This week’s home screen features reader and listener Joshua Holt (Website). Joshua is a lawyer working at a big shiny office in New York. In his spare time, he blogs about personal finance topics while trying to build a community of lawyers to help each other avoid doing dumb things with their money. So Joshua, show us your home screen.

What are some of your favorite apps?

Drafts, Overcast, 1Password and Hangouts are my favorite home screen apps right now. My iPhone is mainly a device for capturing ideas, communicating and the occasional consumption of video.

I’m a total convert to Drafts. It’s my digital notepad on both my iPhone and iPad and my number one resource for capturing ideas, tasks, or anything that needs to be written down. It’s one of the few apps that is allowed to have badges turned on, which lets me know that I need to process through my notes (which is a snap thanks to the robust action platform that lets me send text to the right app).

Overcast is a must for my subway commute. It’s how I keep up with MacPowerUsers and thanks to a neat trick from Katie Floyd, it’s also a way to get Continuing Legal Education (CLE) credits, which are required in the legal profession.

A lot of people make a fuss about the security aspect of using strong passwords, but without 1Password I have no idea how people keep track of their various logins. It seems crazy to me. I have over 425 accounts according to 1Password. Without one program to manage them, I’d explode in frustration every time I had to login to a website.

Hangouts is a new home page app for me, but I am experimenting with dropping my voice plan since I rarely make voice calls. Hangouts allows you to make free calls to regular phone numbers over both wifi and data. So far, so good. I think the day isn’t too far away when voice plans will go the way of the dinosaurs. I already prefer to use FaceTime Audio thanks to the superior call quality and my work phone runs over the Internet, so why shouldn’t my mobile phone?

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Chess. A few months ago, I discovered that you could play three minute games against anyone in the world. I’m hooked. I find it relaxing to get lost in a few quick chess matches in between tasks. I probably play more than I should, but I figure it’s a better habit than using Facebook.

What app makes you most productive?

I’m surprised to say this, but I’m most productive in the Mail app. I enjoy processing email on my iPhone more than on Outlook on my work PC. As a lawyer, we spend way too much time writing email and I appreciate the limitations on email responses that comes from replying with an iPhone. Also, the predictive “move” command in iOS 10 has really helped me keep my inbox clean which means I try to triage email as much as possible on my iPhone rather than diving into Outlook.

What app do you know you’re underutilizing?

ToDoist. It’s my favorite task management app, particularly because it is cross-platform and has a lightweight UI, but I’ve just never been great at running a task management system. There’s something about sitting down to handle tasks assigned by former me that I find really distasteful. Like, “who is that guy to be telling me what to do?” That said, I use Todoist as a running list of things I’d like to accomplish and open it up from time to time to pick things I feel like working on in a given moment.

What is the app you are still missing?

Hazel for the iPhone would be pretty amazing. I’d love to see an app that could automate certain functions and be triggered by things like time, files, or other inputs.

How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?

Thanks to the app Moment, I can tell you that I picked my iPhone exactly 46 times yesterday. I don’t know how it’s working under the hood to provide that data, but I think it’s handy to get a sense for how much screen time I’m spending with my iPhone.

What Today View widgets are you using and why?

Workflow is hands down my favorite Today widget. I’m getting used to swiping right (rather than down) to bring up my helpful workflows. I work with a personal trainer and send him an email each day with photographs of what I ate. Using Workflow, in two taps, I take a picture, crop it and upload it to a Dropbox folder. From there, Hazel takes over and renames the photo using a timestamp. At the end of each day, Hazel drafts and sends an email automatically attaching my food photos of the day. It’s still magical to me.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

I’ve always been blown away that we have more computing power in our pockets than Neil Armstrong had when he landed on the moon. If you had asked the astronauts in the 1960s whether by 2016 we would have traveled to Mars or invented a device that carried around the entirety of humanity’s knowledge, I think we know which they would have said is more likely.

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

First, I would fix the search functionality in Mail on the iPhone/iPad. It’s not usable. Perhaps this isn’t their fault given that my work email is stored on an Exchange server, but I find it surprising that I can’t easily pinpoint an email in iOS that would take me a few seconds to do on my work PC.

Next, I would fix the problem with iMessage being tied to the phone number of the SIM card. Because iMessage automatically assumes your SIM card number is your primary number, iMessage “breaks” if you travel abroad and replace your SIM with a local SIM. If someone sends you a message at your primary number, you will not receive it. The way around this is to send iMessages to email addresses but not many people know that you can send iMessages to email addresses. The simple fix would be for Apple to allow you to associate any phone number with iMessage if you could prove ownership of the phone message (likely be receiving a SMS code similar to two-factor authentication). This is a big flaw in foreign countries where many people switch SIMs quite regularly and communicate via apps like WhatsApp (which doesn’t have this limitation).

What’s your wallpaper and why?

I can’t remember where I found my lock screen wallpaper, but it’s some type of zen Japanese artwork that I love. I’ve had the same wallpaper since my iPhone 5, so going on four years now.

Anything else you’d like to share?

I think JustSend is a great app. The developer bills it as “Zero Inbox” because it’s email without the inbox. When you open the app you’re presented with the Mail drafting pane and your only options are to send the email. The app makes it really easy to compose and send an email without getting sucked into the inbox.

Dolphin is a great web browser that I use when I’m not on wifi. It has a feature that allows you to turn off photos and videos. Pages load super fast and I don’t worry about using excess data.

Thanks Joshua.

This week’s home screen features Christopher Hannah (Website) (Twitter). Christopher developed my favorite Wikipedia app for the Mac, Qwiki. Qwiki puts Wikipedia in my search bar and I use it all the time. You should check it out. So Christopher, show us your home screen.

What are some of your favorite apps?

I would have to say Overcast , Infuse , Tweetbot , and 2Do .

