Mike Vardy (Twitter) (website) speaks and writes about managing your time better. How appropriate then that Mike released a book this week about how we use our calendars, The Now Year, A Practical Guide to Calendar Management. In addition to being prolific, Mike’s a really kind fellow and agreed to share his home screen. So Mike, what’s on your home screen?

What are your most interesting home screen apps?

One of them is 1Password because I’m actually using it as my main browser app now. It has all of my passwords stored in it, and the new version sports a much better browsing component. I rarely browse the Internet on my iPhone, but when I do (other than when it comes from a prompt within Dispatch, which defaults to Safari), I use 1Password.

30/30 is also an interesting choice because while I use it sparingly, it’s nice to have it there when I want to use a modified version of The Pomodoro Technique. If it wasn’t on my home screen I’d probably not use it as much.

YNAB and Neat are there for the same reason. I want to keep on top of my finances and my scannables, so having these apps front and center really helps. In fact, most things on my home screen are there because of that. And if the Reviewables folder (where all of my beta testing apps are) then I’d not put the apps through the paces nearly as often…or as well.

What is your favorite app?

Drafts, with Dispatch being a close second. I’m a big fan of “gateway” apps — apps that allow you to get in the door with something and then place that thing where you need it most with as little friction as possible. Drafts and Dispatch (along with Launch Center Pro) are the best gateway apps I’ve come across. They’re the reason I am getting so much more use out of my iPhone than ever before.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

I’d say that’d be the Untappd app. I don’t use location check-in apps other than this one. Untappd is essentially a social networking app for beer drinkers, and ever since I started getting into craft beers (I’ve even started cellaring them and have been using Evernote to help out with that process) I have been using Untappd to indicate when I have a beer and what beer I’m having. Other than listening to the Mikes on Mics back catalog, it’s the only other way I track the beers I’ve had.

What is the app you are still missing?

With Drafts, Dispatch, and Launch Center Pro in my arsenal, I don’t really find myself wanting for any particular app. What I think is missing is the fact that I can’t choose to change my default mail app from the stock app to Dispatch, or the stock browser to 1Password if I want. I understand why that’s the case (or at least I think I do), but that doesn’t mean I have to like it, right?

How many times a day do you use your iPhone?

Far more often than in the past – I’d say upwards of 10 times per day since I’m actually using Dispatch as my primary email app (yep, even over the one on my MacBook Air). The ability to quickly capture and shift things to where I need them to be (email tasks to OmniFocus or Asana, email information materials to Evernote, quick capture of ideas to Drafts, etc.) is what makes iOS (and my iPhone) the operating system I’m using more and more these days.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone?

I’d say the new Control Center feature introduced in iOS 7 is my favourite. I love that I can quickly swipe up with my thumb and activate Airplane Mode, open the calculator, and fire up the flashlight. It’s a small thing, but it’s a classic example of great UI and UX – something Apple knows a thing or two about.

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

Other than the ability to choose my own “sensible defaults” — hat tip to Patrick Rhone for that phrase — not much. That said, the default thing is pretty important (but I don’t see it changing anytime soon).

Anything else you’d like to share?

If you’re not using Drafts, Dispatch, and/or Launch Center Pro do yourself a favour and start. Any of these apps (when you take the time to set them up to meet your needs) will really change the way you use your iPhone.

It’s been several years since I featured the home screen of my friend and New Orleans Attorney Jeff Richardson (Twitter). Jeff writes the iPhoneJD blog and is a leading voice the community of Apple-using attorneys. So Jeff, show us your home screen.

What are some of your favorite apps?

I typically have lots of different meetings, phone calls, etc. every day, and I like the way that Fantastical displays my entries in a list format. It is also much faster to enter new appointments in Fantastical. Having said that, I still use the built-in Calendar app enough to keep it docked to the bottom of my screen.

Twitter has become one of my top sources of news — both news from the “real world” and iOS-related news that I keep track of for iPhone J.D. Tweetbot is my favorite Twitter client, and I use it so much that I moved it down to the dock a few months ago. I also use Feedly to keep track of my RSS feeds, mostly for iOS-related news, and the Feedly app on my iPhone is quite useful.

