Welcome to 2013, Apple fans! Maybe in 5 more years you'll get home screen widgets.

We actually do have home screen widgets, as of like 2020. They got it sometime before I had my iPhone. And an app drawer!

As a former Android user, my iPhone home screen looks wildly different from people who’ve had iPhones for many years. I have very few icons on my home screen, I have widgets taking up most of the top of the screen to push the icons I do have down near my fingers (because Springboard is still stupid as of iOS 17, as this gif is pointing out), I have more widgets to the left (“Today View,” Apple calls this, it’s basically just a scrolling widget section), and then the app drawer equivalent to the right (which Apple calls “App Library”). It’s clean and beautiful and reminiscent of my lovely Nova launcher setup I had on my beloved OnePlus 7T Pro (may it rest in peace).

Whereas most longtime iPhone users just have page after page after page of apps and folders. Every app they own is on there somewhere. Which is ridiculous since on iOS you can just swipe down, type the first few letters of the app, and there it is.

I remember having this feature on my jailbroken iPhone in like 2009. Wild that it took this long.

iOS already has widgets?

2013? Pretty sure you could do this on Android waaaay before that.

I'm not sure about iPhones, but iPads have had homescreen widgets for a whole year, maybe even two!

Shit - my first Android phone had widgets, customizable homescreen (not just icons - but the entire layout an launcher), and anything else custom you wanted back in 2009.

15 years late to the game in an industry that's effectively 17 years old...

Ahh Apple, the first to introduce what Android users have simply taken for granted

You would think that. But as a person having an iPhone... No it is not. At least the part of iPhones currently not having that option. App-Icons on your "desktop" will always align in dense rows from top left to bottom right, with no free spaces allowed.

It is a bit weird, and I don't really see why, since you can change the order of icons in this dense row-grid. I am glad Apple warms up to the fact that people might actually want some kind of customization on their devices and not everything "the way Apple decrees it".

But to be really honest... I did not even notice prior to this post, and I had all Android before switching to my current iPhone. So at least for me this is a really small non-issue, and maybe a nice-to-have feature.

I had an iPhone before this Android I have now, and you could definitely put icons wherever you wanted on the home screen.

When everything = one of two.

It can

Its Apple. Control first, everything else third.

It's Apple, their entire business model is making their tech as restrictive as possible and stripping away as much freedom as they legally can. You can't name a company more power-hungry.

unixporn material.

You've taken "home screen as self expression" to a new level level 70 and I am here for it.

that is 🔥 ! how though?

What sort of gameboy is this?

Holy fuck why is that so beautiful. You've unlocked something in me I didn't know was there and must pursue now.

Beautiful homescreen from a beautiful place

Ahhhh config please..

Sauce?

nice rice bro

lovely homescreen. thanks for sharing!

I rarely comment but had to stop here to say, nice home screen.

Yeah boiii! Look what I've got going on! These aren't just squares. They're cubes that rotate!! It's like the compiz dream in my hand!

This looks cool, what are you using?

Say what you will about Microsoft, lemmys, but Windows Phone 10 had great performance and battery life. It's a shame that it was nuked because MS couldn't bring themselves to go all the way on the Android bridge.

Honestly windows phone was sabotaged by both 3rd party developers who refused to port their apps to the platform, despite how easy it became AND did things like kill their own APIs to stop other developers from developing ports themselves, as well as by Google by not allowing their services on the platform.

The hardware was honestly top notch, even compared to my current S21 ultra. They were fairly pro consumer, having removable batteries, SD card slots and a 3.5mm jack right up until the end, even after the other big manufacturers removed them. And after the major update (the WP 8.1 update iirc) the software was really nice, intutive and pretty. I miss arranging and resising tiles, I miss having my pictures or album artworks showing up on the homescreen and I still use the Microsoft launcher on android to get the app drawer like I had on my WP.

Yes, it was a shame, and it only died mainly due to the lack of available apps in the store and bad management. MS took too long to release it with Android and iOS already well established in the market.. It was also the OS that resisted the longest in the Pwn2Own Hacking Contest in these years. While Android and iOS went down in less than a minute, before the hackers could access the data, on WindowsPhone they hit their teeth on a rock, after half an hour they could only access the cookies.

I was always shocked how smooth windows phone was. This system had potential but well.

