Comment by zxcvasd

>Operating systems are supposed to get in the way of things like this

debbie from accounting will say "darn thing wont let me do my job", and get frustrated from all of the prompts and approvals she doesnt understand. she is just going to click yes on every single prompt, not reading it. no meaningful security increase occurs.

debbies boss is going to get annoyed that debbies productivity has fallen 15% because she doesnt understand what her computer is asking for and she is having to stop what she is doing to hit some stupid prompt every 10 minutes. no meaningful security increase occurs.

tier 1 tech support will quit their jobs because now they arent just resetting hundreds of passwords each day, they have to listen to people yelling at them about their computer prompting for permissions every 10 minutes. "just hit yes whenever it shows up", they say. no meaningful security increase occurs.

neckbeard mcneckbeard on HN will screech "mIcRoSlOp thinks they know how to secure my computer better than me!! screeeeeee walled garden screeeeeeeeee if i bought it i should be able to do anything to it". mr. mcneckbeard is very vocal and causing all sorts of bad publicity. they hack some workarounds or change the settings so that they dont get prompted every 10 minutes. no meaningful security increase occurs. (side note: i ~mostly~ agree with mr mcneckbeard)

if security is not convenient, people will work around it, and you'll end up with even worse security because everything will be done in the shadows.

security an extreme balancing act. if the friction is too high, it will end up lowering security, not increasing it.

>Backwards compatibility is not more important than this

in more situations than you probably think, backwards compatibility is literally the most important thing.