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iOS 14 suffers app preference amnesia: Rebooting an iThing resets browser, email client defaults back to Safari, Mail
You didn't want to run that hot Cupertino code? Too bad, loser
Apple's iOS 14 is supposed to let people select third-party apps, such as Chrome and Outlook, as their default browser and email client. Yet, when the iThings are rebooted or powered back on, these choices are wiped, and the defaults reset to Apple's Safari and Mail.
Released yesterday, version 14 of the mobile operating system has already drawn the ire of developers, and now Apple loyalists are fuming, too.
As told by 9to5Mac, iOS 14 users found their default app settings overridden with Apple's built-in offerings after a reboot.
In short, if you restart your iOS 14 device, you are once again set to have Apple's own browser and client as the default, until you tell it otherwise. We'd say this was a cheeky move by Cupertino, though in the post-Jobs world of straight-edge Apple, we can't really say if it wasn't just a dumb accident.
It's not just isolated users who reported this issue, either. Engineers at Google are similarly upset that the Cupertino idiot-tax operation just happened to kill off everyone's preference for third-party browsers after promising to give folks a choice.
yup (you can imagine this morning’s chat room as we realized it)
— Adrienne Porter Felt (@__apf__) September 17, 2020
We asked Apple for comment, and we'll see you for a snowball fight in Hell if it gets back to us with an explanation. ®