hiding Applications

Sorry but no (in general).
However, if you ever fill up ALL your screens with apps to the max then move your stock app to the end. Then add another app, it will bump it off the visible screens.

I know not the answer you are looking for.

Wouldn't it be nice if you could hide icons, and even organize apps in folders so when you click on their icon a new page loads up with all the apps you put in there? Hopefully Apple will include a cool feature like this in the future.

Yes, something like that would be very nice but Apple seems to want to do things their way or move very, very slow at changing... and we keep accepting it because we continue to buy their phones, me included. It obviously a trade-off between the features we want and the features we think we need.

Very true! It would be really cool if they put out a survey asking what feature people would like to see most, then take the top features and have the customers vote on which feature people would like to see most developed!