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macOS 10.15 Vista

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Re: macOS 10.15 Vista

#81

Post by gowld »

dpkonofa wrote: post #60
berberous wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bad onboarding though, full stop, and not very Apple like. For example, I imagine there could be a way to present the user a screen with all apps, and ask the user on one screen to check/uncheck any that it would like to receive notifications for. Similarly, for the apps requesting access to various things, if I were Apple, I'd wait a bit and then present the user a list with the apps requesting access, explai…

I disagree but only for one major reason: the entire reason this is coming up is because the OP is using an old version of Alfred that wasn't prepped for the new permission settings of Catalina even though there's a fully compatible version that's been released since. The vast majority of users will never, ever get something this obnoxious so it's not a bad on-boarding experience as much as it's a side effect of runn…

Surely many users have at least one piece of software that is a bit old.

This Mac notion of "if your software/hardware wasn't purchased this week, it's unsupported" is not a good look.

Re: macOS 10.15 Vista

#82

Post by charredbacon »

etchalon wrote: post #3

I understand this is chaos, but it's chaos because it has to be. There's no way to move users from an world of opaque "if it's an application, it can do anything it wants" to a world of "applications should ask me when they want to do something" transparency. The idea that Apple doesn't care about the Mac because it's trying to explicitly improve our privacy and security is … weird.

I disagree that there's no transition.

This looks like a pretty good alternative:

https://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/bparno/papers/user-driven.pd...

Instead of the OS displaying an annoying prompt when the application tries to use a privilege, the application embeds an OS-drawn access control gadget inside its UI, such that the user interacting with the UI grants the privilege.

Re: macOS 10.15 Vista

#84

Post by gowld »

azinman2 wrote: post #51
bsaul wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think you read the post properly : all those popups appeared after an OS migration. I don’t see why upgrading the OS would need you to reauthorize apps, and even parts of the OS like icloud shouldn’t require you to relog (unless the security mechanism of icloud itself has been upgraded to a new system with no migration possible of the credentials).

These are new permissions that didn’t previously exist.

No, they are new restrictions that didn't previously exist.

Users were already "owned" before Catalina, so waiting 5 minutes to avoid spamming 100 popups isn't a major risk.

Re: macOS 10.15 Vista

#85

Post by hkai »

iamleppert wrote: post #80

This isn’t a “step forward in user privacy” or whatever the others here are saying. It’s a mess and very poorly executed UX. Users will tend to feel overwhelmed and just click through modals when they are presented in this way. Displaying stacks of modals is an anti-pattern. The right thing to do would have been to create a migration UX that allows quick review and audit of application permissions, presented in a tab…

But that's a one time thing. When you're doing an OS upgrade, I guess you're expecting some extra work. Your also have to reinstall xcode, update other apps etc.

Re: macOS 10.15 Vista

#86

Post by judge2020 »

iamleppert wrote: post #80

This isn’t a “step forward in user privacy” or whatever the others here are saying. It’s a mess and very poorly executed UX. Users will tend to feel overwhelmed and just click through modals when they are presented in this way. Displaying stacks of modals is an anti-pattern. The right thing to do would have been to create a migration UX that allows quick review and audit of application permissions, presented in a tab…

FWIW, every program looks like one that usually is set to start at startup; the intent is to have the dialogue only show up when you start an app for the first time. Since so many background apps were running at startup they all slowly needed to ask for their permissions.

> create a migration UX

Might not be possible if the previous MacOS isn't full-on tracking what folders a program is accessing, and it still would likely encourage allowing all permissions if the user has more than 30 different programs accessing enough folders.

Re: macOS 10.15 Vista

#87

Post by 013a »

I'm astounded with some of the user security dialogs that Macs display. I got one today: "VSCode wants to make some changes. Deny or Allow." That was the exact wording.

Seriously? THIS. BENEFITS. NO. ONE.

The only thing I can figure is that, somehow, Mac has required applications to display something to the user to get their permission to make some substantial system-level changes. But the application is, I guess?, allowed to fill in the message dialog. I can't believe that wording came from Apple; I assume it was Microsoft, who I do trust as much as anyone, so I'll approve it, but this leaves a lingering question:

Either Apple actually did write that, or they allow applications published by "whoever" to fill in "whatever" messaging they want to get the user to click Yes. It's absolutely unacceptable behavior.

