Are stock iOS apps more than sufficient? — Part II

Exactly one year ago I wrote an article on using stock apps on iOS. Specifically, the case I was making was that for most people, stock apps will do just fine and our seemingly natural gravitation towards third-party apps exists, not always as a consequence of their being better, but as a result of us not giving stock apps enough time to show us their worth. Once again this is mostly because we are used to encountering shoddy bundled apps elsewhere and the trend that stock apps are all bad just sticks.

Now, having spent an entire year with my iPhone, I decided to return to address the same issue (naturally with the same title), and with considerably more experience backing me. One particularly useful trend I noticed through the year as I switched to third-party alternatives was that I found myself returning to stock apps. At the end of the day, this stands as an opinion piece, but one that is worthwhile to everyone contemplating this issue — and especially to those who discard stock Apple apps just by habit.

Apple Notes can finally compete with Evernote

With iOS 9, Apple made its stock apps more fluid and certain apps became vastly more powerful — Notes.app, for example. They say the maps app has also been overhauled, but it does not work where I live (and never did) so I cannot speak for it. Better attachment capabilities and annotation options make Apple Mail a much better app. It is still sorely missing sharing capabilities, however: it would be great to be able to share e-mails to our to-do list or notes apps¹.

In part one preceding this article I spoke about my IMAP setup on Mail.app and how it enables me to use it as a combined, or universal, inbox. I had complained that push was not supported, but due to my recent explorations of the Joy of Missing Out, I now find it a good thing. I simply fetch my e-mail once or twice a day and that prevents any recurring distraction — and it saves my battery considerably.

At the start of 2016, what Apple has on offer are a truly powerful and flexible suite of apps: Mail, Calendar, Notes, Reminders, Photos and Music being the jewels on the crown. The new Music Memo targeted at musicians, the capable Garage Band, a minimal and quick browser in Safari, deep search with Spotlight etc. take things up a notch.

You cannot complain much about Apple’s e-mail client

In a rare chiding of Apple by The Verge, Walt Mossberg says, “…more familiar mainstays, like Mail and Photos, iTunes, and iCloud … too often fail to meet Apple’s self-imposed standards.” In my own personal experience I see nothing to back this claim. Perhaps, as Mr Mossberg himself puts it towards the end, some of these bugs are likely particular to his set-up.

His biggest concern was with iTunes and how, on the Mac, it feels bloated. His suggestion is to break it up like on iOS (iTunes Store, Music, Podcasts, Videos). I second that; however, I do so cautiously: the fact that iTunes has it all on the Mac is what makes it a one-time, bundled solution. Disintegrated it would be too easy and too tempting not to replace with targeted third-party solutions just for the sake of it².

That said, I have grown to be a big fan of Apple Music. As part of a family subscription that moved over from Rdio (which was another great service that, unfortunately, shut down recently) I have had absolutely no cause to regret joining the service. My own music and personal compositions are also stored in the cloud and are retrievable just as easily as anything on Apple’s catalogue.

I have spoken enough about the Calendar.app in my previous article. There is little to add except that I switched to Fantastical and Timepage in-between before returning to the default app simply because I saw no reason to switch. Other apps have their own visual style — I particularly love Timepage — but they have nothing that counts as necessary, besides eye candy, to keep me. With the default app I get Timepage’s scrolling appointments view as well as Fantastical’s flexibility. There is no natural language input, but adding appointments is not that much of a chore, to be honest.

What I see as iOS’s weakest point is the Maps.app integration everywhere. All of it breaks down because I live where Apple Maps does not work. Google Maps works like a charm, but no apps can use it by default — except other Google apps. Location-based reminders or destination selection while entering a schedule or appointment in the Calendar.app is simply impossible.

The only other drawback was iCloud — Apple’s cloud drive and ecosystem. It had no dedicated app to access it; you could only do so via apps that could save files onto iCloud and retrieve said files. That made it useless altogether and I had remarked about this well before iOS 9 came out solving the problem. With an optional iCloud app, browsing iCloud as any other location is a lot more convenient.

Apple’s next step should be to include a new settings menu with a similar option to selectively disable default apps³. The latest version of iOS 9 that I have as of the time of writing this article — iOS 9.3, beta 2 — now comes with . I do not know of a single person who uses all of them.

It might come as a surprise to you that an article advocating the use of default apps also supports having an option to get rid of them. But it is important to realise that there are three categories, at this juncture, into which all apps not specifically clicked on and used fall: firstly, as fond as I may be of some of Apple’s bundled apps, I never find a reason to use some of them, for example, Stocks, iBooks (I use GoodNotes for better annotation and note-taking) and Videos; secondly, some are simply unusable, such as the Watch app for someone like me who will not give up my automatic timepieces for anything; and lastly, apps baked into the system, such as Spotlight and Siri. Little can be done about the last category, but the first two — once a disable (or better still a delete) option is provided — will most likely be disabled/deleted by everyone⁴.

Apps bundled with iOS are a big part of the iPhone experience unlike on certain other operating systems where they are almost like obligatory baggage. It is best to at least use them for a while and see if they do enrich your experience and make life easier (as they are supposed to) rather than just discard them as soon as the phone turns on. Third-party apps have their merits, especially in the myriad of different interfaces and approaches towards the same goal, and if that suits you better once in a while, so be it, but in my experience there is a consistency, a fluidity and a common language in Apple’s bundled apps which makes them powerful competitors and, in any case, excellent choices when it comes to getting things done.s

Some e-mail apps, like Dispatch, have this as a core feature. ↩
For instance, see how the App Store is flooded with Podcast apps such as Overcast etc., all good in their own right, but from what I have seen and heard and experienced, most would rather have podcasts built into the music app on iOS as this would make life much easier — and one less app to install is better too ↩
There is current a half-baked method of restricting apps that is making rounds on the internet, but that is not an ideal, or a straightforward, solution. ↩
Of course what apps fall into these two categories will vary by user, but the point is, whatever apps do fall into these categories, they can safely be removed for a much better user experience. ↩

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