Apple has been holding its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) for over 30 years, and honestly, no one has called them out for abbreviating it with two Ws in that time—I don’t feel strongly about them. Start something new. Shovel any AI bloatware. It’s a big tech world and I’m just as caught up in it as anyone else. Imagine if recurring updates to the damn computer were a major part of your identity. I couldn’t be!
But when I saw this, my world-weary ears rang tidbit from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman is ahead Monday’s keynote speech:
In iOS 18, codenamed Crystal, the latest iPhone operating system, app icons will no longer have to remain in a neat grid. Instead, users will be able to place the icon anywhere they choose on their home screen. Plus, icon colors will be customizable for the first time.
Reader, it’s time to make your home screen look like a total disaster.
Surely there’s a version of this new freedom that someone can actually improve productivity on Apple devices (ew) or achieve a unique aesthetic that spits in the face of Apple’s refined design language (closer, but not yet). Instead, it allows us the honor of making our apps look like a teenager’s bedroom. Give me a closet full of outdated weather software. A pile of unfinished homework from workout trackers. An unmade bed Temple Run clones have been squeezed uncomfortably into the dustbin of ad-laden Maps alternatives.
Of course you are can “do everything [your] “Social media apps are blue, or finance-related icons are green,” as Gurman suggests. Or you could always convert the same shape and color app, rename them all to “Gmail,” and try to solve the terrible puzzle you’re turning into part of every day. Your user experience. .
I’m told this is the kind of functionality that Android users have had for a while. If so, why aren’t you people using it? None of us enjoy these horrible things. Let the disorder make you happy.
Why do we climb mountains? For the same reason, we stick a cup under each faucet in the soda machine and taste them together. The purest of human instinct guides them both.
