I've seen that in a couple places in the manual. Pretty good for a laugh (but not so much help). You've described pretty much the UVmap proceedure. The mesh itself is changed (the vertices are re-ordered) by the mapping. However....if you have an image you want to map onto an object you can also asign that texture FIRST. Then go into the UV mapper and pull the vertices around until the image is properly placed on the model. When you hit that "OK" in the UV mapper it should make those changes in the model, allowing you to render that texture as you saw it in the mapper.