back to article Apple iOS 6 beta limits number of apps per device

The beta versions of Apple's iOS 6 limit the number of apps that you can have installed on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch – a limitation that didn't exist on iOS 4 or iOS 5. The limit, however, is high enough that only the most app-happy Apple-kit owners would hit the wall, according to a post by "macjeff" on the Mid …

COMMENTS

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  1. LarsG
    WTF?

    500-1000 aps, who the hell has that many on their iPad? Is it even possible or are we going to see a big memory increase in these devices?

    1. Richard 81
      FAIL

      Pardon the block quote, but:

      "Now, 500 to 1,000 apps may at first blush seem to be far more than any rational human being might keep on their iOS device. But as macjeff rightly points out, if Apple expects your iPhone, for example, to eventually replace "your phone, your pocket gaming system, your smart-home remotes, your TV remotes, your day-timer, etc.," it might want to reconsider the limitation."

      1. Silverburn

        Re: Pardon the block quote, but: @ Rich

        Maybe...but can you imagine the UI nightmare 500 apps presents on a tiny touch device like an iphone? From a usability point of view, it's a nightmare.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    They should drop it to 10 just for the beta then raise it for the final build. It might at least stop these idiots buying beta roms and then downrating app store applications that don't run on it.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Genius

    What a clever way to force someone to need even more of their delectably fruity hardware devices.

    Onwards to a $1 Trillion market cap!

    1. Jim in Hayward

      It's so silly.

      I am a fruity Apple Corp. product lover. But I have a grand total of 62 apps on my iPhone and 74 on my iPad (of which 62 are my iPhone apps).

      This is a crazy amount of apps. I bet you can't run even 30 on a Windows phone!

      1. tirk
        Headmaster

        "This is a crazy amount of apps. "

        It may or may not be crazy, but it's definitely a number, not an amount!!

        (Kids of today - I bet all the nostalgic humour of Wack-O! would be lost on them, sadly.)

      2. Andrew 66

        Re: It's so silly.

        Really?

        My Windows Phone currently has 73 apps installed. It runs just as fast, and just as smoothly as the day it had none installed.

        For reference, it has a 1GHz single core processor and 512Mb RAM, and as a result the battery lasts 2 days.

        Try that on your iPhone.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Trollface

          Re: It's so silly.

          I wasn't aware there were even 73 apps available on the Windows marketplace.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I'm a professional reviewer of fart apps and...

    ...this will completely ruin my livelihood. I'd need to buy at least a thousand more iPhones. Where would I put them all?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I'm a professional reviewer of fart apps and...

      You can wipe them when you're done reviewing, you don't need all of them sucking the wind out of the device at the same time.

      1. Oninoshiko
        Coat

        Re: I'm a professional reviewer of fart apps and...

        Most of them stink!

        I'll get my coat....

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    Slow news day?

    Bug reports of beta versions are worthy of news articles now?

    From the description there's no limit, just something that breaks the beta when a user has a lot of apps.

  6. Chris McFaul
    FAIL

    i had about 700 but i had a bit of a purge and im down to 550 now....

    1. Silverburn
      Happy

      You sir...have a problem.

  7. Cameron Colley

    25 screens to scroll through?

    Are there really people out there who scroll through 25 screens to get to their desired "app"? Or do they defeat the object of a "touch" interface y having to type into the search every time?

    Either way, I don't know how people can cope with having more than 60 apps on the unconfigurable PITA operating system. Or have Apple relented and decided the user may know how they want their desktops to look?

    1. E Haines

      Re: 25 screens to scroll through?

      Er, no, iOS has had folders for ages.

      1. Cameron Colley

        Re: Er, no, iOS has had folders for ages.

        Wow, much better than allowing a user to have as many icons as they want on their home screen -- that would just be stupid.

        Heaven forbid anyone should feel the need for more than 20 icons on one screen!!!!!!!!!!

  8. PassiveSmoking
    Stop

    Hot breaking news! A piece of beta software that's been released for testing and which is expected to have bugs in it has a bug in it! Stop the presses!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Someone should tell the people who think beta means "early adopter".

