Tales from the Crypto

Alun-

You're running Vista.  You've already got about 60G of worthless stuff that you can't uninstall-- like Internet Exploder!  Sure, given it's smaller initial installed base and the popularity of the iPod and iTunes, Apple has chosen in this case to act precisely as slimy as Microsoft.. but I'm amazed that 20 years later you still give MS a pass while bitching about Apple!

Really, look at the momentum, its time for you to defect:

ichart.finance.yahoo.com/z

If you do, I promise, I'll never say "I told you so."  Not once.  Ok, well, only once. :-)

Oh well, I'll still gladly buy you a pint sometime if you'd let me... I'll even come over to the eastside.

Jay

wow, i still am unsure how to rid myself of the ofensive itunes but i liked the speeding quote and it reminded me of "even if you prove me crazy, it doesn't mean your sane."  it often comes to mind when I think of the Apple/MS debates.  I recently bought another Apple because I needed to sync my iphone and wanted to run Filemaker 9 on a true mother ship.  several thousand dollars later, the iphone won't sync with ical, the escalated service people are baffled and sent it to engineering, which has steadfastly ignored the issue for weeks, and Filemaker, wholly owned by Apple will not play well with Leopard.  I'm  not at all hopeful.  Aleopard never changes it spots and all.  I'm old enough to remember my old Apples and the problems are much like those days, so they look cool but are still fraught with problems.  MS is a study in how to become a monopoly while never producing a complete quality product.  But it does run Filemaker pretty well.  

Alunj, you're too funny.  I don't have time to play with apple toyz either.

There's a fix for Apple Software Update, you know. Start ASU. Leave a check mark beside the applications you do NOT want to be prompted for in the future. Click Tools, Ignore Selected Updates.

When you run Apple Software Update in the future, you'll see available updates for only those programs you left unchecked.

Alun, you are dead-on.  All my 'Apple' friends constantly tell me how good their systems are, but I find their arguments a little flimsy.  For instance, I cannot stand Quicktime, but I have to have it to view their videos that they send me.  And every time I configure it NOT to start at system boot, it comes back to haunt me everytime!  I finally have to edit the registry to keep it out of my System Tray!

Their IPOD?  Hey, I bought a 30GB Zune for half the price and it works just as well as their players.  (Actually I got it free from the MS store!  :)

About the only thing I find good about Apple is their commercials.  Too bad they are more 'exaggeration' than truth.

Anyway, keep up the good work, and everyone have a safe and Happy New Year!

William Pecht

MVP - MS Networking

etc., etc.

Why not just uninstall the "Apple Software Update" application?  That will cure your Apple update issues and remove yet another application that thinks it needs to start with your system eating up resources in the guise of protecting you.  Doing this simply demands that you be aware of updates and manually get them.

And your comments on the Apple "trash can" are spot on!  I've worked with Apple systems for years and find *nothing* intuitive about them.  Most goes contrary to logic.

Usually some programs will not uninstall unless they are completely shut down. Here is what I found out, is that the Apple Mobile Device will start up on its own with out clicking on anything. Go to "cntr" alt del" to bring up the "Windows task manager", go to the "processes" and you will see it running, click on it and select "end process",,,  wait a little bit and it will start right back up again..... keep the window open,,,,

 Go to the "remove programs" section in the Control Panel" where you will find Apple Mobile device" about 35 Meg in size,,,,

 end the process, anmd immediately go to remove the program,,,, go back to the Task Manager and ensure it does not come back on again......

 If successful, it should be removed for good!

Coffeelover,,,,,,,,,

Justement moi j'ai une question un peu contraire a ce que vous dites vu que en faite j'aimerais bien demarrer apple mobile device.. j'vient d'avoir un itouch et itunes ne le reconnait pas parce que apple moble device est pas demarré... donc voila si vous m'aider .. merci

Okay, I've been trying to remove this software from my computer for several hours now with no success. It starts the install both ways, but hangs up at some point, forcing me to end the uninstall process.

I can't find any reference to this software anywhere at the Apple.com website.

Can someone help me?

I don't like apple because I see their "intuitive" approach as saying user is not intelligent enough to understand files, programs, or what .exe means.  Unfortunately, Vista is following.

