Aside of the lack of PGP?
I think it’s the only reason why it isn’t recommended. If you don’t use OpenPGP for mails, then I think you can safely use Apple Mail on iOS/iPadOS.
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How is it recommended in MacOS, btw? I thought PG has open source as a criteria for apps.
The criteria are listed at the bottom of the mail client recommendation page. Open source is only a best case criterion, not a must have.
I think this should be reconsidered indeed. PGP is not something most people use anyway. Apple Mail has support for S/Mime. (Use S/MIME to send and receive encrypted messages in the Mail app in iOS - Apple Support). In addition to also having the anti tracking features it really is a good mail client.
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I think the site would look quite a bit different if we recommended the apps most people use, instead of apps with added privacy and security features.
S/mime is a more widely used option and gets more adoption. So it’s not necessary a bad thing. Email security is mostly unpresent. Apple Mail is one of the only email clients tackling email trackers in a good way. To my knowledge proton is the only other one doing so and they came later with this than Apple did.
It’s not like recommending gmail and outlook because everyone uses it. Apple Mail actually has a good offering compared to the competition.
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iCloud Mail != Apple Mail client. Not the topic here.
I would argue that Protect Mail Activity has a better implementation compared to ProtonMail. Protect Mail Activity uses Private Relay under the hood, which provides better privacy compared to ProtonMail’s use of a simple proxy.
Protect Mail Activity helps protect your privacy by preventing email senders, including Apple, from learning information about your Mail activity. When you receive an email in the Mail app, rather than downloading remote content when you open an email, Protect Mail Activity downloads remote content in the background by default — regardless of whether you engage with the email. Apple does not learn any information about the content.
In addition, Protect Mail Activity routes all remote content downloaded by Mail through two separate relays operated by different entities. The first knows your IP address, but not the remote Mail content you receive. The second knows the remote Mail content you receive, but not your IP address, instead providing a generalised identity to the destination. This way, no single entity has the information to identify both you and the remote Mail content you receive. Senders can’t use your IP address as a unique identifier to connect your activity across websites or apps to build a profile about you.