Several months ago I was on a business trip and had one of those fortuitous experiences. This guy got on the airport shuttle with me and was positively beaming. He was a complete stranger to me but I immediately knew I wanted to make a new friend. He turned out to be Steve Volk (Twitter) and the reason he was so happy is he had the first print copy of his first book. Steve and I proceeded to share lunch and a drink at the Airport and I made a really smart and geek-inclined new friend. Steve is an experienced investigative journalist and just released his first book, Fringe-ology, all about a serious look into such things as ghosts, UFOs, and maverick scientists. So Steve, show us your home screen.

What are your most interesting home screen apps?

Things like Zite and Flipboard, which aggregate media, intrigue me. They probably represent the future of my business as a journalist, allowing people to bypass all the traditional portals and eliminating the reader’s identification with particular publications. I’m not sure what this means for my paychecks, ultimately, and I worry about a public that more and more can entirely control what information it receives. Sometimes, we simply need to be confronted by points of view we don’t like. But I’m also excited by what these apps represent—the ability to get content to people, multimedia content, near instantaneously.

What is your favorite app?

I love my comics reader, Comixology, and the functionality of iBooks is dreamy—sorry, bibliophiles, but the tactile sensation of holding the iPad and turning virtual pages is enough for me. This is quite a statement from a guy with a book he’s looking to sell. But whoomp! there it is, and I’m just as happy to have people buy it using an e-reader.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

FIFA 11—the soccer app. I can play a half of soccer in seven or eight minutes on a break and a second half later, whenever I have the time. The graphics are great and the gameplay is smooth and, well, shouldn’t I be using those stolen minutes to meditate? Here I am, having done all that research on meditation and I’m spending some of my time playing videogame soccer?

What is the app you are still missing?

Too many to count. With the book out and some assignments I’ve been working, including a long piece on the culture of open air drug dealing in Philadelphia, I’ve been too busy to really even scratch the surface of what’s available to me. My intention, no lie, is to sit down with your blog, on my iPad, of course, and get some ideas of what I’m missing. But I have yet to enjoy the chance.

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

I mean, constantly. I use my iPhone to listen to audiobooks, podcasts and music. In fact, I listen to my phone more than my home stereo. I also use it every time I run. I am finishing Couch to 5K, the running app, and transitioning to Couch to 10K. My iPad is even more of a companion. When I sit down for the night, whenever that is, I curl up with my iPad and sit next to my wife in the exact same way I used to sit down with an armful of books and magazines.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

I’m not sure if this is what you’re looking for, but the ease of use. I am not a technophile but darn if I can’t figure stuff out on these bad boys. In my entire life, how many things have met my expectations for them—from people and relationships, to my own work and nearly every product I buy, book I read or movie I see? My wedding day, my marriage, my iPhone and my iPad all have one thing in common—they exceeded my expectations for them. That’s a short list. And no, I’m really not equating my iPad to marriage… . Really.

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

Dudes, for gosh sakes’, bring back the black MacBooks. They were so fricking cool.

Anything else you’d like to share?

Well, ultimately, my book is about how we don’t have to feel separate from one another. And whether anyone buys the book or not, I hope if people take away one thing from Fringe-ology, it’s that. I took on a whole series of taboo topics for a mainstream journalist—paranormal stuff. And what I found, again and again, is that the people on the extreme poles of belief and unbelief hold a lot in common. I think they try to establish a worldview for themselves based on plastering some often ill-fitting answer over questions that are still open to investigation. But once I started looking into topics like prayer, meditation and lucid dreaming—which, for a lot of people are just hooey—I found myself in new territory. Here, it seems, whether we believe these are purely material pursuits that bestow beneficial effects on our brain, or also spiritual pursuits, we’re still better off for taking part in these practices. And if we focus our thoughts on ideals like peace and compassion and love, we tend to emerge with a more accepting, tolerant and welcoming attitude toward other people and their beliefs. This may color me as a kind of journalist-hippie. But I’m all right with that. See how accepting I am?

Thanks Steve

Josh Barrett(Twitter) is the publisher of Tablet Legal the premier iPad site for lawyers. Josh’s site includes tons of practical tips about getting the most out of your iPad and is useful to everyone. Josh and I became friends at the ABA Techshow. Josh is really smart and I recommend subscribing to his site. So Josh, show us your home screen.

