Should An Icon Mount On My Desktop!

I have loaded all the Canon Software that came with my Camera onto my Apple G5 OS10.4.5, but when I connect the camera to it using the USB cable, it automatically fires up iPhoto and I can import the photos into this, but no desktop icon.
I would have thought a folder would have appeared on the desktop and I could access all files from there, without going through iPhoto. When I use a card reader I obviously get the icon/folder on the desktop, but not when connected direct.
I was a bit worried if the CF cards would get damaged after a while, as I am unable to eject the card from the desk top, as there isn't one, the only way is to turn off the camera.
Am I using old Canon software? or is it the way it works with the Canon software.

not sure about that because i only use cardd readers but i do know that you should get rid of that iphoto crap... i switched to iview media pro and it made my life soooooo much better!!!

iPhoto just imports the files onto the computer as I said and I do any pre-outputting work in Photoshop. The card reader USB2, seems to take forever to download the files, iPhoto is very quick and I can write to disc straight from the original files. Iview media pro! uuummmm!
Cheers anyway!

A USB2 card reader should be as fast or a bit faster then the camera....
If you use Canons Eos Utility or Eos Viewer Utility you can see the camera.... It won't appear on the desktop however (at least, my 1D2 won't).
Get rid of iPhoto (or at least disable the automatic startup), and use PhotoMechanic and iView media pro instead. (Both offer a free trail period)

There must some sort of default setting in iPhoto that opens iPhoto when it detects a camera attached or when jpegs or RAW files are being transferred.

Bizarrely, the settings for this are not in iPhoto, but Image capture. Open Image Capture (should be in your Applications folder, then hit "Apple+," to open the preferences.

In the preference pane, you should see "Camera: When a camera is connected,open:" Then you can select from iPhoto, Image Capture, No Application or Other.

As for the eject issue, can you see a small eject button in iPhoto, next to the camera after you import?

I appreciate all your posts and I understand about iPhoto and how to switch it off as a default access software, as I have been using the Apple operating system for some tweleve years now.
But my wife has a little Fuji digital camera and the software supplied used to put a folder on the desktop when the camera was connected and you could open and choose what files you wanted to download.
I thought maybe the Canon software would have this option, also as a default.

My main concern was that after downloading files from my 350D, I did not have the facility to eject the camera, hence causing damage to the card/camera!

Cheers
K
:p