My phone feels incomplete without a jailbreak. Personally, I HATE the new folders - they are a pain in the ass to set up and they can only hold 12 apps. I can't wait to start using CategoriesSB again.
I hated Categories. Yeah, it was handy in the absence of any alternative, but it was terribly implemented, ugly, and a huge pain in the ass to manage. I don't know whether that's improved in the last year, but based on the last time I used it, I'll take the official folder implementation over Categories in a New York minute. It's simple and it works, even if it's limited.
It looks like this for me. Two folders on this screen, the middle dock icon is Utilities and the one to it's right is Games: Games folder opened. 100 apps exactly, smooth vertical scrolling with no lag whatsoever. Folder name/default background are optional and you can also choose to scroll horizontally. Folders within folders supported. I'll admit that adding apps is slightly less intuitive than Apple's folder scheme since you've got to open Categories to do it, but I'm pretty sure if you're working with more than about 24 apps it'll be quicker.
The reasons I'm not going to jailbreak again: -Battery drains MUCH slower -iPod is a LOT laggier - And it is way to easy to screw up my iPod And those outweigh the good things
You mean faster? It depends on what you're doing, all I use are folders and simple themes. My experiences so far show little to no difference in battery life or performance. In fact performance is increased in some ways due to being able to free up memory within a few apps.
I liked the old categories - I never got categories SB but from what I have read, that is really the only way to go, as just using categories was much slower. Lots of problems with jailbreaking though - phone was glitchy, and unreliable, and I never felt safe travelling with it, as I would not unfrequently get an iTunes logo and need a computer to set things right again. I like having folders in the new OS, but find it very funny that Apple - who has always been the company known for making things easy - makes it so difficult. The springboard oooohhh and aaaahhhh paging through apps lasted about 3 minutes for me, then I wondered how anyone could organize anything.... People talking about spotlight - BUT, you have to know the name of the app... People talk about why I need that much on my phone - because I do... Why should I need to remember everything that is on my phone? I have hundreds of contacts - am I supposed to remember everyones names? So, I have to scroll - a pain, but oh well - at least the scrolling is easy, and quick. On the Palm - I got Launcher, and took off the icons (who cares about them?? (Please don't flame me...)) and had 3 columns of apps that were simply listed in text form... Very quick and efficient. Ultimately handheld devices are likely to be the "desktops" - there really is no reason other than current storage, etc to make them that way. So the more customization, the better. Why not get the Android? Because to a large extent software drives the purchase - I have hundreds of dollars invested in the software, so the hardware is actually cheaper - getting an Android means I have to start all over with the software, which becomes prohibitively expensive... So I will continue to press Apple to make the iPhone more customizable, and add more features that let the consumer use the iPhone for actual use, rather than presentation. Done with rant....
While I agree and am all for customization and letting the user decide what they want to do with their device, I can also see Apple's point of view in the context of the vision they have for the iPhone. Jobs wants an experience, not just a UI, and they want that experience to be uniform regardless of who's buying it. In a very big way, that's the way Apple has always been, and it's a philosophy I can understand, even if it's one that I, as a power user, don't completely agree with. But for Apple that philosophy has never been more important to them to stick to than with the iPhone which, apart from the original iPod line, is Apple's biggest success story, and the idea is simply that they want the device to be as easy to use, as user-friendly, and as eye-catching as possible without adding layers of complexity for even the most novice of smartphone users -- and to that end they have succeeded better than any other consumer device to date. Android is getting there but it still feels incomplete and lacking in polish (despite custom UIs like Sense), and it still doesn't have nearly the support the iPhone does -- and what support it has with its marketplace is littered with even more utter crap than our App Store, some of it quite gray and scammy in nature -- which brings up Apple's much-maligned approval process, at least some degree of which the Android Marketplace could use. But that's another issue. And I don't even wanna talk about Windows Phone 7. That thing struck me as unbelievably ugly; the homescreen UI is a complete mess and the rest has the same stark, minimalist Zune-like design that doesn't remotely appeal to me. Point being, Apple does what it does in the name of KISS. (That is, "Keep It Simple, Stupid," not hero worship of Ace Frehly.) And it works, too. It's not necessarily for us, but it is for the larger majority of those who may not care or may not even think about deeper levels of functionality or customization. But Apple does listen to requests, especially if they get enough of the same ones. It may take them a while to get around to implementing them in a manner that stays within their design philosophy, but when they do it's usually pretty good, and if it's lacking, there's always the chance they could improve it with further updates. I'm fine with the way things are right now, to be honest. I'd like more, but now that folders (to a large extent) and homescreen wallpaper have been addressed, I'm content to wait for whatever OS improvements may come. There's still nothing in the JB scene that makes me want to rejoin it either; CategoriesSB does look like it's improved (though it's still a little ugly), but it also appears still to be cumbersome and annoying to manage.
Would any of you pessimists really prefer to scroll though 9 pages of apps to find the one you want? Sure, folders are not perfect, but I doubt many of you dislike the ability to store more apps, on fewer pages. And if you hate folders so much, then don't use them. IMO, folders are simple, easy to use, and time efficient. I personally use them for all of my apps, (although the initial set up took forever).
But he seems to be suggesting that there are existing implementations of folders on mobile devices that Apple should have researched before going with the implementation that they did, so I'd like to know which ones he's referring to. I've used Palm and PocketPC; Palm didn't have folders (you could kinda organize with alternative launchers using tabs) and PocketPC worked about as well as Windows, which is to say not best suited for the user-friendliness of a mobile device.
Just how user-friendly do mobile devices need to be? We're always hearing Mac owners spout off about how much simpler they are than PCs and their folder system isn't that far off at all. Suddenly just because it's a smaller screen we need to plummet into the depths of retardedness? People buy smartphones because they want them to be smarter, Apple have already proved this point by making the app layout so moronically simple that people moaned about it. User-friendliness is one thing, but we're not idiots, I think we could manage more than 12 apps per folder and perhaps even handle the mind-numbing mathematics involved with putting folders inside folders.
Those bolded words there are the key. We are not idiots. We could manage nested folders. We could handle real multitasking (task management and all), too, and be perfectly aware of the potential for performance hits and extra battery drain and deal with them accordingly. But we are not the target demographic; we're the outliers on the fringes, the power users who can handle the more complicated stuff. The average user? Many of them are idiots, at least when it comes to tech, and much as I hate to say it. They are the ones who would level complaints about the difficulty in using things we would just take to like fish in water. We are the minority. They are the majority. So to whom should Apple cater if they want to reach the broadest market? And before you break out the "let us decide" card, remember this: The average Joe doesn't know enough not to monkey with stuff they don't understand. They will, and when they do and it screws things up or confuses them beyond their ability to wrap their mind around, they will blame the device and the people who made it. Yes, it's cynical. It's also true.
The average Joe knows how to use a phone, and to a certain degree, a Mac/PC. They're not beyond learning anything new and besides, I'm fairly sure the target demographic with the iPhone is people who have access to iTunes elsewhere.
I don't think the concept of nested folders or scrolling within a folder can be particularly hard for anyone to understand..and it wouldn't be complicated to implement at all, unlike stuff like multitasking which isn't as obvious. seems to me all they'd have to do would be to put a little back arrow at the top to navigate through..yes although iOS 4 is a step forward I think they did some stuff kinda halfheartedly, maybe they had a reason but idk what it is.