Unfortunately, some programs, like Adobe Premiere movie editor requires Quicktime.

Q.  What is the purpose of Mobile Device Support?  Does to relate to Quicktime, iTunes, or ipod or none of the above??

Thank you! I was having trouble removing that Apple Mobile Device Support thing : )

Just to follow up;  using control panel, remove programs; I selected the apple mobile and the remove instruction. That did it.

To be sure, used search for any trace of Apple Mobile device.  only thing left was the installer hiding in "documents and settings/all users/application data/apple/installation cache"

Just selected and deleted those.  all clean now.

still didn't solve my interference problem, but I feel better.

I have a iPod Nano with video now.  You can uninstall the Apple Mobile Device service without it affecting iTunes.  I also managed to uninstall the apple updater.  I should mention I have iTunes on a Windows Media Center computer (XP not Vista).  I won't let iTunes anywhere near my Vista laptop :)

I got a Vista comp from someone, and it had 2 Apple programs on it, one of which was the MDS.  Surprisingly, I didn't have any issues uninstalling it...went easily.

However, the second program was some kind of Apple Data something-or-other program.  I tried the uninstall routine, twice, and it froze both times, first time at 50%, and the second time at "1 second" to completion.  

I rebooted my comp after both situations, and gave up trying to uninstall it.  Vista started acting a little funky, but didn't seem serious.  So, I moved on to installing another piece of software, and it crashed mid-installation with BSOD.  I reboot a few times, and each time Vista degrades more and more, until it eventually won't boot at all (just goes black screen).  

After screwing around with my Vista install/recovery CD, doing the repair routine, it turns out the registry hive was corrupted and had to get rolled back.  I did so, and on a whim (just to confirm) decided to try uninstalling the Apple Data thing one more time.  Sure enough, Vista started screwing up, and I had to repair the registry hive again using the cd.

So, several issues here...1) Apple's lame program has a crap uninstall procedure, 2) it's so crap it can screw up the OS, 3) It's the 21st century and we're on the 6th iteration of Windows, but still Vista can't recover anymore gracefully from situations like this (IE: I would assume that on booting, Vista would notice it's reg is corrupted, tell me, and ask if I want to keep going or roll-back to a good version.  Nope.  Instead, it lets you boot as if nothing's wrong and progressively blows up until you can't boot and have to repair using the cd.  That's pretty pathetic.)

Apple sucks, Microsoft sucks, blah blah blah...  I find it odd that you're complaining about something you installed (apple software updater - it asks if you want it) with an option to not bug you about products you don't have, and the option to not load at startup (reg editing? run msconfig) in order to update a product originally developed for another OS (Mac OS X) and proted to a different OS that's bloated, slow, buggy, and lacking support in its own right.  For the record, I haven't used a Mac in years; I'm writing this from Windows XP x64 (Microsoft's finest OS so far IMO - and talk about lack of support, it's years later and I STILL have to pray for drivers for big name products).  Yeah, Apple's stuff sometimes runs poorly on windows - iTunes in particular is slow and buggy.  But it runs great on Macs, which are, after all, the primary focus of Apple.  Don't want iTunes?  Don't get an iPod.  Don't want QuickTime?  Don't use it (if you absolutely MUST see that super-important QuickTime video, get just the CODECs with QuickTime Alternative; but in all honesty, I have more trouble configuring my apps to use the proper DirectShow filters in the proper order than I ever had with QuickTime).  Finally, you're COMPLAINING that you can uninstall many applications simply by deleting their folders, without the need to delve into the murky waters of ApplicationData and other system folders or a nearly incomprehensible registry system?  I'm amazed.  The Mac OS is certainly different, but there's really no denying that it runs much more smoothly and responsively on worse hardware than does Vista.  It's a cleaner, slimmer OS.  But it is different and it's not perfect.  It would be great if Apple could make both the Mac OS AND Windows run better, but that seems a little unreasonable.

