Folks like to cite how capability OSes are a great thing, and I certainly appreciate the concept, and, no, MacOS, is not a capability OS.

However, it feels like one to the User. Having to get constantly prompted to grant permissions they don't even necessarily understand to random programs.

There's been chatter about how system like iOS are not "document based", they're app based. Many apps do not present their data as "files", users don't know where their data resides, just that the app knows and that's their window.

I don't know where an application on MacOS can "save their files" if they don't have "Full Disk Access". I don't know if they get some directory "for free" that they can use much like iOS does.

Then, of course, there's the Apple Document model where data auto saves to Somewhere. You have versioned files you can work with. But until you actually "save" the file to "the disk", its living in some unannounced space. My TextEdit app has dozens of "Untitled-XX" files that are...somewhere.

And its great! There's a peace of just having "stacks of stuff" that you can leave "unmanaged". "Where would you like to save your work?" "Oh, great, cognitive load just exploded as need to think about the minutia of data organization, when, mostly I just "don't want to lose this".

But, the constant prompting is exhausting, to me. Again, I have to "think about it". I need to question everything, when I really just want to Get Stuff Done.

And, in time, we become blind to these prompts. "ok, Ok, OK!! GO ALREADY! JUST WORK!!".

Exhausting.

Sandboxed Mac apps have access to their own container which includes directories like Documents/ and a temporary directory and more where they can save anything just like on iOS.