How Many iPhone Apps Per Category Do You Allow Yourself?
One of my constant battles with the iPhone “ or perhaps more with myself “ is in the area of keeping my number of installed apps under control. Lately I ‘ve been trying to pay more attention to how many apps I have within single categories, or certainly those within a category that do the same job.
Some categories naturally get more leeway of course “ like Games for instance, where you may well have lots of different games but very few that overlap in terms of what they offer.
The areas I ‘m trying to force myself to do a little trimming in are those where I do have several apps that all do pretty much the same thing. My two biggest areas of this type right now are note-taking apps and Twitter client apps.
I currently have four note-taking apps installed “ and that ‘s not even counting voice notes apps. I would like to narrow this down to two “ Evernote (which is a constant and a go-to app on both desktop and iPhone) and one other, with a nicer text note input interface than Evernote.
On the Twitter clients front, I also have four apps at the moment “ though one is under review right now, so generally I have been running three of late “ Twitterrific and Tweetie (which have been my two favorites for a while) and TweetDeck, which I am learning to appreciate because of its Groups feature. Again, my goal is to eventually narrow this down to two apps, and ideally to just one at some point in future.
How do you all manage on this subject? Do you allow yourself to have more than one app in a category if they have the exact same purpose? How many apps do you allow yourself in most categories?
I think the majority of my apps are games other than Pandora, LastFM, and SimplifyMedia, and iheardradio.
Cool. Not as much overlap with that sort of apps collection.
I have several in a category (ie. several Twitter apps, several IM apps, several voice recorder/note apps). I tell myself I'm evaluating them… but there's still there.
LOL – ah yes, evaluating – that's what we're doing
Basically I am really trying to have just one app per category, as otherwise, at least that's how I see it, productivity and usefulness go downhill. Is it not most convenient to have it all under one roof, to not have to ask oneself every single time which one to use?
The only reason for me to have more than one app is in cases where there simply is no single app that really covers it all, satisfies all my needs. That would be the case with twitter clients (TweetDeck's columns with fast switching are awesome plus it looks slick, but unlike tweetie it does not offer the ability to open a link in Safari externally, so switching to a horizontal view, which both apps unfortunately do also not offer internally, is not possible) and location-aware apps that tell You what's nearby. Those I have several of mostly because I still have to figure out which one is best for where I live (Germany).
Otherwise, with the notable exception, as You already mentioned, of games, I try to limit at least the apps I need to most to one. That is not to say that I would not try out many single-purpose and often rather odd apps, but that's a different story. I mean, I even have a Sudoku solving app, though I don't like Soduko at all, but the fact that it lets You take a photo of a puzzle, then automatically analyzes it, turns it into a digital version and finally solves it is just too awesome!
I guess that's the geek in all of us. No wonder Apple sold way over a million apps already…
I agree that I think productivity might well be enhanced by sticking to one app for each specific purpose, but I find it very tough to manage sometimes. I'm going to strive to get there – but will need from some apps adding a few missing features. And yes, it is little wonder Apple has sold so many apps with all of us app horders out here
I organize my apps based on chronological order hahaha…perhaps not the most efficient listing but it sometimes helps me remember when I downloaded them in the event I want to go back and get upgrades of certain apps.
Wow, that's a method I'd not seen or heard of before. I'd never be able to manage that way – too many apps, too many dates – yikes
It's odd – with that many apps and therefore so many for each purpose, one should think there ought to be a perfect version for everyone, but alas, that's not the case. Well, in the end, we all customize and fill up our iPhones the way that works best for us, so to a certain degree it's just a question of taste and preferences anyhow.
A purely chronological order would not work for me either, though. I do however usually have a dedicated page for new apps that I still need to test or haven't decided on keeping or deleting again yet. But that's as chronological as I get…
Ah yes – I use a dedicated page (pages) as well for apps I'm testing / reviewing. And I absolutely agree that it often just comes down to taste and preference, combined with 'what works best for you'.