You’re definitely not alone if you believe that Windows Vista was not one of Microsoft’s better attempts at a new operating system. People are quick to criticize the corporate giant for making decisions that aren’t particularly bright (in their respective opinions). However, there may have actually been more thought put into Vista than anyone previously realized.
Could Windows Vista actually have been a brilliant attempt at paving a better road for Windows 7? A recent statement from a Microsoft employee indicates that could be the case.
One of the chief complaints when the OS launched was the debut of the User Account Control (UAC) pop-up boxes that reared their ugly heads every time a program was opened. You know the ones. They incessantly asked if you were absolutely sure that you wanted to run that program you just clicked to open.
UAC pop-ups irritated enough users to create a surge of technical support calls, not only to Microsoft, but to the manufacturers of the programs that users were trying to open. It appears now that Microsoft actually intended for users to get upset and call tech support lines to complain about the UAC pop-ups.
"The purpose of UAC was to move applications away from using administrative privileges. Its job was to spank programs that used administrator that don't need to,” explained Crispin Cowan, a Microsoft senior program manager for the Windows core security team, at the Usenix Security Symposium this week in Washington DC. “[It caused a] massive decimation of the population of ill-behaved [Windows] programs. The number of programs asking for admin rights dropped precipitously."
The “spankings” from Microsoft must have worked. Many software developers have rewritten their programs to no longer require full administrative privileges to run. Estimates by Microsoft claim that Windows applications requiring administrative access have dropped from about 900,000 to 180,000.
The move increases security for users since constantly running Windows with full administrative privileges leaves computers much more vulnerable to viruses, malware and other attacks.
Windows 7, Cowen claims, is now actually more secure than Unix in many aspects, including network access protection, memory address randomization, and data execution prevention.
So was Windows Vista actually a bonehead mistake or a good idea by Microsoft? Was it right for them to intentionally annoy users as a tool for provoking developers to change software? As a former tech support agent and a Windows user, I have some mixed feeling about it. I’m happy that Windows is, supposedly, much more secure now. However, increased support call volume can be a big strain on company budgets, especially for some of the smaller software houses.
What do you think?
