What you need to know

• iCloud+ will include support for custom domain names for iCloud Mail users.
• Poeple will be able to invite others to use the same domain name.

Apple's big WWDC opening keynote saw a ton of things announced yesterday with iCloud+ just one of them. The new name for iCloud's paid tiers brings with it its own new features, including one that wasn't announced during that event – support for custom domain names when using iCloud Mail.

The feature is mentioned on the iOS 15 preview page on Apple's website, but that's as much as we have. It does sound promising though, with Apple also noting that we'll be able to invite other people to use the same domain on their iCloud Mail accounts as well.

The addition of support for custom domains could change the game for many, especially those who have had to deal with using Google and Microsoft products when they'd rather use Apple's.

We don't know any more than that at this stage and there doesn't appear to be any kind of interface relating to this in the initial iOS 15 beta that I can find. It's still early days however and Apple will no doubt be adding – and removing! – things as we work our way through the long and winding beta process.

One thing we do know is that the new M1 iPad Pro is super duper awesome. It isn't cheap though, so make sure you snag one from our list of the best iPad Pro deals on the internet. Everyone likes saving money, right?

iMore's not just the best place to come for news, how-tos, and analysis on all thinges Apple. It's also a vibrant community of writers and readers, interacting with one another discussing the important issues and hottest topics of the day regarding technology and how it impacts our daily lives.

If you want to join in with the discussions that the community's having, the best way to do that is to create a Passport account here at iMore. Here's how to get started.

How to sign up for iMore

1. Open iMore.com in your browser of choice.
2. Click or tap the hamburger menu (looks like three black horizontal lines) in the top-left corner of the screen.
3. Click or tap Sign Up.

4. Enter a username.
5. Enter your email address.
6. Enter a password. Make it a strong one.

7. Enter the same password again to confirm it.
8. Complete the reCAPATCHA box.
9. Click or tap the checkboxes to remove the checkmarks if you don't want to receive newsletters or promotional emails.

10. Click or tap Continue.
11. Open your email app of choice. In this case, we'll use Mail on the iPad.
12. Click or tap the verification link in the email titled Mobile Nations Passport New Email Verification.

Excited to join iMore?

What's the first thing you'll do once you join iMore? Post in the forums? Subscribe to our awesome newsletter?

Let us know in the comments down below!

I don't know about you guys, but I'm always happy to get more video games and nerd culture in my day. If you feel the same way, then we've got some exciting news for you. We're happy to announce that we've just created a new video game-centered Twitter account: iMore Games.

We'll post primarily about things related to Nintendo, Pokémon, Zelda, or any other games/accessories that make their way onto Nintendo's gaming systems. That means if we see good Nintendo deals, or if we see news regarding upcoming Nintendo hardware or services, you'll be sure to hear from us. Yes, we will also post big news regarding Xbox, PlayStation, PC, or mobile gaming, but if you're a big Nintendo fan, iMore Games is your best bet.

We'll be posting several times a week with the best stories and news as well as retweeting hilarious gaming posts, creating videos, polls, and more:

Of course, we'll also bring you more informative articles, like this one:

The bottom line here is that we're gaming nerds that want to share our love of Nintendo and other consoles with fellow gaming nerds. If you love seeing hilarious Zelda memes, or want to be better informed on video game-related news, follow us at iMore Games! You won't be disappointed.

We're also excited to see your feedback on the iMore Games Twitter account. Let's get a conversation going. You can leave us a comment below or tweet at us!

By the by, if you're interested in Xbox gaming, we do have a sister Twitter account for you, Windows Central Gaming. Check it out when you get a chance!

Since the start of 2016, our entire team has been brainstorming about the next iteration of iMore. We've always had big goals for the site since its earliest iterations, and this next step puts some of our biggest ones in motion.

In short: We want to put the "more" in iMore — to help everyone live a connected, fruitful life with their technology; provide better analysis on the news that matters; and give our readers a great place to enjoy all of this content.

For the last year, we've been chatting with you about your vision for the future of iMore, and we've been rolling out various editorial and under-the-hood changes to get us on that track. Today, we're launching our first big visual and navigational change: a new iMore look and feel, along with a new website header.

The evolution of iMore

In the beginning, there was phone different — a site dedicated to giving our readers the latest and best news and tips coverage for iOS. As we found ourselves conquering iPhone and iPad, we wanted to expand our coverage, and became iMore — your place for all things iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple.

Now, it's come time for us to take that next step. Our iPhone and Mac world has widened beyond what Apple has to offer:

• Covering the latest Apple news and rumors now means following (and understanding) topics like politics, education, commercial zoning, the entertainment industry, privacy issues, and federal law
• More people than ever have entered the iOS and Mac ecosystem — and that means more people looking for help on base issues as well as more advanced ones
• Apple's Beats line of headphones and speakers means we're covering more audio technology than ever before
• Gaming titles like Pokémon Go and consoles like Nintendo Switch further blur the line for what mobile gaming has to offer
• With rumors that Apple will soon enter the AR/VR space, we may soon have to explore virtual reality

The old iMore structure and site isn't built to handle this, and we've struggled at times to help support our newer readers and provide great content for our core community. We believe there is a place for both, but these content types don't necessarily play well together; for a news junkie, the fifth article about Pokemon Go will be four articles too many — and we get it.

Just because we are expanding our Apple world doesn't mean you want to take part in everything that world has to offer, and we don't want to force readers who want expert analysis from Rene or Serenity to sift through six how-to articles to find it.

