Uninstalling Applications on a Mac

[Mike Honcho]

Want to know how to uninstall applications or programs for a Mac?

All you need to do is find the program icon right click and move it to trash or drag and drop it to the trash. No long uninstall process like windows. You just throw it in the trash. Fucking brilliant!

[Steezus]

If it is a package, this works. If it is the older style of programs with a folder and lots of files in it, it does not work. It would be the equivalent of throwing the program icon away into the garbage on Windows and thinking you un-installed it.

Of course people have studied the amount of clicks it takes to perform tasks on both OS's in an objective manner. There is literally no difference between the two now days. Some tasks take more clicks on Windows and some take longer on OSX. Windows only gets complicated when you want to refine and customize it further... since it actually lets you.

[Mike Honcho]

If it is a package, this works. If it is the older style of programs with a folder and lots of files in it, it does not work. It would be the equivalent of throwing the program icon away into the garbage on Windows and thinking you un-installed it.

Of course people have studied the amount of clicks it takes to perform tasks on both OS's in an objective manner. There is literally no difference between the two now days. Some tasks take more clicks on Windows and some take longer on OSX. Windows only gets complicated when you want to refine and customize it further... since it actually lets you.

I haven't run into that yet but I've only had my Mac Mini for 3 months.

[Steezus]

Yeah, it is mostly for people that are running legacy programs that are a couple of years old that are not updated by the developer. The amount of HD space in a computer these days makes it not really an issue even if you leave every program you have ever installed on a computer these days now, so I guess it isn't even a big deal to leave program files on a machine.

[jonnyseeandoh]

Even if you have bits of an old program lying on your mac, they don't usually bog the system down, as loose bits will do on Windoze. That said, if you right click on the "program.app" listing, you can browse the contents, (It's just a magic folder afterall.) There might be somewhere in there an uninstall script which you can click and run, and then for sure you will get a clean uninstall...the only hiccup I've seen there is you might have to manually banish the associated dock icon if you had one in use.

[Steezus]

Even if you have bits of an old program lying on your mac, they don't usually bog the system down, as loose bits will do on Windoze.

I guess if you mean loose bits as in registry keys on Wondows, then it could slow your computer down. Mike posted a link to CCleaner that has an an awesome registry cleaner for that, but leaving residual files on either system won't do anything. They both automatically defragment now.

[jonnyseeandoh]

There are uninstaller apps for mac, that examine the programs you have, to see where all their parts are, and as you install new stuff it watches where everything goes, then when you want to uninstall, the program takes note of your effort to trash the .app folder, and pops up to show you any other files that may be safely deleted....and when you approve, it will do it for you.

[Steezus]

Revo..