Do you prefer sudo or just to login as root directly?
TBH I don't perceive UAC popups as "something intrusive", they could be better, but they do their work fine: to stop non-tech savvy users from screwing up the PC.
No, they don't save the non-tech savvy users. They click "yes, I want to see the dancing bunnies" every time they see a UAC popup.
They do make it reasonably pleasant to run Windows as a non-admin user though, and not the impossibility that was in XP.
They can't click "yes, I want to see the dancing bunnies" when you are the system administrator ;).