The article really isn't fair to Apple when it lists the "Top 20 Applications". For iOS the top 5 are: Phone, Weather, Photos, Camera, Clock. All of these apps except for Weather maybe, I would consider essential to a smartphone.<p>And its good that these are 1st party apps, because they wouldn't make money on their own. I can see 3rd party apps for things like Weather, Camera or Calculator, but imagine if your iPhone didn't come with a dailer app and every app in the app store required you to "subscribe" to an app and pay $50/yr for the privilege, just to do the most basic things your phone should do out of the box.