iMac - Filled with Rubbish

[Pyrotechnic]

Whilst I anticipate the arrival of my new and first ever Mac, I wondered, do they come installed with loads of rubbish.

Having purchased Dell machines in the past, I usually end up reformatting them just the way I want to avoid the unnecessary.

Someone please tell me that when first booting up, it will be a breeze and a pleasure with no unwanted rubbish here, there and everywhere.

 

[paolo-]

No rubbish slowing down your computer. Mind you there are lots of full quality apps that are installed (the whole iLife suite) but it's definitively not rubbish and won't annoy you if you don't use them (oooh and you will).

 

[itommyboy]

Whilst I anticipate the arrival of my new and first ever Mac, I wondered, do they come installed with loads of rubbish.

Having purchased Dell machines in the past, I usually end up reformatting them just the way I want to avoid the unnecessary.

Someone please tell me that when first booting up, it will be a breeze and a pleasure with no unwanted rubbish here, there and everywhere.

Grats on your new mac. Chances are you'll find that "when first booting up, it will be a breeze and a pleasure with no unwanted rubbish here, there and everywhere".

 

[CD3660]

Switching to Mac is like a breath of fresh air!

 

[Pyrotechnic]

Fantastic, I even purchased iWork, so lots of other goodies as well.

No rubbish = Making the move from a PC to Mac, even more worth it.

 

[Sun Baked]

Just the useless rubbish that people put on it themselves to slow the machine down and make it crash, like the Norton Universal Machine Destructor.

 

[Pyrotechnic]

I shall not be filling it with rubbish.

In fact I am trying to find a thread of the "must haves" for when I am up and running. As a newbie to the Mac, I will be reluctant to download and install anything that may make a hash of a smooth running setup.

 

[NRose8989]

Well...... I'm going to be honest.

Yes it does come with SOME rubbish, not necessarily bad rubbish but some un-useful rubbish.

Apple sends out you computer with the default install of OS X. This includes printer drivers from a ton of printer manufactures, extra support for different languages etc.

So chances are if you only use one printer, then your just wasting some space of your hard drive, and if you only speak english, then I'm pretty sure Chinese support isn't going to be much help.

I usually just do a clean install and during the install you can "customize" what you want to install.

Also, I use pro apps, so having iLife installed would take up useless space.

 

[gasport]

Whilst I anticipate the arrival of my new and first ever Mac, I wondered, do they come installed with loads of rubbish.

Having purchased Dell machines in the past, I usually end up reformatting them just the way I want to avoid the unnecessary.

Someone please tell me that when first booting up, it will be a breeze and a pleasure with no unwanted rubbish here, there and everywhere.

Yes, I know what you mean... Having purchased Dells in the past it was refreshing to see the Mac with just great software and not the come ons loaded to try to sell unneeded software.

 

[Mike in Kansas]

Well...... I'm going to be honest.

Yes it does come with SOME rubbish, not necessarily bad rubbish but some un-useful rubbish.

So of the 12GB or so of OSX that comes pre-installed, just how much of that do you remove on a fresh install - 4GB maybe? So you save 4GB on a 320GB hard drive (or 640 these days). I don't think that's too awful bad. And none of it slows your system down. That can't be said for the stuff on a PC.

The "rubbish" that the OP was referring to was is all that CR*P that comes with OEM Windows that loads when you start up, and all those "30 day offers" crowding your desktop: Dell "product assistant" that sits in the background, Kodak easy share, Nero helper, MSN trial offer, AOL for 90 days, Symantic for 60 days, 10 free 4X6 prints from Snapfish, blah blah blah. NONE of that on a Mac thank goodness.

As far as iLife goes, that is a useful suite of apps, unlike all of the stuff that I referred to above. And I would bet that over 90% of Mac users actually USE iLife, as opposed to the number of Windows users that use all that other "rubbish".

