Re: Drag it to the trash...

Daniel Johnson wrote:

"GreyCloud" <mist@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:uuydnfE76ushMNLZnZ2dneKdnZydnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Daniel Johnson wrote:

Therefore, I am not surprised you have not ever seen an uninstaller
that totally removes everything: it can't actually be done.

Why not? I saw one uninstaller for win98 that did.


Even on win98, tracking down the registry hives for every user
is painful. Though I suppose without roaming profiles it is at
least *possible*. I was thinking of more recent Windows
versions.


The rest were clueless or didn't care.
The fact that the software can be installed and registry entries be made, then the reverse is true.


The "reverse"?

Yeup. If software can make an entry, then the uninstall software can remove it.



This is, I think, the sort of klunkyness that Apple abhors. It's
a damn sight better than *nothing*, but's still not *right* in a
sort of philosophical sense.

Also, having all your eggs in one basket aka the registry really isn't a good idea. Of course they have registry backups, but that too is a kludge that isn't easily managed by the usual user.


I presume, then, that you are one of those people who keeps
your OS, apps, and documents on three different partitions-
since having all your eggs in one basket, aka the file system, isn't
a good idea, right?

Not the same. Works great in UNIX and makes backups a snap.
But the registry is one file that holds ALL entries for ALL apps.
Break that and you've pretty much hosed all the apps along with the o/s.
Getting back a copy of the registry isn't in the end users skill.


[snip]

Not so. It's okay for ordinary self-contained apps, where leaking
caches and prefs is just a waste of disk.

I haven't run into any problems yet. I've installed a lot of apps I didn't care for and just dragged them to the trash. Out of curiousity I even double checked to make sure everything went to the trash. It seems that Apple has included some kind of mechanism that when you drag an app to the trash can that hard or soft links are followed up on to ensure a complete dump.


This is not the case. I will not argue this with you, since arguing with
you is futile; but there is not any such magic.


So, never heard of hard and soft links?
It isn't magic if you understand the underpinnings of UNIX.


But consider the long threads you see on this group when a new
point release of Mac OS X comes out. Everyone wants to know:
will it hose my system? Every now and then, Apple releases
system software that is broken, and *you can't uninstall it*.

I haven't had that happen to me yet.


Me either; Apple's not all that bad really.

Actually, they are moving ahead in the world.
One thing I don't abide with is stagnation.



But you can *uninstall* it if you know what you are doing with links.
It takes a clear understanding of UNIX file system to do so.


I would be very surprised at this; surely an OS upgrade replaces
some files, and re-arranging links could restore those.

[snip- uninstall tools]

The one I had made a mess of things. The only true way was the product that IBM provided that kept a system snap shot by date. I had to go back 3 months of snap shots to completely restore a system to that date to get rid of a program... AT&Ts product that interferred with IE.


If it were *easy* to do this, MS would included it standard, or so
I'd think.


Leave it to some developer to get around it. They have and will continue to do so. That's why I never use an ISPs CD for the initial hookup.



--
Where are we going?
And why am I in this handbasket?
.

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