Sources: iOS 18 Lets Apps Be Placed Anywhere on Home Screen Grid

What an amazing cutting edge breakthrough. Truly frontier technology. The mind boggles.

Every modern release of iOS is more like Android, and every modern release of Android is more like iOS. Welcome to convergent evolution.

By 2030, the only major difference between Android and iOS will be that, when you hit the bottom of a scrolling page, one will be a little bouncy and the other will be a little stretchy.

People will still fight over which OS is the best.

this is an unpopular opinion but i know the aesthetic reason for apple not implementing this for so long, and like eveything, it’s to make money.

android design is pretty good, but user created android phones home screens can often look pretty hateful, often with 4-6 screens of more empty space than icons, tons of widgets with an inconsistent design scheme, random half empty folders and a notification bar overcrowded with overshrunk icons. android phones often look like old Windows XP desktops—even on flagship distributions.

in contrast to google, apple cares what your phone looks like because they have a highly visual brand.

apple, by not allowing placement anywhere intentionally enforced a consistent top-left to bottom-right aesthetic which is now ubiquitous to the brand. among other design decisions, the result is that when you blur your eyes and look at a phone home screen you can tell whether it is apple or not.

• but the functionality is worse, yes i know.
• but it actually does look worse too, to you maybe, but not to apple. my belief is they did this for the same reason they put the magic mouse’s lighting port on the bottom (to keep users from always using it plugged in. which looks “ugly”).

the power of a strong and unmistakable brand is incomparable. in many cases, the value of a brand can even outperform raw product utility when it comes to customer satisfaction, a theory which i believe apple has been leveraging in this case very much intentionally despite the seeming paradox of utility.

edit: already getting downvoted to heck i should have known better than to be aware of basic marketing principles lol. i promise you im not defending apple im just explaining why they did this to make more money.

How courageously innovative. I bet their implementation will be extremely polished because they waited so long. /s

Only took them 18 major version releases. Maybe one day we'll get to choose an alarm snooze timer than isn't 9 minutes something.

⁰_0

Welcome to apple_enthusiast, where most of the comments seem to come from people that haven’t had iOS as a daily driver since the iPhone 3 or 4.

How will Apple users now manage with so many decisions to make??

LOL

Oooh wow will they let you change your brightness and font too?

I can't imagine the thundering applause the mindless morons will erupt into when Tim Cook announces on stage that you'll be able to customize your home screen.

iPhones are super popular...? What a fucking joke

I'll believe it when i see it

I know people have been horny for this for the longest time - just like the app drawer, but honestly if I wanted this, I would’ve bought an Android phone. I need a way to disable the shitty app drawer and this upcoming “feature” cuz I never asked for it.

Wow, I'm glad Apple engineers finally figured out how to invent this feature. I can't wait to be told at a keynote how bold, innovative, and courageous this is.

In other news, Apple sued Google and Samsung for copying the feature

iOS lookin more like Android with each release.

Welcome, to the world of 2015!

Off topic but I never see articles posted here about what the new features in Android are going to be, but Apple haters will undoubtedly let me know what I can expect to see in iOS.

Can't wait until iOS 19 where they add an App drawer.

My next phone is an Android probably because Apple stopped making "small" phones.

They're getting this now? I could do that on my old LG G5.

Big whoop.

This should be fun to play with for a little bit, but I put a lot of thought into my current layout and I’m not sure how much I really want to mess with it at this point.

Wtf lol

That's not a feature already????

Guess they’re doing the easy stuff now that the hard stuff is out of the way.

The original iTunes Store app was placed in the bottom right corner. How they resuscitated this tech is beyond me.