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Comment by bendiksolheim | Hacker News Reader

Do you have a source for this? I can’t remember Apple disallowing an app because Apple itself provides a similar app. I checked the default apps quickly on my phone, and can find several competitors for all of them. If you are talking about the "apps" Messages.app or Phone.app then I guess you might be right if we define "not providing a public API" the same as "disallowing on the App Store".

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The policy no longer applies but for a long time, from the start of the app store, you weren't allowed to make apps that "duplicated the functionality" of the built in apps.

Notably Google made their own maps app and Apple banned it:

http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-screws-google-over-lati...

But it also applied to iTunes competitors:

https://www.engadget.com/2008/09/12/app-disqualified-from-ap...

That's a good reason why fines (like what Google is getting) should be huge.

It's deliberate to kill competition while not being in a dominant position, and then when in a dominant position, continue the trajectory by defining defaults.

The Apple apps are dominant partially because of the abusive rules the app store had earlier. It's quite clear from the fact that in any area where Apple did not have a default app, they are unable to match what the free market offers.

You can’t choose what happens is the default on an iPhone. If I want to use Gmail to open mailto links I cannot. If I want to use chrome to open web links by default, I cannot.

On Android you can pick whatever apps you want as the default.

I might have misunderstood what theBobBob meant with "default apps" completely, but that was not how I understood it at all. As far as I understand, he talks about disallowing apps on the App Store, so this would be a completely different point (to which I agree, setting a different browser would be nice).

They don’t allow apps that have similar functionality as well. On my phone, but when AirPods came out they pulled an app that helped you find your AirPods from the store because they included their own version of the same tool in an update

I was unaware of this exact case, thanks for the information. I agree that pulling apps such as this is very unfortunate.

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