How does the iPad fit in your workflow?

Like you, David, I’m a practicing lawyer a nerdy blogger and a family man. My iPad is a big part of my workflow in each of these areas. It helps me get more done with less friction so I can spend more time kicking the soccer ball with my kids, trying to write better on my blog and helping my clients.

My main work axe is a Windows PC because that is what my firm has deployed. Otherwise I use Macs at home and iOS devices exclusively.

What is most interesting about your home screen?

What usually strikes people about my iPad home screen is that it isn’t full. This might seem silly, but I like the aesthetic of a “composed” home screen, especially on the iPad. It also turns out that I have everything I use heavily on that home screen.

I have a folder for my “work” apps which sort of creates two “contexts” on the home screen. The default context includes mail, contacts, maps, music, my to do list manager and the like. The folder context contains my main productivity apps that I often use in conjunction with one another. The folder may introduce an extra tap or two in my workflow but the organization makes sense to me and seems to reduce mental friction while working. I named the folder “Ship it” as (1) an homage to “cranky” Internet guy Merlin Mann and (2) a fun reminder to me to get back to work.

What is your favorite app?

The app that has me most intrigued right now is probably Zite, the news app. The “Pandora of news” is the best way I have heard it described and I think that fits perfectly. Excited to see how this technology develops

My most heavily used app would probably be a combination of Reeder and Instapaper. These apps have transformed the way I interact and network with clients. I am able to stay informed about goings on in my clients’ industries through RSS feeds and I consume, share and archive articles I want to read through Instapaper.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

MLS MatchDay, I guess. I have been a huge supporter of the Portland Timbers for years and this year they entered the MLS. The app is great with live video of matches (if not blacked out), highlights (often posted within minutes of the action), news and the like. Home games are my time to really blow off steam with the Timbers Army or share quality time with the family.

What is the app you are still missing?

More of an iOS feature I’d say, and that is better file management. As a lawyer like you, my work lives and breathes by files of all sorts of formats, versions, collaborators and the like. Dropbox solves a lot of this but I’m really hoping iOS 5 does something really special in this area.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

Two things for me:

• Portability with Lots of Power: This ensures I always have a great tool right at hand. I used to have to think about whether to bring a laptop (seems like I’d always guess wrong). Now I don’t have to decide. This is less of an issue now because of the new MacBook Air, but I don’t have one of those. Until I do, having the power of the iPad in an almost unnoticeable form factor is terrific.

• Focused Work Environment: Because the iPad really becomes whatever it is you are working on, I find I stay focused and productive while using it. Also, even being a heavy user since the beginning, I still find the experience of using the iPad a treat. I can’t think of many of my tools that I can say that about. I have said it before, but there is something qualitatively different about engaging with your work on the iPad. Kudos to Apple for the product and the developers for coming up with new ways to do things.

Anything else you’d like to share?

Folks often ask about my wallpaper. It is a photo I made of the Lower Latourell Falls near my home in Oregon. Photography is a hobby of mine. Lots of great waterfalls out here to shoot.

Thanks for sharing my home screen with your readers!

Thanks Josh.

Brett Kelly (twitter) really likes Evernote. He likes it so much that one day he just decided to write a book about it, Evernote Essentials, which became the definitive guide for Evernote. I had heard about Brett but never realized, until recently, that he lives near me. So Brett and I got together for breakfast and immediately felt like old friends. Brett is also now publishing some well-produced Evernote screencasts. In addition to all other pursuits, Brett loves his iPhone. So Brett, show us what is on your home screen.

I have a dual-purpose philosophy for home screen apps: these 16 apps are comprised of a) apps that I really like and use regularly and b) apps that I want to use more. I find that if I see an app when I unlock my phone, I’m more likely to think about firing it up. This obviously depends a great deal on the app in question as well as the time and place, but it’s helped me to do better at adopting apps whose potential is clear.

What is most your most interesting app?

