Hacker News Reader

Allowing users to set which of any possible 2^N subsets of these N types of permission would cause a lot of developer complication and errors, and people complaining about buggy apps, making the android platform "seem" buggy all the time.

Your analysis is off.

View on HN

If an app "wants to do x", where x is a defined do-able thing, then it shouldn't be too complex to say no. It's not like an app wants permission to drown my puppy in the aquarium in the living room; it wants to do things set as do-able in android. I don't see what's so complex about that. Instead of a blanket permission policy where an app fails to work because I didn't install it coz I don't like the permissions it wants, let apps fail because I denied them permissions I didn't deem necessary. An app can simply tell me it won't work unless I allow it to drown my puppy in the living room aquarium, and once I say "leave my puppy alone", it stops working and sulks away. Mind you, I'm not a developer, so I don't know what I'm talking about at a technical level. I just want to be able to say no when a flash light app wants to send sms messages. Or when a flea extermination app wants to drown my puppies.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com