I grant you, this experience sucks.

Was it better before, when everything had carte blanche to do what it liked without your knowledge/consent? (My intent isn't to lea the witness — I have my preference, but am curious what you think.)

> Was it better before, when everything had carte blanche to do what it liked without your knowledge/consent?

Yes.

The caveat is I'm using a very stable set of programs, that I spent a long time to decide if I was OK with giving access to a lot of my critical information. I'm using Karabiner since it exists, and it's a worse experience and performance as it is now than when it was running unprotected and full carte blanche. Same with Bitwarden, it already has all my life's passwords, giving it access to read my screen is just an additional annoyance.

At some point VSCode could also go rogue, but I'll be more worried with it leaking my SSH keys than recording my face when I'm coding.

(We did this to ourselves, by constantly trying to make computers easier to use, and telling everyone else they should have one)

> (We did this to ourselves, by constantly trying to make computers easier to use, and telling everyone else they should have one)

Agreed. However: most people never wanted a computer, they only wanted to do certain computer-y things.

And they don't have to anymore! We now have this new breed of wondrous, computer-y devices which are less capable, but in return are also a lot easier to use. It's here, it's absolutely ubiquitous and it is roughly good enough most of the time.

The worlds of "smart" devices and general computing machines could have, _should_ have coexisted perfectly next to each other. That Apple is slowly but surely merging the two is a massive, unnecessary, foolhardy mistake that is on them and them alone.

Enterprise "businessy" people already have fully managed enterprise Windows, large education fleets and low computing needs organizations can be served by Chromebooks or iPads.

We're the ones stuck in a state where linux is still too compromised, Windows lacks polish, and now macos has iOS-ified to the point it becomes an hinderance but without getting the real advantages (touch support etc.).

I'm patientely waiting for a shift to happen, in the meantime jumping to Windows looks like the more pragmatic solution, how crazy it may sound.

Sure you can disable many security stuff in macOS but then many of the apple stuff don't work, so you would need to leave on the table one major reason to buy Apple hardware.

In my opinion Apple painted itself in a corner with their strategy, they may have more money than ever and more customer than ever but they are making their offering so irrelevant to tech enthusiast people so quickly I'm not sure any of their tech will be relevant in ten years.

Of course Apple fanboys (omnipresent here) want to believe the contrary...

While you're absolutely correct it's my impression that most people will grant any permission without reading just to make this popup interruption go away and move on with their task.

  spctl --master-disable
  csrutil disable
  nvram boot-args="amfi_get_out_of_my_way=1"

Could not have said it better myself.

You’re still wearing the rose-tinted glasses. MacOS is not able to (natively): 1. Allow the trackpad to scroll “natively” and a mouse to “normal” scroll. 2. Scale for an external display without a specific PPI. The PPI is so high there’s only a couple monitors that support it on the market. 3. Display crisp text on a non-high-PPI screen (as above). 4. Allow the user to edit or remove the horrendous mouse acceleration curve. 5. Allow users to select minimized windows with Alt+Tab. 6. Allow users to snap windows. 7. Etc etc.

I’m stunned I can’t scale stuff on my 4k monitor, adjust the mouse, or be productive with alt-tab.

Gorgeous hardware, but wow, I’m stunned you guys (and girls) can use this seriously.

I’m not saying you’re wrong for wanting them. I’m saying you’re wrong to assume that everyone else does, too.

Be happy they still let you use non-Apple external monitors! :)

4k monitors also scale fine?

Minimizing a window in macOS takes it out of the working set. You can't quick switch to a minimized window, and it doesn't even show on Mission Control. You have to click the minimized window in the dock to bring it back. In short, minimizing a window is not just a visibility setting, but a workflow choice.

It's actionable now. You can use an app without allowing the permission request, and the permission request is tied to when you try to use the function rather than at install time or app boot.

You can ctrl+right click and then press Open to bypass this and just show a warning with an "Open" button on it, fyi. After you do it once, it won't bug you for the same application.

This is not MacOS's problem. This is an industry-wide problem where users are besieged by rude software that treats the user like an idiot and decides to do as it pleases regarding system configuration. It is not an exaggeration that it is a security nightmare. With dark patterns becoming the norm, I am happy to have MacOS limit which programs can access which resource, even if it means setup takes longer.

The world you wistfully pine for, with well behaved software and operating systems that simply serve as a platform for programs, no longer exists.