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> I can install any keyboard I want as long as it's just a skin on their keyboard.

As an iOS app dev with a hobby project iOS keyboard, this is false. Third party iOS keyboards have just as much control over the keyboard UI and how each key (if it even has keys — your “keyboard” can be literally anything) interacts with text as a full fledged app does. In fact there is no way to “skin” the standard keyboard, but I wish there were because building a decent touch keyboard is actually quite difficult and that’d reduce the workload quite a lot.

I'm extremely interested in this; how come none of the keyboards I've tried depart from the same layout as Apple? Is it strict adherence to guidelines rather than technical restriction then?

To wit, some of the features that same-named apps/keyboards give me on android but not on iPhone include "hold key for alternative character" or button to "force" numpad. As well all keyboards I've tried have same layout and sizing as the original one.

I assumed it was imposed on them in some way I guess?

I don't think there's much, if anything, in the way of App Store guidelines for keyboards except that they do things with the text field the user currently has highlighted.

For instance the app Fantastical comes with a "keyboard" that inputs dates that are open on your calendar[0] and there exist a few rather nonstandard keyboards like Typewise[1].

Absence of features common on Android boards I would guess comes down to those patterns not being familiar to (and thus, not desired by) iOS users or in some cases software patents (there have been a few cases of keyboard devs receiving cease and desist notices from patent holders for using some UI pattern).

[0]: https://flexibits.com/img/help/fantastical-ios/en/f3-opening... [1]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/typewise-custom-keyboard/id147...

I have MessageEase installed as a keyboard.

https://www.exideas.com/ME/index.php

Somewhat different from the original keyboard layout.

(The paucity of alternatives is probably down to patents and licensing.)

yet, 20% of times, apple loads their own keyboard instead of my default GBoard :)

This is most likely due to developers of certain apps/inputs and not iOS/Apple themselves, there is a simple line of code to do this and from what I've noticed some overly-secure-wannabe-apps force system keyboard for certain inputs.

Yes, developers can disable third party keyboards throughout their entire app with an application delegate method[0], and when secureTextEntry[1] is enabled on UITextField the system automatically disables third party keyboards on both that text field as well as any immediately adjacent text field (likely for username+password combos).

The idea is that because keyboards can connect to the internet (with user permission), there's potential for data theft. It may also be possible to exfiltrate data from a keyboard extension by saving the data to an app container shared by the host app, which the host app can then send out with its network access.

Devs who don't know how or care to properly accommodate the variable height of third-party keyboards may use the app-wide opt-out to eliminate bugs relating to that, though I haven't personally encountered this.

[0]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uiapplicatio... [1]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uitextinputt...

For many years the keyboards were only skins, and for many years after that they would periodically lose their default status and revert to the built in keyboard.

Now it seems that the keyboards randomly hang / crash and don't come up when requested on the first try.

Apple goes out of their way to screw with third party competitors.

Apple doesn't make it easy, but they don't make it impossible either, and at this point it's on the ecosystem to show Apple they want more of this by embracing what they have. So, sure, map links tend to open Apple Maps by default, but they can offer the user the choice to use other mapping apps, which they can check for by seeing if the OS will respond to their open url scheme. Harder? Sure. Impossible? Nope.

And for what it's worth, open a directions link from Google some time - for me, it opens Google Maps, which I do have installed, but don't prefer using. I choose Apple Maps because I'd rather have Watch notifications while I drive, but Google doesn't offer me that choice.

> because I'd rather have Watch notifications while I drive

Off topic, but you're not actually looking at your watch while you drive right?

If you're navigating with a watch on, it'll notify you of upcoming turns (either through vibrations or by making a turn signal-like noise) without ducking/pausing your music.

Uses different haptics for left and right turns as well.

And, the taps on your wrist are unique depending on which direction you need to turn, so you can theoretically navigate via the wrist-taps alone.

This is wonderful for when you're on a motorcycle going somewhere new. Absolute game changer!

No I am not. The Watch taps my wrist as I drive with different patterns for left or right. If I can't tell which it's indicating, I can quickly look at my infotainment screen and see the map. But I am not driving while looking at my Watch, no. That would be very dangerous.

I’d personally like the choice to be enforced by the OS. I’m sick of Google’s popup for opening links in gmail. It confuses my partner into thinking she has the link open in her regular safari, but the option to actually do that is the only one with no icon. On top of that they’re really trying to railroad people into using chrome, and she’s accidentally hit that option a few times. I wish the justice department would treat that as anti-competitive.

You sound like a person who never even tried. Open Settings > Safari > Default Browser App, and select the app you want. It's really that easy.

