Soon, owners of iPhone and iPad will be able to change a number of default programs.
Against the background of the familiar "closed" iOS - the lack of many functions to configure the system for a specific user - the innovation looks like a breath of fresh air. According to Bloomberg, now Apple is considering various options and will soon decide which of the applications will be affected by the changes. Confidently, we can talk only about the Safari browser and the Mail client.
The question remains the built-in music service Apple Music: perhaps it will be allowed to replace it with Spotify or analogues. In the most optimistic scenario, the default applications can be changed even on the smart Home Pod. According to analysts, such a change in company policy will avoid potential claims from antitrust authorities, and will also facilitate competition.
Now about four dozen applications are built into iOS, a significant part of which cannot be replaced or removed. Presumably, the option to change the default programs will become available in the fourteenth version of the operating system from Apple. Her announcement will occur in July 2020.
Ways to replace embedded applications existed before, but they either violated Apple's user agreement (the so-called "jailbreak"), or were not fully functional. Now, the processing of all web links may become possible not through Safari, but, for example, Chrome or Firefox. This also applies to e-mail - now, even if a third-party application provides more functionality than the built-in, you cannot make it so that when you click on an e-mail address it opens, not Apple Mail.