Next on iTunes: App Management?

Popular rumor has the next version of iTunes with Blu-ray support and app management.  My first question regarding this is: what exactly does app management mean?

Based on the image that comes with the article, app management involves drag and drop installation of apps onto your iPhone or iPod Touch.

It’s about time.

For all the debate about the convenience of iTunes and the ease at which graphics, audio and video can be moved to and from the device, getting applications installed on an iPhone is a bit of a pain if your doing it from your computer (directly of course its much easier but it leads to other a different problem I have described below).

A drag and drop feature for installation and uninstallation would be very cool.  It would be much easier to track which apps are on the iPhone or iPod Touch (particularly when your apps start to number in the hundreds).

The potential Blu-ray capability shouldn’t be ignored either.  It’s a sign that future Macs could come with Blu-ray drives pre-installed.  While this wouldn’t affect the iPhone or iPod Touch that much (except maybe in the transfer of video) it is still a sign that Apple has more confidence in the future of that technology.

Its not that I’m too lazy to select and deselect the apps that I want to put on my device, its just that i find that I tend to do so on the iPhone itself, and most of the time, I fail to adjust the preferences in iTunes itself.  So the next time I go to resync, the apps that i removed on the device are back on the device.  Drag and Drop would hopefully make this situation a little bit easier to manage than sorting through the hundreds of apps I have and having to check box the ones that I want.

So the real question is, what does app management really mean?  Is it simply drag and drop, or is there more?  Something more in line I hope with syncing the device and iTunes better, so i don’t end up with apps on the iPhone that I already removed.