Rethinking the iPhone's App Switcher

Shortly before going to bed last night, I saw that *The Verge had featured something from one of their forum posters. Brent Caswell, aka brentcas, had a pretty neat concept of how the iOS multitask tray could be improved. He focuses mainly on the iPhone, and I really like what he came up with.

By adding another row of apps, I think the multitask tray would gain much more utility in easily switching between several apps. I also really like how he keeps the status bar visible and adds Spotlight search.

I love iOS’s Spotlight search, when I remember it is there. I think it would become much more notorious for use in Brent’s mockup.

I’m also loving his idea for dedicated music and settings sections. As far as his settings mockup goes, I applaud his toggles for Airplane Mode, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and 3G (or 4G/LTE, depending).

What I don’t like about his settings mockup is the Clear All button for killing every app. I know many of my friends swear their iPhone performs better when they tediously kill off every app int he multitask tray, but I still subscribe to it being unnecessary. Sure, there is the occasional errant app, but that is the exception, not the rule. In my experience, iOS is very good at managing itself.

In the comments to the post, user ThomasEvans makes the suggestion that instead of Clear All the button should be for activating Personal Hotspot. I’m much more on board with that idea.

I’m sure if someone important at Apple saw this mockup and was inspired to add it to iOS, it would be a little late in the game to include it in iOS 6. Maybe for iOS 7. Or maybe Apple has something better up its sleeve.