I've just spent 14 hours -- count em! -- trying to install an iTouch. The reason I'm responding to this topic is that all but 3 minutes of those 14 hours was spent dealing with Apple Mobile Device Support crap. First, there was apparently an older version of my system and we couldn't get it to uninstall. Apple Tech Support had to follow my lead to figure out that I needed to use the Windows Install Clean-up Utility. That got rid of the older version -- but nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing could be done to get the NEW version to install. We even fat-fingered it (at the Apple "Genius" desk at my local store) to try and force the system to see it. As reported here, the stupid program would start to install (it's the first of three "programs" that are installed when you install the latest version of iTunes) and then it would rollback, deleting the files it had copied under \program files\common files\apple\mobile device support. I can't tell you the tricks we went through to try and prevent it from deleting the files.

I can tell you though that I learned two things from this: (1) you can download a version of Quicktime WITHOUT iTunes attached to it (I believe the address was www.apple.com/support/downloads/quicktime) and (2) I'll stay away from Apple's sexy new products since they can't seem to get them to work.

i call bullshit on anyone who is trying to compare the itunes virus to windows' bundled software. i don't use iexplorer cause i know better.  so when i DON'T use it, it stays put without popping it's ugly head without warning.  itunes on the other hand keeps popping back up like a drunk after getting kicked out of a party.  if you don't believe me, open up your task manager and kill  "applemobiledeviceservice.exe" and wait about 30 seconds.... wait for it.... HEY!  there it is!  i didn't open itunes or plugged in my ipod but hey, it wants to party!  i don't really care about apple's catholic way of blessing us with their logic on my macbook (since i chose to buy it and understand how apple works) but this is one egg short of a virus on my pc.  BULLSHIT!!!

thanks man, been looking for this fix for awhile now. yes apple sucks, talk about a proprietory bunch of crap, buy a ipod player you have to buy itunes or convert your current library to mp4 which thay dont offer to convert back to use in any other player, basiclly i feel thay have stole my rights to my music. now thats crappy.

Well, seems like apple and microsoft are in a equal low state position right now. People used to say apple pc's were better, but every new day I see something worst. Vista was not a smart option for microsoft, but at least it ain't apple :D

Hope that doesn't happen with Linux tho...

Hmmmm.  I run Outlook and I had to close it before I could uninstall Apple Mobile Device Support.  I'm guessing that's because I might be synching Outlook with the iPhone THAT I DON'T HAVE!  At least it uninstalled without issue.

For Jay -

What's wrong with this picture?  Simple.  If Microsoft is a monopoly and it uses hardware that is open source, then Apple has to be a mega-monopoly with it's closed source hardware.

If a company wants to go into the video card business and make cards and drivers for Windows, no problem.  Microsoft can't stop them.  If the card and drivers are garbage, the free market will weed them out.

On the other hand, if you want to make ANY piece of hardware for a Mac, you have to get approval from the great god Apple.  If you want to write a SOFTWARE application for the Mac you have to get approval from Apple as well.  

Basically, Apple is a huge monopoly that plays the "little ol' home grown company" card very well.  Law suits by Apple Music (The Beatles) and Cisco (they had the name "iPhone" first) come to mind.  Please stop lauding the VIRTUES of Apple. They are a company like any other trying to be profitable.

Knock off the "holier than thou" attitude when talking about Apple.

Make sure to remember to remove Apple's crap networking piece, Bonjour, that installs with itunes as well.

It shows up in Add/Remove programs in Windoez.

If you don't want to run Quicktime (as well as RealPlayer), there is a good player which is freeware and will run all files like a breeze. It's also light and unobstrusive. Try it, you will like it.

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

It took me about 30 minutes to remove the Apple Mobile Device Support out of Windows XP.  It's domineering though that XP almost couldn't do anything, like a patient being operated on a major surgery.  It freezed on several minutes, but I had to wait, read something else while waiting for it to finish uninstalling.  It did, but there was no message telling that it was completely uninstalled.  What a crappy software Apple insiduously offers to MS users.

As I have mentioned in other posts ( Retro-bundling - another suck of the Apple , MacBook Air debuts;

I haven't read all of the replies to this but I had the same problem... using XP I went to My Computer, rick click, Management, Services, stop the Apple Mobile Device Support from running.  This worked for me.  Good luck.

Can't quicktime (.mov) files be run on VLC? Wouldn't that solve your problem?

u r an ass.

i love my ipod and i know im an ass.

but ur an ass but u don't know it

get lost

Pingback from  Apple Plumping Up My Windows System?

