Organizing Applications - Is there a good way?

[cbreaker]

Greetings,

 

I was wondering if there was any nice little utility or function to organize applications? The list is pretty big and even though it's sorted alphabetically it's still annoying to scroll through this big list to open the app I want to use.

 

I tried putting all the applications into sub folders organizing things, but that caused two problems:

 

1) It won't update links on the Dock for new users, so you get ??? all on the dock

2) Software update only looks in /Applications for applications, and won't even look in sub-folders. You can't auto-update if you move them. You also can't manually update a lot of apps, because the updater will look for the app directly in /Applications.

 

I tried leaving all the default OSX installed apps in /Applications and put any apps I added later into sub-folders but a lot of things update with software update and I'm left with the same problem as #2 above.

 

So, I'm looking for some sort of something that will give me a menu (I don't even care if I have to manually add my apps to it) that I can launch apps from.

 

Any ideas?

[aberracus]

i recommend overflow.. its a blast!

[strip22]

Overflow

[aniphreak]

DragThing is the best and far more better than overflow...

[A Nonny Moose]

First off, if you need to organize the Applications folder, it's time to start cleaning that folder out. Delete anything you don't use unless it resides in the Utilities subfolder. You'll be surprised at how much you really don't use.

[cbreaker]

Hell no. I use everything. I might not use every app every day, but even if I use it once a month - after taking some photos or video for instance - I don't want to reinstall things. Disk space isn't a concern. It's cheap. You can get 500GB disks for $150 now. This machine has almost 2TB installed.

 

I'm not a person that believes having lots of stuff installed causes problems or shouldn't be done. On my XP install I have perhaps 150 applications and 50 games installed, and I don't have any problems. And I use all of them. Hey, maybe I'll only play Dune Emperor every few months. But it's there for me. Maybe my friend calls me up and says "Hey, let's play some AOE3." I won't have to install anything.

 

Even still, the /Applications folder is auto-loaded with a bunch of stuff from Apple, and even adding a handful of applications makes the list too long for comfort. Not to compare MacOS to Windows again, but you wouldn't want to have to scroll through the \Program Files folder every time you wanted to launch an application there either. I truly enjoy using MacOS, but sometimes it's simplicity is it's undoing. And, I've found that sometimes making things too simple makes things complicated.

 

Slightly off topic: What the hell is the deal with uninstalling apps anyways? I mean, dragging an app to install it and uninstall it is one thing, but a lot of apps (notably most apple apps) use an installer. I understand why; sometimes there's libraries and kext's and such that need to be installed. However, there's no uninstallers! How could Apple let something like this happen, when they quite often get things right? You want to uninstall Final Cut, and you have to go to apple's site and delete a list of files and folders to remove it completely. Say a lot of things about Windows, but the installer/uninstaller database is a good thing.

 

Anyways, Overflow seems nice. I'll have to use it for a little while to see if I really like it, but it does get the job done. I suppose I could also symlink everything into an organized set of folders, too, so that's an option if the $15 for Overflow doesn't suit my fancy. I haven't checked out DragThing, but I've looked at their web site and it looks like it has promise (although, isn't it reminiscent of CDE?)

[Synaesthesia]

Slightly off topic: What the hell is the deal with uninstalling apps anyways? I mean, dragging an app to install it and uninstall it is one thing, but a lot of apps (notably most apple apps) use an installer. I understand why; sometimes there's libraries and kext's and such that need to be installed. However, there's no uninstallers! How could Apple let something like this happen, when they quite often get things right? You want to uninstall Final Cut, and you have to go to apple's site and delete a list of files and folders to remove it completely. Say a lot of things about Windows, but the installer/uninstaller database is a good thing.

 

There are third party apps for that : Appzapper and cleanapp. Otherwise, I usually spotlight the apps name, to find all files with it's name in it, and delete those too. Makes me feel better!

[cbreaker]

Yea I know there's 3rd party apps, but there should be an official uninstaller. Even back to Windows 95, Microsoft required that vendors provide an uninstaller in order to be "Windows 95 Certified."

 

Seems like something that should be addressed. Maybe they will. Maybe they assume nobody ever uninstalls Apple software =)

 

Spotlight will pick up files with they keyword you selected but many libraries and preference files won't have the name in it. Lots of little plugins can be installed as well as kexts.

