macOS Sequoia adds weekly permission promptfor screenshot, screen recording apps

There's some irony in this for me personally. My most recent major "I quit Apple" rage moment was trying to get Flameshot (which I use routinely on Linux) working on my Macbook, so I could more easily take screenshots, just to share something with a friend, because the built-in screenshot functionality in MacOS is so clunky. Between Gatekeeper and the XCode upgrade train, Mac OS's dogged insistence on not letting me run the software I wanted it to run worked me into a rage and I swear I'll never buy another Mac for casual daily computing again. They've really ruined the OS.

Apple, start your photocopiers and you'll see why 2024 won't be like 2007[1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Account_Control

This is going to be an unpopular opinion. But I really like the old Hardware solution to the WebCam. In order for the Webcam to be activated, it must pass through the LED and showing a green dot. Switching it to software actually make me feel less protected knowing how fragile our software are.

First it was the orange/green dot in the corner of the screen for microphone/webcam (even in full-screen, much to the annoyance of anyone putting something on a projector). Then it was a full menu bar icon, with an added purple one for anytime something was doing screen recording (very annoying if you use software that regularly needs to do this, like Bartender[0] needed to for Bartender Bar and Show for Updates). I seriously hope this can be disabled, or at least is just one pop-up per week that covers all the applications, as otherwise it's going to be very annoying.

[0]: I have since moved to Ice, which has been less buggy.

> I think it shows just how much care and thoughtfulness went into turning up the dial on these nags that the button label incorrectly capitalizes the “to” in “Continue To Allow”. You can say, well, that’s a little thing. But that’s exactly the sort of little thing that almost never shipped from Apple, even in beta, until the last few years.

> Having to click through these confirmation nags every week, for every such utility you use, is not a little thing at all. It’s the sort of thing companies do when decisions like this are made by people looking to cover their asses, not make insanely great products.

I share Gruber's same sentiment. It makes me sad, as a longtime Mac fan, to witness the slow degradation of the platform. The polish, care, and thoughtfulness of earlier versions of OS X was, from my outside perspective, downstream of cultural and leadership conditions that no longer exist at Apple.

I fully expect macOS to continue sliding in quality unless and until some cultural reset happens... which is to say, I'm not holding my breath.

I generally agree that this is annoying but look at the flip side of this:

From a security perspective the average user is probably getting scammed by a whole lot of apps that ask for screen recording permissions once and abuse it.

There’s no way in hell your user interface-blind retired mom or dad is noticing the little screen recording icon.

There are a lot of users who legitimately need to have this reminder because they install all kinds of privacy invading software.

I’m sure that in the future the nag will be adjusted to strike the right balance.

Perhaps it'd be better if these were just weekly, non-intrusive notifications ¹ (instead of prompt dialogs) that said something like "hey, this app can still record your screen, head to Settings to revoke that permission."

¹ Insert your own definition of non-intrusive notification.

Will Apple's own apps issue this weekly permission prompt?

That's going to be fun for remote software assistance apps in the corporate world..

Hopefully this can be avoided if the device is in supervised mode.

I wonder what my personal breaking point is with macOS. Apple already sells chronically underpowered hardware compared to the competition and you have to just be content with the fact that it's attractive hardware, silent, and sips power instead of chugging it like the others.

But Ubuntu is becoming more attractive as time goes on.

> Having to click through these confirmation nags every week, for every such utility you use, is not a little thing at all. It’s the sort of thing companies do when decisions like this are made by people looking to cover their asses, not make insanely great products.

... or alternatively, when agreeing to using such an app is such a huge privacy nightmare that it might just be safer (for the user) to ask the user to opt-in every week, especially if the company which runs the OS is known for promoting a privacy-friendly brand.