My most “interesting” home screen apps are probably Instacast and Evernote (which I keep in the dock, so that may disqualify it from the “home screen” category). The former has completely changed how I consume podcasts on my iPhone. Before Instacast, getting new podcast episodes required either syncing with iTunes or downloading them piecemeal using the iTunes app. Other than occasionally moving music I’d purchased on the phone into iTunes, podcasts were the only reason I ever synced my iPhone. Instacast lets me bypass that whole process by allowing me to add/edit/delete podcast subscriptions and download new episodes, all from within the app. It’s a bargain at ten times the $3 price.

Evernote is a no-brainer for me. It’s easily among my top 3 most-used apps (along with OmniFocus and Twitter) and is an indispensable capture tool for me. I use it to keep track of where I go (and when I was there) using the geotagging business, to fully photo-document my son’s t-ball games and my daughter’s ballet classes and as a portable copy of my entire digital filing cabinet (plus a pantload of other uses). Anybody who knows me knows that I’m a huge fan of Evernote, so none of this should come as any surprise (disclosure: I work for Evernote).

What is your favorite app?

Choosing a favorite app would be tough, but the two contenders would certainly be OmniFocus and Evernote. OmniFocus is my task manager of choice on both my Macs, my iPad and my iPhone. It’s hard to overstate just how mind-bindingly awesome it is, particularly on the iPad (a point you’ve made on many occasions). It’s got all the oats you could possibly want in a task manager, but let’s you keep it simple if that’s your deal. I won’t belabor this point, but suffice it to say that OmniFocus is what I tap by default when absentmindedly unlocking my iPhone.

My guilty pleasure would definitely be Ego. It’s a simple app that let’s you track your social-ish stats: RSS subscribers, twitter followers, blog page views, etc. I will freely admit that there’s a certain amount of narcissism inherent in apps like this (hence the name), but it does give me a dashboard-style view of how popular I am and, thus, how worthwhile my existence is on this earth. Kidding.

So what is missing from your iPhone?

I’ll be honest — and this is going to sound extremely fanboy-like — there isn’t really an app that I want to exist that doesn’t. I’m already pretty floored by what my iPhone can do and it does just about everything I want. I could do with a little less friction in some cases (I’d pay money for native clipboard history or TextExpander-style functionality), but on the whole I’m very happy with everything my phone does.

How often do you use your iPhone?

I use my iPhone pretty regularly throughout the day. I work at home and, as such, I often need to get away from my desk for a few minutes. If I’m taking a walk, I’m probably listening to a podcast or skimming RSS feeds in Reeder. If I’m in the kitchen making a tasty snack, I’m probably reading Twitter or doing email triage. If I’m at my desk, it will frequently serve dutifully as my Pandora player (so I can avoid having to spin up the molasses-laden CPU hog Flash player on my Mac). After business hours, I use my iPhone a great deal more for taking quick snaps of my family or shooting short video clips. I suck at both of these activities to startling degrees, but the iPhone makes that particular act of sucking very, very easy.

What is your favorite iPhone feature?

I’ve carried golf bags for some UI designers and one axiom of their field that has stuck with me is the idea that interfaces should do the least surprising thing. Both the iPhone and the iPad absolutely nail this: for the most part, they do what you expect when you interact with them. A close second would be that, with both devices, Apple built them to be responsive above just about anything else. I very rarely find myself tapping on a button or swiping the screen without something happening, even if it’s already grinding away on something. In my admittedly limited experience with other smartphones, this simply isn’t the case — at least, not to the same extent.

Anything else you’d like to share?

Personally, I can’t stand the folders. The current iteration of iOS allows 11 screens of un-folder-ed apps. I can’t imagine requiring more space than that. I understand the idea of logically grouping applications, but the novelty wore off very quickly because, at least for me, it just meant I needed to tap the screen a few extra times to launch the app that I wanted. I’ve used the same apps (in the same arrangement) for long enough that I know instinctively where to go and how to launch them. Folders would effectively kneecap my ability to launch apps without looking closely at the Springboard.

My only exception to this whiny folder-hating approach is that I use a single folder to hold all of the stock apps that I rarely or never use and can’t outright delete: Notes, Contacts, Weather, Compass, Voice Memos, Stocks, etc. I also keep the App Store and iTunes apps in this folder to avoid excessively draining my wallet; out of sight, out of mind.

