Questions?
-
## AARON MAHNKE’S HOME SCREEN ##My home screen is pretty boring, to tell you the truth. I’ve got this 5-year old habit of trying my best to keep the original icon order. When a better app comes along that can take the place of an Apple app, I will swap it out. That’s how CalcBot made it onto my home screen. And honestly, if you don’t use CalcBot, you’re missing out. But of the more significant apps on my home screen, here’s my explanations:
Kindle App I read a lot. And I also write a lot. I have two novels available for the Kindle. And so the Kindle app serves a number of roles for me, serving as a test device for book formatting, a place to store odd documents for meetings and such that I need to read, and my library in my pocket. I love the app.
RunKeeper I don’t run. This is for walking. I hate running. And if I’ve not been clear enough, I hate running. But this is a great app for logging my GPS route each morning, keeping a running list of dates with time and distance, and the web interface is a nice touch as well when I need it.
Instacast I’m rocking the older version, and won’t be upgrading to 2.0 anytime soon. This is the app that I use while I take my morning walks (4 miles, about 55 minutes), and it’s full of nearly a hundred unplayed episodes of history-related podcasts that I enjoy. As well as a bunch of shows on the 70 Decibels Network…most of which I am responsible for the podcast logo design. So I’m biased. And I hate running.
TweetBot Can I gush enough about this app? I love every. Single. Thing. About it. But I hate running.
WriteUp Fantastic text editor that syncs with Dropbox. And I designed the app icon, so again, I’m biased.
Drafts Capture stuff before it vanishes. Ideas, tasks, notes, whatever. Drafts if a great way to grab the content before it evaporates, and then allows me to send that text to whatever app I want. And I designed the app icon. Again, biased.
SpellTower Mr. T, and myself, pity the fool who hasn’t played SpellTower. Seriously. Why are you even reading the rest of this paragraph? Just go get it. Trust me.
And I hate running.
-
Alex Knight’s Home Screen
On my iPhone, Launch Center is my favourite app for quickly accessing most things. Instacast is probably the most used, since I listen to podcasts all day. On my iPad, Tweetbot and Instapaper are two apps I spend most of my time in.
Thanks for sharing, Alex. You win the award for least amount of apps on the home screen thus far.
-
An Important Announcement
First of all, thanks to everyone for all of their homescreen submissions. It really means a lot, and last week the site passed 200 followers on Tumblr, which I think is a pretty big milestone for something that was only started two months ago.
When I began the site, I asked several bloggers, podcasters, and writers that I read and enjoyed if they would mind sharing their homescreens. These were people like Shawn Blanc, Myke Hurley, Brett Kelly, Stephen Hackett, Justin Williams, and Lukas Mathis; pretty big names to me, and probably to you if you live in the technology world. After several of them linked to the site, interest exploded, and that’s when the problem began.
The problem is that there are too many submissions. I’ve got a backlog that will take me forever to clear out. And in addition, I’m not convinced that people enjoy the “regular” homescreens more than those of the people I ask specifically.
So I’ve come to a decision: As of right now, I’m not going to accept any more submissions. The only way you’re going to be on Swipe the Linen from now on is if I ask you directly, and all of the homescreens are going to be hand-picked.
I really don’t want to insult anyone by doing this, and for those of you whose homescreens I never reached, I’m sorry. But I think that this is the right way to go, and it’s the decision I’ve come to.
Please let me know what you think.
-
There’s something fascinating and voyeuristic about seeing other home screens and sharing your own. Why does it feel so personal? Each time I see a home screen posted, it feels like a peek into the poster’s soul. Is it really? I doubt it, but it’s fun to speculate and make up stories about each person anyway.
-
Lukas Mathis’ Home Screen
I’ve looked at pretty much old iOS podcasting apps. Pocket Casts remains one of the weirdest, but it’s also the best available, and it’s been updated regularly (some updates have even removed a bit of the craziness).
1Password is fantastic, and the best argument for why it should be possible for developers to write plugins for iOS’s Safari.
On many mobile platforms, changing the screen’s brightness or getting to your data usage information is pretty simple. On the iPhone, it’s not, which is why I have David Barnard’s Launch Center on my home screen. Among other things, it allows me to jump directly to different screens of the Settings app.
-
Chris Herbert’s Home Screen
Hey guys, I’m Chris Herbert, Editor over at MacStories. My home screen, like others, contains my most-used and precious apps.
Besides the stock Apple ones, I use Instacast to listen to great podcasts from 5by5, 70 Decibels and The Verge. I use AppShopper for iOS (and .com) everyday to do the @MacStoriesDeals posts and am currently testing TouchArcade which works with AppShopper. You guys will love it. Agenda is my Calendar.app replacement and Sparrow (currently beta) is great. Tweetbot for my twitter habit, Instagram for sharing pictures (I recommends an olloclip by the way), and Reeder for RSS. Reminders was a nice addition to iOS 5 especially if you have a 4S with Siri.
Thanks for checking out my home screen!
-
A Few Swipe the Linen Updates
Here are some news tidbits about the site.
-
Justin Williams’ Home Screen
Dialvetica: I don’t make that many calls, so I am not really sure why this app has such prominent spot on my home screen. It’s a nice app though.
Camera+: I recently started snapping photos with Camera+ rather than the built-in Camera app solely because of the lightbox feature. It’s nice to be able to snap a few variations of a photo and then pick between them in the app rather than cluttering up my photo library.
Elements: Shameless plug. It’s my app. I use it a lot.
The Social: This is my folder of apps that are social networking related. I think Ia m the only person that is still using Stamped, but I’m OK with that. It’s a really well done app. Instapaper: I can’t imagine I’ll ever replace Instapaper with Safari’s built-in reading list. It’s just too good.
Reference: This is somewhat of a dumping ground for apps related to TV, movies and dictionaries. Not necessarily things I use every day, but stuff that I want quick access to when I need them.
1Password: Essential tool. I couldn’t use a smartphone platform that didn’t have a 1Password client on it.
OmniFocus: OmniFocus has my entire brain in it. It’s the most expensive and most used app on both my iPhone and iPad.
Audio: I shuffle between Spotify, Instacast, Music and TuneIn for my music and spoken word listening interests.
-
Brett Kelly’s Home Screen
I’d say my home screen is fairly “average”. The usual suspects are all present: a Twitter client (I love Tweetbot), Mail, Instacast, Reeder, etc. The dock is where I live and die, though. I use the Camera pretty much constantly since I have two small kids and a penchant for making dumb, photo-related Internet jokes. Evernote is where my life lives (naturally) and if I didn’t have OmniFocus, I’d spend most of my time following shiny things. Mail is my primary mode of communication for just about everybody I don’t live physically near, so I need that close at hand.
I have very little love for the Wordpress app, but it’s there as part of an experiment (involving Reeder and Notesy, two apps that I really like a lot) that will soon be over. Apps that deserve a spot on the first screen but don’t currently have one include the venerable 1Password and Instagram.
And, yes, I still have the stock wallpaper. This is because I haven’t really had the time to go hunting for a different one since I got my 4S (but I secretly don’t care, to be honest).
-
Stephen Hackett’s Home Screen
My choices are pretty boring. The biggest news is that Launch Center has taken a spot in the Dock, shifting Settings back a screen.
Page 1 of 2
