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Microsoft: UAC designed to bring insanity

By Adam Myers ⋅ April 11, 2008 ⋅ Tags: uac, vista

User Account Control is both the most publicized and hated feature of Windows Vista as evident by the random tech headlines on any given day. The incessent pop-up confirmation boxes inundate users on even the mundane of tasks. We’ve heard the lectures that this is really for own good, how we are more secure as a result. Today though, we hear a shocking statement from Microsoft Executive David Cross, a member of the team that brought us UAC.

“The reason we put UAC into the platform was to annoy users. I’m serious,” said Cross. “We needed to change the ecosystem, and we needed a heavy hammer to do it.”

Cross further explains the carrot-and-the-stick approach as a way to change application developers’ attitudes toward security and application installations. The idea that programs, for the most part, should be installable without elevated privileges makes some sense on the surface. But in reality, if this is truly Microsoft’s intention, we users are caught in this silly crossfire of differing beliefs. Will developers learn to design applications without triggering UAC on install? Time will always tell, though most can agree it’s gotten slightly better since Vista’s release. However, the unpleasant screen blackening experience just before UAC kicks in will always leave the black eye on Microsoft themselves, and not the developers, as far as the user and their experience is concerned.

Unfortunately, as with most things Microsoft, the initial implementation is severely lacking even though the goal is admirable. Check back on UAC v2.

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