 

[Pyrotechnic]

The "rubbish" that the OP was referring to was is all that CR*P that comes with OEM Windows that loads when you start up, and all those "30 day offers" crowding your desktop: Dell "product assistant" that sits in the background, Kodak easy share, Nero helper, MSN trial offer, AOL for 90 days, Symantic for 60 days, 10 free 4X6 prints from Snapfish, blah blah blah. NONE of that on a Mac thank goodness.

Correct, it is this stuff, I do not want. As for any of the other stuff, they may well prove the best utilities ever, after all, I use notepad on my PC more than any other app, very boring I know. However, I am looking forward to trying every single piece of the system OSx.

 

[NRose8989]

So of the 12GB or so of OSX that comes pre-installed, just how much of that do you remove on a fresh install - 4GB maybe? So you save 4GB on a 320GB hard drive (or 640 these days). I don't think that's too awful bad. And none of it slows your system down. That can't be said for the stuff on a PC.

The "rubbish" that the OP was referring to was is all that CR*P that comes with OEM Windows that loads when you start up, and all those "30 day offers" crowding your desktop: Dell "product assistant" that sits in the background, Kodak easy share, Nero helper, MSN trial offer, AOL for 90 days, Symantic for 60 days, 10 free 4X6 prints from Snapfish, blah blah blah. NONE of that on a Mac thank goodness.

As far as iLife goes, that is a useful suite of apps, unlike all of the stuff that I referred to above. And I would bet that over 90% of Mac users actually USE iLife, as opposed to the number of Windows users that use all that other "rubbish".

True, I'm aware of what the OP was referring to.

I'm pretty OCD, so if i don't need it, then it's useless for it to be on the HD.

 

[Testify]

So of the 12GB or so of OSX that comes pre-installed, just how much of that do you remove on a fresh install - 4GB maybe? So you save 4GB on a 320GB hard drive (or 640 these days). I don't think that's too awful bad. And none of it slows your system down. That can't be said for the stuff on a PC.

The "rubbish" that the OP was referring to was is all that CR*P that comes with OEM Windows that loads when you start up, and all those "30 day offers" crowding your desktop: Dell "product assistant" that sits in the background, Kodak easy share, Nero helper, MSN trial offer, AOL for 90 days, Symantic for 60 days, 10 free 4X6 prints from Snapfish, blah blah blah. NONE of that on a Mac thank goodness.

As far as iLife goes, that is a useful suite of apps, unlike all of the stuff that I referred to above. And I would bet that over 90% of Mac users actually USE iLife, as opposed to the number of Windows users that use all that other "rubbish".

The mistake I made when I bought a Dell PC 2 years ago!!! I remember wasting at least 2-3 hours setting my PC to delete all that crap!

I bought an iMac on the 3rd and can't wait to get it!! Can't wait to feel that breath of fresh air

 

[sn00pie]

Welcome to the world of beautiful computing

 

[Pyrotechnic]

Welcome to the world of beautiful computing

I do like it when I see quotes like that, it makes spending the £2k worth it

 

[NT1440]

That rubbish is part of the reason why PC's are "so much cheaper". Companies subsidies the cost for makers like Dell or HP in order to load up on all the crapp apps. Even intel sinks crazy amounts into manufacturers to slap on all those disgusting labels (that leave nothing but goo behind).

Welcome to sleek and relatively bloatless computing, I envy you all.

 

[Eidorian]

The Office 2008 Trial should be it.

That rubbish is part of the reason why PC's are "so much cheaper". Companies subsidies the cost for makers like Dell or HP in order to load up on all the crapp apps. Even intel sinks crazy amounts into manufacturers to slap on all those disgusting labels (that leave nothing but goo behind).

Welcome to sleek and relatively bloatless computing, I envy you all.

The stickers are worth it in my opinion since they're only cosmetic. The only crapware I've found on the Dells that I've gotten recently is Adobe Reader 9 and it's tough to get a machine without antivirus as well.

