Earlier today as I was scrolling through 9to5Mac’s RSS feed, I came across this interesting tidbit about iOS 16. For their upcoming software release, Apple has decided to add three more system apps to the list of default apps that can be removed from the device: Clock, Health, and Find My.
Towards the bottom of the post, Filipe Espósito says the following:
But the explanation for this may be related to the recent antitrust investigations that Apple has been facing. Back in 2020, the European Union raised the possibility of banning tech companies from forcing users to have all their own apps installed. There are also accusations that Apple uses its control over iOS to push its own services.
I don’t want to knock everything that the European Union does because they have done some good things for their citizens, but if Apple truly is allowing these apps to be deleted because of that anti-trust investigations, it feels like it’s going a bit too far.
We all know the reason for the anti-trust investigation is because companies like Spotify claim Apple is gaining an unfair advantage by having Apple Music installed as the default on every iOS device. When it comes to these three apps, however, it’s much harder to find an anti-trust link.
While I know there are other clock apps available on iOS, I can’t say I’ve ever seen major competition in that space, let alone enough to trigger a move like this. As for Health and Find My…while I’m confident there’s other all-encompassing health apps available on the App Store, almost every health app I’ve ever seen on iOS uses Health as the backbone for all its data. As for Find My, the article notes that users won’t be able to find their phone or AirTags without the app installed.
Out of these three apps, the only one I can think of with an actual anti-trust complaint against Apple is Tile, though even that I can’t imagine would be enough to intentionally hamper the ability of your device to that extent.
I absolutely get that some people do want to uninstall Apple apps they don’t use, but I do also wish Apple would include a toggle to disable this functionality. As the person who is IT for all of my family devices, I’ve found several times in the past that my father has deleted stock apps from his phone and didn’t even realize he did so until I went to help him with something and the app was nowhere to be found.
I think in the coming months, and even years, it’s going to be interesting to see what comes of these anti-trust investigations in the EU and elsewhere, with the hope that the spirit of the law won’t get so corrupted and tangled that the usability of the device becomes compromised in the process.
Dan Stransky 