"It used to be possible for Android apps to access any kind of storage on an android device through the WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission. Writing to the SD card is useful for many different kinds of apps, e.g. file managers or cloud storage synchronization. However, the latest version of Android will no longer allow apps to write anywhere on external storage media, instead apps will only be allowed to access app-specific folders on SD cards. Android Police has an excellent writeup of the changes and the implications for users."
[ED Note: This is bound to irritate power users that rely on their SD cards for additional device storage.]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by joshuajon on Wednesday February 19 2014, @02:44PM
From my perspective it's because the main issue is there's no granularity to the control. There are apps that NEED to have full access to the SD card (ahem, file manager?) in order to function. This will make them effectively useless.
Yes, file permissions are good, no - this is not the right way to achieve them.