Status quo and inertia. Smartphones had it from the beginning. On Windows there was a struggle just to make default user accounts non-administrator. Personal software for Windows has for the most part adapted to UAC. There's plenty of legacy enterprise software that requires installation with local administrator privileges, domain controller privileges, remote desktop access, no firewall, etc.

I'd love permissions for desktop apps too, but it's not as big a deal because on a desktop I have root access and can monitor what applications are doing myself. I can see which files or hardware is being accessed and when. I can see what network traffic is being sent and to where. I have full control over what applications are installed and what they are allowed to do. I can even fully sandbox apps or run them in VMs.

The phone in my pocket isn't mine, I paid for it, but it belongs to Google, and they make changes to it all the time without my permission and without giving any indication to me that something was changed on my device. Google prevents me from being able to see what the apps on it are doing, and prevents me from changing how they run, or from monitoring all in/outbound communication.

Google's shitty permissions system is such a big deal for mobile because it's literally all we have "protecting" us, and that isn't much. Naturally that leaves us with zero protection from Google itself. but that's the price we pay for having a mobile device that gives us more freedom than Apple ever would.

> where any application can to everything.

Sandboxing has existed for ages and recently a lot of effort is being invested into making it mainstream on desktop Linux.

That’s sort of like saying seatbelts shouldn’t be required in cars because you don’t need one on a motorcycle.

Depending on the scope of "everything", Windows may pop up a dialog box asking for permission, and Linux will return error to the application.

I believe most modern operating systems will not just grant blanket permissions to every application, except maybe single user systems like BeOS.

Flatpak, Windows/Microsoft Store both address this, if I understood correctly.

It's just that innovation on the desktop side died years ago.