installing Programs

Well… coming from the windows world installing a program is quite a bit different (sometimes) Talking with my mac Guru friend he talks about windows installs requiring too much user interaction… I’ll give him some of that, most programs require you to say yes a few times… only where it allows you to pick some options or install directories…. now when I started using apple I was confused about mounting a drive (more on that later) but seems as though some programs have an “installer” and there seems to be a few different flavors of that, but some don’t and I guess you’re supposed to know to drag the application that you want into the “applications” folder… Not sure how you’re supposed to know this. You can simply drag it onto the desktop and the program will run, apple normally doesn’t require that a program install modify anything of the system (more on windows safety vs apple later) so you can run a program from anywhere you drag it (maybe even from the trash can)…

Sometimes programs have installers like use windows users are used to minus a few clicks of where you might want it installed… and then sometimes there is some kind of little window thing that pops up and shows a folder of the program you want and a icon that looks like your applications folder and tells you to drag the application about 1/2″ over to the picture of the application folder… no consistency at all…. I know the apple is supposed to be intuitive but for installing this is not the case…