 

Oh well, it's really not THAT big of a deal but it could be if things continue to go down this road.

[alicheusz]

Why just don't use Quicsilver, it's fastest and easiest way to find apps for me. You can drag your Applications folder to Dock it will create something like Start menu for quick acces if you don't remenber name of the app.

[Synaesthesia]

To cbreaker : I know! But even those windows uninstallers built into programs don't uninstall everything. With time, your windows pc clogs up with {censored}. Well designed OS X apps should be self contained though, all within the .app directory, so that when you delete it, everythings gone.

 

To alicheusz : I now use both Overflow and Quicksilver. Overflow lets me look at my apps, which is nice. Quicksilver just does so much more than just launching apps, I love it!

[cbreaker]

Well designed OS X apps should be self contained though, all within the .app directory, so that when you delete it, everythings gone.

 

Almost all Apple applications are poorly designed then, because almost everything (Final Cut Studio, iLife, Aperture, etc) uses an installer, and doesn't remove everything when you delete the .app. And on the same token, a well designed Windows application (they do exist) will remove everything on an uninstall.

 

Besides, most Windows apps I uninstall, do it completely, besides any user documents which I would hope wouldn't be uninstalled. I'm sure there's some apps that are messy at uninstalling but most aren't. Not anymore.

 

But that's neither here nor there. Both systems have shortcomings. Apple could remedy the situation at least as well as Microsoft by providing a standard "uninstall" interface that apps could register with. It's not a bad idea, and shouldn't require the purchase of additional software.

 

Oh well. I've been using Overflow and it seems to work the way I want. Quicksilver is a little bit overkill for what I wanted, and I don't need yet another tool to index the 1500 GB (of used) data storage on this machine.

 

Thanks for the suggestions!

[Synaesthesia]

To me a well designed app is a small one, that you just drag to the applications folder. Like Cog (music player), Audacity, seashore...

 

My favourite app is a windows one, uTorrent. It's just one .exe that's 300kb in size! What a brilliant program!

[cbreaker]

You simply cannot create big applications in 300KB. The little BitTorrent client, the little IM client, the small FTP client, all these things are great, but they're utility apps. Music players. Etc.

 

You can't make an NLE video editing package in 500KB. You can't make an office suite fit on a floppy disk. And no matter how hard you try, you won't get GarageBand to fit into a 2MB package.

 

I don't look at the size of the executable to decide if the application is good or bad - especially with a modern operating system. While some small little 300KB app might LOOK small, it could be linking to dozens of system libraries and be one of the biggest resource hogs you have running.

 

Bloat is overrated.

[sandmanfvrga]

I like alot of apps, but you can make folders and put your apps anywhere you want to. I don't need another app to organize my {censored}. On Windows, I would have 50 or more apps and I did us them on and off. Had my ibook for 4 days and I got alot of apps in my dock, and other will just stay in the application folder. To me, the dock is there to organize stuff. You can download those vertical bars (there are somewhere on this forum) and then do that. The dock is a main way to organize, then after that, create you folders in the applications folder. Then make an alias in the dock (right side next to the trash) and then one click and get in there for rarely used apps.

[cardinal]

For apps that have no installer, you can just drag them to trash, or use AppZapper to help you find associated preference and such files. Those are easy.

 

There are apps that dig deeper into your system, installing codecs of frameworks or such in /Library or ~/Library. Those apps usually use package installation procedure, ask you to authenticate as administrator during installation, and leave receipt in /Library/Receipts. You can open this receipt with a tool like Pacifist and see what files they installed, and delete them by hand. In addition, I use locate command to search for app name and see if there is any extra junk left around. Have to be a bit careful with those and make sure that same files are not used by another application - for example, Apple apps may share some files in your /Library. But for 3rd party apps, you can usually just delete those files and not affect anything else.

 

In general, apps leave stuff in:

 

/Applications - obviously

/User/*/Library/... there can be a bunch of {censored}, from preferences to caches to whatever else. locate command is your best bet.

/Library or ~/Library often contain stuff in:

Application Support - generally a folder for application or family of applications

QuickTime for quicktime codecs

Frameworks (for example, Stuffit.framework)

Documentation

Contextual Menu Items (iView Media Pro, Stuffit...) items here show up on right-click and need to be removed to stop showing up.

