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OS X Lion - Apple pls stop micromanaging how I organize my stuff!!!

S

Synergie

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 15, 2011
771
210
Halifax, Canada
I installedLion yesterday.... hoping for some good changes... some are ok... but I wasn't expecting them to remove some of the customizability that was there in Snow Leopard and earlier.

My biggest question: WHY does Apple seem to think it's a great idea to dump ALL of your icons into ONE big folder so you have to scroll forever to find something???

My issue: I used to have Finder set to open to Applications all the time. In there, I would be greeted with only subfolders... no icons at all. They were all neatly tucked into sub-folders... example: Office, Multimedia, Tools, Graphics etc. I knew exactly where everything was that I needed to get to. So I install Lion, go into Applications (expecting to have to regroup and reorganize everything again) and find that if I try to move ANY of the included apps from Applications into a subfolder I can copy them.... but not move them. Okay so that's fine I can always copy them and delete the original... NOPE! I get the nice little msg "iTunes can't be modified because it's required by OS X"

So now I have roughly 300 icons sitting in one main folder that takes me 3 times a long to find an app. I can only fit so many on the dock, and FORGET about Launch Pad! There's no options to even change the icon size larger! It seems like they are tiny, unreadable and I find myself squinting at the screen! Not to mention it's a pain to organize, it pulls EVERY icon including ones that you don't need and there's no way to hide or delete icons off it at all. You can just throw them into a folder and move the folder over to the last page....

I guess I can't install any more apps on my MBP or I will never be able to find anything! :(

... Does anyone know of a way to override the restrictions with moving included apps into subfolders??
 
Try to adapt. There are several different ways that you can choose to organize your apps however you like. Updaters and installers often like for the app to be where they expect it to be.

If you don't like stacks or launchpad or any of the dozens of app launchers or dock replacements, try using Aliases. Organize them to your heart's content.
 
BaldiMac said:
Try to adapt. There are several different ways that you can choose to organize your apps however you like. Updaters and installers often like for the app to be where they expect it to be.

If you don't like stacks or launchpad or any of the dozens of app launchers or dock replacements, try using Aliases. Organize them to your heart's content.
Click to expand...

I shouldn't need third party software to simply put my icons into subfolders and be more organized!! :(
 
Synergie said:
I shouldn't need third party software to simply put my icons into subfolders and be more organized!! :(
Click to expand...

You don't need third party software. I suggested three different Apple solutions. Aliases, launchpad, stacks.
 
chrono1081 said:
This.

No offense intended OP but it sounds like you need to learn more about the new features, they do exactly what you are after.
Click to expand...

Not 'exactly' what I am after.... I like total customizability....

Launchpad is fine and dandy... but what do I do with all the extra icons that I don't need? I can't hide them like I do on my iPhone (I jail broke partly for that reason... I can hide stocks etc now - oh and I also changed the default look of iOS too with themes.... so why would I like how Launchpad looks??) The best I can do is shove the extras in a folder and move the folder over to the very last page on its own.... but that's a pain in the butt and creates an extra 'junk' page that I don't need to see. If I could somehow delete the extra icons I don't want on Launchpad, or at least HIDE them I'd be happy using that as an alternative.

For now, I put my most used 10 apps on the dock, and the rest for now I am suffering with scrolling and scrolling through the tons of icons to look for what I need.

I am still fairly new with OS X in general (having switched last year from PC)... if I can create shortcuts of all my apps (I couldn't figure out how, I did figure out how to copy the whole darn app though!), then maybe create another 'application' folder with all my subfolders, then drop the shortcuts in the appropriate ones, then take 'applications' off the Finder sidebar and add my new 'applications' folder there instead. But that seriously seems like LOT of work to do for that many icons!

I might look at finding a dock alternative - one that allows multiple sub-docks etc. if such a thing exists... and then use that.

I do miss using the apps folder though like I used to, ... it was so easy to just go into Finder (I had it set to auto open to the applications folder) and then go into which subfolder I needed.

Seriously though for all the control Apple seems to want to have over how I do things.... I would still never go back to PC.
 
I have to agree, the whole idea of not being able to 'move' my apps in Finder into subFolders is a bit of a going backwards step for any company and an OS. Sure you can 'adapt'... but why should we have to, when something so simple worked before.

I had always had my apps moved into subFolders making both my Finder & Dock experience a whole lot more organized, and simply placed the folders into the Dock and set them as a Grid or List layout, depending on how I felt that week, lol.

