Vista has problems. Paul doesn’t like it; Apple grabs market share while making fun of it. So what does Microsoft do? Fight back with science!

Microsoft recently conducted its own study where they showed users a new Windows operating system called “Mojave”. Subjects reported that they liked the new OS better than their current one (presumably XP). The catch is that it wasn’t a new operating system, it was Vista.

It reminds me of when the tobacco industry published its own research back in the 50’s. Suspicious? You bet.

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Ever since I first read Vista's UAC security prompt was designed to annoy you at Ars Technica, I've had a chip on my shoulder about it.

User Account Control is easily one of the most hated features of Windows Vista, according to readers. The seemingly endless stream of UAC pop-ups, asking you to confirm this action or that action, just get in the way (and aren't particularly zippy, given the screen redraw)...

At the RSA 2008 confab in San Francisco, Microsoft admitted that UAC was designed, in fact, to annoy. Microsoft's David Cross came out and said so: "The reason we put UAC into the platform was to annoy users. I'm serious," said Cross.

Microsoft's idea here is that they can transfer the burden of not annoying users to developers. This seems almost reasonable when you say it like that, but the reality is this: In order for users to not be constantly frustrated by these pop-ups, developers are forced to jump through hoops to design their software in such a way that privilege elevations aren't needed in the first place. (UAC is basically a lumbering, graphical sudo.)

This means that Microsoft's best attempt to solve the problem of viruses and malware infection for Vista ensures that a) no extant software is cleanly compatible with installation, b) every software company designing for Windows now has to refactor their installers, and c) also, everyone else has to be creative enough to figure out how to do everything they need to do without requiring elevated permissions (good luck, Norton!).

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