Allison Johnson writing for The Verge: European iPhones are more fun now

Whining about stuff is a treasured American pastime, so allow me to indulge: the iPhone is more fun in Europe now, and it’s not fair.

And Federico Viticci linking to the above piece: The DMA Version of iOS Is More Fun Than Vanilla iOS

I personally feel like the “DMA fork” of iOS is the version of iOS I’ve wanted for the past few years. It’s still iOS, with the tasteful design, vibrant app ecosystem, high-performance animations, and accessibility we’ve come to expect from Apple; at the same time, it’s a more flexible and fun version of iOS predicated upon the assumption that users deserve options to control more aspects of how their expensive pocket computers should work. Or, as I put it: some of the flexibility of Android, but on iOS, sounds like a dream to me.

I spend more time than I’d like on this blog defending the idea that Apple products could do more (touch on Macs, mice on iPads, widgets on home screens, RCS messaging, contactless payments from third party apps, USB-C on iPhones, etc.) in the face of push back from some that actually everything Apple doesn’t do today (or doesn’t let me do as a user) is a feature.

Then, of course, once Apple releases the thing I was arguing for, most everyone loves it. Including those who thought they were bad ideas.

I’m not saying everything should be allowed and everything is a good idea, but I would ask people to want more from their devices. After all, if you don’t think any of the proposed new features others are suggesting, why do you get excited about new hardware announcements? A faster horse?