Finally, I can make my iPhone look like total crap
IOS 18, thank you for (reportedly) enabling my worst instincts.
Apple has been holding its Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) for over 30 years and frankly — other than no one calling them out for abbreviating it with two Ws in that span of time — I don't have strong feelings about them. Launch a new thing. Shovel AI bloatware into whatever. It's big tech's world and I'm just as trapped in it as anyone else. Imagine thinking iterative updates to a goddamn computer are a core part of your identity. Couldn't be me!
But my world-weary ears perked up when I saw this little tidbit from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman ahead of Monday's keynote:
In the latest iPhone operating system — iOS 18, codenamed Crystal — app icons will no longer have to remain in a neat grid. Instead, users will be able to place icons wherever they choose on their home screen. Moreover, icon colors will be customizable for the first time.
Reader, it's time to make your home screen look like a complete disaster.
Sure, there's a version of this new freedom where someone could really maximize their productivity on Apple devices (ew) or achieve a unique aesthetic that spits in the face of Apple's sanitized design language (closer, but still no). Instead, lets bask in the glory of letting our apps resemble a teenager's bedroom. Give me an overstuffed closet of defunct weather software. An unfinished homework pile of workout trackers. An unmade bed of Temple Run clones pressed uncomfortably close to a junk drawer of ad-laden Maps alternatives.
Of course you could "make all [your] social media apps blue or finance-related icons green" as Gurman suggests. Or you could turn ever app the same shape and color, rename them all to 'Gmail' and spend part of every day trying to solve the awful puzzle you've turned your user experience into.
I'm told this is the sort of functionality Android users have had for a while. If so, why haven't you people been taking advantage of this?? None of us enjoy using these horrible things. Let disarray delight you.
Why do we climb mountains? For the same reason we stick the cup under every single spout in the soda machine and see what they taste like together. The purest of human instinct guides them both.