![Screen shot 2009-10-12 at [ October 12 ] 9.26.54 AM](http://www.mobilecrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Screen-shot-2009-10-12-at-October-12-9.26.54-AM.png "Screen shot 2009-10-12 at [ October 12 ] 9.26.54 AM")
We get the strangest e-mails in the MobileCrunch tips line. Sometimes people will write in to tell us about their day, using us as an archaic, vacuum-esque livejournal. Other times (and quite often), internet newbies fail to realize this isn’t a store, and ask us when we’ll have such and such item in stock. Less often, we’ll get random little gems of self-created goodness that I’m never quite sure what to do with; they’re not news, per se, but they’re still rather interesting.
Such is the case with this concept video (after the jump) from Swedish design house Ocean Observations. It looks rather flashy and neat, but I’m left wondering: would anyone use it?
It’s like OS X’s Expose feature, tweaked for iPhone app screens. Tap the home button, and up to 9 pages of homescreen are shown in a grid. Tapping any of the displayed pages will jump you directly to that page, allowing you to skip from page 1 to page 8 without swiping 7 times. If Apple provided this as one of the home button behavior alternatives, would you use this? It seems to me like the primary use would be launching a specific app; if that’s the case, why not just use search – which can already be tied to the home button?
A very Nice idea.Apple should include this feature.
oh, ok. so it’s something like TaskFacade is on windows mobile
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaQdaLkuLm4
in anycase, it is a good concept
TaskFacade is a task switcher (more like Exposé in OS X).
This is a way to get to one of your home screens on your iPhone without having to flip through multiple pages.
same concept though, correct?
I’d definitely use that. None of the homescreen double-tap functions are really useful to me at present.
I think this replaces the “single click” functionality of your home button for the home screen only.
Instead of having it just jump you between your search page and your first home screen, it lets you see all your home screens and your search bar.
I really like the idea.
I am waiting for that …
With this available in App Sync on 3.1 FW it is a useful tool for organizing many pages of app icons. Given that there are “over 75,000 apps” in app store and more elsewhere it would make a great way to get around screens. Search is ok, but why type when you do not have…
Apple should take it a step forward and allow for “folder” icons similar to Categories app for better app icon management.
Now, where did I put those bi-focols???
Agreed. Again, an app for jailbroken phones [Categories] leading the way.
you’re useless.
I agree. The concept does make sense as I myself get a lot frustrated sometimes to flip through the screens. This does bring in a better way to do that.
Moreover I think instead each grid being a single page, it can be a group of pages. That would help categorizing hundreds of apps a person can have on his iPhone. Assign each grid for category like, default, games, productivity, books etc.
I agree it needs folder capability. So you can group different apps in different folders, just like Symbian has it.
Also, i don’t see how useful this concept is and still you won’t know which apps are in which group, unless you memorize. IT will still be trial and error if you have large apps.
everything I use regularly fits on 2 screens and I have a 3rd with less used things.. so personally I wouldn’t ever need such an interaction model, but I could see it being an optional replacement for the double tap to go home action, which I personally prefer, but the option would be cool.
I would use that sort of replacement for a home screen.
For those times I actually wanted the very first page, it would be one extra and very quick tap, for all other page acceses it would be much faster than tap>swipe>swipe>swipe>swipe to get somewhere.
I very much like the idea of being able to easily jump directly to the screen I want.
(Same would apply to any touch-screen smartphone.)
Does nobody here knows you can just tap the ‘page indicators’ to jump to the next/previous page???
I’ve setup my pages to contain 3 rows of 4 icons, and this works wonderfully. Stop complaining, and start discovering ;-).
You’re a moron.
I think you fail to see the point of this. You can tap the page indicators to go the next page, but you’d still have to tap 8 times to get to page 9, which is a little annoying.
those dots are freaking tiny!!
This is brilliant. Hope Apple does it!
This is ridiculous.
FOLDERS.
Why do we need expose? Just give us folders that we can name or change the color or the icon of. And then we can put them on our front page.
I agree, folders would be a much better solution
yeah. folders. NO WAY!
the reason WinMo and Android are a distant third and fourth behind BB and iPhone is that they try to be computers.
Folders are very desktop-based things. They don’t belong on a mobile platform. I will agree that category pages would be great, a Nav page, a Social page, a Games page, whatever… But I hate the idea of stacking folders on the home screen of my phone. That’s so 1998….
Ah, you mean like Android? That kind of folders?
Oh, you mean those things that have been in Windows Mobile since euhm… forever?
Have wanted folders of some sort for ages…I don’t have a problem with file size of apps (with 32Gb) just physical space…constantly deleting ‘the weakest link’ apps to add new ones.