Overcast because I listen to loads of podcasts, I prefer this to listening to music, and they’re especially useful when traveling to university. My favourites at the minute have to be Connected , Cortex , and also Canvas which is helping me learn loads of new things about my iPad. I also listen to Mac Power Users and Under the Radar occasionally. I am of course an Overcast patron, as I just /love/ dark themes.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

At the minute I can’t see any guilty pleasure on my home screen but Engage. I know it’s an app designed for people with a big number of followers, and want to see interactions from other influencers, but I like to see stats about everything, so that’s why I downloaded it! But the bottom row of my iPhone home screen is very volatile, and it’s where I put apps that I’m currently trying out, or I can see myself deleting soon.

What app makes you most productive?

Definitely 2Do, it was only recently that I started using this properly, but I can already feel it helping me organise what tasks I need to do. I used it to plan out the features and also the release of Qwiki, and also to schedule things like paying rent, and to reminding me to send invoices on a certain day of the month. I haven’t got a good memory, so I usually forget due dates for coursework, and what tasks I have to do. But luckily 2Do also helped me with scheduling my university coursework, which made it easier to see the scale of work I had to do at a simple glance.

What app do you know you’re underutilizing?

This would have to be Workflow, just because I know it can do so much, and I use it for quite basic tasks. The most used Workflows of mine would have to be joining multiple images together for writing reviews, sending the last photo to a WhatsApp contact, and a few different quick tweet actions.

I can see myself using Workflow more in the future, especially as I’m slowly using my iPad more and more for work purposes.

What is the app you are still missing?

This is a hard question, because if there was a app I desperately wanted, then I would try and develop it myself. I can honestly say that at the minute, I can’t think of anything else I would want my iPhone or iPad to do, if anything I’m more surprised what my devices can actually do when I listen to podcasts like Canvas.

How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?

I use my iPhone way too much to measure, there’s rarely an hour gone by before I’m on it again, whether I’m catching up with Twitter, or actually doing something productive.

With my iPad, it’s a bit different. When I go out to friends houses, or just traveling, then I’m now taking my iPad over my MacBook Pro, so it would be used a few times a day. But if I’m at home, then I’m normally at my desk, which means I’ll just use my Mac for everything. So on average I use it 3/4 days a week.

What Today View widgets are you using and why?

I don’t have any at the minute, because I’ve done the risky thing and installed iOS 10 on both of my iOS devices. But before this I just used Fantastical, 2Do, and Workflow with a few quick actions. It’s never been a part of iOS that I’ve used that much.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

Picture in Picture, it’s amazing. The other day I was on my iPad reading twitter, and also watching the Euros at the same time. It shocked me again at the time that iOS has actually come pretty far from when the iPad as first introduced. I sure Federico would also agree!

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

I wouldn’t add anything special, but I would stop or at least slow down the invention of new products. I know the Car is being worked on, and that’s fine for a long term project, but I can see the current devices being updated constantly, and sometimes it’s too much in my opinion. I think they need a good few years of refinements, and slimming down product categories.

Regarding the Macs, I want the MacBook Air to die. Then there’s just the MacBook and it’s Pro counterpart for the laptops, and the the iMac and Mac Pro to represent desktop computing. Each Mac should have 2 screen sizes as a maximum, and I think the non-retina pros should be discontinued.

For iOS devices, I think the iPhone lineup should be thinned down drastically. There’s too many old products, simply for the price range. I think it’s already going that way with the iPhone SE providing current hardware to users who want a smaller screen size. So preferably I would only have 3 different iPhones on sale at any point, but maybe that’s a step too far. I would also do the same thing to the iPads, I think there should simply be an iPad, and an iPad Pro. Then the iPad in all three sizes, and the Pro in the current two.

So yeah, I would try and stabilise Apple off was in charge, there’s a lot going on at the moment, and I sort of want that to change.

Do you have an Apple Watch?

I do, and it’s become one of my favourite devices. I gave two different watch faces, one for casual use, and the other for when I want access to emails, next calendar events, etc.

Before watchOS 3 was announced, my watch was simply a way for me to receive notifications on my wrist, and also to tell the time. But like just my iOS devices, I’ve installed the beta on my watch as well. So I know use it more for reading texts, and also replying got them now with the new Scribble feature. It’s also proven useful for keeping up to date with the football scores. Apps and that are stored in my dock really do open up instantly, and I can see watchOS 3 really changing the watch for everyone.

What’s your wallpaper and why?

For my iPhone and iPad I just have a plain blue graph paper image as my wallpaper, I like it to be as simple as possible. So it’s always something like that, or occasionally a nice wood texture.

Anything else you’d like to share?

The only other thing I want to share about my iPhone is typing, I hate typing on it. I think it’s down to the physical size of the phone, as I’ve got the 5S at the moment. But hopefully it’s fixed when the new one comes out!

Thanks Christopher. And thanks for making Qwiki.

This week’s home screen feature Matt Teresi (Twitter), the entrepreneur behind The Easel iPad stand. I had the privilege of meeting Matt recently and he’s a stand up guy. So Matt, show us your home screen.

HOW MANY TIMES A DAY DO YOU USE YOUR IPHONE/IPAD?

Over the past couple months, I have converted almost all of my workflow to iOS. However, the fact that these devices can be anything at anytime can be dangerous. Those who are familiar with CGP Grey and Cortex will recognize a lot of my workflow. Like him, I try to be very intentional about how I work and how I am using technology.

I have three iOS devices that serve separate primary purposes: Capture (iPhone), Consumption (9.7“ iPad Pro), Creation (12.9” iPad Pro). The home screens shown have apps on the desktop that point me in the direction of what I should be using the device for.

The iPhone has apps that allow for quick capture of ideas, encourage focused work, and remind me to improve health. The 3D Touch actions on Launch Center Pro are great for capture as well, and I have made actions New Fantastical Event, New Scanbot, New PCalc, and Snapchat.

The 9.7″ iPad Pro is a multi purpose consumption device for me. It’s blank because I launch everything with spotlight, and honestly, couldn’t settle on a series of apps that made sense. What I use here the most are: Tweetbot (The only place I use this), Unread, Instapaper, and Paprika to name a few.

The 12.9″ iPad Pro has only apps I use for focused work. There is no potential for distraction here from social apps and this is almost always on do not disturb, with no badges turned on. I use Goodnotes, Excel, Soulver, Spark, and Word the most. This iPad lives on my Easel, and I do 95% of my work here using the software keyboard and Apple Pencil.

WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR FAVORITE APPS?

Notes Like most people, I could count the number of notes I had in Apple Notes on the fingers on my two hands before iOS 9. Now, even though I have weekly review set up to purge and act on notes from the week, I find myself above the Macsparky note count. A couple features I had hoped would be included at WWDC: Support for editing two notes simultaneously in split screen and better organization capabilities on iPad.

Goodnotes I have drawers full of Field Notes notebooks. They are great and one of my favorite products, but I could never find a way to quickly reference information recorded. Every project lived in these notebooks, with brainstorming, outlining, notes, thoughts, and planning all done here. Then the Apple Pencil and iPad Pro happened. I tested all kinds of apps to replicate and improve this workflow using this new technology, and I settled on Goodnotes. It is not perfect, and there are some definite UI problems that drive me nuts, but my single favorite work task to do now is planning my day/week/month/year and projects using this app, the 12.9″ iPad Pro, and Easel. This is illustrated in the photo below.

Overcast Playlists are huge for me, but Smart Speed is a feature that makes listening to podcasts elsewhere a form of torture. Marco the developer is a great guy as well, so start listening to MPU here.

Drafts Emails, thoughts, tasks, reminders, journals. As time goes on, more and more starts here. David’s tutorial introduced me to this great app.

Paper by Fifty Three My design concepts for Easel were all done here using Apple Pencil.

WHAT TODAY VIEW WIDGETS ARE YOU USING AND WHY?

Notification Center I use the Fantastical calendar widget in today view, but what I love about this pull down screen overlay is Notification Center. It took me along time to figure this out, and a commitment to use it this way, but once I began using this as my inbox, instead of opening app after app to see what was new, I felt this realization that this has to be what the guys and gals in Cupertino had in mind when designing iOS. I put all the apps where stuff from the world comes in into one folder on my iPhone home screen called Inbox. This is the only place where I will find a red circle on my home screen, and when I see it, I swipe down Notification Center to see what’s going on. I know this is not groundbreaking, but it has been so effective in how I handle stuff on iPhone.

WHAT APP MAKES YOU MOST PRODUCTIVE?

Omnifocus I live in here and David’s tutorial increased my efficiency here exponentially.

WHAT APP DO YOU KNOW YOU ARE UNDERUTILIZING?

Workflow I have a couple dozen set up, but I know there is so much more out there. I have never done any scripting on Mac, but I love building these and am constantly looking where I can automate tasks.

IF YOU WERE IN CHARGE OF APPLE, WHAT WOULD YOU ADD OR CHANGE?

I was disappointed by the lack of iPad specific iOS features at WWDC. I understand here has been a lot of innovation here I the past year, but the heavy iOS usage for the past couple months has led to some noticeable gaps where improvements would be great. These are:

More gesture based support. Drag and drop. Select multiple files/photos and act on them. Multiple window support for Notes, other apps (Use both sides of multitasking screen). Improved multi tasking selection.

WHAT APPS ARE YOU MISSING?

More than whole Apps, there are features within the apps I love that would improve the experience. More iPad actions for Launch Center Pro, and more robust professional Apps especially CAD and Adobe programs.

DO YOU HAVE AN APPLE WATCH?

I use the modular face. Interesting parts here:

In the bottom right is timers, which I use to track a lot, but most important is units worked, like David does with his candles. I then enter units worked into a custom workflow I created in the Workflow app, in the bottom left of the watch face. The center is Waterminder, where I keep track of oz of water drank through the day. Only other stuff I use is an app called Reminders Nano and Now Playing glance. I have high hopes that this experience will improve dramatically with the newly announced watchOS 3.

Thanks Matt.

This week’s home screen features reader and listener Peter Vincent. Peter is a smart guy and a chemist. He’s such a geek that he’s created a custom set of chemistry TextExpander snippets found over at Chem Expander (Twitter). So Peter, show us your home screen.

WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR FAVORITE APPS?

• Sleep Cycle is the only way to get up in the morning. I don’t know how accurate its sleep tracking is, but its alarm function is amazing.
• Plex is how I watch just about anything now, I have emptied both my MacBook and iPhone of all video content, and just stream it with plex.
• Near Lock is a new app for me, but it is a great way of using Touch ID to unlock my MacBook, which I think is very cool.

WHICH APP IS YOUR GUILTY PLEASURE?

Overcast isn’t your typical guilty pleasure app. Except that in just over a year, I have saved 47 hours using the smart speed function. Do you know how many podcasts you need to listen to to save 47 hours with smart speed? you need to listen to a lot of podcasts to save 47 hours with smart speed.

WHAT APP MAKES YOU MOST PRODUCTIVE?

• Wolfram Alpha is the reason I was able to pass calculus. When working and studying as an engineer, being able to instantly solve complicated functions with all sorts of units involved is an absolute life saver.
• Scanbot is a little app that lets you take a photo of a document with your iPhone, and it returns a cropped OCR’ed and recoloured PDF in seconds.
• Due is a very nice reminder app for anything that is time sensitive. Due will continue to nudge me after a task is due. This is something I do need if i want to do anything.

WHAT APP DO YOU KNOW YOU’RE UNDERUTILIZING?

• Soulver is so cool, and the first ‘calculator’ app I have seen that does more than a pocket calculator can. I use it as a pocket calculator.
• My Apple Notes only has 20 notes in it. Which I would have thought was fine, until I heard David Sparks has about 800 notes. So clearly I am under using Notes.

WHAT IS THE APP YOU ARE STILL MISSING?

There are so many clever people out there, that anything I could possibly think of seems to already exist. I don’t think I am even smart enough to come up with an idea for an app that I cant already buy for a few dollars. What a time to be alive!

HOW MANY TIMES A DAY DO YOU USE YOUR IPHONE/IPAD?

Almost constantly. I heard recently that the average iPhone user unlocks their phone 80 times a day. That just seems way to low… I wasn’t too bad when I owned the iPhone 5. Now I have a iPhone 6s Plus, I just can’t not use it. That huge screen is perfect for doing everything.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE FEATURE OF THE IPHONE?

