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iPod touch 5000 apps on your iPod

A

ardee

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 1, 2008
20
0
There are some 10,000 apps in the App Store for the iPhone, and most of them work on the iPod touch 2G. Many, many of them are free.

So why is it that you can only put a tiny percentage of that number onto the device, even if you have ample free space?

I called Apple twice before getting my unit to make sure that the extra space could be used for holding more apps, and both times they said yes. Well, nobody mentioned that the app manager feature can only handle 9 screens of 16 apps apiece. After that, extra apps are simply inaccessible!

Almost ten years ago I had a Palm Pilot. I could load hundreds of apps onto it and organize them into categories. Has that technology been lost to humanity in the intervening decade?

It seems to go without saying that there should be a way to manage hundreds of apps on your iPhone (or my iPod touch), being able to sort them, get info on them, group (categorize) them, and perhaps search for them and even rename them (since the app's name often has little to do with its function).

Is this an unreasonable expectation? Is it technologically impossible?
 
It isn't impossible, just not something most people need. 148 apps in your pocket is enough for most people. Why would you want more apps than you can even remember you put on there? It's not like you wouldn't be able to delete and put new ones on whenever you have access to a computer or Wi-Fi.

P.S. I bet you can't list 149 apps off the top of your head :D
 
The idea is that you get all the ones that look interesting, try them out, then remove the ones you don't like. You build up a library of games, utilities, business apps, music apps, puzzles, etc. To me, that's what a computer is all about -- getting and trying all sorts of apps. And I view the touch as a PDA, which is a type of computer. :)

(I remember telling people I wanted more than 20mg of hard drive space back in the '80s and they thought I was crazy. "List every file you could have that would fill up that much space!" they said.)

(I have 1000s of apps on my PC. Don't have to use every one every day for them to be useful in a pinch, especially since I can organize them by category.)

(Also, we keep dozens of kinds of foods in our pantry, even though in any one week we may only use a small subset of them. And my toolbox has many tools I rarely use but wouldn't want to be without. Etc., etc.)
 
ardee said:
(I have 1000s of apps on my PC. Don't have to use every one every day for them to be useful in a pinch, especially since I can organize them by category.)
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I refuse to believe that. Thousands. As in multiple thousands. What sense is there in that? You can't tell me that they all perform different functions. It's useless to have them all, and it must be shredding your load times.
 
ardee said:
It seems to go without saying that there should be a way to manage hundreds of apps on your iPhone (or my iPod touch), being able to sort them, get info on them, group (categorize) them, and perhaps search for them and even rename them (since the app's name often has little to do with its function).

Is this an unreasonable expectation? Is it technologically impossible?
Click to expand...

Most, if not all, of the things you listed are available for jailbroken Touch/iPhone, so no, not technologically impossible. Why Apple didn't build those functionality into the Touch/iPhone? I have no idea, it boggles my mind that they would cripple their product like this.
 
Night Spring said:
Most, if not all, of the things you listed are available for jailbroken Touch/iPhone, so no, not technologically impossible. Why Apple didn't build those functionality into the Touch/iPhone? I have no idea, it boggles my mind that they would cripple their product like this.
Click to expand...

It's for reliability. An unlimited amount of apps hurts memory use, which increases crashing, which increases tech support calls and complaints. It makes sense to limit it.
 
Tallest Skil said:
I refuse to believe that. Thousands. As in multiple thousands. What sense is there in that? You can't tell me that they all perform different functions. It's useless to have them all, and it must be shredding your load times.
Click to expand...


I can understand your skepticism, yet it's true. A few notes:

1) I've been collecting apps since the DOS days and have installed each version of Windows over the preceding one since 3.0 (3.0-->3.1-->95-->98-->98SE-->XP).

2) It's absolutely NOT the case that they all perform different functions. That's the whole point. Each app has its strengths & its weaknesses; often one's strengths help make up for another's weaknesses & vice-versa. So I have perhaps a dozen of each major type of app, plus there are certain categories in which I collect most every program (chess, poker, Go, and others).

3) Yes, perhaps my load times are shredded. My system is moderately fast anyway, but I'm sure it would be a lot faster if I didn't have so many apps installed.

4) I may have a touch of OCD (you think?). And I'll confess that a lot of the apps I have installed over the years just sit there because I never get around to uninstalling them (or doing so fails). I procrastinate on revisiting the older apps, but they don't seem to be hurting me much. My PC basically never crashes (I leave it on for months at a time and use it all day every day). And it runs remarkably well. But of course I've had to give each program a very short name so they all show up in the Start Menu!
 
