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The Mac Proselytization Thread

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grant

14:52 / 09.05.05

By the way, what exactly is a "disk image"?
These things keep popping up on Macs, and for a longtime PC guy like me, they might as well be little alien visitors from Dimension X.

I finally figured out that to *really* install something, I have to move the icon into the Applications folder. This was confusing for a while, because things'd work on one account fine, but not the others (and my primary account is not the admin one).

ShadowSax

14:57 / 09.05.05

a disk image is like an image of a disk, like, one that is mounted on your computer and is used to install things. like where you used to install things from a cd, now you download, say, a disk image, and the icon looks like a disk and its trash behavior is actually eject, like a disk. you'll even see it listed in your volumes/servers/drives in that part of the finder window.

The Strobe

15:04 / 09.05.05

Yeah, it's basically a virtual disk that things are distributed on. You double-click the dmg file and it "mounts" like a CD or Hard Disk. Open it up and run the installer or copy stuff to your hard disk; then drag the disk image to the wastebasket to unmount it, and then delete the dmg file.

It's basically a convenient way of bundling things for distribution before you compress them (or not). It's much like a .iso file for a CD. Except not.

netbanshee

17:46 / 09.05.05

Disk images keep the integrity of the data similar to a volume or disc. If you want to make a perfect backup of a data CD for instance, making a disk image of it is the way to go. Copying from the disc usually doesn't provide the same sort of status.

Mourne Kransky

18:52 / 09.05.05

I too am a convert to the mighty mac but I don't understandf any of the techspeak above. I have mine because it's pretty. And because, despite knowing fuck all about computers, it lets me do such interesting things. Although my iPod is temperamental little fucker.

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