Thanks Brett.

I first met Wendy Cherwinski (twitter) in the Macworld speaker room several years ago. Wendy has this disarming, infectious smile and near encyclopedic knowledge of Keynote and presenting skills. It makes sense after all. Wendy pays her rent writing speeches and teaching people to communicate at Echelon Communications.

What are your most interesting home screen apps?

We’re probably talking about the suite of apps I’ve named ‘productivity’. As a writer, I’m always reaching for a note-taking app such as SimpleNote to copy some gem I’ve gleaned from Twitter or the Web. It’s also great to have a text editor like PlainText handy so I can start working on a speech, presentation or article and then pick up the project later on either my iMac or MacBookPro. As you might guess, I’m a big fan of DropBox.

What is your favorite app?

My very favorite app is Scrivener, which is actually a Mac app. It’s superb for writing speeches because you can dip into your research so easily while you work on a draft. Using Scrivener and TextExpander together really helps chip time off speech assignments. My favourites apps on the iPhone are Captio and Say It Mail It. I generate some of my best ideas when I’m out for a walk. Captio lets me capture my thoughts and email them to myself. I use Say It Mail It to record spoken ideas that I want to share with my husband.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

I’m mostly all business when it comes to using my iPhone. However, I like to relax with my Crosswords app on the iPad. Blocking out the world, and concentrating on what fits ‘down’ and ‘across’ for an hour or so is definitely a guilty pleasure.

What is the app you are still missing?

I just bought Notesy and can’t wait to give it a spin. It’s a note-taking app that syncs with DropBox so you can work across your iPhone, iPad and computer. Plus you can email your notes, which is a feature I find especially attractive. Actually, I’m missing every note-taking and text editing app that has yet to be invented. I love to get new ones and give them a test drive.

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

I use both of them too many times a day to count. When the alarm goes off in the morning I grab one or the other to check Twitter and email while I listen to the news on the radio. Over breakfast, I scroll through news sites while I read the paper. (I often have to search through sections of the paper to retrieve my iPhone before heading off to my office.) Basically, if I’m not in front of my computer, I have either my iPhone or iPad in hand. Before bed I set them up to recharge.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

I love watching videos on both devices. My husband likes to shoot video on our holidays and then create tightly edited movies complete with music. In an idle moment I can watch a movie and enjoy the walk down memory lane. Priceless.

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

I would improve the integration between mobile devices and the desktop (less dependence on iTunes). MobileMe should behave more like DropBox and wireless syncing of docs between iOS and OSX apps would be terrific.

Anything else you’d like to share?

Another of my favourite Apple products is my iPod nano. I bought a band so I can wear it as a wristwatch. It works great!

Thanks Wendy.

This week’s home screen post features Ben Waldie (Web site and Twitter) is the godfather of Mac automation. Ben has written books and published some excellent screencasts on the subject. Indeed, when Microsoft wanted to add Automator tools to the office suite, they went to Ben. I had the pleasure meeting Ben this year at Macworld and he is just as nice as he is smart. So Ben, show us your home screen.

What are your most interesting home screen apps?

Well, I should probably begin by explaining my home screen app organization process. As you can see, I organize my apps into folders, which are arranged alphabetically. Within each folder, I arrange the apps themselves alphabetically too. By doing so, I always know where any given app resides. The only exceptions are games, which I don’t organize alphabetically. Why not? Because I have multiple folders of games, and I don’t want to reorganize every time I install a new one. (I also arrange my Mac OS X Dock alphabetically, and yes, I realize I’m a freak.)

While I probably wouldn’t consider them most interesting, the apps I use the most are the ones that let me get work done efficiently while on the go. I use Mail and Safari regularly, iCal and AddressBook (with MobileMe sync), Dropbox, OmniFocus, and LogMeIn.

The app I find most interesting and fun is Star Walk. Just point your iPhone at the sky wherever you are, and it shows you real time information about stars, planets, satellites, and more.

What is your favorite app?

My favorite app changes on a regular basis. At the moment, it’s probably Reeder, which I use to keep up to date on the latest tech news. I love its ease of use, nice interface, and sync integration with Google Reader, which eliminates the need for me to read the same headlines when I switch devices.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

I freely admit that I love Facebook for keeping track of what’s going on in the lives of friends and family.

