So this company called TuneUp Media announced today the availability of a plug-in for iTunes for Mac that is supposed to make tagging and adding cover art easier. I downloaded the demo, installed it, and went to try and figure out what to do. There’s an application that opens, but doesn’t have any commands in its menus (other than a File menu that lets you quit it), and there’s supposed to be something that integrates with iTunes. No documentation, so I went to the website to look for help. Nothing telling me what to do, how to get started. I eventually found that it’s supposed to add something to the right side of my iTunes window; nothing there.
I figured it was time to uninstall it. Well, no help on that either. It turns out you need to remove the application (in /Applications) and then a plug-in in /Library/iTunes/iTunes Plug-ins. (If you don’t uninstall the latter, you’ll get an AppleScript dialog looking for the application each time you launch iTunes. It toook a while for me to find it, because there’s nothing on the web site explaining how to remove the crapware.
What can I say? Another Windows company releasing a lame port of their software for Mac, that can’t even be bothered to include documentation (or even a link to the Help page on their website), and, especially, not even an uninstaller? Geez, what a bunch of losers…
Follow-up: Read the comments for more on uninstalling this crapware. An intrepid reader found that there’s more to remove, and that there’s a hidden uninstaller. I guess I really should use my copy of AppZapper more often. I always forget about it, but it makes sense, because it’ll find the tiny files that litter up my Mac.
Follow-up follow-up: So out of curiosity, I re-downloaded the crapware, then reinstalled it to see what AppZapper could do. It only removed a few files. I suspect that TuneUp doesn’t install a proper receipt file that ApplZapper can use for its uninstallation…
For tagging in iTunes, nothing beats the AppleScripts at Doug’s AppleScripts website. They
may not have an integrated interface like this app claimed to have (although
most are quite easy to use), but the
combined power of some of the scripts can save hours of tedious tag
manipulation. For example, the parser script allows you to apply regular
expressions to tag data, giving you the ability to parse practically any kind of
misconstrued data into your preferred format.
Doug’s a friend of mine, and I’ve written about his stuff often. (In fact, my next
Playlist column talks about a great applet of his). I was more interested in
TuneUp for the album art search, for the handful of albums I still don’t have
artwork for.
For tagging in iTunes, nothing beats the AppleScripts at Doug’s AppleScripts website. They
may not have an integrated interface like this app claimed to have (although
most are quite easy to use), but the
combined power of some of the scripts can save hours of tedious tag
manipulation. For example, the parser script allows you to apply regular
expressions to tag data, giving you the ability to parse practically any kind of
misconstrued data into your preferred format.
Doug’s a friend of mine, and I’ve written about his stuff often. (In fact, my next
Playlist column talks about a great applet of his). I was more interested in
TuneUp for the album art search, for the handful of albums I still don’t have
artwork for.
Hi Kirk,
This app is installing even more than you indicate. See my write-up at http://tomdale.net/2008/12/11/uninstalling-tuneup-for-the-
mac/.
Thanks for pointing that out! What a total piece of crap to hid an installer…
Hi Kirk,
This app is installing even more than you indicate. See my write-up at http://tomdale.net/2008/12/11/uninstalling-tuneup-for-the-
mac/.
Thanks for pointing that out! What a total piece of crap to hid an installer…
Hi all, hi Kirk & Tom,
you saved my day… (or at least some minutes)
I tried out Tuneup yesterday evening. Everything worked interestingly…
After some time – this morning, Berlin – I realized that I couldn’t use my
user login anymore, it just vanished without any chance to enter anything. I
decided to reboot. Only then I realized that my login system was f…d up. I
can’t prove it.
Luckily I’ve read your posts and had two backups at hand.
I removed most of the usr/local/… and /Library/ Frameworks stuff by hand
and everything’s fine now, again.
Btw, the deinstaller’s option to deinstall the sparkle framework reminds of
good old Win 95 days when I had the pleasure to uninstall crucial dlls with
the help of deinstallers…
I can’t prove it 100% – and won’t waste more time to make the issue
repeatable or contact support – but, yes, the
Good to know that AppZapper and probably Hazel etc. aren’t able to manage
that.
thyx
PS In case anyone else needs the full list of installed files I post it according
to the log file. Luckily deleting the ones I could read on Kirk’s screenshot
was good enough.
Ah yes. Well, still in the minutes you saved me…
Btw, it’s now commented on MacUpdate. Next time I wait some hours before
I install the new wonder program.
thyx
TuneUp 1.0
"TuneUp.app" at "/Applications" was installed.
