I’m running a fresh installation of OSX Mavericks on my MacBook Pro. My mobile phone is an Android, and I listen to music exclusively with Spotify. I therefore believe I have no need for iTunes, and wanted to remove it. OK.

sudo rm -rf /Applications/iTunes.app

Not so simple.

Periodically while I’m working and listening to music, suddenly the speakers become silent, and the supposedly completely eradicated ITUNES POPS UP! What an unwelcome gift from the gods at Apple!

iTunes opening on top of Spotify

Could it be Jawbone’s fault?

Perhaps complicating things, I usually have my laptop connected via Bluetooth to my Jawbone speakers. When iTunes magically opens, I notice Spotify is still playing music, and the computer is still apparently connected to the Jawbone speakers.

The Jawbone speakers are apparently connected to my computer

My computer is apparently outputting to the Jawbone speakers

As a test, I disable Bluetooth. Immediately the music starts playing from the laptop’s speakers. I reenable Bluetooth, and the computer automatically reconnects to the Jawbone speakers and the playback switches to those speakers as before.

But why does my music get interrupted?! AND WHY THE HELL IS ITUNES BACK?!

While writing this entry, I Googled “big jambox” to get a link, and noticed the second search result: “iTunes opens randomly, shuts off Big Jambox“. Apparently I’m not alone.

Google results for “BIG JAMBOX” after searching “iTunes”

Unfortunately, the suggested fix doesn’t seem to apply to me since it involves disabling autostart on Jawbone software that I don’t even have installed.

Next steps

I was going to try this “long” method for uninstalling iTunes next, but I might check with Jawbone support as well.

According to that Wikihow article, to remove iTunes, I not only need to delete it, but also stop and disable “iTunes Helper”, and also delete AppleMobileDeviceSupport.pkg from /System/Library/Extensions. I already had removed iTunes Helper, but I think iTunes put it back when it came back to life.

My processes according to Lingon X

And now that I look, I don’t have an AppleMobileDeviceSupport.pkg file, but there is a AppleMobileDevice.kext. I renamed it, so I’ll see if that helps.

23 January Update

I think I discovered why iTunes keeps reappearing. I had OSX set to automatically install new updates, and after deleting iTunes.app again today and then opening App Store, I noticed iTunes was in the list of “updates” available. I also noticed a nice long history of iTunes being installed.

App Store history shows iTunes being installed many times

So I am disabling auto updates and apparently will have to put up with iTunes always being suggested as an update. Perhaps I’ll just never update again! :-)

Disable auto updates in OSX