Now many of you will know that on the iPod and iPhone you cannot normally organise your apps into folders, just a maximum of 129 (I think) 3rd party apps spread over 9 pages with 16 icons on each page. Talk about unfriendly! Other apps are still there, you just can't launch them until you delete another one.
Bring on Categories. This is an app you an only install if you jailbreak your device. Once installed you can put apps into folders and in fact I managed to get down to just one screen on my iPod, with 6 folders full of nicely organised apps. Categories and SBSettings were the two main reasons I kept my iPod jailbroken.
So now I've updated to OS 2.2.1 and decided not to jailbreak it, as I don't like going through the steps and somehow being made to feel like a criminal by Apple for daring to want to organise my apps. This means I've got to do without over 50 of my apps, just because Apple made an absolute pig's ear of app icon organisation. I'm sure Apple advocates regularly mocked Bill Gates for the "640k" limit of early DOS...
I jailbroke recently, in part for categories. It's helpful, but still flawed. There's a solid lag while the category loads, then when you quit an app you are dropped back to the main springboard and must endure the lag again before selecting another app within the category. When switching between apps for performance, this is basically a dealbreaker for me.
ReplyDeleteIt's a shame. the iphone is great on so many levels, but parts of it are utterly lacking in usability (next to design an apple obsession, I thought). I really miss the category dropdown of my trusty past of palm pilots.
I agree, Apple seem to have made such a basic mistake here it is very strange. I just hope that they have a fix ready for the next OS update.
ReplyDeleteLet's hope that iPhone OS 3.0 makes a difference.
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