The case that Mac OS X doesn’t need an uninstaller has been settled, as far as I’m concerned. The few files that an application leaves behind are of absolutely no consequence, so why bother spending cash on an extra app, when you can merely drag something to the trash? AppZapper was the first with the idea of a third party uninstaller, but the first release was buggy, featureless, and the application didn’t evolve as the developers abandoned it for a while.
In a surprise move that came out of nowhere, AppZapper 2 landed and zapped the crap out of many a Mac user. While maintaining its original premise of ‘drag an app here to uninstall’, it comes with a brilliant new user interface, dubbed, ‘the Hit List’. Switch to the hit list mode, and you can see a beautiful grid of all your applications. You can switch to widgets, preference panes, plugins, or the whole 9 yards. And that’s when you start zapping the buggers. Zap! Zap! Zap! It’s fun! The trick these guys realised is, that while Mac OS X certainly doesn’t need an uninstaller, what if they’re made to want one.
Another feature that makes it into the this release, is My Apps. It’s an application manager of apps near and dear to you. Consider moving 1Password, Coda, Tweetie, and the like into this window. Why would you do this? For the sole reason of staring at your favourite app icons. The devs have done a fantastic job with the user interface—click an icon and a card swings out with its crucial details. You can store licensing details if you want, or not. Personally I’d prefer using something more solid like 1Password to store my app licenses, but it takes hardly two minutes to drop them in anyway.
What’s the bad stuff on this? For one, I still think you don’t need an uninstaller. I haven’t used one for such a long time and my Mac works just fine. Second, in addition to just zapping, they should have also included a slimming feature. Would go hand in hand as the concepts are rather related. And third, I found the app’s features a little too disconnected from each other. There are practically three different user interfaces you have to deal with.
Although, at $13, it won’t burn a hole in your pocket, and it offers a gracious trial of having the pleasure of zapping up to 5 apps. And if you have a license from back in the days, even a MacHeist one, you don’t have to pay any upgrade price. Respect.
Giveaway
Owing to the utter coolness of the app, I got the AppZapper team to offer up a couple of licenses for a giveaway. Tell us which was [one of] the first app you zapped, and/or tweet about this post to get in the game. Standard giveaway rules apply.