Live Photos are so much fun, I love: – Taking a perfectly timed photo and getting that little bit of footage either side. – Catching someone saying something funny just as you take the photo. – Seeing a band live and getting a snap shot of their sound as well.

The vast majority of my photos I will remove the live function after the fact, but on the ones I keep are great. I feel like this is the future of photography.

IF YOU WERE IN CHARGE AT APPLE, WHAT WOULD YOU ADD OR CHANGE?

There are rumours that Apple will make MacOS to be a lot more similar to iOS. I think this is a mistake. I would embrace the differences between the two systems. Make mac better at what Mac can be good at, and make iOS better at what iOS can be good at. I would even break iOS up into iPhoneOS and iPadOS for the same reason.

WHAT’S YOUR WALLPAPER AND WHY?

My wallpaper is a live photo of my wonderful girlfriend. I love that you can set a live photo as a background. It’s just such a fun feature.

ANYTHING ELSE YOU’D LIKE TO SHARE?

I hate the camera on the 6s Plus. That’s not true at all, I love it and use it all the time. I love it so much that now I hardly use my DSLR (Canon 550D with a 24–105mm L Lens). My DSLR is obviously so much better than my iPhone, but the iPhone 6s Plus is finally good enough to make a DSLR not worth carrying around. I went to Banff in the Canadian Rockies in March to visit my brother. I only used my phone’s camera for the whole trip. If I had a lesser phone I would have used my DSLR and had even better photos.

This week’s home screen features my friend Brett Kelly (Website)(Twitter). If you use Evernote and want to get better at it, Brett has written the Evernote book, Evernote Essentials, which has sold 45,000 copies and just received a really nice update. Brett’s an avid iPhone user and agreed to share his home screen. So Brett … let’s see it!

What are some of your favorite apps?

My most-used apps are:

1. Drafts; I have this little jewel wired to do all sorts of things (add items to my grocery list, create new projects in my task manager, publish updates to Twitter and Facebook, just to name a few). Mine is primarily a text-based world and a non-trivial amount of the text I generate begins its life here.
2. Tweetbot; though my Twitter use has waned a bit in recent months, I still lurk fairly often and, for my money, Tweetbot provides the best Twitter experience out there. It’s the perfect blend of delightful user experience and utility.
3. Spotify; along with its OS X counterpart, there aren’t many times throughout the day when Spotify isn’t playing something from somewhere and my phone is usually the “somewhere.”
4. Evernote; of course, we can’t forget my beloved Evernote. The vast majority of my data lives there and always having it with me has saved my bacon more times than I can count. On my iPhone, it’s mostly used for reference: I don’t do a ton of heavy addition or editing in Evernote (other than checking off todos periodically), but I tap the elephant kind of a lot.
5. Spark; my relationship with email is very much of the “love/hate” variety. I write as little email on my iPhone as I can get by with, but I get a ton of email and Spark lets me do quick inbox triage when I’m out and about.

Honorable mentions include: Workflow, 1Password, Day One, Pinterest (for finding things to cook), and Fantastical.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Facebook, I suppose. While I do sometimes use it for work-related things (monitoring a few groups to which I belong), the majority of my Facebook time is spent keeping tabs on friends and family. I probably use it more than I should, but as a guy who mostly works alone, I like having the ability to spy on those I love. That sounded creepy.

What app makes you most productive?

Drafts, hands down. A couple of months back, I set aside a few blocks of time to really dial it in and that investment has paid dividends. It’s position in the dock is quite intentional: it’s the easiest app for me to reach—I mostly hold my iPhone in my right hand—and I have several actions, a few of them custom, that help me capture, communicate, and create while I’m not at my Mac.

What app do you know you’re underutilizing?

Launch Center Pro. I know how it works and I can appreciate its power, but other than a small handful of actions I regularly use, I hardly open it. To be honest, at this point, it mosty serves as a way for me to trigger Workflow workflows based on time or location. I suspect I’ll give it the “Drafts treatment” soon and spend an afternoon really thinking about how I can use it more effectively, but for now I mostly keep this particular Cadillac parked in the garage (which bums me out).

What is the app you are still missing?

Honestly, there isn’t much I wish my iPhone could do that it doesn’t do already. Now, I have plenty of thoughts about how things could work differently, but that’ll be for another time.

How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?

My iPhone comes out of my pocket dozens of times per day. My iPad, on the other hand, is gathering dust; my kids use it to play games and watch Netflix, but that’s about it. I’m all Mac and iPhone these days.

What Today View widgets are you using and why?

This is another area of iPhone functionality that’s mostly lost on me. Several utilities are sitting in the Today view, but I rarely use most of them. For me, the Today view tells me what’s on my calendar for the day and how to dress based on the weather.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

Probably TouchID. Mine is an iPhone 6—equipped with the comparatively slower sensor—so it’s not as speedy as its 6S counterpart. That said, using it still feels like magic to me and it makes performing many tasks on my iPhone quick and pleasurable instead of a giant pain.

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

First and foremost, I’d give Siri a lot of attention. Other than setting the occasional timer or reminder, it’s unreliable enough that I don’t use it. Plus, the fact that it can’t do what seem like simple tasks is a source of friction for me. For example, it’d be great if all of these were possible:

• “Email my most recent photo to Jimmy.”
• “Copy Billy’s phone number to the clipboard” (or “Send my work address to Susan”).
• “Remind me to start the crock pot five minutes after I get home.”

Maybe I’m all wet, but those kinds of things seem eminently doable.

Second, I’d love to be able to customize Control Center more. I hardly ever use Airplane Mode, the calculator, or orientation lock, so the ability to replace those buttons with other things—like, say, a button that launched Drafts—would be excellent.

Finally, let me change the default mail client.

Do you have an Apple Watch? Show us your watch face tell us about it.

I do indeed. I use the Modular face because, in my opinion, it allows me to fit the most information on the screen while keeping the data that’s important to me—the time, date, and weather—visible at a glance.

