by Jason Snell
‘This should remind you of Windows Vista’
A little bit more on the impending security changes in Mojave, from SuperDuper developer Dave Nanian:
Many more advanced Mac users employ AppleScript or Automator to automate complicated or repetitive tasks. Behind the scenes, many applications use Apple Events—which underlay AppleScript—to ask other applications, or parts of the system, to perform tasks for which they are designed….
A really simple example is Xcode. There’s a command in Xcode’s File menu to Show in Finder. When you choose that command, Xcode sends an Apple Event that asks Finder to open the folder where the file is, and to select that file. Pretty basic, and that type of thing has been in Mac applications since well before OS X.
In Beta 8 of Mojave, that action is considered unsafe. When selected, the system alarmingly prompts that “”Xcode” would like to control the application “Finder”.” and asks the user if they want to allow it….
This should remind you of one thing: Windows Vista. Back when Microsoft released Vista, they added a whole bunch of security prompts that proved to be one of worst ideas Microsoft ever had. And it didn’t work. It annoyed users so much, and caused such a huge backlash that they backed off the approach, and got smarter about their prompting in later releases.
Perhaps Apple’s marketing team needs to talk to engineering?
This is a user-experience disaster waiting to happen.