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This could be like early Windows firewalls all over again; popping up windows every time you try to do something, until you just disable it.

by vdm 15y ago

psawaya 15y ago
Maybe. I think the idea of "blocking" a program makes a lot less sense to the novice user compared to choosing if a program can e-mail you or post on your wall. I agree that they could easily become a nuisance and lead to the user reflexively clicking "accept", though.
- bigiain 15y ago
  Maybe there needs to be a reverse version of this - all of your _friends_ who get spammed by the app writing in your stream ought to be able to vote [] continue receiving updates from this user using foo-app [] block updates from this user's instance of foo-app [] block all automated updates from this user's stream ([] unfriend this clearly unhinged "install every shiney-thing" user) Then any user with more than a certain threshold of blocks would need to get permission from a majority of his social network before being allowed to authorise apps :-)
  - notahacker 15y ago
    You missed "block all updates from any instance of foo-app". My Facebook stream looks so much less cluttered since I blocked Zynga apps.
sshumaker 15y ago
I think the idea would to be ask once when you the app tries to do something that requires a permission, and from then on the app would be granted that permission (unless you revoke it). In practice, this doesn't seem to be a nuisance on iOS.
- SomeCallMeTim 15y ago
  That's because an iOS app can access a LOT more by default than an Android app. Most data access doesn't require permission at all. The only things apps have to ask about on iOS (that I've seen) are push notifications and GPS tracking. Android requires a permission for Internet access, and another for accessing contacts, and another for sending SMS messages, and over a hundred others. I WOULD love to have the option (on Android) of querying a user for a permission after install; the "read system log" permission, for instance, is useful for the 0.1% of cases where there's a crash, but I have to request it for everyone if I want to get complete crash reports (the Google crash reports are useless since I use NDK and the Java stack trace, which is all it sends, doesn't tell me anything). But honestly, with the fine-grained security model on Android, it would be a pain if every complex app had a half dozen permission requests -- and some would have a dozen or more. Frankly that would be what people would complain about if it were true. The iOS model only works because apps are SO open by default on iOS. So I don't think the Android model is a design mistake, but rather a security necessity given that Google doesn't even take a cursory look at an app that's going up in the Market. Apple can at least claim that they've checked out each app to make sure it behaves well, though it seems even then that a few slip through the net and behave badly from time to time.
rhizome 15y ago
Nah, that BlackIce Defender nagwall stuff usually settled into a relatively quiet equilibrium.

This could be like early Windows firewalls all over again; popping up windows every time you try to do something, until you just disable it.

by vdm 15y ago

This could be like early Windows firewalls all over again; popping up windows every time you try to do something, until you just disable it.

psawaya 15y ago

Maybe. I think the idea of "blocking" a program makes a lot less sense to the novice user compared to choosing if a program can e-mail you or post on your wall. I agree that they could easily become a nuisance and lead to the user reflexively clicking "accept", though.

bigiain 15y ago
Maybe there needs to be a reverse version of this - all of your _friends_ who get spammed by the app writing in your stream ought to be able to vote [] continue receiving updates from this user using foo-app [] block updates from this user's instance of foo-app [] block all automated updates from this user's stream ([] unfriend this clearly unhinged "install every shiney-thing" user) Then any user with more than a certain threshold of blocks would need to get permission from a majority of his social network before being allowed to authorise apps :-)
- notahacker 15y ago
  You missed "block all updates from any instance of foo-app". My Facebook stream looks so much less cluttered since I blocked Zynga apps.

sshumaker 15y ago

I think the idea would to be ask once when you the app tries to do something that requires a permission, and from then on the app would be granted that permission (unless you revoke it). In practice, this doesn't seem to be a nuisance on iOS.

SomeCallMeTim 15y ago
That's because an iOS app can access a LOT more by default than an Android app. Most data access doesn't require permission at all. The only things apps have to ask about on iOS (that I've seen) are push notifications and GPS tracking. Android requires a permission for Internet access, and another for accessing contacts, and another for sending SMS messages, and over a hundred others. I WOULD love to have the option (on Android) of querying a user for a permission after install; the "read system log" permission, for instance, is useful for the 0.1% of cases where there's a crash, but I have to request it for everyone if I want to get complete crash reports (the Google crash reports are useless since I use NDK and the Java stack trace, which is all it sends, doesn't tell me anything). But honestly, with the fine-grained security model on Android, it would be a pain if every complex app had a half dozen permission requests -- and some would have a dozen or more. Frankly that would be what people would complain about if it were true. The iOS model only works because apps are SO open by default on iOS. So I don't think the Android model is a design mistake, but rather a security necessity given that Google doesn't even take a cursory look at an app that's going up in the Market. Apple can at least claim that they've checked out each app to make sure it behaves well, though it seems even then that a few slip through the net and behave badly from time to time.

rhizome 15y ago

Nah, that BlackIce Defender nagwall stuff usually settled into a relatively quiet equilibrium.