The only third-party app I use with any regularity is Drafts; capturing quick notes for later is easy, especially when I’m driving or otherwise encumbered.

For the most part, my Apple Watch is a little thingie that notifies me of what appears on the phone that’s in my pocket. It’s handy for reading text messages, email notifications, and directions using the Maps app, but anything that requires the watch to talk extensively to the phone is a non-starter because of how stupid long it takes apps to launch and collect whatever data they need. It’s just faster to pull out my phone.

What’s your wallpaper and why?

On my lock screen I have a picture of my lady because she’s really pretty. My home screen wallpaper is one of the stock dark wallpaper (in the “Stills” collection). I’ve found that pictures of waterfalls or people on the Springboard makes this needlessly difficult to read, so I stick with the simple option.

Anything else you’d like to share?

Just that you’re awesome, David. Awesome.

And so are you Brett … so very awesome.

This week’s Home Screen features Ernie Svenson (Website)(Twitter). Ernie and I have taught courses together at the American Bar Association and Ernie is one of my favorite teachers. This week Ernie’s just announced a new online course for lawyers called “Small Firm Bootcamp”. If you’re a solo or small firm attorney, you should sign up for Ernie’s course. When I went solo, Ernie gave me tons of advice and saved me from many self-inflicted wounds.

What are some of your favorite apps?

My “favorite” apps are probably those that I use most often without thinking about it. So they deserve more appreciation than I probably give them. Included among those would be Dark Sky, Overcast, and iMessage.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Definitely it’s Enlight, which is a photography app that’s basically like having Photoshop on your iPhone but easier to use. I use it to quickly manipulate photos in cool ways like making part of the picture black & white and leaving the rest in color.

What app makes you most productive?

Two apps fit that category in my mind: Trello and Skype. I use these apps to communicate with my virtual assistants that are located in Croatia and Romania. One of my VA’s likes to communicate by Skype and the other uses Trello. I love being out, like I was at the recent 7 day jazz music festival in New Orleans, and responding to questions from my VAs.

Not many people can say that they’re moving important work along as they sit in a grassy field listening to Steely Dan. So my “Bodhisattva” is Trello and Skype 😉

What app do you know you’re underutilizing?

OmniFocus, but fortunately I know a guy named David who has some great videos that I can watch to up my game in that department.

What is the app you are still missing?

The self-driving car app. But apparently you have to buy a Tesla to get that, so I’m working on that.

How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?

So many times that I can’t even imagine being without my iPhone. My iPad is used sporadically because when I went to the large iPhone I basically didn’t need it much.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone?

I like Siri a lot now. I use it constantly, and will probably use it more as time goes on. I also like the new Notes app and rely on that a lot too.

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

Make the notifications on the iPhone and Apple Watch more intuitive, or somehow easier to use.

Do you have an Apple Watch? Show us your watch face tell us about it.

I do and I use the default watch face that shows me the time, date, temperature, and my next appointment.

What’s your wallpaper and why?

I use the “Live” wallpaper, and love how it moves when I push on the screen. It’s the little things in life that keep me going… 😉

Anything else you’d like to share?

I bought the first iPhone when it came out. I can’t even remember how little it did compared to the phone I have now. I feel like I could do almost anything with my iPhone now, and in some ways it’s more convenient than my computer.

Thanks Ernie.

This week’s home screen features Larry Salibra (Website) (Twitter). Larry, from Ohio but now living in Hong Kong, was a founder of pay4bugs.com and, among other endeavors, wrote an interesting post about how to put Live Photos on the web. So Larry, show us your home screen.

What are some of your favorite apps?

Apple Music is my current favorite app. It’s really done a lot to introduce me to new music outside of my normal comfort zone. When I don’t know what I want to listen to, I listen to Beats 1. When I hear a song on Beats 1 I like, I’ll add it to my music and sometimes even dive deeper and explore that artist’s other works. Before Apple Music, music discovery via radio was much higher friction.

I use the Hong Kong Observatory’s weather app to check out weather radar whenever it looks like it’s going to rain to plan my driving route around any potential rain clouds. I drive a scooter, and like to avoid getting soaked. Hong Kong has a lot of mountains and islands and it’s amazing how by choosing a slightly different route – perhaps through a tunnel instead of over a bridge, or on the non-rainy side of a hill – to a destination you can avoid getting wet.

I like the Breadwallet bitcoin wallet. It’s well done both technically and visually.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Twitter. I love to see what’s going on and get involved in silly Twitter debates about China, cybersecurity or Bitcoin.

What app do you know you’re underutilizing?

I’m definitely underusing OmniFocus. It’s my go to for everything I need to do, but I’m not as disciplined as I should be keeping it organized.

What is the app you are still missing?

I’m really looking forward to the Blockstack iOS client. Blockstack is a blockchain-based global internet database has the potential to revolutionize the way we as consumers manage our private information, store our login credentials and access information. Think decentralized domain names and decentralized FaceBook login secured by the Bitcoin blockchain.

How many times a day do you use your iPhone?

I use my iPhone all day. I’m using it listening to music on while I’m working. I keep sound notifications turned off and frequently set the phone (and my watch & mac) to do not disturb to escape from the constant deluge of iMessage, Whatsapp, Wechat, Telegram and other messages.

What Today View widgets are you using and why?

I’m using the Bitcoin ticker widget and the Air Quality widgets. I like to keep track of the price of Bitcoin and how much damage is being done to my lungs if I’m traveling in Mainland China. (The air in Hong Kong is usually pretty good!)

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone?

The camera is the best feature of my iPhone. It’s really changed how I keep in touch with my friends and family. My brother, who currently lives in Bulgaria recently called me on Facetime from the Munich airport on a layover on his business trip to the UK because he wanted to show me the planes he was watching from the observation deck. It’s amazing that we can still share these moments even though two brothers from Ohio spend most of our lives on opposite sides of the earth thousands of miles from home. iPhone enables that..

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

I’d like to see Apple do something about Apple Maps in Hong Kong. It hasn’t received any of the improvements maps in the rest of the world has and is light years behinds the maps they offer their customers in Mainland China. The obvious solution would be to let us use the maps users in Mainland China get since the China supplier’s maps of Hong Kong are much, much better than what we’re forced to use.