Folders are so 20th century.
Folders – I’m still waiting for a non-jail broke solution and folders would be something I’d use all the time. Expose’ is just an incremental improvement on the home screen. Give us more power with folders.
Yes, I would appreciate it :-)
I would love this feature! i’ve got 7 pages of apps I scroll through and use on a daily basis, this would be much better.
Good in theory, but impractical. Unless you have incredible vision or happen to remember what page each app is on, this solution falls apart.
I agree. This solution relies too much on knowing which page your desired app sits on. I don’t doubt most people have a system for how they organise their pages.
Take this idea through a title for each page on the bottom or top.
Now you have the folder name idea with this cool function that allows you to see the apps and which ones have notifications.
Best of both worlds…
No. While a neat idea, this does not address the lack of usability and customizability of the iPhone home screen. If a grid of 4 x 4 icons is unproductive, I don’t see how a 3 x 3 grid of thumbnails of 4 x 4 screens does this better.
The home screen needs categories.
yes. app tags.
No, I won’t use this; I don’t use an iphone. ;-)
HAHAHAHAHA
not clever.
I just want the time & weather, maybe upcoming events
wtf?
They have release a Cover Flow Style Menu now;
Read more about it here:
http://www.dailyiphone.se/2009/10/12/iphone-cover-flow-multitasking-cover-flow-meny-till-iphone/
Realy nice looking. i wish both are comeing true. :)
Agreed. I would use both also.
this is big! scrolling the screens is an annoying task and this is much better
I would use this. I would also suggest FOLDERS. I know that might anger steve jobs, but folders such as a game folder, productivity folder, and stuff, that we can create, name, and drag apps into. That would help a ton.
After getting a few pages of apps it just gets annoying and confusing.
Kind of funny that Android has had folders since day 1, considering how anti-folder Google seems to be in Gmail, etc. I think it’s clear that both Apple and Google could take cues from the other on their UI.
Folders already exist. Its under jailbreak. Its listed as No. 2 in my top 10 jailbreak apps. http://www.perivision.net/wordpress/?p=734
Yeah, but most of us don’t have jailbroken iPhones and won’t ever. I don’t have the time and don’t want the hassle.
The iPhone UI, while slick looking, is a dog performance-wise. And iTunes, well, just sucks as a piece of software.
Uffa. Yea, I agree on itunes. I think 1/2 of my blogging is about how much the iphone/Apple/AT&T drive me nuts as much as I like it. Yes the iphone could be better, but until just recently, there was nothing like it, and you have to admit, it is till an amazing product.
Although, jailbreaking is not THAT much hassle, I guess you have to find that one jailbroken app that makes it worth it.
I have my home button do a couple things already – go to search, go to my ipod, go to my camera, quit the application…I think adding more features to the same button would be annoying.
I feature I think Apple should implement ASAP is being able to SMS back right within an app. I’ll go out on a limb and categorize the bulk of iPhone users like me – which means the biggest reason for multi-tasking would simply be able to respond to text messages while I’m in another app – makes no sense to close the app I’m in when I already have a window right there that alerts me to the text message. Wouldn’t it make sense to reply right there so I can stay in the app I’m using?
Amen to that. This is a costant issue for me, especially with apps like pandora and colloquiy.
Folders/categories would be awesome. It would also be helpful to set the home screen as something other than the first screen. If I could set screen 4 as my home screen, the number of screens to scroll through in either direction would be cut in half.
I would definitely like to see this, pretty sweet cuz I got a lot of apps.
I’d like to see options that mirror the way we can organize music. 1. See the apps the way we do now, 2. see them in an alphabetical list with the ability to jump down to whatever letter we need, or 3. organized in user defined folders. Options would be categories, favorites, developer, etc.
We all probably need to weed out the almost-never used apps and make more room for the Bob Dylan Christmas album, but that’s another story.
Yes, do this and mimic the safari page swipe for multi-tasking between apps.
I think this will be really useful for those folks like me with pages and pages of apps.
Even though I manage to have some sort of sanity organizing apps with some relevance & order, it is a pain to swipe across pages.
Yes, iPhone spotlight has solved this issue for me for the most part.
Where it falls short is at times I can’t remember the name of the app. Or I am not sure what part of the app name it uses for brevity.
Some examples:
HR Battle – Homerun Battle
NFSU – Need for Speed
GPS Drive – Motion X GPS Drive
As I use them more, I will remember what it’s called but any more help in navigating like an expose interface is definitely most welcome!