Now what I've had to do is create Aliases for everything, create all the Folders again, not a big deal... right? Well, yes it is... now I've achieved the same results except now I've got tons of little black arrows in the way, making everything really just that much less appealing while enjoying 'the best OS experience' out there, I'm finding myself a wee bit frustrated at a very basic idea of not being able to simply move my apps instead. Why is it always someone's attitude that everyone should adapt and do things another way when a company as large and profitable as Apple makes changes that alter the user experience and lower the ability to customize?

Launchpad, as nice as many may see it as, is a disaster for me. I've got this 1920x1200 17" screen laptop and if I utilize Launchpad, it's a whole lot extra work for no reason... and to top it off, I would have to make an 'Unused' folder in it just to stick all the extra stuff I wouldn't want in my way... and you have to click, just to get to Launchpad, then click again to open the folder, then again to open the app you want to use... That's 1 extra click, and an out of the way one at that... since the dock was just 2 clicks, right where we're all used to clicking... not a click on the dock, then way up at the top of the screen for the launchpad icons. It may seem like no big deal to many folks, but it's really a big step backwards in using the OS in the easiest of manners. It works for an iPhone, or an iPad... but sure doesn't do much justice to OS X.

I don't regret my OS X Lion purchase, everything else has been a nice pleasant upgraded user experience so far, and I wouldn't go switching to Windows over something as small as this, just felt like venting out my opinion regardless of whether it's received well or not.
 
Yay... someone else who 'gets it' :p

Aliases won't look as good because of the black arrows on everything, and it would take a LOT of work to alias everything. Then I'd have to create a new apps folder with subfolders and put all the aliases in there. Then I'd have to delete the default 'applications' folder off the sidebar in Finder and replace with my new apps folder.... WAY too much work to get only close to what I had before.

Launchpad is somewhat ok... but I really want to delete unused icons... or at least hide them! Frankly...iOS SHOULD have this ability as well. Blackberry has had it for AGES. The ability to hide unused icons at will. And to be easily able to get them back if you want.


I just downloaded TabLauncher... it's got multi tabs so you can organize and seems easy to set up by just dragging the icons on to each dock tab as wanted. I just don't know if I like how it looks or not.... it's just not quite as polished looking as I'd like.

Anyone know of any other third party docks with multiple tabs??? Free or low cost.... I don't mind spending a few bucks to get organized again.
 
I use the Dock for my most important apps, Launchpad (first screen) for my second tier apps, and finally folders in Launchpad on the 2nd, 3rd, etc screen.

Another tool is LEAP and I tagged my apps into categories that I could find my apps very quickly. I am trying out the native tools but sometimes I go back to LEAP because it allows me maximum flexibility.
 
I don't get why it's so hard to just find the app by it's name. It takes all of two seconds. But you could also use spotlight as a launcher. It has a keyboard shortcut and all you have to do is type the first few letters and hit enter.

And you should be able to make folders in launchpad if you really want to. Just put the stuff that you don't use in another folder. While I would just stick to my stack and a quick scroll, you should be ecstatic about launchpad. As others have said, it's designed to do exactly what you want.

Also, why are you acting so angry toward others who are just trying to help you out?
 
300 apps? That's more than the total I have on my iPad, iPhone and MacBook Pro combined. I doubt you use all of them.

Anyway, you could always use Spotlight. That's what I have been doing since Leopard. Unless you don't remember the name of the App, Spotlight works quite nicely.

Aliases are good if you don't have a lot of apps (which you do) so it's useless to you.
 
Applications are supposed to go into the Applications Folder. It may seem arbitrary, but it allows updates to find the application where it expects to find it.

My belief is that since OS X doesn't use a registry, it doesn't know which version of an application is the "official" version, unless it is where it is expected to be. If you have applications scattered across several folders, it becomes very easy to have several versions of the same application in a couple of different places. Which version is supposed to be updated in this case?

I also wonder if this isn't also part of the new security process? If all applications are being forced into a single location, it becomes harder to sneak some malware in and tuck it someplace hidden. This is just speculation on part.

As others have said, learn to do things the Apple way. It may not be best way, but to do otherwise is to just invite frustration. I have a bunch of folders on my desktop for different types of apps, and inside them are aliases. Each folder's icon is customized for the type of apps inside. I don't really care about the app's icon since except for the very few on my dock I never even look at them.

Most of the time I launch apps through Spotlight. Command+Spacebar -> [1st few letters of the app name] -> [Enter] = Launched Application. Doesn't matter where the app's icon is, Spotlight finds it for me. If I need to find something in particular, and can't remember the name then I look through the folders with the aliases.

I've been putting all of my applications in the Applications Folder now for years. It really is just easier in the long.

One more tip for free. The more that you add little programs to make OS X behave differently, the more instability you will introduce - generally speaking, and imho. I came from OS/2 that allowed more customization than even Windows. You could spend all day avoiding real work by changing the colours of every single element of every single window. When I moved to OS X, I found the lack of customizing options, um.... depressing. So started adding all those little haxies, all well reviewed and well legitimate. Within a few years the system was not nearly as stable as I wished it was. It crashed every few days. It would exhibit random slowdowns, etc etc. I started researching and reading, and the best advice I could come up with was to do clean install, and start adding back the haxies one by one to identify the culprit. Except I forgot to add them back, learnt to do things the Apple way (for better or worse) and haven't had a non-HW related crash in years. Not one - and I use my Macs to make my living as a photographer.

Apple has nearly half-a-dozen ways to launch apps. Try them all, and use the ones that make the most sense for you. You'll save yourself a lot of hair-pulling....

Good Luck...
 
Synergie said:
...if I can create shortcuts of all my apps (I couldn't figure out how, I did figure out how to copy the whole darn app though!), then maybe create another 'application' folder with all my subfolders, then drop the shortcuts in the appropriate ones, then take 'applications' off the Finder sidebar and add my new 'applications' folder there instead. But that seriously seems like LOT of work to do for that many icons!
Click to expand...

This will really do what you want, and doesn't seem like much more work than moving the original Applications around into sub-folders. Depending how comfortable you are with making aliases, I suspect you can make them all at once, or a group at a time.

I do something similar with a much smaller set of frequently used apps, and put them into a folder and put the folder in my dock as a stack.
 
Synergie said:
Launchpad is fine and dandy... but what do I do with all the extra icons that I don't need? I can't hide them like I do on my iPhone (I jail broke partly for that reason... I can hide stocks etc now - oh and I also changed the default look of iOS too with themes.... so why would I like how Launchpad looks??) The best I can do is shove the extras in a folder and move the folder over to the very last page on its own.... but that's a pain in the butt and creates an extra 'junk' page that I don't need to see.
Click to expand...
I'm confused.

LaunchPad should give you the same capabilities to put apps into folders that you had when you were using Finder to manually organize your Applications folder back in Snow Leopard, no?

What did you do with all of the extra apps ("icons") that you didn't need in Snow Leopard? If they were system apps like iTunes, surely you didn't "delete" them? You had to have put them into a new folder you created in the Applications folder, which is the same thing you'd do in LaunchPad?
 
aristobrat said:
I'm confused.

LaunchPad should give you the same capabilities to put apps into folders that you had when you were using Finder to manually organize your Applications folder back in Snow Leopard, no?

What did you do with all of the extra apps ("icons") that you didn't need in Snow Leopard? If they were system apps like iTunes, surely you didn't "delete" them? You had to have put them into a new folder you created in the Applications folder, which is the same thing you'd do in LaunchPad?
Click to expand...

The way I had it in Finder, I threw all the extra utility type stuff in the Utilities folder... It won't allow me to do that in Launch Pad. It's like that folder is now locked so I had to make a second Utilities type folder....

Actually I just ended up making a page for each type of app in Launch Pad and then throwing all my 'Junk' in a folder and put it on the last page. I just wish I could HIDE the thing! :( I tried the workaround using the .db file and renaming the integer with a - in front of it (it was posted on here). All that did was dump the icons back out to the main page and deleted the folder.

I do have over 300 icons... and a ton of them I won't ever use... in fact you can't use because they can't be launched except from within another application. Adobe CS5 is bad for that!!

And the scrolling through all the apps, or typing in a specific name works most of the time. But I do have some games that I forgot that I have, so sometimes I will just go into the games folder and browse for something to play. Can't use spotlight for that LOL.

----

...And Zync I am not angry at anyone... I am just frustrated at Apple LOL. I've always been someone who was very into customization... to the point that when I had a PC I had windows hacked to death to do exactly what I wanted. (Don't get me wrong... I'd NEVER go back! LOL) I do actually have Lion customized a bit... for example I got rid of the 3d dock using a known hack and I use the same 2d dock that shows at left and right, is now how the dock also looks on the bottom. I just like it better.

I think once I have Tab Launcher set up it will suffice for now wrt categories. And I am going to take a look at some other 3rd party launchers (non dock type ones)
 
Here's what I ended up doing, although I would still rather be able to just move the apps into subFolders inside the Applications folder (Keeping them buried within that main top-level folder could be the restriction perhaps, keeping security in-tact and preventing app update confusion.)...
I stared down the face of new and am using Launchpad. What I had done before was had categories of apps on my Dock, only open apps showed up individually on the left side. This was my personal most efficient way to get things done as I do go after a ton of different apps all the time for what I'm doing throughout the day.

I'll deal with it, I'll get used to the 'new' way of doing things... just won't understand how folks think these new ways are the best way for everyone to 'just deal with it' and 'adapt'... we shouldn't have to 'adapt'... Not for something as simple as where an app gets installed... and as far as security goes... any moron can download a virused up app and install it and screw up their Mac, security? It's no more secure than it was before...

So now I've cluttered up my dock with individual uncategorized apps that I use most commonly, sorted the craziness out of Launchpad, made my 'Natural' scrolling stay on the Trackpad but used the Orochi Mouse settings to keep the mouse scroll going the way it used to... and all is well I suppose.

I refuse to type to launch apps, and find Spotlight to be really redundant for constant app loading / swapping as I find myself doing in the type of work I do.
 
What is going on with your comments, man------?
What more do you want for this great and the most advanced OS ever invented. Plus at a bargain price of $29. Would you be happy with a WIndow system for $299? If that's the case, go back to Windows or DOS.

Apple and Steve Jobs, God Bless him and protect him for eternity, gave us one of the most advanced OS and we still have dudes that complain about? - Jesus Henry Christ, please have mercy on his dude....,

RF,
 
RoyalFlushAK(s) said:
What is going on with your comments, man------?
What more do you want for this great and the most advanced OS ever invented. Plus at a bargain price of $29. Would you be happy with a WIndow system for $299? If that's the case, go back to Windows or DOS.

Apple and Steve Jobs, God Bless him and protect him for eternity, gave us one of the most advanced OS and we still have dudes that complain about? - Jesus Henry Christ, please have mercy on his dude....,

RF,
Click to expand...

One simple thing would make me happy with all this change.... the ability to HIDE unwanted icons on the Launch Pad!!! That's it.... that's all I ask for!!!
 
I think the folks who pay for the software that companies make are allowed to discuss their opinions on it, that's what I think. :-D I think that since we pay for it, it merits at least a few of us to be allowed to mention things we dislike, perhaps?

Some of us are computer users, not fanboys.
 
To be honest, I still have no idea what you're talking about. I'm able to move application icons into folders in the finder. I don't get it.
 
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Synergie said:
RoyalFlushAK(s) said:
What is going on with your comments, man------?
What more do you want for this great and the most advanced OS ever invented. Plus at a bargain price of $29. Would you be happy with a WIndow system for $299? If that's the case, go back to Windows or DOS.

Apple and Steve Jobs, God Bless him and protect him for eternity, gave us one of the most advanced OS and we still have dudes that complain about? - Jesus Henry Christ, please have mercy on his dude....,

RF,
Click to expand...

One simple thing would make me happy with all this change.... the ability to HIDE unwanted icons on the Launch Pad!!! That's it.... that's all I ask for!!!
Click to expand...

I can understand that. I have put all the unused stuff in folders and they sit out the back end of the launchpad list.

what I dont understand is why you want to hide them. what harm do they do sitting in a folder several screens away?

is it some OCD anally retentive thing? (not being rude a genuine question) or is it a little inflexibility on your part?

don't get me wrong, I too would like to
hide them. but what's the point, they do no harm at the back surely, if u really think about it.
 
You can't move any that are a 'part of the OS', so for example if you want to create subFolders for say Accessories, Communications, Emulation, Games, Imaging & Photo, Multimedia & Sound, Office & Publishing, Reference, System, Utilities... you can't move around all of the Apps in the Application folder into those subFolders, which can be very useful if you're like Syn and myself and enjoy the extra organization, as well as myself who would place those subFolders as Stacks with Grid or List layout into the OS X Dock for quick easy organized access to them in a way we have always enjoyed doing, without the mess of creating a bunch of Aliases with black arrows all over the place.

To HarrisonDavies: That's what I ended up doing, works out well, I used the categories inside Launchpad and will never need a second page, so stuck the Unwanted into a category over on it. I just wish I could have my Dock back the way it was, I'll get used to the new stuff soon I'm sure, but feels good to vent it out a little since something as simple as subFolders inside the Applications Folder was something that really didn't need to be removed as a capability.
 
Last edited:
Synergie -

I'm right there with you. I'm going to spend a fair amount of time trying to figure out if there's a way to work around this silly change.
 
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