Apple Weighs Letting Users Switch Default iPhone Apps to Rivals
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Wow
> ... Apple’s closed system to prohibit users from setting third-party apps as defaults was questioned last year during a hearing of a U.S. House of Representatives antitrust panel. Lawmakers pressed the issue of whether iPhone users can make non-Apple apps their defaults in categories including web browsers, maps, email and music.
> ... Last year, Stockholm-based Spotify submitted an antitrust complaint to the European Union, saying Apple squeezes rival services by imposing a 30% cut for subscriptions made via the App Store. Apple responded that Spotify wants the benefits of the App Store without paying for them. As part of its complaint, Spotify singled out the inability to run on the HomePod and become the default music player in Siri, Apple’s voice-activated digital assistant.
It's good that Apple wants to avoid the fines and bad publicity and is willing to change its practices. But unless they change their philosophy and business model they will never be truly open and we customers will continue to be at their mercy and get screwed.
> ... The company currently pre-installs 38 default apps on iPhones and iPads, Bloomberg News has reported, including the Safari web browser, Maps, Messages and Mail.
Imagine that - Apple PRE-INSTALLS 38 DEFAULT app. We are used to complaining about computer and mobile manufactures that bundle apps on Windows and Android platforms but we accept this as a de-facto thing with Apple without a whimper. And this really, really really needs to change.
A developer should be able to use whatever rendering engine s/he wants to create a browser on ios and user should have the freedom to install apps from outside the app store.
Developers and users, who are both paying Apple, should be fighting for their consumer rights more aggressively rather than just giving in ...
And it shouldn't stop with just Apple, but every other corporate in the tech sector who are abusing their position due to lax regulation in this industry.
Apple provided the API a while back to allow third party audio streaming and apps exist today e.g. Overcast which take advantage of it.
And WebKit is open source just like Firefox is. How is one open and not the other ?
Why not? When we can install extensions for Mobile Safari, if other browsers are permitted with their own rendering engine, why would browser extensions for them be not allowed?
> And WebKit is open source just like Firefox is. How is one open and not the other?
You can like open source webkit. I can like open source Firefox. Is it fair that only you can enjoy webkit on ios and I can't enjoy Firefox on ios? That's the issue - the deliberate limitation of choice.
I'd like to support Firefox so that we do not end up in a browser (mono|duo)culture, like the IE6 days. For this reason I use Firefox on iOS even though it's skinned WebKit.
My impression is that Mozilla has generally had the well-being of netizens front and centre, social controversies involving Eich aside.
It also removes some statistics skews I would guess.
My bookmarks stay synced between all three browsers on my computer and phone.
I'm relying on Xbrowsersync for now but it's still not the optimal "everything everywhere" solution, as it does not support syncing to Safari (and from reading their website, its developer appears to be ideologically opposed to implementing it).
Even on the Mac it is ridiculous that for decades the Unix “file” command (installed on the Mac!!) knows more about files than the graphical OSes do when opening them. Why is it so hard to recognize text as something openable and previewable without a specific file extension, for instance?
So yes, please improve options for handling links but let’s not pretend they aren’t still years behind where they should be.
I'm kind of surprised Apple has gotten away with this for so long.
And the issue wasn't just the bundling but that they used that market share to strong arm OEMs into making IE the default browser and preventing Netscape deals. Monopolies can be legal and tolerated provided you aren't going out of your way to extinguish what's left of the competition.
As a matter of fact in the US you do not strictly need greater than a 50% market share to even be considered a monopoly. You just need to have market control.However Apple’s iPhone is hovering just around 50% in the United States.
Google Search has a market share of 92%. iPhone has a market share of 11%.
Imagine all the chat/calling apps that will try to replace your default Phone/messaging/etc. apps and the amount of spam/inconsistent behaviour this will bring.
Hopefully Apple will make sure only top notch apps can replace the default apps.
choosing apple (or Microsoft, or Google, ...) as the arbiters of what defaults exist on a platform, and making them unchangeable, is anticompetitive. strangely, we're no longer in a climate where calling out companies on this behavior is appealing anymore. Microsoft got much worse treatment when it did this decades ago. apple has been given a pass on this forever.
Pages will render blank, scrolling shows content but then gets wiped blank. Once the app loses its mind it needs to be force quit before it works again. I’ll try a screen recording sometime. I can’t be the only one seeing this.
Cost of software patch for inconsequential issue?
HMMMMMMM