I agree, I'm tired of having Quicktime and iTunes pushed on me repeatedly when I'm not really interested in the upgrades if I don't want them. Now pushing Safari and this new Apple Mobile Device Support is the newest one on the list.

Pingback from  Apple Plumping Up My Windows System? : AwesomeBlogs.Info

************ HELP PLEASE!!! ************

I have iTunes. I use Windows Vista. Everytime I open iTunes [lately], I get a "looped message" that says:

"AppleMobileDeviceHelper has stopped working

Aproblem caused the program to stop working correctly.

Windows will close the progtam and notify you if a solution is available."

I do want to continue using iTunes for my iPod.

Can I just go in and "uninstall" Apple Mobile Device Support and solve the problem of the "loop"?

Beautiful.  My girlfriend installed iTunes and with it came all kinds of junk she didn't need (Bonjour, Safari, Apple Mobile Device Support).  I was able to uninstall all the unneeded cruft but ran into the same problem you did uninstalling Apple Mobile Device.  By selecting "Change" instead of "Uninstall" I was finally able to get rid of that program.  Thanks!

We're accustomed to MS installing bloatware, but I personally expect more from Apple. I myself am very unimpressed with Apple. Thank goodness there are alternatives to quicktime.

Thanks man for tellin' me how to uninstall this program! Tried three times and couldn't understand why it was going back up the status bar! The use of the Change button worked perfectly! Thanks again!

VLC Media Player plays everything BUT QuickTime AND RealTime files. Will play everything else including broken and incomplete files.

Many thanks for this - it works. I'm infuriated with Apple dumping stuff on my machine without telling me. It is incredible how little coverage this has got, but thanks to

blogs.zdnet.com/Bott

as well for pointing out how much rubbish the update installs.

Hi guys,

I was plagued by this very problem for months and months.  The Apple Mobile Device support was supposedly "corrupt" and would prevent me from re-installing ITunes(after I deleted it because I got repeated "apple mobile device has stopped working" looping whenever Itunes was open) every time I tried.  

I read on one of the forums you can rename the 'bin' file in the Apple Device Support folder.  So I did that, put my computer in safe mode(the only way it would let me do it) and change the bin filename to bin2.

And OMFG it worked.. I have my music back!

This is a problem apple needs to fix pronto..

got a big problem, after working problems with itunes i deleted the folder with mobile device manually, now i cant install it anymore, is there a way to remove the entries and reinstall the mobile device driver??

please help me :((

thx

I am unable to install latest itune8, i tried to uninstall apple mobile device support . however there is a fatal error msg 2330. pointed to there is some error in the apple mobilebackup. I cant install itunes8 coz of this error?

Pleae advise. Everytime i run itunes my comp will lagg n hang for at least 10 mins

Jerome

After deleting this programme I find I can't attach a document to anything, e.mail, bebo, anything, can any one help?  did I delete something else in the process?

Folks I am using tune up utilities 2007 on my XP based pc. Using the uninstall manager takes me to a repair or remove prompt for all programs I try to uninstall. Once I select the remove option I have never had a problem uninstalling a program cleanly. I also use tune-up to maintain my computer (clean registry error etc and my machine runs fine.

i accidentally deleted my mobile device service when i didn't want to... how do i get it back if i want to? installing itunes again didn't work. what now?

How can i remove apple mobile device support from my pc

I noticed after I installed my ipod that only did I have to get itunes but safari & quick time now I have to apple mobile device. Well if I uninstall it will my ipod sync, oh yeah some bone head ripped off my new ipod when I was at the gym. Thanks...Ronster

I bought an ipod but I didn't know I that besides itunes I had to have quick time and safari and now apple mobile device, if I delete apple mobile device can I still sync my ipod? The Ronster

Can anyone tell me how to change the filename to Bin2?

I'm trying to reinstall iTunes but of course it wont let me. I'm hoping changing the name will help with this.

It would be greatly appreciated!! Thanks!

bonjour,

je ne peux plus faire de synchro avec l iphone il met apple mobile device n est pas connecte

quelqu'un peu maider

merci

Hello, I have been having trouble removing this program too. I was wondering if you could maybe email me. Because It [my computer] keeps telling me that I have an updated version of mobile device, when I take off everything of apple, except for Mobile Device,  and stilll try to get an updated version for my ipod touch, it wont let me because I need an updated version of Movile device, that's basically my problem, and to shorten it out, it does NOT wanna come off. Can you help me at any possible chance ??

