The Syncplicity Saga

When my USB thumb drive died, and then its brand new replacement followed it, I looked for an online alternative. I picked Syncplicity because I liked the screen shots: I knew exactly what I would see as a user. I used it to access live copies of my most-used files on both my work and home MacBook Pros. Well, Syncplicity decided to drop Mac support cold at the end of last month. I finally got around to uninstalling it, which was a pain because the directions disappeared out from under me.

If you need 'em, those directions are:

1. Shut Syncplicity down

2. Delete /Applications/Syncplicity.app

3. Delete /Library/Contextual Menu Items/SyncpCMPlugin.plugin

4. Delete ~/Library/Application Support/Syncplicity

5. Restart your Mac

My first thought while reading those directions was:

1. osascript -e "tell application \"Syncplicity\" to quit"

2. rm -rf /Applications/Syncplicity.app

3. sudo rm -rf /Library/Contextual\ Menu\ Items/SyncpCMPlugin.plugin

4. rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/Syncplicity

5. osascript -e "tell application \"Finder\" to restart"

so I decided to script it. Since the first and last steps were AppleScript commands, I dabbled around and came up with an AppleScript application to uninstall Syncplicity for the Mac (download).

For alternatives, I picked Dropbox (SugarSync is similar), but if you lean towards backups too then Mozy, iDrive, and rsync.net are also strong contenders.

The last step, after making sure all my files are current and local, is to cancel my account at Syncplicity. Time to move on!