It is an 'issue' to the consumer;
Of course. However, this issue is transient, as it is based on application
compatibility - applications will BECOME compatible in the future.
It's a chicken and egg scenario. Apps break if you change the OS. You don't
want to change the OS until apps work with it, yet apps won't change unless
people are using the OS. Someone has to make the first move, and there will
be a lag time for the other party to catch up.
unless Microsoft wants to play a blame game
and pass the buck to poor app programming by their partners...oh wait,
"Partner" means that they wouldnt throw them under the bus...so that isnt
the
way to go.
There IS fault in the programming community for not writing applications
that follow basic guidelines on how to work with the OS (including XP!) as a
standard user. These are the programs that fail the hardest on Vista (the
programs that always assume the user is an admin, which is AS MUCH AN
INVALID ASSUMTION in XP, even though it was generally true).
It is ALSO MS's fault for not previously enforcing their programming
requirements in the OS and making it difficult for software developers to
implement the best practices that they recommended.
And it is also the USER'S fault for not being more proactive about security.
But there's no sense playing the blame game - the fact is, the way it WAS
BEFORE in XP wasn't working, reagrdless of whose fault it was; so something
had to be done, and that something is UAC. UAC is a way to get the majority
of people in the world running in a standard user environment
(admin-on-demand) and yet be able to easily put on an 'admin' cap in order
to do admin related tasks, in a way that is intuitively understandable by
the average user.
The game is this: If you want all of the programs that have ever been made
to work on a new OS, you *cant change the OS*, since ANY change will break
SOME program. The bigger the changes, the bigger the breakage.
UAC strives heavily to work around faulty applications; however, there will
be some collateral damage, and that is unavoidable. The road to the future
is paved over non-compliant and non-supported applications and hardware.
As i recall, Gates himself touts their strong partner relationships as one
of their greatest strengths. (see Vista prelaunch in New York video)
Have you installed Adobe Reader 8 to your Vista machine? you get the admin
prompt, but it still fails. You have to start it yourself <run as
administartor> and then the app gets the right permissions. so yes it
prompts, but doesnt do the "handoff" very well. Seen this with other apps
as
well (ATI catalyst).
This is completely ADOBE'S FAULT. Not Vista's.
And for the record, I installed Adobe Reader 8 without a hitch. And as an
aside, I LOVE what they've done with it! It's the first acrobat/reader that
has come out of Adobe in 10 years that I haven't felt embarassed to install.
Lets talk UAC for a second, Great Idea, poor execution. why have a setting
that you see in the GUI and set, yet in the registry that setting is
nullified; whereas to all appearances, you think you set it correctly?
Don't know what you mean here - can you give a specific example?
now
you start troubleshooting "i am an admin on my pc, why is it acting like i
am
not? Admin in Vista means you are allowed to enter admin credentials so
the
process can continue. and again, that pass off isnt executed well.
This "pass of" is executed perfectly. Programs launched via a prompt run
with the full rights of the user. Programs that don't prompt do not run as
an admin.
This can be frustrating for users - primarily due to LEGACY PROGRAMS that
don't prompt. All Vista-compatible programs will prompt when necessary, so
this will be less and less of a problem as the future rolls on by.
have you tried to share a folder from a Vista machine to an XP machine?
You
set a share permission for the user, they can authenticate, but the
security
on the folder is set so that users (which you are even if you set your
account as admin) are denied control. So thinking along the lines of
'least
privelege' you are not allowed FULL perms like you set in the Share
permissions. And XP is not getting the 'admin prompt' to credential your
activity. You arent sharing like you thougt. I am working on this one now.
In this regard, the sharing in VISTA works exactly like it did in XP.
"Share" permissions have never overriden the security permission on files -
the least of both permissions always has taken effect. This has been true
since the early days of Windows NT.
Also, Vista does not allow you to use your admin power remotely by default;
so, if you are trying to access a file that administrators can only access,
you will be denied, even if authenticated as an admin; you can change this -
see my website for more info.
The Vista product was not ready to ship ((EX: change location of Documents
<properties of the folder/location tab> in your Users Profile folder, and
it
works....but that location change should also change the junction that
still
points to C:/users. Or you install an app that references it, and it gets
created again, and now you have 2 Documents folders. took me a 2 seconds
to
logically realize that))
This is unrelated to UAC
. However, I agree that this feature is sorely
lacking in functionality. Vista definately has rough edges, primarily in
functionality that MS doesn't expect most users to use and where the bugs
aren't very severe.
I am not bahsing it, what works is awesome, but overall, users are going
to
get a bad experience (and wouldnt you agree that most of the features and
marketing are aimed at home users; which are definitely not skilled enough
to
deal with this.
I agree that users using poorly compatible applications will not get a great
experience. However, this ALWAYS happens when a new OS is released; it is
not a "problem" with Vista specifically, but a problem that is always
experienced when things change, regardless of OS, and in fact, is a general
problem that can be applied to pretty much any scenario.
I disagree that Vista's features are aimed soley at home users. There are
many, many features that are cool for business that aren't immediately
visible. (Reworked network stack increases throughput in
high-bandwith-high-latency connections; Increased number of group policy
configurations available; Awesome new features in task scheduling, event
logs, and performance monitoring; Many more command-line administrative
utilities; Completely new, completely customizable image-based deployment
capabilities; just to name a few).
Basically what you are saying is that UAC is different than the way Windows
XP does security. And I would agree with you 100%. However, we seem to
disagree on whether this is a good thing. Is change always bad? Are you
saying that UAC is bad *because it doesn't work like XP did*? If that's not
what you are saying, then what exactly would you have UAC do that it doesn't
do now?
Would be happy to continue this discussion...if i am off the mark i would
be
happy to learn how it is really working so i can teach/train/support/use
the
product. If this is close to the truth, then lets get it out there so
peeps
can be aware and correct their issues.
This is a favorite topic of mine
--
- JB
Microsoft MVP - Windows Shell/User
Windows Vista Support Faq
http://www.jimmah.com/vista/