"TuneUp Visualizer.bundle" at "/Library/iTunes/iTunes Plug-ins" was
installed.
"TuneUpMedia" at "/Library" was installed.
"TuneUpMediaPreferences" at "/Users/th/Library/Preferences" was installed.
"expat.framework" at "/Library/Frameworks" was installed.
"SharedMenusCocoa.framework" at "/Library/Frameworks" was installed.
"TuneUpDater.framework" at "/Library/Frameworks" was installed.
"Sparkle.framework" at "/Library/Frameworks" was installed.
"CHBrowserView.dylib" at "/usr/local/lib" was installed.
"libpcrecpp.a" at "/usr/local/lib" was installed.
"libgnsdk_musicid_file.dylib" at "/usr/local/lib" was installed.
"libgnsdk_sdkmanager.dylib" at "/usr/local/lib" was installed.
"libmusicid_osx.dylib" at "/usr/local/lib" was installed.
"libjson.dylib" at "/usr/local/lib" was installed.
"libpcre.0.dylib" at "/usr/local/lib" was installed.
"libjson.0.0.1.dylib" at "/usr/local/lib" was installed.
"libpcreposix.0.0.0.dylib" at "/usr/local/lib" was installed.
"libjson.la" at "/usr/local/lib" was installed.
"libpcre.a" at "/usr/local/lib" was installed.
"libpcre.0.0.1.dylib" at "/usr/local/lib" was installed.
"libjson.a" at "/usr/local/lib" was installed.
"libpcreposix.0.dylib" at "/usr/local/lib" was installed.
"libpcrecpp.lai" at "/usr/local/lib" was installed.
"libpcrecpp.0.dylib" at "/usr/local/lib" was installed.
"libjson.0.dylib" at "/usr/local/lib" was installed.
"libpcrecpp.dylib" at "/usr/local/lib" was installed.
"libpcrecpp.0.0.0.dylib" at "/usr/local/lib" was installed.
"TuneUp Uninstaller.app" at "/Users/th/Library/Logs" was installed.
Installation finished on 2008-12-11 19:40:45 +0100
I wondered about the Sparkle framework, but I checked my last clone (from
before installing TuneUp) and I don’t have one there. I don’t know where it is
installed, because it seems to work with different Sparkle-aware apps; I’m
guessing its in the apps themselves, rather than in /Library or elsewhere. Which
makes sense, if you think about it…
Oh, you’re right. I wondered about the modification dates for a moment,
then I was just happy to get back to normal. I just checked the few files I
could quickview, they look like default / dummy versions yet to be filled
with some useful stuff, e.g. names of the app, etc.
My grasp of Sparkle is that I won’t function with apps spread over several
folders anyway.
Tz, what a mess. At best it’s a good opportunity to realize how well normal
apps behave. I wasn’t suspicious about the admin login because that’s what
apps need to install anyway if you don’t use an admin account.
Well, in retrospect it all started when I realized that the file with the app
name wasn’t the app but the installer…
On tuaw, my comment is still the last, I really wonder what caused that,
perhaps some conflict. But I’ve never those problems before. So…
thyx
> My grasp of Sparkle is that I won’t function with apps spread over several
folders anyway.
Actually *I* am able to function like that, but not sparkle 😉
With "apps" I meant the files of an app. And with "folders" tuneup means
"forbidden realms".
Tuneup, please quote this passage: "The fun thing after all is that the album
art feature worked well" … in two of five cases.
It’s getting interestinger:
Stephen Pontes from Tuneup support contacted me.
He wasn’t aware that the devs actually (tried to) implement Sparkle as updater (he thought they rejeced the proposal). I managed to answer the question how well Tuneup worked in a really polite way – hard to be objective when your system doesn’t manage a restart or any admin actions anymore.
And I did a little research: yes, of course Sparkle does not spread itself over system folders on its own.
thyx
Hi all, hi Kirk & Tom,
you saved my day… (or at least some minutes)
I tried out Tuneup yesterday evening. Everything worked interestingly…
After some time – this morning, Berlin – I realized that I couldn’t use my
user login anymore, it just vanished without any chance to enter anything. I
decided to reboot. Only then I realized that my login system was f…d up. I
can’t prove it.
Luckily I’ve read your posts and had two backups at hand.
I removed most of the usr/local/… and /Library/ Frameworks stuff by hand
and everything’s fine now, again.
