Carbon Applications running from the Applications Folder

[ericmurphy]

I recently installed two commercial Carbon applications under OS X, Quicken 2002 and Bryce 5, and discovered that, seemingly, neither of them can be run from the Applications folder by a user without administrative privileges. This means I HAVE to run them from my home directory, which does not seem to comply with the way OS X should work as a multi-user OS. For one thing, each user seemingly would have to have an individual install of these programs.

Both Quicken and Bryce have numerous configuration files that must be read from and written to, and obviously they can't be written to by a user who does not have write privileges to the Applications folder. For security reasons, I don't like to be logged in as a user with administrative privileges unless I'm actually administering the system.

It seems that, in this case, both Intuit and Corel are breaking some of the philosophies underlying OS X. User files should be kept in ~/Library/ somewhere, but it doesn't seem like either Bryce or Quicken are set up this way. When installed in the /Applications folder, neither application could read or write user files in my home directory. After I installed them in ~/Applications/, in my home directory, they both seemed to run fine.

Agree? Disagree? Am I missing something obvious?

[Jadey]

If you're using your system as the main administrator, you will run into this. We ran into it installing Limewire as a different admin in the main Applications folder. Looks like if it belongs to you, it's gotta go in your home directory.

[mcasteel]

I think the problem you are having with Quicken and Bryce are not generic to Carbon applications, it's the way those applications were written. Especially for multi-file and bundled apps, permissions have to be set properly, and the app better not try to write to any part of 'itself' (in the Applications directory). It certainly isn't rocket science, but has to be done right.

Either those apps haven't been done 'right' (for a multiuser system like OS X), or they didn't document how to install them properly, or something went wrong in your install.

Looking in my Quicken 98 installation, I see that Quicken 98 keeps a number of files it obviously writes to (like backups) in a folder located next to the application. I keep my accounts file in a separate location--if those other files that Quicken 98 writes to were located relative to the accounts file instead of the application, it would play better in a multiuser environment.

You could fiddle with file and folder ownership and privileges to get it working, probably. You could also wait for Intuit to fix Quicken, but I don't recommend that you hold your breath, given Intuit's record.

[boysimple]

I've been running Quicken Deluxe 2002 out of my applications folder fro about a week now. And the quicken data is also stored there...

I'm logged in as the admin user if that changes things.

E

[ericmurphy]

I agree that this problem is not specific to Carbon (although the use of Carbon APIs or development environments might make it harder to write well-behaved apps). I believe it's simply not writing the applications correctly. I have the feeling it's due to a hasty port of Classic Applications.

There are all kinds of files in both Quicken and Bryce that need to be written to. Obviously, if you're not an administrator (and I'm not, for security reasons), you're not going to be able to write to them in the /Applications directory, unless you fiddle with permissions in that directory, which I'm not willing to do. It's always made perfect sense that normal users can't write to the /Applications directory, and I want to keep it that way.

So I guess I'll have to wait until hell freezes over, or until Corel and/or Intuit fix things, whichever comes first (my bets are on hell). Actually, I don't really mind running Quicken out of my home directory, but it's definitely pretty stupid to have to run Bryce from there as well.

[boysimple]

I think if you just move the quicken data file to your home directory (or somewhere within), you should be ok. but I'm not 100% sure, and you may have tried this already...

E

[ericmurphy]

Yes, my Quicken data has always been in my home directory (interestingly, Quicken can't even open my data file if it's in my home directory). But there are other files Quicken needs to write to, and it can't, because I don't have administrative rights. And no, giving myself administrative rights is not an acceptable solution.