Apple has added more security stuff, which is good. The implementation of it is… not so good. In software design there's a temptation to dump difficult decisions onto the user in the guise of a 'settings page'. With Catalina they've gone for the 'flood of dialog boxes' approach, all telling you something about System Settings with buttons that imply they're going to show you the thing they're on about, but actually don't

Aegir feeling the pain I felt a few weekends ago, installing MacOS Catalina. The implementation of the new security stuff is an atrocious nightmare. I think it's the first time I've ever shouted at a computer in a non-gaming context. The stupid app wants to do a thing - open your settings, then spelunk through a billion menus to make sure you enabled each thing the app wants to do dialogues make me so angry, and the solution is so simple. All they need is an accept all button on the dialogue, and a view all to make it so that you can find everything the app just asked to do. Hopefully it'll be improved in future versions because right now it's an expletive-inducing hellscape and I want no part in it.

Whilst we're at it; just let me install apps. Tell me that it's new, and check that it's something I definitely installed, but don't make me go and find the security options to enable an app I just went to the effort of installing. I don't care if it's an unsigned developer or whatever. I installed it; let me run it.

Number of times the unsigned app alert has been for actual malware that I don't want to run: zero.

12/11/2019