Apparently the latest iPhone OS 3.0 beta now allows 11 home screens instead of the current 9 screens limit on the 2.x version of the OS – according to Apple Insider and various other solid sources today. I’m running the latest beta but haven’t verified this for myself, and don’t plan to in the near future (if I can help it) – because I just don’t care that much about this higher allowance (you can now squeeze in 180 apps, rather than 148).
I am glad we can have more apps, definitely – in fact, I’d like to see that limit keep going up, considerably. The reason I don’t care about this change right now is that while we continue to have no sensible, effective ways to organize our apps, or to launch them, more apps just mean more headaches in some ways.
Having recently done several restores on my iPhone, I’m more aware than ever of how immensely clumsy and stupid the current methods for arranging our apps and home screens on the iPhone are. I honestly think the ‘dicking around with app icons’ portion of things is the largest block of time in the restore process for me. It takes considerably longer than the restore itself, or than the very lengthy first sync after a restore.
I love Spotlight search, and I’m starting to use that more and more to get to apps quickly – but I also like being able to do things like flick to a screen full of games and choose one to play on a whim.
So what I want to see – really, really want to see – is a clever method for organizing our apps and home screens. I want something obvious and simple like the demo a while back of using iTunes to do these things. Or something smarter that Apple dreams up. Or something smarter that 3rd party devs dream up. I’m not fussed who brings us the solution – I just want Apple to let somebody bring us a solution. I feel quite sure that if Apple would just give the nod that they’ll allow this, devs will be more than capable of delivering.
This seems such a huge no-brainer to me. The App Store is an incredible, monster success. People love apps – lots of apps. So don’t ruin the experience. Seems dead simple to me. And the lack of a not-completely-dumb way to organize apps is certainly already detracting from the experience by now, at least for those of us who are ‘app junkies’ (a class of user Apple should have some fondness for I’d think).
During my recent restores, I’ve noticed two obvious examples of this. In choosing which apps to sync back onto my fresh, newly restored (not from backup) phone each time I am:
- Noticing apps I really don’t get much use out of anymore, and choosing not to put them back on the phone. I would’ve noticed these earlier if I had a clever way to arrange and re-arrange home screens.
- Noticing apps that I should be using more, but have semi-forgotten about. Same again, if it wasn’t such a big pain in the arse to re-org screens, I’d be reminded of these guys more often.
OK, mini-rant done. What do you all think? Happy about the new 180 apps limit?
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I'm hearing ya, I'm also longing for a way to organize sensibly – have patience, it'll come. In the meantime, I'm experimenting with apps organized by icon colour
One would think that apps organization would be a priority in iPhone 3.0 – unless Apple added Spotlight to help us find our apps.
ginalee = LOL, good luck on that, have seen others say they like that method too. For me, it's by type of app / most used apps. First 3 screens are in order of most often used, then a games screen, a kids screen etc.
Bill – exactly. I am loving Spotlight, but I feel there's still a big need for the organization pieces as well …
I was a genius and bricked my iphone 2 days ago and was stuck until i found the website that i linked to my name above, just click on my name to go there. They had me up and running in no time and i now have complete access to their Apple developers account with my own user ID and password. It was worth it, just my 2 cents for anyone who is in the same boat i was.
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