Download & Dock Questions

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24" iMac, 3.06GHz, 2GB Ram, 880GS Video; 500GB HD
Hello all,

My wife and I just picked up a 24" alum iMac yesterday. I haven't used a mac since the IIe days ;D

Overall, the interface is intuitive and we are really enjoying learning a new system. We have each read through the mac 101 pages on apple.com, however hearing from actual people makes learning so much easier.
Now to my questions. I seemed to have removed the downloads dock icon. I can find it in the HD section but can't seem to add it back. Silly I know, but I am puzzled. Ha.

Second one, a bit more meat to this one. I don't fully understand the download function. Ok, I downloaded a game and now the icon shows on the desktop (not dock). When I click the icon instead of opening the game it opens another window which actually has the game. Now he is what I don't get. I can push that exe icon to the dock but to get rid of the one on the desktop I have to eject it. Which takes it and the dock icon into never never land and I have to install it all again. HELP!

I hope you can make sense of my questions, it's tough since I don't know the lingo as of yet.

I appreciate it all!!!
 
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To answer your first question, open up the Finder, go to your Home folder (it should be named whatever the username is) and then click and drag the downloads folder to the RIGHT side of the dock.

The thing that you are seeing on your desktop is a DMG or .dmg it is sort of like a .zip file in the sense that it contains the file you want inside of it. OSX doesn't usually need to install a program like in Windows the program is contained within itself, so when you download a .dmg you are going to want to open that up copy the app to anywhere else on your computer (usually your applications folder) and than eject the .dmg and away you go!
 
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Like Vindicated said...

Open the white .dmg folder and then drag the application to the application folder. Drop it in there. Then go and eject the .dmg folder. Your application is now installed on your computer.
 
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J
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Awesome, thanks for the fast response!

I am sure there will be plenty more coming over the next few days, ha.
 
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Josh,

Welcome to the froum.

I do one other step. I created a "Setup" folder inside of my applications folder and after I move the new downloaded app from the .dmg folder to the applications folder, I move the .dmg folder itself to my Setup folder instead of ejecting it. That way, I can keep that apps' .dmg in case I inadvertently delete the app. Then I can move the .dmg folder back to the desktop and re-install the app. I think that may be easier than re-downloading the .dmg from the internet.

May be wasteful of your HDD, but I'm new to Mac and may give this practice up later on if I feel there's no need for it :)

Noel
 
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J
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Next Question if I may.

How the heck to I remove a program / delete it?
 
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Jos,

Just drag it from the application folder to the trash can or right click it and select "Move to Trash."

Noel
 
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Jos,

Just drag it from the application folder to the trash can or right click it and select "Move to Trash."

Noel
Interesting, almost too easy.
Thanks
 
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Yes it is nice and easy, but as a rule of thumb, if any program had to go through an install (not just the usual drag and drop) than it probably came with an uninstaller in which you should use.
 

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