(Here are some tweets that show the difference between Apple Maps view of same place from both sides of the border.

I’d also like to see them improve the UX of Apple Notes. Folders work inconsistently across platforms and the app sometimes feels sluggish with a lot of notes.

iMessage is also another common source of problems. The phone number/apple id aspect of iMessage causes a lot of problems. I usually give people my apple id and tell them they can reach me via iMessage. Most people don’t even know that you can send iMessages to “emails”. What will then happen, is that person sends me an iMessage that comes from their phone number. Our messages stop getting delivered as soon at the person changes phone numbers by switching SIMs. I live in a part of the world where people are always changing numbers. Hong Kong’s country code (852) covers an area the size of New York City and most people don’t want to pay for roaming, so they usually switch to a local sim card as soon as they board the plane or cross the border, not realizing that switching sims will “break” their iMessage. If you exchanged Apple IDs with each other, it keeps working as you’d expect. If you didn’t (most people don’t), your messages just never get delivered or one party will suddenly get a message from a new unknown number.

Apple could easily fix this by making iMessage send from Apple ID by default, but it’s probably too late in many markets where Whatsapp or Wechat reigns supreme and many people have removed the Messages app from their home screen altogether.

Do you have an Apple Watch? Show us your watch face tell us about it.

Yes. I have the Apple Watch Sport 38mm with the white band. I’m using the utility watch with the activity, weather and sunset/sunrise complications. I like to do outdoor activities like hiking or swimming, so it’s important to know how many more hours of daylight I have. I also often stay up late and want to make sure I get to sleep before the sun comes up.

The killer app for my watch is turn by turn driving directions on my Vespa – much safer than how I’d previously have to pull over to the side of the road in busy traffic, take off my riding gloves, fumble to get my iPhone out of my pocket and then hope I could memorize the upcoming turns. It’s been a real life saver – literally!

What’s your wallpaper and why?

I recently changed to a colorful cityscape I found online. I really like how it brings out the capabilities of the iPhone 6s Plus screen and brightens up what has been a rather dark and rainy spring. Honestly, though I don’t see it very often, because I’m usually listening to music so the album artwork is on my lock screen.

Thanks Larry.

This week’s home screen features James Coleman (Twitter). James was a recent guest on the Mac Power Users and runs the Switcher Genius website that helps show PC users the light and bring them to the Mac. So James, show us your home screen.

What are some of your favorite apps?

My favorite apps aren’t necessarily the ones on my home screen, which is interesting. In fact, my favorite apps are just the interface to an entire platform that solves some problem in an incredible way previously not possible.  More and more I’m reminded that the iPhone is just the box we carry around to interface with platforms that could span hundreds or thousands of servers, and hundreds of thousands or millions of people worldwide.

As of the time of this writing, I really, really like Withings. I have two Withings scales and a bluetooth blood pressure cuff, and I use the scales daily, and the cuff every few days and no less than once per week.  I just discovered and applied a fitness recovery protocol for myself and lost >15lbs in the prior month, and I’m on track for losing another 10 this month. Withings is an important tool that’s part of my plan.  It’s groovy because it gives me data points I can look at, which is like reviewing financials if you’re a business type. A really critical 20% of my fitness regimen is a psyche game, and having those data points to look at constructively helps me analyze and stay focused. So if Withings helps me get back my sexy, I’m a fan.   Shazam and SoundHound are two of my favorite apps for telling me what the song is that I’m hearing, wherever I’m at. I dig this, especially in yoga sculpt (I’m addicted to yoga), and it can even tells me specific mixes, which is more awesome. And Shazam lets me put listening on continuous mode so I don’t have to tap the big listen button. I used SoundHound at my 5 year old’s sports festival recently to figure out what the songs were they were dancing to. My son was super stoked when he found out that I had added them to his playlist on iTunes.

I love Periscope. Tech has so much potential to open up TV, like Podcasting has done for audio broadcast.  I worked in West Hollywood for a few years, and during that time I met so much talent that had a snowball’s chance in hell of being discovered because media is largely controlled a few big companies. With a platform like Periscope, a student, screenwriter, actor – virtually anyone – can be heard, followed and discovered worldwide.  It’s unbelievable. I’m planning on putting Periscope to good use by answering tech questions my readers and listeners ask on the Switcher Genius blog and in a Q&A format online, live, unscripted. How cool is it that this is possible?

I have to admit that I was blown away with the experience using Postmates.  Seriously, if anyone hasn’t ordered delivery (usually food, but other things like groceries too, etc.) via Postmates, do it. When a business really thinks through the customer experience, and not just on-screen, but also off-screen, like how well the information flows between the person holding the phone and the company they want something from, they’re winning the game. 

A related note for business/tech nerds like me, about why I think an apps like Postmates are cool: The future of products and services is really about who can deliver the most efficiency from an asset. And not necessarily their own assets. Think about Apple: When you think Apple, the first products that come to mind are Macs and iOS devices. Those are just the medium.  Where Apple’s winning super hardcore is on making money on everyone else’s assets.  What is it now that they make off of iTunes and Apps that are other people’s assets?  Like $20 billion in profit?  Uber and AirBnB are two other great examples of this.  Any App that makes my experience with a company better by making it more efficient is cool.

Other than that, the apps most important to me are closest to my right-hand thumb.  I actually organized my phone specifically so the apps that I use most each day are easily in reach. No folders. No stretching. They’re right there. I call this area my iPhone’s “golden triangle” (see picture).

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

It’s nutty and nerdy, but it would have to be the app called Japanese.  I have a degree in Japanese Language and Literature, and during my undergrad studies I carried around a character lookup dictionary by Nelson that looks like a law school tome: Hardback, and it probably weighs 4 lbs and has some 1100 pages.  To look up any Kanji (Kanji = the adopted Chinese characters that are a core part of the Japanese written language) I would have to dissect a character based on its core components mentally then look it up. It’s actually really similar in some ways to translating hieroglyphics.  The whole process always struck me as crazy inefficient when we have English and can look up anything from A-Z, and most of the time phonetically instead of graphically.

