iPhone App Shuffle

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A few modest contributions to the blogosphere from Andy Fluke,
co-founder of the National Coalition
for Dialogue & Deliberation.

Sat Jan 24

iPhone App Shuffle

Getting a Little Too Close to 148

So you’ve had your iPhone or iPod Touch for a while now. It’s become a regular part of your day. You’ve filled it with great productivity apps and plenty of entertainment but, suddenly, you realize you’re running out of screen space. Four apps on screen seven need to be on screen two, and two apps on screen eight need to be on screen one! Now you have to do the iPhone App Shuffle, shifting back and forth between screens, moving the apps one by one, wasting a lot of time. We’ve all been there.

Chris Heuer, founder of the Social Media Club, deals with this every week, and his frustration led him to post the following tweet today:

re-arranging my iphone screen has become a 1x per week ritual - with 8 screens its almost unmanageable. it has to be desktop function in 2.3 (link)

chrisheuer

I really understand his frustration but I can’t disagree more. I’m not sure if the way I manage apps is any better than anyone else, but the idea of cluttering up this wonderfully simple interface with the desktop paradigm* really bothers me.

Having been a Palm Lifedrive user for a couple years, dealing with a handheld device that utilized a bit of that “desktop function” on a similarly-sized screen, I am aware of both the positive and negative sides to the functionality. But it seems to me that simplicity is the most important element of the iPhone UI and changing that would alter the very essence of what makes it such an attractive device.

Perhaps we ask too much of the iPhone if we start desiring Finder-like capabilities? Or maybe we’re just stuffing too many apps into the device. I’m just as guilty of that as the next person. But the iPhone UI isn’t going to change anytime soon, so I guess we need to find ways to adapt…

Andy’s Personal App Management System (APAMS**)

Chris’ tweet made me want to share my system.

Three Apps to Rule Them All (Not Four)

At the bottom of your iPhone screens are four app icons. Remove one. This will free up a space to drag icons into when you need to shift them around — speeding up the process of moving them to a new screen. Whatever app you remove can easily live with your most important apps on the first screen.

Leverage the Home Button

When your iPhone is awake, pressing the home button takes you back to the first screen. This little trick gets you to your most important apps with the push of a button.

No More Than Three Screens Apart

This might be unique to me, but I’ve discovered that my apps breakdown into three categories: productivity, information/entertainment and games. I have set up my screens to reflect this.

On my main screen lives all my “most important” apps and they are all productivity apps in some form. They also represent most of the apps that I use everyday. My second screen houses my internet radio apps, youtube player, etc.. My third screen is all games.

When I started expanding beyond screen three, I kept this pattern. Screen four holds more productivity apps, screen five has news apps and web links, and screen six is slowly filling up with more games. With nine screens to play with, I can leverage this pattern one more time.

By keeping to this pattern, I usually have no more than three screens to move back and forth between when rearranging and this set-up tends to place newly loaded apps no more than one screen away from a screen that houses similar apps.

Be Comfortable With Imperfection

148 Apps is the secret goal of all of us, but you will always need one empty space, (preferably on screen five to maximize efficiency) to move shifting apps into when you have finally reached iPhone nerdvana.

—

So this is my system. I don’t know how unique it is, but it works for me, and I hope it gives you some ideas on how to manage your iPhone apps.

* Ooh, ooh, I got to use the word paradigm in a blog post!

** Trademark pending.