What does a red dot mean Apple?

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