If you’ve ever tried re-arranging your iPhone home screens, and the app icons on them, you know that the current methods of doing this suck. The more apps and home screens you have, the more it sucks.
Gizmodo has a post up today showing off a ‘concept’ video that offers a simple alternative, one that has occurred to lots of us as a natural way to go about this – using iTunes to manage home screens and app icons placement.
The demo shows off how easy it is to work with multiple screens at once on iTunes on a desktop PC, as well as the ability to move multiple icons at once, and even move entire screens. It also shows three ‘Sort By’ options: None, Alphabetically, and By Most Used.
All of this looks good, and makes great sense. Now all we need is for Apple to either do this themselves or just step aside and let 3rd party developers come up with solutions for this.
For me, this is much more important than copy&paste or Flash. I’m used to not having those two features, and really don’t find I miss them that often. I do find – pretty much every day – that I want to use my apps, and I want to be able to get to them more quickly and move between them easily. This annoys me every day.
This should be a serious, top, top priority for Apple. Look at how much they are touting iPhone apps and the App Store now. It is the full focus of their TV ads, and they seem to be promoting apps more and more through their email promo campaigns. Apps are one of – or possibly *the* – main reasons why the iPhone is such a phenomenon in the smartphone arena.
And judging by the download numbers, tons of users are buying into this and grabbing up apps like never before on a mobile platform. As we saw in the recent Pinch Media report though, people are getting apps (free or purchased) but then quite often not using them much after one day, and less after two days, and even less after 5 days, and so on. Maybe at least part of this is because they forget about them / can’t find them due to how stupidly clumsy home screens and apps are to work with right now???
The lack of any sensible way to arrange home screens, to group apps in folders or similar, and to have some sort of application launcher to help you get to apps quickly – risks ruining the whole ‘There’s an app for that’ experience for a lot of users. Hell, I’m a diehard and an apps junkie, so I’m going to keep using lots of apps regardless – but I really wonder how many other users will just be turned off of getting apps entirely if Apple doesn’t fix this.
What do you all think? Is the iTunes concept a good one? Does this issue bother you at all?
Continue reading:
- Everything New Apple Just Announced (Septembe
- Apple Watch Pre-Order
- Apple Research Kit launches with 5 Apps
- Apple TV now only $69
TAGS:
