More information about this wallpaper, Pyramid Lake.

Justin Williams

February 25, 2011

While on my iPhone I leave the bottom row empty, I don’t have the same discipline on the iPad.  Part of it is because rotating the device changes how many apps are in a row but also because I still haven’t gotten the feel for how I want to use my iPad.  I use my iPhone for hours a day and have it down to a fine science.  My iPad and I are still in the courting phase.

My dock has the four applications I use 90% of the time.  Safari mobile is my preferred way to casually browse the Web now.  It’s so good that I no longer feel the need to take my MacBook Pro off the desk.  MobileMail is nice, but still lacks the unified inbox and ability to move messages to folders between accounts.  Because of that, I usually just read and compose short emails, but not much else.  Twitter for the iPad is my Twitter client.  I don’t love it, but it strikes a decent balance between Twitterrific’s minimalism and Osfoora’s chaos.  Instapaper was made for the iPad.

In fact, if you look at my homescreen, it’s really designed for reading.  I own a Kindle, which I use primarily for reading, but the iPad is much better suited for reading at night before bed.  Reeder is my RSS app of choice presently.  I prefer the UI of the iPhone version, but the iPad version is still top notch.  The new NY Times app is fantastic.  If only it supported Instapaper.

Elements is my notes and writing app of choice (given that I am the developer of it).  It coupled with Dropbox on my Mac have changed how I use the iPad for creation.  Being able to edit a file on my iPad and then have the changes automatically synced to my Mac when I get back is awesome.

Penultimate is another app I like, and wish I could use to sketch out UI wireframes rather than my stack of notebooks but my finger doesn’t give me nearly the precision I’m used to.  Now I just use it to draw juvenile pictures that make me laugh and my wife question why she married me.

The IMDB app is great on the iPhone, but even better on the iPad.  Since my iPad is by my side when I’m watching TV I’ll frequently look up a movie or television show I’m watching if I want to see what an actor previously appeared in.

As a sports junkie, I use the Sportscenter XL app to check on scores for the major sporting events going on each night though I don’t use it nearly as much as I do on the iPhone since ESPN.com works so well in Safari for iPad.  The MLB At Bat app has been a great companion to the baseball playoffs. 

OmniFocus is my task management app of choice.  I love being able to sync my tasks lists over the air from my Mac and have it up-to-date on my iPhone and iPad.  I don’t really use the iPad version too much, but it is nice to be able to jot down something quickly when I need to get it out of my head.

When I’m not sitting in front of my Mac, I attempt to do some light cooking.  I’m not very good at it, but the Epicurious app at least gives me lots of great ideas on how to fail at my newfound hobby. 

Seasonality Go is my goto app for checking the current weather conditions.  It has the most iPad like user interface of any of the apps and also has a ton of really geeky weather data as well.  I have no idea what half of it means, but it looks nice!