing]

Originally posted by MacBandit


The only problem with running it from the disc is that you are running a program without the latest updates. Without the latest updates Norton has even worse compatibility with X then the latest version has.

Best recommendation is to sell you Norton on eBay or use it for target practice.

Definitely. That asshole doctor on the box makes for awesome kicking.

Not that I've ever needed any utilities to fix my mac running X, but if I did, I'd use Diskwarrior. It's a god.

[shadowfax]

Originally posted by springscansing


Definitely. That asshole doctor on the box makes for awesome kicking.

Not that I've ever needed any utilities to fix my mac running X, but if I did, I'd use Diskwarrior. It's a god.

it is. i really like it.

[MacBandit]

Originally posted by springscansing


Definitely. That asshole doctor on the box makes for awesome kicking.

Not that I've ever needed any utilities to fix my mac running X, but if I did, I'd use Diskwarrior. It's a god.

Bow to DiskWarrior and kiss his feet for he could be your saviour.:p

Seriously DiskWarrior is the best disk repair program for OSX or OS9 on the market today or ever.

[springscansing]

Diskwarrior has magically saved my dad's 7600 a billion times... and still is to this day. It will not recognize drives, freeze on boot, etc.

Pop in discwarrior, run it once, restart, and everything is perfect. Well.. as perfect as a 7600 with a flakey G4 upgrade card and a semi-compatible ataptec SCSI card can be.

[shadowfax]

Originally posted by MacBandit


Bow to DiskWarrior and kiss his feet for he could be your saviour.:p

Seriously DiskWarrior is the best disk repair program for OSX or OS9 on the market today or ever.

have you heard about an update to it to make the thing run from OS X natively? i thought i read that was supposed to becoming the first half of the year.

[MacBandit]

Originally posted by Shadowfax


have you heard about an update to it to make the thing run from OS X natively? i thought i read that was supposed to becoming the first half of the year.

Yeah, I believe what I read was they said it would be out by March. They were apparently demoing it at MacWorld.

[springscansing]

This posting is so fast it is practically chat, haha.

[shadowfax]

Originally posted by MacBandit


Yeah, I believe what I read was they said it would be out by March. They were apparently demoing it at MacWorld.

yeah, macworld, that's right. that's going to be so cool. all the power and innate coolness of diskwarrior with the looks of Drive 10. lol

[MacBandit]

Originally posted by Shadowfax


yeah, macworld, that's right. that's going to be so cool. all the power and innate coolness of diskwarrior with the looks of Drive 10. lol

I just wish they would add a Disk Defragger. I don't care what people say I know how much fragmentation goes on and when you are talking about 100s and 100s of thousands of files spread out across 80-200+ Gig hard drives this does slow things down.

[shadowfax]

Originally posted by MacBandit


I just wish they would add a Disk Defragger. I don't care what people say I know how much fragmentation goes on and when you are talking about 100s and 100s of thousands of files spread out across 80-200+ Gig hard drives this does slow things down.

isn't that what plusoptimizer is? it comes with diskwarrior (at least, the one i bought after christmas).

this really is like chatting!

[Les Kern]

Originally posted by springscansing
I'd use Diskwarrior. It's a god.

D'OH! Diskwarrior is the best to be sure in fixing directories. It's never failed me. I was just trying to warn of potential Norton issues if installed. Norton IS a good tool, however, in ridding my 750 machines of the macro viruses I have to deal with: Mellissa and MarkerA. They are annoying to our users, but pretty harmless on OS9 or X. (I lock the normal template so at least it doesnt infect new files) I use a 2-year old copy to sweep on occasion, but generally I'd PERSONALLY never update the descriptions. I did see somewhere where it's not really necessary to defrag a machine running X exclusively. Anyone hear that? I've never bothered, and have 10 X servers that have never even been rebooted this school year, and I have 1500 users hammering them constantly without issue. Okay I'm rambling. I guess for the ex Dell Dude, Diskwarrior for sure, Norton if you like adventure! IMHO.

[MacBandit]

Originally posted by Shadowfax


isn't that what plusoptimizer is? it comes with diskwarrior (at least, the one i bought after christmas).

this really is like chatting!

Sure does. I hadn't previously realized that it came with a program to defragment. I will definitely be getting it now as soon as they release the OSX dedicated version.

