Michael T. Rose (Twitter) is a longtime editor and contributor at The Unofficial Apple Weblog, AOL Tech’s site for all things Apple and app-related. He’s the co-host (with Kelly Guimont), of The Aftershow a new podcast that picks up where TUAW’s long-running weekly Talkcast left off. When he’s not blogging or podcasting, Mike’s day job is with Salesforce.com as a senior sales engineer. Mike lives in Brooklyn with his family and has a personal blog at geekparent.com. So Mike, show us your home screen.
What are some of your favorite apps?
As a New York City denizen, I depend on the city’s public transit system every day to get where I’m going. NextStop is a wonderful transit information app, delivering scheduled (and in the case of a few subway lines, real-time) train arrival information. Citymapper, HopStop, and Embark NYC provide savvy transit routing information that takes repairs, diversions and other schedule changes into account. (Embark was bought by Apple last year, so chances are that app’s capabilities will eventually show up in the iOS Maps app.) But the best app for emulating a New York subway rider is Exit Strategy; it helps you figure out where to stand on the subway platform so that you line up just right to exit at your eventual destination.
I live and die by 1Password, of course, and I use Things to manage my to-do list. MobileDay makes it easy to dial into conference calls with a single tap, and JotNot Pro is my go-to “Paperless enabler” app for capturing receipts and other paper documents. Tweetbot is my Twitter client of choice, and for all my day job connections with my Salesforce colleagues, there’s the powerful and simple Salesforce1 app.
On my second home screen you’ll find a few more frequent flyers: Tripit, RoadAhead, Overcast, Spotify and the indispensable Sleep Cycle.
Which app is your guilty pleasure?
I’ve got to go with Timehop, the personal time capsule for social media. My kids are young enough, and I’ve been on Twitter and Facebook long enough, that a look back at “this day in history” is often a reminder of what they were saying and doing when they were small. It’s adorkable.
What is the app you are still missing?
One of the biggest things I’m missing isn’t an app per se, but a feature that’s promised for iOS 8 and Yosemite: tethered mirroring of iOS devices. I do software demos as a major part of my job, including on iOS, and often as not via a remote meeting solution like GoToMeeting or WebEx. Current-gen mirroring tools like Reflector and AirServer do a pretty good job, but they’re only as good as the local WiFi network; mid-demo is not the time you want to have a wireless hiccup interfering with your presentation flow. When I can connect a Lightning cable and show my iPhone screen seamlessly and reliably on my Mac, that’ll be a happy day.
How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?
The iPad, maybe 10–20 times – usually for note-taking or reading, or sometimes mobile mindmapping with MindNode. The iPhone? Pretty constantly, although since I got a [Pebble]https://getpebble.com) a few weeks ago I notice that I’m not doing as much “take the phone out of the pocket to see what that buzzing is about” since my notifications are visible right on my wrist.
What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?
Push notifications. Apps like Dark Sky and MobileDay let me know what I need to know, before I need to know it.
If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?
I’d allow pa
id upgrades, trials and beta testing on the App Store. The changes in iOS 8 are going to be great, but they still don’t address one of the economic challenges of app development; there’s no good way to capture revenue from the effort of developing a powerful new version of an app, unless it’s positioned as an entirely new app. Which in turn puts original purchasers in a bad mood.
What’s your wallpaper and why?
This wallpaper is Apple’s very basic gradient with the parallax turned off, as it was giving me some dizziness. Since I took this screenshot, I’ve been experimenting with turning it back on and having a zoomable/slideable background. We’ll see how it goes. Meanwhile, my lock screen includes “if found please contact” information; I should add some “in case of emergency” detail as well.
Thanks Mike.