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macOS 10.15 Vista

tyler.io

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Re: macOS 10.15 Vista

#101

Post by threeseed »

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…

These are all new permissions.

So there is no database of applications that need access to read/write Documents or Pictures.

So a UI like you are suggesting is not technically possible to create.

Re: macOS 10.15 Vista

#102

Post by bobbylarrybobby »

scarlac wrote: post #40
Rebelgecko wrote: post #26

At least for me, there's really no good reason to upgrade to Catalina. Most of the new "features" are things that I can't or won't use (e.g. desktop Siri). However Catalina causes a lot of problems with things that I do care about (32 bit apps, hardware drivers)

I won't pretend you have the same interests as me but one of the reasons I personally look(ed) forward to Catalina was the ability to essentially "run iOS apps" (recompiled for macOS). I can't wait to get rid of some of my Electron apps in favor of proper native ones. That feature alone would be worth the upgrade in my opinion. But that's not to say I agree with how they've implemented the permissions dialogs. As a d…

How can you just "run iOS apps"?

Re: macOS 10.15 Vista

#103

Post by rewgs »

scarlac wrote: post #40
Rebelgecko wrote: post #26

At least for me, there's really no good reason to upgrade to Catalina. Most of the new "features" are things that I can't or won't use (e.g. desktop Siri). However Catalina causes a lot of problems with things that I do care about (32 bit apps, hardware drivers)

I won't pretend you have the same interests as me but one of the reasons I personally look(ed) forward to Catalina was the ability to essentially "run iOS apps" (recompiled for macOS). I can't wait to get rid of some of my Electron apps in favor of proper native ones. That feature alone would be worth the upgrade in my opinion. But that's not to say I agree with how they've implemented the permissions dialogs. As a d…

The day before Catalina was released, I found myself looking for the Podcasts app on macOS. I've become a big fan of it on iOS and couldn't remember if it was one those early iOS-to-macOS apps, like News. It wasn't. Bummer.

Upgraded to Catalina without a second thought after seeing that Podcasts was included.

It's tiny, but it's things like that that make this feature cool. Just a little less friction between the platforms.

Re: macOS 10.15 Vista

#104

Post by stickfigure »

kbenson wrote: post #49
Yetanfou wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that, plus the fact that it was resource-heavy. This was compounded by the fact that a lot of hardware was sold as being 'Vista-ready' while in reality being incapable of running the overly-fancy graphics-heavy 'glass' shell. It also had a number of performance problems (e.g. slow file copy) which only got sorted out in Windows 7. Oh, let's not forget the fact that Vista was supposed to be Longhorn, the OS of t…

> Oh, let's not forget the fact that Vista was supposed to be Longhorn, the OS of the future with a database file system This sounded interesting when I first heard about it, long before Vista came out. Now when I see it I wonder what they were trying to do. A file system is a database, with a well understood user API. So what were they going to add? Tagging? Application level views of the system? None of t hat seems…

A file system is a database, with a well understood user API.

Yes, a terrible API which works poorly for most home use cases.

You probably have music on your computer. In your hierarchical filesystem, do you organize it by Genre/Artist/Album or Artist/Album? Do music videos live in the same Artist directory or in a separate "video" folder?

Chances are you don't know/care because you're using an app like iTunes that builds a custom database on top of the filesystem. And something like Photos that reinvents a totally different custom database. And more database reinventions for email, ebooks, games, karaoke files, voice memos, calendar appointments, etc... all proprietary file formats without published APIs.

Data doesn't want to be organized in a single static hierarchy.

Re: macOS 10.15 Vista

#105

Post by GhettoMaestro »

lone_haxx0r wrote: post #98
keyle wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> should have their software designing license revoked. Dang it, I never filed for one. Hey Clippy, where do I get one of those... > Hi I'm Clippy! It looks like you're trying to make a joke. Do you need some assistance? Clippy would like permission to invade your screen after you summoned him. /s

Luckily, lawyers and bureaucrats don't have that much power over this industry, yet.

Areas that come to mind that are legal-liability driven would be things like health-care, aircraft flight control systems, etc. In those industries, they do have strict software regulations already.

Otherwise, free market baby.

Re: macOS 10.15 Vista

#106

Post by ssalka »

threeseed wrote: post #101
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…

These are all new permissions. So there is no database of applications that need access to read/write Documents or Pictures. So a UI like you are suggesting is not technically possible to create.

Maybe we have different understandings of how that UI would work, but I imagine it to be totally possible:

Take all the windows/notifications from OP's screenshot, map each of them to a row in a table, group by application. Show all this info in 1 modal, call it Migration Assistant.

Re: macOS 10.15 Vista

#107

Post by cjohansson »

vikingcaffiene wrote: post #94

I've lost faith in Apple leadership. After 10 years of being a diehard, I recently jumped ship. Got myself a System 76 Oryx Pro and an Pixel 3a phone. Still working out the kinks but so far so good. The apple tax was only worth it when was the clearly superior choice. It ain't anymore.

I’m at the same position now. If macOS converges to Windows then Windows is a better alternative, the reason I started with Apple was that Windows was a mess, now Linux feels like the most sane alternative for power-users

Re: macOS 10.15 Vista

#108

Post by celadevra_ »

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.

> a world of "applications should ask me when they want to do something" transparency.

Why not make the user know what applications do: which files, ports, devices it has to access, and what data it emits, to begin with?

Re: macOS 10.15 Vista

#109

Post by mathemagics »

cactus2093 wrote: post #89
mathemagics wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 betwe…

Apple provides APIs for saving app settings in the app's sandbox. They require no additional permissions.

You're probably right that it's not nefarious in this app's case, but rather just developer ignorance. But even so, this is the right path to nudge developers towards better security practices.

Also, the permissions are contextual. I didn't see this dialog until I launched the app. Similarly, the first time an app wants to show a notification, the system prompts you to allow / deny it. I'm sure Apple can polish this more over time. But I will take this over the "nearly full-system access by default" paradigms that dominate desktop OS's.

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