[MacBandit]

Originally posted by Les Kern


D'OH! Diskwarrior is the best to be sure in fixing directories. It's never failed me. I was just trying to warn of potential Norton issues if installed. Norton IS a good tool, however, in ridding my 750 machines of the macro viruses I have to deal with: Mellissa and MarkerA. They are annoying to our users, but pretty harmless on OS9 or X. (I lock the normal template so at least it doesnt infect new files) I use a 2-year old copy to sweep on occasion, but generally I'd PERSONALLY never update the descriptions. I did see somewhere where it's not really necessary to defrag a machine running X exclusively. Anyone hear that? I've never bothered, and have 10 X servers that have never even been rebooted this school year, and I have 1500 users hammering them constantly without issue. Okay I'm rambling. I guess for the ex Dell Dude, Diskwarrior for sure, Norton if you like adventure! IMHO.

I too have heard that you don't need to defrag. Needing and wanting to defrag are two different things though. Just because you don't need to doesn't mean that there isn't some benefits to it. As I stated previously on my system with 100s and 100s of thousands of files spread out over my 80gig hard driver there has to be a slow down because of it. Just think about people with larger drives they have to be even slower. Though this doesn't mean you absolutely need to. I believe in OSX no matter how fragmented the drive gets it will never be a problem in the since that it will cause lock ups like it does in OS9.

[Les Kern]

Okay, I'm continuing the off-topic, but here goes.
If you installed Mac OSX into a UFS partition (what I din't make clear above when using strictly OSX), then defragmenting would be a waste of time since the unix file system handles file fragmentation just fine. If you have HFS or HFS+, you need contiguous space for movies and such or use a lot of Classic apps, then defrag. Norton is best if only for it's speed over Plus Optimizer.

[shadowfax]

Originally posted by Les Kern
Okay, I'm continuing the off-topic, but here goes.
If you installed Mac OSX into a UFS partition (what I din't make clear above when using strictly OSX), then defragmenting would be a waste of time since the unix file system handles file fragmentation just fine. If you have HFS or HFS+, you need contiguous space for movies and such or use a lot of Classic apps, then defrag. Norton is best if only for it's speed over Plus Optimizer.

PlusOptimizer does take FOREVER, you're right. i have to leave it running all night usually. i am not sure how much of that it takes, but it's at least a 3-4 hour process on my 60 GB hdd.

[beatle888]

how about a reply thats on topic.

when i want to uninstall an application,
i usually go to FILE>FIND and type it
the name of the application. i then select
the ones that belong to the application
and move them to the trash. you might
have to do a restart or log out and back in
for some applications. you know, the ones
that add things to the menu bar and such.

macs are easy...but god damn there soooo
customizable....i LOVE Codetek virtual desktop
soooooo much :D first piece of shareware that
has convinced me its worth it.

[Heart Break Kid]

i gotta say
the customizable part was also another reason i switched

i fell in love with the whole konfabulator idea too
the mac just gave me everything ive ever wanted in a computer

the ease of use
ability to customize it
and the 17" PB is sure as hell gonna get me some jelous looks...and thats always a reason to switch

[cubist]

One of the things I loved about the Mac when I first got into it (Mac centris 610) was that I could just drag a program from one place to another - and it would still work! No autoexec.bat - no registry - no hidden files - no path... In fact, even the operating system itself could be dragged from one disk to another. Now Mac OS X is a little different, but for the most part all of that mac goodness is still there. It's great! I could never go back.

[Heart Break Kid]

god i think im going to cry

you people actually understand my new love for macs
its soo hard to get my brother or friends to listen

they're always like....mac eh? what the hell? does it got programs and stuff?

ahh...finally people who understand me!!

finally!!

[beatle888]

Originally posted by Heart Break Kid
god i think im going to cry

you people actually understand my new love for macs
its soo hard to get my brother or friends to listen

they're always like....mac eh? what the hell? does it got programs and stuff?

ahh...finally people who understand me!!

finally!!



ok then, since you sincerely seem touched by
the mac. and the fact that this utility proves
very helpful for organizing a lot of windows.
check out CodeTec Virtual Desktop. it allows
you to have multiple work spaces....i have a
desktop that i have, leaving all my web apps
open on that desktop, arranged just how i like
them. :D

BUT with the wave of a hand i slide over to my
finder desktop....just finder windows here...
and i have three workspace desktops. its so
minority report :D so coool

[Mr. MacPhisto]

Thing that's beautiful on the Mac is that an icon for a program represents the whole program - everything. You can look at the individual files if you want (CTRL-CLICK and select Show Package Contents) but you're not forced to see every stinking file in the directory. And there aren't any stupid DLLs or Registry. Mac OS X is a far more intuitive OS that makes sense. I switched six months ago and love it. Welcome to a world where the computers actually work and increase productivity and things actually make sense. No more blue screens of death!