Starting today, we're beginning the process of refreshing our site to make it easier for you to find what you want to read amidst the growing technology ecosystem on iMore. We're doing that by refreshing the infrastructure of both our site, app, and forums, and a brand new iMore look and feel:

As of today, you'll see this new style appear on iMore.com as well as on our Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube channels. And in addition, we're rolling out the first piece of the new iMore.com website: a new header page, along with new navigational changes.

Previewing our new site

We're rolling out our new iMore site in pieces (more on that below), but here's a preview of what you'll get when we're all finished: Instead of one, unified roll of stories, we'll be providing readers with central hubs that cover the stories that matter to them. You'll be able to bookmark the sections you want to read; those will then become your customized home page and RSS feeds. Never want to see a how-to article again? You soon won't have to.

• Apple: This is where you'll find our core reporting and analysis from sources you trust like Rene, Serenity, Lory, Mikah, and more. If you want to keep up to date on the most important events and occurrences in the Apple world, here's the place you want to go. When our new site is completed, our Apple hub will focus entirely on news, analysis, reviews, and comparisons of Apple's products, business decisions, and cultural impact.
• Hubs: For those interested in how-tos, tips, and tricks on specific topics, we've broken down our non-analysis coverage into specific hubs like Apps and Games, Fitness, Home Automation, and more. You'll be able to visit these hubs to find device reviews and roundups, how-to content, and app coverage, and customize your home page to only show the bits you want to see.
• Destinations: Rather than create a new Buyers Guide or roundup every few months, we've built a single location for our most-often updated pages. When our rollout is complete, you'll be able to use these to check on the latest and best iPhone models, headphones, speakers, and more.

Every part of iMore's code base has undergone significant improvements; the site should load faster and perform better everywhere. Rogue ad units can still grind a page to a halt, but we now have considerably better oversight on finding those units and stopping them before they pose a nuisance to our site and our readers.

Our launch timeline

Many of the editorial decisions and underlying structural work for the new iMore have happened over the past six months, but starting today you'll see the first fruits from our visual and tech team. Rather than bombard you with an entirely new site, we're going to be launching our redesign in stages; it's a little bit messier, but it's also safer from both a tech and readership angle — we can get live feedback as we progress, and keep from accidentally breaking too many things in the process. Ideally, we're hoping to roll out all these changes over the next few months, so don't panic too much if you see a few bits of construction here and there.

This week, we're also rolling out a new iMore app that's faster, smarter, and offers a great support team behind it. We plan to constantly test and improve this app over time; if you have feedback, please send it our way!

Today, you'll see iMore's new styles and header; next on our timeline is our Destinations section, which will contain our new-and-improved Buyers Guides and Roundups; once we've rolled those out, we hope to launch the rest of the homepage and fully transition into the next generation of iMore.

Our readers and supporters are some of the best out there, and we genuinely hope that these changes and improvements will help everyone get what they love from iMore — whether that's expert analysis, how-to coverage, buyers guides and recommendations, or app reviews. And as always, we want to hear from you as we undergo this process: If you have thoughts or feelings about these changes, let us know. More on the way soon!

• Have thoughts about iMore 2017? Let us know in the forums!

Updated 1/27/17 for Snapchat's newest update.

While the zoom is used sparingly in Hollywood movies to convey drama, fear, and tension, the zoom on Snapchat is used to convey ridiculousness, creepiness, and hilarity. So how does this earth-shattering zoom change your life for the better? Let us tell you, Snapchat addicts. Check out our video or read on for five ways to use Snapchat's one-handed zoom!

1. Creep on friends easier

Who hasn't taken an unflattering Snap of a friend or coworker when they were least expecting it? Now you can do it sneakier and smoother with Snapchat's one-handed zoom!

2. Use your free hand for all the activities

Eat a cupcake, save a life, ride a scooter and more with your free hand. The possibilities for extra activities are endless (the only limitation is your imaaaaaagination).

3. Make your selfie videos even more uncomfortable

Sure, you could pull a Kylie Jenner and take a boring selfie Snapchat video for your millions of followers to see, or you could spice things up with an uncomfortable zoom! Show your followers what it's like to get up-close and personal with your beautiful face.

4. Smoothly zoom in on everything (no more awkward tapping!)

One benefit about the one-handed zoom is that there's no need for any more awkward tapping! Simply tap the recording button, and with your finger still touching the screen, hold and slide back and forth for an effortless zoom.

5. Create the best dramatic snaps you can

Turn your snapchat story into a drama that would rival 1920s detective movies, James Bond films, or dramatic horror scenes – get creative!

What will you use your one-handed zoom powers for?

Let us know what amazing things you can accomplish now that Snapchat lets you zoom with one hand!

The new year is here for us and for Apple. Let's take a look at where the company's strengths, weaknesses, and potential threats lie.

Strengths

There are few, if any, brands that carry the cachet of Apple's. The excitement that builds around every new product release makes other vendors weep. Apple's retail team is led by the same person who restored the Burberry brand from shlock to premium cachet. Apple's retail team is doing an amazing job to make sure Apple's brand never falters.

It sounds silly but one of the things that differentiates Apple is marketing. The marketing teams ability to create, hone, and communicate a clear message around products and strategies carries over to press, analysts, and of course, users.

