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It's a bad onboarding though, full stop, and not very Apple like. For example, I imagine there could be a way to present the user a screen with all apps, and as

It's a bad onboarding though, full stop, and not very Apple like. For example, I imagine there could be a way to present the user a screen with all apps, and ask the user on one screen to check/uncheck any that it would like to receive notifications for. Similarly, for the apps requesting access to various things, if I were Apple, I'd wait a bit and then present the user a list with the apps requesting access, explaining why it's happening, etc. So two simple screens with clear explanations and helpful advice, versus a million baffling popups.

etchalon 7y ago
If you have one window, with checkboxes, the window would need to start with the boxes all unchecked. And users, being users, would then demand a way to check all of the boxes. And then what would the point of the notifications and requests be? If they didn't, people would complain that they had to click all these checkboxes, and then missed one. Or the window wouldn't have room for applications to explain why they needed that access. Or they would, and users would maybe read the first one, but skip others. There is no "better experience" which doesn't sacrifice the point of the prompts.
Someone 7y ago
”I imagine there could be a way to present the user a screen with all apps, and ask the user on one screen to check/uncheck any that it would like to receive notifications for” All 150+ apps (I don’t know how many are installed by default, but I have 277 on my system), many of which the user won’t even know he has installed? (I just found out I have an “Adobe Air Uninstaller” and two “Abobe Air Application Uninstaller”s, something called “Computer.app”, and 11 different Java 8 updates, for example) And no, I don’t think such a dialog would be useful because users could delete applications they “don’t use” from there. The average user simply doesn’t know which applications he doesn’t use. I certainly don’t. I think they could do a bit better, but I don’t think this problem has an easy answer. For example, they could exclude all Apple apps from these questions, but I suspect that would (rightfully) give us “Apple gives its own applications preferential treatment” complaints.
dpkonofa 7y ago
I disagree but only for one major reason: the entire reason this is coming up is because the OP is using an old version of Alfred that wasn't prepped for the new permission settings of Catalina even though there's a fully compatible version that's been released since. The vast majority of users will never, ever get something this obnoxious so it's not a bad on-boarding experience as much as it's a side effect of running old software.
- gowld 7y ago
  Surely many users have at least one piece of software that is a bit old. This Mac notion of "if your software/hardware wasn't purchased this week, it's unsupported" is not a good look.
- ben509 7y ago
  I don't know the numbers, especially as companies have pushed hard to change upgrade habits. But unless they're forced by automatic upgrades, most people wait years to upgrade. Even if they are upgrading because they get new hardware, they run all those migration assistants and such to copy everything over.
  - dpkonofa 7y ago
    I'm sure they do but, as in the case of Alfred, they're notified multiple times that there is a newer version and that their OS may not support all the features of the app and vice versa. You have to explicitly ignore the dialog boxes and install the new OS anyways to get the behavior being demonstrated in the OP.

etchalon 7y ago

If you have one window, with checkboxes, the window would need to start with the boxes all unchecked. And users, being users, would then demand a way to check all of the boxes. And then what would the point of the notifications and requests be? If they didn't, people would complain that they had to click all these checkboxes, and then missed one. Or the window wouldn't have room for applications to explain why they needed that access. Or they would, and users would maybe read the first one, but skip others. There is no "better experience" which doesn't sacrifice the point of the prompts.

Someone 7y ago

”I imagine there could be a way to present the user a screen with all apps, and ask the user on one screen to check/uncheck any that it would like to receive notifications for” All 150+ apps (I don’t know how many are installed by default, but I have 277 on my system), many of which the user won’t even know he has installed? (I just found out I have an “Adobe Air Uninstaller” and two “Abobe Air Application Uninstaller”s, something called “Computer.app”, and 11 different Java 8 updates, for example) And no, I don’t think such a dialog would be useful because users could delete applications they “don’t use” from there. The average user simply doesn’t know which applications he doesn’t use. I certainly don’t. I think they could do a bit better, but I don’t think this problem has an easy answer. For example, they could exclude all Apple apps from these questions, but I suspect that would (rightfully) give us “Apple gives its own applications preferential treatment” complaints.

dpkonofa 7y ago

I disagree but only for one major reason: the entire reason this is coming up is because the OP is using an old version of Alfred that wasn't prepped for the new permission settings of Catalina even though there's a fully compatible version that's been released since. The vast majority of users will never, ever get something this obnoxious so it's not a bad on-boarding experience as much as it's a side effect of running old software.

gowld 7y ago
Surely many users have at least one piece of software that is a bit old. This Mac notion of "if your software/hardware wasn't purchased this week, it's unsupported" is not a good look.
ben509 7y ago
I don't know the numbers, especially as companies have pushed hard to change upgrade habits. But unless they're forced by automatic upgrades, most people wait years to upgrade. Even if they are upgrading because they get new hardware, they run all those migration assistants and such to copy everything over.
- dpkonofa 7y ago
  I'm sure they do but, as in the case of Alfred, they're notified multiple times that there is a newer version and that their OS may not support all the features of the app and vice versa. You have to explicitly ignore the dialog boxes and install the new OS anyways to get the behavior being demonstrated in the OP.