Apple needs to improve the behaviour of iOS folders. iOS and its power users need it.
There are a handful of apps that any device owner couldn't live without: the apps that make the owner's world go round. They are the must-have apps. The essential apps. These apps generally reside in the dock or on the first home screen.
Then there's the really awesome apps. These are the apps that help make the device worth using. For some people they're social apps, for others they're games, for others productivity apps. They're the apps that show up on the first and second home screen.
Then there's everything else. The good apps that we use once in a while. The apps our friends recommended but that we haven't had a chance to try out yet. The fun games and productivity apps we tell ourselves we don't have time for. The genuinely useful apps that are simply fantastic but that we only ever need once in a while. The apps we forgot about, and the ones we want to forget about (like the unused, built-in apps).
For all these non-essential apps, there's two options:
1) We can fill up all of our home screens and never use folders, thus making it a chore to find the home screen with the app we want, or
2) We can use a bunch of folders, making it a chore to open a folder for the app it contains.
Neither of these two options is very appealing. Sure, there are workarounds, but that doesn't solve the problem.
Some people, like power users, will opt for folders. They're organized. They bring a semblance of order to the chaos that is iOS' launch screen.
There's a problem with folders, though: They take a while to open and close, both in terms of the animation time and in terms of the number of steps needed to use them and launch the apps they contain. You have to find the folder, tap on it, watch the animation, and then you can finally launch your app.
That's too many steps. Folders might as well be the place where apps go to die.
There was a similar problem with another part of iOS that was solved by the addition of a shortcut: The keyboard.
When you want to type a number, symbol, or punctuation on the iOS keyboard you have to switch to another keyboard containing all those things. You can do this by either:
- Tapping the button at the bottom-left of the keyboard, then typing the net you want, then hitting the button again to go back to the alphabetical keyboard, or
- Pressing down on that bottom-left button, dragging your finger over to and lifting your finger from the key that you want.
I like to think the same shortcut can be used for folders:
- Hold down on the folder containing the app you want to launch for a brief period, drag your finger toward the vertically opposite half of the screen from your finger to slide the folder open, drag your finger to the app you want to launch, and lift your finger. When you quit the app, the folder will be closed.
The problem of multiple steps is solved by creating a single-step shortcut. The problem of time consumption is solved by cutting that time in half or less. The problem of having an open folder after quitting the app is solved by having the folder close itself.
Non-power users will never know the difference unless they stumble upon it by accident, and power users have a new shortcut they may even be willing to use in their dock.