He has a point. Microsoft’s architecture has pretty much invited and required developers to write their applications to need elevated privileges for many years, and that’s what triggers UAC. It’s going to take developers a while to get used to the non-Microsoft way of doing things, which is writing your applications with only the privileges they need. Maybe the second generation of written-for-Vista apps will finally cut the number of UAC prompts down.
So, the plethora of UAC’s isn’t necessarily Vista’s fault, it’s mostly Microsoft’s fault pre-Vista.
You're right, I grant.
But Vista was SUPPOSED to have fixed that. The original specs for Longhorn called for major rewrite, even a codebase change. One of the things I recall hearing about was the much-anticipated, "Users will be able to run apps without admin priv", which we all took to mean, "Vista will REQUIRE that the applications NOT require admin priv, except to install."
Instead, we have this debacle.
And worse, things like WindowsLive OneCare, which (I say this as a mostly-content user) requires that training the firewall be done with admin priv (correct) BUT it doesn't give the user a way to elevate themselves during the blocked connection -- they just see that the app failed for no apparent reason. The next time an admin LOGS IN, then up come the dialogs to allow the connection.
STUPID, STUPID, STUPID. And all at the feet of Microsoft, by design.
So while the apps developers are surely not innocent, Microsoft had the opportunity to fix this in Vista and other recent MS software, and has refused to do so.
I think they've been infiltrated by Apple moles. It's the only explanation for how often they screw up Windows. ;-)