[OT] More Apple Foolishness

[Chipp Walters]

Maybe I'm not the biggest Apple fan in the world, but my family does own three iPhones, three iPads, three Apple TV's and a MacBook Air. So, in some sense, I do support them, no matter how ridiculous their 1984-like Big Brother policies. And I feel it gives the right to gripe about some stuff as well. 

Warning: Those for which Apple can do no wrong should press delete and move on to the next thread. You've been warned!

So today, I update my apps, and it turns out my Kindle app, (and the B&N Nook) has an update which remove per Apple's latest policy, the "Shop for a book" button in the app-- which basically just launched Safari and went to the Amazon.com Kindle section. So now, I have to manually go to Amazon.com to buy a book-- requiring me to go an extra step and launch the browser. 

Smartly, Amazon figured this out and as soon as I arrive at their Kindle store in Safari, a little JavaScript popup said to "click this button and we'll put a nice Kindle shop icon on the Home screen." Which I did-- and now I have a Kindle shop icon next to my Kindle icon, thus cluttering up my home screens further. Score 1 for Amazon, 0 for Apple and -1 for the customer.

Nice to see Apple looking out for their customers. Damn, if only there was ANY decent alternative to iOS. 

Fact is, there are so many interface problems with iOS, I don't even know were to start. Oh yes I do-- somewhere after four or five screens worth of icons, you forget where stuff is. Finding an app in "folders" is like playing that kids game of concentration, is it here? No, how about here? No. Where in tarnation is it? Oh, let's search for it, which finds and launches it, but still doesn't give you a clue about where it's at.

Please give me a list or outline view, which can sort by name, or date installed, or date last used. Smartly someone at the AppStore has figured some of this out as they AT LEAST show your updates and purchased apps in a list, though searching for an app to purchase there is a supreme exercise in frustration. Thankfully, others have jumped in to help. 

For instance there's a great free app called Discovr (yes that's the correct spelling) which creates a mind map diagram linking an app you know with others like it. Then there's the free website Quixey, which does a great job indexing apps of all kinds.