I suppose you aren't aware that they are all the same browser because apple doesn't allow competing browser engines

The person above complaining about links defaulting to open in Safari was obviously talking about the app and not the rendering engine

They are the same, but Firefox on my iPad syncs with my real firefox on: linux, windows and android. I can send tabs to and from it, sync passwords etc. What rendering engine is used is completely irrelevant to me most of the time.

Is this true for Maps and most critically Voice Assistants?

How do I get Siri to navigate using Google Maps? How do I replace Siri with a different voice assistant?

You can't for either of those questions.

Nevermind that changing the browser doesn't actually change jack because Apple doesn't allow competition in the browser engine space.

All in all, it is just hard for me to take seriously an opinion saying that Apple allows for unrestrained competition on its devices and Microsoft is the big bad in this space. Historically, maybe true - but not even close to true now imo.

You can actually ask Siri to navigate with Google Maps by appending "using Google Maps" to a request. So for example, "navigate home using Google Maps".

However, clicking an address in a message and being told to install Apple Maps is super aggravating and I'm not sure if there's a way around that...

> You can actually ask Siri to navigate with Google Maps by appending "using Google Maps" to a request. So for example, "navigate home using Google Maps".

Yeah, and its easy to open the link from Outlook and Teams in Chrome - just copy the link & paste into the chrome URL bar.

> How do I get Siri to navigate using Google Maps? .... You can't

> You can actually ask Siri to navigate with Google Maps by appending "using Google Maps" to a request. So for example, "navigate home using Google Maps".

Has the quoted user edited their comment?

It reads differently now.

iOS 15.7.5, there is no such setting. Searching settings for "Default Browser" doesn't come up with anything.

Oh yeah, I forgot that the default browser app, should be under the settings for a different browser. Putting that shit under the Safari settings is deceptive and hides it while keeping it in plain site.

You can also do it from the settings of whatever browser you want. It exists under Settings > Chrome, and Settings > Firefox, but only if you have those browser installed. The option is always under Settings > Safari, though.

I've done a fair bit of trying over the years; based on your comment I retried today I still cannot find it under Settings -> Safari -> Default Browser App.

To be fair though, I did find it on my wife's iPhone, though under Chrome (she does not have it under Safari (or General either, where I would've expected it)). Still don't have it anywhere on my iPhone. I'll try to see if that's because she's ahead of me on OS updates or some other reason.

Thx!

If your phone is a corporate device, they may have set the default browser via MDM. Check Settings > General > VPN & Device Management.

There is literally no setting like that in path you've given, I just checked on personal 13 Pro with iOS 16.4.1(a)

Yes, but Apple offers a neat well maintained garden that is the greatest thing as long as everything you need is there, and you don't eat any apples.

MS looks at it and thinks their frat party mansion (3 bedroom duplex) can do the same.

Apple gets away with it because that what their target audience want. MS target audience doesn't want it. If I wanted a walled garden - I would use Apple, they clearly know how to maintain it.

Actually I don't get how Apple always gets away with the sh*t they are doing.

All Smartphones on this planet use the same USB-C charging port except iPhones. And as far as I remember, the European Union requires the manufacturers by law to use USB-C, because before the law every phone came with a different power adapter.

Next example, OS and browsers: Every Operating System has to offer the user the choice of which browser they want to use. Except for Apple, they offer a choice of which UI you want to use, but on iOS the browser engine is always Safari (which kills competition hard on iOS devices).

No, I am not a big fan of that Microsoft move, because I think they should respect the users browser choice. But I am even less a fan of Apple doing things nobody else is allowed (for good reason).

> All Smartphones on this planet use the same USB-C charging port except iPhones. And as far as I remember, the European Union requires the manufacturers by law to use USB-C, because before the law every phone came with a different power adapter.

The law you're talking about here specified that the charger itself must have a standard USB-C port. Apple gets away with it because 1. they don't even bundle a charger anymore, and 2. they ship a cable that allows the phone to be connected to a USB-C charger (Lightning to USB-C cable).

The new law that takes effect some time in 2024 for smartphones (amongst other devices) stipulates that the port on the smart device must be USB-C. Under this new law, essentially if a device is large enough then the port must be USB-C.

> Next example, OS and browsers: Every Operating System has to offer the user the choice of which browser they want to use. Except for Apple, they offer a choice of which UI you want to use, but on iOS the browser engine is always Safari (which kills competition hard on iOS devices).

Another new EU law (the Digital Markets Act) takes aim at this specific issue actually.

I get where you're coming from, and yeah sure one could argue that giants like Apple, Google, Microsoft should do better, but in the end they are corporations who will do what is best for their shareholders, as such I am not in the least surprised over actions they take like the ones discussed in your comment and the article that started this discussion.

I think it's great that governmental regulation is finally coming to set the game rules for things like how general purpose operating systems must allow device owners the ability to install their own software (including real actual browsers with their own engines and everything), how communication apps must support cross-network communication upon request, and to standardise how we charge our smart devices.

