Garrett Murray

http://log.maniacalrage.net/

I’m Garrett Murray. I make films, websites and, recently, iPhone apps. I guess I’m what you might call a workaholic. Years ago I wrote xPad.

The first thing I did a long time ago was move iPod from the dock to the top left of the screen. I send more text messages than I listen to music (which is saying a lot, since I listen to a lot of music). Otherwise, the dock is pretty standard. Turns out I do use Phone, Mail and Safari the most so it made sense to keep them there.

Most of my home screen applications are first-party. I use Calendar daily, Photos sparingly (but I change my wallpaper frequently enough that I didn’t bother moving it) and Camera semi-regularly. I used to use Darkroom as my camera on my iPhone 3G, but when upgrading to the 3GS I wanted the video and focus features so I switched back to the standard Camera app. I use Clock as my alarm clock every day, and Maps and Weather nearly every day as well. Settings is there because ATT’s 3G coverage is not so good and I’m regularly switching it on and off when I’m out (it would be fantastic if someone could create a one-off app that did that, but I don’t think it’s possible).

The third and fourth rows are where we get into my most-used third-party apps. Things, of course, is a great task manager and syncs with the desktop app. Wikipanion is a fantastic Wikipedia application with tons of amazing features I wish Apple would incorporate into Safari like a browsing queue and orientation locking. Byline is a simple but nice feed reader that synchronizes with Google Reader. Birdfeed is a fast and awesome little Twitter client by my friend Buzz Andersen. AIM Pro is, of course, Instant Messenger (without the ads). And, last but not least, the app I wrote, Ego, which allows you to check all your various web stats (Twitter, Mint, Feed Burner, Google Analytics, etc) all in a single glance.

A little bonus info: The next (2nd) page of my home screen is all secondary apps. It contains things like the Facebook app, Deliveries (a great package tracker), iPhlix, Ninjawords and Birdhouse. The third page is all games, including FlightControl, HoldEm, StarDefense and more. And the fourth and last page is all non-essential apps like YouTube, Stocks, Remote and Compass.