I’ve long been awaiting smart folder management for apps, so I can group them into category, most recently used, most often used, etc.
well …the cover flow concept is also nice…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9Irt_J2c7o
I’d use it. It’s a good step forward in making the apps a little more manageable. The space on Search is otherwise wasted real estate, so this doesn’t seem to be a feature that comes by way of compromise of any sort.
I think there is a Chink in the Iphone’s armor.
I would absolutely love this feature. With so many screens of apps a better way to get to the app I want is badly needed then swiping multiple times or worse, typing in a name.
I know what home screen each of my apps is on (thanks mostly to the new feature of being able to organize my home screens in iTunes), but if I’m on screen 1 and the app I want to launch is on screen 6 that still requires 5 swipes of the finger, which is frustrating. The ability to see 9 home screens and pick the screen I want seems much faster.
Though still what I want (which has been available on Jailbreak for a long time, but has been painfully slow and intensive) is Categories/Folders. I want to be able to hit an icon for a category, and see the icons in that folder and then pick one. Then my main home screen would consist of app categories:
Location Apps
Online Services
Communication Apps
Games
Tools
Media
And then a few key brought out ones (phone, email, browser, ipod), every thing else I would simply pick a category, have only one home screen, and be happy.
Another option I would prefer is to switch from a page view like we currently have, to a scrolling view, where I can scroll my list of icons up and down, rather then swipe from page to page.
Yes, we care.
More details, please?
STFU
Folders?! Seriously?
No. Wrong.
Why don’t we load Windows 3.1 on the iPhone while we’re at it?
This is an elegant solution if Apple only ever allows 9 screens. Otherwise, we’ll have spaces of spaces, and so on.
Folders? Really? Maybe you thought this was a post for Windows Mobile.
Agreed, folders is the wrong way to go.
I’d prefer tags as an alternative to folders. Folders can be simulated with tags by keeping the tags mutually exclusive.
I think this kind of functionality is a great idea, but if Apple were to ever implement it, I think it would work much better as a multi-touch pinch gesture on the screen as opposed to the button push.
I think I’d be more interested in an Expose for running multiple apps at once, like the Palm Pre’s card deck feature. But my 1G iPod touch is gonna need a processor bump for that…so I guess that’s not so much of a good idea after all.
I don’t use apps on my itouch very often, but in reality I don’t think this is a usable solution. The icons are so small that they are almost unreadable. You wouldn’t be able to tell which page had the app you wanted. Unless of course you already categorized them by page. In which case, I don’t think you need this.
Yes, I’d use [this Expose view] in a heartbeat! (The coverflow concept is also very intriguing…)
Yo, Apple! You readin’ this?
Too cool. I would just have to look at my phone about an inch from my eye. Regardless that would be an awesome feature.
Just a usability alternative, and one that I would use. Even being an apple user, I prefer dock icons for launching to using spotlight to find an app.
I think it would be cool if you could add a few more than 4 items to the bottom dock – this could be done two ways
1. Allow the dock to go up to a second row (limiting you to 8 apps per “Screen” but 8 on your dock).
2. Make the 4 icon dock scrollable left and right independently of the home screens (but not too far, maybe only 8 total…)
I mean (in #1) you could have 12 main icons per screen, not 16, if 8 were dockable…
I wouldn’t mind it.
I would like a home screen with the temperature on it.
Sucks how jailbroken phones have so many cooler features.
Dude.
I looked at your website.
Use a dictionary next time.
The word you should have used in your domain (and business) name is `tutorial`, not `tuition`.
jeez.
*facepalm*
Actually he has got the correct spelling of ‘tuition’. Tutorial would be out of context for the sentence and therefore would be incorrect grammar.
So its you who needs to look at a dictionary to actually see the differance.
*facepalm yourself*
This thread makes me sad.
It’s a nice idea by looks like crap. Yay, nine icons of teeny tiny icons I can’t see.
Personally I think you should be able to tag your apps. Create a “Go To” feature to filter apps based off the tag and boom, every app should be within 2-3 taps.
Other than that, I am a little amazed that people have 9 screens of apps.
“Other than that, I am a little amazed that people have 9 screens of apps.”
Ditto. I’d bet there is a high correlation between the number of iPhone apps people have and the amount they use twitter. These are the people who can’t resist shiny, frivolous things.
“Other than that, I am a little amazed that people have 9 screens of apps.”
Oh ye of little imagination. Lots of people I know with iPhones have maxed out the number of apps that show on the limited number of springboard pages on the iPhone. Just because YOU can’t imagine yourself using lots of apps, don’t criticize those of us who do. I have lots of apps that I use occasionally but fit a particular purpose in my life.
