The System Library is one thing although if you want to use your Mac as a webserver, there are some useful places to visit. The /Library and the ~/Library are something else. There is a lot of useful data stored under, for example, Application Support and there is always the possibility of corrupted Preferences. You might want to browse around a bit and see what you recognize. I tend to try to synchronize my laptop and my desktop and sometimes it is way easier to just copy across a folder in ~/Library than mess at some higher  (or would it be lower) level with some synchronization program.

Ed Wall

On Aug 18, 2011, at  10:51 PM, Brian Ferguson wrote:

> Thanks Nobumi for this excellent lesson on the various Libraries in OS X.
> 
> The more I read about Libraries, the more I am certain about is to NEVER fiddle about in them  - unless one is looking for a disaster.
> 
> Just accept that they are there for a purpose at too high a level for mere mortals.
> 
> (-:
> ------------------------
> Regards from brianF
> ===============
> 
> On 19/08/2011, at 10:36 AM, Nobumi Iyanaga wrote:
> 
>> Hello jem and Þorvarður,
>> On Aug 19, 2011, at 4:26 AM, Þorvarður Davíðsson wrote:
>>> On 15.08.2011, at 20:17, jem cabanes wrote:
>>> 
>>>>> (…)  it’s no use having an ~/Library folder if the /Users/~/Applications folder is gone.
>>>> 
>>>> This is new to me. What am I missing? I've always seen Applications on /HD/Applications, never on ~/Applications. And yet ~/Library is a pretty good use.
>>>> 
>>> Since OS 10.4.11 and all the way till OS 10.6.8 there has always been ~/Applications on my computer. I think it is a pre-installed default folder for those applications you only want to install in your user account (and not for all users). This folder has an "A" on it, in other words, it does not look like a normal folder and because of this I am pretty sure that it was created by the installer and not by me.
>> 
>> It seems your discussions are based on some inaccurate understanding. In OS 10 system (that is Unix system), there is no "/HD/Applications", and no "/Users/~/Applications". The first "/" in the path string stands for "root", that is the highest directory in the system hierarchy. It is the booting hard disk. The "Applications" folder which you find at the first level of your booting hard disk (along with "/System", "/Library" and "/Users") is "/Applications".
> 
> Snipped [only to save space]
> 
>> Best regard,
>> 
>> Nobumi Iyanaga
>> Tokyo,
>> Japan
> 
>