I'd say I'm done with Apple, but there isn't a personal computing platform who gets this right. Every Apple employee reading this article should be ashamed. Every Microsoft employee should be ashamed. Everyone just Needs To Do Better.

What is Better? I don't know, off-hand. It's not easy, but I'd imagine why that's why these companies are paid billions of dollars. For starters: If I install around your centralized certificate signing authority to install something, I Trust That Application. It doesn't need to alert me every time it makes a change. And if I install it through your store, then I also trust it, because you trust it. So why do I get so many damn "Approve This Change" notifications? I should get ZERO after the install.

I get that most users aren't as savvy as me, but that's why you're making it so hard to bypass that central certificate signing authority, and I'm fine with that. It's the lingering notifications that make zero sense. Fix your shit, Apple, because I haven't encountered anyone that's ecstatic with anything you've released in the past 18 months.

Re: macOS 10.15 Vista

#88

Post by save_ferris »

dpkonofa wrote: post #64
nikanj wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What really irks me is the touchbar. It's never going away, not because people like it, but because so many would lose face if they admitted it was a bad idea.

I don't understand why people feel this way. Apple's doing away with 3D Touch because of the data that says that people don't use it. What makes you think they wouldn't do the same with the Touch Bar? Despite that, I love the Touch Bar. I do tons of video and audio editing and it's super-convenient for me. It seems like HN just has a higher noise ratio against the TB because it's mostly programmers and a high percent…

MacRumors has been hinting that the touchbar is being phased out, but we’ll see. If you’re one of the people that actually gets value out of the touchbar, that’s great.

Forcing it on all 15 in. MBPs and maxed-out 13 in. models was the biggest FU to Mac users and an insanely user-hostile decision. But they’ve been really good at pulling those lately, so I’m not getting my hopes up.

Re: macOS 10.15 Vista

#89

Post by cactus2093 »

mathemagics wrote: post #47
etchalon wrote: post #3

I understand this is chaos, but it's chaos because it has to be. There's no way to move users from an world of opaque "if it's an application, it can do anything it wants" to a world of "applications should ask me when they want to do something" transparency. The idea that Apple doesn't care about the Mac because it's trying to explicitly improve our privacy and security is … weird.

Agree that it is overall an improved experience. After upgrading, I discovered that a VPN app wanted access to my Documents folder. No reason it would need that, so I simply denied it. Lo and behold, the app continues to work just fine as expected. IMO, this alone is a big reason to upgrade to Catalina.

I wonder if maybe it just stores a settings file in there or something?

I've seen similar things with apps that request access to Dropbox or Google Drive just not being scoped granularly enough, so they just ask for access to your entire account to control a single file or folder. Which leads to a shitty situation, either you give up functionality like being able to declaratively override settings and sync them between machines, or you compromise your security and allow access. There's no way the PM for the product actually cares about granular permission scoping, so of course nobody actually implements in a safer way where you don't have to make this choice.

I haven't looked closely at the new MacOS permissions and how granular they can be, but I'm kind of curious how this will turn out. I suspect the average person will just get used to clicking allow on everything, so developers won't actually care about only asking for what they need, and not much will actually improve about security. But I hope to be proven wrong.

Re: macOS 10.15 Vista

#90

Post by ben509 »

dpkonofa wrote: post #60
berberous wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bad onboarding though, full stop, and not very Apple like. For example, I imagine there could be a way to present the user a screen with all apps, and ask the user on one screen to check/uncheck any that it would like to receive notifications for. Similarly, for the apps requesting access to various things, if I were Apple, I'd wait a bit and then present the user a list with the apps requesting access, explai…

I disagree but only for one major reason: the entire reason this is coming up is because the OP is using an old version of Alfred that wasn't prepped for the new permission settings of Catalina even though there's a fully compatible version that's been released since. The vast majority of users will never, ever get something this obnoxious so it's not a bad on-boarding experience as much as it's a side effect of runn…

I don't know the numbers, especially as companies have pushed hard to change upgrade habits. But unless they're forced by automatic upgrades, most people wait years to upgrade. Even if they are upgrading because they get new hardware, they run all those migration assistants and such to copy everything over.
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