382255 - Installation process is not obvious to most Mac users (pictogram in DMG)

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 320155

(Firefox :: Installer, defect)

Description

[Max Killen]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/419 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/419.3
Build Identifier: 

I know this sounds stupid but I know that it's a real problem.  Most Mac users do not know what a DMG file is.  They do not understand that is happening when they open the file.  They don't understand that they are supposed to copy / drag /move FireFox (or any other item in a DMG) to the correct location.

Yes I know that there is a grey arrow pointing to a grey rendition of the Applications folder.  They don't understand it.

Most Mac FireFox users just add the item, that's in the DMG file to their Dock.  When they want to use FireFox, they click on the icon in the dock.  That then opens the DMG file and then launches FireFox.  Then they wonder why it takes so long for FireFox to load and why a lot of their RAM is gone.

I think it would be very helpful if the DMG was designed with more blatant instructions.  You can add a link to the Applications folder instead of having a picture of it.  You can have the window open so that the side bar is not hidden (that makes it easier to get to the destination.  The background image could be text telling the user exactly what to do.  Maybe the app could recognize that it is running from the DMG and alert the user to the situation.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Go to an Apple Store Genius Bar
2. Wait for a user to open up their portable and ask if they are using FireFox
3. If they are, check to see if they are running it from the DMG file.
Actual Results:  
You will see that the application is not installed and is not being upgraded.

Expected Results:  
The "installer" should not rely on the users understanding of pictograms.

Comment 1

[Jo Hermans]

dupe of bug 320155