Skip to Main Content
Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Mountain Lion Edition
book

Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Mountain Lion Edition

by David Pogue
September 2012
Beginner content levelBeginner
762 pages
29h 25m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Mountain Lion Edition

Other Ways to Get Mac Software

In general, new programs arrive on your Mac via one of two avenues: as an Internet download (whether from the App Store or not), or on a CD or DVD.

Downloading Compressed Files

Programs you download from the Web (not the App Store) generally arrive in a specially encoded, compressed form. And unless you’ve changed the settings, they arrive in the Downloads folder on your Dock.

The downloaded file’s name usually has one of these file name extensions:

  • .zip is the standard compression file format for Windows and Mac files. In fact, OS X has a built-in Compress command right in the File menu.

  • .sit indicates a StuffIt file, the standard Macintosh file-compression format of years gone by.

  • .dmg is a disk image, described below.

Fortunately, you generally don’t have to worry about any of this; most Web browsers, including Safari, automatically unzip and unstuff downloads of all types.

Disk images (.dmg files)

Once you’ve downloaded a program, it often takes the form of a disk image file, whose name ends with the letters .dmg (second from the top in Figure 4-2).

Disk images are extremely common in 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 were a real disk (third from the top in Figure 4-2). For example:

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

  • Remove it from your desktop by dragging it to the Trash (whose icon turns into ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Start your free trial

You might also like

Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, El Capitan Edition

Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, El Capitan Edition

David Pogue

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781449338978Supplemental ContentErrata Page