‘A Platform That’s Teetering on the Edge of Becoming a User-Experience Joke Akin to Windows Vista’

Jason Snell, “Apple’s Permissions Features Are Out of Balance”:

Some users will make bad decisions. That’s just reality. The wrong reaction is to take the decision out of every user’s hands to protect the ones who might do something stupid. Apple needs to find that balance, that protects people but gives users freedom to do what they want, however dangerous it might be.

Apple’s recent feature changes suggest a value system that’s wildly out of balance, preferring to warn (and control) users no matter how damaging it is to the overall user experience. Maybe the people in charge should be forced to sit down and watch that Apple ad that mocks Windows Vista. Vista’s security prompts existed for good reasons — but they were a user disaster. The Apple of that era knew it. I’d guess a lot of people inside today’s Apple know it, too — but they clearly are unable to win the arguments when it matters.

Never would have guessed I’d still find use for the “Windows Vista” tag in my CMS in 2024, but here we are.

★ Thursday, 8 August 2024