How did I pick the most hated new features of the year? Well, I didn’t pick them; you did. While looking at the most popular posts on here’s the thing this year, I saw that many of them had to do with tweaks, changes, redesigns, or all-new features that you wish had never happened.

In some cases, there were workarounds; in others, chagrined company executives hit the brakes and reversed course. A few, though, we’ll just have to live with—for now, anyway.

So, in ascending order of most hated tech improvements, let’s begin with…

#5: Facebook’s revamped News Feed, and the new “ticker”

The new, much-hated Facebook "ticker."

How it used to be: A live feed of posts, photos, and status updates from our friends, neighbors, and loved ones on Facebook. You could sort the old feed chronologically, or filter the updates according to your Friend Lists. Easy.
What they changed: In September, Facebook rolled out two major new features: “Top” and “Highlighted” News Feed stories that the social geniuses at Facebook figured mattered to you the most—whether you thought so or not—and the “Ticker,” a live feed in the top-right corner of the screen that reported your every move, no matter how insignificant.
Why you hated it: The live Ticker felt a little too much like an eye in the sky, and there wasn’t (and still isn’t) a way to hide it. The new News Feed, meanwhile, wouldn’t let you sort updates from friends in chronological order anymore; instead, you were stuck with “Highlighted” updates that were often hours or even days old.
Status: The Facebook Ticker is still there, telling the world every time you “like” something or hit “play” on Spotify. But while “Highlighted” updates are still around, at least you can now sort the News Feed chronologically again.

#4: Netflix website redesign

Netflix's revamped home page, complete with those slowly-scrolling rows of videos.

How it used to be: It’s hard to remember now, but earlier this year, Netflix’s home page featured a fairly standard grid of smallish, clickable rows of movie cover art, as well as long listings of videos that you could sort by year, MPAA ratings, or (best of all) user “star” rating.
What they changed: In June, Netflix unveiled a major home-page revamp, complete with large, slowly scrolling rows of “Watch Instantly” movies and TV shows.
Why you hated it: The slow, stately pace of the scrolling video covers drove many of you nuts, as well as the fact that you had to hover over a box with your mouse to read the video details. Also annoying: the fact that the redesign seemed to kick DVDs to the curb in favor of instant-streaming movies. Worst of all, though, you couldn’t sort videos at all anymore—or at least, not on the Netflix website.
Status: Netflix hasn’t budged on the scrolling video boxes, but you can once again sort movies and TV shows by year and rating.

#3: Mac OS X “Lion” and the missing scroll bars

Hey, where'd the scroll bars go?

How it used to be: Back in the day, the windows on our desktops used to have these little bars on the edges that you could click and drag for scrolling—you know, scroll bars. Indeed, those handy scroll bars are still standard issue on Windows PCs.
What they changed: With its big “Lion” update for the Mac operating system, Apple decided to take several features from the iPhone and iPad and bring them “back to the Mac”—including the near absence of scroll bars, which only appear as slivers while you’re actually scrolling.
Why you hated it: While many have grown to love scrolling with two-finger gestures on their trackpads, plenty of Mac users—and particularly those who do precision editing in programs like Photoshop—missed the visible, easy-to-click scroll bars, not to mention the arrows that used to sit on either end.
Status: You can turn scroll bars back on in the Mac system settings, but they’re still awfully slim and tough to grab. And those scroll bar arrows, by the way, are history.

#2: The new iOS “Newsstand”

There's no getting rid of Newsstand.

How it used to be: Newspaper and magazine apps for the iPhone and iPad have been around for years now, and they used to function just like any other app. You could put them on any home page, put them all in a folder, put magazines in one folder and newspapers in another, whatever you wanted.
What they changed: Enter “Newsstand,” a new feature in iOS 5 that organizes all of your newspapers and magazine apps—well, many of them, anyway—into a single folder, complete with automatic updates whenever a new digital issue gets published.
Why you hated it: Not only can you not hide Newstand into a folder, you also can’t put magazine and newspaper apps into Newsstand unless they’ve been Newsstand-enabled by individual publishers—and in some cases, publishers have specifically decided to keep their apps out of the Newsstand due to Apple’s revenue-sharing terms.
Status: Apple hasn’t budged on Newsstand—well, not yet.

…and, drumroll please…

#1: The Gmail redesign

Yes, please.

