Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Panther Edition

Installing Mac OS X Programs

In general, new programs arrive on your Mac via one of two avenues: on a CD, or via an Internet download. The CD method is slightly simpler; see “Performing the Installation” later in this section.

For help installing downloaded programs, on the other hand, read on.

.sit, .zip, .tar, and .gz

Programs you download from the Internet generally arrive in a specially encoded, compressed form. The downloaded file’s name usually has one of these file name extensions:

• .sit indicates a StuffIt file, the standard Macintosh file-compression format.

• .zip is the standard Windows compression file format—and, because Panther has a built-in Create [.zip] Archive command right in the File menu, it may become the new standard Macintosh compression format. (That would certainly make life easier for people who have to exchange files with the Windows crowd.)

• .tar is short for tape archive, an ancient Unix utility that combines (but doesn’t compress) several files into a single icon, for simplicity in sending.

• .gz is short for gzip, a standard Unix compression format.

• .tar.gz or .tgz represents one compressed archive containing several files.

• .dmg is a disk image, described below.

Fortunately, if you use Safari (Chapter 20) as your Web browser, you don’t have to worry about all this, because it automatically unzips and unstuffs them. If you use some other browser, StuffIt Expander can turn all of them back into usable form. In fact, StuffIt Expander, a program in your Applications→Utilities folder, generally kicks in automatically when you download a file. (If it doesn’t, double-click a downloaded compressed file to spur Expander into action.)

Disk Images (.dmg files)

Once you’ve unstuffed (or untarred) a downloaded program, it often takes the form of a disk image file, whose name ends with the letters .dmg (second from top in Figure 4.19). (Some files arrive as disk images straight from the Web, too, without having been compressed first.)

Disk images have been around for years on the Mac, but they’re extremely common in Mac OS X. All you have to do is double-click the .dmg icon. After a moment, it magically turns into a disk icon on your desktop, which you can work with just as though it’s a real disk (third from top in Figure 4.19). For example:

• Double-click it to open it. The software you downloaded is right inside.

• Remove it from your desktop by dragging it to the Trash (whose icon turns into a big silver Eject key as you drag), highlighting it and pressing -E (the shortcut for File→Eject), or Control-clicking it and choosing Eject from the contextual menu. (You’ve still got the original .dmg file you downloaded, so you’re not really saying goodbye to the disk image forever.)

Figure 4-19. Downloading a new program from the Internet may strew your desktop with icons. After the installation is complete, you can delete all of them. (But keep the .dmg file if you think you might want to install the software again later.)

Note

In 2003, Apple introduced a new kind of disk images called Internet-enabled disk images. When you download one, the .dmg file automatically copies its contents onto your desktop and then auto-Trashes itself. You might never know that you downloaded a disk image; it’s as though you just downloaded a bunch of files.

If you don’t see all of the left-over detritus illustrated in Figure 4-19 after downloading a disk image, now you’ll know why; you just got lucky.

Cleaning Up after Decompression

When the StuffIt Expander progress-bar dialog box disappears, you may have several icons on your desktop. Some are useful; some you’re free to trash.

• The original compressed file. It’s safe to throw away the .sit, .tar, .gz, or .tgz file you originally downloaded (after it’s decompressed, of course).

Tip

If you get tired of cleaning up after your downloads this way, you can tell StuffIt Expander to delete the pieces automatically. To do so, double-click the StuffIt Expander icon (in Applications→Utilities). From the StuffIt Expander menu, choose Preferences. Turn on both “Delete after expanding” checkboxes, and then click OK.

• The .dmg file. Once you’ve turned it into an actual disk-drive icon, installed the software from it, and “ejected” the disk-drive icon, you can delete the .dmg file. Keep it only if you think you might need to reinstall the software someday.

Note

If you try to trash the .dmg file before removing the disk-drive icon from the screen, you’ll get a “file in use” error message when you try to empty the Trash.

• The disk image itself. This final icon, the one that contains the actual software or its installer (third from top in Figure 4-19), doesn’t exist as a file on your hard drive. It’s a phantom drive, held in memory, that will go away by itself when you log out. So after installing its software, feel free to drag it to the Trash (or highlight it and press -E to “eject” it).

Performing the Installation

Working with .tar, .gz, and .dmg files are all skills unique to downloading Mac OS X programs from the Internet. Installing software from a CD is much more straight-forward.

In either case, once you’ve got a disk icon on your desktop (either a pseudo-disk from a disk image or a CD you’ve inserted), you’re ready to install the software. You can install many Mac OS X programs just by dragging their icons or folders to your hard drive. Others offer a traditional installer program that requires you to double-click, read, and accept a license agreement, and so on.

