Uninstalling [Was: Palm Again - Fixed and How]

[Alex]

On Friday, Mar 26, 2004, at 07:26 Canada/Eastern, Anne Keller-Smith 
wrote:

> A general question about de-installing: My impression has been
> that most Mac programs do not require a de-install of the previous
> software version, in fact the opposite - to upgrade the previous
> version MUST be present. I am familiar with Photoshop, QuarkXpress,
> Illustrator, Dreamweaver, etc.

Uninstalling is one thing. Upgrading is another.

> Is de-installing more properly a Windows method? Or have I
> just had a narrow experience?

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 will 
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