On 3 July 2013 12:38, Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> wrote:

> Older versions of cyanogenmod supported disabling permissions so you can
> restrict what it can do if you don't like the requested permissions. Not in
> recent versions unfortunately. There might be alternative apps in the
> market to do this, haven't checked in ages.

Spineless developers {sigh}. This isn't the first time the CyanogenMod
developers have shied away from greater user control.
http://review.cyanogenmod.com/#change,5677

:-(

To be fair, it is a weakness in the Android permission model.

Basically the app says "I want this privilege and I expect it to be available." meaning app might crash or do weird things if privilege is not available.

Instead it should be "Please can I have this permission?" and Android can say "Yes" or "No" depending on the user's preference, and app has to handle the result in a graceful way (yes, this could mean throwing up an error message and refusing to run).

The idea that everyone will be happy to give an app a every possible privilege it requests just in case they happen to use that feature is a bad one I think.

--
Brian May <brian@microcomaustralia.com.au>