Don't laugh just yet. Sure, 2016 might not have been perceived as the most innovative Apple year. That perception is wrong. Much depends on how you define "innovation". One of Apple's core skills has always been taking the commodity and making it special. The iPod was just a refined MP3 player. It also changed the course of music forever. We've seen that spirit alive and well this past year. AirPods, for example, are hardly the first wireless earbuds. They probably aren't even the best sounding. What they do is, through a powerful set of individual technologies, make the whole something special. From the magic of pairing them with an Apple device to the elegant carrying case to the simplicity of use, AirPods redefine that category. Innovation isn't always measured in feeds, speeds, or even UI. Sometimes innovation is just about the continued ability to surprise and delight.

Weaknesses

Services remain average to poor. Music has finally come into its own, but while perhaps matching competitors such as Spotify, it's hardly the leader in the market. Apple forums are filled with users, frustrated with issues related to synchronization across devices, often due to poor design choices. iWork lags behind competing services (especially for working across platforms). Cloud storage and synchronization have been usurped by services such as Dropbox, and Gmail is the de facto mail service for millions. While Apple execs have promised a greater emphasis on services (and service revenue), it's hard to see any Apple service that is best of breed. At the high end, pro applications have been recently panned as dumbed down (or in some cases just abandoned). Apple's decisions on services architectures, direction, and pricing all need review.

Opportunities

Apple has some great opportunities to make some strong inroads with the education market. New updates to iOS make iPad even more attractive to teachers. New tools for teaching principles of coding, creating interactive content, and an app ecosystem that's unparalleled are all tools Apple has at its disposal to recapture the mantle of "education brand".

Nope, Apple hasn't cracked it yet. The good news is that neither has anyone else. 2017 is a great year for Apple to break away from the pack and take a pole position in the living room. No vendor will cede this market to Apple, but Apple has the space to advance its platforms to take a market lead.

Threats

It's a no-brainer. Google is a huge threat to Apple's well-being. Google services are rapidly becoming de facto services for consumers, well beyond search. Google's ability to deliver Google services to iOS that are as good as, if not better than what's available on Android should be a huge concern. At the moment, Google could well be on track to co-opt many key services on iOS. It's only iOS lockdown of default service actions for things such as mail, maps, and browsing that's keeping Google at bay.

Google's own Pixel devices have received glowing reviews; in some cases the Pixel camera touted as superior to iPhone. Google's value add of free, unlimited, full resolution photo backup and storage is a perfect example of Google doing an end run around a place Apple should own. Google Music offers free upload and access of user libraries across multiple platforms. Apple charges $24.99 a year for the same service. Expect to see Google keep up the pressure throughout 2017 with new products such as Google Home and new WiFi devices (at a time when Apple is leaving that market).

This is not Microsoft from days of yore. A revitalized Microsoft brought new innovations in the form of HoloLens, a premiere VRg platform for the living room, and an updated Windows that's optimized for both PC and tablet form factors. New Surface Books offer more "pro" specs than the latest MacBooks. Surface Studio, while a premium product, demonstrated an ability to capture mindshare and aspiration. Apple ignoring Microsoft in 2017 would be a huge mistake.

Bottom line

2017 will be a pivotal year for Apple. Expectations are high for the next generation of iPhone, iPad, and Watch. Apple must convince the market that Mac is not just a hobby but a core part of the business, if not in revenue, then in resource allocation. The overall state of the Apple ecosystem remains strong, but as a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, Apple's ecosystem is only as strong as it's weakest product or service.

Not long after Apple announced the inclusion of Stickers in iOS 10, my colleague Rene Ritchie was asking us for headshots, reference photos, and selfies. He wanted to send an artist we'd commissioned all the necessary visuals to craft a sticker pack filled with reactions, sorta-kinda inside jokes, adorable laughing Georgia Dows, and even a facepalm (still waiting on that facepalm emoji)!

Animated iMore Goodness

First thing's first, here's where you'll find the iMore Sticker Pack:

• iMore Sticker Pack - Free - Download Now

I mean, what could be better than adorning your conversations with stickers of the iMore team? We'll answer that for you: Not a thing.

• Throw your friends some side eye with Rene Ritchie's "SRSLY?"
• Warn off your enemies with Georgia Dow's "Brace yourself."
• Skate away from awkward conversations with Serenity Caldwell's roller derby.
• Rock out with Lory Gil's guitar-wielding "rock!"
• Celebrate your friend's success with Mikah Sargent's "Yasssss!"
• Apologize profusely with Daniel Bader's "So sorry."

Plus loads more from members of the iMore team!

And here's the best part, folks: We aren't stopping just yet! We've got some surprises in the works, so don't forget to check for updates! I think Georgia Dow puts it best:

Brace yourself, indeed, Georgia. Brace yourself, indeed.

STICKERS!

Apart from the iMore Sticker Pack — which is obviously your new favorite — what are your other favorite, can't-live-without Sticker Packs? Give us a shout!

Cliquefie redefines the selfie stick. You know what I mean: Almost every selfie stick follows the same design: extendable metal arm, plastic handle or grip, a clamp to hold your phone, and not much else.

But what if you wanted to take a group shot and the stick wasn't long enough? What if you wanted to prop up your selfie stick and take a photo on a timer, only to have your device fall over because there's nothing to secure it? What if all your selfies are blurry because you struggle to balance your phone and hit the button at the same time? And what if your selfie stick is just… Ugly?

