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.