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You can link apps in iOS too. You can do a simple test: open safari and type fb://feed and it will open the facebook app and go to your wall.

More: http://wiki.akosma.com/IPhone_URL_Schemes#Registering_your_o...

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How does iOS handle multiple apps registering for the same type of URL? In Android, I get a popup asking which app I want to use for this action, and an option to make that the default for future actions. Is there something similar on iOS?

You get a popup asking which app to use. I don't think there is a "save as default" because that would necessitate a way to manage those defaults, which would expose the underlying mechanism to users, something Apple is generally averse to doing.

The reality is that it doesn't get used a whole lot. Browsers, Dropbox, and other apps of that nature tend to provide the data while miscellaneous apps consume it.

Sure, you can open other apps and target applications with different link types, but you can't interleave functionality with nearly as much ease as in Android.

Any time you click a web link from an email, or a YouTube link from Safari you see this: the current app is backgrounded and there's no simple way for the two workflows to interact. This is a major difference between the two OS's and one advantage for Android, imo.

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