Comment by dotancohen
3 years ago
For one thing, from what I understand (I don't develop mobile apps, and I don't own an Apple phone) Apple forbids applications that provide features already built into the phone. That's why even Firefox on iOS is just a skin over Safari.
So if Apple Weather (or whatever they call the in-house weather app) comes with the phone, then your "same thing but different" app will not be made available in the Apple app store.
Weather is an entire category of apps on the App Store. You can develop any weather app you like.
This is also not true. There are plenty of podcast apps, weather apps, notes apps, music apps, streaming video apps. I can’t think of a single bundled app where there are not plenty of alternatives.