Click “View in Mac App Store” since apparently I’m not doing that yet, but wait!

Tell my browser that it’s okay to do what I just told it to do.

We’re launched into the Mac App Store app, so we need to click the grey on grey “Updates” button / tab / thing…

And click “Update all” or just “Update”.

Sign into my Apple account for some reason.

Oh we need to quit the app. Command-Tab…

Quit the app.

Back to the Mac App Store app again.

It’s updated and I can launch it again.

Ten only marginally confusing steps!

At least they got the gradients, drop shadows, rounded corners and noisy backgrounds right.

The approach taken by Magnolia (who only support OpenID logins these days) and IDSelector (which is supposed to make OpenID usable) is allow users to log in with any of their existing accounts that offer OpenID (Yahoo, Livejournal, AOL, etc). The thinking behind this is that users don’t have to remember a new username and password this way. This thinking is backwards. Users already remember their usernames and passwords. Web browsers remember passwords and people use consistent usernames and password patterns across sites. Both software and humans have adapted to this problem. People haven’t adapted to remembering which account they used to sign into a site.

If I sign up for Magnolia using one of the accounts I have (of the 7 external account types they offer, I have 5) what happens in 2 weeks when my cookie expires and I need to log in again? Even though I might use the same password across all of those accounts there isn’t an easy way for me to remember which account I chose to use to log in. Fundamentally, this approach to OpenID doesn’t give users less things to remember, but more.

I think a better approach is for site to allow either local logins or OpenID identities. When offering OpenID logins it’s important that sites help educate users about the value of OpenID rather than hiding it.