Tag Archives: Bloat

Apple Free

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It was back in the 90′s – I was calling on a small computer company in Austin that had just introduced a new operating system named OS/2. It was a pretty neat operating system, years ahead of Microsoft’s Windows 95, and I’d wager to say a good portion of the technologists started adopting it. And when that same small computer company started shipping their office software package named Symphony, I, and many of my peers, removed the last remnants of any Microsoft products from our hard disks and proudly proclaimed ourselves to be “Microsoft Free.”

Maybe a decade or so later, KDE and Gnome started making shells for the then-dominant Linux version, Red Hat. And around the same time, Sun Microsystems bought Star Office from its German author and turned it into open source as Open Office. Again, a good number of the geek community took the occasion to go “Microsoft Free.”

Similarly, a large number of Mac users have used the advent of OS X and iWorks (as well as Numbers, Keynote and Pages) to again go “Microsoft Free.”

See a theme here?

Well, my struggles are a bit different. As much as I love my iPod, I’m equally unhappy with the software it’s tethered to, iTunes. It’s huge and bloated, runs a large number of performance-sapping and unnecessary background processes, and every major revision seems to break something else. I could go on but you get the picture.

Well, for a month or so I’ve been porting my music libraries to MediaMonkey. Podcasts took a little extra work, but in the end, I had weaned myself from a six-year iTunes habit. The only thing left to do was remove iTunes, Quicktime and a couple Apple utilities. That was completed yesterday. Today I’m “Apple Free.”

“Apple Free” wasn’t really the objective – The real objective was to lose iTunes – But now that I’m here, I’m certain I’m a trend-setter … Just like I was with OS/2!

Disclaimer: iTunes does seem to work fine on my Mac. But it’s a real nuisance on the PC. Good riddance!

Bloat

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Periodically I’ll remind myself of paying $3,000 for 48K of RAM. Now I buy 20,000 times as much for less than $100! Or I’ll remember that first 10M hard drive for $1,200. Today 100,000 times as much also costs less than $100.

And it’s not just the hardware – Early AppleDOS fit on one 140K disk drive. And there was a time when a complete copy of DOS, Windows and Office fit on a dozen floppies. Today both Win7 and OSX require 2-3G on a DVD. Linux (in particular Ubuntu) still manages to squeeze both operating system *and* applications on a CD, although the fit is getting tight and the 10.04 version due next month will lose the Gimp image editing program to still come in under a CD’s 650M limit.

So imagine my surprise this morning seeing an almost-CD-size “update!” It’s not an operating system, it’s not an operating system with applications, it’s simply an update. And this isn’t even a “service pack” or “point” update. It’s, for lack of a better word, a point-point update, or a minor update.

I don’t care – It’s gargantuan – Wonder how people on dial-up cope with these types of updates?

Putting iTunes on a Diet

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iTunes64ContentsAs much as I enjoy my iPod, I’ve never been thrilled with iTunes – Overly bloated (91MB vs. 24MB for Windows WMP) and overly complex (Try creating a Netcast Playlist with iTunes 9), it adds features (and virus vectors) that I don’t need nor want. Worse, it adds all this unwanted functionality without checking with the user!

Turns out the iTunes64Setup.exe installer can be opened and dissected. Using an ZIP program (I use 7-ZIP, but WinRAR and WinZIP should work as well) open the installer. If your target is a simple iPod, extract the following three programs and put them in a subdirectory: iTunes64.msi, QuickTime.msi, and AppleApplicationsSupport.msi. Open a command prompt, navigate to that folder and run the following:

AppleApplicationsSupport.msi /passive
QuickTime.msi /passive
iTunes64.msi /passive

If you’re installing for an iTouch or iPhone, add

AppleMobileDeviceSupport64.msi /passive

Under no circumstances install the AppleSoftwareUpdate.msi as that will just add back all the bloat features and start offering you Safari again. The “/passive” switch allows the installation to run unattended.

Someday Songbird or MediaMonkey will add better Podcast functionality and then I can finally chuck iTunes, but for now I’m happy with what I have.