Would You Rather Manage Your iPhone Home Screen Icons in iTunes?
Interesting concept video for using iTunes, rather than the iPhone itself, to manage home screen icons and layout. Single icon, multi-icon selection, icon and space lock and unlock, whole screen moving, sort by name, sort by last usage, etc. are all visualized and it makes a rather compelling case.
Would you rather (or additionally) handle icon/app management via iTunes? As we move to more wireless/over-the-air syncing and operations, do we want to have more reasons to stick with the tether, or could a MobileMe-like service include it?
Also, while it looks solid on 2 screen, what if you’re rocking 9 screens, will it scale?
(Via MobileCrunch. Thanks to Phil from WMExperts for passing it along!)
February 23rd, 2009 at 4:05 pm
Personally, I don’t see why something like that isn’t possible within the iPhone itself.
February 23rd, 2009 at 4:09 pm
Absolutely – i hate trying to manage them on the phone. I try to move an icon from one page to another a couple of pages over and it’s bumping icons from other pages along the way. What a mess. This would be great – having a “clipboard at the bottom might help if you have a lot pf pages to manage. drag an icon from one page to the clipboard, then pull up the page you want to move it to drag it into place.
February 23rd, 2009 at 4:09 pm
I’ve been hoping for this capability for a long time. If you’ve got more than three or four screens, then managing them directly on the iPhone is a pain–particularly if most of those screens are already full.
February 23rd, 2009 at 4:21 pm
This is a much needed feature that should be added into iTunes. Especially with more and more apps being released every week this would be nice to have.
February 23rd, 2009 at 4:21 pm
This would be great in iTunes, as well as in MobileMe, but I’d also like to be able to better manage them on the iPhone itself.
I posted the link below in the forum awhile back. It’s a concept of managing home screens on the iPhone in the same sort of way Spaces is used in Leopard.
http://blog.satpalsharma.com/?p=81
February 23rd, 2009 at 4:28 pm
WOW! I’m impressed. Apple better pay these ppl off and then Patient their own little version. This is areally smart idea. You have no clue how many times I had to reorder my icons on my iPhone after a restore or what have you.
February 23rd, 2009 at 4:30 pm
Would this eliminate managing the apps on the phone? I would like both options. Like it’s already been said, this would make management of apps so much easier when there are 3+ pages.
February 23rd, 2009 at 4:42 pm
TERRIFIC IDEA!!! I would gladly donate to support this concept and purchase the software. App management is a huge omission in the iPhone/iTunes ecosystem. KUDOS to the developer!!!!
February 23rd, 2009 at 4:45 pm
It would be good, but I would love to see an easy way to add a page between pages without having to move every icon on every subsequent page.
February 23rd, 2009 at 4:47 pm
good idea. but i’d rather be able to answer/receive sms in iTunes while my iPhone i syncing.
February 23rd, 2009 at 4:50 pm
Yes. I would definitely use this in iTunes. Have been waiting for this to become available for some time. It seems that it would take much less time to organize all my iPhone apps on my homescreens.
February 23rd, 2009 at 4:52 pm
Really need this funtionalty. I usually have around 144 apps and moving them around is a pain. I sometimes use the bar at the bottom to “shuttle” icons through my 9 screns.
If this were capable on a jailbroken iPhone, I’d jailbreak just for this functionality.
February 23rd, 2009 at 4:56 pm
It is a great concept and would like to see it being usable and will donate if needed. The stand alone way does not work all time time and is difficult to use. I feel that you will need to keep the old method as well once your on the go and want to change your icons on the fly as well as have your concept available to use through iTunes or another way. Apple and it’s products are all about Change, Creativity and individuality
February 23rd, 2009 at 5:00 pm
Coming to the iPhone from the Palm OS environment, I find the app management on the iPhone to be lacking. On Palm OS I was able to put my apps into categories so that I could easily find the app I needed. Once in the category the apps were automatically sorted alphabetically. Moving the app from category to category page (which is not limited to 16 apps per page like on the iPhone) was as simple as bringing up a list of the apps installed and changing it’s category.
February 23rd, 2009 at 5:29 pm
I would be happy if iTunes would just REMEMBER where I put them, and restore them to the same place.
Ok, I’m a Luddite: I dread hooking the iPhone up to the computer. Every iPhone failure I’ve ever had was when it was hooked up syncing or upgrading. The less I have to deal with iTunes the better. I go weeks at a time without a sync. My calendar is synced over the air, and my contacts are fairly stable. I don’t want iTunes to own me or my phone.
Side rant: I can’t speak for iTunes on Mac computers, but from a Windows user’s point of view it is one of the most poorly designed, confusing, un-intuitive, cantankerous applications I have ever encounters on any Windows platform. I was told (probably 5 million times) that Mac does everything easier, and its way easier to use, but iTunes puts the lie to that.