That's where Cliquefie comes in. It's the anti-selfie-stick selfie stick, and it's changing the selfie landscape for the better with the CliquefieMax and Mini (aka: a selfie stick that won't totally embarrass you when you whip it out in public).

CliquefieMax

• Style
• Features
• Design
• The Bottom Line

Take everything you know about the selfie stick and amplify its coolness, practicality, and overall appearance, and you get the Cliquefie.

The device in black resembles a baton of sorts, but extends to nearly 30 inches once it's opened up, and compacts to 10 inches when closed. Unlike most selfie sticks, the CliquefieMax can be compacted into a convenient, easy to carry stick without any loose wires or parts, so you don't have to worry about any parts breaking off in your bag like cheaper selfie sticks.

One thing that makes the CliquefieMax stand out from other regular selfie sticks are the plethora of features the little device has. It's definitely not your momma's selfie stick, that's for sure!

Besides being easy to condense down for portability and storage, and besides having a clamp that extends to 5.5 inches to fit bigger phones and cases, the Cliquefie comes with a wireless remote shutter that's embedded directly into the handle of the stick and secured with magnets. This is the perfect tool if you have shaky hands, or if you're holding the selfie stick up at an awkward angle and can't hit the button on the handle.

The best part about the shutter is that it works with Bluetooth, so you don't have to download any pesky apps (plus it works with apps like Snapchat flawlessly!) and you can shoot your photos from a distance of over 10 meters away.

The remote shutter is also great for big group shots, but what if not everyone can fit in the photo? Sure, you could prop up your Cliquefie (the base is flat and it stays balanced on most surfaces), or you could extend their one-click tripod! Retractable and easy to pull out for wide shots or taking long video, the Cliquefie's tripod pops out the bottom of the stick and can be extended depending on how high you want your phone for extra stability.

There's only one word that properly describes Cliquefie's design: Minimalist. The sticks are all one solid color, and there aren't any exposed wires or brightly colored handles to junk up the device. The CliquefieMax comes in white, black, or raspberry rose pink, so you can customize your Cliquefie to suit your personal style.

Similar to most selfie sticks, the Cliquefie weighs only seven ounces, and coupled with its minimalist, sleek design, makes it the perfect little tool to carry around without looking like a moron. If anything, people will stop and ask you where you got your Cliquefie!

Throw away your old selfie stick and pick up a CliquefieMax ASAP.

See at CliqueFie

Cliquefie Mini

• Style
• Features
• Design
• The Bottom Line

Similar to the CliquefieMax, the Mini works with the same sleek style but without all the bells and whistles.

Only nine inches tall and one inch in diameter, the CliqueFieMini is small enough to fit in most purses and bags, while still extending to nearly 30 inches with its maximum strength polarised stainless steel pole for full phone support.

Tiny, compact, and inconspicuous, the Mini is perfect for taking selfies at any angle.

While not as fancy as the larger model, the Mini still comes with a shutter remote with a range of up to 10 meters. The CliquefieMini doesn't come with an extendable tripod, but it does come with a standard sized tripod thread at the bottom so you can fasten it to most tripod types, and the grip that secures your phone is tough enough to stretch to 5.2 inches to fit even the bulkiest phone cases.

The CliquefieMini also comes with a clear looking strap that resembles an infinity symbol or the number "8." This is used to extra-secure your cellphone to the Cliquefie, so it doesn't fall off while shooting. Though it seems silly, the strap provides a ton of extra support and security and you can shake your Cliquefie around quite a bit with a decent amount of force without it budging.

The only bummer is that the Mini doesn't have a convenient little slot on the handle to store your remote, so you have to keep track of the remote separately if you take it out and about.

The CliquefieMini comes in a ton of fun colors, including blue, aqua-green, yellow, pink, black, and white, and when you get the device, you actually get a little card that shows you a couple of cute color pairing gift ideas that the CliquefieMini would be perfect for.

The overall design of the Mini is almost identical to the Max, but without the additional bulk, the slot for the remote shutter, or the tripod, making it a little bit lighter at around five ounces.

While just as awesome as the CliquefieMax, the Mini's abilities seem closer related to a selfie stick. If you want a device that goes above and beyond the call of duty, then you should consider the CliquefieMax.

See at CliqueFie

WWDC 2016 has come and gone without so much as a mention of a Dark Mode or Night Theme for iOS 10. For those who'd been hoping for one, the closest we got was the new Dark Mode for tvOS 10. And, obviously, that's fine for our televisions but not so much of our iPhones and iPads.

There have been some dark interface chunks found in the iOS 10 pre-release seed, leading some to hope that we might see more in future betas. But it's better not to confuse remnants with release plans.

Instead, I'm interested to know how many of you actually want a Dark Mode in iOS 10? How many would prefer something less bright, be it as a night theme or an all-day thing?

I've been asking for a dark mode for year and, if you have access, the request can be found at rdar://19760524 (closed as a dupe of rdar://11786790). Now, I'd like to know what you think. Please vote in the poll above and expand on your thoughts in the comments below.

On Wednesday June 1, Justin Bieber posted a cartoon version of himself to his 70 million Instagram followers with the caption "Friday". While this could mean a billion things, a lot of people have been speculating that he is the latest celebrity coming out with their own Emoji keyboard.

It's not news that people are obsessed with Emoji. According to research from eMarketer, there are 2 billion smartphone users worldwide, and on those devices, around 6 billion Emoji are sent Every. Single. Day. That's almost the entire population of Earth sent in Emoji form on a day to day basis!

