Thanks Shane & Ron, but there's something funny going on.
I've copied and pasted the code from Shane's book, restarted Xcode, & re-booted, but I still can't get the code below to add to the pList file.
on applicationWillFinishLaunching_(aNotification)
-- Insert code here to initialize your application before any files are opened
tell current application's NSUserDefaults to set defaults to standardUserDefaults()
tell defaults to registerDefaults_({bottomButtonChoice:3, bottomText:"Default text"})
#tell defaults to registerDefaults_({saveLocalftpArchive:true})#,messagesTop:{{theGraphClient:"Email list"}}
tell defaults to set SaveLocalftpArchiveOnServer to objectForKey_("saveLocalftpArchive")
tell defaults to set messagesTopText to objectForKey_("messagesTop")
set my messagesBottomtext to "Mail Manager is Running Normally"
tell windowMain to displayIfNeeded()
set my buttonStandbyFlag to false
my buttonStandby's setTitle_("Standby for " & theMinutesToStop & " minutes.")
my displayData()
my setftpButton()
my runMM()
end applicationWillFinishLaunching_