It’s a screenshot (literally, as Android does not have native support
for on-device screenshots) of the screen you get when you install an
application that requires access to certain system components.

Why is this type of screen even necessary? To scare the hell out of
new users? To inform them that their decision may have an adverse
effect on their accounts/storage/etc?

Frankly it reminds me a bit of Windows User Account Control (UAC) —
those annoying popup messages that dim your screen to tell you that a
program will probably MURDER YOU IF IT HAS THE OPPORTUNITY, DO YOU
REALLY WANT IT TO ACCESS YOUR DATA??! (Huge thanks to Dom for that last bit.)

Say what you want about Apple’s closed garden, about how each and
every app is sandboxed* — if that means I don’t get to SUFFER THE
CONSEQUENCES OF INSTALLING A PROGRAM then that’s pretty okay by me.

* note that only apps downloaded from the App Store or on the phone by
default are sandboxed. If you’ve jailbroken your phone and installed
apps that modify core system functionally, while that’s not quite the
same as rooting as your Android handset you are allowing those
jailbreak apps to access parts of the system they normally wouldn’t be
allowed to access. The difference here is jailbreaking is a conscious
step you have to take — Android just lets apps access any part of the
system you’ve allowed them to.

Posted via email from Benny’s randomly-updated Posterous