I've probably used Apple Mail and/or Apple Calendar at some point in my ownership of Apple products but they're both using Google products at the moment on my phone and I have no recollection of setting those up as being complex through a variety of hardware transitions.

It’s also probably worth noting that most of the stock iOS apps are the most service-provider-agnostic in the industry. Mail and Notes work on bog standard IMAP, and Calendar and Contacts are built on CalDAV and CardDAV, respectively. Google services work fine in all of them (though could be better if it weren’t for Google’s crappy IMAP implementation). The only case where they don’t work is with non-standard providers like Proton.

Go try to sign into your open-standards-abiding calendar and notes accounts in the Calendar and Contacts bundled with nearly every Android phone on the planet and see how well that goes.

> I mean, does Settings > Apps > Gmail (or whichever other app) > Default Mail App really qualify as “a complex labyrinth”?

Compared to Android?

Yes.

I have no idea why iPhone users put up with this shit.

See my edit. I have two Android devices sitting right in front of me, and they’re identical to iOS in this regard: Settings > Apps > Default apps.

I didn't even know you could change the default mail app on iOS and I’ve used it for the better part of a decade now, as a Proton user too. I’ve endured the frustration because I thought it was fixed. Either being allowed to change it is relatively new, region locked, or yeah it’s a labyrinth.

> Either being allowed to change it is relatively new, region locked, or yeah it’s a labyrinth.

It's about 5 years old by now. Not having looked for something in a couple of years and being bummed out by that doesn't make Apple the bad guy.

Why would anyone look for something they haven't been told about?

You may as well ask why you should look anywhere but at your own feet while walking around your city.

You have been told that every new OS update brings new features and abilities, and Apple publishes an iPhone User Guide for learning about iOS features like how to change the default mail app (https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/change-the-default-ap...). It's on you to look.

It’s not region locked, and as the sibling post notes it’s been there for a while. I’m not sure how much more simple it can be made (open Settings, tap Apps, and there it is at the top of the page).

I suppose it could be possible for apps to prompt the user to change the default, but I’m honestly pretty sick of that behavior on desktop (e.g. I have several browsers installed for various reasons and they nearly all bug me about being default) and would rather not see it copied to mobile OSes too (I don’t believe Android allows apps to show such a prompt either).