Thanks for the details.

For me it shows what kind of a company Apple is. Even companies like Sony (who install rootkits on your devices without your consent), comply with the spirit of the charging adapter law. But Apple tries to find a loophole, just to push their own agenda, at whatever cost for society.

But as you said, the other large corporations probably do it in some way too.

One could argue that the spirit of the law is an aim to reduce e-waste, and changing iPhones to USB-C will render literally billions of Lightning to USB-A/C cables useless within a few years. But there's obviously the argument that the existence of a need for those cables is in itself a source of e-waste production...

I swing both ways honestly, I love many engineering aspects of the Lightning port, and at the same time I recognise that having only USB-C to care about would obviously simplify my life a bit, even if I think for the purpose of a mobile phone it is an inferior port.

Uhm, I had pixel phone is the first Pixel. Once it started using wireless charging, I only use usb-c in three scenarios: I'm traveling and using a powerbank, I'm in a car and want to use Android Auto (for some reason my car has wireless Car Play, but not AA), or I'm on a couch and my phone is low on battery (never happened when I iPhone tho). For this reason, I travel with cables that have adapters for lightning. Annoying, but not the end of the world.

I realistically don't care what port is on my phone, but my wife's phone has USB-C and I have 9000 and 1 usbc cables at home.

> Every Operating System has to offer the user the choice of which browser they want to use. Except for Apple, they offer a choice of which UI you want to use, but on iOS the browser engine is always Safari (which kills competition hard on iOS devices).

This is due to security imposed on App Store apps: can't do JIT, and you can't have a reasonable JavaScript engine today without it. Frankly, I'm not concerned with what engine browser uses as long as everything synced.

I have plenty of annoyances with Apple, but what people usually bring up are from people just looking for reasons to hate on Apple for no reason.

Actually, I prefer wireless charging as well (started with my Samsung S3 around 2014), in part because I can use the same charger for Apple as well as for Samsung, but also because they have no wearout and I don't like cables. However, the point is, that all manufacturers had their own adapters in the past (pre-2007) and all but Apple switched to Micro USB and later to USB-C (because the law demands it). So if Apple would also have switched to USB-C we wouldn't have the discussion.

> I'm not concerned with what engine browser uses

Just to give one example from the top of my head: For years (5+), Apple did not implement a proper Push-API for Safari. All other major browsers had it, but because on iOS all browsers are just Safari, there was no way to have it on iOS, which is a pretty big market share. Push-API sound like some marketing stuff, but in reality it is pretty fundamental to a lot of use-cases like multi-user synchronization, chats, etc. So you might think that you don't care about the rendering engine, but in reality Apple can abuse the browser situation to control the whole JS ecosystem.

So I don't hate Apple for no reason. Instead, I hate them for very specific reasons. They also do good stuff (primarily for their users/customers), but for me the bad far outweighs the good, because it affects everybody who has contact with their customers and not just the people who decided they want to have an Apple device.

There all doing the same shit just in vary levels of degree and focus. If anyone thinks different, they are only fooling themselves.

Apple is the most user-hostile company I have ever seen from a individual freedom centric standpoint, but they are good at hiding it. They think everyone outside of the organization should follow their line of thinking. Apple wants to be the gatekeeper of everything and that doesn't work in a free society. Deep down, I think people want to be free of external influence. Microsoft only cares about maximizing profits and doing whatever it takes to get there. I guess there is no difference between the two except that apple tries to justify there behavior behind a superiority complex.

Email is the most annoying one. There's an old API that some apps use that always uses Mail.app, regardless of what my "default email client" is set to. SUPER annoying as I only have my work email in Mail.app and it's usually for things like bug reports or news article feedback, you know, things I do on my free time which have nothing to do with work.

The bug report ones is especially annoying as those emails are often pre-populated with a bunch of data that isn't so easy to just copy into a new email in a different mail client, like support attachments, etc.

> when I click a link or address

A link to what domain?

For clicking addresses, I kind of get it: the author of the text didn't link it at all, so the OS (or whatever) gets to decide how to enhance the presentation which can include promoting a specific app. Not great, but fine.

For clicking links, it should definitely just use the browser unless an installed app's manifest has the domain registered.

On WINDOWS. On a DESKTOP COMPUTER.

On your phone, the walled garden approach is fine. On a desktop machine in which you control, it is not.

>walled garden

Walled garden is marketing speak. You should not use it.

Fair enough; what is the recommended term that is applicable?

“jail”

Here are some

>Closed ecosystem

>Restricted platform

>Proprietary systems

>Walled Prison/Jail(this has negative bias, but may fit depending on the context)

>Curated platform

I'm sure you can get objective phrases from chatgpt too.