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michael180 · Oct 31, 2011, 11:54 AM

All of a sudden I no longer have a user Library. I searched for it in Spotlight, but it's not there. I just upgraded to Lion. I wonder if that had anything to do with it?

Any suggestions?

King Bob On The Cob · Oct 31, 2011, 12:06 PM

Hold Option and go to the "Go" menu.

Apple hid it because too many people were deleting files from it without realizing what they did.

michael180 · Oct 31, 2011, 12:31 PM

Originally Posted by King Bob On The Cob

Hold Option and go to the "Go" menu.

Apple hid it because too many people were deleting files from it without realizing what they did.

Got it! Thanks Bob . . .

reader50 · Oct 31, 2011, 01:26 PM

Lion sounds more like a winner the more I hear about it. You can use a utility to change ~/Library/ back to being visible.

Big Mac · Oct 31, 2011, 01:39 PM

Originally Posted by King Bob On The Cob

Hold Option and go to the "Go" menu.

Apple hid it because too many people were deleting files from it without realizing what they did.

Are too many people very stupid or something?

From a UI standpoint I don't think it's a good choice for Apple to make such a fundamental user folder invisible by default. They could protect it with a dialog warning the user opening it that it's an important folder, but it shouldn't be made invisible IMO.

chabig · Oct 31, 2011, 04:22 PM

Originally Posted by Big Mac

Are too many people very stupid or something?

From a UI standpoint I don't think it's a good choice for Apple to make such a fundamental user folder invisible by default. They could protect it with a dialog warning the user opening it that it's an important folder, but it shouldn't be made invisible IMO.

I have to disagree. The Library is not a fundamental user folder. It is similar in nature to the System Folder in that it's managed by the system and its apps. The only reason it's in your home directory at all is because the permissions for it are account specific.

Big Mac · 05:13 PM

I guess we have a fundamentally different view of what the user should see. I tend to believe very little should be hidden-especially not a place where essential user data files from applications are stored. There was an OS from the 1980s, I forgot its name right now, but it was a competitor of the Mac, and one of its primary design elements was that the user should see all files, necessitating a clean OS with user-friendly named support files. I like that notion. The Mac once held close to a similar, if less absolute design goal.

I don't think it's a good idea to conceal things from the user in such a large way. I really don't like it.

Waragainstsleep · Oct 31, 2011, 04:45 PM

Most people don't go near it and don't need to. Those who do can still get to it if they so wish. I don't see any problem with hiding it, its a minor inconvenience at most.

chabig · Oct 31, 2011, 05:44 PM

Originally Posted by Big Mac

I guess we have a fundamentally different view...

I am tech savvy (as are you) and we understand what's going on in that folder, the reasons for /System/Library, /Library, and ~/Library. But I assure you my girlfriend, my sister, my Mother, and my son don't. I suspect there are more folks like them than there are like you and me. I was trying to think of an analogy and I came up with this (poor) one: Most people know how to use a toilet, but they don't know about the parts inside the tank or how to fix them--that's why the tank is opaque and has a lid. I think hiding the user's library folder is appropriate for the vast majority of users. It's not inaccessible, just hidden. When it need fixing, you just open the lid (with the option key) and take care of business.

posthumanus · Nov 1, 2011, 01:25 AM

you can also drag it to the sidebar for easy access.

i like to manually manage my clean installs (ie. pick and choose what i bring across) and with your Library in the sidebar you can get to your bookmarks and mail folders.

problem just arose for me though when my hard drive died. couldn't restore from time machine manually cause it doesn't let me access the Library either. sure, i could've brought everything across but there's a lot of trash laying around in there.

so now i've dumped time machine and do backups (of what i want to keep) manually. has worked like a charm so far.

posthumanus

Spheric Harlot · Nov 1, 2011, 04:11 AM

We had a NeXT cube at the music studies institute at Uni.

The professors would save EVERYTHING to the user's Library folder. Obviously! It's where you archive stuff for future reference. The programming guys wouldn't have called it "Library" otherwise—they're not stupid, after all!

Waragainstsleep · Nov 1, 2011, 05:37 AM

I wonder how many NeXT Cubes are still around. I worked on one once about 4 years ago. Only one I ever saw in the flesh.