In general, this type of sandbox is a Good Thing. I would love to live in a world where the default environment for any program is a very limited sandbox that can only interact with the outside world via standardized UI elements. That is, outside a data store specific to the application, it can only access files via the standard dialogs, and so forth.

The potential for malware distribution would be significantly reduced in such a world, because yes, there will always be stupid users, but you cannot blame all the stupidity on the user.

Even I as a power user would like to try out little programs that I find on the internet - and that includes small games and screensavers, which are cliche carriers of malware. Yet I simply cannot safely try them out without an exorbitant amount of work. Having a proper sandbox environment as de facto standard outside of web browsers would be awesome.

That said, it absolutely sucks that Apple combines an idea that is a Good Thing in principle with idiotic policies - if it is indeed true what the article claims.