But for celebrities like Charlie Sheen and Rick Ross, Emoji are much more than silly little faces or tiny cartoon tigers and pears – they're a business. In an interview with USA, Moji Inc. founder Oliver Camilo, who has worked on designing Emoji-specific keyboards with Fetty Wap and Amber Rose, says celebrities can make a ton of money from releasing their own 'moji keyboards.

Since Kim Kardashian (aka the queen of the internet aka the person you love to hate) pioneered the way for celebrities to weave their way into Emoji culture, celebrities of all sorts (rappers, internet celebs, singers, and more) have started to design and put together their own Emoji packs for their fans. While some can be downloaded independently, the majority of them are actually part of Moji Keyboard, an app that's home to a number of celebrities with their own Emoji designs. The app is free to download, but some celebrity Emoji packs may cost you.

We compiled a few celebs who have their own Emoji keyboards for you to check out down below, but is there a celebrity that you'd kill to have develop their own Emoji? Or do you think big stars coming out with Emoji is just plain stupid?

• Kim Kardashian - Kimoji
• Amber Rose - MuvaMoji
• Kanye West - YEmoji
• Future - Future Emoji
• Blac Chyna - Chymoji
• Charlie Sheen - Sheenoji
• Ariana Grande - Ari by Ariana Grande
• Wiz Khalifa - WIZmoji
• Fetty Wap - FettyWap Emoji
• Steph Curry - StephMoji
• Martin Solveig - MartinSolveigEmoji
• The Game - The Game Emoji
• Austin Mahone - Austin Mahone Emoji
• Princess Pia Mia - Pia Mia Emoji
• Zeds Dead - ZedsDead Emoji
• Lil Dicky - LilDicky Emoji
• DJ Snake - DJSnake
• Rick Ross - RickRoss Emoji
• Shaun T - Fitmoji
• Violet Benson aka Daddy Issues - Slaymoji
• Dennis Graham - DennisGraham Emoji
• ASAP Ferg - ASAPFerg
• Carnage - CarnageEmoji
• Logic - LogicEmoji
• ILoveMakonnen - ILoveMakonnenEmoji
• Bro Safari - BroSafariEmoji
• Big Gigantic - BigGiganticEmoji
• G-Eazy - G-EazyEmoji
• Yogi Berra - YojiBerraEmoji
• Snails - SnailsEmoji

In 2014, Sam and Luke, design students from New York City, decided to create a board game (of sorts) that embraces technology rather than shun it, and after a widely successful Kickstarter campaign, Game of Phones was born.

What is Game of Phones exactly?

Think Cards Against Humanity, but with a lot more cellphones (and potentially a lot less vulgarity).

You and your friends use your phones to answer questions that the designated question master asks; the question master changes every round. Questions range from stuff like, "find something underwhelming, be creative!" or "most unread text messages win" or "find the best selfie" or "find the best niche Tumblr".

How do we play?

First, the question master picks a card and shows it to the entire group. Then everyone finds a response to the question on their cellphones and shows the person who picked the card. The question master who picked the original card then judges all the answers, and picks the winner of that round.

When the round is finished, everyone grabs their phones, and the next person draws their card – easy peasy!

Cool! So do I need anything else besides my cellphone?

You need at least 2 friends to play the game, but you can have up to as many people as you can fit around your table. Don't worry about blowing through the game too quickly, either. Game of Phones comes with over 100 prompts in a single deck (but infinite possibilities!)

Seems simple enough… Are there any rules?

From the Game of Phones site:

• We suggest the oldest player draws the first card. (They're probably at a disadvantage).
• The player drawing the card is the judge for that turn.
• Each turn is 60 seconds and the judge is responsible for keeping time.
• The judge cannot play in the turn and awards the card to the player with the best response.
• The person to the left of the judge picks the next card and becomes the judge of that turn.
• Repeat until someone has collected 10 cards to win the game.
• If a player can't or won't play a turn they can spectate (though they risk falling behind).
• Play continues if a notification card is drawn. The judge awards the card to the first person that can show they received the relevant notification.

Where can I pick up my own Game of Phones?

You can either order it right off the Game of Phones site or Photojojo.

No, it's not the Australian tool that comes whipping back to you when you chuck it, and no, it's not the Gmail email scheduling app, and no, it's not Cartoon Network's channel that shows re-runs from old cartoons.

Boomerang is a fairly new app from social media giant Instagram that breaks the boundaries on what social media content is supposed to be. How? Well to quote Instagram, "It's not a photo. It's not a gif. It's a Boomerang."

Boomerang works by taking a super short, super fast burst of photos and stitching them together into a mini video that plays forward and backward and forward and backward and—well, you get the idea.

The app first picked up speed with social media influencers (like the Jenner sisters) and has even encouraged some friendly competition amongst other popular photo-editing apps. VCSO, an app aimed at photo editing for more serious iPhoneographers, recently unveiled DSCO, "a free GIF-making app designed with VSCO's superior imaging technology."

• Free - Download now

I've already shown you folks what I'm currently using on my iPhone 6, so next up is my iPad Air 2. Since I use my iPad differently than I use my iPhone, I don't organize it the same way. For that matter, I don't even have the same apps on both devices. I know some folks are driven nuts by a lack of consistency, but this is one place where I deem it acceptable. Why? Read on for a look at the apps I'm currently rocking on my iPad Air 2.