WickedFall said:
...An unlimited amount of apps hurts memory use, which increases crashing...
Click to expand...

If it's anything like a PC, Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, a Pocket PC, or a Palm PDA, all the apps that you're not currently using don't interact in any way with those you are running [except co-residing in the Registry on Windows]. And since you can run only one at a time on the iPhone/Touch (as far as I know), the "other" (non-running) apps are just sitting there, doing nothing, causing no problems. Even on the Pocket PC, where you can run multiple apps at one time, they never seem to affect each other (unless specifically designed to do so).
 
We've had several threads like this complaining about the "limited" number of applications you can store on your device. These complainers always get bashed. It's time to stop it now.

I, for one, do not want to live in a world where I am limited by the number of flashlights I can store on my device. Do you really think these all serve the same function. Each flashlight has a clear and distinct function and I need all 29 of them. We live in America, not some third world country where flashlight use is strictly regulated by their repressive governments.

I use all 326 "social networking" applications. I know that, through my vigilance, I will, one day, make news friends who share my passions. I will finally have a reason to wake up each morning, shower and leave the keyboard behind.

All 14 weather applications are vital to my life. I must have the most accurate measure of the wind speeds in my area and to those that I will be traveling to each day. With a really bad combover, it allows for the perfect amount of "product" to be used each day in my hair. As these hair products are petroleum based, using too much would be environmentally irresponsible.

Are these unreasonable expectations? I think not.
 
while the direction this thread has gone is lovely... i suppose i'll give a first and offer some advice to the original question:


Collections


- Just a note, you've got to have a jailbroken device. I'm not hip to the ipod touch and its status of jailbrakery, but this is exactly what you are used to on the PALM, and will allow you to sort and 'categorize' to your hearts content. I'm not sure if it reduces the internal problems of how many apps the software can load, but moving them into organized folders with multiple pages within there might solve the issue.

To get this useful program, open Cydia and do a search for categories. The use of it is selfevident, just one word of caution, I've read that you MUST take all of your applications out of the organized folders before you decide to uninstall the software... or else... *use your imagination* - on the plus side, when you reinstall it, they should reappear as well. This could be a problem with an older version, but you've been warned.


and on the note of collecting and archiving... while 'thousands of apps on the pc' is absurd, your analogy to food in the pantry and tools sitting in a box with the potential to be used, is valid and legitimizes your need for more browsing space.

hope that helps
 
Very witty, rdowns.

Of course, apps that aren't running are harmless as long you have the space.

And I'm sure if one were to visit your house, one would find nothing there other than the things you are using that very moment. No food in the fridge for later meals, no "other" games for the kids to play, no tools you don't happen to need at the very moment, etc.

It must be that the numerous companies that put in thousands of person-hours of labor creating and selling app-management software for the Palm OS were just crazy and never sold a copy. Or that Palm itself was crazy for building basic app-management capabilities (categorization) into their PDA from the get-go -- even when it had only 512k (or 128k, which is 250,000 times less space than my Touch) of storage.

It must be stress-free having a PC (or Mac) with only the OS, a single browser, and maybe a couple of other apps. (Firefox is better than the built-in browser for some sites and worse for others? Bah! I must limit myself to only one browser!) Because some people don't want to do it, I think everybody else should also give up the idea of trying out lots of different apps. Everybody should limit themselves to at most one in each category. One game, too!

(I will have to throw away most of the songs I've purchased over the years too, as I can only listen to one at a time and the ones I'm not listening to at this very moment could not possibly interest me in the future. And don't get me started about books!)
 
damn shame about 2g touch not jailbrakable [yet] - just read the thread about possible fix.. and it sounds fishy... i guess this is the trade off for having a slightly faster processor than thee iphone? in due time, due time...
 
Some people own only a few books. Others own thousands. To each his own (assuming those who own only a few don't try to prevent others from owning more). Luckily there's a market for bookshelves that hold more than just a few books...
 
ardee said:
Some people own only a few books. Others own thousands. To each his own (assuming those who own only a few don't try to prevent others from owning more). Luckily there's a market for bookshelves that hold more than just a few books...
Click to expand...

seems odd that just cuz somebody isnt interested in doing something themselves they think nobody else should do that thing either. maybe from communist country?
 
leehosook said:
seems odd that just cuz somebody isnt interested in doing something themselves they think nobody else should do that thing either. maybe from communist country?
Click to expand...

I don't think peer pressure works when you're online, but that communist suggestion was a good shot. :p
 
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