Apple: Don't Default On Default Apps

It’s about time Apple let us take our preferred apps into our own hands.

- Dan Moren

Since the earliest days of iOS, Apple has kept tight control on its users’ relationship with apps. The very first iPhone, of course, only shipped with a dozen or so preinstalled software programs: you couldn’t add more, you couldn’t delete the ones you had.

Over the years, Apple has loosened those strictures a bit. First you could add new third-party apps. Later, developers were even able to create and sell software that competed with some of those default options. More recently, you’ve even been able to delete some of those built-in apps. (Adios, Stocks!)

But more than a few restrictions have remained nonetheless. Most obviously, the prohibition on installing software from anyplace other than the company’s own

App Store. I don’t take particular issue with that; the prevalence of malware and security breaches these days means you can’t be too careful, and Apple’s approach has proven merit.

That said, there’s still one major place that Apple could stand to relax its rules: letting users choose default apps for tasks like mail, calendaring, and web browsing. And, given a recent anti-competition ruling against rival Google in the European Union for a similar situation, this issue may come to the forefront sooner rather than later.

GOOD FOR USERS

For users, the benefits of choosing default apps is obvious. Right now if you tap a web link in most apps you get taken to Safari, regardless of whether you’d rather use Chrome or Firefox. The same for mail links: if you’d rather compose your messages in Outlook or Gmail, you have to jump through some hoops to make it happen.