Vista function actually 'designed to be annoying'

News

Andrew Wooden Apr 14 2008, 11:54am

Security feature of operating system was deliberately engineered to ‘annoy users’ claims Microsoft manager

A key function of Windows Vista was purposefully designed to ‘annoy users’, claims a product unit manager at Microsoft.

David Cross was in charge of designing the security feature in question – User Account Control – and says by irritating users with it Microsoft hoped to change the ecosystem of third party software vendors, and reduce the number of applications causing prompts.

"The reason we put UAC into the [Vista] platform was to annoy users — I'm serious," said Cross, reported ZDNet. "Most users had administrator privileges on previous Windows systems and most applications needed administrator privileges to install or run."

"We needed to change the ecosystem. UAC is changing the ISV (Independent Software Vendor) ecosystem; applications are getting more secure. This was our target — to change the ecosystem. The fact is that there are fewer applications causing prompts. Eighty percent of the prompts were caused by ten apps, some from ISVs and some from Microsoft. Sixty-six percent of sessions now have no prompts."

The admission is comparable to spending months tapping on the side of someone’s head, before explaining how legitimate and useful the course of action will prove itself in the grand scheme of things. Some would argue that being annoying with good intentions is still pretty annoying.