What is the app you are still missing?

This isn’t an app, it’s more of a feature… I’m still missing a way to wirelessly keep my entire iPad/iPhone in sync with my Mac. Sync is super important to me, since I never know what device I’ll have with me at any given time. I have configured some apps to sync using Dropbox or MobileMe, but I’d like to see something on a more global scale.

An app I’m missing is one that will eliminate supermarket and other retail membership cards, so I don’t need to carry them in my wallet. I have actually seen some apps designed for this, but they don’t work with most checkout scanners.

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

It’s difficult to calculate, but I would estimate that I often don’t go for 5 minutes without using one or the other. My wife just considers them extensions of my arms.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

My favorite feature is probably the camera. I love having such a great quality camera with me wherever I go to capture the funny things my kids are doing, special events, UFOs, or whatever else I encounter. I also love using apps like Photoshop Express and Camera+ to manipulate and improve photos right on my phone. And, of course, the ability to video chat with the kids when I’m away on business is simply awesome.

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

I’m sure there are a million things I’d add or change. One would be to improve the printing capabilities. Another would be to allow FaceTime usage over 3G (in the interim, Skype works great for this).

Anything else you’d like to share?

Thanks for your interest in checking out my home screen!

Thanks Ben.

Even after publishing MacSparky.com for 4 years, part of me still sometimes forgets that other people read it. So you can imagine my surprise when I heard from writer, director, and actor David Wain (twitter and IMDb). You can learn a lot more about David at his Web site. I’m a fan of David’s from way back. If you’ve never seen it before, you really should check out The State, perhaps the best sketch comedy show ever. David, when not writing and directing the latest Jennifer Aniston movie, is busy playing with his iPhone. So David, show us your home screen.

What are your most interesting home screen apps?

I’ve been using GPS Drive while on an extended work trip to Los Angeles (normally I don’t drive when home in NYC). I love having one less device to keep track of, and I particularly like how it pauses the iPod (like when I’m listening to Mac Power Users) when it wants to tell me where to turn. It also syncs with my address book so I rarely have to type in an address.

The other one I find indispensable in the car (as well as when running) is FlickTunes which allows me to control my music and podcasts with simple one- two- and three-finger swipes – I never have to look down at the screen.

I’ve also been enjoying Dialvetica’s smart way of knowing which contacts I want to have in front of me when I open it.

What is your favorite app?

Instapaper, no competition. It has erased that agita I get whenever I come across something I want to read but don’t have time at that moment. When I get into bed at night, I read my Instapaper articles (in the dark mode that automatically kicks in after sundown). I prefer reading in bed on the iPhone vs the iPad because of the retina display and the much lighter weight. (It’s amazing that just a couple of years ago when traveling I used to bring books, magazines, a GPS, white noise machine, iPod, cell phone, address book, alarm clock and day planner. Now ALL of that is in the iPhone, and actually better.)

I also love MOG – like having an iPod with millions of songs. So much fun. Honorable mention: Simplenote, Yelp.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

I play Words With Friends with my sisters pretty much every time I sit on the toilet. I know that sounds gross but you know what I mean. I love flipping through my Twitter feed but try not to because it’s so addictive.

What is the app you are still missing?
The one that controls brightness without having to go to settings > brightness. I’m adjusting brightness all the time.

How many times a day do you use your iPhone?

I’m definitely one of those for whom the iPhone has become an appendage. It’s just so damn useful! I’m going to try to do electronics free Saturdays when I’m done with my current work stint, because it can get to be too much.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone?

I love the overall “just works” factor. That things tend to happen the way you expect them too, and they’ve got it to the point where you don’t have to fiddle with it too much (if you don’t want to).

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?
I’d let those users who care to customize their experience be allowed to do so. They can still have the automatic user-friendly closed version for casual losers, but let the geeks go under the hood if they want!

Also I hate when I pull out my phone because I want to show someone my home screen image of my kids, but there’s a text message there so it blocks it. These are the kinds of things they should allow us to customize!

