Quote:
Originally Posted by sclitheroe
The file system is a big database too, people who bitch about the registry make me laugh. It's the same thing, just a different level of abstraction. Out of all the differences between the two systems, the registry vs. plist files should really be the least of them. Especially since so many solutions to Mac problems are "delete the plist files" - if they were so much better a solution, why are Mac users erasing them whenever they have problems?
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Because we can.
If I have an app that starts acting screwy (I had one —
one, mind you — after I upgraded to Leopard) the first guess is to delete the .plist file for that app. Nothing else is affected. It isn't even theoretically possible for me to damage my system; the whole operation is done in userland. Nor will it affect any other apps. In fact, I don't even have to quit my other processes to apply that fix.
If I were trying to do the same on Windows, it would involve firing up regedit, trying to find the correct database entries in an unsorted binary file tens of megabytes in size, deleting them, and hoping to heaven I didn't mess with anything that would destabilize
other parts of the system.
There's a reason why step #2 in almost any Windows troubleshooting sequence is 'reinstall Windows'. It's because step #1 established that the Registry is gorked and must be rebuilt from scratch.