Why the hell do apps on Windows have to integrate themselves with the system? And why the hell should programs be throwing stuff in a central database (the registry)?
My Macness is showing again, but I really do like the way it has been done on the Mac OS. In the older versions of Mac OS, programs had two forks: the data fork and the resource fork. You can guess what they did. In the resource fork, you could store stuff like you would files. Everything the program did was in the resource fork(it also allowed easy modding of programs, and hence a large amount of amusment in my earlier years). Preferences could be stored either in the data fork, or (more commonly) in a preference file in /System Folder/Preferences. No funky hidden extensions to the system, unless the program is providing a system service. In that case, an extension file would be placed in /System Folder/Extensions.
Wanna uninstall? Trash the app! If it used any extensions (few programs actually did), trash those. And trash the prefs if you wanted, but it's not that important. They will do you no harm.
Mac OS X is a bit different and definitely more complex now, but the uninstall procedures are pretty much the same because almost no apps need to mod the system anymore. Trash the file. Done. The programs are in Mach-O binary format. What is really cool about that is the package scheme. The application is basically a folder that the system treats like a whole program. It has all the things the program needs to run inside.
Ehh... I'm just bitter because I'm in charge of cleaning up a really badly cluttered and virus infested computer lab at my school. I finally said screw it and we are wiping all the machines and ghosting them. Oh well, the old tech who is responsible for leaving these machines unsecured is gone, so I won't have to worry about this as much as time goes on. We have been writing some Nazi security policies for the suckas lately........
