The Friday Thing #835

February. Already. Oh, and my Apple brochure from last week’s edition showed up. Beautifully retro ??

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The Friday Thing #835 is inspired by a brief post I made on LinkedIn last month that got way more attention that I expected. A few times over the years I have posted a “what's in my bag” post for The Friday Thing – maybe I should do one of those again soon. Perhaps the new “what’s in your bag” question is “what's on on your home screen” though? Like it or not, our mobile devices are now an integral part of our lives and replace things we once took for granted. For example, over the last year as I have really embraced contactless phone payment, I have noticed how infrequently I now remove my wallet from my bag. What does this mean for the future of wallet making? Equally, it’s a rare occasion now when I ‘hail’ a taxi – unless I am in London – because my phone has become my driver with Uber and Lyft.

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This is sort of stating the obvious of course to say how ubiquitous mobile apps have become and how reliant we are on them, but I still think the home screen question is an interesting study in utility, psychology and personality. Maybe personality ‘tests’ in the future will analyze our home screens for indicators of our type, style or tribe? (I hope not). But there is no doubt that your home screen says something about you in terms of apps, arrangement, color and theme. So here is mine and my own amateur analysis of it.

1. The calendar app: there not because I use it but because I want a glanceable view of the day/date. Outlook is my calendar….more on that below.
2. Phone and messaging: oriented for quick thumb-based access though not in the prime spots of the “tray” of 4 icons.
3. A mix of work and life: Outlook, LinkedIn, and Teams for the former. Strava, BBC Sport, La Marzocco, and Rapha for the latter.
4. Some utilities: Lifx for my lights at home and MyQ for my garage door.
5. The dock: my key apps: Outlook is by far the most used of these and whenever I see a friend using the Apple Mail app, I implore them to switch to Outlook. Hands down the best email client on iOS (yes, I am biased). Ditto on Edge/Safari.
6. A note on Instagram: this used to be in my dock, but I intentionally replaced it with Microsoft Copilot recently both to change my ‘muscle memory’ of just hitting Instagram and doom scrolling and now hitting Copilot to get answers to questions that arise throughout my day. It’s working – I am spending less time on Insta and more time satisfying my curiosity.
7. Weather: I still miss Dark Sky. Apple bought them and didn’t move all the good stuff over.
8. My Wallpaper: simple, dark and offering contrast. On close inspection it’s a black wood effect.
9. Pages: in my original post, people sorta freaked out about how many pages of apps I had. It was a good reminder that led me to cull the cruft but also, I realized that there are simply some apps in there that you have to have that maybe you only use once per year (hello Whistler Blackcomb app). Even with the cull, I still have ~300 apps. Yoiks.

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So….that’s my home screen and my quick analysis. If you want to join the party in commenting on mine or posting your own with your thoughts, head over to the LinkedIn post. iOS, Android both welcome ??

That’s all for this week. The sun is out here in Seattle and so I am off to find a cool drink.

Music for this week is Madam Butterfly by Malcolm McLaren.

Happy Friday.

?Cheers,?

-Steve