On Android, if a permission isn't granted, then when you try to use it, it throws an error in the app. If you're not expecting that throw, the app will crash. It's not the kind of "throw" that Java forces you to handle; it's more like a null pointer exception, and no, I don't put blanket try/catch blocks on every block of code. That would mean writing code that would almost never have coverage, which is a poor practice itself.
If the OS handles it transparently, then sure, it could work. But as I understand things, that's why the CyanogenMod "feature" of selective permission disabling fails: If I ask whether the Internet has a valid signal, and it unexpectedly throws an error, then my app will either crash or behave in an untested way (depending on whether I'm catching top-level errors and continuing to run anyway). I don't know how the 4.3 feature handles it.
I don't want users to have the ability to disable Internet, though; not if I'm writing an ad-supported app. I don't want to kill the app on devices that simply never connect to the Internet either, so I'd prefer if the OS guaranteed that, IF there's an Internet connection, it will give me full access to it.
Reading from the SD card permissions at least was more subtle. IIRC the File you got back was simply null, no Exception or anything at all. This isn't what you would expect from the API call or documentation.
Perhaps that's the hardest part to test about the Cyanogen-style permissions disabling: that there's no uniform way Android handles a missing permission. Sometimes the API will throw an exception, while other times it returns a null Object.
If the OS handles it transparently, then sure, it could work. But as I understand things, that's why the CyanogenMod "feature" of selective permission disabling fails: If I ask whether the Internet has a valid signal, and it unexpectedly throws an error, then my app will either crash or behave in an untested way (depending on whether I'm catching top-level errors and continuing to run anyway). I don't know how the 4.3 feature handles it.
I don't want users to have the ability to disable Internet, though; not if I'm writing an ad-supported app. I don't want to kill the app on devices that simply never connect to the Internet either, so I'd prefer if the OS guaranteed that, IF there's an Internet connection, it will give me full access to it.