AND I hate the podcast organizing system. Why can’t you erase a podcast on your iPhone and have it then be erased on your iTunes!?

Anything else you’d like to share?

I’ve never publicly gotten so Mac geeky. Thanks for letting my inner nerd shine!

Thanks David!

This week’s Home Screen post features Dan Benjamin (Twitter). Dan has quietly built a podcasting empire at 5by5 Studios with numerous quality shows. While I’ve not had the opportunity to meet Dan in person, he guested on the Mac Power Users and I’ve listened to enough of his podcasts that, at this point, he feels like an old friend. Dan recently bought a shiny new Verizon iPhone after spending a few years on Web OS and Android devices. So Dan, what is on your home screen.

What are your most interesting home screen apps?

Most of the apps I have on my home screen are task related, obviously the things I use most, so they tend to be less interesting and more practical or related to work and communication. The exception to this is Instagram, which would probably qualify as being the most interesting. I love it.

What is your favorite app?

The Camera app, if you can believe it. This app, and the iPhone 4’s photo and video capabilities are so great. I’m the parent of a 3-year old, and being able to use my phone to capture any moment is an incredible thing. And the app is just great.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Angry Birds, of course.

What is the app you are still missing?

The one that lets us sync everything without a physical connection to iTunes. Oh, it would be slow over wifi, you say? That’s fine, I’m patient.

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

I use my iPhone and iPad as primary devices as part of my work, and whenever I’m out. It’s not constant, but it’s a lot.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

The iOS operating system itself, and the benefits and constraints it places on developers. After spending about a year with Android and webOS, I can tell you first hand that iOS is much easier and more fun to use.

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

The IAP thing is a bit frustrating for my developer friends, and I’d like to see that get worked out in a way that makes more sense for the long haul. I don’t have answers, though, as to how it should work, but it feels kind of wrong the way it is.

And now that there’s a Verizon iPhone 4, the only thing missing is the syncing over wifi.

Anything else you’d like to share?

I use my iPhone 10x more than I used my Android or Palm device. OK, so now I’m sounding like an Apple fanboy. Sorry, but it’s just the truth: Apple made a better, easier to use, and more fun tool. I feel lucky every time I use an iOS device, like I’m in the future. Now I just need a jet-car.

Thanks Dan!

Shawn Blanc (twitter) is one of the premier Mac bloggers and recently made the ballsy move of turning his blog, ShawnBlanc.net, into his full time gig. I am a fan. I asked Shawn to share his iPad screen today, on iPad 2 launch day, and he was kind enough to help out. So Shawn, let’s see your home screen.

What are your most interesting home screen apps?

iBooks, OmniFocus, and Wired come to mind as being the apps that most capture my curiosity in the iPad.

• Wired because I think it’s a great magazine and I enjoy reading it on my iPad every month. I enjoy how the icon color and loading screen change colors for every updated issue and I even appreciate how it notifies me when there are new issues for download.

  But really I like Wired because: (a) my roots in design are with print and layout; (b) I’ve had a longstanding affinity for software and technology; and (c) I love to read on my iPad. So, in a way, Wired represents the amalgamation of all these things: it’s a print magazine that discusses technology and which is moving to the iPad as a new medium for delivery.

• OmniFocus because here’s an app that has been on the Desktop for years, and yet, somehow, they bust out a version on the iPad that blows the original out of the water. Here’s an app that shows just how exciting a future the iPad has for personal computing and getting work done. Or, put another way, OmniFocus is a great example of how such a complex application with layers and layers of information can work so well on a small touch screen tablet.

• And iBooks because what I do most on the iPad is read. And though the reading environment in iBooks isn’t amazing it is pretty great. I’m not a total bookworm, like some people I know, but I do like to always be reading through a book or two. I’ve purchased several books from the iBookstore, and also have some other eBooks and PDFs that I’ve added into iBooks.

  And the fact that I can highlight, bookmark, and add notes makes it great as well. I’d like to start writing book reviews too, and so these extra bits of functionality make it great to jot down and highlight in preparation to return to the book and write a review of it.

What is your favorite app?

Instapaper. By a long shot. I’ve said before that if there was ever an app that was like a good cup of coffee it would be Instapaper.

