Chance Miller, reporting for 9to5Mac:

Apple has announced another set of changes to its App Store and iPhone policies in the European Union. This time around, Apple is expanding default app controls, making additional first-party apps deletable, and updating the browser choice screen.

First, the browser choice screen. From Apple:

By the end of this year, an update to iOS and iPadOS will include the following changes to when the choice screen is displayed:

  • All users with Safari as their default browser, including users who have already seen the choice screen prior to the update, will see the choice screen upon first launch of Safari after installing the update available later this year
  • The choice screen will not be displayed if a user already has a browser other than Safari set as default
  • The choice screen will be shown once per device instead of once per user
  • When migrating to a new device, if (and only if) the user’s previously chosen default browser was Safari, the user will be required to reselect a default browser (i.e. unlike other settings in iOS, the user’s choice of default browser will not be migrated if that choice was Safari)

This is easily the most hostile design ever created for the iOS operating system since its very conception. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything worse and more confusing than this screen. I write about technology for a living and I don’t think even I would know what to do with it if I weren’t tuned into the news, but thanks to the European Union, millions of innocent European users will be faced with it incessantly, even if they’ve already chosen Safari as their browser. This does not level the playing field — it criminalizes choosing Safari. Because Apple doesn’t want to be fined an inordinate amount of money for committing the crime of servicing E.U. customers, it has to make these changes. How anyone can applaud this is truly beyond me.

That isn’t even the worst of it. Yes, it seriously gets worse. From Apple:

Starting in an update later this year, iOS and iPadOS will include the following updates in the EU to default app controls:

  • In a special segment at the top of iOS and iPadOS 18’s new Apps settings, there will be a new Default Apps section in Settings where users can manage their default settings
  • In addition to setting their default browser, mail, app marketplace, and contactless apps, users will be able to set defaults for phone calls, messaging, password managers, keyboards, and call spam filters…
  • The App Store, Messages, Camera, Photos, and Safari apps will be deletable for users in the EU. Only Settings and Phone will not be deletable.

Dylan McDonald had a great quip on the social media website X: “Question, how do you get the App Store back if you delete it?”

I know: the App Store! Wait.

Readers of this blog are undeniably nerds and know that they shouldn’t delete the App Store; they’ll never delete it because that is truly a stupid thing to do. But the overall population who knows what the App Store does and why it’s a bad idea to delete it is quite slim in the context of the world, and so it should be — iOS should be intuitive for everyone to use with minimal instructions. With these unnecessary changes, people will go around deleting core apps part of the iOS interface, then worry about being unable to use their phones as before. Fraudsters just hit the jackpot, too: now they have a whole continent of gullible idiots who can uninstall the App Store and replace it with a scam third-party app marketplace with minimal friction.

And don’t even get me started on being able to delete the Phone app. The iPhone is a telephone, for heaven’s sake. What is anyone supposed to do with it if there’s no Phone app? How is this regulation even acceptable? At this rate, the European Union is going to begin mandating Apple ship Android on iPhones in the future. At some point, there needs to be an end to this madness. Apple needs to begin to say no and start pulling out of the E.U. market if the European Commission, the European Union’s regulatory body, continues to make outlandish demands and threaten Apple with devastating fines. This isn’t just an attack on free market capitalism, it is an attack on the sovereignty of the United States. It’s a trade war. Europe is punishing the No. 1 American corporation for designing products Europeans love.

While Europe is waging its little trade war while over-regulating every industry on the planet — even to the chagrin of its own members — Europeans are caught in the middle, being exposed to terrible scams, non-functional products, and terrible designs. None of this is regulation — it is bullying.