• Wallpaper - I change my wallpaper quite often on my iPad. The one I'm currently rocking is an amazing image I found on Google of Westminster and Big Ben. Nine times out of ten, my wallpapers are either my own travel photos or images of places I enjoy visiting. Whether it's a landscape picture or great architecture, I love it all. I picked this image because London is one of my favorite cities and I can't wait to go back this winter.
• Dock - Only my most important apps get a position in the dock. Most of these positions go to stock apps, including Messages, FaceTime, Mail, Safari, and Music. The only spot in my dock that's occupied by a non-stock app is Fantastical 2 and that's simply because it's much more valuable to me than the default Calendar app. Once you've used it, you'll understand why it's such a wonderful replacement not only for the Calendar app, but the Reminders app as well.
• Photos, Camera, Clock, and Contacts - As with my iPhone, I haven't moved these icons around in as long as I can remember, and it just feels wrong to. That being said, I rarely, if ever, take photos with my iPad unless I'm in a complete and utter pinch. Anyone who listens to the iMore podcast is already aware of my stance on iPad photography. I'm not a fan. I'm just not sure why I can't bring myself to hide the app entirely.
• App Store, iTunes, Videos - My next row of icons contains the App Store and iTunes. Like the above icons, this is mainly because they've been in these spaces since I got my first iPad; no real reason other than muscle memory. As for Videos, I consume a lot more media on my iPad than I do on my iPhone, so this app gets a front spot. My Music app is also in the dock on my iPad since I use it more than I do on my iPhone. Though that does leave a spot in my second row open...
• 1Password - This is one of the apps I use most and can't live without. If I'm restoring a device as new, it's one of the first apps I re-download. I have tons of passwords to manage between my personal accounts and iMore; I also randomly generate many of them for extra security. I'll never remember them all so I rely completely on 1Password to do it for me.
• Chase Bank - Nothing really spectacular to say here. Whenever I'm paying bills or checking finances, I typically do it from my tablet. On my iPhone, this app is in a folder, but here on my iPad, Chase gets a spot on my first Home page.
• Reeder 2 - Reeder 2 has been one of my go-to RSS apps for ages. It's simple and does what I need it to without confusing tile or magazine views. However, I've had a love/hate relationship with it since its bigger updates are few and far between. Unread for iPad just came out, and I think I may be replacing Reeder 2 on my home screen with it. I've already done so on my iPhone and haven't looked back. I'm willing to hear what you guys think about that in the comments, of course!
• Pocket - When I don't have time to read an article or story, I send it to Pocket. This is also where I keep tweets and any other content tied to a URL that I want to keep track of. I think Instapaper is a great service, but Pocket better suits my taste in design and usability.
• Settings - I've never been okay with putting the Settings app in a folder. I'm fiddling with things far too often for that. While it may get shuffled around from time to time, it always remains a constant on my first Home screen.
• Social folder - My social folder consists of all the important social apps I use on a regular basis. This includes usual suspects such as Facebook, Pinterest, Skype, Google Hangouts, and others. For Twitter, I don't use the stock Twitter app; instead, I much prefer the beautiful experience Twitterrific 5 offers. If you haven't used it, it's a must-have app on the iPad.
• iMore folder - This folder contains all the apps I use on a regular basis for work. First and foremost is Slack, which we use for work chat (and for me to spam Rene or Peter with doge memes when appropriate). We use Trello for planning and content management; I've also used it for my own organization and planning purposes, and it's awesome. One app I couldn't do without is Screens VNC, which allows remote access to your connected computers. I can't tell you how many times I've accidentally saved something on one computer and needed to access it after I've left the house. Screens has saved the day more than once. Other work apps include Dropbox, Evernote, and a few others that I use for personal organization.
• Games - I play more games on my iPad than on my iPhone, so I have quite a few stored on my tablet. Duolingo is half-game, half-education app. If you want to learn a new language in a fun way, this is the app you want. Smash Hit is another one of my favorites and lets you endlessly smash glass with marbles. Get as far as you can before you run out of balls. What's not fun about smashing things?! Threes! and Monument Valley are constants — games I can play over and over — along with Dots. I prefer the original over the sequel, though I play both.
• Media - This folder contains streaming services, home audio apps, and other things that fall under the general realm of consumable media. My go-to streaming apps are Rdio and Pandora; I'm constantly using them in conjunction with my Sonos system, for which I use the Sonos Controller app. I also use the Remote app to control the few Apple TVs we have scattered around our condo. I rely on TeeVee 3 to let me know when my shows are playing and what episodes are coming up. They even have a fancy Today Widget so you can access your shows in a single swipe via Notification Center.
• Travel - I love to travel and have about 10 pages of travel apps, with the most important ones on the first page. American Airlines is our airline of choice. We use Airbnb to book apartments, flats, and houses all over the world with very little effort — not to mention it's a heck of a lot more comfortable and less cramped than staying in boring hotels all the time. I also use Foursquare to find local spots to check out. I know some people hate the new design, but I still find lots of good information so I'll continue to use it for now. Google Maps is essential for transit directions, while I prefer Apple Maps for driving. Find My iPhone also gets a prime spot in case a device goes missing during our adventures. Dark Sky is my favorite weather app across the board and gives scary-accurate precipitation forecasts down to the minute.
• Photography - My photography folder is stuffed with cool filter and editing apps. In that folder, my must-have apps include Lightroom, Pixelmator, and Afterlight. These get the most use; I have a bunch of others that are great, but only get used on occasion.
• Entertainment - My entertainment folder is mainly comprised of streaming apps, including Netflix, Hulu Plus, YouTube, and a few others. I also added apps like Fandango, which looks up movie tickets and trailers. Everything else is pretty much what you'd expect to find in an entertainment folder mainly meant to pass time.
• Second screen - My iPad's second Home screen is pretty uninteresting, and doesn't contain near as much as the second screen of my iPhone. I use these apps often enough to warrant them being on my device, but they aren't used enough to get a spot on the first page. I mainly use Spotlight search these days, so if something doesn't fit in the first page, it gets stuck in a folder on the second page and searched for later.

