Is there any way to set/update values in the settings.bundle from within your app. I am fine reading in values from the preferences into NSUserDefaults but was wondering whe
You're asking two questions here.
The first one is if you can update settings from within the application. You assume you can't, but you can quite easily. Just use NSUserDefault's setObject:forKey:
method.
If you want to do in-app settings, I'd start here: How to simplify in app Application Settings management?