New Mac, steep learning curve

TheChiefJaguar

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Bought two MBA's during a pretty good sale at the NEX, but I have a lot to learn so far...
I downloaded the Adobe Flash Player and it says installation is complete, but it put the icon on my desktop. Through the Apple preferences menu I selected hide/remove, but then a Macintosh HD icon took its place!
Why, and how do I get rid of it?
 

doogald

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Drag the icon to the trash can icon on the far right of the dock. (It's not the application itself, but the installation file that you downloaded.)
 

TheChiefJaguar

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Drag the icon to the trash can icon on the far right of the dock. (It's not the application itself, but the installation file that you downloaded.)

Tried it, didn’t work. Prior to the icon changing, when it was still the flash player icon, I clicked “Eject Flash Player”, and that’s when it changed to the Mac HD icon. What exactly is it ejecting?
 

doogald

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Tried it, didn’t work. Prior to the icon changing, when it was still the flash player icon, I clicked “Eject Flash Player”, and that’s when it changed to the Mac HD icon. What exactly is it ejecting?

Many/most installation files create virtual external drives and mount themselves like virtual external hard disks. You are doing the equivalent of unmounting the drive (which dragging to the trash should have done as well, by the way.)
 

gnirkatto

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Coming from ~30 years of Windows experience, I made the move to a Mac about 6 months ago.
In general, I love Mac OS, its smoothness and ease of use (once you got used to how to handle it properly).

However, there are some unexplainable stupidities, and this sudden appearance of volumes or icons that the OP describes is one of them, imho.

The installation routines and/or (?) the OS shall do whatever they want during the installation process, but clean everything up properly before finishing.

How on earth would a new or not so experienced user be able to determine what a newly appearing icon or volume is good for, and if it has to stay there forever, or if something will collapse in case it gets removed or unmounted?

But, even in the light of such Mac issues, all I can say is that for me, it feels like in comparison, when using Windows, the number of such stupidities that one has to deal with on a daily basis is about 50 times higher.
 

TheChiefJaguar

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Resolved! Got the answer on the Apple forums.
Go to Finder menu > Preferences > General > Show these items on Desktop and uncheck Hard disks.
 

Just_Me_D

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Resolved! Got the answer on the Apple forums.
Go to Finder menu > Preferences > General > Show these items on Desktop and uncheck Hard disks.

Oh heck, I could've told you that, but I was somehow under the impression that the Adobe app wouldn't delete. After re-reading your post, I realized what you were referring to. My apologies for the misread, but I'm glad you resolved the issue.