hiya maccies! glad you are here. trying to transition

[mopinko]

to my first mac. been using pc for a pretty long time, but i am kinda spoiled. got a hubby and a son who know everything. so i have had great built in tech support. now i am on my own with this thing.
i got the one on one for christmas, but have only been able to use it once. (health crap) but i am getting there. i am finding mac help to be not so much, tho. partly i think it is a matter of terminology. so, maybe i am just looking in the wrong places for things.
anyway, here is my pressing issue right now- i don't have any trouble installing apps from disc, but when i try to install something that i download, i can't seem to tell it where to put it, and it doesn't seem to know. i get the box asking for the destination, but it comes up with mac hard drive selected and it won't let me change it. if i let it continue as it wishes, it doesn't install anyway. :shrug:
well, glad to find you guys. hope i don't annoy you with my stupid questions.

[Bongo Prophet]

1. Welcome to the club, mopinko. We'll try to help.

Once you get over just a few transitional concepts, it is really smooth sailing.

Let us know whether it be imac/tower or laptop, as some keyboard tips will work for one or the other.

Then the simple translations of win keys to mac:
right mouse click is ctrl click - or tapping trackpad on laptop, if set in system prefs)
the apple key, also called command key is similar to ctrl on pc (so cut/copy/paste are cmd+x, cmd+c, cmd+v and so on)
the ctrl key is like the option key on pc


Now, to the question, and not sure I understand totally, but will take a shot.
When you download, Safari will put it wherever the safari preferences panel has been set to put it. The default is desktop.
Those are often zipped or otherwise compressed, or a disk image (.dmg) if you double-click the compressed, they will often leave a dmg file as a result. Double-clicking the dmg will "mount" it, and it is really an emulated disk drive image with files inside. There will often be readme files and such.

One key thing to remember is NOT to run programs from the disk image.

Most of the time you can just drag the program file icon to your applications icon in the sidebar in a finder window. Sometimes there will be an alias to the applications folder in the disk imaage itself - this is a convenience feature, as it still goes to the same place. It makes a COPY to that destination, so a small file might copy so fast you don't notice. Just look in that applications folder to see that it is there.
Unmount disk images (like you would a cd - cmd+e, or click the "eject" icon in the sidebar-it is a triangle with a line under it)

Some programs will run an installer, and these generally let you put it anywhere. But you should always put programs in the main applications folder or a subfolder like graphics or audio within these is also fine. Don't be confused that you ALSO have an applications folder within your HOME folder - this is for programs (apps) that ONLY specific user should use, so in a multiuser system you can hide it from other users. Usually you want to have an app available to ALL users.

Sometimes when a pop up file requester appears, it will offer to save to a default folder, but there is a little "down-arrow" that opens up to full size with all the options you need to put things where you want. This gets new users, and is supposed to make things easier, but I disagree - it confuses people, in my experience.

I hope this all helped - I think I rambled a bit, but pre-coffee headache will do that.
good luck, and feel free to ask anything.
You will also get more info from apple related sites, but please hang out in this DU subgroup from time to time - we need more people here to liven it up a bit!

bp

[suffragette]

2. The two things I had the most issues with in my transition

were terminology and that I would overcomplicate processes.

For example, I hunted all over the place for days to learn how to create a shortcut, before I finally discovered the term on a Mac is "alias." Once found, super simple and I'm so glad I got a Mac.

Poked around just now and found a glossary of some Windows to Mac terms for you. Hope this helps.

Note, it's a PDF:

http://cidb.nsbsd.org/docs/Apple/Windows-Mac_Glossary.pdf

[alfredo]

4. Drag and drop an application to your dock and it will becomes an alais.

If you no longer want it there, just drag it from the dock and release. The Alias will go out in a puff of smoke.

You can also create an alias in the sidebar of your finder the same way.

Get to know the system preferences. Look at Spaces and Expose. They come in handy.

[suffragette]

5. Actually I switched at home back when it was OS9

Was referring to it since I remember needing to learn terms as well as different (generally easier) ways of doing things back when I switched and thought that might be helpful for the OP.

At first, I would overcomplicate and overthink matters and/or just not know the correct Mac term.

[alfredo]

6. I was just throwing out some neat tricks for our new user.

[suffragette]

7. And good tricks they are

I remember back in OS9 how astounded I was that you could just check or uncheck boxes in extensions, which I had to do at one point for my QPS burner to work. After fighting with dll files and IRQ conflicts in Windows, this was quite the revelation.

Also, the first time I installed a program, it happened so quickly (and with no puzzling Windows messages asking me whether I want to replace specific old files or not - I always felt the unwritten text with that action was "And if you choose wrong, even though we haven't told you why, your system will implode) and easily that I was sure it couldn't have installed properly - but, of course, it had.

Love my Mac.

[alfredo]

8. I remember all the problems with Windows if you deleted a program

and another program shared a same resource.

I remember the first piece of MS software I put on my Mac. When I decided to delete it, I had to hunt all over the computer to get rid of all the files it spewed on my drive. And that was just a Demo.

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. Welcome to the club

and what they said.

Once you open the DMG, click on it... and open your applications folder, and drag it in there. That is all it takes.

I´ll admit, having played with LINUX helped me to get up and running with my mac in october... and right now typing from my mom´s XP (phew not Vista) and it is different. Of course it does not help her OS is set to run in Spanish, that just adds to the confusion factor.

:-)