Launchpad
It’s been around half a year since Lion was unleashed upon the world, and honestly I thought I had written about why I hate Launchpad before. Evidentially I did not, because all I could dig up was this gem. I feel it basically glazes the whole issue.
My first criticism comes from the fact that it’s very similar to what Microsoft is trying to do by shoehorning Metro into Windows 8. The Launchpad UI is obviously based on the iOS Springboard, which is designed for a touch interface. It just isn’t as intuitive to use with a cursor. What’s the worst thing about it? To delete apps, you do the exact same thing you do to delete apps on iOS, except for the fact that you do it with a mouse instead of your finger, which makes it very…awkward to say the least.
Secondly, it shows every .app package on your hard drive (or SSD, depending on how you roll), even if it’s in the dock, which is displayed alongside Launchpad. On iOS, you can’t have an app in the dock and on one of your home screen pages. If they’re trying to imitate iOS with this feature, then why overlook something so mind-numbingly obvious? In addition, if your app came with an uninstaller, that will also show up in Launchpad, but that’s a minor annoyance compared to the dock thing.
Thirdly, and this is technically more a criticism of the Mac App Store, Launchpad should not be shoved in your face when you make a purchase from the Mac App Store. I understand what Apple is trying to do, they’re trying to get people to think of Launchpad as the home for their apps. It could be great for new users who are just getting Macs after using an iPhone or iPad. Unfortunately for the rest of us, for the past 10+ years of OS X we’ve been trained that applications go in the Applications folder. No matter the level of tech-savvy people I know have demonstrated, they all have that simple fact ingrained in their heads, so thank you Apple for confusing my grandmother.
And finally, the bugs. Even putting all my other criticisms aside, the bugs completely destroy the UX of Launchpad. And they’re not just minor bugs, like icons turning upside down. This one bug, that has not been fixed in the 2 updates since Lion’s release is…all your carefully arranged icons move by themselves. You expect iPhoto to be the second app on the 3rd row? Not today! Because Launchpad decided that iPhoto should be on the next row, second from the last icon. Don’t bother arranging your icons because they will be in whatever random order Launchpad decides they will be in. And whatever possible usefulness this feature may have had is basically dead until this is fixed.
So in short, Launchpad is buggy, doesn’t act the way you’d expect it to, breaks the established norm of OS X and it’s just not conducive to a point-and-click interface. Honestly, Launchpad feels like something they tacked on. In some ways it reminds me of the original Front Row, which was absolute garbage. Perhaps we’ll see Launchpad’s issues resolved in Mac OS X 10.8, but thats at least another year and a half away, so hopefully we’ll see some fixes that will at least make Launchpad somewhat usable.
Or even better, maybe they’ll give us the ability to turn it off completely.
