Friday, May 21, 2010

I Want My iPhone Folders. Now!

My #1 most desired feature on the iPhone - by a country mile - was folders for organizing my apps.  So when such folders were announced as a forthcoming feature of iPhone OS v.4, I figured this would satisfy my desires with this knowledge that my wish would be fulfilled in just a couple of months. 

I thought wrong.

Since the announcement, my desires have descended into frustration and is now borderline outrage.  Before I had no problem sitting down in front of my hub Mac and spending 15 minutes (or more) organizing my 11 pages of apps.  But now, forget it.  I've given up on organizing my apps all together.

Being able to organize your apps in iTunes was a much needed step for the iPhone, but it always was a crutch solution.  The real problem was that 11 pages of apps was just ridiculous.  I gave up on scrolling past the 5th screen a long time ago and have now gotten quite comfortable using Spotlight to find the app I want.  I'd say that's quite a pretty impressive behavior change coming from someone who still rarely uses Spotlight on the Mac.

So how's that working for me?  Not as bad as you might think.  The Spotlight search is awesome as I can find most apps just by typing in 3 letters.  And it's smart too.  When I was following the NCAA men's basketball tournament using CBS' March Madness app, I would just start typing "NCAA" and Spotlight found the March Madness app before I was finished typing, even though NCAA doesn't appear in the app name.  Cool stuff!

Still, I find myself denouncing my iPhone more and more for not giving me a better way to organize my apps than trying to keep related apps (ex. news, sports, weather) together on the same page.  How much longer can this behavior continue?  Please Apple, don't make me find out.  Give us iPhone OS v.4 sooner rather than later.

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