This week’s home screen features my newest friend from Portugal, Jorge Pedroso (Twitter). Jorge is one of the two developers that created my current favorite simple text editor, Byword. Jorge loves his iPhone and agreed to share. So Jorge, show us your home screen.
What are your most interesting home screen apps?
Instacast is filling my recent addiction to podcasts—thanks a lot, 5by5. It made the podcast subscribing+listening experience much more pleasant. Streaming is a killer feature and the iTunes and iPod apps simply don’t cut it.
Droplr I use to quickly share iPhone screenshots and video over-the-air with co-workers. It’s a great way to quickly show issues in the apps as we develop when one of us is working remotely.
RTP is how I keep up with portuguese news. These days, the news coming are mostly not that good but the app is pretty great.
Tiny Wings for casual gaming. Perfectly designed, relaxing, challenging and different every day.
What is your favorite app?
Mobile Safari. For me, it alone revolutionized the mobile internet and made it a first class experience on handheld devices. When I’m on the go, I find myself using it all the time, directly or indirectly through other app.
Mail and Twitter for iPhone deserve honorable mentions for being my most used apps.
Which app is your guilty pleasure?
Ranky. I can’t help it. Having apps selling on the App Store puts one in constant desire of checking the App Store ranks. I hope this gets better with time.
What is the app you are still missing?
Not missing much but I’ve been looking for a simple, yet comprehensive, personal analytics app. A smart writing app with Markdown capabilities would be nice for the go too. Just saying.
How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?
As many times as I hear it emitting a sound. I check Mail and Twitter on the iPhone and Metaclassy’s customer support comes through those channels. I’m not complaining (yet). I love my job.
What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?
I’ll pick two, if I may. One on software and another on hardware.
On software, it’s iOS in general and the App Store in particular. They destroyed so many barriers, both for users and developers. I thank iOS for the overall quality of most apps and the App Store for the simplicity of getting those same apps.
On hardware, it’s the Retina display of the iPhone 4. I still remember the wow moment when I first had it in my hands. For weeks, it made it really difficult for me to use an iPad frequently again (or any other mobile device for that matter). I got used to the differences but I eagerly wait for the day where pixels are no longer human-detectable squares in our screens.
If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?
Well, I hate it when I’m laying down in bed/couch, reading or something, and the iPhone slips and falls on my face. So, I’d consider adding Velcro on the iPhone’s back and a glove. Skin magnets could work too. Needs research.
Other than that, giving high priority to all radars (issues and improvements) I submitted to bugreport.apple.com would be pretty cool.
Anything else you’d like to share?
I’m eagerly anticipating the next year, as a developer and as a user. After the mobile shift, it seems everyone is already undergoing another shift in personal computing where data is supposed to come full-circle seamlessly across all devices. MacSparky was spot on calling multi-platform as a feature at the center of it. Consequently, data portability and interoperability will increasingly become features/concerns to look out for. For me, it will be yet another busy year—in a good way.
Thanks Jorge.
To read more home screens, clicky here