If you have any questions about what I'm using or have a suggestion for an app that's better, I'd love to hear from you! Be sure to let me know in the comments.

• What's on our iPhones, iPads, desks, and more!

Much like Rene, I keep my iPhone pretty much bone-stock on its first Home screen. I do this because I've reset it frequently enough that I just can't be bothered to spend a lot of time customizing it, and like Rene, I use it occasionally for product shots when reviewing stuff at iMore and want it looking as fresh-out-of-the-box as possible.

I don't like a lot of messy app clutter on my iPhone's Home screens. I pretty compulsively find places to put apps I've downloaded, because I don't want to have to flip through pages finding what I'm looking for. My most frequently used apps I access by just double-pressing the Home button and flipping through pages until I find what I'm looking for. Everything else has its place.

• Wallpaper: Stock. I like the wintery nighttime sky.
• Utilities: This started out as the "Extras" folder Apple includes with iOS, so it has Contacts, Calculator, Compass and Voice Memos. I've also added Find My Friends, Xfinity Connect, Ookla Speedtest and a few other utilities I use sporadically.
• Games: contains only the games I play most frequently. Lately I've been enjoying Puzzlejuice (a Tetris-style word game from the maker of Threes), Color Zen, Lyne and Hay Day. Mostly I play Hay Day. It's like Farmville. Don't judge.
• Passbook apps: For reasons I don't remember, I've put all the Passbook-compatible apps in a single folder. I use this to track my Discover card balance, Walgreens, Fandango (which I use for movie tickets), Starbucks, and a few other Passbook-related apps that I actually use pretty frequently.
• Social: Here's where I keep the apps I use to stay in touch when I'm away from my Mac. Echofon Pro is my Twitter client of choice. I also keep Skype, Facebook, LinkedIn, Vine, and a few other apps nearby.
• Travel: Here's where I keep map apps including Transit (helpful for finding public transportation schedules in most big U.S. cities) and Google Maps. I fly JetBlue occasionally so I put the boarding pass app in here, along with the Uber app, and Guidebook (which I use for some tradeshows and sci-fi/anime conventions).
• Photography: I use an Olloclip with my iPhone 6 to take macro and wide-angle shots, and the Olloclip app helps correct some of the weird aberrations that can occur with those photos. This is where I keep iPhoto, too. It doesn't work with iOS 8 anymore, but I keep it around to remind me of the really stupid things Apple does sometimes, like discontinuing iPhoto for iOS without giving users an easy way of recovering all the content they produce with it. Scanner Pro from Readdle is an excellent document scanning tool. Instagram is here, along with Big Lens (which can fake bokeh pretty well), Diddeo (a video editing tool that makes it easy to make short clips with music), and Union (a masking and blending app).
• Entertainment: Spotify, Shazam, Beats Music, Amazon Music, and a really cool music creation app called Bandojo reside in this folder.
• Payment Tools: I have a few apps in here that aren't necessarily Passbook-related but I need them for online payments, like SmartPay, which I use to get gas discounts at Cumberland Farms filling stations; Domino's Pizza, sadly the only pizza place in my area that delivers; T-Mobile's My Account app; and a few others.
• Lifestyle: I admit this has become kind of a catch-all for stuff I've been too lazy to put elsewhere. Nike+ Move and MyFitnessPal live here, along with (inexplicably) iBooks and iTunes U, as well as Pocket, which I've been ignoring lately. (Sorry, Pocket.) I also keep NFL Mobile in there this time of year so I can keep track of my beloved New England Patriots when I'm away from the TV.
• iMore: A few crucial utilities for my job: Trello, which we use for assignment management; Slack, our interoffice communication tool of choice; and the iMore app itself, of course.
• Productivity: In this folder I keep Apple's iWork apps — Pages, Numbers, and Keynote — along with [Google Docs],(https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/keynote/id361285480?mt=8&at=10l3Vy&ct=d_im){.nofollow} Microsoft Office (Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

I have a 64 GB iPhone, and while I don't have a ton of apps, I do store quite a bit of media. In particular, I have thousands of music files I've downloaded. While I stream quite frequently when I'm out and about, I still find myself in areas with spotty reception. So I usually keep my "Recently Added" playlist refreshed and downloaded, very rarely (if ever) taking those tunes off, which makes my music library keep building and building. Eventually I'll have to clear it out, but I'm still dozens of GB away from that point right now.

I don't use all of these apps evenly. Of all of them, I rely on social networking apps, my iMore communication tools, the Camera app, and iTunes most frequently.

Interested in what my colleagues are using? Check out their iPhone Home screens. And if you have any questions about what I'm using or recommendations for apps that you think are better than what I have, lay them on me!

• What everyone else at iMore is using right now!

