Get a Mac - Vista Vs Mac - Security - New Mac Add
Why Hacker News recommends it
Cited, often ironically, in macOS security threads as Apple's mockery of permission prompts that macOS later adopted itself.
What it is
A short Apple Get a Mac ad that mocks Windows Vista's constant security pop-up prompts.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2022 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Cites GekkePrutser · 2022-06 · on “Apple’s macOS Ventura – New Security Changes”
PS: Why the 0 points? :) They even made fun of Vista's popups at that time: [this video] Apple at that time really didn't care as much about security as they do now, it was before the fappening, before wannacry etc. They were more obscure as an OS so there was not as much malware. Security was not as much on the radar as it is now.
Cites codetrotter · 2023-07 · on “Apple says it'll remove iMessage and FaceTime in UK rather than break encryption”
> Apple didn't give two stones about security until it became a marketing/selling point as a counterpoint to the big G That’s not true. Apple was position itself as being better at security than Microsoft long before Google was selling devices to people. For example: [this video]
Cites latexr · 2025-10 · on “What happened to Apple's legendary attention to detail?”
> I wonder if anyone else here is old enough to remember the "I'm a Mac", "And I'm a PC" ads. Those ads ran from 2006 to 2009. That’s between 16 and 19 years ago. How young do you imagine the typical HN commenter is? > There was one that was about all the annoying security pop-ups Windows (used to?) have. Those have been relentlessly mocked on the Mac for years. I remember a point where several articles were written making that exact comparison. People have been calling it “macOS Vista” since before Apple Silicon was a thing. > WIW, it starts here: [LINK] A bit better quality: [this video]
Critical wkat4242 · 2023-04 · on “New macOS malware steals info, including a user's entire Keychain database”
> No auth, no checks, just full access via the `security` command. Indeed, that security command was definitely a misnomer. However these days it's not as easy, you get a pop-up for every app that wants to access the keychain. The bigger problem though is that Apple resorts to pop-ups way too much. Installing a new Mac with my work stuff I get 30 of them. This causes fatigue and totally fails to solve the problem. In fact it does the exact same thing that Apple blamed Vista for in their Mac vs PC ad. In fact macOS is worse now than Vista ever was. [this video]
Critical sureIy · 2025-05 · on “Can you trust that permission pop-up on macOS?”
Technically you're right. From an end-user standpoint, it's irrelevant. Apple's mock vista ad applies just as well to Ventura: they're all annoying and a security theater if the user is just told to input admin password into any random popup. [this video]