Apple News, Analysis and Podcasts

Unlike the Mac, Windows lets applications install files all over the system and program folders. The result of Windows allowing apps to install files or DLLS in many locations is it can wreck havoc with operating system stability. Apple has a better approach.

OS X confines application files to the application, system's library, and user's library folders. Some application preferences are system wide and others are specific to a certain user (which is why there are two library folders), but hints in OS X Lion suggest things are about to change.

Under the hood 10.7 Lion, Apple is hiding the user library folder and adding a new user folder called applications. If Apple does not want users to modify the library folder, why not hide all the system folders to protect the user from themselves? After all, there are many system files that are far more sensitive to change than the what lies within the library. The reasoning to hide just the library folder seems to make little sense, yet Apple may be pushing to simply eliminate the library altogether.

Apple may be intending to just move application and preference locations, but if that were the case, they would have made the change with Lion, yet they have not. As of now, nothing is in the user's application folder. Why hide the Library folder and add a application folder but not make any changes to applications? The only solution is that Apple is waiting for something. The only thing coming in the near future that will directly effect Mac OS Lion is iCloud, which would be a great place to backup preferences. Apple could soon be storing the preferences in application packages and syncing them in the user's iCloud folder. With this approach, users could re-download applications for the Mac App Store and also get the preferences files which would be stored in iCloud. With the preference files store in iCloud, the user's system would be fully backed up offsite (on iCloud). When a user buys another computer, they can transfer the applications and preferences from the cloud to their next machine.

Clearly, Apple is making some major changes to the way applications are installed and where preferences are stored, it's just that the entire plan has not been fully implemented – yet. Look for iCloud to make some big changes to Lion when it arrives in September.

1 Comment

1. Robert ~ August 4, 2011 17:00
   The ~/Applications folder has been there in previous versions of OSX. Some applications wanted to only install in a user's home directory so they wouldn't be available to all users on the computer. As for hiding ~/Library and not /Library or /System, ~/Library is writable by non-admin users while the other two are not, therefore, there's really no reason to hide them. I can understand Apple's rationale for hiding ~/Library but unfortunately, there are files stored in that folder that many users need to get to (Mail and Application Support are the primary ones I get to). Users can still get there but it's not so obvious. As for moving ~/Library to iCloud, that better not ever happen since it would require the computer to have internet access before a user could log on. Apple can't guarantee that capability 100% of the time so it would make no sense to do that. Same with moving /Applications. I can't see Apple selling just a dumb netbook; too many Macs are used away from the internet and even cellular to take that gamble.

Leave your reply