Btw, the deinstaller’s option to deinstall the sparkle framework reminds of
good old Win 95 days when I had the pleasure to uninstall crucial dlls with
the help of deinstallers…
I can’t prove it 100% – and won’t waste more time to make the issue
repeatable or contact support – but, yes, the
Good to know that AppZapper and probably Hazel etc. aren’t able to manage
that.
thyx
PS In case anyone else needs the full list of installed files I post it according
to the log file. Luckily deleting the ones I could read on Kirk’s screenshot
was good enough.
Ah yes. Well, still in the minutes you saved me…
Btw, it’s now commented on MacUpdate. Next time I wait some hours before
I install the new wonder program.
thyx
TuneUp 1.0
"TuneUp.app" at "/Applications" was installed.
"TuneUp Visualizer.bundle" at "/Library/iTunes/iTunes Plug-ins" was
installed.
"TuneUpMedia" at "/Library" was installed.
"TuneUpMediaPreferences" at "/Users/th/Library/Preferences" was installed.
"expat.framework" at "/Library/Frameworks" was installed.
"SharedMenusCocoa.framework" at "/Library/Frameworks" was installed.
"TuneUpDater.framework" at "/Library/Frameworks" was installed.
"Sparkle.framework" at "/Library/Frameworks" was installed.
"CHBrowserView.dylib" at "/usr/local/lib" was installed.
"libpcrecpp.a" at "/usr/local/lib" was installed.
"libgnsdk_musicid_file.dylib" at "/usr/local/lib" was installed.
"libgnsdk_sdkmanager.dylib" at "/usr/local/lib" was installed.
"libmusicid_osx.dylib" at "/usr/local/lib" was installed.
"libjson.dylib" at "/usr/local/lib" was installed.
"libpcre.0.dylib" at "/usr/local/lib" was installed.
"libjson.0.0.1.dylib" at "/usr/local/lib" was installed.
"libpcreposix.0.0.0.dylib" at "/usr/local/lib" was installed.
"libjson.la" at "/usr/local/lib" was installed.
"libpcre.a" at "/usr/local/lib" was installed.
"libpcre.0.0.1.dylib" at "/usr/local/lib" was installed.
"libjson.a" at "/usr/local/lib" was installed.
"libpcreposix.0.dylib" at "/usr/local/lib" was installed.
"libpcrecpp.lai" at "/usr/local/lib" was installed.
"libpcrecpp.0.dylib" at "/usr/local/lib" was installed.
"libjson.0.dylib" at "/usr/local/lib" was installed.
"libpcrecpp.dylib" at "/usr/local/lib" was installed.
"libpcrecpp.0.0.0.dylib" at "/usr/local/lib" was installed.
"TuneUp Uninstaller.app" at "/Users/th/Library/Logs" was installed.
Installation finished on 2008-12-11 19:40:45 +0100
I wondered about the Sparkle framework, but I checked my last clone (from
before installing TuneUp) and I don’t have one there. I don’t know where it is
installed, because it seems to work with different Sparkle-aware apps; I’m
guessing its in the apps themselves, rather than in /Library or elsewhere. Which
makes sense, if you think about it…
Oh, you’re right. I wondered about the modification dates for a moment,
then I was just happy to get back to normal. I just checked the few files I
could quickview, they look like default / dummy versions yet to be filled
with some useful stuff, e.g. names of the app, etc.
My grasp of Sparkle is that I won’t function with apps spread over several
folders anyway.
Tz, what a mess. At best it’s a good opportunity to realize how well normal
apps behave. I wasn’t suspicious about the admin login because that’s what
apps need to install anyway if you don’t use an admin account.
Well, in retrospect it all started when I realized that the file with the app
name wasn’t the app but the installer…
On tuaw, my comment is still the last, I really wonder what caused that,
perhaps some conflict. But I’ve never those problems before. So…
thyx
> My grasp of Sparkle is that I won’t function with apps spread over several
folders anyway.
Actually *I* am able to function like that, but not sparkle 😉
With "apps" I meant the files of an app. And with "folders" tuneup means
"forbidden realms".
Tuneup, please quote this passage: "The fun thing after all is that the album
art feature worked well" … in two of five cases.
It’s getting interestinger:
Stephen Pontes from Tuneup support contacted me.
He wasn’t aware that the devs actually (tried to) implement Sparkle as updater (he thought they rejeced the proposal). I managed to answer the question how well Tuneup worked in a really polite way – hard to be objective when your system doesn’t manage a restart or any admin actions anymore.
And I did a little research: yes, of course Sparkle does not spread itself over system folders on its own.
thyx