I ‘ve been wanting to see better options for organizing our iPhone apps and home screens almost ever since the App Store opened. It ‘s always been at or near the top of my wish list for the iPhone.
As of today, with the release of iPhone 0S 3.1, we now have the ability to organize apps in iTunes “ so I can scratch that big item off my wish list right? Not so much. Not at all in fact.
Don ‘t get me wrong. I ‘m glad to see this addition to iTunes and the iPhone. It is better than what we had before in this area, which of course was nothing.
Honestly, at least so far “ after having done a restore and update to 3.1 and actually using the new capability to re-arrange my apps “ it just doesn ‘t feel very much better than the nothing that preceded it.
Here are some reasons why:
My first disappointment when getting to know the new Applications area in iTunes came shortly after noticing some options to Organize by Name or by Category. I saw those and felt like real headway might be getting made in helping us arrange our apps. Then I realized that organization applies * only * to how the apps appear in the list in iTunes used to select apps to sync. It has no carry-over to the iPhone at all. So I can group by category, to select apps to sync. Seriously “ who cares? Categories or folders on the iPhone itself would be very interesting “ in a selection list that rarely even gets used I see very, very little value in them.
If you select an app within the ‘Organizing Area ‘ you cannot right-click (or use any similar action) to just choose a home screen destination for it. This seems to me like it would have been a natural and intuitive thing to let us do “ but no dice, we have to select and drag icons to their desired destination. It almost feels like treating the iTunes interface as if it was an iPhone and we have to use multitouch gestures, except with a mouse.
That feeling is reinforced by the small, cramped area used for apps organizing. If you have more than four or five screens worth of apps, you have to do tons of vertical scrolling back and forth to move apps around among the screens. Why does this area have to be so small? The unofficial Movement app that came out a couple weeks back offers a much nicer space to work in.
When I move an app icon from one home screen to another, unless I ‘m very careful and make sure I don ‘t hover at all over the destination screen, I get bounced to that destination screen rather than the one I started on, which is where I usually want to stay (so I can clean up one screen at a time). Others may have better luck with the sensitivity of how long you hover over the target screen, but I find it way too sensitive. Again, this just feels counter-intuitive to me. It should at least offer an option to always snap back to the screen you moved an icon from.
You can ‘t label your home screens. Wouldn ‘t that be handy “ in the awkward little scrolly view? To be able to just see your screens labeled ‘Games ‘, ‘Sports ‘, ‘Social ‘, ‘Productivity ‘ (notice my excellent priorities), ‘Books ‘ and so on “ so that as you quickly drag an icon, it ‘s quicker to just slap it down on the ‘Books ‘ screen or whichever you ‘re after? In fact, it would be nice if the display would even offer a clue what screen you ‘re currently on “ it would easily fit. The little home screen dots are the only indicator “ and I never remember to look at those yet.
Overall, this new feature just feels clumsy and slapped together to me. For a company like Apple, that is praised for its wonderful interface design in so many areas, this just feels way below par. A very shoddy 1.0 effort.
And it ‘s not just a poor effort in terms of not being ‘pretty enough ‘ or slick enough. It ‘s clumsy to use in my view. Using iTunes, it took less time to re-arrange all my apps than it previously would have on the iPhone itself “ but honestly not a huge amount less time.
Maybe the new functionality will grow on me with more use. Maybe I ‘ll get more comfortable with it “ but I ‘m not betting on that right now.
I think we already have an example of an app that does a better job than iTunes currently does. If I hadn ‘t given up my jailbreak “ which by the way I now regret “ in order to see this new feature, I ‘d swap over to that method of app arranging straight away.
I still feel this is a good move by Apple to include this feature “ it just needs more polishing. A heck of a lot more polishing.
Here ‘s hoping the new Genius feature for apps is super cool, because in hindsight this new feature is certainly not worth giving up my jailbreak (temporarily) for. I had a feeling it wouldn ‘t be “ but felt I had to give it a look.
What do you all think of organizing apps in iTunes so far? Liking it much better than I am? Feeling any of my pain? As always, we ‘d love to hear your thoughts.
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