 

[NT1440]

The Office 2008 Trial should be it.

I had no clue that was there.

Its gonna be iwork or openoffice for me (probably iwork).

Edit: Good luck getting those stickers off without very hard to remove residue. My palmrests still feel like they have a ton of friction from a layer of that crap I just can't seem to get off. But the AMOUNT of crapware on most PC's drives me nuts. Especially if you don't get a Windows restore disk, just a manufacturers one, simply because if you try to do a fresh install, you still get crap like google desktop, 60 day trials left and right, ridiculous amounts of IE toolbars (annoying when going to install safari or firefox and ditch IE for the crap that it is).

The metallic stickers annoy me as well simply because they are a bitch to get off.

Sorry for the rant guys, but I am extremely iritated right now using windows. My toshiba apparantly threw a tantrum and decided to start up with the explorer.exe crashes again after two weeks of relative smoothness. GHIAEHSKLDJRH DKIG

 

[elcid]

When you boot it up the first time it will be nothing but you and a little hard drive icon we like to call "Macintosh HD".


It's a beautiful thing.

 

[Jack Flash]

A solid 6GB of useless help document translations and printer drivers.

 

[Cheffy Dave]

Just the useless rubbish that people put on it themselves to slow the machine down and make it crash, like the Norton Universal Machine Destructor.

Boy ain't that the freakin truth, pure junkola

 

[Pyrotechnic]

Ah, I read I could just plug my printer in. Surely its better to put the install disc in, providing of course it contains the correct software for the OS.

 

[neiltc13]

iLife 09 is bloated crap. iPhoto 09 is unstable, buggy and simply slow. It is far worse than its predecessor and the only real shame is that there isn't a good alternative.

GarageBand has turned into yet another revenue stream for Apple.

Also, if you're looking forward to "compatibility" with standard document formats like .doc and .xls, iWork is NOT for you. It struggles with simple formatting when importing and does a terrible job of exporting to these formats.

That 2-3 hours of removing Dell's preinstalled stuff is going to be replaced by 2-3 weeks of hoping and praying you can find software to make your computer do what you want it to do.

Take image editing. On Windows, you get Paint. For all the criticism it gets, Paint is an excellent piece of software which does its job admirably. It's fast, good for quick edits and is also fun too. Show me the free software for OS X that does this as well as paint does. There simply isn't one.

I hope that provides some much needed balance to this topic!

Ah, I read I could just plug my printer in. Surely its better to put the install disc in, providing of course it contains the correct software for the OS.

Good luck with that. You'll soon get used to companies simply abandoning support for their peripherals on Mac OS even when they are releasing new drivers for Windows. My printer doesn't "just work" with OS X and there are many thousands of other models that will be the same.

I had to download some third party software, some strange Unix driver extension and then the driver itself to get mine to work with my Mac. Samsung's drivers for Mac are years out of date.

 

[Eidorian]

The lack of a simple Paint alternative is rather annoying in OS X. Not to mention Irfanview.

Luckily I don't have any problem using Windows.

 

[Pyrotechnic]

Also, if you're looking forward to "compatibility" with standard document formats like .doc and .xls, iWork is NOT for you. It struggles with simple formatting when importing and does a terrible job of exporting to these formats.

The fact I can export most to a PDF will cover this without spending 100s on Adobe Products.

That 2-3 hours of removing Dell's preinstalled stuff is going to be replaced by 2-3 weeks of hoping and praying you can find software to make your computer do what you want it to do.

I am hoping it will be 2 - 3 weeks of learning rather than removing with the added bonus of a more stable platform.

Take image editing. On Windows, you get Paint. For all the criticism it gets, Paint is an excellent piece of software which does its job admirably. It's fast, good for quick edits and is also fun too. Show me the free software for OS X that does this as well as paint does. There simply isn't one.

Never used it.

I hope that provides some much needed balance to this topic!

Of course