Apps folder: View settings are always being reset
Finder view settings are stored in invisble .DS_Store files, in the parent of the folder being set. So the settings for /Applications are stored in /.DS_Store, and /Applications/.DS_Store holds the settings for subfolders of /Applications, such as /Applications/Utilities.

Normally you have write permission to these files in one of two ways:


For system folders such as /Applications, the .DS_Store files have
write access for members of the admin group, i.e. administrators.
For folders that you create, you are the owner of the .DS_Store file.


The problem is that the permissions can get screwed up. One way is via the macOS Migration Assistant: the migration changes the permissions on some .DS_Store files to be owned by root, but with no write access granted to the admin group.  This results in the symptoms you describe.

A fix is to first run this command:

 sudo find -x / -name .DS_Store -user root -exec chmod -v g+w {} \;


which will give the group write access to any .DS_Store files owned by root.

That still won't fix all of the files; there may be a few stragglers (such as, /.DS_Store) where the migration has changed the file to the wrong group, such as wheel instead of admin. You can fix that with the chgrp command, e.g.:

 sudo chgrp admin /.DS_Store