I never understood why the permissions are so generic. When I see what permissions apps require, I shiver. It would be much better if it just demanded the developers to describe what they need the permissions for. What would be even better is that I could choose to enable some permissions on a case-by-case basis. That way I'd feel more secure and less frightened.

Android has some big app security issues to address, and they just... seem to be moving in the opposite direction. I've seen this update and it simply doesn't make sense to me. It didn't make the permissions more clear, it made me more scared of what might be hiding underneath all that.

I don't remember ever stopping an app installation when I saw suspicious permissions—I just assumed they were used for something, and I guess that's what 90% of the people would do. It would make all of them more secure if they could choose a small "ask me every time" option next to permissions that don't seem quite right, but may be legit.

Or overhaul the whole API. It's really a mess at times. Not just security. I have a beef with the horrible ways to address ridiculous hardware and software fragmentation, right from the ways you specify design and looks to using API features not available everywhere, or falling back to reasonable defaults if there isn't a hardware component you need.

I haven't developed for iOS, but I imagine it's much better than Android as a platform to develop on.