Thanks for this.  I despise Apple for installing all this crap on my computer without checking first to see if I own an iPod or an Airport.  Morons.  Apple's developers are totally suck.

Alun Jones wrote (long, long ago)...

"I'm trying to give Apple something close to a fair shake of the stick, that's why I'm not just following my old practice of simply removing QuickTime after every time I view a movie file I'm just so desperate to see."

I myself have gone through the same dillema, however a there exists a solution that formerly worked for me (my gruding acceptance of an Ipod as a gift last Christmas resulted in Quicktime's required residency on my hard drive.)

Someone like yourself, who was lucky enough to NOT be given something free and feel obligated to take it, could visit: "www.free-codecs.com/.../QuickTime_Alternative.htm" and download the codec, which is more or less customizable. The beautiful part: you can watch the wayward Quicktime movie you happen across, without needing the player... from the comfort of your quick-loading, lighter-weight media prog (whichever one it may be.)  Of course, maybe you knew this.  But its safe, works well, and lets you pick out anything you need from it while leaving the rest out.  Even down to the bare codec files. Hope that helps with the "Apple cramps."

I ran into the same problem as described and found that the uninstall procedure left so many remnants of the program that the reinstall was never clean.  The following has worked successfully for me:

1.  I used Windows Install Clean Up (available at the MS website) to remove all parts of iTunes first including iTunes, Quicktime, Bonjour....

2. Even though I had attempted to remove Apple Mobile Device Support it was running but not listed in the Programs listing.

3. I stopped the APMD service.

4. I removed the directory structure

C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Apple\Mobile Device Support

5. And then rebooting and reinstalling iTunes successfully resolved my problem.

Hope this might help someone since this problem frustrated me for a good (or bad) 5 hours.

Thanks for your blog.

Got the same problem on Vista.

By the way the solution is in the original article. I quote:

"I'll save Windows Installer logging for later, because quite by chance, I found out how to remove Apple Mobile Device Support from Windows Vista.

Instead of clicking "Uninstall", click "Change". You're given the option to "Repair" or "Remove".

Click "Remove".

As counter-intuitive as it sounds, this appears to take you through a completely different uninstall procedure, which actually results in the removal of the Apple Mobile Device Support."

Thank you for your excellent tips on removing unwanted Apple software from my PC running VISTA.  Like some others, the only reason I have Quicktime is to enable viewing of videos that require that format. I do not know much about PCs and things digital.  I just want to use my PC to prepare text documents and participate in an on-line woodworking forum.

discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa

Thanks for the great post.  You're making a difference.

I was annoyed at this exact same problem but found you on Google.  Two minutes later I'm rid of the "mobile device support".

Apple Mobile Device is a program that allows Itouch and Iphones to log onto your wireless network, i think. I was just watching my TCP viewer because I thought someone gave someone else my network key, and I was right!!!

My TCP was telling me that an Apple Mobile device was trying to access my network. I uninstalled Apple mobile device support and BAM!!! The dumb girl with the Itouch cant log onto my network even know she has my password!! awsome.

great stuff: used the :"change feature" to uninstal with W XP.

many thanks to all above.

Hi, I also had success using your directions to remove Apple Mobile Device Support. As you, I dislike Apple and only use Quicktime when I need it play a video. I deleted the itunes also.  Now I have Quicktime and Apple software update.  I need the Quicktime, I guess, but need to learn more about the Apple software update.  If I don't need it for the Quicktime I will remove Apple software update too.

Thank you so much for your help!! You are great!!

Nice chat above, but I just used the "change remove option" described and the progress bars moved to the right in an encouraging manner, then suddenly stoped and wnet backwards again.  Any hope/help here?

I clicked the Change button instead of the Uninstall button but it did the same thing, the progress bar went backwards. I have everything else uninstalled (Bonjour, iTunes, QuickTime) but AMDS won't come off.

Finally killed my AMDS with 'Windows Installer CleanUp Utility' avail at support.microsoft.com/.../290301