[1]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/servicemanagement/...

its sold more as a way to store and all conversations than the ability to be a messaging application.

the original pitch was to make all information, even private conversation of previous employees, searchable.

One somewhat paranoid department that was convinced they were being spied on (they weren’t; I saw the Slack admin dashboard and management was too cheap to pay for the retention and spying features) maintained the use of an ancient Jabber based group chat for their own internal communications.

The only restriction was if you went to China, you took a burner phone (one of the old company phones, usually) and weren’t supposed to ever use it again once you left. I think they just sold them to a liquidator.

Slack is also used because it allows to create persistent channels that are searchable. So they often end up being a knowledge base for the company.

I kinda like this angle. While Slack makes an effort to work basically everywhere with low effort, I wonder what would follow if it wasn't the case.

For instance if for some stupid legal reason Slack was banned from macos, how many people would just switch to another OS ? I'd bet it would be a non trivial amount of users at this point.

This idea of respecting user preference is not the way, though. For example, back when Skype existed, you couldn't remove its icon from the macOS menu bar, because (1) Microsoft didn't believe you had the right to choose to remove that item, and (2) macOS believes an app developer should have more control over what goes in my menu bar than I do.

Overall I think it's good paranoia to not grant root permissions to apps that do not clearly need them such as Slack.

I can see this happening, but it probably won't anytime soon. macOS is still open enough, and with the assumption that sometimes processes need root (see third-party Launch Daemons).

It would probably break quite a lot. But I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually gradually move macOS in that direction.

It contains no information that I can reasonably use to match a decision on whether or not to allow it, so I always click cancel on it.

It’s like how my bank often calls and wants me to give them my personal info for ‘data protection’ before we can speak. These are legit bank calls, training people to give out personal info to strangers.

Regardless, yes it causes the exact issue you're talking about. I don't even read what the popups say anymore, I'm just blindly hitting an accept button.

When you make an iOS app and requested permission for something - photo library or location etc. you MUST write out a sentence of what you’ll use it for which is shown to the user.

Why not the same for Mac apps?

How would Apple enforce that?

iOS apps go through the App Store, so proper behavior can be enforced.

The apps people are complaining about here are downloaded from the vendor. Apple is not involved.

If it’s an expected call or they give me a good reason to, I’ll call their listed contact number back.

So far I have not missed out on anything of consequence by refusing to identify myself to someone who initiated contact with me.

Discord can be installed this way as well. It's (imo) a better usage experience than their Electron apps.

Nearly every Electron app is better this way.

I've been ignoring both for literally years.