iPhone dock app solves the “too many apps” problem

Intrepid iPhone hacker Nate True has released a new app that solves one of my major problems with the presentation of third-party apps. As I noted when I first began installing third-party native apps on the iPhone, Apple had clearly not designed Springboard (the iPhone’s launcher application) to support more than sixteen apps (not including the four along the bottom row). I think the reasoning on Apple’s part was aesthetic more than anything else: a full screen of iPhone apps looks pretty darn cluttered and overwhelming and nowhere near as elegant as it does with that blank line as a spacer. I would be unsurprised to find that Apple had held back on some of their apps until they could figure out how they wanted to handle filling up the launcher.

But enough about that: onto the solution. Nate’s Dock is an application that can be installed with Nullriver’s installer app or iFuntastic and lets you scroll through listings in that fourth row. It’s probably easier just to show you, so here’s the video Nate posted to his site.

Pretty nifty. And now I can have as many third-party apps installed on the iPhone as I want, without having to fret about finding them. Until Apple figures out how it wants to handle additional applications, this is pretty much the most elegant solution I’ve seen.

[via Wired]

Category: Software

Posted by Dan Moren on Aug 31 2007, 2:40 PM ET

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