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. 

This Sunday, the Mac Power Users will publish a workflow show with Ben Carter (website) (Twitter). Ben started a law firm and is now doing a short run podcast on it called, “Let’s Start a Law Firm”. It’s a great little show and useful to a lot of people running small service-based businesses. Ben was telling me about some of his favorite apps so I decided to make it official.

What are some of favorite apps?

My three favorite apps that your readers may not be using are:

1) Deli Radio allows users to create custom playlists of musicians that are performing in or near a specific geographical area within a specific date horizon. For example, I have a playlist that plays indie rock bands that are playing within 50 miles of Louisville, Kentucky in the next month. It’s a great way to discover new music and support live music. Also, one of my best friends is their general counsel. It is also a web app, so you can listen at your desk.

2) Songza offers users pre-made playlists that may be appropriate for certain activities at specific times of the day and week. It tells you: “It’s Wednesday morning. Do you want music for: a) waking up happy, b) waking up with energy, c) rolling over and hitting snooze, etc. etc.? It will then present you with six or so genres of music. After choosing a genre, you get to pick one of three playlists. I’ve found some great songs on Songza and love all of the new ways we have to listen to music. In another life—if I do this one well—I hope to come back as a musician. Songza also has a web app for at-work listening, but I mostly use Spotify at my desk to explore some of the bands I’ve found using Deli Radio and Songza on my phone. I pay the 99 cents a week for the ad-free version of Songza. Worth it.

3) Avocado is a really fun app that I use with my girlfriend. Designed as a kind of social network for two people, Avocado is basically a beefed-up text messaging app with a few awesome twists. When I started dating my girlfriend, she was living in Manhattan and I was in Louisville, so a lot of our relationship was in text messages. Very early in the relationship it occurred to me how much of the inside jokes and meaning-making was evolving in text messages that were trapped on our phones, so I began to look for an alternative that might allow me to export our text-exchanges and found Avocado. It allows you to use your photos to set custom emojis for certain emotions (I have a fist bump, a look of dismay, and a high-five emoji), create and update shared lists, and share, caption, and draw on photos. It’s a really fun app that (again), has a web component. So while I’m at my desk, I can text her on her phone using my computer keyboard, which is really nice.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Facebook. I wish I didn’t like it so much, but I do.

What is the app you are still missing?

I don’t really feel like I’m missing apps so much as I feel like I’m missing some functionality in the apps I already use. I use Sparrow as an email client even though I know I’m living on borrowed time following its acquisition by Google because it has a “Send and Archive” feature. I love “Send and Archive”. More email clients should offer it.

Also, I wish Songza made it possible to save songs to playlists that I could create rather than only offering me their playlists. Instead, I’m snapping screenshots of good songs and adding them to Spotify playlists.

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

I run my law practice through my phone. My iPhone is my office phone. I use Soulver to calculate mileage, balance my books, and double-check the math that loan servicers have performed when offering or denying my clients loan modifications. I track my time when I’m on the run using Rocket Matter’s iPhone app. I navigate to rural Kentucky’s courthouses using Google Maps and listen to Roderick on the Line on my way there using Downcast. Even when I’m standing at my desk, I’m just as likely to log on to check my bank balances on my phone as on my computer.

So, is “constantly” an answer?

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

IT IS A COMPUTER. IN MY POCKET. I feel really lucky to be old enough to remember computing in the mid–80s and hope I never stop feeling grateful for the nerds that make this all possible.

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

I practice consumer law, which basically means that I’m representing people who have been duped, defrauded, or otherwise misled/screwed by a business. I wish there were an easier way to export text message exchanges. In a surprising number of my cases, text messages are going to be evidence in a trial. Screenshots? Come on.

Anything else you’d like to share?

If you’re a guitar player, I really recommend the ultimate-guitar.com app for iPad. I use it on my Mini and it really makes finding, storing, and playing music easy and fun.

Thanks Ben.