Tw1sty

A couple of times now, TheMonkeyBoy has posted a “First & 20″ on his blog.  In essence this is a screen shot of your iPhone home screen, and an explanation of the apps you have there and why.  I have thought about doing this too, my home screen has been pretty much locked in for at least the last couple of years, and my second page is like an extended home screen. But recently I read an article on 37Signals called “Ten apps is all I need.”  Which got me thinking, how many apps do I need?  So, I’m going to combine these two ideas, and show my “First & Twenty” and breakdown which apps I can’t do with out.  I have a lot of apps on my iPhone, many that I use VERY rarely, if ever…  but you never know when you might.

Now, first off, I subscribe to the “empty row society” where I leave the fourth row empty on all my screens.  I think it makes the screen look neater, and is easier to swipe between screens without accidentally opening or moving apps.

I have a mix of Apple & third party apps on my home screen.  The Apple apps I keep on my home screen are the basics: Safari, Contacts, Camera, Photos, Settings, Calendar, Clock, with Phone, Messages & Mail on my dock.  As for third party apps:

I use Pkt Weather for checking the weather, it is more accurate than the Apple app, because it gets it’s data from the Beaureau of Meteorology.  Also, with it’s push notifications and badges, it makes it easy to see current or forecast temps without opening anything.

Facebook, Echfon & Foursquare.  I use these social media apps to stay in touch.  I tweet a lot, and I like the features of Echofon such as their mute feature, and built in push notifications.  Facebook app is basically for a quick browse of people’s status updates, or to keep up with events and birthdays.  Foursquare I use mainly to see if any of my friends are nearby… and to keep my mayorships. Ha!

The other two apps on my home screen are Evernote & Reminders, which is actually a new Apple app from iOS5.  I use Evernote for all my note taking, I can jot down any ideas in there for use later on, or I can even save web clippings on there for browsing later.  The best feature of Evernote, I believe, is that it’s multi-platform… any note I write on my iPhone can then be accessed by me on my mac, or on their web interface.  Reminders I use for my to-do’s list, as you can set time based or location based alarms, makes it easy to remember things.

As for how many apps do I need, or which can’t I live without on a daily basis?  I could probably get by with just 10 apps on my iPhone…  That’s quite a few less than the 100 I have on there at the moment.  So, here’s my list:

• Safari
• Camera
• Photos
• Messages
• Mail
• Maps
• Echofon
• Evernote
• iPod
• Calendar

How many apps do YOU need?