Ahhh, I love it when a prediction comes together.

I've been saying all along that UAC had little to do with the user or the administrator. It was designed to bring software companies around towards the end of writing better code. Turns out my prediction was actually right on the money.

I read this today on huliq.com:

Thursday at RSA 2008, David Cross, a product unit manager at Microsoft who was part of the team that developed UAC, admitted it was designed to annoy. But the reason wasn't just so Microsoft could get its jollies. It was designed to annoy users and ISVs into changing their behavior.

Microsoft wanted to get end users from running as administrators, but also to force ISVs to stop building apps that require administrative privileges to install and run.

"The reason we put UAC into the platform was to annoy users. I'm serious," said Cross. "We needed to change the ecosystem, and we needed a heavy hammer to do it."

Reading between the lines here (which is why I emboldened the clause), Microsoft designed UAC to force users to be annoyed. An annoyed user base would then force application vendors to stop writing code that drives the prompts. Code that doesn't drive prompts is better and more securely written. And, in the end, everyone wins out.

So, if you've felt annoyed, disturbed, and all around pained by UAC, don't fret. You never were the target. You were just the means to an end. (Now, I wonder if I don't feel a bit used... Kidding!)

Full article at: http://www.huliq.com/56682/microsoft-says-vista-user-account-control-designed-annoy