I think there's a reasonable exception for some built-in applications that manage core services, but that privilege should be used sparingly and for clearly benign or user-friendly reasons. It shouldn't be used to gain a competitive advantage in revenue-generating applications or services.
Hmm, after writing the above it occurred to me that cloud storage like iCloud might have to be an exception to that rule for pragmatic reasons. iCloud is clearly a competitor to Dropbox, but it is also used to store backups of the phone's system settings and such. On the one hand Dropbox should be able to compete fairly against iCloud for offline app data storage, but I don't think it should have access to do backups of phone system settings.
I suppose the way out of that conundrum is to ensure that any use of iCloud for system related storage should not be part of a commercial service offering, which is sort of how it works as you can do that on the iCloud free tier. Still, it's an interesting edge case that shows how tricky these questions can be.
Because then it could read the phone's system settings, which could have dire security and privacy implications. It would also presumably need the ability to change them, because otherwise how do you restore the backups?
FWIW Apple encrypts all the data with your encryption key. So even if you swapped it out with a consumer solution like Dropbox that wouldn't make it less secure. It would make it more expensive for Apple to maintain that connection & increased customer support since people would complain to Apple when Dropbox had an issue.
Hmm, after writing the above it occurred to me that cloud storage like iCloud might have to be an exception to that rule for pragmatic reasons. iCloud is clearly a competitor to Dropbox, but it is also used to store backups of the phone's system settings and such. On the one hand Dropbox should be able to compete fairly against iCloud for offline app data storage, but I don't think it should have access to do backups of phone system settings.
I suppose the way out of that conundrum is to ensure that any use of iCloud for system related storage should not be part of a commercial service offering, which is sort of how it works as you can do that on the iCloud free tier. Still, it's an interesting edge case that shows how tricky these questions can be.