Welcome to 2013, Apple fans! Maybe in 5 more years you'll get ~~homescreen widgets~~ customizable layouts (change number of apps per row etc). In 10 you might get custom launchers!
Welcome to 2013, Apple fans! Maybe in 5 more years you'll get home screen widgets.
We actually do have home screen widgets, as of like 2020. They got it sometime before I had my iPhone. And an app drawer!
As a former Android user, my iPhone home screen looks wildly different from people who’ve had iPhones for many years. I have very few icons on my home screen, I have widgets taking up most of the top of the screen to push the icons I do have down near my fingers (because Springboard is still stupid as of iOS 17, as this gif is pointing out), I have more widgets to the left (“Today View,” Apple calls this, it’s basically just a scrolling widget section), and then the app drawer equivalent to the right (which Apple calls “App Library”). It’s clean and beautiful and reminiscent of my lovely Nova launcher setup I had on my beloved OnePlus 7T Pro (may it rest in peace).
Whereas most longtime iPhone users just have page after page after page of apps and folders. Every app they own is on there somewhere. Which is ridiculous since on iOS you can just swipe down, type the first few letters of the app, and there it is.
I remember having this feature on my jailbroken iPhone in like 2009. Wild that it took this long.
This is an April Fools, right?
No way a fancy top end smartphone in 2024 doesn't have this extremely basic feature from over a decade ago that everything has....
iPhone just feels so unintuitive after using Android. Their UI absolutely sucks in my opinion.
Try Mac OS next lol. "Here, hold down alt, smack your left ass cheek, and tap dance around your computer to run this unsigned executable". It really feels like they're deliberately violating the principle of discoverability to stop your from doing things that they don't like.
Ahh Apple, the first to introduce what Android users have simply taken for granted
You would think that. But as a person having an iPhone... No it is not. At least the part of iPhones currently not having that option. App-Icons on your "desktop" will always align in dense rows from top left to bottom right, with no free spaces allowed.
It is a bit weird, and I don't really see why, since you can change the order of icons in this dense row-grid. I am glad Apple warms up to the fact that people might actually want some kind of customization on their devices and not everything "the way Apple decrees it".
But to be really honest... I did not even notice prior to this post, and I had all Android before switching to my current iPhone. So at least for me this is a really small non-issue, and maybe a nice-to-have feature.
I had an iPad for a while and it definitely bothered me. Really just about everything did. It felt like I had to fight with it to do just about anything I wanted to do.
This is what my homescreen looks like and apple's struggling with placement of icons?
Edit: for those asking for theme, below is the video with instructions and apps used. https://youtu.be/UQKIUycDfQg Can't guarantee if it'll work for you.
unixporn material.
that is 🔥 ! how though?
Total launcher. Had to design whole thing though. The theme is based on nier: automata game ui.
Holy fuck why is that so beautiful. You've unlocked something in me I didn't know was there and must pursue now.
You've taken "home screen as self expression" to a new level ~~level 70~~ and I am here for it.
What sort of gameboy is this?
I used to work with an Apple fanboy that knew next to nothing about how computers actually work, but he knew that Apple was the best at everything. Any time someone brought up something about a device or service from any other company or with any other OS, his stock answer was always "switch to Apple". Any time someone pointed out that their device offered a feature or functionality they appreciated that Apple did not offer in a convenient way, his stock answer was always "You don't need that." Sometimes he'd add "why would you want to do that? Do X instead".
Fast forward to today, I ended up killing him and am writing this from jail.
This is really my problem with Apple.
They make great hardware, and they make great software...but their answer to an XY problem is always W. You do things their way, or you don't do them.
And what they are really best at is marketing and simplicity. They market their simplicity. That attracts a lot of people who don't care to know any way of doing things other than the Apple way. Even if another way is objectively better in any or every way.
RIP in peace Windows Phone 10. Still the best home screen setup ever.
Say what you will about Microsoft, lemmys, but Windows Phone 10 had great performance and battery life. It's a shame that it was nuked because MS couldn't bring themselves to go all the way on the Android bridge.
I'm a mobile developer and back around 2011 I was hoping like hell that Windows Phone would make it big. When you look at Xcode (for iOS), Eclipse (for Android and Blackberry) and MS Visual Studio (for Windows Mobile and Windows Phone) for mobile development, there was absolutely no comparison - it was Visual Studio all the fucking way. But Microsoft just decided to completely shit the bed and give up on mobile altogether. I still don't get it.
Honestly windows phone was sabotaged by both 3rd party developers who refused to port their apps to the platform, despite how easy it became AND did things like kill their own APIs to stop other developers from developing ports themselves, as well as by Google by not allowing their services on the platform.
The hardware was honestly top notch, even compared to my current S21 ultra. They were fairly pro consumer, having removable batteries, SD card slots and a 3.5mm jack right up until the end, even after the other big manufacturers removed them. And after the major update (the WP 8.1 update iirc) the software was really nice, intutive and pretty. I miss arranging and resising tiles, I miss having my pictures or album artworks showing up on the homescreen and I still use the Microsoft launcher on android to get the app drawer like I had on my WP.
Tbh the default launchers for mobile are garbage. Scrolling around looking for icons on a desktop like environment is not intuitive. Everyone's home screens just become a junk drawer of every app they've ever downloaded.
They can rip Niagara launcher from my cold dead hands I'm never going back to icon panels
This was not allowed before. Until just recently, the technology didn't exist to place icons anywhere in the grid. They would automatically smoosh up into orderly rows starting at the top-left with no gaps between icons. Apple is continuing to develop cutting edge innovation, though, and now you will be able to leave entire rows and columns empty, or any specific icon space you choose!
Apple fan boi here.
I also love to shit on Apple.
Some of the big reveals are so dumb. They just give things a different name to blow your mind.
“Omg! They invited spatial computing!!!”
Well this is good news. I never owned an Apple product until my recent purchase of an iPad Mini.
I was nervous about switching from an Android tablet, but everything went great until I tried to move my home screen icons where I wanted them, and resize a weather widget the way I wanted it. Neither worked, and I had to laugh at how ridiculous it was.
I'm very much looking forward to version 18 now.
Are they letting you guys keep your screens on yet? Or is that something that's being saved for 19? Probably not a big deal for most, but an always on display for time, calendar, and alerts without having to do anything to active my phone is clutch for me. When I see other peoples phones with blank black screens they look so dead.
Me on Linux changing the look of notification area with CSS stylesheet after installing an icon pack that works not only on app launcher but in most of the system.
PS Don't forget to install this Magisk module that hacks Google checks so you can still log-in to your bank after you changed animations style via that other Magisk module.
