Comments on: Copying Files

By: Tristan

Tristan — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 19:35:33 +0000

some large apps/suites (particularly the ones that use the installer to be installed) have stuff in either Library:Application Support or Users:USER_NAME:Library:Application Support.

Just some useful hints!

Visit http://www.10101software.co.nr for some free mac apps by me!

By: Fred

Fred — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 11:46:25 +0000

Just unzip or copy Apps, and user/apps specific settings is also perfectly well managed in Linux and Unixes.
The only ugly duckling OS is…

By: Carl

Carl — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 14:03:50 +0000

I feel your pain. I just went through a similar exercise replacing a fried hard drive in a laptop. For some applications I literally gave up on trying to reinstall them because of license/key hurdles.

The problem with the Registry, in design terms, is this: they solved the wrong problem with INI files. In the move to Win95, MS saw three issues: (1) Too many INI files, scattered all over the place. (2) INI files too unstructured, limiting their flexibility. (3) The need to have different INI files for different users.

What they missed is that the solution to (1) isn’t to put all the INIs in one place, i.e. the Registry), but to put each of them in the right place, i.e. the application’s install directory.

In other words, the Registry itself is quite a useful idea for solving (2) and (3)… but there ought to be one “mini Registry” per application, not one humongous Registry per machine.

By: Dean

Dean — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 23:05:44 +0000

Yes, on the Mac everything an application needs is in the application bundle itself. If you need to move the app somewhere else, just copy it there. The user’s preferences are stored under ~/LIbrary/Preferences

BTW: you can also install apps in ~/Applications if you want to make them available only to that user.

Oh, I really miss Windows…NOT!!!!

By: Dave Aronson

Dave Aronson — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 19:34:56 +0000

The Registry always struck me as a very convenient basket for all your eggs….

By: Cedric

Cedric — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 13:38:39 +0000

I Confirm, just needs a copy.

Even worse, the mac does it for you at the install, it copies your old user folder and the apps that are not present by default with the installation ( like iLife’s or iWok’s for example ). When you have rebooted you have the exact same desktop as you used to have except on a new machine, gotta love it (It evens setups your network like it used to be! )

The funnier is that in the real world you never really need to format/reinstall the mac so that great reinstall system is only used when you change of machine, where windows needs sometimes a reformat just for the “fun” of it…

Windows with such a system would be a far less pain in the butt than it is right now, i even think less people would consider switching if a brand new install of their windows would take 2 clicks and some time (which you wouldn’t need to spend next to the comp ) like on the mac.

But hey Microsoft is microsoft, they are already busy making the gui more weird and complex, they can’t do everything

( yeah i just reinstalled a machine and like you, I’m not feeling especially happy about the loss of time …. )