By far and away the thing I do most with my iPad is read. And Instapaper is, in my opinion, the best reading app on the iPad. It is such a splendidly simple app and service that it fits into hundreds of different use-cases. I think that’s why explaining what it does is nothing at all like explaining what it is.

Instapaper isn’t just a service. It’s like some sort of placebo. When you find something great you save it and move on, knowing that something of value is now in a place you know you’ll get to it. And so Reading Later has become a favorite habit.

What is the app you are still missing?

It’s not so much an app that I feel is missing as much as a service. A syncing service.

I am hesitant to use apps that do not sync automatically between my laptop, iPhone, and iPad. I would love to see better over-the-air sync for all apps and other data. I think that MobileMe could have huge potential as a syncing server for all the data and apps on our iPads and iPhones.

Something as fast and easy to use as Dropbox — meaning it would sync and share info and files — but it would let other apps use it for syncing. Imagine setting up your iPhone with your Apple ID once, and then any app that has a Mac and/or iPad counterpart would sync.

Including the 3rd-party apps. If MobileMe could be used by 3rd-party developers it would make their jobs significantly easier

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

I use my iPhone much more than my iPad — especially when I’m out and about. And I work mostly on my laptop. Though I use my iPad for checking email, writing, checking Twitter, and playing an occasional game, I mostly use it for the things it does better than any of my other gadgets, which means reading and doing reviews of my to-do lists in OmniFocus.

What is your favorite feature of the iPad?

The battery. My iPad’s battery usually lasts for up to 12 hours. I’ve never owned a gadget like that. With my iPhone or laptop — and even my bluetooth headset I keep in the car — it’s common for the battery life to interrupt the workflow and interaction I have with the device.

With the iPad I rarely ever worry or think about the battery at all. It’s just something I’ve begun to take for granted. Even when it goes into the “red zone” it means I still have a couple hours of battery life.

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

I would give out free scoops of Rocky Road ice cream to people who stand in line every spring and summer to buy iPhones and iPads.

Anything else you’d like to share?

For those who may want to snag it, the background image I’m currently using can be found here (and I found it via Prettify).

Thanks Shawn!

This week’s home screen post features one of my favorite Mac developers, Keith Blount, who very quietly revolutionized word processing with his outstanding application, Scrivener (also, see Scrivener on twitter). In addition to being a top notch Mac developer, I can report with first hand knowledge that Keith is very patient, especially when dealing with nerdy zealots who pepper him with requests to sync Scrivener text files to the iPad.

So Keith, show us your iPad home screen.

What are your most interesting home screen apps?

Everything there is fairly well-known, but Kineo is one of the apps I had the most fun with when I first got my iPad. It’s a really simple concept but stupidly fun. It’s just a flip-book app – you draw a stick man or whatever with your finger, then create a new page, and your last image is still faintly visible so that you can draw the next one over it, moving it slightly, and so doing gradually build up an animation. It’s full of blood and violence since my kids got at it, but it provides a great wind-down activity while you’re waiting for something.

In terms of my day job, there are several apps there that are interesting. Simplenote, Notebooks and PlainText are all great note-taking tools and Index Card provides a really nice corkboard similar to the one in Scrivener, so they are all there in part because I spent a lot of time implementing sync features in Scrivener 2.0 that works with these programs, enabling users to sync text between Scrivener and any one of these apps. So they are there partly for testing purposes and partly because I use them for note-taking occasionally myself. Likewise iBooks and Kindle – these are there for testing Scrivener’s .epub and .mobi export, but I don’t use them much beyond that, to be honest, as I prefer my actual Kindle (or a real, analogue book of course) for extended reading.

What is your favorite app?

Probably IMDb, simply because I’m addicted to it. I can’t remember the last time I watched a TV program or movie without pausing it to look up an actor. I still tend to reach for my MacBook Air and look up things on there for speed of typing, but IMDb on the iPad is beautifully designed and a perfect coffee-table app.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

At the moment it’s Angry Birds. I finally cracked and downloaded it for the first time the other day, and since then the house has been full of the sound of grunting, whooping, kamikaze birds. You know you’ve been playing it too much when you start calculating the angle of your hand when you go to throw something to somebody and then wonder why there’s nothing to tap to make it go faster when it’s in midair. Before that I was addicted for a short while to Bed Bugs – I got my mother addicted to that, too; I probably won’t hear from her for months after I introduce her to Angry Birds.

