OS X conceptual question

[ShadowHunter]

Alright, here's the thing - I got a new job and one of the employees has a Dual 2.0 G5. I've been drooling over it for a few days, and he said I could play with it when he left for the day, so here I am.

One of the things I was messing around with was chatting. I had MSN Messenger 3.0 installed from Office X, and it wasnt connecting to .NET. I figured the version was old, so I downloaded 4.0. I ran it from my desktop, and it all is good. But it didn't replace the old 3.0? When I realized that I was actually running the 4.0 installed from my desktop, I tried to copy it to the Applications area, and delete the old file. But the icon the install put in the dock for the 4.0, kept bringing back the install I left on the desktop??? On top of all this, where are all the configuration files associated with the 3.0 and the 4.0 versions, they don't seem to conflict?

I hope you'll forgive my Windows-centered mind. I just seek conceptual understanding here...

 

[mkrishnan]

There should be a folder in your home/Library for MSN Msngr that has this in it. Office.X installed it into home/Library/Preferences/Microsoft, but I don't have MSN Messenger.

For the dock issue, not sure how you can view the actual alias files the dock references (like you can explore Start), but try this:

- delete the icon on the dock now by dragging it up away from the dock
- go to the folder where you put MSN Msngr 4.0 and run it.
- When it runs, you'll notice it on the right side of the dock. Click and hold down, or right click, and it will show an option "Keep in dock". Otherwise drag it to another place (wherever you like) within the dock and this will have the same effect.

That should solve that issue.

 

[ChrisFromCanada]

Why not do this? (right click)

 

[ShadowHunter]

Why not do this? (right click)

Ok I guess I lost my reply, try again here!

When I tried to click "show in finder", it didn't seem to do anything? Maybe my memory is wrong. When I normal clicked the icon, it brought back the Messenger application on the desktop after I had deleted it??

Eventually I dumped the icon and then I killed the application. But I still don't understand how these are working.

 

[7on]

Generally different versions of apps don't conflict. And if they do, hopefully the devs made the pref files version specific. I was even able to do a cmd+D on Safari and have two identical Safari's running. Reading off the same prefs isn't too far-fetched. Think of the preferences as files. You can open a .txt file in both text edit and Word and have it both open at the same time. If you want to get rid of one, just delete both apps and redownload 4.0 and drag it to the app folder (make sure you're not running it off the virtual drive (.dmg). Also, make sure you don't break anything. I know I'd be raising Hell if someone came in and had installed multiple versions of the same app (I'm a bit tidy/oc) on my machine. hehe, I knew someone who had like 3 of the same version of AIM on the computer and the OS9 Q3A and the OSX Q3A. And the reason was that this girl let her PC using bf install stuff for her because he "knew" stuff about computers. I swear, I even had Finder mastered the first 2 minutes of booting my Mac for the first time. No need to put AIM and Quake in the root of the drive or on the desktop.

 

[ingenious]

Ok I guess I lost my reply, try again here!

When I tried to click "show in finder", it didn't seem to do anything? Maybe my memory is wrong. When I normal clicked the icon, it brought back the Messenger application on the desktop after I had deleted it??

Eventually I dumped the icon and then I killed the application. But I still don't understand how these are working.

If the app was still on your desktop, then "show in finder" of course would appear to do nothing except show the desktop where it was at. Now if MSN Messenger 4 was in a different folder and it didn't take you to that folder, then that's something different.