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Comment by tonyb | Hacker News Reader

The first except for Blackberry. Before IOS or Android even existed Blackberry had granular per app permissions.

I don't disagree with your argument though, of the modern mobile OSs Apple moved to towards the per-app model before everyone else. I just find it interesting when Apple or Android gets coverage/credit for a feature that has long existed but was forgotten or ignored.

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Actually, BB10 had an even better feature, you could provide dummy data to wrapped Android applications. So you could fill the Android contact data with an empty contact list and the app would be none-the-wiser. This feature was never advertised.

But noone bought the phones so who cares?

The problem is BB wasn't around by the time smartphones became more than a niche product.

The list of prior work that influenced Apple, or any tech company, is usually far too long to list.

>The list of prior work that influenced Apple, or any tech company, is usually far too long to list.

Agreed, but that doesn't mean we should default to "Apple was the first" simply because we can't wrap our heads around the pre-iPhone days.

I did not know this, thanks for teaching me something new! It goes at least back to BlackBerry OS 4, running on the BlackBerry Pearl, released in 2008 (but likely further back):

> You can set permissions that control how third-party applications on your BlackBerry device interact with the other applications on your device. For example, you ca control whether third-party applications can access data or the Internet, make calls, or use Bluetooth® connections.

https://www.t-mobile.com/support/public-files/images/legacy/...

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