Japanese is awesome because I can look up almost any word any number of ways.  Like by the way it sounds, just typing roman letters. Or via the “alphabet” of Japanese.  I can even draw the Kanji (which is useful if you’ve memorized 2000+ Kanji in college and still remember some, or can write what you see on a sign/book/newspaper, etc.)  I recently started blogging about Japan and Japanese (on Japanophile.jp), and I’ve using this app probably 15–20 times per day as I find new things to translate and share with people interesting in cool Japanese stuff.

What app makes you most productive? 

When I think productivity, three appsimmediately come to mind. Omnifocus, Evernote, 1Password.

The clear winner would be Evernote. I wrote most of this in Evernote in my car using Siri. But Evernote goes so much further than I could possibly have imagined. It’s text recognition capability is amazing, and paired with all of the capability of the iPhone it makes for the perfect external brain, which is basically their tagline. I take photos and menus at restaurants. I log almost all my calls of any consequence, and can look them up on any device instantly and by content, tags, or even the notebooks that I organize my notes into.  It’s so ridiculously easy to keep track of notes with tags, and organize them into notebooks or projects and endeavors.  And Evernote’s hooks into web browsers make it’s superbly easy to capture clips of anything.  

I signed up for Evernote for Business, and I keep discovering new ways to use it. It’s already replaced my company’s wiki and it’s replacing a large part of what Box.com used to do for me, and now I’m using it to collaborate on projects at work and at home, including planning vacations, school activities, etc. I estimate that actually utilizing Evernote gives me back at least 5 hours per week.  I used to think that Box.com was hot and servers were ancient.  I’m starting to realize that a platform like Evernote is much, much more than notes and can radically change the way a business – or even a household – runs.

What app do you know you’re underutilizing?

You know, when it comes to under-utilizing an app, I can’t really think of one off the top of my head.  I think it’s because I’m so obsessive-compulsive about how I select apps, how I organize them, and more important, what I get rid of. I do an 80–20 analysis on everything. My iPhone is a great example.  I use the stuff on the home screen 95%+ of the time. I used to have the calculator app on the home screen before Siri and before the Calculator was moved to the control center.  If I had to pick one by features it would be OmniFocus.  There’s just so much more I could do with it, but I don’t need to because the 20% I use it for gives me the 95% of what I want. 

What is the app you are still missing?

A really, really, really good translation app. There are some cool ones out there, but there’s no real rosetta stone of apps yet. I will seriously geek out when the day comes that I can tap ’translate’ and have it do real-time translation of everything happening in my conversation and transfer it to my Moto Hint that’s usually embedded in my ear. Then again, I remember holding the original 5GB iPod in my hand and saying “wouldn’t it be cool if this thing had a camera and you could make calls on it.” Maybe Siri will become my personal translator not too far off.

How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?

I use my iPhone a lot. In order of use:

1.  Phone. I’m only using one phone number nowadays.

2.  Messages.

3.  Evernote. Using with #1 and #2 constantly.

4.  Music and Apple Remote. Music is sooooo important to me.  I’m playing music constantly, in the car, at the office, at home.  

5.  Twitter. I’m @jamescoleman on Twitter. Twitter is the ultimate ability to say “hello” to anyone out there, and I love responding to anyone that says hi to me.   

On the other hand, I’m getting more and more used to leaving the ring volume on and cranked up somewhere in the house when I’m home so I don’t have the tendency of looking at it all the time.  When it’s in my pocket or in my hand, I noticed I’m more likely to look at it when I don’t need to.  Same for work production time.  When I’m writing the phone is a massive distraction, so it good to my right on the bookshelf and waits there.

I own two iPads and use them all the time teaching people Photos and business and personal productivity, but I use my iPhone for everything.  The only time I really use my iPad is as a parent-saving-device (PSD) on 12-hour flight to Japan, fully loaded with Ultraman and Youkai Watch videos for my kiddos.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

The camera. Without a doubt. The ability to take a photo anywhere, anytime, geo-tagged, is just so wonderful. I’ve spent 10 years learning everything there is about digital photography, and I’ve helped everyone from moms and dads to some of the best photographers in the world get their photos and videos in order. I fill up my iPhone (I have the largest size and storage possible) at least once every 3 months.  I just love it.

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

My wife’s phone was just stolen during a trip to San Francisco, and within minutes we pushed the destroy-all-data button. About an hour later we had confirmation that the iPhone was zeroed out. The problem is, the jerk who stole it still has some incentive, despite the IMEI being reported stolen. There are too many parts that get taken and make their way into the black market. I want an option to not only wipe data, but fry all the circuitry simultaneously so every single part of the device is worthless to the crook who took it. I would find a way to not just remote wipe the phone, but also to safely remote destroy it.

What’s your wallpaper and why?

My lock screen rotates a lot. Usually pictures of my two boys or my gorgeous wife. Right now it’s a good luck charm I saw in Kyoto, Japan when I was traveling in the Yunohana area with my brother last April. I had just started a new blog so the maneki neko – a good luck cat – is beckoning for new readers 🙂

Thanks James.

This week’s home screen features my partner in crime, Daisy Sparks (website) (Twitter). My wife is pretty amazing. Not only is she coordinating the Orange County App Camp for Girls (want to help?), she also puts up with her befuddled, nerdy husband. So Daisy, show us your home screen.

What are some of your favorite apps?

Some of my favorite apps usually have to do with my photos. Instagram is a favorite so I can look at interesting photos that my friends or favorite brands share. I really enjoy WordSwag and Rhonna where I can edit, play and insert text to create images from photos. I’ve been playing around with Camera+ so I can enhance my photos for my blog and scrapbooking. It is easy to use and has lots of great features.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Disney Tsum Tsum is definitely my guilty pleasure. I don’t play any video games but this one just gets me. I’ve been playing for a year and I have 78 Tsums in my collection. It’s fun to play and takes up way too much of my time. I have friends who also love it so we enable our Tsum Tsum addiction.

