iOS 7 Folders Fail: Number of Apps Viewable

[Ed91]

I can see why apple did it; the icon zooming in means that the icons in a folder are all in the same place as the little icons that make up the folder icon. However, the limitation is bad enough on an iPhone but completely ridiculous on an iPad. Curiously, if you look at Mavericks, you'll see that they've stuck with the old folder paradigm, (hopefully) showing that they see a problem with the 3x3 implementation on larger screens.

The other thing that bugs me is that text labels on the home screen and in the zooming animation (on other icons) are obviously below the icon, but when we view the zoomed in icon, the text label magically appears above the folder. I know that's nitpicking, but if you're going to sell me on the whole zooming in thing, you could at least make it consistent.

 

[Altis]

4x6 if you include the app bar at the bottom (which you might also notice is not there when you go into a folder)

I wonder why they don't put the home row at the bottom when viewing folders. Instead it's just a blank space.

More of Ives romantic obsession with simplicity, I suppose.

 

[FredT2]

I manage 50 or so iPads at an elementary school. I have apps arranged in folders so that everything fits on the home screen, and folders are subcategories such kindergarten spelling, 4-5 math, etc. Some of those folders are full. So now I'm supposed to tell kindergartners to tap on the spelling folder then swipe left two times? Plus the swipe target is restricted to the folder square. If you start the swipe just outside of the folder boundary, nothing happens as you swipe across the folder. This is just one of many many examples of something being less useable for me in iOS 7 to make it look pretty.

 

[Jeneaston]

At least, and it's a small consolation, when going from portrait to landscape on the ipad the folder contents stay in the same presentation.
3x3 always instead of 4x5 portrait and 5x4 landscape. The app is always where I left it.

Like I said, a small consolation.

Yes but I NEVER understood why Apple would realign the 4x5 apps when set to landscape and shuffle the apps to different rows when they could have easily (and simply) rotated the app icons 90 degrees so that the text stayed on the bottom and the apps stayed near their respective corners.

I've never understood how they thought it would be more confusing for my brain if my upper-right app became my lower-right vs my upper-right app used to being the first app on the second row.

For a company that tries so hard to perfect things, obvious details get ignored for years.

 

[ErikGrim]

Not excusing the decision to waste space, but the reason for it is obvious to me. It is to maintain visual consistency when you "zoom in" on the folder by tapping on it.

This. iOS7 is now in part a zoomable GUI.

 

[oplix]

That's what you can expect from beta software. You didn't really think that retail ios7 is out of beta, did you? Naive.

 

[Dimka]

iOS 7 Folders shoud be improved

It's a huge step back in usability right now.
It's way harder to find apps just by browsing.

1. Instead of folders they should use Tags. This way we can place apps in more than one "Tag" group.
2. They should not limit how many apps fit per page. If more that screen can hold a scroll should appear. Users will sort it out if they wish to push few apps to second or third page.
3. When a notification is shown for the folder they can show little notification next to the tiny preview icon of the app that is used to form the folder icon.
4. Since there is no search on Page 0, pages should loop and loop withing Folders too.