On Jul 26, 2011, at 1:22 PM, Andrew Rodney wrote:
I haven’t as yet upgraded to Lion. But my understanding is that the users Library folder is now invisible. Those without Admin privileges are going to find it difficult (impossible?) to install ICC profiles. That seems to put the burden on every software product that builds ICC profiles, let alone those of us sharing them for print use. On one hand, I have to ask, what was Apple thinking? But I’d rather ask, is there a solution, an Applescript or something that will accommodate these users.
Yes I've noticed this change also and to me it seems untenable, as I mentioned on this issue yesterday on the ColorSync-Dev list. No response yet to the inquiry so far. So on the one hand the main /Library/ColorSync/Profiles folder permissions have changed from 775 to 755, which means that the group owner no longer has permission to write to that folder. The group owner for this folder is group admin. Most users are admins, except in corporate environments or mom and dad and the kids, who are often demoted intentionally to non-admins or normal users. Therefore most users (admin level permissions) cannot in Lion, unlike Snow Leopard, add or subtract profiles from this folder without authenticating every single time (name and password) since the root user is the only one that can change the contents now. What's absurd to me is that the fonts folder in the same location is NOT set to 755 permissions. Fonts are significantly more likely to be a security attack vector than ICC profiles. And yet admins can add/subtract fonts at will, but not ICC profiles. So I think this is either an oversight on Apple's part or it's flawed logic. It's certainly a hassle. Since ~/Library is now hidden by default, while applications that save profiles to these locations will not be affected, by default the vast majority of users, whether admin or non-admin, will have no understanding of how to reveal that folder and its contents to either manually add or subtract profiles from this location. So the result of this change, if I understand correctly is: a.) Normal (non-admin) users effectively cannot add or subtract ICC profiles at all without an application that does it for them. b.) Admin users can effectively only add or subtract ICC profiles if they authenticate every time. !!! seems totally knee jerk and unnecessary. I for one will unhide my user Library folder, and change permissions on the /Library/ColorSync/Profiles folder back to the way they were. But we can't expect developers to do this for us. They will have to add code to their application so that the admin user can authenticate anytime a profile is going to be saved in /Library.
As an aside, going back to OS9, installing ICC profiles was as simple as dropping them on the System Folder. Our Windows friends have a contextual menu to install them from any location. OS X progressively makes simple things like installing profiles more and more difficult. Shame.
Agreed. Chris Murphy