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Comment by alok-g | Hacker News Reader

>> Camera, Cortana, and Photos can now be uninstalled

When a user would uninstall an app, would it actually be removed from the system, or just the icons and entries would be. Motivation for asking: Several built-in apps are listed in the Apps section of the settings as having just a few kB in size, which does not match how bloated in size apps typically are in the current times. I've seen mouse drivers occupy hundreds of MB. My guess is that the apps are much bigger than those kB values and the installed Apps settings section is set to let users believe otherwise.

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I think for app uninstallation to be relevant it's not whether the app resides on disk that's important, it's whether it's interfering with how you use the system. E.g. for a browser it's just important that the browser isn't registered as the default browser everywhere, but you can install your own browser. Being able to "uninstall" an app in a relevant way means being able to make it appear as if you don't have it. Whether or not the files the app uses are still on disk is perhaps relevant for disk space, but from a legal standpoint that seems almost irrelevant.

What you are talking about is not uninstalling. It's disabling. Uninstalling should remove application.

What you are talking about doesn't really have a good definition. If a windows app consists of 10 files of which 9 are used by other apps too, does that mean removing the only unique file to the app? Should it remove any configuration related to the app etc

These are easy questions, and it's been a very common experience since forever:

Shared files stay until you uninstall all apps that use that

User config can be removed with an extra option

Can you cite your law where "legally" uninstall doesn't uninstall the app binaries???

What I’m saying is that the law here isn’t about removal but the ability to not use it (and use something else instead). It sounds extremely unlikely that legal texts would care about what particular method is used to ensure that.

No, the law is specifically about removal:

"To enable end user choice, gatekeepers should not prevent end users from un-installing any software applications on their operating system."

And

"3. The gatekeeper shall allow and technically enable end users to easily un-install any software applications on the operating system of the gatekeeper,"

Yes, but the idea of "removal" here I'm pretty sure isn't about disk space but about competition.

As with my iPhone that has none of Voice Memos at the moment has data shown as 4 GB. I remove the app, nothing changes, it frees some kilobytes for the app (which I doubt, that the app is in kilobytes) and leaves the data, while it claims it keeps the data only when I unload the app to the cloud.

Some Windows binaries are hard linked to run directly from the installation disk image copied during Windows install .

Those few kb are probably the size of the hard links to the image.

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