Deleting Apple’s App Store

Hey y’all. Apple will soon allow some iPhone users to delete built-in apps such as Messages, Photos and even the App Store itself. But first [View in browser]( [Bloomberg]( [by Austin Carr]( Hey y’all. Apple will soon allow some iPhone users to delete built-in apps such as Messages, Photos and even the App Store itself. But first... Three things you need to know today: • Apple CFO Luca Maestri will step down and [hand off to his top deputy]( • Sony is hiking the PS5’s price in Japan [by 19% due to volatile costs]( • Temu owner PDD suffered a [$55 billion stock crash after sales missed]( Decisions, decisions Last week, Apple Inc. [announced]( a coming software update that will enable iPhone and iPad users in the European Union to alter many of its default services — and delete a slew of Apple apps that previously couldn’t be wiped out. Some of those apps have long been [core to Apple’s mobile products]( including the iPhone’s native web browser, camera tool, image library, software marketplace and text messenger. 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. Some view the deletion options as a big and necessary step toward increasing control of our devices and reminding Apple of the “I” in iPhone. The idea of being able to get rid of certain Apple apps may sound trivial, but critics of the world’s most valuable company contend users ought to have more ownership over the iPhones they, well, own. Right now, Apple’s permissions for deleting its in-house software are a mess. These days, iPhones come with a trove of Apple-built apps that, to me at least, feel more and more like bloatware: Keynote, Health, Home, Books, Pages, Numbers, iMovie, GarageBand, the iTunes Store, the Apple Store, Journal, Freeform and Tips, among others. I rarely if ever use any of them, and although they can all thankfully be deleted, I usually end up lazily storing them in a junk folder. Then there are Apple apps that can’t be removed or can only sort of be semi-removed. For example, you can neither delete Apple’s Messages app nor replace it with a third-party default like WeChat. While you can change your default web browser to Firefox, you cannot uninstall Apple’s homegrown Safari. And though you have the ability to delete Apple Maps, tapping a link to a street address will simply route you back to Apple’s App Store to redownload its navigation program instead of, say, automatically opening Google Maps or another provider’s service that’s installed on your phone. Confusing, right? 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. Take Apple’s Siri. You can disable Siri, but you cannot delete it nor switch the default to Amazon.com Inc.’s Alexa or Alphabet Inc.’s Google Assistant. Is this because Siri is too integrated with the iPhone’s OS to allow for a third-party alternative? Or does Apple engineer its OS so that no alternative can be as integrated as Siri? Apple rivals have long argued such [preloaded services hinder their ability to compete](. Which is why the EU, through its [Digital Markets Act]( aimed at reining in the power of tech companies designated as platform “gatekeepers,” is forcing Big Tech players like Apple to open up their closed ecosystems. Apple will soon provide a centralized section of its settings menu for EU users to see and outsource defaults, offering them the option of completely replacing services Apple has counted as OS-level functionality. Eventually, Apple will even let EU users change the default app they use for dialing phone numbers. 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?     Apple will inevitably add easy ways to restore original settings, but the EU’s hope, of course, is that lots of developers will rush to fill the void, creating default-quality apps for fundamental iPhone features that could be listed in [novel software marketplaces taking on Apple’s App Store](. For those who don’t reside in the EU, perhaps Apple will eventually allow us to delete unwanted default services too. Until then, our only other option is to keep them in a junk folder.—[Austin Carr](mailto:acarr54@bloomberg.net) The big story The rapid rise of chipmaker Nvidia has minted many new millionaires among its employees. Despite [their lucrative stock grants]( the grueling work environment hasn’t let many of them enjoy much of what money can buy. One to watch [Brian Ruder, a partner at Permira, is interviewed on Bloomberg Television about the global investment firm’s views on tech.]( Get fully charged Apollo and Blackrock are helping two [Amazon aggregators merge](. IBM is shutting down a hardware [research center in China](. Mark Zuckerberg says the White House pressured Facebook to take down [content relating to the pandemic in 2021.]( The arrest of Telegram founder Pavel Durov in France complicates efforts to take the [messaging app public](. Durov is a United Arab Emirates citizen, and the UAE has asked French officials [for access to the detained founder](. Apple has scheduled an event to unveil the iPhone 16 [on Sept. 9](. More from Bloomberg Bloomberg Tech: Humanity has always relied on technology to drive growth. 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