[X Newbies] mac applications

[David Crandon]

Alex,

There is an OS9 utility called "Installer Observer" that automates the 
manual process you do of listing files. You run it (under Classic) 
immediatly before and after an installation and it will tell you 
exactly what was added, deleted and changed by the installation.

David Crandon


On Feb 21, 2004, at 4:59 AM, Alex wrote:

>
> On Friday, Feb 20, 2004, at 18:11 Canada/Eastern, lingo wrote:
>
>> [...] i know pretty much everything about pc's [...]
>
> Great! How do you format a 40GB volume as FAT32 under Win XP?
>
>> [...] how do i remove(uninstall) programs from my computer. [...] I 
>> am running osx and i also have os9. [...]
>
> You've hit upon a weakness in Mac OS. There is no system facility for 
> uninstalling applications, as there is under Win. (Mind you, the Win 
> mechanism isn't at all robust, but at least there is something. On the 
> other hand, there is much less need on the Mac for something like 
> that.) So, at this point, you're pretty much left at the mercy of the 
> application's developer for the uninstall process.
>
> (1) Under Mac OS X, the simplest installation procedure is to drag an 
> application's folder to /Applications. (A well-designed Mac 
> application should require no more; and I'm wary of applications which 
> require installers, especially third-party installers.) In this case, 
> uninstalling is equally simple -- just drag the respective folder to 
> the trash.
>
> (2) If the application was installed with Installer.app, often you can 
> remove it as in (1); but that is not always enough. In case it isn't, 
> you can go back to the original package and start Installer again. It 
> may offer an Uninstall option (that depends on the installation 
> script, not on Installer); but, even if it doesn't, you can get a 
> listing of files to be installed (File > Show Files), so you'll know 
> what to remove.
>
> (3) If the application was installed with a third-party installer, 
> then all depends on that installer and the installation script. You 
> can remove the application by trashing it, as in (1), but bits will be 
> left behind -- although it's much less likely than in Windows that 
> they cause trouble. A well-designed installer and/or installer script 
> will have an uninstall option, and it's usually best to use it; if a 
> separate uninstaller is provided, use that. But in some cases you may 
> be left to your own devices, and removing all the nasty bits may be a 
> hairy process -- Norton Utilities is a notorious example. I keep track 
> of the process by doing a listing of the boot volume immediately 
> before running the installer, another immediately afterwards, and 
> doing a diff on the two files. Admitedly, it's cumbersome and 
> inelegant -- but I'm paranoid; I hate not knowing what's on my own 
> hard drive.
>
> As in Windows, the procedures above will not remove files which may be 
> created by the application after installation (e.g., prefs, logs, 
> regs), but such files are (with rare exceptions) benign and take next 
> to no space. If you really want to get rid of them as well, you must 
> either find them yourself or use a third party utility (such as Angelo 
> Scicolone's Prefs Overload <http://www.ziksw.com>) to do so.
>
> f
>
>
>
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