When I am driving, I typically listen to either podcasts, using Apple’s Podcasts apps, or music. When I listen to music, I use FlickTunes because it makes it easy to swipe the screen to change songs. FlickTunes hasn’t been updated in a long time — it still is not formatted for the longer screen on the iPhone 5/5s — but it does the job.

I use 1Password all the time — on my PC at work, my Mac at home, my iPhone and my iPad. Obviously I use it to store usernames and passwords (which, thanks to this app, are virtually all complex passwords). I also use it to store other confidential information.

And I frequently use LogMeIn Ignition, a quick and easy way to access my PC or my Mac when they are not in front of me.

But that just scratches the surface. There are 425 apps on my iPhone at current count. For example, I have a set of apps that I use all the time when I travel, including Apple’s Passbook app (I love using a digital boarding pass), TripIt, FlightTrackPro, GateGuru and the Delta app (that airline I fly the most). For just about any app beyond the first screen, I don’t pay much attention to what screen the app is on and instead I simply search to find and launch the app. I’ve grown to really prefer the iOS 7 approach to Spotlight because it is faster to flick down from a screen then to navigate to the first page and then swipe to the left.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

This changes all the time. Last week, for example, I enjoyed playing the new version of Dragon’s Lair for the iPhone, but that has more to do with me still feeling that sense of wonder from when I used to play and watch others play that groundbreaking arcade game in the 1980s. For a while, my wife and I would play Letterpress all the time.

What is the app you are still missing?

As a lawyer who writes documents in Microsoft Word every day, I’d love to have a full-featured Word app for the iPhone and iPad, one which includes a track changes redline feature and doesn’t mess up the formatting in my documents. The Office Mobile app released by Microsoft earlier this year is a start, but it needs more features. In the meantime, I use many other apps to fill the gap including Apple’s Pages app and the DataViz Documents to Go app, among others.

How many times a day do you use your iPhone?

What key do I hold down on my iPhone’s keyboard to get the Infinite symbol? Seems like it should be the 8 but that’s not working… 

Jeff…try Control+Command+Space in Mavericks. -David

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone?

I often think of my iPhone as being an extra brain. Thanks to a number of apps including Reminders, 1Password, Vesper, Notes, and Calendar/Fantastical, my iPhone remembers everything that matters to me so that I don’t have to worry about forgetting something. And thanks to a number of apps including Safari, Siri, Maps, Messages, and Mail, I can use my iPhone to quickly get answers to things that I need to know. Thus, I can devote my pre-installed brain to analyzing and acting upon that information.

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

I’m intrigued by the idea of wearable computing. I’d love to have a virtually invisible, wireless earpiece that can tell me information about the world around me without me needing to look down at my iPhone screen, such as reminding me of a person’s name and other key information as soon as I see them, letting me listen to podcasts or music wirelessly and without any distracting hardware, etc. If Apple were to take something with the promise of Google Glass, give it the polish and ease-of-use that Apple is famous for, and then make the whole thing unobtrusive so that it is easy to wear and you don’t look ridiculous doing so, Apple would have a real winner on its hands. The signs that Apple is currently working on some form of wearable computing are undeniable, which is exciting because at some point I suspect that Apple will produce something similar to, and at some point far beyond, what I’m imagining.

Anything else you’d like to share?

I work at a large law firm, currently over 300 attorneys. When I started in 1994, we were one of the few large law firms to use Macs, but for a variety of reasons including lack of law-related software for the Mac, we switched to PCs in the early 2000s just like every other medium/large law firm. Today, thanks to the iPhone and the iPad, almost every attorney I know is now using an Apple device for both work and play, something that I never would have predicted a decade ago. Indeed, the device that sits on my office desk might have the title of “personal computer” but my iPhone and iPad are easily as sophisticated as any computer and are far more personal. I am thrilled to once again have well-designed, Apple-quality hardware and software in my life, I am excited to see where Apple takes the iPhone/iPad in the future.

Thanks Jeff.