Audio for Audio Unit plugins and other stuff

 

So, it pays to become familiar with layout of Library directories, and while it is unfortunate that Apple doesn't have an uninstaller, in practice this doesn't cause problems, except for stuff in Library/Contextual Menu Items, which you can remove by hand. Often, when I am unsure if something is needed, I create disabled subdirectory, such as /Library/Contextual Menu Items/disabled and move stuff there semi-permanently.

 

I can think of one example when an app pollutes the system - InterMapper installs a daemon and items in /bin something else, but because they use package installer, it was trivial to find those things by opening receipt in Pacifist.

[alicheusz]

Oh well. I've been using Overflow and it seems to work the way I want. Quicksilver is a little bit overkill for what I wanted, and I don't need yet another tool to index the 1500 GB (of used) data storage on this machine.

 

Quicksilver is not another spotlight, I only once notice that this app take some 0.5 % of my CPU for a moment. I don't even notice that it index something it will not burn your CPU and HDD

 

My favourite app is a windows one, uTorrent. It's just one .exe that's 300kb in size! What a brilliant program!

 

I totally agree with you this is amazing what these guys fit into this small package. But I must say that meaby OS X apps are huge, but I can live with this because for that waste space you have stress free life. OS X is unix (all unixes and linuxes are modular systems) these huge packages propably waste loot of space but also are easiest in management. And always works. Keep in mind that they have two architectures lots of localizations (some also lots of very huge templates) and they are hard linked with library they use and that are not in default os x installation. In linux You must have some package management program that will take care with dependencies. You may want install litlle app but to do that you must install/upgrade twenty others. Maybe to install these other libraries you must install or upgrade some another. You can stuck in these hell of dependencies (some packages can't be upgraded but must be to install main app) OS X hard link libraries and you don't need to manage other libraries, but propably you can have these same library duplicated many times in other apps. Another thing is that hard linked library make app loads faster.

Edited January 11, 2007 by alicheusz

[cbreaker]

I always wondered why more Linux apps didn't do more static linking instead of linking everything dynamically, but that's the way the system works. In theory, you upgrade one part and everything can take advantage of it. For instance, if everything uses the same SSL libraries and a security vulnerability is found, it can be fixed with one update instead of updates to 50 statically linked executables.

 

In practice, there's no standards, so one mismatched version of a library could break a bunch of apps. It's not as big of a problem as it seems though, since most new distributions keep things binary compatible for the life of the version (which could be a year or more) and offer ways to upgrade core dependencies and associated dependees for big updates. It's not much different then a Windows Service Pack, except in that a Linux distribution offers a lot more software then a Windows distribution does.

 

This is both a weakness and strength of Linux systems. A big part of how Linux works is that software developers don't have to reinvent the wheel every time they go to write something new, and so we end up with a lot of little software packages. There's almost every utility library under the sun available free for Linux. So why bother writing a new image compression library when you can just link to imagemagic? This is how much OSS software is developed so fast, and often by rag-tag groups of programmers. Everyone can benefit from everyone's work.

 

Dynamic linking isn't necessarily slower anymore, with all the pre-linking performed now a days. Besides, you usually load that stuff once when the app launches, and then that's it. And, the nice thing is that you can load a specific library once, and multiple apps can link off it, saving system resources.

 

It's worth noting that Windows works on the same principals. A DLL is just a shared object by another name. The difference between Linux and Windows DLL's is that Windows DLL's tend to stabilize more - once a DLL is released for a specific version of Windows or a specific version of the DLL, it'll usually remain binary compatible with whatever links to it. Things used to be worse, but you don't hear much about "DLL hell" these days anymore.

 

Either way, no matter how it's done, there's benefits and compromises. As long as the system works in the end, you're good to go!

[realfolkblues]

I just leave it the way it is and use spotlight to find the app i need.

[alicheusz]

In practice, there's no standards, so one mismatched version of a library could break a bunch of apps. It's not as big of a problem as it seems though, since most new distributions keep things binary compatible for the life of the version (which could be a year or more) and offer ways to upgrade core dependencies and associated dependees for big updates.

