Re:One week with the Google Pixel
by RBerenguel on Friday November 04, 2016 @04:42PM
(#12875929)
Recently I cleaned completely my home screen (iPhone). In the dock I keep Phone, a folder with Safari and Mail, a folder with what I used to have in my home screen (Calendar, todo, clock... 7-8 things) and the "social" apps folder (Facebook, Whatsapp, iMessage, etc). The rest, I have it in a secondary screen, neatly ordered by folder. And anyway, when I need to open almost anything that is not in the dock, I just search for it, just like I do on my computer. It's like having an uncluttered desktop so I can see the background.
I did that on Android too. I hate the iPhone's "YOU MUST LOOK AT ALL YOUR ICONS" mandate, because a quick swipe down brings up a search that's much more efficient than looking at things.
You absolutely can only have 4-8 apps on your iPhones home screen. You can move them all off to another page. You could move them to the fourth or fifth or whatever page if you don't want them on the second page.
Re:One week with the Google Pixel
by stanleydrew on Friday November 04, 2016 @04:55PM
(#12876036)
Good to know. I'm obviously a bit out of date on my iOS UI knowledge. Will experiment with this now.
After playing with the home screen on iOS for a minute I remember what was annoying. I can control how many apps appear on the home screen, but they always float up and to the left. If I want to use my phone one-handed most of the time, it's really critical that I be able to keep two rows of apps at the bottom of the screen. Currently impossible on iOS.
The operating system shouldn't be paternalistically responsible for preventing this kind of preference. Some people do want to voluntarily give this information to FB in exchange for a simplified or more integrated messaging experience. I don't happen to be one of them (no FB account), but it's a meaningful positive that the OS allows this for a whole lot of people.
> Less drastically I question the need to hide apps away in an app drawer. If you don't use the app then just delete it. Am I alone in feeling that way?
Yes. I have an iPhone and a Pixel. The fact that I can't only keep 4, or 8, highly-used apps on my iPhone's primary home screen really does make it harder to use.
Imagine a Windows or a MacOS desktop that was literally covered in evenly-spaced icons. There's a reason most people don't do that.