Every now and again – Apple demands my attention with a red dot on the System Preferences in the dock
When they do – I launch the preferences app, and my eye is immediately drawn to the icon at the top right on the ‘Notifications’ icon
Of course – that red dot isn’t a notification dot. That’s an icon of a notification dot – not an actual notification dot
I’m supposed to ignore that one, and look for the second one on the ‘software update’ icon
That’s just bad UI
Update – Catalina
Apple have fixed this as of Mac OS 10.15