Comments on: Ugh – Re-Arranging iPhone Home Screens Sucks

By: PatrickJ

PatrickJ — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 18:52:10 +0000

Rags – man, I can’t see my self ever getting down to three pages. Would like to, but can’t see it happening …

By: Ragart

Ragart — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 18:28:36 +0000

I have three pages of apps — two of them are full, the third is just the stupid default apps I can’t get rid of (stocks, contacts, some other one I forgot)

By: ssschmidt

ssschmidt — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 21:18:23 +0000

Actually, I didn’t. I’m slacking. But, I guess I can fire up a spamming campaign demanding home screen customization via I-Tunes.

Not that I would actually waste the spam. it’s good grilled.

By: PatrickJ

PatrickJ — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 21:10:47 +0000

billso – Thanks! It seems this is definitely another of those hot topics for lots of iPhone users.
ssschmidt – I imagine you already know about this one, but just in case, there is their feedback form:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

By: ssschmidt

ssschmidt — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 20:44:27 +0000

It’s just a darn shame that there is no clear way to express your desires to apple. At least where you can see if someone actually looked at it. But, maybe that’s why Mac’s work so well. 1 person decides instead of listening to the users.

By: billso

billso — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 19:19:22 +0000

Great article. Apps management is one more thing that Apple needs to fix ASAP. I don’t need tabs, just a way to rearrange apps from the desktop.

By: PatrickJ

PatrickJ — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 17:01:47 +0000

@ ssschmidt – DOH – OK, now I do get it 🙂

@ cdamion2 – I like your ideas a lot. I think a lot of people would like to see something cool done in iTunes. I’d still also like to see some good app launchers on the iPhone itself as well …

By: cdamion2

cdamion2 — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 14:23:37 +0000

I would want something like this as a solution:

Managing IPhone apps on iTunes is for now a non existing art. I mean, what can we do with just a list of icons and names?

What if:

1) We could manage the icons on iTunes with the same configuration of our iPhone screens?- There would be space to see several screens at once and drag icons from one to anyone other with the mouse.
– There could be a buffer area to put apps on hold until we drag them to the desired screen.
– There could be an area to drag apps to uninstall them. From this area we would drag icons to the desired iPhone screen to install them.
– There could be some auto-arrange rules defined by us like classify apps from 5 to 1 stars and put them on order of preference, or organize them by type (games, utilities, productivity, etc) where we choose which type to each screen, or even mix these rules. The rules could be saved like playlists and chosen later at will.
– Of course this organized screens would pass to iPhone by sync.

2) Also Clicking on any icon should open the app store on that app. Sometimes I don’t remember what a given app is and the info on iTunes is null. I have to manually search for that name on the app store.

I don’t think this would be dificult to implement on iTunes. Most of this work it’s already done for the Music Library management.

What do you think? Would this help you?

By: ssschmidt

ssschmidt — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 09:22:06 +0000

You move the apps that were in your dock back when you are done. 🙂

By: PatrickJ

PatrickJ — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 05:17:29 +0000

ssschmidt – OK, got it. It does sound interesting, but I don’t know that I have 3 apps that are more often used than the four that are on the dock by default …

By: ssschmidt

ssschmidt — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 04:41:42 +0000

Yeah. I meant the dock. That way you can move 3 at a time to the dock, go to the page you want them on, move them off. Less dealing with the jello icons.

By: PatrickJ

PatrickJ — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 01:24:32 +0000

Sebastien – I might give jailbreak a try again at some point. I tried Categories when I was jailbroken and didn’t love it – probably more to do with me and not working that well with folders etc. Something like Stacks or even Nate True’s old ‘Dock’ app suits me better. That’s why I’d really like to see some good app launchers.

ssschmidt – Interesting. when you say 3 of your 4 bottom line apps you mean those in the dock? I may give that kinda system a go at some point – right now I’m just glad to be don with housekeeping 🙂

By: ssschmidt

ssschmidt — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 01:11:46 +0000

“”TIP”” Move 3 of your 4 bottom line apps to another window. This gives you 3 slots to work with. Think of it like freecell. No credit to me. I read it somewhere else.

I have 8 windows in use. None of them are full. I keep my most used on the 1st. The next two are for applications I use often.

The remaining ones I use to hold stuff I’m evaluating/reviewing, with the last two pages being an unemptied trash can.

With a 16 gig phone and 6 gig of music, that leaves me around 10 gig to play with. Right now, I have a total of 6 Gig free. Wow. Thats more space than my first 5 computers had… LOL

By: Sebastien

Sebastien — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 01:10:07 +0000

Yet another reason for you to jailbreak and use Categories, or Stack apps…..

PS: glad I can subscribe to comments 🙂