Vista’s UAC security prompt was designed to annoy you
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User Account Control is easily one of the most hated features of Windows Vista, according to readers. The seemingly endless stream of UAC pop-ups, asking you to confirm this action or that action, just get in the way (and aren’t particularly zippy, given the screen redraw). Others don’t mind UAC, but there’s no doubt it’s a controversial “feature” of the OS.
At the RSA 2008 confab in San Francisco, Microsoft admitted that UAC was designed, in fact, to annoy. Microsoft’s David Cross came out and said so: “The reason we put UAC into the platform was to annoy users. I’m serious,” said Cross.
This isn’t a total revelation. UAC was designed to get in your face; it’s all about that “hey, you sure about that bauddy?”, second-guessing thing. It’s a less intimidating, less entertaining version of Clint Eastwood saying, “do you feel lucky, punk?” All this because you wanted to do something unimpressive like view all running processes on your system or install GAIM.
The idea was to “force” developers to write their software in a way such that privilege elevations aren’t needed in the first place. And since the end-user doesn’t have much influence on what developers do, it looks they didn’t think their cunning plan through…
April 13th, 2008 at 8:13
I just wonder if people hate UAC, then why some people think they will switch to Linux, where you have the same annoying feature?
So, if it annoys you in Ubuntu, then it’s a “secure, stable platform helping you to stay that way”, if it annoys you in Windows it’s a “stupid annoying hateful thing”. There is a word, starts with h, and ends with ypocrite.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
April 13th, 2008 at 8:14
And that is not aimed at you John, just a general observation about people, who seems to hate Windows just because it is Windows. Should we call that OSism?
April 13th, 2008 at 8:21
I know, and you have a point. However - the difference is that on Unix based systems, the separation of privileges has been built in from the start, and users run everything with limited privileges. On windows, this was bolted on retrospectively and they’re trying to enforce it by annoying the wrong person. If they annoyed the developers about it from the start, you’d probably end up with something like the way Mac OS “annoys” you when it needs privilege escalation.
And here’s another difference between UAC and my Mac - if something on Mac OS needs higher privileges and asks me for my password, I can ignore it, switch to another application and continue using my computer until I decide it’s time to deal with the app that needs the privilege. What I’ve seen in Vista is that everything basically stops until you deal with it.
April 13th, 2008 at 9:10
Well, as a developer I can only agree with you. Developers should do the hard work, not the users. (And I am sort of fed up with the “but that’s difficult to do” argument, that’s why they are paid, but I am getting off topic)
As for the UAC, that was the first thing I turned off on my Vista, because it is a really annoying feature, so I can’t be sure, but as I remember you could cancel it, and carry on.
I agree with you on the point of the UAC has been implemented in an awful way, but then, what do you expect when the general attitude toward users is “they are just stupid”. And that is true to Linux, Mac, Windows, AS/400 and about every developer community. Except a for a few, who I greatly respect for that.