@the invisible one,
You're entitled to your opinion. They aren't everyone's.
The assumption your making about not being able to opt out of the firewall is just that,
an assumption. If you don't like the firewall, you have choices.
I find it works verywell. Not all of us are looking for complications.
Sometimes it's nice when something just works and does what it's supposed to do.
Not complications, but control.
I undestand that for many people simplicity is more important than a full control.
But there could be a simple / advanced mode split so that every users can get the level of control they need.
Technically, it's exactly what Windows Firewall is: by default it just does its job, but every user can go into the detailed settings and have the huge flexibility in adding or editing the rules.
By the way, I've seen reports that the new simplified firewall didn't stop some newly downloaded porgrams from accessing internet.
And since there's no way to manually add programs just in case, it would mean that there's no guarantee that it would stop every theoretically malicious program in time.
I'm not sure about it deserving that much trust to auto-detect applications, since it seems unreliable.
There needs to be a manual way to add rules, too. Also, editing or deleting existing rules are the basic abilities of almost any decent firewall, so why over-simplify that? I don't understand it. But oh well.
