Counting (and Filing) the iPhone Apps
David Pogue JULY 1, 2010
When Steve Jobs unveiled the new iOS4 (the latest iPhone operating software), he bragged about a new feature that lets you organize your downloaded apps into logically named folders. (Truly, it's a fantastic feature.)
You can fit up to 12 apps in each folder. And you can have 16 folders on each of your 11 home screens. And you can have four more folders on the Dock that's always at the bottom of the home screen.
So let's see: 12 apps * 16 folders * 11 home screens + (4 Dock folders * 12 apps) = 2,160 apps.
According to Steve Jobs, then, you can have 2,160 apps on an iPhone!
Or can you?
"@pogue, actually, it's 2149," wrote my Twitter follower mtisher66. "There's no way to create the last folder, because you don't have two icons to drop onto one another!"
I stared at that tweet, deeply concerned. It's true: to create a folder on the iPhone, you drag one app's icon on top of another. (The software automatically creates the new folder, puts both apps inside, and even attempts to name the folder based on the apps you put into it: "Games," for example, or "Music.")
But once you've got 15 folder icons on the last page, the 16th icon would have to be an app icon - a single app icon - and there'd be no way to create a final folder!
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