[dilap]

I'm a user/dev on the iOS side, and you're definitely right that apps need to be coded to specifically handle cases where they don't get permissions, but...

...this stuff is critical! Give the user the control, let them break the apps that are over-using permissions, and let the apps update to fix.

You can do this in a pretty intuitive, nice way too -- include a flag in apps that says they've been updated to handle partial permissions correctly, and then if an app that hasn't been updated crashes w/ reduced permissions, throw up a dialog explaining that (1) the devs need to update the app (2) if the app not crashing is critical for the moment, the user should lift the permissions restrictions.

Arguments for "simplicity" seem unconvincing to me -- you want to avoid non-essential complexity to achieve simplicity, but this stuff is important to all users.