General Mac OS questions

hi everybody,

long time PC user here and am planning to buy a Mac Book Pro soon.

there are a few questions i have (well, a lot) but there are a few in particular i am concerned about.

how does the mac OS stand up against frequent software installs and uninstalls?
in Windows, i have to reformat and reinstall every other month or so because the OS gets bogged down by broken registries, scattered files all over the drive, and overall messiness. does the mac OS have this problem?

do you find that you generally do not need to "clean" up the OS and if you do how easy is it to do so?

for windows there is a large amount of "cleaners" available but they usually do more harm than good... IE: getting rid of bad registry files but removing good ones as well.

as i understand it, and from my few months with the OS, this is almost a non-issue.

most apps are installed as "packages" which appear as one file that you'd typically see or put in your applications folder (though i believe they can technically go anywhere). to uninstall, delete the app from the application folder. that's basically it.

though some apps will create an additional folder or two in other places (like iphoto, itunes) for caching or storing your files. there are clean up utilities for these that i'm sure someone will post down the road...

thanks eric!

and wow that sounds GREAT!
i had no idea applications behaved like that in mac.

i hate the way it is set up in windows...every little application embeds itself in your system somehow.

i really can't wait to start using the mac apps

yeah, that was one of my favorite things to learn as well. very slick.
you can still see the parts of a given app too just by right/context clicking and selecting "show package contents". not super useful, but nice to know you can see the innards of an app.

you can also make folders in the application folder to hold an app and it's doco, or multiple like apps. not sure if an alias (shortcut) will follow a file if it's moved. in windows, you'd break the link. i believe that a mac will change it for you... i guess i could check.

yep, just moved iCal into another folder and then launched it from an existing alias on the dock - still worked!

oh man, that is great! sounds extremely user friendly.

how about spyware? have you had much problem with that?

eric is almost correct. Most of the OS X Apps. are installed as bundles and moving it to the trash is equal to uninstalling in a Windows based PC. However these Apps. also generate couple of other files such as preferences(/Library/Preferences or ~/Library/Preferences), caches, receipts and application support files. It wont harm if you keep them but if you are paranoid about system cleanness, you can do a search in Spotlight and remove them too. If you are looking for a more convenient way of doing it, try AppZapper. It will basically look for all the dependent files and remove them for you.

So far there are no known spyware threats for OS X.

haven't had any that i know of - though i haven't really looked...

as i understand it, virii and spyware should be pretty much a non-issue (unless, of course, you're running windows under bootcamp or parallels).

you know, i'm not sure what there is in terms of spyware detection for macs... off to version tracker for me...

novicew said:

eric is almost correct.

Click to expand...

i'm pretty sure i mentioned the extra stuff...

[looks]

yep, i did.

Pref files are created for each app installed on your Mac, as novicew posted. While a lot of users say there is no problem with leaving pref files there after uninstalling the app, I want them out simply because it makes for a tidier, cleaner pref folder and it gives me peace of mind that I am doing my best to help the system run at its best.

That's why I bought my licence of AppZapper: it pulls everything associated with the app you are getting rid of, even the pref files. AppZapper to me is part of the essential Mac utilities software each Mac user should have. Right along DiskWarrior, SuperDuper! and MainMenu (or OnyX).

hmm interesting.

sounds like the preferences is a sort of equivalent to the Application Data folders in Windows, sort of?

but it's very good to know how clean the OS is. i mean, i can imagine there are some stragglers now and there, but it can't be as bad as Windows where any given AntiVirus program will embed itself into your system indefinitely.

i do plan on using Windows through Bootcamp...has there been any problems with virii leaking through Windows into OS 10?

There are no such things like Windows viruses leaking into OS X (at least for the time being). However like in any other PC, Windows partition in a Mac can get any XP viruses if you don't take preventive actions.