What is the app you are still missing?

I don’t think I’m missing anything – there are a gazillion apps already out there and I don’t use my iPad enough to feel it wanting anything, really. The obvious answer, of course, would be Scrivener, as we do get a good few requests for an iPad version, but I still much prefer writing on my MacBook Air or other Macs so I can’t get as excited about the prospect as I probably should.

How many times a day do you use your iPad?

My current addiction to Angry Birds notwithstanding, in general I have to admit I don’t use my iPad very much at all. By day I do my development work on a Mac Pro and in the evenings I have my MacBook Air at hand, so I haven’t found an obvious place for the iPad in my daily life as many people have. My kids, on the other hand – I can’t keep them off the thing.

What is your favorite feature of the Pad?

It keeps the kids quiet. (Actually that’s not even true; they fight over it.)

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

That one’s easy – I’d add a rich text system that developers could utilize, an equivalent of the NSText system on the Mac. At the moment most writing apps on the iPad are plain text only, and this is because there is no easy way to create rich text editing apps (Apple rolled their own text system with Pages that isn’t available to third-party developers). I have seen some apps roll their own basic rich text systems – Docs2Go for instance – but if there was a standard one as there is on the Mac, there would be a lot more powerful writing tools on there – and, from a completely biased point of view, it would make it easier to sync Scrivener with apps on the iPad. It would also make it a little easier for us to design a stripped-down version of Scrivener for the iPad off in one potential future, too, of course. But that’s my day-job speaking again, as I’m probably unlikely to use the iPad for writing much myself; I just know a lot of our customers use it for note-taking and that this would be useful to them.

Anything else you’d like to share?

Just a thank you for inviting me to share my home screen.

Thanks Keith!

This week I’m pleased to feature Joseph Nilo (twitter), one of the pioneers of Mac podcasting and a very talented video and audio production guy who co-founded HiLo Media. After having a multiple year e-lationship, I finally got to meet Joseph in person this year at Macworld and I was so pleased that he agreed to share his home screen. So Joseph, show us your home screen.

What are your most interesting home screen apps?

My preferred home screen apps are pretty standard-issue. My least recognizable are certainly DP Control, which is a controller for my audio production software Digital Performer, and Authenticator, which allows me to securely log into my World of Warcraft account.

Additionally I really like Flickpad Pro, which is an ingenious way to view my friend’s Facebook and Flickr photos.
I do have to mention that, for the sake of this post, I had to pull my most-accessed apps out of their respective folders to make it more interesting. I like a clutter-free home page with folders. The dock holds my six most-accessed apps and I use the Spotlight search or just muscle memory to find the rest.

What is your favorite app?

I certainly spend the most time in River of News and [Instapaper]. My last hour before bed at night is spent going through RSS feeds and saving interesting stuff to Instapaper for later reading.
Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Authenticator represents my real-life guilty pleasure: World of Warcraft (I can stop whenever I want to, I swear!). My favorite time-killer is Monopoly HD.
How many times a day do you use your iPad?

I use my iPad quite often. It sits in my edit suite with me (along with a Mac Pro with three displays and a MacBook pro, it certainly is excessive).

The iPad gets used (for work) mostly as a script reader— I keep the script for whatever video I’m editing live on my iPad for quick access. Additionally it comes with me into the voiceover booth as I’ve long-abandoned printing out scripts for the sake of being green. And hating printers.

The tools I use for managing all my work stuff: Dropbox, Evernote, Simplenote, Things, and a Safari link to Google Docs. Plus I prefer the Gmail interface in Safari to the iPad’s Mail app.
And then my iPad becomes a part of my nightly ritual of reading in bed.

What is your favorite feature of the iPad?

Usability. I am constantly amazed that Apple has designed a product that my four-year-old has an almost disturbing mastery of. If she needs to be occupied for a time at a restaurant or on a plane or in the car, I feel better about her interacting and problem-solving in her favorite apps then having just parked her in front of a movie for a couple hours.

Thanks Joseph.