After inspecting the Library's MAC OS/X interface via rdesktop on linux systems, it became clear that application Maple 18 did not save its options, after user setup. This likely a bug, due to the way Maple saves setup information.

In a normal Maple 18 install, the user sets the options in a pull-down menu, then those are the defaults on every new launch. Crucial in the setup is whether or not to use a programming GUI or a MS-Word clone GUI. 

The two GUI options do not mix-and-match. Re-selecting program defaults on each launch is tiresome, and it points to an install problem, to be handled by the original installers.

I investigated work-arounds for this setup issue, but there is nothing useful emerging, so I have to ask the sysops for a system-wide solution. 

Tried already: symbolic link to ~/.mapleinit with target in writable directory ~/Downloads/.mapleinit
Maple 18 reads the file, but the maple code in the file seems to be limited to non-option commands (so far ...).
There seems to be no way to write the GUI option defaults into this text file, so I scrapped the idea.