Why am I using a music player to manage my phone?
Is this is a case where the only tool Apple is familiar with is a hammer, so they look at every problem as if it were a nail?
Why isn’t there a pared down sleek phone sync tool aimed for the corporate world, and my Mom?
February 23rd, 2009 at 5:33 pm
YES!!! Glad to hear that someone else thinks this would be a great idea too!
February 23rd, 2009 at 5:47 pm
What ISN’T poorly designed, confusing, un-intuitive, and cantankerous on Windows?
February 23rd, 2009 at 6:04 pm
This is actually a great idea. I don’t think it would ever have occurred to me in a million years though! But I personally manage everything I can through iTunes and the ability to manage the iPhone home screen would be a most welcome addition
February 23rd, 2009 at 6:17 pm
Oh, I don’t know…. 1)Columns of a listview that are too narrow to display the contents pop up a tool-tip with the full contents 2)A highlight that follows the currently selected playing song. 3)silly little arrows that do nothing (and have no tool tips) don’t appear 4) Grabbing a corner and resizing doesn’t drive the cpu to 100% utilization and move in jerks on a quad processor box 5) scroll bars don’t drop off and reappear during window resizing 6 Clicking an entry in the tree-view doesn’t take 2 seconds to repopulate the detail view 7 Everything that is clickable has a cursor change as the cursor passes over it
Tool tips for EVERY control
9) clicking on a control in one tab does not start work in a totally hidden tab that you have to search for
sign… I could go on…
You know, little things like that ARE NOT poorly designed, confusing, un-intuitive, and cantankerous on Windows – Unless you are running iTunes.
February 23rd, 2009 at 6:33 pm
I would live for this
February 23rd, 2009 at 6:36 pm
Hard to believe this essential part of the UI is still so bad. One of the few things I don’t like about the iPhone/Touch. What a miserable design.
February 23rd, 2009 at 7:21 pm
Good idea
February 23rd, 2009 at 7:27 pm
Yeah, I’d love to see that! A lot easier!
February 23rd, 2009 at 7:44 pm
As much as I love apple, I have to agree with icebike.
I can’t imagine my company not to mention most large corporations using iTunes for employees to sync cell phones. Most companies wouldn’t want employees wasting time on iTunes.
February 23rd, 2009 at 8:27 pm
yes.
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:29 pm
Yes, that would be a blessing!
But if only Apple would fix iTunes so that its not a drag to even browse the Applications folder. I have 239 apps in there, mostly free apps which I download and try and keep in case they become more popular and useful via future updates.
February 23rd, 2009 at 10:16 pm
I’ve been wanting this kind of thing forever. I would even be fine with just a simple ordered list where they showed breaks for how many fit on a page. Super simple, but done in iTunes, instead of the utter tedium it is to do on your phone.
February 23rd, 2009 at 10:43 pm
One word… Sweet Now, that would be a killer function.
February 23rd, 2009 at 10:46 pm
I would love to have this! Of course as an addition feature though, not replacement.
February 23rd, 2009 at 11:03 pm
YES!!
I also was a Palm OS user, and Windows Mobile, and find the iPhone way of managing apps extremely frustrating. There have been a few good suggestions here, any one of which would be far better than what we’re dealing with now.
It takes WAY too much time to arrange the screens on the iPhone itself, plus it is too easy to mistakenly move apps one doesn’t want moved.
Useful would be a way to tag apps in iTunes as active or inactive, with iTunes updating both, as well as a way to arrange the iPhone app screen layouts from within iTunes. And maybe a flag to mark apps as locked in place, so they can’t be mistakenly moved from the phone itself?
(I also want a native app in Ubuntu Linux for managing my iPhone, or straightforward instructions on how to run either the Win or Mac version from within Ubuntu, but that’s another issue.)
February 23rd, 2009 at 11:49 pm
ahhhh. I only wish
February 24th, 2009 at 12:00 am
@ Andy:
I sometimes use Free VmwarePlayer to run a Virtual Windows machine in which I run Itunes. You still need a windows license from somewhere.
February 24th, 2009 at 2:33 am
Interesting concept. Of course, if iTunes becomes a means of manipulating the homescreen there is no reason the homescreen might not grow to encompass folders, which would be easily created and manipulated in the proposed iTunes interface.
February 24th, 2009 at 3:13 am
I would mainly be happy if iTunes synced the icon positions. (If you try to do a full restore of a backup in the current iTunes version, all of your icons will be out of place.)
I figure this kind of power management of icons is unnecessary. Honestly how many people use more than 3 pages of programs. Yes you may /own/ more than 3 pages, but how many do you actually use? And in my experience unnecessary features lead to unnecessary complexity.
That said, it /would/ be nice to be able to add “blanks” to the home screen to position icons more precisely. One workaround for that functionality is to add a bookmark to “about:blank” to the home screen and name it something like “.”. Not very elegant.
