Don’t respond so juvenile. I dislike Facebook like many here as they are hypocritical if you look at their own business practices, but they do have a point here. Opening up “default apps” selectively to just the Browser and Mail, but not music, maps, messaging, etc, only accentuates the fact Apple’s behavior is anti competitive.
They have become so huge that an App Store is not just an App Store anymore (imagine you could only rent a house from one of the two private companies in the world), and the ability to not allow users to select their default apps system wide is putting Apple’s financial interests over consumer choice and free market values.
In fact, Apple has built in this “default app” feature just to prepare for legal antitrust actions against them, so that when they are finally forced to change, they just do a quick iOS update to include other app types. This is terrible behavior from Apple’s part and legal action is way overdue.
What a crock of shit.
First off, Apple can’t let Messenger be the “default” messaging App. The proper APIs to allow that don’t even exist in iOS (access to SMS or your phone). They exist in Android, and are a clusterfuck for malware and other misbehaving Apps. Allowing an App the ability to read all your messages AND send/receive messages? Because that’s what it would take to allow Messenger or any other App be the default.
This isn’t the same as having an App be the default for a certain type of content (a URL opens in your favorite browser, a mailto: link opens in your favorite email client, or a JPEG opens in your favorite image viewer). Making a messaging App the default requires hooks into the OS and significant effort.
Your claim Apple has “built in this “default app feature just to prepare for legal antitrust actions” is pure horseshit. Apple has no such thing as a “built-in” way to handle default Apps nor do they have a master switch they can flip to allow any App be a default. It was easy for Apple to allow browsers and email clients be the defaults since iOS already has a way to open content in other Apps through the share sheet. It was easy for them to convert that ability into allowing them to be default Apps.
Your enire post shows you don’t have a clue how iOS operates.
Likely we'll never know, but it would be interesting to know what % of people end up changing their default mail & browser.
I'd guess it's pretty low.
I think being able to designate Outlook as the default email app will be very popular with businesses who have internal company wide Microsoft 365 and (managed) iPhone deployments. I'd even go as far as to say that providing a more seamless interaction with Office 365 apps like Outlook, Edge, and Teams will only help to improve iPhone and iPad sales to corporate users.
The important point here is that regardless of which browser, email client, or messaging app a company uses, corporate, and concerned, users must always retain the ability to monitor and filter every bit of content that's entering and leaving their IT system and limit/prohibit access to their internal data and information from third parties of any kind. Anything less, in a corporate setting, would be gross negligence. I don't know whether GMail, Facebook Messenger, and other non-Apple applications provide the required level of protection, security, and privacy that corporate users and some concerned individual users demand.
Facebook's whole business model is built on a hollow "trust me" promise that they have shown time and again to be as worthless and lacking integrity as everything else their leader says. The last thing I would ever want Apple to do would be to open themselves up to a Facebook induced failure or infection that compromises the integrity of Apple's platforms. Frankly, I don't even want Apple to provide a way to "opt out" of any of their built-in protections. If you really want to opt out of Apple's walled garden, buy an Android device, exit the garden, end of story. The mere presence of any opt-out code in Apple's code base is a self-destruct trigger waiting to be discovered. And it will be discovered by someone, or leaked by a malcontent insider at some point, guaranteed.
Totally not understanding what FB wants. FB Messages doesn’t have the ability to use SMS. So if I choose FB Messages how would I get a text from some not on FB? If someone messages me from FB Message my FB Message gets the call. It’s not like there’s some universal code that rings up one app. If anyone wanted a default text message app it be the phone companies. They could come up with their own SMS app and demand it be default
It makes sense to be able to configure an alternate default browser or email client, because there are standardized links for opening a new browser (https:) or email (mailto:), done
For messages, not so much. While it could *technically* be possible, there's no common standard and, in any case, it wouldn't work for closed platforms like FB that don't/won't/can't fallback to SMS. Anyone who wants to send/receive FB messages can already do that with the FB apps.
Facebook is already in the App Store so what is the problem. I already have a messaging app which I can trust. I have no interest in Facebook because all they want to do is plaster you all over the internet so I would not want their app on my phone, tablet, TV box or anything else I will own in the future from Apple.
Facebook sucks, FB messenger sucks and it's not better than iMessage. I'd love for Apple to make this possible just for FB to see how few people decide to make Messenger their default.
The problem is cheap companies who use messenger groups for company coms and have to cater for ppl with Android phones. I have this problem. I might add that message is generally a low standard application but has some nice features which generally are poorly executed. Facebook is relying on ease of crossing the android barrier to pull casual apple users into their world and therefore to the open world of their android partners
I agree with the other posts that FB should not be made a default option. The only company of the big IT ones is Apple so I don’t want to be sharing any of my data with any other company.
Comments
First off, Apple can’t let Messenger be the “default” messaging App. The proper APIs to allow that don’t even exist in iOS (access to SMS or your phone). They exist in Android, and are a clusterfuck for malware and other misbehaving Apps. Allowing an App the ability to read all your messages AND send/receive messages? Because that’s what it would take to allow Messenger or any other App be the default.
This isn’t the same as having an App be the default for a certain type of content (a URL opens in your favorite browser, a mailto: link opens in your favorite email client, or a JPEG opens in your favorite image viewer). Making a messaging App the default requires hooks into the OS and significant effort.
Your claim Apple has “built in this “default app feature just to prepare for legal antitrust actions” is pure horseshit. Apple has no such thing as a “built-in” way to handle default Apps nor do they have a master switch they can flip to allow any App be a default. It was easy for Apple to allow browsers and email clients be the defaults since iOS already has a way to open content in other Apps through the share sheet. It was easy for them to convert that ability into allowing them to be default Apps.
Your enire post shows you don’t have a clue how iOS operates.
The important point here is that regardless of which browser, email client, or messaging app a company uses, corporate, and concerned, users must always retain the ability to monitor and filter every bit of content that's entering and leaving their IT system and limit/prohibit access to their internal data and information from third parties of any kind. Anything less, in a corporate setting, would be gross negligence. I don't know whether GMail, Facebook Messenger, and other non-Apple applications provide the required level of protection, security, and privacy that corporate users and some concerned individual users demand.
Facebook's whole business model is built on a hollow "trust me" promise that they have shown time and again to be as worthless and lacking integrity as everything else their leader says. The last thing I would ever want Apple to do would be to open themselves up to a Facebook induced failure or infection that compromises the integrity of Apple's platforms. Frankly, I don't even want Apple to provide a way to "opt out" of any of their built-in protections. If you really want to opt out of Apple's walled garden, buy an Android device, exit the garden, end of story. The mere presence of any opt-out code in Apple's code base is a self-destruct trigger waiting to be discovered. And it will be discovered by someone, or leaked by a malcontent insider at some point, guaranteed.
For messages, not so much. While it could *technically* be possible, there's no common standard and, in any case, it wouldn't work for closed platforms like FB that don't/won't/can't fallback to SMS. Anyone who wants to send/receive FB messages can already do that with the FB apps.