Yes it is annoying. My point is if you want to be annoying, you should be annoying the user when they visit ANY external links as trusting the link text isn't a practice that should taught/encouraged.

> almost every one who isn't "techy" for lack of a better term won't even bother reading it and just press ok.

That depends on how short and well worded the alert is. However, there is certainly an attention budget that can be used up with pointless / low value alerts (which is why I would assume that Apple did not go this route).