"User account control is a pain-in-the-ass and Forshaw's "ultimate bug bear". It appeared to have been downgraded from a security technology to "'something you just put there to annoy the user'"."
The number of so called security experts that keep saying this, yet none of them actually explain why or what a viable alternative would be. You don't get linux people saying "Oh my God Sudo is a pain in the ass! It's just here to annoy me!". I find UAC supremely useful for making it simple to run a STANDARD account on Windows and not have to change to my admin account every time I want to do some systems admin tasks.
Yes I realise that default UAC settings aren't the most secure, but that's largely come about because of whining like that and "oh there's too many prompts" etc. Microsoft just can't seem to win on this one (though I suppose it's their own fault for the mess in Windows XP that got everyone used to the idea of no UAC prompts when installing their malware).
"though the complete refusal to run some things rather than querying admin credentials (or at least allowing you to do this - some items will completely omit this option) can be annoying."
Just saw this so sorry for the edit, you know who seems most guilty of this? MICROSOFT! I haven't really come across any third party software that refuses to UAC into admin that I can remember, but there's a few things you can't do through MS's own fancy "modern" interface without actually logging in as admin. So yeah I suppose they shoot themselves in the foot with that one.