Oh, and i DON’T use Twitter, either. Don’t make sweeping generalizations. Of course, you’re probably upset that the App Store has thousands of apps….
What if hovered over the tiny home screen icons was a name you could change, then you could categorize your apps and actually name that home screen “games” “sports” “finance” etc…
Yes, great idea.
I don’t have an iPhone so i don’t know if the gesture is already used for something else, but wouldn’t it be more intuitive to just use the multitouch pinch gesture on the phone to zoom out rather than using the home button?
I like that idea, but I hate not being able to use 1 finger to do stuff – doing a pinch takes two hands (one to hold one to pinch) – right now hitting home while already home brings up search (which is implemented in the top of this video’s exposé feature…) so it would work with the button click.
What if instead of the home screens being aligned in a row left to right, they were already arranged in a grid like is shown when the user activates the exposé – then you could swipe vertically and diagonally to change screens instead of just left to right. (Kind like how Spaces works on OS X).
Yes, I have been working on a prototype of exactly that. You would have to know where your apps were, but I don’t think that should be a problem. I just have them organized into categories and to get to games, for instance, I just swipe diagonally top right to bottom left.
Cute but not scalable and frankly quite unreadable (not every iPhone user is young with perfect vision), and limited to 9 pages of icons. With 600 apps, I want an unlimited number of pages, not just 9. And folders are not the solution… too complicated. Filtering is, but it has to be easier than having to type. Maybe an ability to assign colors or tags to apps, then access the list of colors or tags in use at any time to filter the list of apps.
I like their use of CoverFlow much better, in the second video, although ideally, you should be able to be on any page, then enter CoverFlow mode that would take the whole screen to let you flip between pages much faster. Indeed, a single swipe would let you go from the first to the last page in one step, if performed with sufficient velocity.
I’m surprised they didn’t use “Pinch”. Why not Pinch on any screen and you see IT surrounded by all the other screens. Being able to name the screens would be useful… I find I have to play “one of these things is not like the others” whenever I download a new app… it’s on the ‘wrong’ screen (not with my other “games” or “toys” or “comms” apps) so I have to flip from screen to screen, look at all the icons, determine what the common theme is, to determine which screen it is and whether or not the newly downloaded app ‘belongs’ there.
Hooray for Steve Job’s usually excellent insights, but there is a difference between shoving UI down peoples throats and allowing them access to more ‘advanced’ features. You can hide access to UI that you think is disruptive for most users, but empowering to some. Try it. You’ll like it.
This expose-style solution seems like overkill. Also slow/awkward to use and not particularly scalable.
A simpler solutions would be to allow you tap (or double tap) on the white dots that indicate what screen you are currently on. It’d be basically the same UI that they use for fast scrolling in the address book and ipod apps.
Allowing you to arranging the 9 screens in a grid instead of a line might also help, although the white dots would take up more space (perhaps they could be replaced with a number indicating what screen you were on)
Even if you do think an expose-style solution is best, it still makes sense to have it be based on holding on the white dots.
Oh my bad, you already can click on the white dots, it’s just really hard to do, and as far as I can tell they only move you one screen at a time. So close…
The iPhone UI is terrible. Apple is getting smoked on the Android and Pre front in terms of UI. Nothing short of a total overhaul will change that. Apple is too arrogant though, IMO. I’m getting disenchanted with Apple lately. Sad thing really.
JP,
“iPhone UI is terrible.” You’re so right; not. Go buy an Android or a Pre, and be happy.
Shrug. I suppose it’s subjective.
I happen to think the UI is not intuitive for getting things done. You can’t run multiple apps. You have to exit everything, flip screens, tap another app. Exit an app and when you relaunch it you’re not back where you left off. The icons can’t be placed where you want them. They have an autoarrange type behavior. You can’t put spaces where you want them in the middle of a screen. Notifications pop up over everything you’re doing. It’s very disruptive.
Just about the exact opposite of Mac OS X… which is the best product Apple has.
In fact, I’m moving to Android this week… for several reasons. And I will be happy. Nothing is perfect. To each his own.
fail troll is fail.
Much better approach by, (of course) Tog…
http://www.asktog.com/columns/080Springboard.html
Very good ideas. Apple are you looking?
hrmmm, forgot to comment earlier. Yes I would use this.
This is pretty cool. To small to see the icons. Though, it would be useful to see badge numbers.
More importantly, there needs to be an interface to see all your notifications in one place.
Folders has been out for a year now its called categories welcome to 2008 guys. Am im reading techcruch to read ancient history or?
Most of us don’t have jailbroken iPhones….
That’s so dumb, just add folders already! Don’t understand why that’s so hard, it would really simplify things drastically.