Yankee Group: Windows Vista to alienate business with disruptive security features
Tuesday, May 09, 2006 - 11:55 AM EST"Vista's new security features will make for such a disruptive user experience that business users might want to steer clear of the operating system for the time being, according to Yankee Group... the new features will make it difficult for many enterprises to upgrade their users, because of usability issues. One problem is that features such as User Account Control, designed to reduce the impact of attacks by limiting users' privileges, are likely to irritate users and IT administrators," Matthew Broersma reports for Techworld.
"'Although the new security system shows promise, it is far too chatty and annoying,' wrote analyst Andrew Jaquith in the report. He said many people using the tools have said they deliver unnecessarily repetitive messages, have a patronizing feel and interrupt administrators' work patterns," Broersma reports.
Full article here.
Paul Thurrott writes for SuperSite for Windows, "Modern operating systems like Linux and Mac OS X operate under a security model where even administrative users don't get full access to certain features unless they provide an in-place logon before performing any task that might harm the system. This type of security model protects users from themselves, and it is something that Microsoft should have added to Windows years and years ago... In Windows Vista, Microsoft is indeed moving to this kind of security model. The feature is called User Account Protection (UAP) and, as you might expect, it prevents even administrative users from performing potentially dangerous tasks without first providing security credentials, thus ensuring that the user understands what they're doing before making a critical mistake. It sounds like a good system. But this is Microsoft, we're talking about here. They completely botched UAP."
"The bad news, then, is that UAP is a sad, sad joke. It's the most annoying feature that Microsoft has ever added to any software product, and yes, that includes that ridiculous Clippy character from older Office versions. The problem with UAP is that it throws up an unbelievable number of warning dialogs for even the simplest of tasks. That these dialogs pop up repeatedly for the same action would be comical if it weren't so amazingly frustrating. It would be hilarious if it weren't going to affect hundreds of millions of people in a few short months. It is, in fact, almost criminal in its insidiousness," Thurrott writes. "...the dialogs stack right up, one after the other, in a seemingly never-ending display of stupidity. Indeed, sometimes you'll find yourself unable to do certain things for no good reason, and you click Allow buttons until you're blue in the face. It will never stop bothering you, unless you agree to stop your silliness and leave that file on the desktop where it belongs. Mark my words, this will happen to you. And you will hate it."
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We won't hate it, Paul. We'll be using Mac OS X Leopard, not a "amazingly frustrating... sad, sad joke... almost criminal... botched" copy of it. The real "sad, sad joke" is that Microsoft seems to have convinced so many that they need Microsoft in order to partake in personal computing. More people would be far better off if they had fewer or no Microsoft products anywhere near their computers. Tell that to most people and they'll look at you with mouths more agape than usual, but it's a fact. 100% Microsoft-free and loving every minute of it.
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Related article:
Defending Windows over Mac a sign of mental illness - December 21, 2003
Mac users should not buy Microsoft software (or hardware) - May 16, 2003
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Let's just hope MS keeps up the bad work.