Hello, I am designdisorder

One of my habits when I see people using their iPhone or iPad is actually checking how they setup the device, i.e. what are the used wallpapers and how do they group apps on the screen and into app folders.

I know, this is a highly personal thing, but it is interesting that you find a few common patterns across different users. Is this only a question of taste and style or can a specific layout of apps support a more efficient usage of the device? Based on my own experiences, it is the latter.

So, what are my driving factors in organizing my devices? In order to make the usage of an iPhone or iPad as efficient as possible, it is key to minimize search time for apps and have a consistent way of structuring your workspace. As soon as you have to search for a specific app, your are wasting time doing what you actually want to do. Yeah, you can always use the global iOS search to do that, but this requires the usage of the keyboard, which is not always possible.

Let me show you my principles of how I organize my device, independent if it’s my iPhone or iPad.

1. Don’t use busy images or photos as a wallpaper

This is one of my favorites: people putting the most distracting images on the front page of the device. It is not only a sacrilege to destroy the design of a device that has been designed with every detail in mind, it is actually very distracting to have a busy image underneath the various app icons and folders. It simply becomes difficult to find the app you are looking for on top of such wallpapers. So, what are good wallpapers in this case? Apple’s genuine wallpapers are actually a good start if you look for something that fits to the rest of the device. They are simple and typically not too busy. If you want to do something that is the least distracting, I would vote for a pitch black background. No other wallpaper beats that. If you still wanna keep your personal touch, put your kids, pets, wife, … onto the lock screen.

2. (Almost) don’t touch the first page

This is another one of those rules that sounds kind of weird in the beginning, but keeps the look of your device clean and new. Leave the first page of your device almost untouched. I say almost as you might wanna replace certain Apple default apps by your favorite 3rd party app. We’ll come to the unused Appple apps later. Second rule here: don’t fill the first page up with apps. Leave a row or even more space unused, which gives your device a very clean and lean look. This seems to be subtle, but it is always amazing to see how such a simple thing changes the whole UI. This goes hand in hand with my third rule …

3. The most important apps go into the dock

The Dock is an important element of the iOS UI. Beside the first page, the dock is the most present UI element on iOS. It is always visible when you go back to the homescreen and it stays put even if you swipe between homescreen pages. Everything that goes into the dock can be reached with 2 clicks max: home button, app. Your most requently used apps should end up here. There is actually a modified version of this rule in case you are running out of app slots there: in such cases add an app folder into the doc. I usually do this on my devices.

The screenshot above actually shows both principles we just talked about: an almost untouched homescreen as well as the priority based dock including app folders with additional frequently used apps. I use to name this folder WTF … and it holds all apps that would eventually go into the dock if there would be more space. This app folder can actually have several pages if you need more space, but in any case it still provides faster access to apps then anywhere else.

4. Use activity based app categories

If you group apps together on your iPhone or iPad, iOS intelligently suggests a folder name based on the categories of the apps you want to put together. The generated category can be more or less useful depending on the app categories. Typically you want to change this name as you don’t want every other folder to be named Productivity or something very generic. One of the most compelling ways to name app folders for me is using activity labels similar to Read, Write, Listen, Watch or Play. Those labels are also kind of generic, but they are task/activity oriented and don’t describe the type of apps as such. I find this very intuitive in case I have to remember an app location based on what I do. Most of those names are even self explanatory, allowing even other users to find stuff on my device with only a few touches. Another philosophy here is to have only 2 pages max per folder. I usually go for only one if possible. There is typically only one type of folder that doesn’t follow this convention: the Play folder. There are simply too many games out there :) Finally a few last recommendation here that is similar to what I do on the first page: all app folders go to the second homescreen page, don’t use single apps on that page and don’t fill up the complete page with app folders. Here is my 2nd page …

5. Move everything else out of the way …

We are almost done here. The only thing that is left is putting all the Apple default apps somewhere and there are usually a couple of apps that you have to open only once (extensions, keyboards, etc.) or which are more system related and don’t fit anywhere else. For those cases I have a -folder and a ⌘-folder. Both are on the 3rd page and I usually don’t have to go there for days.

“This quarter was unique as we had new detachables in the market from all three of the major platform players,” said Jitesh Ubrani, Senior Research Analyst with IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Device Trackers. “Despite lukewarm reviews, the iPad Pro was the clear winner this season as it was the top selling detachable, surpassing notable entries from Microsoft and other PC vendors. It’s also important to note that the transition towards detachable tablets has presented positive opportunities for both Apple and Microsoft. However, Google’s recent foray into this space has been rather lackluster as the Android platform will require a lot more refinement to achieve any measurable success.”