You can still get it with android launchers. Was toying with them the other day. Launcher 10 I believe is pretty close.

There's a few android launchers that emulate the metro ui. I use the Square Home one and I have no complaints.

can't get an android emulator?

You can use launcher10 or any other launcher that looks like windows phone home screen.

They can rip Niagara launcher from my cold dead hands I'm never going back to icon panels

My Home Screen

Niagra, Lynx, Olauncher(FOSS, previously Sentient launcher), are all very differebt cool usable launchers

Microsoft launcher master race.

Lmfao it's always great reading a comment on Lemmy that ends in something batshit insane for fun, and absolutely none of the comments under it acknowledge it.

This is really my problem with Apple.

They make great hardware, and they make great software...but their answer to an XY problem is always W. You do things their way, or you don't do them.

And what they are really best at is marketing and simplicity. They market their simplicity. That attracts a lot of people who don't care to know any way of doing things other than the Apple way. Even if another way is objectively better in any or every way.

Good for you, man. Get yo life.

Fast forward to today, I ended up killing him and am writing this from jail.

That went from 0 to 100 real fast.

Fast forward to today, I ended up killing him and am writing this from jail.

Okay, important question here: are you writing this on Android or iPhone?

They make great computers if you are into music production or photo/video editing.

Actually their computers are better than windows 11 at this point...

Their phones, on the other hand, should all be thrown into a volcano.

There is a tweak, which I don't recall even having on Android, that lets you select tons of apps and move them around, you know, like you could in a desktop environment... I wonder how much time will take to have that.

(Probably some 3rd party launchers or Android skins allow this, but I can't do it with Pixel Launcher).

It's not dumb because it works, doesn't it? Even haters spread the news.

They have actually introduced AOD, but only from the iPhone 15.

Their reasoning for not backporting the feature (unless phone is charging) is that the older models don't have LTPO displays that go down to the 1hz they do in AOD on the 15. A stupid reason imo.

It’s been around since 2022. Though I actually turned mine mostly off besides the clock because it’s just unnecessary and distracting the majority of the time. And super unhealthy.

Wouldn't this drain your battery and cause burn-in on your screen?

Fucking weird comment

I'm not sure I understand what we're talking about. When you install an app on iOS, the icon pops onto the home screen or an adjacent page if there's no room. Can you not move the icons after that? I know you can put them in folders.

That was the last thing holding you back? No criticism, just genuinely curious.

That's what I do. My home screen only has the time and weather on it. The next two screens have folders.

Yeah I have almost no apps on my Home Screen. Just one page of widgets, and 3 pinned to the bottom.

Otherwise if I want an app I just use spotlight. Quick swipe down and the first letter or 2 of any app and I’m in. I almost never touch the App Library.

This prob comes from using spotlight so much on Mac as well though.

You've just moved the same problem somewhere else if you do that.

I run a "main" home screen with Clock, Calendar, Weather and Alerts, then the next one is apps I commonly use, separated into folders, tools, photography, entertainment, comms, MFA, and then the next screen is my email.

lol yeah I literally use Spotlight for everything, it’s way faster the majority of the time.

Isn't that launcher dependent?

I see what you mean, and this could be easily fixable with a toggle.

As an exclusively Android user, I couldn't agree more

The gap/spaced rows are impossible with current technology

Can you leave a space in between two icons though

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

https://piped.video/9BnLbv6QYcA?si=gRyq1w2l4X6HYgC-

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

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https://youtu.be/LgncSiSnIyI?si=vsSfn4_DBOkOMTgG

I think you meant to reply to this comment.

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

https://piped.video/LgncSiSnIyI?si=vsSfn4_DBOkOMTgG

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

Oh you mean that other completely artificial limitation that Apple insists on having in their os?

I thought this shit was a meme till I started texting someone yesterday to arrange a date, she said "you don't have iPhone?"...

Counter counterpoint: no one cares what color the bubbles are, except the person reading em. Sounds like an iOS problem 😉

counter counterpoint: color-coded bubbles for contacts and group chats

Looking at iOS innovations going in android direction, they gonna make iphone with green bubbles someday and present it as amazing innovation, bet they even make you pay for subscription to make your bubbles green

Might want to mark this as sarcasm

the point is that people should have the option even if you personally don't need it

You personally don't need a phone either.