Filed under: Found Footage, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch
Found Footage: iTunes-based App management concept
One of my biggest annoyances with my iPhone involves the difficulty of managing my applications. Springboard, the iPhone application that actually displays the different pages of apps, clearly wasn't designed with the intention of managing so many apps. I've long thought, like with other aspects of organizing content on the iPhone, that app management should be possible in iTunes.
Apparently I'm not alone, because this video by svdomer9 shows a nice mockup of how such an iTunes-based app management scheme might work. I really like the idea in general, though I would suggest that there also ought to be a kind of well at the bottom which would hold the applications until they've been assigned to a specific page. Naturally, it would be nice to see a bit more sophistication on the iPhone side as well so that it would be easy to go directly to a given screen (via the roller interface, perhaps) as well as directly send Apps to a given page (e.g. a pop-up menu that would appear when you hold your finger on an App for a few seconds).
Whatever the particulars, it seems that we need something like this on the iPhone going forward. If you had Apple's ear, how would you do it?
[via @pogue]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Finnschi said 12:33PM on 3-02-2009
wasn't this on Engadget like... 1 week ago?
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Hobbes said 5:49PM on 3-02-2009
How about letting us that don't read Engadget read about Mac news here?
Thank you
brian said 9:43PM on 3-02-2009
no, it wasnt.
semdigital said 12:35PM on 3-02-2009
I would...love this....C'mon Apple, thi would make people life's SOOO much easier
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kyle.edmonds said 3:54AM on 3-03-2009
Seriously!!
Why is Apple dragging @ss on silly sh!t like MMS, copy/paste, and this...
GOD I hope they get they're heads out of their @sses for the iPhone 3.0 firmware.
David Hildreth said 12:41PM on 3-02-2009
This two screen sort of concept looks like it would get tiresome with multiple pages of apps. However, I like the idea of having groups of apps to move back and forth... almost like app playlists.
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Dr. Spaceman said 1:59PM on 3-02-2009
You're right, it would be tiresome. And wiggle-mode NEVER gets tiresome...
Dave M. said 4:55PM on 3-02-2009
Amen Dr. Spaceman!
spiceweasel said 12:52PM on 3-02-2009
yes, it should look and work something like this. even more so, i'd love to have the possibility to have folders in springboard. a folder for all my games, a folder for all the social network apps, one for musical instruments and so on. those should be fully user-manegeable, with the possibility to re-name them at your own digest. for starters, apple could include "standard" folders oriented by the genres in the app-store, with the possibility of adding/deleting own folders. i can also imagine an iphone app (or a sort of preference pane in the settings menu) that would help you do this on the iphone itself.
whith 20,000 apps available, and sadly a lot of apps being necessary for features the iphone does not bring "out of the box", screens are getting very crowded...
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Andy said 1:01PM on 3-02-2009
Saw this last week... but REALLY want it! I especially like the option to sort by frequency used. I wouldn't want my apps to be sorted exactly like that, but I at least would like to know which ones I use the most.
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Galley said 1:28PM on 3-02-2009
Apple should borrow an idea from Palm launchers: allow the user to sort apps by popularity or alphabetically.
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Philip said 1:35PM on 3-02-2009
please, a folder concept for apps like Categories on cydia!
(which I use of course)
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Eric said 1:36PM on 3-02-2009
Which keynote effect was the one where the text and picture seperate out to red,blue, and green? Even if apple didn't do this couldn't some one write an app to do it?
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James F said 10:21AM on 3-03-2009
It's known in iPhoto as the Shatter transition. I'm not sure if Keynote has it
adam said 1:43PM on 3-02-2009
Couldn't they just sort it by exactly what's on my iPhone screen-for-screen, instead of making the user do all of that sorting all over again? And then if they did decide to rearrange things, those changes would reflect on the phone once sync'd up? And yes, a well at the bottom for anything currently unused? Yes, looks great, but knowing Apple it's on their time-table which could easily be never.
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mark trana said 2:03PM on 3-02-2009
I'd place a row of vertical tabs along the side of the iphone representing each window. Dragging an icon into the tab places it in the window. Rearanging tabs reorders the entire window. You could even have springy folder action: drag icon to tab, tab opens, place icon, and you spring back to original tab.
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chillin said 1:58PM on 3-02-2009
application management != screen management
iPhone already has at least 3 application managers (AppStore, Cydia, & Installer). Unless you get your nomenclature right, Apple isn't going to know wtf you are on about. The video has NOTHING to do with application management. Please refrain from redefining commonly accepted word definitions.
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jimbeam said 2:48PM on 3-02-2009
Categories from cydia is the best app manager on the iPhone. Just put everything in folders. I have one for games, Tools and Misc filled with all the random stuff. Just jailbreak already!
Managing them in iTunes would be nice. Just having them categorized in my iTunes library, games, tools, misc and so on...
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chillin said 2:59PM on 3-02-2009
Cydia is the application manager. Categories is NOT an application manager (just trying to prevent the demise of the English language here). Categories is more like an icon manager, or screen manager or possibly a window manager. Unless it can install, keep track, AND uninstall applications, its NOT an application manager. The OP's lack of mastery of the language or techy rhetoric must be stopped -- before no one has any idea what anyone else is talking about!
pedant said 10:36AM on 3-03-2009
Actually, organisation and management are intrinsically linked concepts. An "application manager" should have the ability to *organise* the applications you have installed in addition to offering functionality to *manage* the ones you do and don't want to use.
A "screen manager," or "icon manager," implies nothing of the sort when what you are doing is arranging the order in which you want your applications to be displayed.
The author of the post and people using "application manager," in the context of application organisation are a hundred percent correct.