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Comment by acdha | Hacker News Reader

#13 should be even more generic: not just “Set default apps in iOS” but introducing something like the desktop OS X services, Android intents, etc. which would allow an app to start an operation with a type of data (i.e. a URL, an email address, a picture, etc.) and allow the user to send it to an arbitrary app.

You should be able to send a URL to Instapaper or send a picture in Dropbox/Facebook/etc. without making either one your default "browser", "photo viewer", etc.

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This has been my number 1 request for iOS since the beginning. I'm starting to think it's never going to happen.

Ditto - very odd given that it's both a huge usability improvement and something Apple already had developed. A little time porting the services menu from OS X to a touch equivalent and it'd be done, probably without even needing an API change.

It's a usability improvement for power users but a massive increase in complexity for regular users who comprise the vast majority of the user-base.

I think they should solve the problem, but I don't think the existing solutions are good enough.

Have you ever seen a normal user have to deal with sharing data between two apps which haven't hard-coded support? Most people just give up and think you can't do it. With a little streamlined support – i.e. default email, browser — and some basic UI thought (e.g. remembering the last / most frequent choices, setting per-app defaults, etc.) the current situation would be a lot less painful.

Agreed. With every release my hopes are dwindling.

iOS has support for something called XPC. IIRC, it's how the mail composer, etc is invoked by apps (behind the scenes). I'd be very surprised if the API isn't made public in the next version of iOS, which would help facilitate some of these things - it would at least allow easier app-to-app integration.

More info: http://oleb.net/blog/2012/10/remote-view-controllers-in-ios-...

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