Vista's Troublesome UAC is Developer's Fault?

MythMoth wonders: "We've heard all about the pain and discomfort of working with Windows' User Account Control (UAC) switched on, but now Ian Griffiths is explaining that the developers are the problem — they brought it on themselves. In earlier articles we have heard that Microsoft think that everyone should do it like this — Ian does acknowledge that things are better in the Unix world, but is he right? Is the onus now on the developers to help fix a problem that they did not cause?" Rather than ask the user for permission on every operation, what other ways could Microsoft have improved Vista's security?

Comments

I saw a different problem

[280Z28]

I noticed a different and (possibly) serious issue:

• First few times: What is this annoying thing?
• Next few times: Well I guess it's better than not knowing
• After that (without reading) click ok...

So does that mean it's not working, wasting my time, AND training me to ignore security warnings? Honestly I don't have a better solution except for the rhetorical question "why can't people who exploit users just /themselves......"

Re:I saw a different problem

[Osty]

So does that mean it's not working, wasting my time, AND training me to ignore security warnings? Honestly I don't have a better solution except for the rhetorical question "why can't people who exploit users just /themselves......"

Which goes to exactly what Ian was saying -- If you're really seeing UAC that often, you're doing something wrong (or you're using software from developers who did something wrong). As developers get their act together and stop requiring admin privileges for trivial things (hint: using %userprofile% and HKCU rather than %programfiles% and HKLM will solve 90% of your admin-privilege requirements when developing), UAC prompts should appear less and less often, and then only when you really expect them (you're doing system configuration stuff) or when there's a real issue that you should deny. Unfortunately, that world is probably 3+ years away as developers get with the program and rev their software, and in the meantime UAC will just become one more annoying dialog you have to click through to do anything.

With that said, I saw the UAC dialog exactly once today, and that was only because I had to upgrade my video drivers. I'm a professional software developer. I spend my time with Visual Studio and SQL Server, and I rarely have to deal with UAC prompts.

Re:I saw a different problem

[AaronBrethorst]

VS2005 does not require you to run with admin privileges. There are some scenarios that require this, but they're generally the exception rather than the rule. If you want to do something like create a new IIS website on your local machine from within VS you'll need to launch VS elevated, but this is because IIS requires administrative privileges to accomplish this task. For VS 2005, there wasn't much we could do about that. Let me know if you want more information about the topic. I was the developer division's go-to guy for UAC for a year.

Re:I kinda like the concept

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I pine for the days of being able to uninstall a program fully from my system by deleting its folder. Or being able to simply copy a configuration file from one computer to the next and having all my settings preserved.

I really hate to say this, but this is very similar to how Mac OS X works most of the time. Most programs are installed by dragging the icon into the Apps folder, and most programs are uninstalled by deleting them.

Configuration files are a little more complicated, but transferring all the user settings is very easy too, there is a transfer agent that allows you to copy your apps, files and settings to another computer. I know Windows has a transfer agent, I just used it today, and unfortunately, the Windows transfer agent isn't nearly as good. A lot of the preference settings do transfer if you just copy the Library folder in your home directory, system settings are in /Library. But Migration assistant handles almost all of that, IIRC, the only thing that doesn't transfer are a few software license keys.