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Comment by Delmania | Hacker News Reader

Let's talk about how with iOS you can't change the default web browser, email, or calendar apps? If you remove Mail.app, install something like Airmail, and then click on a mail link, you're prompted to reinstall Mail.app.

I don't like this move by Microsoft, but they called out on shit like this more than other tech companies it seems.

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For comparison, my Pixelbook lets me switch the default browser from Chrome to the Android version of Firefox. Considering that Chrome is basically the operating system itself, that's impressive.

> to the Android version of Firefox

Out of curiousity, how well does that work on a bigger screen like that?

I recently installed the Android version of Firefox on my Essential Phone and find it pretty snappy and nice to use.

It works reasonably well, and will expand to a vageuly-desktop-like look and feel (tabs on top, for example) automatically on tablets (or in this case laptop/tablet hybrids).

It doesn't integrate quite perfectly with ChromeOS, but that's not surprising. Supposedly Pixelbooks have built-in support for running normal Linux apps, so I might end up trying the desktop version of Firefox at some point.

The alternate browsers allowed on iOS are really just wrappers for their engine. You can’t really have an alternate browser in Apple ‘s iOS

Sort of true. You can swap out the network stack (and Chrome does).

One slight pro of it is that at least Chrome doesn't have 80% of mobile traffic as well due to iOS users being unable to switch default browser. I mean, that's the only pro.

Shouldnt we call a spade a spade? If what Microsoft is doing is scummy, then what Apple is doing is scummy as well.

Maybe it has to do with the fact that iOS never gave you that control while Windows is trying to take that control away.

iOS never gave you the control, Windows still gives you the control but wants to influence your decision.

Sure, but things are improving on that front. For example, they used to do the same thing with maps. Recently though they changed it so clicking on a map link asks you which map software you want to open it in.

That’s a solvable problem, if anyone cared enough to solve it. Write a 3rd party browser (yes I realize that it would be a shell over WebKit) and allow the user to choose which app handles third party urls like mailto and maps links.

Chrome for iOS already does something similar but you only get to choose between gmail and the native mail client.

You really do not know how this works on Android, do you?

Yes I do. But we weren't talking about Android.....

This would only solve the problem of clicking mailto: links in one particular app (the custom browser), but it wouldn't help for all the other 999.999 apps that try to openURL a mailto:

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