Apple’s standard apps — good enough or waste of space?

One of the great things about the Apple ecosystem is that there are plenty of opportunities for enterprising developers to complement or replace the apps that ship as part of macOS, iOS and iPadOS. But those opportunities seem to shrink with each successive operating system release. Are Apple’s default apps good enough or is there room for third parties to replace them?

I’m going to focus my discussion on five core productivity apps: Safari, Notes, Mail, Calendar and Reminders. And while iOS and iPadOS are key productivity platforms, I’m going to limit this discussion to macOS.

Browsing the internet: Safari

Safari’s main competitor is Google Chrome. Chrome is a great browser supported by a vibrant developer community that creates plug-ins to augment and extend its functionality. If you work on multiple devices across different platforms, Chrome is the standout choice —…