Where do you save preferences?

[Kay C Lan]

On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 3:26 AM, Richard Gaskin
<ambassador at fourthworld.com>wrote:

>
> What's new is that your app doesn't "write" there per se.  Apple is now
> requiring that the OS write there on your behalf, using either the
> theNSUserDefaults Cocoa class or the CFPreferences API.
>
> At face value this seems silly, since of course being able to write a file
> to a given location isn't exactly rocket science truly requiring OS-level
> support.
>
> Maybe, maybe not. From my observance of the Apple Forums I would say well
over 90% of the advise given whenever OS X or an app starts misbehaving is:
Start Disk Utility and 'Repair Disk Permissions'* and Trash the app
Preference file.

I've seen similar advise given on this List. As it clearly works, it would
suggest that for whatever reason, Preference files are regularly not
written correctly or are written in a way which corrupts other app
Preference files.

Counter to this argument is the same advise is given even for Apple's own
apps, but I'm wondering again, is this because so many apps interact with
Apple apps, iTunes in particular. Do these 3rd party apps go in and try to
read/write iTunes prefs, but since iTunes has updated AGAIN, the data is on
a different line or in a different format so it comes back as gobbledygook,
which is then saved as garbage?

This is a big IF, but IF Apple could reduce by 50% the number of times an
Apple non-Rocket Scientist had to suggest 'Trash the app Preference file'
this would be a huge time saving to allow the Genius to attend to more
complex customer needs. Maybe this is why Apple feel compelled to sanitise
how developers interact with the Preference Folder.

Like, Bob, I would just hope that RunRev quickly implement the API.

* One difference I've noted Lion has over all previous OS X's I've used; no
matter how many time I run 'Repair Disk Permissions' and how many time's it
reports files with the wrong permissions and it says it's fixed; there are
ALWAYS files that will reappear in the next run. I've never been able to
get a 'clean' run until Lion. JavaVM is an habitual offender, which I
believe has been removed from Lion. RemoteManagement and Menu Extras is
another I can never fix on pre-Lion.