2024 It will be remembered at Apple as a year full of changes.s. We don’t know if anyone internally will call this catastrophic for the interests and ideas that the company has traditionally had, given that there are several historical changes that it has already had to face in Europe. And now, a few more.
In March, the Digital Markets Act, better known as DMA for its acronym in English, came into force on the old continent. It is a law that forced Apple to make radical changes such as allowing alternative app stores to the App Store, facilitating the choice of the default browser or opening the NFC chip of the iPhone. Well, soon new changes already confirmed will be added by Apple itself through a statement on its developer website.
All the changes Apple will have to apply to iPhones
Although Apple started rolling out iOS 17.4 changes to accommodate DMA, we soon learned that Europe wasn’t compliant. They wanted more, and among the requests were things like changing the default Photos app, something that was never possible on the iPhone.
Well, you will soon be able to do that and much more. In short, these are the changes that Apple will apply in iOS 18 and what he officially confirmed in his aforementioned statement:
- App Store: In addition to continuing to allow third-party stores and allowing them to be chosen as default, which has been happening since March, the user can, if they wish, remove the App Store from their iPhone.
- Photos: The native Apple application that has changed in iOS 18 will no longer be an essential pillar on the iPhone if the user considers it as such, since it can also be deleted and any other application can be chosen as default, being here Google Photos one of the most solid alternatives and that has already been present on iOS for years.
- Phone: Unlike Android, Apple has historically not allowed any application to enter iOS to make phone calls through voice coverage. Yes, through the Internet with options such as WhatsApp, Telegram and many others. However, now this will not only allow applications of this type to exist, but it will also allow them to be the default ones and the user to delete this native “Phone” application.
- Default messages: While it is true that currently we can ask Siri to send messages through apps other than “Messages”, an even bigger change will occur that will make it even easier to choose other default apps for sending and receiving SMS and RCS messages. standard that the company will adopt soon. As with “Phone”, until now other apps could not be configured, while on Android this was allowed years ago, with Facebook Messenger being one of the messaging apps that already allowed it (others like WhatsApp or Telegram did not allow it). Of course, “Messages” can also be deleted.
To manage all this, Apple to add space for default apps in iOS settings. Of course, they don’t dare to set dates for when these changes will arrive. It should be in the spring of 2025, which will give developers time to adapt their applications if they wish and Apple’s own engineers time to implement everything correctly in the system and avoid problems that could arise, such as the App Store being removed and then having no way to reinstall it.
It should be emphasized that These measures will only affect the European UnionApple is embroiled in legal battles with territories such as the United States and Japan, which are demanding that they implement identical measures, even though they currently have no legal imposition that forces them to do so as is the case in the old continent.
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