Unfortunately, OS X can make it a bit too easy. Until I gave her instruction otherwise, my wife downloaded apps like MSN Messenger, opened the DMG and then ran the app direct from there! So she had all these installation DMGs open so she could run her apps.
My father (who tried OS X after being a Linux user for some time) did the same. It's really not obvious what you're meant to do unless the DMG has the instructions in clear sight (which some developers do). I had a similar confusion when I first switched to the Mac five years ago.
What they were doing may seem weird, but it's not really technically wrong to do. The only real downside is the resources wasted on keeping the disk mounted.
That's funny. The words "web" and "cloud" do not yet appear anywhere in these comments!
Even novice users have proven that they can remember to visit URLs for their applications and bookmark their favorites. With that in mind, we can easily overcome the "desktop loaded with .application files" problem.
My father (who tried OS X after being a Linux user for some time) did the same. It's really not obvious what you're meant to do unless the DMG has the instructions in clear sight (which some developers do). I had a similar confusion when I first switched to the Mac five years ago.