Home Screens - Mike Vardy

Mike Vardy (Website) (Twitter) is humorist that writes and talks about productivity. I met Mike at Macworld this year and can report he is a pretty swell guy. So Mike, show us your home screen.

What are your most interesting home screen apps?

Buddha Machine, without a doubt. When I want some ambient music in the background while I’m either working on my book or doing any other type of writing, it hits just the right spot.

What is your favorite app?

My favorite app is Reeder – both on my iPhone and iPad – because it allows me to read, share, track and enjoy all of my RSS feeds in one fell swoop. It’s just really well-executed and a pleasure to use.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

I didn’t have one until recently, as I got rid of any games I’d installed. But then Paper by Fifty-Three came along for the iPad and I’ve been having a blast with it. I had no need for a stylus before it, but since I downloaded it (and subsequently bought the in-app writing/drawing instruments), I’ve got Studio Neat’s Cosmonaut headed my way.

What is the app you are still missing?

A proper mobile app for Asana, my task management app of choice. It’s not quite as robust as it needs to be, so I’m anxiously awaiting an update so that I can have a more full-featured Asana experience in my pocket.

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

I have both of them at the ready every day, several times a day. I shift gears to my iPad when my MacBook air battery runs low, and my iPhone is my work phone. I read all of my RSS feeds and my Instapaper queue on my iPad or iPhone, and podcasts on Instacast are synced between the two devices as well. And let’s not forget Tweetbot. Both my iPad and iPhone get used numerous times per day, and each of them has use cases they’re better suited for based on form factor.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

Both the iPhone and iPad give me the power to create and interact with others that are miles away regardless of where I might be. That kind of power and flexibility is something that I enjoy having at my disposal.

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

I’d make sure that the inability to delete native apps from iOS devices was no longer an issue. I mean, if iDevices are supposed to be so personal, surely I should be able to remove the apps that aren’t a factor in my life…right?

Anything else you’d like to share?

The best part about both the iPad and iPhone is that they can do so much and take up so little space. They can be used to consume or create. They can play music or they can make music. They can display words or they can allow you to take words and display them almost anywhere. They can play movies and they can make movies. When you think about all they can do, that’s pretty phenomenal.

Thanks Mike.

For more home screens, clicky here.

Happy BB-Birthday

Jason Snell writes about 20 years of BBEdit. That is a pretty amazing accomplishment for a text editor. Moreover, I love the way BareBones never stopped innovating and pushing the envelope with BBEdit. Congratulations to Rich Siegel and the BareBones team. In related news, BareBones’ free text editor, TextWrangler also got a recent update.

Bartending, Memoirs of an Apple Genius

Stephen Hackett just self-pubished a book, Bartending, Memoirs of an Apple Genius, sharing his experiences both behind and in front of the Genius Bar in Apple retail. If you’ve ever wondered what really goes on back there, this is the book for you. I routinely read Stephen’s 512 Pixels blog and that same friendly voice comes out loud and clear in this book. You can get it from Amazon or an iBooks friendly ePub version directly from Stephen.

The Macademic

Aleh Cherp is tearing it up lately with posts about using your Mac in an academic setting. If that is your thing, check out Macademic.org.

RSS Sponsor: Byword

This week’s RSS sponsor is Byword for iOS and Mac. Byword’s simple and clean interface combined with some wicked iCloud syncing makes this suite of apps my “go to” place for any serious text I’m currently cooking up. Today I’ve got a half-written Macworld article, a few posts for this site, notes from a deposition, and legal billing notes all jumping between my Mac, iPad, and iPhone versions of Byword. It feels like living in the future.

Don’t believe me? Watch my screencast.

iOS Byword Introduction from David Sparks on Vimeo.

Byword is available on the Mac App Store for $9.99, and for iOS on the App Store at the introductory price of $2.99. Check it out.

Marked 1.4

As cool of a guy as John Gruber is for writing Daring Fireball, his Markdown syntax truly changed the way I interact with my computer. I write just about everything in Markdown and Brett Terpstra’s Marked app previews my Markdown text from any app I throw at it. Version 1.4 came out today with many improvements, including the ability to preview Scrivener files. Oh Brett, you complete me.

Random File Names with TextExpander

Brian Hays gets two gold stars for cooking up this bit of TextExpander trickery. Using AppleScript, he made up a random file name generator for a more secure file sharing. Slick.

A Really Big Pair

Tim Stringer beat stage four cancer and wrote about how he used OmniFocus along the way. He also made a great video about his journey and what he’s up to. So the next time your barista screws up your order, think about Tim.

Home Screens - Brooks Duncan

Several years ago, I met a very nice fellow at Macworld who told me about his website dedicated to scanning and paperless workflows. Little did I know what an institution Brooks Duncan (Twitter) and his DocumentSnap.com website would become. Alright Brooks, show us your home screen.

What are your most interesting home screen apps?

Based on the amount that I use them, I would say Sparrow and Pocket Casts.

Sparrow is an e-mail client that has replaced iOS’s Mail app for me. I am not bothered by the lack of Push Notifications because I prefer to check my e-mail rather than have it notify me. Even if it had Push I would probably turn it off. I did my time in Blackberry blinking-red-light hell for too many years.

Pocket Casts is a podcatcher. I know that Instacast seems to be the big favorite, and I have it too, but for some reason I keep coming back to Pocket Casts. Maybe because it is the one I tried first and I became used to it.

Either way, I could never go back to stock podcast management and syncing through iTunes like an animal.

Honorable mentions should go to YNAB, which is the iPhone client for You Need A Budget. I use that to track my spending. I use Notesy, for my general Dropbox-synced text geekiness.

What is your favorite app?

Definitely OmniFocus. I hemmed and hawed about moving to OmniFocus for almost two years, but I finally pulled the trigger after Macworld|iWorld this year. I am angry at everyone on the Internet for allowing me to wait this long. I don’t understand how I got anything done without it.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Right now, probably the Kindle app because I have become sucked into George R.R. Martin’s A Song Of Ice And Fire series. Any moment that I am not working or playing with my kids, and some moments when I probably should be, I am reading A Dance With Dragons.

I love how I can start reading on my iPad, switch to the Kindle 4, and then seamlessly move to the iPhone when I am in a grocery line lineup.

What is the app you are still missing?

I have yet to find a great document scanning app that will also OCR documents well. It is not something I need to do often, but it would be cool when I need it.

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

I would say “a lot”. My wife would say “way too much”. My kids would say “what do you mean YOUR iPad, it’s ours!”

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

How well it all works now. iCloud is really starting to be the glue that pulls it all together. I love buying an app, a song, or a book, and having it just be there on all my devices without me thinking about it.

Thanks to your screencast, I have started using the iCloud functionality in Byword on iOS and the Mac, and that is just magical.

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

The recently-killed ability for Launch Center to directly access prefs URLs was fantastic. I wish Apple would find a way to bring something like this back. Other platforms have iOS beat on this. It should not be so hard to turn Bluetooth on and off.

Speaking of Apple killing great functionality, I really wish there was a way to export or print an e-mail to PDF on the device. That would be great for GTD-style “if it takes a minute, just do it” e-mail processing. Prior to iOS 5, apps could register themselves as an AirPrint destination for this, but that is sadly gone.

Anything else you’d like to share?*

Despite my OCR whining above, it is amazing what a great document scanner the iPhone makes. Both the camera and the apps have become so good that it is a really viable on-the-go or one-off scanner.

Thanks Brooks.

For more home screens, clicky here.

OmniFocus Themes

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