I have noticed that some applications after installation open a window and ask for user's password. It says that the application needs system.privilege.admin. I was trying to figure out what exactly this means. The application itself seems to be running in user mode. Then why does it ask for the password? Can anyone please help?
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Eimantas
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I doubt it would be asking for "priviledge"; "privilege", that should be, I imagine? – Chris Morgan May 23 '12 at 07:17
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This question would be better if it stated its relevance to programming rather than implying it. – paulmelnikow Mar 13 '13 at 22:32
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Most Mac installations put the program into the Applications folder. By default this is not writable to users. Under the hood the installer is basically doing a sudo so that it can write the files to Applications.
In addition many mac apps have a preferences file in the system library. This will aso require admin privilege to write.
Finally, the application may register what kinds of files it can open. E.g. pdf files can be opened by Preview or Acrobat Reader, or Acrobat distiller. The system needs to keep track of which apps can do what.
Sherwood Botsford
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