“A lot of folks including me want the security and safety of a slightly “walled-off garden” as a matter of choice.”

No one is suggesting you lose your choice. Stay in the garden, it’s beautiful and probably safe. Others want the choice to step outside the garden without having to climb a ladder.

They have 90% of my usage. 🙂

1) The “new” app does not work the same way as the previous. This is true, it has a different UI, and is only enforced on users as the default on brand new KitKat phones. I.e. the Nexus 5. In older phones, it’ll ask you which to use (i believe), with SMS still the default.

2) SMS are in fact sent through Google Hangouts. People who send you SMS will show up with an [SMS] tag, which when replying to is still an SMS message. When selecting a contact you can choose to send it over Google Hangouts or SMS; which can be a source of confusion, but it does not mean that SMS messages aren’t sent through hangouts.

3) Maybe not. But as the only time Hangouts is forced on them is a brand new phone with a brand new operating system, well.. it’s to be expected really that their apps will change.

Also I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting the product you use every day and have significant investment in to be better. I use an iPhone despite this failing, but every time my non-preferred app launches it frustrates me, or every time I have to copy and paste an address into Google Maps instead of just clicking it (which would launch Apple Maps).

There are already alternative apps in the App Store — why not take the logical next step from a user experience point of view and allow those to be what’s launched by default? I can’t think of any reason that’s good for users why not, and I haven’t seen any proposed.

I’m super pro-Apple, that’s why I don’t want to switch to Android just to have my preferred browser come up when I click a link.

LOL.

See my comment above.

Do you really expect someone who’s not a technerd to :
1) understand that the “new” app does not work in the way that the previous
2) that what is sent is not text but ‘hangout messages’ that the recipient will only read when they open G+
3) that they can look up the store for and install another SMS app?

It’s a frickin’ phone. People rightfully expect that the “phone” features just WORK.

So, instead of being able to pick the app who’s creator you trust most, you prefer a fixed default? That makes no sense to me.

http://www.binarypassion.net/2013/10/do-you-remember-us-and-eu-antitrust.html

“Go do your cluelesslyindignant and meritless crusade elsewhere.”
Dude, this is his blog, you can’t really send someone away from his own site 🙂

Oh, and good luck believing in the safety of your garden 😉

I’d much rather Apple just give us the same flexibility on iOS they do on OS X.

It’s not that there aren’t other browsers, calendar apps, etc, it’s that when you click a link only Apple’s are launched, you’re locked into their defaults with no flexibility or control.

With kitkat, Android now lets other apps register themselves as default SMS handlers. That wasn’t possible before.

http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2013/10/getting-your-sms-apps-ready-for-kitkat.html

Well difference is, Apple does not have a 90% market share on smartphones 🙂

The reason why the DoJ, or indeed other services in, what Americans generally forget is, the majority of the world have not taken action is that there’s no monopoly activity here. Apple’s actions affects it’s own vertical product categories, however big they become. They don’t impinge on others products or prevent them offering competing options.

For myself, I am divided in opinion. I would often like for a better app or service to be linkable into the system defaults in place of the provided ones. Actually Maps isn’t one of them but Notes, Calendar, Mail and Camera are.
However being a developer i can in some ways understand the issues here. Apple’s own apps, whether they are well implemented or not, are at the least deeply integrated.
Allowing developers to connect to that integration means:
1. Ensuring the developers fully implement all the required connections
2. Having a way of monitoring the apps behaviour on those connections to prevent malicious code execution.
3. Reassuring the majority of users that this isn’t the security hell that it plainly could be.

To use Android as a comparison, Google allows a lot of swapping out of tools for defaults, but, defend it as you will, Android does not have the record of protesting against malicious code execution and security breaches that iOS does.

So once again we are in the world where allowing more accessibility to the system innards compromises security and reducing that access compromises choice.
Google feels answerable to the developer community from the casual up to the Stallman-ites.
Apple feels answerable to it’s customers at least for security issues if not for transparency.

Your preference can dictate your purchasing choice as it should.
Personally, I find Android inconsistent and bit amateur still and Win 8 Phone too shallow. And yes I have owned and sincerely tried to like both.

FYI julien… Android KitKat allows you to choose the default SMS app in the WiFi more settings. 😉