Find Installed applications in cocoa

Question

Hi, I am developing an application in cocoa.I need to check whether iTunes is installed or not in the machine.Is there any way to find the installed applications????

Answer 1

iTunes is always installed, it's shipped with a clean install of OS X.

Answer 2

The function LSFindApplicationForInfo() can take a bundle ID (e.g. com.apple.iTunes), so you can find out whether iTunes is installed by trying to look it up.

http://developer.apple.com/DOCUMENTATION/Carbon/Reference/LaunchServicesReference/Reference/reference.html

To answer the second part of your question, there is a hidden interface on LaunchServices to get a list of all application names. However, as your goal is to find whether iTunes is installed, don't use it - just look for iTunes.

Answer 3

As was mentioned by Mike Abdullah the correct cocoa call is:

NSString* iTunesPath = [ [ NSWorkspace sharedWorkspace ] 
     absolutePathForAppBundleWithIdentifier: @"com.apple.iTunes" ];
if( iTunesPath ) {
    // iTunes installed, do something
}