

Rethinking the App Model - gaborcselle
http://blog.gaborcselle.com/2012/10/the-app-model-deserves-to-die.html

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ssebro
I think the real "customer pain" is that having a ton of apps leads to more
difficult visual search. You want hipstamatic, but you have no idea which
screen it's on.

I already use iOS's app search as my default method of finding most apps, but
going to the left to find the search is irritating. Maybe it would be better
if apple just allowed you one page of apps, and an integrated search box on
that page.

Android may already have solved this problem.

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co_pl_te
This is why I love that Siri can now open apps.

I agree that visual search of apps on an iPhone is a "pain point" especially
when you have a ton of apps and are looking to open one you use less often
that's buried in some folder on screen 7. Could Apple do better restructuring
this? Sure. But I think they've solved the problem of opening the app you want
to use splendidly with Siri.

Like you, I used to use Spotlight for this frequently, but was also slightly
annoyed by the effort — however slight — needed to get a solution. With Siri,
though, I find it hard to fault visual or text search on iPhone because I
don't think there's any way either can compete with just asking Siri to open
what you want.

I don't like talking on the phone — to say nothing of talking to it — but it
doesn't get any more frictionless to open a buried app than asking Siri to do
it for you.

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sftueni
Agree with 'hard to get rid off'. But then again - given the vast amount of
storage (incl. Apple's Cloud) - is it really a priority to provide app with a
shelf-life for auto-deletion? Or a 'nice to have' feature, to keep screens
free from clutter?

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ssebro
I think it's really about the cost of visual search, which simply doesn't
scale to 76 icons.

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sigwhite
This is a bit iOS centric. Not to bash on Apple, but on a stock Android ICS
device there is a clear distinction between "all the apps" and the launcher,
which is more like a desktop. Metro seems to take a similar approach.

