California attorney David Sparks has a recurring feature on his MacSparky blog where he asks people to share the apps on their iPhone home screen. This week, in an homage to Sparks, New York attorney and TechnoLawyer publisher Neil Squillante showed off the apps on his iPad home screen. He has some interesting choices so his post is worth reading. It's been over three years since Sparks asked me to talk about the apps on my iPhone home screen, and a lot has changed since then. My current iPhone home screen apps include Vesper to track tasks, Tweetbot for Twitter, Feedly for RSS feeds, 1Password for my passwords and confidential notes, Fantastical for my calendar, Forecast for the weather (which is actually a free web app, not an app that you download from the App Store), FlickTunes for skipping through music tracks while I am driving, Facebook, plus the Apple apps Photos, Camera, Maps, Podcasts, App Store, Phone, Contacts, Settings, Messages, Music, Reminders and Clock. My dock currently contains Calendar, Safari, Mail and Launch Center Pro — although I might remove Launch Center Pro at some point soon because I use it less often nowadays. And now, the news of note from the past week:
- British Columbia lawyer David Paul recommends iPad apps for lawyers for Canadian Lawyer magazine.
- Speaking of California attorney David Sparks, he recommends Editorial, a text editor app for the iPad.
- Josh Ong of The Next Web recommends 10 writing apps for the iPad, including Editorial.
- Rene Ritchie of iMore has five tips for using Siri.
- David Pogue of the New York Times compares the iPhone's Siri voice recognition system to the similar system on Android phones.
- Poornima Gupta and Peter Henderson of Reuters wrote a profile of Apple CEO Tim Cook.
- Dan Frakes of Macworld recommends the best external keyboards for the iPad. I currently recommend two keyboards, both of which Frakes likes as well. First, if you want a keyboard that is part of a case for the iPad so that you can carry it all together as one, I think that the current best choice is the Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover. Second, if you want a keyboard with full-size keys (which is my preference for typing), I recommend (and use) the Apple Wireless Keyboard along with the Incase Origami Workstation, which covers and protects the Apple keyboard plus provides you with an iPad stand.
- And finally, we all know what Marimba sounds like, the standard ringtone on the iPhone. The band Mars Argo created a song around the Marimba ringtone, and it's actually quite good. Here is the video. (via The Mac Observer)