A quick warning to Snow Leopard users.
I just spent the past day and a half working on a 4,000-word article for one of my publishers about ways you can reduce hard disk clutter. (I’ll share the link when the article goes online in about a month.) As part of the article, I checked out two Smith Micro software products: Spring Cleaning 10 and Internet Cleanup 5. I don’t think I’ve ever regretted installing any software as much as I regret installing these two products.
First, I should mention that the process of obtaining a 30-day demo copy of Spring Cleaning 10 requires you to provide a credit card number up front. Although the Web site offers a PayPal option, it simply does not work — and customer service is clueless about the problem. It took me three tries to get the software. In the end, after two hours of frustration, download instructions finally arrived. Even those weren’t clear; I still had to hunt around for the download link.
While I’m not sure which of the two products caused the problems I encountered, I suspect it may have been Internet Cleanup. This software purports to help protect you from malware and spyware. It installs files all over your computer, including files that interact directly with your system files. After installing either it or Spring Cleaning, my Mac began suffering kernel panic crashes every time I shut down.
If you’re not familiar with a kernel panic, it appears as a sweep of darkness over the face of your computer screen, from the top to the bottom. The computer becomes completely unresponsive. A message in four or five languages appears, instructing you to shut down your computer by holding down the power button until the computer stops running. You can then restart. When I restarted, a dialog asked if I wanted to report the problem to Apple. Clicking the Show Details button in that screen displays some gibberish that helps Apple’s tech people understand what went wrong. In every case, the name SmithMicro appeared among the gibberish — proof that the software was causing the problem.
I uninstalled both programs. For Internet Cleanup, I used AppZapper, which appeared to delete all the files. For Spring Cleaning, I used the uninstaller that came with the program. Unfortunately, the kernel panic errors continued to plague my system.
Even a “genius” at the Apple Store was baffled. In the end, he reinstalled Snow Leopard from scratch for me. The problem went away. Two files appeared in an Incompatible Software folder after the reinstallation. Both referred to Smith Micro software.
I’m writing this post to warn users of potential problems. No one wants their computer screwed up so badly that a system software reinstallation is necessary.
I’ve written to the folks at Smith Micro to advise them of my experience. I have not received a response. Customer service did tell me that my credit card would not be charged for the software, which I have since fully deleted. There is no mention of Snow Leopard compatibility — or incompatibility — for either of these products on the Smith Micro Web site.
Clicking the More Info button displays a dialog with details about which software is incompatible and what the Snow Leopard installer did with it. In this example, Snow Leopard won’t work with my Palm Sync software. That’s okay with me because I no longer use a Palm (I have a BlackBerry now), which is why I never bothered to update the Palm Sync software. By moving it to the Incompatible Software folder it created, the Snow Leopard installer made it easy for me to simply delete it from my hard disk.