[shadowfax]

Originally posted by beatle888




ok then, since you sincerely seem touched by
the mac. and the fact that this utility proves
very helpful for organizing a lot of windows.
check out CodeTec Virtual Desktop. it allows
you to have multiple work spaces....i have a
desktop that i have, leaving all my web apps
open on that desktop, arranged just how i like
them. :D

BUT with the wave of a hand i slide over to my
finder desktop....just finder windows here...
and i have three workspace desktops. its so
minority report :D so coool

actually, virtual desktops are nothing special in the slightest. XP does that for free, after you buy XP, and linux does it for free, after you get linux for free. that is, depending on your window manager. KDE does it, i know, and i'd bet GNOME does too.

[shadowfax]

Originally posted by Mr. MacPhisto
Thing that's beautiful on the Mac is that an icon for a program represents the whole program - everything. You can look at the individual files if you want (CTRL-CLICK and select Show Package Contents) but you're not forced to see every stinking file in the directory. And there aren't any stupid DLLs or Registry. Mac OS X is a far more intuitive OS that makes sense. I switched six months ago and love it. Welcome to a world where the computers actually work and increase productivity and things actually make sense. No more blue screens of death!

I have to agree with you, it's not so much the customizability of OS X i love. if you look around, Windows is actually much more customizable. you don't even have to use the explorer shell. i have seen some pretty intense stuff on Windows from people who use alternate shells and all. but escaping DLLs, and more importantly, the system registry, that's just priceless. well, the price of an apple, anyhow. DLLs are really powerful, but it seems that they are just too easy to totally screw up.
registries, blecch. that's got to be the most irresponsible way to structure an OS for which you intend to have 3rd party apps for. humbug!

the other nice thing: OS X is beautiful.

[Sedulous]

I was under the impression that OS X writes data into unfragmented blocks automatically. The idea being it saves time in the long run because you don't have to defrag. No?

[shadowfax]

Originally posted by Sedulous
I was under the impression that OS X writes data into unfragmented blocks automatically. The idea being it saves time in the long run because you don't have to defrag. No?

uhhh, i don't think so. i mean, it's not going to write a 500 MB file contiguously if there isn't the space on the drive to do so. I imagine OS X is much less frag prone than most OSes these days, but that doesn't mean it's frag free.

[Sedulous]

Well, if the OS takes the time to always write things contiguously there would be order to allow writing without having to fragment. I'd really like to know if someone has a definitive answer rather than conjecture.

[DannyZR2]

why not!?

[MacBandit]

Originally posted by Sedulous
Well, if the OS takes the time to always write things contiguously there would be order to allow writing without having to fragment. I'd really like to know if someone has a definitive answer rather than conjecture.

OSX does not write files that way. Simple answer, I don't have further explanation I just know that it does get fragmented.

[shadowfax]

Originally posted by Sedulous
Well, if the OS takes the time to always write things contiguously there would be order to allow writing without having to fragment. I'd really like to know if someone has a definitive answer rather than conjecture.

I think the OS just handles fragmentation better. apparently OS 9 would freeze more often when the HDD fragmented. i don't think such is the case with Linux type OSes/file systems. i can't explain why either, but if you have a 5 GB video to save and there is no consecutive 5 GB on the hard drive to put it onto, OS X won't magically lay it on the HDD contiguously.

[MacBandit]

Originally posted by Sedulous
Well, if the OS takes the time to always write things contiguously there would be order to allow writing without having to fragment. I'd really like to know if someone has a definitive answer rather than conjecture.

Something that is obvious but for some reason I misser earlier is that if you delete something all of a sudden you have an opening in the data spread of the hard drive. This is why as your hard drive get's fuller it is mroe likely to fragment. As ShadowFax has pointed out a couple times it will start writing to the open spaces. These open spaces as I pointed out above are from data that has been erased.

Even if you have unlimited space OSX will still get fragmented. Again I don't know the exact reasons why but I'm sure there is a good one.

[shadowfax]

Originally posted by MacBandit
As ShadowFax has pointed out a couple times it will start writing to the open spaces.
I love your subtlety. i'm sorry for being redundant, i just forgot i had posted the info already. i should have quoted myself for more effect. it's late; i have this weird splitting headache, and i can't go to sleep yet.

I wonder, does anybody know if OS X will actually look for a wide open space to write files to? i have looked at some fragmentation graphs in XP and noticed that the hard drive often puts files out towards the outside of the disk where there is a great deal more contiguous open space for file writing.

I am going to guess that the hard drive doesn't just write to the first open sector it finds on the disk; i think at first it tries to keep stuff on the outside. but i would bet it writes little 10MB files to holes too. i don't really know how strategized saving is :)