With a wide variety of software that is available for your Mac computer, you are probably tempted to download and install many of them. With many freewares, sharewares and low-cost applications out there, you will eventually run out of disk space, depending on how big your disk drive is.
There are many reasons why you might want to uninstall programs. Space constraint is one; you will have to remove programs and files you no longer want or need to free up some disk space, before you realize that there is no more physical space left on your disk! Uninstalling unwanted Mac programs is an important aspect of keeping your Mac clean so that your machine does not slow down, or freeze.
The other reason to uninstall software is to upgrade existing necessary software. Sometimes this requires a complete uninstall and reinstall. When upgrading a program from an older version to a newer version, you sometimes have to remove the old one or the new one might not work properly.
Does Mac OS X have an inbuilt uninstaller?
Apple Mac OS X does not come with an inbuilt uninstaller tool. This is because most Mac applications are packaged programs that keep most of the files together in one place. Each application is represented via an icon in the Applications folder; this might be a single file with simple software, or a folder that contains the files required for a program to work. This form of packaged software is called bundle software in Mac language.
To view package contents, hold down the Ctrl key and click on an application. From the menu options that are displayed, select the Show Package Contents option. When you select this option, a Finder window opens for you to view the files and folders that are part of the application.
How to uninstall programs in Mac
To uninstall an application package, just drag the application icon to the Trash. Alternatively, you can hold down the Ctrl key and click on the application icon, and then choose Move to Trash from the menu that is displayed.
Note that a few applications do come with uninstallers, so before you drag the application to the Trash, check to see if one is available.
Always install and uninstall software while logged on as an administrator rather than a standard user.
Will Trashing programs uninstall them completely?
Trashing a program will work if the trashed program is a packaged Mac software bundle. In this case, all the associated files are uninstalled along with the main program.
However, if your uninstalled Mac program is not a bundle, it is likely that many associated files and folders were not uninstalled along with the program. One reason for this is that programs install files in different locations; not all application files are located along with the actual program in the Applications folder, for example, customization options, preferences and options, skins, add-ons and plug-ins. A program may also cache information so that it can be accessed more easily the next time it is required, for example a web browser. Uninstalling your browser will not remove its cache files. If you do not track these rogue leftovers and remove them, your hard disk will soon starve for space and it will not matter that you did uninstall programs to make room.
How to ensure that all associated files are removed
To ensure that all the associated program files (library files, system files, preferences) are removed, you can either manually locate and delete them, or use a third-party uninstaller such as AppTrap to do the clean up for you.
This guest post was written by David Ritchie. David Ritchie is a software development writer. His current area of interest is Mac uninstall software.
I love to travel… I don’t get to head out of town often, but when I do, I need my technology. Being away from my computer for more than a few hours gets me a little twitchy, so road trips have traditionally been hard to deal with. With the iPhone and the almost unmanageable list of applications to choose from, things have gotten much better. I just got back from a road trip from Phoenix, AZ to Long Beach, CA, where Michelle and I stayed on the Queen Mary for an extended party, and my iPhone helped a lot when it came to relaxing and getting things done. Here’s a list of ten must-have iPhone applications for your road trip.
Google Maps
One of the original built-in applications in the iPhone’s OS is the Google Maps app. With it, you can quickly search for your destination and map your route to get there. With your trip all mapped out, you can relax and just check in once in a while for any freeway changes or other details. Of course I’m still waiting for Google to give us turn-by-turn directions on the iPhone for free (yes, I AM that spoiled by Google), but there’s a few (not free) apps out there to try as well. I use Google because it’s incredibly simple and I can jump right to street view to see what the building I’m looking for looks like.
Pandora
My favorite source for streaming music on the web is also my favorite source on my iPhone. What I didn’t know was how useful it could really be on a road trip. I intended to make a note of where in the desert it stopped working, but it just kept working the whole time. Other than a couple times cutting out for about 30 seconds, Pandora streamed brilliantly over AT&T’s 3G network the entire drive. Now if AT&T could just get my phone to reliably make phone calls where I need it to…
Email
Another standard app on most smart phones is an email application and the iPhone has a pretty complete email program and it handles multiple accounts. The thing that I used to hate is coming back home to find thousands of emails to go through. This weekend, I was able to keep up with my two important email accounts and respond to people in a timely manner while removing all the spam from my server to only sync valuable emails when I get home.
TweetDeck
While I tried to enjoy my vacation more than Twitter, I still have thoughts and photos I want to share while out of town. Vacations also offer lots of fun things to tweet about. I’ve tried a few of the top Twitter iPhone apps, but this one is my favorite. Just waiting in line for tickets to the aquarium, I was able to check for new tweets, mentions, and DMs and reply to a couple in just a couple minutes. Then I globally marked the rest as “read”. Easy.
Weather
It’s always important to know the weather where you’re going, and if you’re on a long road trip, this can be tricky. When we drove to Detroit and back last summer, we passed through several states and the weather app was very useful to plan out our wardrobe as well as touristy events.
Safari
Despite the completely unexplainable fact that I still can’t view flash in a web site in Safari on my iPhone, it’s still a great browser. It’s pretty fast and renders very nicely. Best of all, it’s as close as I’ve ever gotten to a real web browsing experience on a phone (except sites with flash). Wireless access in many hotels will run you about ten bucks a day and in the Queen Mary, it didn’t matter because I got almost no wifi signal in my room. Browsing the web over 3G in my room was a huge convenience on many occasions.
Gazette
I read a lot of blogs. I try to stay on top of industry news and events and still read blogs of colleagues and influential bloggers. I could lock down an hour in my room to do this on the laptop, but then I wouldn’t be vacationing, would I? Instead, I prefer to skim my preferred feeds in the frequent spare moments when I’m waiting for Michelle to get ready, the elevator is taking forever, or, dare I say it… the bathroom. Catching up in these otherwise wasted spare minutes leaves that hour free for vacationing.
Camera
I have a digital camera and it takes better pictures than my iPhone, but it also runs on AA batteries, is inconvenient to tote around, and lacks the luxury of instant sharing. With the iPhone’s camera, I can snap off a shot any time and I can take thousands before I run out of space. There’s tons of ways to share my photos, from the Facebook or MySpace apps to Twitter apps to Flickr apps like the one mentioned below. Additionally, with the 3G S, I was able to shoot video, which I found myself doing a lot more on this trip.
FlickIt
One of the apps I use the most, vacationing or not, is FlickIt. It just uploads your photos right to your Flickr account. You can add detailed information and tags to each photo, but I usually just do that later from a PC. The only thing missing is the ability to upload videos to my Flickr account. Then it would be perfect.
WiFiTrak
WiFi is almost always a better option than 3G in terms of speed, but when you travel, you often have to wait until you’re at the hotel or near a hot spot and even then, it will usually cost enough to make you grimace a bit. One way around this is to leech off someone else’s WiFi. Just fire up this app and find a suitable (and open) connection and use it. As seen here, you won’t always find an open router, but when one is nearby it helps to have a fast way of knowing and connecting to it.
Bonus : RDP
What if that piece of information, email, phone number, etc is only available to you from your home or office computer? This happened to me over the weekend. I can’t think of a better test case. Servers were about to be moved and I needed quick access to some IP addresses that were in a list only on my computer at the office. I was on the beach with no other electronics than my phone, but I opened the RDP app and connected to my computer at the office, got the information I needed, and went back to enjoying the beach. The alternative would have been to catch a cab, get back to the hotel, fire up the laptop and pay for the WiFi access. I have only needed this app twice and it could use a little bit of tweaking, but both times it was a life saver.