February 24th, 2009 at 4:01 am
I like this idea. Because it’s quite hard to move applications if for example you want to move it from the very last page to the very first page. With having to navigate in itunes, just with the click of the mouse, you can sort and move apps really faster.
February 24th, 2009 at 7:20 am
Yep good idea.
I would actually like the ability to lock the home screen from entering “nervous mode” just by holding down an icon. My 2 year old can find her way around the icons, knows where to find photos, videos of Mickey Mouse (a great testament to the simple UI) however she also manages to delete some of my apps. Mind you, I don’t know what rating she gives on delete.
February 24th, 2009 at 11:16 am
It’s an improvement yes but I still really want a better ui… give me folders to organize things would be easiest and heck you could still allow nine pages with sliding so people can choose to use the folder option or not.
February 24th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
Dear gawd do i want this. I’ve been hoping something like this would be included in an iTunes update for some time. Its unbelievably cumbersome to arrange icons on the phone especially when your screes are full. You have to move the icon you want to move then rearrange all the icons that got pushed to the next screen.
February 24th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
I think the idea of managing the iPhone home screens from iTunes is a fantastic idea. There’s nothing wrong per se with the way the iPhone handles it currently in my opinion, but every now and then I find cause to revamp my iPhone home screens and using my Mac or PC to do so would be fantastic.
Mentioning using my ‘Mac or PC’ brings me to my next point. I think that a service as part of MobileMe to control and rearrange the iPhone home screen is an amazing idea and would be a very good feather in the cap for MobileMe after its very rocky start and continuous buggy feel. I love what MobileMe tries to achieve and adore its simple and clean interface, but I try to use it as it was intended (or perhaps better terminology is ‘marketed’) – across multiple personal, office and public machines and particularly across multiple platforms/browsers.
I find that depending on the platform AND the browser (whether it’s a MobileMe recommended browser or not) I get different buggy experiences. Needless to say I can’t remember finding any faults or bugs using MobileMe via Safari on my Mac, but when trying to roll out a (paid for – don’t forget this) service to both Mac and PC users, Safari and Firefox users, I think it is shameful that my calendar appointments can disappear unexpectedly or my drafted emails disappear after I click the send button. The recent (and very delayed) addition to the MobileMe iDisk service of ‘Shared Files’ is almost too little too late for me. It’s worked well so far (for my limited use) but I always expected it to be there from day one in any case and if I’m honest, SugarSync has met my requirements in the meantime and surpassed them. I really want to rate the MobileMe service very highly but I pride myself on trying to be objective wherever I’m able to be.
My long winded (hopefully constructive criticism) of MobileMe is just to say:
“that if one day I find an almost too beautifully designed little logo (App Button) across the top left of my MobileMe interface that tells me I can rearrange my iPhone home screens via my browser and it updates my phone screen wireless via the cloud…it better work properly”.
Lastly, to comment on the blog post conclusion. I think that the point to the effect of ‘would the iTunes home screen management option fall down when trying to manage say 9 home screens’ is slightly invalid. I think that if you genuinely find the need for 9 home screens of apps on the iPhone then the iPhone interface itself is just not geared up to suit your needs full stop. You would need a very good memory indeed to remember whether even an often used app was on the 6th or 7th home screen surely. It would also take a few swipes (5 or 6 if my maths serves me well) to get to those screens and on a phone for quick access it just doesn’t add up to me.
The option for sorting your home screen apps by usual OS style options i.e name, date last used, frequency of use etc should in my opinion already be in the settings on the iPhone and it’s disappointing it’s not already there.
All in all, I support the idea of home screen management via iTunes, MobileMe or both. I just want it to work well if and when it comes out.
There…my many cents worth.
February 25th, 2009 at 11:19 am
Yeah that is very sweet!
March 18th, 2009 at 1:02 am
There’s another reason this program would be great- my touchscreen has lost sensitivity and now I’m left stranded with an otherwise working phone dead in the water… if I could just find an application that would let me rearrange buttons through software I would be on the road again!
April 14th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
Totally awesome. I’ve jailbroken my iPhone and I installed the five icon dock addon, so occasionally I’ll use that to rearrange apps. I also keep the bottom right space open so I can drag apps without them bumping each other. But it’s a kludge. So…Windows-like.
April 21st, 2009 at 5:46 pm
Yes! Yes! Yes! I came upon this because I was googling to find out if there was already any way of managing my iPhone homescreens on my Mac. I have ten screens worth, and while I’m not sure how well this will scale, I’m sure it scales better than shuffling them one app at a time on the iPhone itself.
October 1st, 2009 at 8:32 am
Here’s a question Apple. I’ve just installed iTunes 9 for this very reason. Now HOW THE HELL DO I FIND THIS FEATURE?!!??!?!?!