  9. E Haines

    640 apps should be enough for anybody!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      640 enough

      Even then I wouldn't want to scroll through my Itunes app screen

    2. Jim in Hayward
      Angel

      voted up just because of the number. funny!!

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's not a bug.

    It's just a feature to warn the user that they may need to join Shoppers Anonymous.

  11. jubtastic1

    Thats curious

    Just having apps installed shouldn't slow it down, and iOS is pretty brutal about shutting them down when they're not in the foreground, this must be down to something essential thats always running and doesnt scale.

    My money is on the Springboard, It was only designed for 20 apps, but now you can stuff almost ten times that to each of its ten pages. I suspect it caches all the icons and those 'previously' launch shots into RAM so there is never any lag on the homescreen, but one (hundred) too many apps and the system starts to get light headed from RAM starvation.

    1. JeffyPooh
      Pint

      Re: Thats curious

      My coworker's Sony Android phone slowed down due only to apps being *installed*. Fail. He was forced to sell it on and try a different phone.

    2. Shonko Kid
      Holmes

      Just delete some apps, not that big of a deal

      It does seem odd that there should be a limit at all, and 500/1000 seems all too arbitrary. You're probably on the right track with RAM consumption though, as OOM is the best way to cause random crashes - No developer ever checks for it these days.

  12. JeffyPooh
    Pint

    321 apps installed right now...

    I have run into the previous hard limit where all 11 screens (pages) were full of 16 apps each - this was before Apple invented the concept of folders (<- sarcasm). 11 x 16 = 176 apps was the hard limit at that time, so I'm not sure how you can state that such limits are new.

    Even now, it's 11 screens x 16 folders x 12 apps = 2112 (Rush!?), plus four more along the dock.

    1. Giles Jones Gold badge

      Re: 321 apps installed right now...

      Are you Ted Rogers?

      1. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge
        Coat

        Re: 321 apps installed right now... @Giles Jones

        That joke was a bit dusty. Did you dig it out the bin?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: 321 apps installed right now...

      sorry to burst your bubble but it's 2105. You can't put News stand in a folder (for some gods unknown reason) so you lose 11. (2112-11+4)

      1. Zaphod.Beeblebrox
        Boffin

        Re: 321 apps installed right now...

        But since you can put folders on the Dock, you gain another 44 making it 2149...

  13. RAMChYLD
    Boffin

    that's an improvement

    I only have 154 apps on my first-gen iPad running iOS 5.1.1 and it has already slowed down to a crawl, not to mention a handful of apps started randomly crashing when I hit the 100 mark!

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    App

    I've only got one app. It's called App.app. I'm not sure what it does though, as I don't know how to use it.

  15. toadwarrior
    Thumb Down

    So a beta which is expected to be buggy limits you to a ridiculously high number of apps and this bug will be fixed?

    Someone deserves a nobel prize for this kind of reporting.

  16. Dana W
    WTF?

    500-1000??

    I have had an iPhone since 2007, I think I have ten apps, I paid for three. Who seriously has 500 apps?

    1. Steve Renouf
      Boffin

      Re: 500-1000??

      People who need to get out more and join the real world!

      1. JediHomer
        Joke

        Re: 500-1000??

        There's an app for that ;)

    2. David Cantrell
      Trollface

      Re: 500-1000??

      Probably the same morons who send 500 or more illiterate text messages a month

  17. Scarborough Dave
    Happy

    I have 232 apps

    And I took some off last night because it was getting a bit silly!

  18. fourThirty
    WTF?

    seriously...

    ... how can anyone NEED that many apps?

    A large proportion of apps are just wrappers for existing websites anyway, just formatted beffter for the iDevices.

  19. Wize

    Why 500 & 1000?

    Thought it would be more likely to have problems at round numbers, such as 512, 1024.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. Outcast !!!

      Re: Why 500 & 1000?

      What rounds numbers? The numbers you quoted are base 2.

      1. Eddy Ito
        Coat

        Re: Why 500 & 1000?

        But there is only one round number, it's 2π. If you have that many apps, I can see why the poor iPhone would have difficulty.

        The one with the compass in the pocket. No, no, the other kind of compass; looks a bit like dividers.

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