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“One of the biggest reasons why detachables are growing so fast is because end users are seeing those devices as PC replacements,” said Jean Philippe Bouchard, Research Director, Tablets at IDC. “We believe Apple sold just over two million iPad Pros while Microsoft sold around 1.6 million Surface devices, a majority of which were Surface Pro and not the more affordable Surface 3. With these results, it’s clear that price is not the most important feature considered when acquiring a detachable – performance is.”

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*Hawaiian for goodbye MacBook, hello iPad Pro

The PC is on a world-wide decline since a couple of years now and 2015 has been the first year since its introduction, that a new kind of device, the post-PC, has taken the lead in world-wide sales. post-PCs are a new generation of computers which no longer look and feel like a classic PC. Other than classic PCs they are not build for technology-savvy customers. post-PCs have usually a touch interface, are highly portable, don’t have a classic OS like Windows, Linux or OSX and center around the concept of apps rather than classic programs. Smartphones, tablets or smart watches all qualify as post-PC devices.

Meanwhile there is already a generation of users out where the post-PC was the first computer device they got in touch with before even touching a PC. For them the PC is something rather exotic.

But coming from a classic PC, for the last couple of years post-PCs were still inferior in terms of what you could do with them and the efficiency working with the device.

I bought my first tablet when Apple released the original iPad in 2010. In 2012 I got the first Retina iPad, the iPad 3. I liked both of them at the time they came out, but they never made it beyond the point of being a nice web or gaming device …

When I finally bought the iPad Pro last November, I deliberately put my beloved 12" MacBook aside and used the Pro almost exclusively in many different contexts and situations. In a nutshell, the Pro changed everything for me.

Yeah, there is still a need to once in a while startup the Mac and use it for some rather difficult tasks, but the Mac has clearly become my secondary or backup device, focused on very specific tasks. Why is that and why didn’t I have to force myself into that?

iOS, the better OS?

PC operating systems came a long way since the introduction of the PC. How you interact with your PC these days is way more efficient and convenient compared to the console based interfaces in the old days. But when you look at PC operating systems these days, they are more or less based on the same concepts and metaphors. One of the key elements there is the file system, a concept a lot of people have trouble with to adopt. I am not talking about the geeks and computer nerds, I am talking about the average user. And even I have sometimes trouble to organize my stuff within a file systems. On a PC there are the files and then there are programs to work on these files.

In the post-PC world, things are quite different: there are no files, at least not on the front end. Sure, as post-PCs are computers as well, they use file systems as well, but those are not visible to the user per se. Apps are actually there to structure your workflow and documents inside these apps are the method to structure your work products. This is obviously more natural for us as a concept and I haven’t seen users getting lost in this. I have seen quite a few people getting lost in file systems and the Finder. No wonder you see desktops covered with tones of icons.

And then there is iOS 9, the third release in a row that finally gave the iPad the functionality it deserves. With iOS 7 Apple first introduced a whole new design language, a redesign that opened iOS for a better cooperation of apps by introducing a consistent design language. Some people will argue that Apple stopped in the middle of doing that, but the benefit of Apple’s new look is obvious: while still being visible to users, the new look isn’t fully standardized like what you find on the Windows 10 platform. Developers still have the freedom to make their apps unique and look different compared to other apps in the same domain.

After focusing on the look & feel, iOS 8 addressed a major issue on the iOS platform since original iOS version: as all apps are sand-boxed in iOS, they are not able to exchange data and documents with other apps. There where only a couple of shared standard data types, all provided by standard apps, like photos, reminders, calendar entries, contacts, etc. As a start that was ok, but soon developers struggled with these limitations. That's why iOS 8 introduced something called extensions allowing apps to share data and documents between other apps without having to care about data formats. That also included a standardized form of accessing cloud services other than iCloud.

Finally there is iOS 9, which finally gave the iPad some more love: multitasking features like split-view, slide-over and PIP are powerful extensions in iOS that allow iPad users to use the bigger screen real estate more efficiently and allow for more complex app workflows. Sure, it took Apple 3 releases to get there, but I guess, they were following a master plan to gracefully introduce the new capabilities in a 3-step approach to not overwhelm developers as well as users.

The Hardware

So far most implementations of post-PCs still had a couple of deficiencies that made it hard for users to completely switch. The change for me came with iOS 9 and the iPad Pro. For the first time, there is a device, that can compete with a classic PC 100% at the same time being superior in many aspects. So what are those things that finally convinced me to switch?

With the iPad Pro, Apple introduced a post-PC hardware platform that can 100% compete with a PC in terms of performance, at the same time still having the benefit of a slimmer and more efficient post-PC architecture when it comes to energy consumption and weight.

