I just switched to a mac.. I am used to when putting in a cd it auto runs and i get a gui to like install a program.. the three programs ive installed, i have had to browse to find the setup. Am i doing something wrong? There should me an autorun right?
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just switched #2
- Thread starter jer446
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jer446 said:
Welcome! It took me a short while to understand what to do to install a program, but it's actually very simple.
1. When you insert an application CD, the CD mounts as a drive (usually with an icon on your desktop)
2. Double-click the icon and a Finder window opens displaying the CD contents.
3. Sometimes an application will have an installer routine, but most times you just drag the application icon to your Applications folder, et volia! - the application is installed
If you download an application, it will almost always unpack to a .dmg file. This is a disk image file, that to all intents and purposes acts like a CD. So you would double-click the .dmg file and it will mount just like a CD. Then view the mounted image file in Finder and just drag the application icon to your Applications folder and the job is done. You then eject the image file in Finder, and you can now trash the .dmg file if you want
Good luck
jer446 said:
Simply: no. You need to manually find the installer. Of course, this is trivial, because in a vast majority of cases, you'll either simply copy the application to your applications folder, or the installer will be at the top level of the volume, clearly marked.
Apple quietly dropped autorun capability in OS X (it used to be part of OS 9 and earlier). The reason is that there are security concerns with such a feature. A virus could be spread using such a feature. Someone skilled could write a virus to perhaps mimic the loading of a CD volume and then release a trojan. All in all, CDs are easy to handle on a Mac, so consider it a blessing (I've never had a virus or worm or trojan and I've been on an "always on" (broadband) internet connection for about 6 years and dialup for 4 years before that.)