How it used to be: The old Gmail wasn’t anything special, really—just a standard, unexceptional green-and-white design that millions of users knew inside and out.
What they changed: Google is in the process of revamping all its web-based services with a boxy, modern-looking black-and-white design, complete with a big black bar at the top and new icons—and Gmail is next in line.
Why you hated it: Your comments pretty much tell the whole story, ranging from “too annoying” and “not user functional” to “cumbersome” and a good old-fashioned “I HATE IT.”
Status: You can go back to the old Gmail look temporarily, but all Google users will have to switch to the new Gmail eventuall—or at least, that’s the current policy.

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The iOS 5 Newsstand in action. So, what's wrong with this picture?

Steven writes: Okay, so I can’t get rid of Newsstand. I’ll accept that. How come I can’t put my other newspapers in it? The L.A. Times, Huffington Post, etc. sit in their own folder, yet my New York Times app was automatically moved to Newsstand. Don’t get it. Makes for more steps, rather than fewer. Please explain.

Hi Steven! You’re not the first reader to complain about how Newsstand (the new iOS 5 feature that manages your news apps and downloads) and its seemingly willy-nilly attitude toward magazines and newspapers.

As you say, some iOS news apps—like, say, those of the New York Times, GQ, Cosmopolitan, Wired, The New Yorker, and Vanity Fair—now live in the permanent Newsstand folder, and there’s no way to drag them out and put them elsewhere.

Other newspapers and magazines, though—including the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and TIME magazine—don’t place nice with Newsstand, and they’ll refuse to install themselves in the Newsstand icon even if you try dragging and dropping them.

That means that Newsstand isn’t quite the one-stop shop for digital publications that we’d been promised—or not yet, anyway.

Related: Why can’t I move Newsstand into a folder?

So, what’s the deal? Well, newspaper and magazine publishers must agree to Apple’s Newsstand terms (which include a healthy 30-percent share of their revenue), as well as modify their apps to support Newsstand itself.

Now, in some cases, it may simply be a matter of time before a given publication gets its act together and enables Newsstand support for its app. (For example, I can’t imagine it’ll be long before TIME, which was one of the first publications to serve up an iOS app, adds its app to the Newsstand.)

But as the editors at Poynter point out, publishers that are leery of Apple’s terms may decide to take a wait-and-see approach to Newsstand—and indeed, according to TechCrunch, The Economist has already passed on the Newsstand idea.

In other words, we may never see a time when all newspaper and magazine apps live in Newsstand—meaning our favorite news apps might always be scattered here and there on our iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touches.

Now, there’s another scenario: perhaps Apple will relent and either a) allow users to pull news apps out of the Newsstand, or b) let us put non-Newsstand apps into the Newsstand.

Don’t hold your breath, though.

The post Why can’t I put all my newspapers and magazines in iOS 5’s Newsstand? (reader mail) appeared first on here's the thing.

Greetings, John. Newsstand, which is new for the iOS 5 system software for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch, groups all your digital newspaper and magazine subscriptions into one place.

Handy? Maybe. Limited? Definitely

Newsstand comes in handy if you love reading the New York Times or Vanity Fair on your iDevice, and it alerts you when new issues arrive and even downloads them in the background, which I love.

But if you prefer reading the news on good, old-fashioned paper and you’d rather not have Newsstand junking up your iPhone or iPad home screen, your options are a bit limited.

Normally, if you don’t want an app on your iPhone or iPad, you can just delete it. (Just tap and hold the offending app’s icon, then tap the little “x” that appears once the app starts shaking.)

Unfortunately, since Newsstand is now “native” to the iOS software (as are the Apple-designed Weather, Stock, and Calculator apps), you can’t just delete it off your phone.

Nope, it won’t go quietly into a folder

And here’s another thing: you can’t just toss Newsstand into a folder and forget about it. (To create a folder, by the way, you just tap and hold an icon, drag it on top of another app that you’d like to group it with, and voilà—you’ve got a folder.)

Why? Because as far as the iPhone and iPad are concerned, Newsstand isn’t really an app at all.

Instead, it’s just another folder—one designed specifically to contain your digital newspapers and magazines. And in the world of iOS, you can’t put a folder in a folder.

Annoying, yes, or at least it is if you’re not a Newsstand fan.

If you’re really intent on hiding the new iOS 5 Newsstand, you could try banishing it to a far-off home screen.

Just tap and hold the Newsstand folder until it shakes, drag it to the right edge of the display until it slides to the next home screen, keep going until you’ve create a new screen at the very end, then click the Home button.

Update: A few helpful readers have posted tips below for hiding Newsstand in a folder; keep in mind, though, that the tips aren’t sanctioned by Apple, and they may cause Newsstand to crash.

Get the scoop on iOS 5 and iCloud, Apple’s online sharing service, right here.

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