Asking who to blame is simplistic and unproductive, the right question is what to do. As a user, obviously that involves things like updating your understanding of the network stack and the many different places config is stored. I was commenting from a UI designer’s perspective, because I am one and I find that more interesting.

I think Linux for consumers has been historically quite bad at this, and Apple has at least recently also been bad at it. “You’re holding it wrong” is the same mistake.

Safari of course get 'local network' access automatically, with no permission asked of the user. Special treatment for Apple's own apps of course.

My Chromebook has so few settings. Just the bare minimum of control panels and switches to get things running, and so few preferences to set and tweak and fiddle all day with. It was really the #1 reason I chose Chromebook over a Windows notebook at my last purchase.

I was just so relieved to be done with the endless riding-herd on my system like a Windows or Linux admin. I don't run Apple, no, but I can't imagine it is any less complex. My Android too suffers from so many bewildering settings, and most of those are the per-app tweaks that we simply can't keep up with.

On ChromeOS I can be certain that day by day, week by week, I won't need to drop to a shell, open up preferences, or tweak a bunch of settings just desperately trying to get something else working. And when I set up a new system, there won't be that daunting, arduous setup (albeit ChromeOS settings are not stashed in a Google account yet...)

It is much like my apartment. It pains me to read homeowners going over their endless woes of DIY and self-maintenance, and how much it costs to call in a guy to fix stuff; even my parents do this. A good landlord simply keeps everything working for me. Something breaks, I call it in, it gets fixed and we carry on. And no endless tweaking, installing, landscaping, gardening, fixing stuff around the house.

In my youth I tinkered endlessly with computers. I loved breaking them and repairing them. I learned all the internals and acted as professional sysadmin plenty of times. But in my old age and retirement, I just want a system that works, and that won't screw with me. The "Just Works" trophy has been passed from Apple to ChromeOS.

Clearly not, as it took me weeks to figure out. I don't think macOS informs the application that it's being restricted, so Firefox can't really tell me that somethings up. Now I get that macOS can really do that either, otherwise users would be spammed with "This application tried accessing the network", but there should be some feedback mechanism that informs the user that something is probably wrong. Maybe there is and I've haven't found it.