No Mac OSX Uninstaller?

Terms of use on the right forbid us from guessing Apple's policy.
Features can be suggested either through:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/
http://bugreporter.apple.com/ with an online developer account (free registration required).

http://www.appzapper.com/ offers some Application uninstallation capability.
Other applications provide their own uninstallers. Most are able to be removed by simply emptying into the trash. However, if the purpose is to downgrade an application, it may get confused with newer preferences for older applications, so you should check with your application vendor that all dependent files are accounted for, and aren't needed by other applications.

A better uninstaller is one that the user uses themselves, and Apple provides one with every OS. Before Time Machine, there was Disk Utility, and before Disk Utility was Disk Copy. Disk Utility still exists, but alternatives exist as are outlined in my FAQ*:

http://www.macmaps.com/backup.html

If you backup your data, and find you need to uninstall software, just recover your backup from prior to the installation. My other user tip explains how to downgrade the OS:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1308817&tstart=20

- * Links to my pages may give me compensation.

why didn't apple create one?

That sort of question is not only silly to ask other users like yourself, as we cannot be expected to know, but it is also a violation of the [terms of use of these forums|http://discussions.apple.com/help.jspa#terms] to answer it, as doing so would require speculation. If you would like to ask Apple for a system-wide uninstaller, you can use the [Apple feedback page|http://www.apple.com/feedback>.

I personally have never felt a need for an uninstaller, as very few Mac apps are so poorly behaved as to both require an uninstaller and not provide one themselves. However, the prevalence of "how do I uninstall X?" questions on these forums indicates that it might not be an unreasonable thing to add.

Apple does not share that information with us nor can we speculate about it since speculation is forbidden on the AD.

However, OS X does include the ability to reinstall over an existing copy of OS X that is referred to as Archive and Install. Uninstalling OS X is really as easy as erasing the hard drive. If you backup your data, i.e., your Home folder, then your files are also protected.

Apple leaves a lot of supplemental holes open to allow the many developers to develop applications for such things as uninstalling an application. Obviously this has succeeded since there are a dozen utilities for tracking installations and uninstalling them. However, it is up to a developer to provide an uninstaller for his/her program. There is no general uninstaller that will work with everything. Most applications, not all, can be uninstalled by dragging it to the Trash. This is because the applications you see are not unique files. They are actually package bundles so that most applications need only create a preference file. Some applications do create supplemental data that they store in a specific location - the Applications Support folder. Most uninstallers simply track what's in the Preference and Applications Support folders and remove what's there when the application itself is trashed.

Since they seem to be allowing this thread to remain here, I'll give it a guess that will probably get it deleted.

My guess is because Apple isn't as dumb as Microsoft where they insist on using their silly registry and other archaic methods in an attempt to control things that install on Windows. Instead, Apple simply leaves everything to accessible so that a system wide unistaller isn't required. Only in those rare cases where a developer is forced to scatter their code all around the system is an uninstaller required and then the developer must provide.


___________________

Allan


___________________

Don't worry about it smenglish --
No problem.

The one big rule here is that speculation about anything Apple
is strictly forbidden. The 2nd biggest rule is to be polite to everyone.
And you have been most polite.

Don't let it slow you down. Hang around. There's tons of stuff to be learned
here. And most of us are very friendly.
😉