MacKeeper, in detail please

I use fseventer too, but since Lion and ML, all the autosave/saved app state changes cause so much constant traffic, I find it difficult to eliminate the noise from what's actually going on.

Yeah, the noise can be difficult to eliminate, but the process of doing so teaches you a lot about your Mac that you may not have known before. You'll definitely do best if you start it just before pushing the Install button in the installer and then turn it off the instant the installer is done. Then record the first launch of the app as a separate event, to see what it saves where.

Yep, cheers. Will try that. 🙂

Pr0digy V. wrote:

Awesome app, wish i had that when i started testing. Going to re-install and uninstall a few apps just to see if this catches anything i missed.

I doubt that it will catch that invisible file, if in fact there is one, since it's still there from the previous install. You would have to install it on a machine that had never seen it before. Or possible installed by a different user if it is tracking on a per user basis.

MadMacs0 wrote:

I doubt that it will catch that invisible file, if in fact there is one, since it's still there from the previous install. You would have to install it on a machine that had never seen it before. Or possible installed by a different user if it is tracking on a per user basis.

The relative visibility of files is purely a Finder feature. All files are visible in the Terminal (with "ls -a") and in software. The only hard part with fseventer is the timing. You just have to be quick with your fingers or it will look like a Christmas tree in seconds.

etresoft wrote:

MadMacs0 wrote:

I doubt that it will catch that invisible file, if in fact there is one, since it's still there from the previous install.

The relative visibility of files is purely a Finder feature. All files are visible in the Terminal (with "ls -a") and in software.

Sorry, I should have said the file that contains the initial date of installation, which I speculated might be invisible. Once that file gets installed it will stay and not be re-installed by either the installer package or the app first run.

I've been using MacKeeper for awhile. Never had any problems at all. I run the system scan regularly. Again, no worries.

I wonder if most of the vitriol is due to their aggressive marketing. I hate it too, but the app is working fine.

I never run any anti-virus in real time. They all seem to slow down my computer, for no good reason.

BopCat wrote:

I wonder if most of the vitriol is due to their aggressive marketing. I hate it too, but the app is working fine.

That is certainly a big part of the problem, but not all. Their initial approach to advertising was certainly borderline illegal. Thomas Reed documented a lot of this in his Beware MacKeeper! blog.

The original product was not really ready for prime time. The A-V code was unchanged from their Windows product, relying on using wine to be able to run it, resulting in an almost total monopoly of the CPU when it was scanning. That part has been totally re-coded for OS X and is no longer a major issue.

There was no uninstaller for early releases nor any instructions on their support site for how to remove it. Users were told to call the 800 support number for instructions, but callers found themselves being talked into keeping it. Eventually they did publish some incomplete instructions on the web and finally provided a built-in uninstaller that would kick in when you drug it to the trash and provided them with feedback as to why you were deleting it. When users were asked to provide their admin passwords at this point, the paranoia set it (wrongly so).

Judging from all the traffic on Phil Stoke's blog on how to remove it, there have been an extraordinary number of users who's experience differed from yours. Almost none of them explained why, so I really can't judge whether they were using it incorrectly or what. Perhaps they simply noted they were having issues and when trying to research it here read only about the problems with it and jumped to the conclusion that they needed to get rid of it rather than trying to make it work for them. I do know that a many of the users I read about here in the forum complaining about a slow Mac found that it started after installing MacKeeper and stopped once they had removed it. Not all, but enough to feel certain that it had somehow contributed to their issue.

There was also disappointment when they paid for lifetime support of version 1, only to learn that if they wanted the new and improved 2012 version, they would have to pay more. That was somewhat alleviated by offering those folks a free upgrade in exchange for a web review. Another questionable business practice, but not illegal and they certainly aren't the only developer that uses ratings to boost their apparent usefulness. I don't think it helped them to show up at Macworld Expo 2012 handing out condoms to 13 year-olds girls who happened to walk by one of their booth bimbos.

My experience has been strictly one of analysis. I avoid "cleaner" apps at all cost after one bad experience years ago, spending weeks replacing apps that wouldn't run any more after being "thinned out". It had an unusual installer in that it was only a downloader that went to their server to download the real application which didn't include any of the functional modules. It had a totally crippled demo mode that would tell you what was supposedly wrong, but not do anything about it until you paid for it.

I can no longer run it with my setup, so I don't really know much about v2010, but my impression is that they have made considerable improvements over their early effort.