What happens when EU grandmas delete Photos, the App Store, or even the Phone app from their iPhones?
Apple is preparing to grant iPhone users the option to delete pre-installed apps like Photos, the App Store, and even the Phone app. These apps have traditionally been fundamental components of the iPhone’s ecosystem, encompassing essential features such as web browsing, photography, image management, app distribution, communication, and messaging. Bu, what happens when some technically challenged users delete Photos, Messages, or the App Store from their iPhones?
Austin Carr for Bloomberg News:
The changes are part of Apple’s compliance efforts with recent EU regulations intended to enhance developer competition and user choice. But they also threaten a spate of alarmed calls from technophobic parents who accidentally delete the Photos app and have no clue how to access their cherished pics of their grandkids.
Historically, it made sense for platform makers to limit what services could and could not be removed from an operating system. Since personal computers became mainstream, some applications have been deemed so fundamental that deleting them would only cripple the user experience. Consider, for instance, that you cannot delete the Trash or Recycling Bin on a Mac or Windows PC, respectively.
In the smartphone era, however, these kinds of preinstalled defaults have expanded to a string of service categories that blurred the lines between what’s fundamental to the OS and what’s just a convenient feature to have on the iPhone out of the box.
The larger question is whether forcing Apple to let users delete its default offerings is a step too far. Sure, perhaps a sizable portion of EU consumers will want (and know how) to set Instagram as their default selfie taker and WhatsApp as their default calling service, while erasing Apple’s native Camera and Phone apps. But it seems likely that a decent number of users will at some point inadvertently delete an app for which they have no substitute. What will happen if you try to save a photo without having Apple’s Photos app or a third-party replacement installed? Better yet, how will you download either of them if you deleted the App Store?
MacDailyNews Take: Is the EU going to pay for the coming massive increase in support calls from iPhone users in the EU? Of course not.
The nine most terrifying words in the English language are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” – Ronald Reagan
That said, as we wrote in December 2022:
Those who want safety, security, and privacy will stick to Apple’s App Store, but a single point of control is always a danger, especially when it comes to capricious censorship (see: pre-Musk Twitter, Apple’s App Store in China, etc.).
iPhone and iPad users must, like Mac users, have the ability to install third-party apps; even if they never do, for it will keep Apple honest. The ability to ban an app loses all power when it’s simply available in another App Store.
See also:
• Apple pulls Threads, WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal from App Store in China after CCP order – April 19, 2024
• Apple pulls Pray.com app from App Store in China – February 22, 2024
• Apple pulls dozens of generative AI apps from App Store in China ahead of CCP speech crackdown – August 2, 2023
• Apple pulls Parler from the App Store – January 9, 2021
• Apple pulls pandemic simulation game Plague Inc. from App Store in China – February 27, 2020
• Apple pulls 25,000 apps from China App Store after coming under fire from state-run media – August 19, 2018
• Apple removes New York Times apps from App Store in China at behest of Chinese government – January 4, 2017
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My elderly father-in-law managed somehow to turn on parental controls on his phone, ban himself from using safari (which caused it to disappear on his iPhone and Mac), forget his password and forget he had done anything (if he ever knew in the first place). It was a nightmare to figure out.
This sort of problem will be much easier to