Photo Permissions on iOS ⇥ subtraction.com

Khoi Vinh, on the poorly-worded iOS photo permissions dialog box:

From a technical perspective, this dialog box makes sense, because the sensitive information at question isn’t the photos but the location data. Nevertheless, it’s a very confusing way to ask the question, because most users don’t think of their photos as being anything more than just that — photos. But this dialog appears to regard photos as containers of location data, and emphasizes that characteristic more than any other.

I can’t count the number of times friends have asked me why an app on their iPhone needs location access just to deal with photos. This box needs to communicate its access to two intertwined parts of your phone, but only one is desired.