A couple of times a week on the MacBook Pro (or Apple keyboard), I accidentally hit F4, come face to face with the incomprehensible screen full of unorganized icons, and back out quickly.
As I researched this post, I learned that this feature is called Launchpad and that it has something to do with the (anticipated?) convergence of desktop and mobile operating system experiences. I guess when you combine Launchpad with the Dock is OSX, it’s kind of like the way iOS organizes apps.
But, wow, when you first encounter Launchpad in an uncurated stated, it is an incomprehensible jumble. I guess it’s organized according to the order in which things were installed. How is it useful in a world where people tuck everything they need into the dock? It’s not like the average person uses that many different applications.
As part of my research, I settled down and tried to organize Launchpad, which was a nightmare of awkwardly holding down a button on my keyboard and moving icons around. Icons that didn’t want to move between the multiple screens of Launchpad. And sometimes I just had to touch the Option key once, and sometimes I had to hold it down. By the way, some icons are deletable, and most are not, which meant that I just kept shoving applications I barely use into one big folder.
I suppose that means I’m using Launchpad the wrong way – after all, it’s clearly meant to be a place where you keep every single program on your computer. In the end, I used the first screen to hold icons for all the applications I actually use on a regular basis, and left everything as a jumble in the next 3 screens.
It’s not like I’m going to start using Launchpad, anyway. I use Quicksilver and just type what I want (if it isn’t already open).