Most apps for Mac OS X are simple application bundles (.app files). These are simple double-clickable folders essentially, containing everything necessary for the app to run. These applications are easy to uninstall — all you have to do is drag the .app file, usually in the /Applications folder, to the Trash.

The pain in the ass bit comes along when you find applications that aren’t simple app bundles. Many of such applications come installed with OS X: Garageband, iWeb, etc. Not only do they have the .app file (in the Applications folder), but they also install files to various locations oustide the Applications folder, “/Library/Application Support/Garageband” for Garageband being a prime example.

The really annoying thing about these applications? They don’t have uninstallers. So how do we go about uninstalling them then? Well, you’ve got two options really:

1. Use Spotlight. Search for “Garageband” and simply move any folders/files you find to the Trash. This option isn’t actually that bad, although you do, of course, run the risk of deleting files that weren’t actually installed with Garageband and potentially messing up other applications, or deleting files made by you that just happen to have the word ‘garageband’ in them.

2. Use AppZapper. This little app simplifies the process. Doing essentially the same thing as using Spotlight, although it (I assume) is a bit more careful about what things it can/should delete for you, while also allowing you to review files before you let it go ahead and delete them.

Now AppZapper is shareware, so it only allows you to “zap” five apps before it asks you to cough up some cash to purchase it. But, fortunately, it also has this “ZapGenie” feature, which scours your hard drive for installed apps allowing you to select multiple apps to delete at once, while happily only counting as one “zap” in the you-must-pay-us-soon counter.

So, uninstalling some apps on Mac OS X is a pain in the ass, but luckily there are a couple ways to ease the uninstalling process.

You still need more free space??

Yeah, me too.

A nice way of freeing up some more space is to remove all the languages you don’t use. I don’t know about you, but I personally use my computer in only one language.

Normally, removing all the translations would be a Herculean task, but thanks to Monolingual (maybe I should have named this post “How awesome are my pimping skills?”) it’s not too bad, provided you take care to read the Readme.

Monolingual is a small download, and allows you to select for removal things you’ll likely never need to use, but are taking up buckets of space regardless. Things like extra translations, keyboard layouts and input methods, and processor architectures.

Taking the safe route, I chose to remove all languages except the variations of English, and Arabic. While I chose to leave all the architectures, along with all the keyboard layouts and input methods intact: freeing up some 2.2GB of hard drive space – space that is likely to soon be filled with music and photos.

It’s sad that Apple has decided to change it’s Installer program so that it can no longer uninstall applications and languages, as it seemingly could back in OS 9, but, until this oversight is fixed, at least we have a number of other options available to us.

Ordered on July 21st; it finally arrived on Friday, at work, wrapped in it’s shiny box.

This thing is simple as to use; within 15 minutes of opening it up, and turning it on, I already had it syncing with my cell phone, pulling over all my contacts and appointments in my calendar. Also, everything is about as slick as possible, characterised especially by the way the Mac smoothly slides away the desktop to bring Front Row in whenever you click the ‘menu’ button on the remote.

Within about a half hour of having it, I had run out of things to tinker with; with damn near everything already configured to my liking, I was bored*. The solution? Start creating. While pulling my photos off of my phone, I found a rather nice one looking out across Sydney Harbour at the bridge. Still wanting for something to keep me occupied, I then began a rather lame essay in Pages about the history of Sydney’s “Coathanger”, with the centrepiece being my lovely photo. This essay shall never see the light of day, thank God (for you, trust me).

All in all, incredibly happy with my purchase, even if I have some debt to repay now.

* At this point, I still had no Internet, owing both to the rather dubious proposition of hooking it up to work’s wired network; and that all the wireless points nearby were locked (oh, and of course, the minor fact that I had work to do).

Wow.

So, Gentoo was up and running happily – GNOME, Tomboy, Beagle, the whole she-bang. Even my dev. environment was all set up nicely – CMake, OAL, OGL, ODE, etc. all installed.

I had put some finishing touches on my CMake scripts, finally getting Treits building and running to an acceptable level under Linux, I decided to head out and catch a movie…

…two hours later…

I get home and my comp is making weird-ass whirr-beeping sounds, try to use my desktop – whole thing is practically locked up it’s so slow.

Thinking it’s my motherboard bitching about the heat, I turn it off and let it cool for a half-hour or so… Only to turn it on and have linux complain about data corruption… and then the whirr-beeping starts again. Shit.

I’ve spent most of the last two weeks using the other computers in the house. A flash new PSU and an Ubuntu LiveCD later, I have a fairly capable box running, *thumbs up*. I guess the only thing to do now is wait until I can afford a new hard drive and hope to hell that everything on it is at least recoverable…

Update: after a few weeks of worrying about it all, I ended up plugging the old drive in… And everything worked! I guess the power/overheating was screwing up the southbridge or something and causing data loss… hmm, oh well, all is good now.