Authenticating with your Apple Watch

So, Apple added new security features to try to make your actions more secure but at the same time a bit more convenient.  If you decide that you want to do something in the Finder that requires additional permissions, they now display a helpful dialog.  Like, just today when I wanted to delete this 32-bit only detritus that got left when I upgraded to Catalina.

Up pops the dialog, waiting for approval...

... and look, there it is, on my wrist.

So, I'll just double-click that side button and...


Hmmm.  Do you think that perhaps Apple didn't consider that people might actually implement "security best practices"? Authenticating the current user doesn't mean you automatically get admin privileges, because people who are being safe don't log on as admin all the time.

Now, I'm not going to argue that "a non-administrator shouldn't be deleting things like this".  That's fine, it's why the regular dialog prompts for a username as well as a password.

I'm pointing out that every time that dialog displays now, my wrist twitches because Apple decided to make the watch beep and vibrate before asking for pointless validation.

And once again, it demonstrates that Apple's QA department and developers must all be logging on as administrators all the time.  That or they don't own Apple watches.

Catalina, Day One, ten minutes in

Everyone says that Apple is the company that polishes its products, it makes them just work. That might have been true in the past but it sure isn't today. Today's Apple keeps churning out garbage that is just getting worse and worse.

This blog is going to collect all the discrepancies I find that show that they seriously can't be doing any usability testing of any of the complicated scenarios they claim to support.

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So, today, I upgraded to Catalina.  Within ten minutes, they piss the bed.

I don't log on as an administrator normally - you know, best security practice and all that.  Clearly, everyone in the Apple QA department does or, you know, they'd have actually proof-read the prompts that are displayed when you aren't an administrator and you try to move all those non-functional 32-bit apps out of your Applications folder.



Seriously?

administrator\U2019s ?

Please don't tell me "dude, that Unicode" - yes, I know and I also know that Unicode escape sequences should not be visible like this.  I'm sure someone somewhere patted themselves on the back about having used a right single quotation mark, instead of nasty old ascii.  But you know what?  It is supposed to be an apostrophe, not a quotation mark.

Sure, it's just one window, but doesn't that make it worse when some get it right?



So, now, I don't trust that the prompt is always coming out of the same "system approved dialog" either.