Article: Eric Schwarz’s iPhone 5
Now that you’ve seen some home screens of folks I work with, I wanted to share mine and talk a little about my workflow. Although I do a lot of posting on SchwarzTech, especially via mobile, that generally gets done on my iPad. I do have some apps for managing the site on my iPhone, but they have less use. Since my phone is used for a lot of day-to-day tasks, here is my workflow:
The first row seems rather self-explanatory. There’s Camera+, which I’m a big fan of for the added control over Apple’s camera. I just wish that it could do panoramic photos and videos. For that, I revert to Apple’s Camera app, usually launched from the lock screen. Photos is for viewing and managing the end result. I’m pretty satisfied with Maps, so that’s my go-to app for navigation. Passbook doesn’t get as much use as I’d like, but I keep it there for the promise it holds (and the cards I have loaded into it).
The second row features mostly productivity. Fantastical has become a favorite replacement for the stock Calendar app for the same reasons Matt outlined. I generally hate to-do lists, but Clear has become a favorite due to its simplicity and lack of formal structure. iTorch Pro is a holdover from my iPhone 4 days—it’s one of the fastest-loading flashlight apps out there (which mattered a lot more on the slower 4). The last slot is for my weather app du jour—Dark Sky is occupying it at the moment (previously had My-Cast and Check the Weather).
The third row features Instapaper, which is where most of the content I need to read ends up, and often populated by Reeder and Tweetbot. I’m switching over to Fever for managing my RSS subscriptions, so I’m hoping Reeder on the Mac and iPad get support sooner than later. Shazam is next for answer the age-old question of what song is playing.
The fourth row are my two primary media players and my “system tools”—Instacast has been my favorite podcast client for years, although I did briefly try Apple’s own app (both initially and then a few months later when it was far less buggy).
I leave a row of icons free, partially for the holdover of my iPhone 4 days, and also as a little bit of “breathing room” for my wallpaper and my thumb to swipe to the next page of apps. My wallpaper currently is a photo I took at Red Rocks in Colorado (that’s Denver in the distance). There’s no other story other than that I like the picture—I wish I had some sort of deeper explanation.
Last, but not least, my “dock” consists of apps that get the most use (although Tweetbot/Reeder/Instapaper/Instacast could make a strong case to be down there, too). I need quick access to both phone and messaging capabilities.