What app makes you most productive?

Byword is one of those apps that I use daily. I can begin to write a blog post on any of my devices and have it all show up in one place at the end of the day.

1Password is my other productive app. Does that count? I can’t function if I can’t get log onto a site or the cloud. 1Password helps me by saving time and having to remember important and multiple login credentials.

What app do you know you’re underutilizing?

OmniFocus. I have several big buckets of work that I am constantly working on. I know that OmniFocus could help me be more productive and organized but I haven’t dedicated the proper time to really learn how to use it. I heard that there is a really great screencast by some nerdy guy. I should probably watch it.

What is the app you are still missing?

A really good Disneyland app. While there are several Disneyland specific apps out there including an official Disneyland App, none can meet all my Disneyland park needs. The official app makes me leave the app to make dinner reservations. There is a separate Disney shopping app that is geared towards Walt Disney World. The non-Disney Apps are way better and up to date but they have ads. Why can’t it be a “small world after all”?

How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?

How many hours in a day am I awake? Even when I drive my iPhone is giving me directions, playing a podcast or music. I have teens so they prefer to text instead of calling me. I don’t use my iPad as frequently simply because I can’t put it in my pocket.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

I enjoy being able move around my icons and customizing them for my needs so I can access them quickly.

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

If I were in charge of Apple I would hold a weekend Open House once a year similar to the one that JPL hosts. They could give their hardworking teams a chance to show off what’s in progress (not what’s new) or possible and give the public a chance to see what the campus is like and expose people, especially young kids, to what they can create.

Do you have an Apple Watch?

Yes! My watch face is toe-tapping Mickey Mouse and he reminds me to make some magical moments everyday.

What’s your wallpaper and why?

I have lockscreen wallpaper and home screen. My lockscreen wallpaper is of Mickey’s Fun Wheel. With Live photo, my lockscreen wallpaper comes to life. My home screen wallpaper is of the koi pond at the Aulani. It makes viewing all my icons that more manageable.

Anything else you’d like to share?

I am really excited to bring App Camp for Girls to Southern California. It’s a great program rooted in gender equality and empowering girls. As a mother of two girls, I think we can’t have enough opportunities like this. If you’d like to help out, please let me me know.

Thanks Daisy.

There are a group of authors out there embracing the iBooks format with interactive books like we’ve never seen before. Brandon Cullum (Website) (Twitter) is one of those guys with his recent iBooks Author Children’s book, Alfred the Time Traveling Dinosaur. In addition to being a pretty smart guy, Brandon also loves his iPhone. So Brandon show us your home screen.

What are some of your favorite apps?

YNAB I’ve been with YNAB ever since getting married 2 years ago. It has been a huge help in keeping my wife and myself on the same page with our budget. They recently moved to a web-based platform and update the iPhone app to allow you adjust your budget categories on the fly. Super easy to use and a great piece of mind to know where all our money is going.

Casts There are a lot of podcast reader apps out there but Casts has stuck with me. I like its ability to create episode filters. Since I subscribe to a ton of podcasts and listen to a quite a few during the day (especially when I’m doing illustrations), it’s great to have them dropped into different lists.

Day One I have been using Day One as a productivity journal for over a year. I used to keep a journal inside of Evernote but found it getting lost with everything else I throw at the “everything bucket”. Day One is a super clean design and entries can be added from my iPad and Mac. One of my favorite things to do is to flip into the past and see the things I was working on and thinking about.

Slack I was and still am the champion for Slack at our small company. I’m also one of the admins and love introducing people to what it can do. I can waste a good bit of time trying to figure out new integrations and bots that our team can use. On the design side of things, Slack has made feedback so much faster and less formal as works are progressing. Also, Giphys are never a bad thing…..

1Password 1Password continues to improve their product and user experience. Having the ability to create a unique password for every single login I have is great. I am able to set up separate vaults for work and home and the extension ability makes logging in on iOS so easy.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Pinterest. I’ve created boards for potential children’s book projects and add to them several times a day. I’ve also gotten into woodworking and can lose myself looking at new shop projects and furniture I can build around the house.

What app makes you most productive?

Omnifocus does a great job keeping my projects top of mind and serving up just what I need to get done next. After using the Mac app as a standalone for a couple years, it still surprises me how much I can get done just on iOS.

What app do you know you’re underutilizing?

I know I’m underutilizing Workflow. I currently have a workflow that saves an email receipt to PDF and drops into a Hazel folder on my Mac which then gets filed automatically. It feels like magic every time I see it run and know I could tinker around and find a lot more use cases.

What is the app you are still missing?

I wish HomeKit had a mission control style app that was native to Apple. We recently purchased Netgear Arlo security cameras and Hue lights to go along with our Nest. It has been fun to think through ways to hack them all together with IFTT but I wish the process was easier.

How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?

Way too much. If I am in the process of doing illustrations for picture books I’m constantly taking pictures with my iPhone of hand drawings to digitize on my Mac. I’m also using the iPad to test features in iBooks and Kindle.

What Today View widgets are you using and why?

Dark Sky Great weather app with a quick look at the weather for the next hour.

Fantastical This is a great way to a get a quick glance of what is coming up for the day. I also like that I have fast access to a calendar view and a list of appointments for that day in just one glance.

Huemote I love creating custom scenes for our Hue Lights and Huemote makes it so easy to access them all with a quick swipe to control the lights in the entire house.

Strava Strava is my favorite running and cycling app. When I am training for my next race I can get a quick summary of my weekly training and see my progress.

Personal Capital-Holding Personal Capital is kind of like Mint if you added investments. They feature a few different widgets but I’ve added holdings. This gives me a quick glance of how my investments are performing versus the index.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

The ecosystem. The ability to transition between Mac, iPhone, iPad and pick up right where I left off is pretty amazing. Since I make books that are intended to be read on multiple devices it is fun to create them on multiple devices too.

Anything else you’d like to share?

Thanks so much for the incredible work you are doing David! If anyone is interested in children’s books and wants to help me make my next one you reach me at my website or on Twitter.can.

Thanks Brandon.