This is almost certainly a bug in Messenger.
* Microsoft: we will let you set a preference, but we will ignore/reset it
* Apple: we won't let you set a preference at all
If someone wanted to say "Microsoft and Apple don't care about your preferences, but Microsoft is slightly worse", I think that'd be a fair thing to say.
Agreed that apple's is a lack of a feature, BUT if you look at the features which apple does support, it feels closer to they don't want to add it for anti-competitve reasons, and not a technical/implementation reason
* ios apps can be deep linked via "apple-app-site-association"
* ios apps can have custom url schemes "comgooglemaps://?parameters"
* android has had "intents" for a very long time
* ios sms is already detecting "this is an address" from free text and is hot linking it to their maps app
> When I click on an address in FB Messenger, I get the “open in google maps or Apple Maps” prompt, but choosing Google Maps just takes me to the Google Maps App Store page, even though I have the app installed and updated.
Is it possible that this is only the case on FB Messenger? I think there are other Apps offering this option where it does work.