\rant on

Guess everybody is aware of the extremely annoying thing issue of the Mac “uninstall”. Almost every app that needs more privileges than the standard user offers comes packaged as a pkg file. These files are absolutely awesome and offer endless possibilities.

There is problem though: in their arrogance, almost no application developer can conceive that somebody would ever try to get rid of their software. Effect: you are stuck with a program that you cannot uninstall in a easy/clean way.

A sort of a solution is to crack open the pkg file, and delete one file at a time using the Terminal.

The only free way I found so far to open a package, comes in the form of a QuickView (thing that pops up when you press space in Finder) plugin that allows you to view every operation that was performed on your system (and a list of files belonging to the app).

To view the contents of a pkg download, install SuspiciousPackage . I had to install the plugin globally for it to work.

I guess I hate more this blight then I love the insanely simple app installation procedure to just “copy to Applications”…

Apple should either whip some sense in the developers or provide some system-wide package management system that keeps track of all the files installed.

\rant off