{"id":41062,"date":"2023-11-13T16:08:53","date_gmt":"2023-11-13T21:08:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=41062"},"modified":"2023-12-12T11:50:47","modified_gmt":"2023-12-12T16:50:47","slug":"a-picture-is-worth-a-thousand-permissions-requests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2023\/11\/13\/a-picture-is-worth-a-thousand-permissions-requests\/","title":{"rendered":"A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Permissions Requests"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jason Snell<\/a> (Reddit<\/a>, Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

Due to an extremely weird series of troubleshooting maneuvers, I recently found myself having to set my Mac up from scratch without migrating any of my preferences for the first time in longer than I’d like to admit.<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

More than anything else, though, the experience reminded me that Apple has a lot of work to do when it comes to making the experience of upgrading or migrating to a new Mac more pleasant—and that its Security and Privacy team clearly has too much say in the overall macOS experience.<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

Pick your poison: You can die quickly thanks to a barrage of privacy warnings, or you can die slowly by having to deal with privacy warnings every time you run a new app. Either way will kill you.<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

macOS needs to find a better way to let users broadly approve permissions for specific apps. Why am I asked to approve three or four items in sequence instead of being given some sort of simple window indicating all the permissions that are being requested, allowing me to approve or disapprove individually or all at once?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Joe Rosensteel<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I paused, and I read that a few times to make sure I was comprehending the warning. I was warned that the application was downloaded from the internet (I downloaded) and asked “Are you sure you want to open it?” because I had double-clicked on it to open it. Both of those things were definitely true, so what does the little gray text mean? Oh, it wants to tell me the time it was downloaded by Safari, which I guess I could put in my personal journal, but most importantly that Apple checked it for malicious software and none was detected.<\/p>

Are you sure you wanted to do the thing that you told the computer to do even though it’s safe?!<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Mike Rockwell<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

macOS feels more restrictive and more annoying<\/em> to use with each release. Despite having the best hardware in the industry, the operating system is starting to push me toward alternatives.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Jason Snell<\/a> (Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

My point wasn’t to ask Apple to make the Mac less<\/em> secure. It was for Apple to find some ways to improve the user experience while keeping Mac users safe by default. It feels like there’s an imbalance where security is being prioritized but the user experience is allowed to lag, and it’s a problem.<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

Here’s a screenshot I took right after my new Mac booted for the first time after migration[…]<\/p>

What’s happening here is that Migration Assistant has migrated all my apps, and has automatically launched any of them that are listed in Login Items or are set to automatically launch in the background. They all launch, all at once, and every single one of them then prompts me for permission to do all the things they already had permission to do on my previous Mac.<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

Setting up a new M3 iMac should be a pleasure. When I was done, I felt like a swarm of bees was buzzing in my head.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n