Product: AppZapper
Link: www.appzapper.com
Cost: 12.95(USD)
System Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4 or later

I might not be a huge fan of Microsoft Windows, but if it has one thing over Mac OS X, it’s a system wide ability to easily uninstall software. In its own regard, the Microsoft approach may not be perfect, but it’s better than nothing.

When you install an application under Mac OS X, you’re not only installing the pretty file that resides in our Applications folder. Preference files, application support documents and caches all find a cozy place on your hard-drive to set up camp. To an advanced user, this might seem like child’s play, for most however, you’re probably still asking: What’s a cache?

With AppZapper, www.appzapper.com you don’t need to know. This great app is truly the “uninstaller Apple forgot.”

You open the app to a simple interface, which asks users to “Drag Apps Here.” Yes, it is that easy. I dragged Adobe Illustrator onto the app (Not that I would EVER get rid of Illustrator), and was surprised to see how diligent the program was, recognizing not only the app itself and the preference file, but also the apps containing folder with approximately 366MB of data inside. The program did miss one small thing however. Buried deep in my Library folder, under application support, is a Plug-Ins directory for Illustrator. Even thought the directory had no files inside of it, once I had deleted Adobe Illustrator there would be no need for an Adobe Illustrator plugins folder. This is by no means a huge issue (or really even an issue at all) being that the folder didn’t actually have any files in it, but for the obsessive, this may be an annoyance. Hopefully a future release will find a way to look at directories such as this one.

What impressed me most about the software was that it wasn’t limited simply to application files in your application folder. A helpful lightning bolt icon in the lower left of the main window drops down a list of PreferencePanes, Widgets, Plugins and iPod Updaters for you to uninstall. A “genie’s lamp” icon immediately to the right of the lightning bolt will “magically” find all of your apps and allow you to select which ones you want to zap (uninstall).

Don’t worry about deleting something you didn’t want to. Once you select an app to delete, AppZapper first shows you all associated files, their size and location on your hard-drive and allows you to select which to delete. AppZapper also warns you when you attempt to uninstall an open or “safe” app. Safe apps are applications you want to protect from accidental deletion. You can drag specific apps into the list (which you get to through the general preferences) or select some preset options that make default apps (like iPhoto, iTunes, etc.) and open files automatically “safe.”

Final Thoughts
5/5

There’s no question as to whether AppZapper is great. It has a clean, simple interface and does exactly it’s supposed to do: it fully deletes unwanted apps. This is definitely a feature Apple left out and for any Mac OS X user who wants to keep their system in check or simply doesn’t want to be scared of testing out a new app because they think it will leave too many unwanted files in their system, AppZapper is the solution. Advanced users might simply see this program as a slight timesaver or alternative to finding files via Spotlight. For the average user who only vaguely knows about all the extra files installed by an app, this is the way to go.

You can download AppZapper from www.appzapper.com and test out a few zaps for yourself. The application costs $12.95 but comes with free upgrades for life. If that awesome value isn’t enough for you, andPOP is giving away licenses of AppZapper to 5 lucky readers. To enter the contest visit our contests page.






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