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How safe is it to delete Apple-installed default apps?

V

vlark

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 13, 2014
97
0
Apple is turning off support for iChat/AIM if you use a mac.com or me.com ID for anything under 10.7.2 starting in May:

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS5224

which got me to thinking that I never use iChat. And come to think of it, I never use the Airport Base Station Utility, or a whole bunch of other standard stuff Apple installs with a base system install.

Is it safe to remove these--just trash them and be done with it using ApplCleaner or AppDelete--or are there underlying system processes that require these apps to be present?
 
eyoungren

eyoungren

macrumors Penryn
Aug 31, 2011
28,831
26,946
No, not really, especially ones like iChat, iTunes, etc. I would bin them first though just in case you ever need them again.

However, I'd caution against wholesale cleaning of the Utilitites folder. While nothing is really dependent on a lot of those apps in there, there are some things you cannot do without them. For instance, Directory Utility allows you to enable/disable the root user and change the password. You can work around not having this app with terminal commands, but why would you?

So, unless you know what the apps in the Utilities folder really do I'd suggest leaving that alone. Especially so if you are not hurting for drive space.
 
V

vlark

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 13, 2014
97
0
Ok, good to know! I was worried that there might be some underlying framework issues that would arise if I simply archived and deleted any default-installed app.

For the record, yes, I am pinched for drive space. I had two 80GB Western Digital drives installed on the main IDE bus and one of them started making a funny sound on startup; it passed DiskWarror media tests, but it sounded like an airplane taking off and so I know it was only a matter of time. I migrated all the material off and burned a bunch of data to DVDs and moved some more to a 250GB laptop drive in a USB external enclosure.

I have an old Sonnet PATA card that runs great under Tiger but isn't recognized under Leopard at all. I'd love to go SATA, but a regular PCI card that's compatible in a G4 is out of my price range right now.
 
eyoungren

eyoungren

macrumors Penryn
Aug 31, 2011
28,831
26,946
vlark said:
Ok, good to know! I was worried that there might be some underlying framework issues that would arise if I simply archived and deleted any default-installed app.

For the record, yes, I am pinched for drive space. I had two 80GB Western Digital drives installed on the main IDE bus and one of them started making a funny sound on startup; it passed DiskWarror media tests, but it sounded like an airplane taking off and so I know it was only a matter of time. I migrated all the material off and burned a bunch of data to DVDs and moved some more to a 250GB laptop drive in a USB external enclosure.

I have an old Sonnet PATA card that runs great under Tiger but isn't recognized under Leopard at all. I'd love to go SATA, but a regular PCI card that's compatible in a G4 is out of my price range right now.
Click to expand...
Two things.

1. You can drop $10 on a PC version SATA card and flash it to Mac (you need a PC to do that though). All you need are the cables and the power adapters which run anywhere from $3-6. There is a thread here on how to do that. I saved myself $60 because of that thread.
2. You could try using the Tiger SATA drivers in Leopard. Just find them in the system under Tiger and move them over to your Leopard install. That might work - or might not. I am just assuming there are drivers to move over too.
 
V

vlark

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 13, 2014
97
0
Option 1 is out because I don't have access to a PC.

Option 2 is out because it doesn't work. This is an old Sonnet Tempo ATA-66 card and is unsupported under Leopard. I've tried moving the kext files over with no luck.
 
Altemose

Altemose

macrumors G3
Mar 26, 2013
9,189
487
Elkton, Maryland
vlark said:
Option 1 is out because I don't have access to a PC.

Option 2 is out because it doesn't work. This is an old Sonnet Tempo ATA-66 card and is unsupported under Leopard. I've tried moving the kext files over with no luck.
Click to expand...

Did you properly load the kext into Leopard or just copy them in the Finder? If you did the latter it definitely won't work.
 
V

vlark

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 13, 2014
97
0
Altemose said:
Did you properly load the kext into Leopard or just copy them in the Finder? If you did the latter it definitely won't work.
Click to expand...

No, I used some kext installer script that moved the files and set the correct permissions, etc.
 
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