First things first, the Macworld article linked by this post will autoplay a video and, on top of that, has an ad that makes noise if you accidentally (no way to avoid it, really) mouse over it. Obviously, I would never have linked to it if I didn’t think the post was worth it.

Moving on.

Glenn Fleishman, answering some Macworld reader mail, talks you through the process of hiding apps in iTunes. In a nutshell, if you go to the iTunes view that shows you all your apps, you can hover over the corner of an app’s icon until the cursor turns into a pointing finger. On my Mac, the finger appears when I hover on the upper-left corner of an app icon. Click the finger and Apple will prompt you, asking if you’d like to hide the app.

It’s not clear if hiding an app icon in this way will prevent that app from reloading on your device the next time you sync. Even if it does, having the jump through the “hover, click, click hide in the dialog” sequence for every icon you want to get rid of is cumbersome at best.

There is another option, one that actually deletes the app from your list. In your list of all apps in iTunes, control click on an icon and select Delete. That will actually delete the app from your iTunes library (but not from synced devices). Also cumbersome and more permanent.

Of course, you can also add and remove apps on a per-device basis by selecting the device in iTunes, then clicking Apps in the list of options for that device. You’ll get a potentially huge list of every app you’ve ever purchased, with an option to remove or install for each app.

Finally, you can also add and remove apps on a per-page basis by double-clicking on one of the screen shots for your device. Hover over an app icon and click the x that appears to remove the app from your device.

My two cents: All of these options exist, and they all feel a bit weighty, cumbersome. How about a redesign here that folds all this under a single, lighter interface, one that is preloaded and lightning fast?