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Filed under: iTunes, iPhone, iPod touch

iTunes 9 Focus: Tips for editing your iPhone apps screens

While of my colleagues are tremendously excited about Norah Jones and iTunes LP, I've got to say I was far happier to discover the new iTunes 9 iPhone application management screens that Brett touched on yesterday (Sorry, Dave!). Located in the Applications tab for each iPhone and iPod touch device, the manager lets you organize your applications on a screen-by-screen basis from the comfort of your desktop. Unfortunately, the organizer remains fairly primitive.You can...

  • ...check or uncheck apps that you want to sync or not sync.
  • ...drag apps around individual pages to reorder them
  • ...drag apps between screens to reparent them.
  • ...change page order by dragging them within the page column.

And that's pretty much it. There's no way to sort your screens alphabetically or by category. There's no way to copy or share layouts between devices. There's no undo support if you change your mind about any changes. That having been said, there are some iTunes 9 tricks that may help you better organize your applications. Here are TUAW's top four.

Use Command-Click to group apps. Command-clicking an application icon adds it to (or if already added, removes it from) the currently selected group. You can move groups all at once between pages.

Use empty pages. If you have the pages to spare, use the empty pages that iTunes makes available to you to help organize applications by "theme". For example, you can drag an empty page into, say, the page 2 position and then start filling that page with games from the other pages. Adding apps to that empty page causes another empty page to appear at the end of the list if there is room. You're limited to eight 11 pages total for your applications.

Use the dock. Your dock provides a home for up to four applications that you use the most. Docked applications appear on every page, offering the quickest access to your most-used apps. Don't feel limited to the apps that the iPhone OS defaults to. It's your dock. Use it the way that best suits you.

Use the home screen. If you have more than four apps that you need quick access to, don't forget that the first screen of apps is always just a Home button click away. Tapping the home button when viewing apps automatically jumps you to the first page. Place your high priority apps on this first page if they fall short of the urgency of the dock items.

The new Application editor is certainly a great step forward from the way things were. Here's hoping that Apple will make it even easier to manage your applications in future iTunes releases.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iTS, Multimedia, Software, iTunes

iTunes 9 Focus: iTunes LP



For me, the most exciting feature of iTunes 9 is iTunes LP. As a kid, I read CD booklets cover to cover, looked at every photo, saw who played what instrument on what track and who wrote the songs. That's an experience I've missed since distribution went digital, but I've accepted it.

A couple of years ago, Apple added digital booklets to to the iTunes Store, and some of them were quite nice. But even the best don't compare to iTunes LP. Today I purchased the deluxe version of "Come Away With Me" by Norah Jones [iTunes link] and spent nearly 20 minutes exploring it, just like the old days.

The album contains a bonus track ("Peace"), but the real fun begins when you double-click the "Deluxe Version" file and you're presented with something that resembles a DVD menu. A simple animation draws Norah's name while the first few measures of "Come Away With Me" are heard. From there, you're set to explore.

This album has seven options: Play album, songs, memorabilia, photos, videos, liner notes and credits. The first two do what you'd expect, accompanied by photos and lyrics. The memorabilia feature surprised me with pictures of backstage passes, the tour calendar and a "quickie rundown" of events from the 45th Grammy Awards (Norah's appearances highlighted).

There are sixteen photos and four videos including -- surprise! -- Norah's appearance on Sesame Street (much to my 4-year-old's delight). Finally, the full liner notes, biography and album credits are included, each with beautiful photos.

Music fans will love this feature, as will fans of participating artists. It's not like holding a record jacket or CD booklet in your hand, but that's an unfair comparison anyway. Paper liner notes don't contain videos, photos of this size or some of the other goodies. iTunes LP is a very welcome treat.

Check out the gallery below for screenshots.

Gallery: iTunes LP

Start pageAlbum creditsNorah's tour calendarPlaying a songLiner notes

Filed under: Rumors, Odds and ends, iPhone

Apple working on a GPS unit?

It wouldn't be Sunday on the Mac web without a little wacky rumor to keep us interested. A German magazine by the name of Focus has a brief item today claiming that Apple is working on a GPS unit for cars. The article goes on to say that these units would be available exclusively for Mercedes during their the first 6 months of existence and then spread to other car manufacturers.

Will an Apple branded GPS unit be coming to your car in 2009? I'm going to go ahead and say this isn't very likely. It would be more likely that iPhone 2.0 has built in GPS and some sort of car mount. That's a rumor I could get behind (though to be clear I have no inside information about any of this).

Thanks to everyone who sent this in.

Tip of the Day

To get an instant map to any address, just go to your Address Book and right click on the address field of any one of your contacts and select "Map Of." The address will then be revealed in Google Maps on Safari. You can do the same if a data detector determines there is an address in an e-mail in Mail.


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