Apple's Shifting Differentiation

I really wish Apple sold its hardware independently from its software. They make amazing hardware, and their latest silicon releases practically make me want to buy their computers again.

Their software is shit though, and their walled garden, and insistence on using apple programming languages and IDEs for development, practically ensures that third party software will either not exist or be shit as well. There are only a handful of software shops that make decent software for apple, and they are all fully specialized on apple and therefore do not make software that plays nice with collaborators on other computers, nor used on a cloud server, etc. And if there actually exists better software from third parties that competes with apple software, you can forget about it ever being fully integrated. "Hey Siri, navigate to city hall using Google maps". Yeah right.

That is not the best choice of example, since “Hey Siri, navigate to City Hall using Google Maps” LITERALLY WORKS ON iOS [1].

[1]: https://9to5mac.com/2019/09/19/google-maps-waze-siri/

Good for Apple for finally fixing that bullshit. I owned an iphone6 for 4 years, and that was 4 too many for having to deal with an inferior maps app and no ability to change the default.

Do they also allow you to switch the default browser too?

Yes, you can switch the default browser on iOS now