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 t

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.