Had a recent update to an app I use to create cron jobs. When I first opened the new version, it wanted me to re-enter my license info. No problem, although I did have to contact 'support' and ask that they send me the license code that had never been needed in the past. Came right away, of course.
Problem: After entering the correct info, the "Save License" button was still not enabled. Only alternative was to run in "Trial" mode which disabled edit/creating/saving files!
Solution: Contacted the dev and we worked through the problem with him finally sending me a plist with my license data included.
Problem: Opening the app still gave me a modal registration dialog that still had the disabled "Save..." button.
Another email from the dev provided me with a "defaults
import" command. I'd never seen that before, many times I've used 'defaults
write', of course. The good news is that it worked!
The other good news is that he explained why. Apparently Apple, back in 10.9, changed how the plist database (my explanation) is maintained. While the "write" command can make changes in most plists settings (usually changing a number or a string value) the "import" command seems to write to a launch(?)daemon that keeps track of and caches the plist files for apps.
The Terminal command that fixed my problem was:
defaults import com.(apps bundle name) ~/(file location)/(apps bundle name).plist
Naturally, this should be done while the app is not running. This works because the daemon caches it's database and also stores it in persistent ram so it is not lost during a Restart! That speeds up things on Startup, but it also means a plist that was simply replaced is ignored!
I'm not saying we/you should start using "import" instead of "write". I'll let the dev make that call on his own app. And it doesn't seem to be required, usually. I
am restating the need for current backups, however! As well as using the option-drag method of moving critical files like plists. I replaced that plist several times before I was able to do the "import" dance, and each time the OS dutifully
re-replaced the replaced file with the one
it thought should be there.
I hate it when the computer is smarter than I am... especially when it is so often!