As I use my iPhone and Macbook, I cannot help but notice how often I’m prompted for permissions for everything. Most times this is a good thing. I don’t want an app to have my location or access to my photo album for everything without my say so. Other times, however, it can be more annoying. I don’t like having to grant permission whenever I want to download a file from a website, or when I simply want to copy and paste something. I know there’s valid cases for those, but it gets a little cumbersome.
It seems that Apple operating systems are becoming more like the Windows OS that they made fun of in the “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” commercials, where Windows was lampooned for the constant “Deny, Allow” prompts.
Again, I’m not saying these prompts are never necessary, and most of the time they are. But I think Apple at some point needs to learn there is a balance between security and usability. Like what we learned with anti-virus programs, more is not always more. I think Apple will need to focus on smarter security, not simply more brute force security. Apple will need to learn the difference between a simple copy/paste vs. some other app snooping on me. And maybe they need to make it easier for a user to turn off the constant permission asking when I simply want to download a file. Maybe they can remind me about bluetooth settings when I wonder why my phone is not syncing with my Garmin watch. They somehow need to figure out security against automated actions vs intentional actions by the user.
What concerns me though, is, does Apple know that this is even a balance to strike? My fear is that Apple is so focused on privacy and security that usability is now a distant second concern. Maybe things won’t get that bad. Maybe the trend of needing more and more permissions has reached its peak, or maybe the trend will continue where more and more are asked of us as users.
But even if privacy should be the sole concern, does this make people enthusiastic for the future of computing? A future where copy/paste and downloading files becomes more of a chore? The iPhone became a nice alternative to a world with desktops spending considerable CPU resources fighting viruses. Is there a similar answer in a world where so much effort has to be spent in making our mobile devices private?