Microsoft admits Vista’s UAC was designed to ‘annoy users’
By Jonathan Schlaffer
From the test versions of Longhorn (Vista’s development name) to the beta and RC (release candidate) versions of Vista, there was one nagging problem that many reviews cited; Vista’s UAC function. UAC (User Account Controls) is a feature in Vista designed to limit program’s access to the rest of the system and by default, software will not have administrator level access to the entire system.
In the early days of Vista’s release this was a problem because a lot of the software at the time (which was designed for XP) would have a fit if it did not have the appropriate access and UAC would ask to “allow” or “deny” it or to simply “cancel” the action.
Many felt that there were too many UAC dialogs presented to users for common tasks such as moving files around the system, there would be a UAC dialog making sure you wanted to perform that action. Dragging icons from the desktop to the recycle bin would also elicit a response from UAC and to top that off, the default settings have you confirm the move outside of UAC as well. Can you spell annoying?
Now, all of these things can be turned off but David Cross, a product unit manager at Microsoft admits to ZDnet,
“The reason we put UAC into the [Vista] platform was to annoy users — I’m serious.”
He claims the reason Microsoft did this was to “change the ecosystem” - to get developers to change habits. With Windows XP, most users and programs would have full run of the system; this changed with Vista. So, to get developers to change, the environment within Vista changed, annoyed users and seems to have most developers changing the way applications are made.
Cross continued,
“Eighty percent of the prompts were caused by 10 apps, some from ISVs and some from Microsoft. Sixty-six percent of sessions now have no prompts.”
It is also claimed that Microsoft has information which states that 88% of Vista users have UAC enabled. To back that up, Cross went further,
“It’s a myth that users click ‘yes’, ‘yes’, ‘yes’, ‘yes’, “seven percent of all prompts are canceled. Users are not just saying ‘yes’.”
That may be the case but that hasn’t stopped reviewers and third party companies alike from criticizing UAC from top to bottom. Certain features of UAC, namely Virtualization can be enabled without having the annoying prompts all the time by using a utility called TweakUAC.
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Stumble It!
April 11th, 2008
If Mr. Cross still has a job on Monday, Microsoft is in worse shape than I thought. How unbelievably stupid to tell the world your customers are being used to discipline developers by including a feature to piss them off to the point of rebellion.
April 11th, 2008
Somehow I’m not surprised. I always wondered how on earth something like the UAC managed to get through the door.
Microsoft need to seriously change it’s own definition of “user experience”.
April 11th, 2008
I heard conspiracy theories that Vista was designed to fail and it was somehow meant to bring MSFT down. I laughed when I heard that, but now after all the blunders with Vista and the decision to take XP Pro off the market , one has to wonder.
April 12th, 2008
UAC is supposed to annoy users, to make them think twice before running software with elevated permissions.
The only people who criticise it are reviewers who seem incapable of understanding this.
April 12th, 2008
UAC was supposed to be a security enhancement by alerting the user a program or process was requesting elevated system rights.
I don’t see anyone pushing “piss off the customer” as a goal when UAC was proposed.
Most other OS’s have it as a matter of course, but it was a bolt on add in to Windows. The implementation had many users turning it off.
I’m unaware of any security enhancement wanting users to disable it.
Stupid. You get the OS you deserve.
April 12th, 2008
i would bet 80% of users turn the UAC off and the other 20 would if they could figure it out.
April 13th, 2008
The UAC is annoying as heck. But many users dont know how to turn it off. And dont like to venture into the windows, they simply check their e-mail and use their main programs for whatever do. If microsoft is going under their shareholders will be upset cause their stock will be crap get ready to sell people. We all might be switching over to Linux at least its free and more stable.
April 19th, 2008
If UAC is used intelligently it makes your computer more secure. Turning it of is simple for anyone who has more than rudimentary computer skills. This is real tough, type user into start search select user accounts open user accounts click turn user account control on or off. That was tough! The idiots that can’t handle that, are precisely the people that need it.
Obviously no one has ever used Linux or OSX, when you add or remove a program or even a update you have to have normal admin. privileges, and that requires a password. Idiots that run as admin and think that their AV keeps them safe, are the reason so many computers get hacked.
July 30th, 2008
Microsoft is trying to deal with issues that have arisen as a result of past coding practices, and, if it were anyone else, you’d feel sorry for them. However, this is Microsoft, arguably the biggest pack of corporate thugs the world has ever seen, so it seems that sympathy is very thin on the ground.
The statement that UAC was “designed to annoy users” pours petrol on the fire, and underscores both the degree to which Microsoft has lost touch with the market and the contempt in which it holds its customers. How long can a business last when its pronouncements are characterised by breathtaking stupidity and crass arrogance?
January 13th, 2009
I would like to punch David Cross is the mouth. Billy Boy left MSFT in a mess and dumped his worst OS ever on the world as a parting shot. Fortunately it is possible to tweak Vista so it is less like David Cross and his minions envisioned. God only know the horrors Cross and Company have planned for us in Windows 7.