In both cases, where you decide to install the new program is suddenly a big issue. You have the following two alternatives:

• In the Applications folder. Most programs, of course, sit in your Applications folder. Most of the time, this is where you’ll want to install new programs. Putting them in the Applications folder makes it available to anyone who uses the Mac.

Note

You can’t put anything in your Applications folder unless you have an Administrator account, as described in Section 11.2.

• In your Home folder. Suppose you share your Mac with other people, as described in Chapter 11. If that’s your situation, you may occasionally want to install aprogram privately, reserving it for your own use only. In that case, just install or drag it into your Home folder, or a folder inside it. When other people log onto the machine, they won’t even know that you’ve installed that new program, since it doesn’t show up in the Applications folder.

UP TO SPEEDThe Color Picker

Here and there—in System Preferences, TextEdit, Microsoft Office, and many other programs—Mac OS X offers you the opportunity to choose a color for some element: for your desktop background, a window, and so on.

The dialog box that appears offers a miniature color lab that lets you dial in any color in the Mac’s rainbow. Several color labs, actually, arrayed across the top, each designed to make color-choosing easier in certain circumstances:

Color Wheel. Drag the scroll bar vertically to adjust the brightness, and then drag your cursor around the ball to pick the shade.

Color Sliders. From the pop-up menu, choose the color-mixing method you prefer. CMYK stands for cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. People in the printing industry will feel immediately at home, because these four colors are the component inks for color printing. (These people may also be able to explain why K stands for black)

RGB is how a TV or computer monitor thinks of colors: as proportions of red, green, and blue. And HSB stands for Hue, Saturation, and Brightness—a favorite color-specifying scheme in scientific circles.

In each case, just drag the sliders to mix up the color you want, or type in the percentages of each component.

Color Palettes presents canned sets of color swatches. They’re primarily for programmers who want quick access to the standard colors in Mac OS X. (The Web Safe Colors list is useful for Web designers, too; they can tell whether a color will display properly on other computers.)

Image Palettes offers the visible rainbow arrayed yet another way: in cloudy, color-arranged streaks. (Cool tip: If you drag a graphics file directly into the dialog box, it will appear in the spectrum’s place. That’s a handy trick if you’re trying to identify the color of a certain spot of an image, for example. And don’t miss the pop-up button at the bottom of the dialog box, which offers a few other stunts).

Crayons. Now this is a good user interface. You can click each crayon to see its color name: “Mocha,” “Fern,” “Cayenne,” and so on. (Some interior decorator in Cupertino had a field day naming these crayons.)

In any of these color pickers, you can also “sample” a color that’s outside the dialog box—a color you found on a Web page, for example. Just click the magnifying-glass icon and then move your cursor around the screen. You’ll see the sliders and numbers change inside the dialog box automatically when you click.

Finally, note that you can store frequently used (or frequently admired) colors in the mini-palette squares at the bottom. To do that, drag the big rectangular color swatch (next to the magnifying glass) directly down into one of the little squares, where it will stay fresh for weeks.

If you don’t have space for all the colors you want at the bottom of the window, you can drag the small circular dot down to make room for more.

If you don’t have an Administrator account, in fact, this is your only option for installing new programs.

Uninstalling Software

In Mac OS X, there’s no Add/Remove Programs window. If the program you want to trash came with an Uninstall program, by all means use it. If not, to uninstall a program, just drag it (or its folder) from the Applications folder (or wherever it is), to the Trash.

Some programs also leave harmless scraps of themselves behind; to check for them, look for preference files or folders bearing the dearly departed program’s name in your Library folders and your Home→Library→Preferences folder.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONSubmitting to Apple

What the—I was working along in Microsoft Word, and all of a sudden it just vanished! Poof! And all I got was this lousy dialog box about “submitting to Apple.” What’s going on?

Apple is trying to assimilate you.

Or, more accurately, it’s trying to enlist your help in ferreting out all the little glitches that makes modern computing so much fun. If you’re willing to click the Submit Report button and type a few comments (“I was just running Word, minding my own business, and when I clicked the Print toolbar button, the whole thing just crashed”), then Apple will add your report to the thousands flowing in from everyone else.

The idea, which Apple borrowed from Windows and added to Panther, is that when its programmers get a moment, they’ll study these reports, track down the patterns (“Hm, we’ve received 50,000 reports about that Print button in Word”), and then accost the software company responsible—and, presumably, get a fix under way.

The report you submit is full of technical info that help the programmers figure out what was happening at the time of the crash, but no personal information goes along for the ride. So if you feel like doing some good for your fellow Mac fans, by all means submit the report (via the Internet) whenever you’re offered the chance.