The iPhone app showdown

This was an intriguing experiment undertaken over at Minimal Mac: Patrick decided to play a little Homescreen Survivor with his iPhone app icons -- he cleared everything off his homescreen, and then only let those apps back on which he used more than once throughout the course of a week. The result? You can see here which ones made it back on. Contacts, Calendar, Camera all showed up, not surprisingly. Photos did as well -- I don't use that one much, but I can see why. Everything else seems to be his own personal use: Tumblr's app, two different Twitter apps (Birdhouse and Tweetie), and then Simplenote and so on.

But the real point here isn't what apps he used, it's just how different his homescreen looked when he only put what he used on there. I'll admit it: my iPhone is a mess -- I've got icons all over the place, and they don't seem to stay organized even when I try to organize them. But organizing according to actual usage is a great idea, and undertaking the same experiment on your iPhone might actually clear some things up for you.

It's also worth pointing out all of that empty space on his homescreen: he has four more slots there that aren't used at all. Apple, are you listening? I'd guess Patrick's usage is more common than Apple may think -- there's plenty of room on the homescreen for other functions and information.

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Source: http://minimalmac.com/post/343270855/as-promised-here-are-th…

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Hardware Software Odds and ends iPhone App Store

This was an intriguing experiment undertaken over at Minimal Mac: Patrick decided to play a little Homescreen Survivor with his iPhone app...

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Jordan

http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/3131/63271926.jpg

my homescreen is pretty minimal with only my most important apps as well.

January 23 2010 at 12:18 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Laura Moncur

Patrick,

How did you track your iPhone App Usage? I don't want to carry around a piece of paper to track all this stuff. Is there something in iTunes that shows you how often you use your apps?

Laura

January 21 2010 at 9:42 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to Laura Moncur's comment

Patrick Rhone

I actually just tracked it in my head. My rule was that I had to use the app at least twice in a day, in multiple days for it to be moved back to the home screen. Once it met that goal, I moved it back.

January 22 2010 at 11:11 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Patrick Rhone

It you click through to the post on my site it actually explains it a bit better but the way I now find apps on other screens is to use the global search from the home screen. This means I don't have to "go looking for it". I let technology do that for me.

That said, I do have the other screens organized with like apps together. I also take great care as to how colors and icons go together.

January 21 2010 at 2:59 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Caitlin

I always keep my fourth row empty. It just makes my homescreen look cleaner.

I also recently jailbroke my phone. I use my first page for my commonly used apps (12+dock), and I hide the rest of my apps. I figured if I use Spotlight as an app launcher on my computer, why not use Spotlight as an app launcher on my phone.

Still trying to figure out how I feel about it, but I think I like it.

January 21 2010 at 1:49 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

tys

There's a jailbreak app that automatically arranges icons based on usage, but I haven't tried it.
I agree about color matching! I've made custom icons for many apps just to ensure that they'll all look good together on the screen.

January 21 2010 at 1:44 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Martin

I've never found a use for the contacts app. The phone app has all I really need in that regard. Am I missing something?

January 21 2010 at 12:12 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

David

Well duh!!! I've been doing this since I got my 8GB a year ago. Now have 3GS. it rox!! That's why I want backgrounds. I bet it'll be a great update package tho so it's cool.

January 21 2010 at 9:21 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

opitz

cannot belive that there is no game icon on the homescreen. must be a fake...

January 21 2010 at 6:30 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Herchu

Given that many of us think that this way to organize the home screen is the most logical, wouldn't be an iTunes plugin that automagically reorganize the icons a nice add-on?
(I don't know if iTunes has the required API for the task.)

January 21 2010 at 5:01 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

House.

My home page is very similar, I only have on what I use on a day-to-day basis, the rest are organised via colour.

Works for me.

House.

January 21 2010 at 4:26 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply