iPhone OS 4.0

If this is what people want (a LRU stack of apps), wouldn't they'd be better off making the dock do this, instead of introducing a third app area?

The iPhone 3G won't be getting this multitasking.

For me, pinching and multitouch are easy and natural, but often I just use a double tap to zoom instead.

In this case, the real alternative to the task switcher is flicking through multiple pages of apps, which surely is more difficult than a simple row of recently used apps. It's hard to imagine a pinching gesture that would be usable here, without interfering with the current app.

What I meant was web apps that are added to the home screen. Previously it works just like native apps: web apps will need to store and resume its state every time it launch or quit. This cause web apps without manifest file to reload itself every time it launches.

In 4.0, it works just exactly like in Safari: as long as the app don't get killed from the task switcher, its state are resumed automatically.

As do I. It's one of the best things about Android, I've found. Going back and forth between two applications directly is very, very efficient for using a mobile OS, I've found. I think the author is wrong in saying that it appears as a "random selection" of apps. If I'm using it, it's because I remembered that I was just using another app. I'm not using it for discovery; I'm using it as a shortcut.

Using the home button daily on my E71 to switch between email, web, notes, twitter.

WRT the 3 home screens, there are quite a few replacement Home apps that increase it to 7+ - PandaHome, aHome, and Open Home are the first that come to mind.

Android OS 2.1 increases it to 5 homescreens. In addition, you can put folders on any of the Android homescreens that work almost identically (from what I gather from the description in the article) to the way folders work in iPhone OS4.

I think others have mentioned that you can get 3rd party apps for Android that increase the number of home screen to at least 7. These do not require rooting or anything else unusual, just a quick download from the Market.

That's a great point. I certainly think applications should have the freedom to offer their own custom view of the user's data (as you point out, even hierarchical views, if that makes sense in their context - for example, it makes sense for MP3 players, where there is a natural hierarchy along the lines of Band -> Album -> Song), but I also think Apple should show some leadership here, both on a UI level, as well as on a technical level (for synchronization, versioning and similar features).

I agree. For certain applications, strongly hierarchical organization is appropriate. I think it's probably best if they're separate per-application hierarchies. The One Tree file system model is really aesthetically appealing to us hierarchically-structured thinkers, but most people don't seem to think that way.

Interesting to note how it's done on the iPad: Photos, for example, are stored in a hierarchy (in certain views at least; there's not a strong sense that the "true" scheme they're stored in is an hierarchical one), but no folder metaphor is used. It's just stacks of images.

Likewise, the "folders" in OS 4.0 are that in name and function only. They are represented more like the stacks of photos, though the objects "in" them are shown as tiled (with a linear view when tapped, for easier picking) rather than overlapping, though, in that case. But an opaque container isn't used.

So, in both cases, the objects are collected without the container being drawn attention to.

This may limit the number of levels of hierarchy that are possible (stacks of photos within stacks of photos would break the metaphor... not that people put real-life folders within folders very often), but most users don't like deep hierarchies anyway, and the extra hierarchy of objects being stored "within" apps helps mitigate that as well as segregate things somewhat naturally by type.

Of course certain tasks will always require deep, complex hierarchies.

Real world filing cabinets are not infinitely hierarchical, they are very flat. I don't think I've ever seen someone use a filing cabinet with nested folders. You have one list of alphabetized folders with the files directly in it. In this way I think the current "folders" solution in the home screen more closely matches what people expect.

When you have to drill down through more than a few levels of hierarchy to get to what they want, it becomes confusing to keep track of, especially because folders create groups of arbitrary types so everyone has to build their own hierarchical system for each type of data. So while my nested folders for photos represents year/month/event my nested folders in my music library mean artist/album and my Documents folder is a mess where I try and make up groups of things I will remember again later. "does this piece of writing belong in my Essay folder or in my Journal folder?" Who can say? and if I pick one now, what's to say when I go looking for it later I might not categorize it differently?

Things like iPhoto make those decisions for you, just add your pictures to it and it will make you group them as an event, and that is all you have to do. iPhoto actually lets you look for photos in several different ways then: hierarchically by year/month/event, event in overall order, by who is in the picture, or where it was taken. That is a lot of flexibility that lets me search for a photo in whatever way I'm thinking about it in the moment, rather than having to search for a file based on however I originally decided to organize them on the file system.

A straight hierarchical file system is pretty limiting: it only allows you to find files based on one organizational method. That's why search is becoming so useful and why tagging seemed like such a good idea. It would be great if we could find out what the best way for me to keep track of my writing is without me having to think about how it is structured on disk.

So I guess what I am trying to say is that I agree with you that we need different organizational methods for different pieces of data, and that I think nested "folders" is going to be the right solution very rarely. And I agree with Lukas that there needs to be a lot of work done to help people share files and move files to and from the iPad easily.

Still stinks though if he can't get the full update.

Well Id like to upgrade to the 3gs and I do so for $200, but only way I can get a 3gs due to cellphone contract is pay $500 or more. Which is the cost of the iPad, which does not makes sense. Is Apple saying after 4 years of the iPhone in production the cost to manufacture both the iPhone & iPad are the same? Bullcrap AT&T/Apple!

It crashes a lot, but it's usable. Some apps don't work, since they explicitly look for version 3.X (Such as AirVideo)

Of course, no apps background properly currently, but it's useful for testing.

I'm using it on my primary iPhone, but I carry a backup phone in case I actually need to get stuff done ;)

More specifically, if you receive more than one notification, the former is pretty much lost. Your app icon is annotated with a number but you have no idea what happened if you have several icons already annotated.

I haven't been following the evolution iPhone OS releases during the beta phase, but isn't it possible that features are added (or removed) before the final release this summer?

Thanks; that makes it clear. Yes that aspect is indeed not addressed.

That would be confusing! Not at all. I'm simply saying your take is a lot like a popover and think that Apple's implementation though not perfect, is closer to a folder. Actually, to be exact they should have really called it "Drawers" because that's how their animated and in a drawer, contents do indeed get shuffled around!

Although, I've had instances when handling bulky folders and moving them around, the top most documents would get accidentally rearranged! ;-)