New to OS X, weird "problem" installing Skype. Wtf did I do?

[blumpkin]

So last night I installed Skype on my new 13" i7 MBA. According to the Skype instructions, I was supposed to drag the Skype icon from the left into the Applications icon on the right:

Well somehow I managed to overlook that part and simply double-clicked the Skype icon you see above. The installation began and finished fine. Skype loaded and worked.

Afterwards, I completely quit out of Skype. What happened next was odd. I could not find it in my Launcher - it was nowhere in the Applications folder either. I even searched with the Spotlight and could not find any instance of it anywhere. The only place where it existed was in Go > Computer. There was a blue hard-drive-type icon with the Skype logo on it (like the small icon in the title bar in the screenshot above). I right-clicked and there was an option to eject, almost like it was an external HDD plugged in. I clicked it and it was completely gone.

Could somebody please explain to me what the hell I did? I reinstalled following the instructions correctly and everything's fine - but I'd still like to know.

 

[gentlefury]

So last night I installed Skype on my new 13" i7 MBA. According to the Skype instructions, I was supposed to drag the Skype icon from the left into the Applications icon on the right:

Image

Well somehow I managed to overlook that part and simply double-clicked the Skype icon you see above. The installation began and finished fine. Skype loaded and worked.

Afterwards, I completely quit out of Skype. What happened next was odd. I could not find it in my Launcher - it was nowhere in the Applications folder either. I even searched with the Spotlight and could not find any instance of it anywhere. The only place where it existed was in Go > Computer. There was a blue hard-drive-type icon with the Skype logo on it (like the small icon in the title bar in the screenshot above). I right-clicked and there was an option to eject, almost like it was an external HDD plugged in. I clicked it and it was completely gone.

Could somebody please explain to me what the hell I did? I reinstalled following the instructions correctly and everything's fine - but I'd still like to know.

Didn't you just say you overlooked the "drag to applications" part of the setup? Sounds like you answered your own question!

 

[blumpkin]

Didn't you just say you overlooked the "drag to applications" part of the setup? Sounds like you answered your own question!

What I'm trying to figure out is what the computer did in order to make it work. It's almost like it installed a virtual copy of it.

 

[ergdegdeg]

When you download Skype, it comes in a disk image. When you double click that, it gets mounted and looks like an external hard drive. In the disk image, there is the actual application. After you are done installing/dragging the applications to your actual hard drive, you can eject the virtual disk and delete the disk image. Can also just run the application from within the disk image, but it's not the proper way to install an application in OSX.

 

[blumpkin]

When you download Skype, it comes in a disk image. When you double click that, it gets mounted and looks like an external hard drive. In the disk image, there is the actual application. After you are done installing/dragging the applications to your actual hard drive, you can eject the virtual disk and delete the disk image. Can also just run the application from within the disk image, but it's not the proper way to install an application in OSX.

This is the answer I was looking for. Thanks a lot!

 

[gentlefury]

What I'm trying to figure out is what the computer did in order to make it work. It's almost like it installed a virtual copy of it.

Mac is not like windows where things have to be "installed"...to install most apps is to drag it to the applications folder....it will run out of the dmg just fine....but once you eject it it will be gone. Settings will remain tho...so once you properly install it you won't have to set it up again.

 

[blumpkin]

Mac is not like windows where things have to be "installed"...to install most apps is to drag it to the applications folder....it will run out of the dmg just fine....but once you eject it it will be gone. Settings will remain tho...so once you properly install it you won't have to set it up again.

Yup, I noticed that when I reinstalled, everything was just like I'd left it. I was worried that I'd installed two copies or done something wrong.

 

[Watabou]

It takes a bit of time getting used to installing apps on Mac OS X. The Mac App store kinda makes this easy since you don't have to mess with disk images.

But for applications outside the MAS, they come in two forms. Most come in disk images where you have to drag the app from the disk image to the application folder and then eject the disk image once it's done. You can delete the disk image later after you're done moving the app to the app. folder.

Some apps come in packages where you get the installation window and that's more familiar to switchers.

 

[Freyqq]

The application in the application folder is like the exe file in windows (to put it simply). All the preferences for that application are stored in users/(username)/library/application support.