The A9X that Apple uses in the Pro is just amazing. Compared to my the first iPad, the Pro is 22x faster in CPU and 360x faster in GPU. The usual benchmarks available on both platforms iOS and OSX show that the Pro is on par with the MacBook Air and the smaller MacBook Pros. The iPad Pro reaches a performance level where you hardly run into any performance issues with apps, gestures or animations. The Pro also adds additional memory to the mix, which allows for most of the apps, browser tabs and other stuff to stay in memory, which increases the responsiveness of the iPad tremendously.

From a performance point of view, the Pro will for sure survive a couple of iPad generations without any problem. That was different with the early iPads. On top of that, it feels like that iOS is simply not putting as much overhead onto the CPU as an operating system like OSX. I know, this is highly subjective, but I no longer run into situations like “oh, I guess I have to reboot because the whole thing feels like molasses”.

The Software

But the hardware is just one element here. Even more important is the software. As already mentioned, post-PC devices are centered around apps and documents rather than files and programs. This seems to be a subtle difference, but it completely changes the perception of the device and the way you interact. On the PC you usually work with your Finder or Explorer, looking at files, copy them, open them, modify them and delete them. On a post-PC, you think about what you wanna do and what is the best app to achieve what you wanna do. Apps are key and there are apps for almost everything out there. The App Store just passed the 1 billion iPad apps mark in 2015. Compare this to the status quo in the PC market. The absolute number doesn’t matter here, as nobody is able to use that many apps in parallel. But what this number shows you is the attractiveness of the platform. Some of the newest apps are available on a post-PC platform first, if on the PC at all. The post-PC platform has left the PC platform behind in that regard. Sure, there are still a couple of use cases which are not suited for the post-PC and interestingly enough, programming is one of them. But this will change in the future as well.

The Cloud

Another key element for the success of post-PC devices is the cloud. The cloud has become the clue between apps and services like file systems on the PC. But the cloud has many additional benefits compared to the classic device centric file system.

The most obvious benefit is the device independence. The cloud works with all devices, even with you PC. Through mobile access we are able to access the cloud almost everywhere these days. Another thing is the ability of the cloud to work with services as well as with apps, something you can’t easily do with your local file system. Actually, the borders between apps and services start blurring these days. Finally there is another benefit of the cloud that usually becomes very handy when moving from your old to a new device. In the old days, I had to backup and restore my devices in order to make that move. With the cloud this is actually a no-brainer: something that can be done by almost anybody these days.

The Verdict

As already mentioned I am using the iPad Pro in 99% of all cases these days. It’s my web, business, reading, watching, gaming and “what have you” device these days. It is the natural choice these days. Yes, there are still a couple of cases where I prefer my MacBook over the iPad, but those are edge cases. It’s just like in the old days, but just the other way around: the PC has become a highly specialized device for me.

It’s been almost 5 years since I posted here for the last time. Good news is, tumblr is still around :)

Anyway, without further ado, what can you expect here in terms of stuff I am gonna talk about? Well, it will most likely be centered around such topics as mobility, autonomous technologies, gadgets, latest development in the tech space, …

So, feel free to follow, comment and share whatever you like or dislike.

If the MAS is as slow as a snail in 80 mi head wind for you, maybe you wanna try out this little tip from someone that obviously could figure out something Apple is not able to do in the first place.

Just to let you guys know, I am working on a super secret Stack project that nobody has done before and which moves Stacks and RapidWeaver to a new level. I don't wanna say more right now, but it's actually something I already did successfully during the time I was using NetObjects Fusion as a web development environment on Windows. Fusion had components similar to RapidWeaver plugins, written in Java.

So far I got the basics up and running and it is kind of funny when you do a orthogonal design right from the start and you realize that adding a small little feature is beneficial to the rest automatically.

I haven't decided yet when to release this beast as the functionality is still not sufficient for someone to be used. And btw, I could actually benefit from the next Stack version that is currently under development by Yourhead, which adds a lot of features to the HUD.

But there is one thing for sure, this Stack or better those Stacks will be free of charge like any of my other Stacks.

No, it's not Coda and it's not Espresso, not BBEdit or Smultron and of course not Emacs.

Two releases on the same day :) Just fixed an issue one of the stack users reported a few minutes ago with MP4 videos not playing correctly due to the fact that the tumblr specific player code was not included. It is now :)

Here is a quick one right before the start of the new week :)

This is a minor bug fix that focuses on the way photo posts are rendered in the blog. So far the tumblr Stack didn't consider a click-through url if it was present. This release changes this behavior: when there is a link-through url available, clicking on the photo opens the respective url, if not, a larger version of the photo gets displayed.

The guys in charge of making the best Website editor in the world - on Mac only of course ...