This is not a particularly new direction for Apple. I just bought a Mac Studio and set it up today. Latest and greatest non-beta (Ventura 13.4.1). I'm not even trying to do anything particularly adventurous, just install a basic suite of applications and get to the point where I can use my machine. I have been besieged by dialogs, popups, and notifications asking me to give a program access to a file or removable disk or my downloads folder, or "informing" me that a setting has been changed, or that something will run on startup, or most intrusively, in half a dozen cases, preventing a program from working until I open the security preferences and find the "Allow" button.
At one point, after rebooting my computer
- a required step in the 10-minute process of updating the firmware for my fresh out of the box Apple monitor - I got a dialog that said "The application 1Password is not open anymore" (exactly like https://us.v-cdn.net/5020219/uploads/editor/w1/apqiiyi6lwer....). Clicking the help button opened the classic Apple help panel that grinds your computer to a halt and, in this case, displayed a blank white window. I spent a few seconds trying to puzzle this one out, ending on an Apple discussion forum (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252590137) with the again-classic mode for those forums where derision and insults are provided in lieu of assistance.
I fell in love with the "it just works" and "an actually usable GUI plus Unix under the hood" and "they actually sweat the small stuff" aspects of the Mac experience that drew a lot of us to the platform in the early days of OS X. Over time, the shine has worn off and many patches have tarnished or even rusted through. The user-annoyance-factor difference between modern Windows and macOS is very slight.
At one point, after rebooting my computer - a required step in the 10-minute process of updating the firmware for my fresh out of the box Apple monitor - I got a dialog that said "The application 1Password is not open anymore" (exactly like https://us.v-cdn.net/5020219/uploads/editor/w1/apqiiyi6lwer....). Clicking the help button opened the classic Apple help panel that grinds your computer to a halt and, in this case, displayed a blank white window. I spent a few seconds trying to puzzle this one out, ending on an Apple discussion forum (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252590137) with the again-classic mode for those forums where derision and insults are provided in lieu of assistance.
I fell in love with the "it just works" and "an actually usable GUI plus Unix under the hood" and "they actually sweat the small stuff" aspects of the Mac experience that drew a lot of us to the platform in the early days of OS X. Over time, the shine has worn off and many patches have tarnished or even rusted through. The user-annoyance-factor difference between modern Windows and macOS is very slight.