Does it matter where plug-ins are installed on 10.8

Patches placed in /User/[username]/Library only load for the currently-logged-in user; patches placed in the root library (/Library) load for all users. We generally recommend placing patches in the user library, so (in the unlikely event a patch causes major problems) only a single user account is affected, instead of the entire system.

Never install patches to /System.

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Kineme plugins (and other plugins using the private API) need to go in Quartz Composer Patches.

Other third-party plugins (those using the public API) need to go in Quartz Composer Plug-Ins.

More importantly I am curious about why many of these patches, which are usually usually in the file type "Plug-Ins," are supposed to be installed in the /Library/Graphics/Quartz Composer PATCHES folder. It is a little confusing to me.

Also, I read everywhere here that Kineme plug ins are not supported on 10.8, yet, I have tried many and actually had some success with them. Could you comment on this?

Thanks

Except in 10.8 /User/[username]/Library is not visible.

@Scratchpole: It's still there, it's just hidden in Finder by default. You can open it by activating Finder, selecting the Go > Go to Folder... menu, and entering ~/Library.

@mcsteeze: As I said, the difference is whether the plugins use the private API or the public API. Kineme plugins use the private API since the public API omits a lot of functionality required by Kineme plugins. You'd have to ask Apple why they chose to require the 2 types of plugins be in separate folders.

Regarding not supporting 10.8: we can't officially recommend using QC on 10.8 since there are a bunch of critical, unresolved issues in Apple's QC framework in 10.8. However, Apple's bugs notwithstanding, there aren't many known issues specific to our Kineme plugins on 10.8 (those that we know about are listed on the "Known Issues" sections on the individual plugin pages).