Let’s start off with this simple notion: iOS 10 at its most basic level is a platform for mobile devices. It allows developers to build things – apps — on top of it that do certain and specific things. One app takes photos. Another takes and makes calls. Another lets your browse the web. Apple builds the iOS foundation, frameworks and apps; third-party developers build apps and services on top of the platform. Users pick and choose what they want to do with each one.

But with the advent of iOS 10, which is in public beta now and expected to arrive in finished form next month (along with new iPhones and an updated Apple Watch), that old notion of “platform” is getting increasingly blurred. Because Apple has, in a sense, gone meta with its mobile operating system, allowing what were once simple, discreet but limited apps to perform functions and do things that are only tangentially related — at best — to what they were originally designed to do.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here