This is both a weakness and strength of Linux systems. A big part of how Linux works is that software developers don't have to reinvent the wheel every time they go to write something new, and so we end up with a lot of little software packages. There's almost every utility library under the sun available free for Linux. So why bother writing a new image compression library when you can just link to imagemagic? This is how much OSS software is developed so fast, and often by rag-tag groups of programmers. Everyone can benefit from everyone's work.

I must say that I love linux and don't want to go for some another system comparison. Linux is wohle new word and story. But I must say that it take me to much time to maintain installed software.

I like experiment with new software. But install them is a pain.

++beagle is only for suse, another package like trax is hard to install in suse but quite easy in ubuntu, there are also packages that I newer be able to install because of dependencies. One of them is navral. Or I am not be able to install Democracy Player on my Suse box.

If you are guru that it is best system of the word. I must say with all strength of modularity in linux it become quite hard do maintain. Os X with it's hard linked apps solve these problems in easy way. Is stress free, easy, fast and just works, no tutorial needed. It has loots of Unix word in it also. There is no issue for me that apps are big. Every modern computer have very huge drive in it.

Edited January 12, 2007 by alicheusz

[McSkywalker]

As an answer to the original question:

 

I put the applications folder into the right side of the dock, and reach them as a menu with a right click.

[cbreaker]

If you are guru that it is best system of the word. I must say with all strength of modularity in linux it become quite hard do maintain. Os X with it's hard linked apps solve these problems in easy way. Is stress free, easy, fast and just works, no tutorial needed. It has loots of Unix word in it also. There is no issue for me that apps are big. Every modern computer have very huge drive in it.

 

If you start using more of the UNIX side of OSX, you'll find the situation exactly the same on a Linux system.

 

Your examples of some Linux apps being hard to install, well, if it's not built for your distribution you might not be able to use it. I mean, if something says "OSX 10.4.8 required" you might not be able to run it on 10.3 because it wasn't packaged up for it. It's really not all that different in a Linux distribution. The fact that you could POSSIBLY run that app on a Linux system even when there's no build for it is a good thing. If you believe everything in OSX is statically linked you're mistaken. Lots of stuff links to system libraries, and that's why software won't always run on older/different versions of the OS. If you want to run bleeding-edge software, that's the price you pay.

 

You'll also find that a lot of OSX software isn't free. There's boat loads of little utilities and such that all cost a fee. Usually the cost is resonable, but it's not free. That's another price you pay for the simplicity of some of these applications - since they're not free software, they can't link to the vast libraries of GPL software.

 

I'm not hitting OSX; I just don't think it's way is any better then Linux. They're just different. Right now I'm running OSX because I want to try my hand in Final Cut Pro for the next video project I do and see how the workflow goes. It's all about the applications, really.

[alicheusz]

Your examples of some Linux apps being hard to install, well, if it's not built for your distribution you might not be able to use it. I mean, if something says "OSX 10.4.8 required" you might not be able to run it on 10.3 because it wasn't packaged up for it. It's really not all that different in a Linux distribution. The fact that you could POSSIBLY run that app on a Linux system even when there's no build for it is a good thing. If you believe everything in OSX is statically linked you're mistaken. Lots of stuff links to system libraries, and that's why software won't always run on older/different versions of the OS. If you want to run bleeding-edge software, that's the price you pay.

I can debate about that long time but it is off topic. All you write is right but as I mention earlier. OS X apps are easiest to maintain.

[sandmanfvrga]

As an answer to the original question:

 

I put the applications folder into the right side of the dock, and reach them as a menu with a right click.

 

I do that with the Photos and Documents folder. Simpel solutions are the best to me at least.

[cbreaker]

I've been using OverFlow and I like it. It works for what I want to do - just a simple app launcher. I set up several "folders" (whatever they call each section) for different types of apps.

 

The only problem with OverFlow is that it get swapped out if I'm running a lot of stuff. I have 2GB of RAM right now but some of these Mac applications are very RAM hungry, and it gets gobbled up quickly. When I click the OverFlow icon, it can take a couple seconds or more to finally pop up. Slightly annoying. Too bad it doesn't request to never be swapped (I know Windows apps can request that of the system, I'd imagine Mac apps could do the same.)

 

Anyways, it solves my problem, thanks for the suggestion!