When it comes to Windows Vista, the amount of complaints from users, even die-hard Windows users are huge. In fact some have even left the platform for something better.
Vista tested customers with its steep hardware requirements, poor performance, misleading Vista-capable stickers, lack of driver support, problems with graphic card support, its ridiculous amount of different versions, and with its high price. One particular thing that drives users crazy however, is the User Account Control (UAC) that is included in Windows Vista.
The UAC nags users for even the simplest operations such as going to device manager, emptying the recycle bin, or installing/uninstalling an application. Apple even made a commercial poking fun of this ridiculous feature. Or was this a bug? Well according to Microsoft it is a feature. One that was born to annoy users! Yes you read that right. So says the guy who designed it anyway, David Cross.
Mr. Cross, the Microsoft product manager responsible for bringing the UAC to Windows Vista, gave the "real reason" for UAC at the RSA 2008 conference in San Francisco yesterday. "The reason we put UAC into the platform was to annoy users. I'm serious," remarked Cross proudly.
Let's give Microsoft and Mr. Cross a big applause, they have succeeded in a big way, annoying many Vista users. Now that is progress. Wouldn't you say?
Cross claimed Microsoft added the UAC to stop users from wreaking havoc with their systems and to stop software makers from making applications that delved too far into the Windows subsystem. Like emptying the trash? Uninstalling some useless crapware? What constitutes "havoc?" I though just installing Vista was a lot of "havoc" myself.
"We needed to change the ecosystem, and we needed a heavy hammer to do it," Cross added. Sledge, I would say. Cross went on to say that although UAC may be seen as an annoyance to some, but its lasting implications are far more beneficial to Vista users. REALLY? Sure he is right... many have bought Macs!
"Most users, on a daily basis, actually have zero UAC prompts," he added. Probably because like many Vista users, they have disabled the annoying thing. Not so says Microsoft. According to Cross, citing "internal" research, "88% of Vista users have UAC enabled and 66% of Windows sessions do not encounter UAC prompts." My own experience with Windows Vista seems to differ with Mr. Cross' findings.
Even by Mr. Cross' numbers one-third of the 88% of users that have not figured out how to turn the UAC off are still getting annoyed on a "daily" basis. The other 12% were annoyed enough to figure out how to get some relief. What about the other 44% of the "sessions." The way I figure that is over one third of all Windows Vista users being annoyed! Maybe Microsoft can shoot for 100% next time? I think they can do it, really. Maybe Mr. Cross should consider a career change... like into politics.
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. Mark Twain from Chapters from My Autobiography
This gives you the idea that these guys have no clue what a great user experience is. Hey, I guess if this was their goal, they have been highly successful. So successful in fact huge numbers of people forced to use Windows went back to XP!