Following on from other members of the iMore team, it's my turn again to talk about what I'm using on my new iPhone 6. Moving up from the 5s I decided to start afresh, no iCloud restores, just setting up as a new phone and downloading apps as and when I decided that I needed them. My 5s had become unwieldy. Far too many apps installed that I just wasn't using. So I used the upgrade to trim the fat and what's on there now is pretty much what I'm actually, regularly using.

Read on and I'll take you through it.

The wallpaper is one of Apple's own, stock offerings. It's the white mountain scene. Since this year I managed to get the gold and white iPhone 6, I wanted a light background to go with the white front.

• Stock apps: Some of the stock iOS 8 apps remain on my main homescreen, but only the ones I actually use. It's not particularly exciting but I keep Messages, Calendar, Photos, Camera, Settings, Clock, Notes, Reminders, App Store and Passbook on the first screen.
• Hue: I recently acquired a Philips Hue system and while my house is far from completely kitted out, I do have some in what I call my office. I've got a Hue Tap at my desk, too, but the Hue app is still an essential. You can't set your lights up without it!
• Apple Remote: I use this almost exclusively to control my Apple TV. I think it's a much preferrable experience, namely scrolling and typing to search with an actual keyboard. And since I use my Apple TV most days, I use this app a lot.
• Google+ and Twitter:Google+ is still my preferred social network closely followed by Twitter. Since there aren't any third-party apps for Google+ I'm stuck with Googles. I'm using the official Twitter app again (for my sins) and while I don't particularly like it, it still shows me things other clients won't.
• iMore: Because, it's the iMore app! And it looks great on the iPhone 6.
• Yahoo Weather: The best weather app there is in my opinion. Those Flickr sourced photos are just so nice to look at and with data from Weather Underground it's usually accurate, too. I'm constantly looking at the weather just to have an excuse to open this app.
• Yahoo News Digest: Another daily staple from Yahoo. I like to keep up with the news but I don't like to spend much time doing it. This app covers both bases with two updates a day curating the most important news stories. And it's such a nicely done app, too.
• mSecure: I chose mSecure initially because it better supported Android as well as iOS and Mac. And I stand by that. 1Password is now better on Android, but I'm invested in mSecure as my password manager and so I'll be sticking with it.
• Instashare: AirDrop between Mac and iOS just doesn't seem reliable enough to me right now. So to that end I'm still using Instashare which is fast, fast, fast and hasn't put a foot wrong in all the time I've used it.
• Instagram: We all know Instagram. I spend too much time looking through it as it is. That's probably why it's on my main screen. At least it now looks good on the iPhone 6.
• Authy: If you use two-step authentication on any number of accounts online, I can't recommend Authy enough. It allows you to sync your authenticator tokens across devices, including your Mac, so you've got them everywhere. And it's cross platform. With Google Authenticator I had to have one device only activated, which was a real pain. With Authy I've got multiple Android devices, my iPhone, iPad and Mac all hooked up so I'll never need to worry about it again.
• Media Apps: I consume a lot of media content on my iPhone, and there's a bunch of different apps I use to do that. Netflix, Google Play Music, Plex, BBC iPlayer, Amazon Music and Blinkbox Music all have a home on my iPhone. I'm a mess when it comes to music, no-one service or device holds it all, so I'm frequently between apps. My podcast app of choice is Shifty Jelly's excellent Pocket Casts which allows me to sync between iOS and Android as well as now having an excellent web player. That and it's just an awesome app. I've also got the YouTube app in there. I wouldn't say I like it, as such, but I like it more than using the browser like an animal.
• Work Apps: I've really reined in the apps I'm using on a daily basis to help in my work because like the rest of my iPhone, it was a mess. The essentials are there: Slack, our inter-team communication tool, Trello, our editorial planning tool, and Chartbeat, a service that helps keep track of real time traffic hitting the sites. These are supplimented by Skype and Hangouts, both of which we use to actually talk to each other, and Feedly which hosts my insane amount of RSS feeds. Though thanks to our newsroom team, I don't need to look at that nearly as often as this time last year. I've also got Dropbox which is an absolute necessity (to the point I'm paying for 1TB) and Vesper which I do still use to capture any random thoughts and notes. It's just nicer than the iOS Notes app (which I should probably bump off the main screen, right?) I'm still a heavy Byword user, too. I do all my longer writing pieces in it instead of trusting it to our CMS and with Markdown support and iCloud syncing, all my work is where I need it all the time.
• Photography Apps: Nowhere near as many as I used to have, but I still keep my favorites on my main home screen. VSCO Cam and Camera Noir are old favorites, as is Snapseed. But joining them now are the excellent Storehouse and Google's Photosphere app. Granted, more often that not I just use the stock camera app, but sometime I try to be creative. Try being the word.
• On my dock: The Phone app, because I still call people quite a lot. It is a phone, right? Also down there are the Safari and Music apps and the new Google Inbox application. I managed to get into Inbox on the first day – and please, don't go posting your email addresses in the comments, I have no invites left and you don't want to do that, anyway – and so I'm going all in on it to see if it works for me. It doesn't work with Google Apps accounts so I also still have the Gmail app elsewhere on my phone to get all my work correspondence. Not ideal, but it's where I'm at.
• Other favorites: There are a few apps that are as important as those above but that space wouldn't allow for. For example, I have the BT BabyAudio application which while absolutely stuck in an iOS 6 world, will allow me to use my iPhone to listen to the baby monitor in the nursery upstairs when my baby arrives. And I still think it's pretty awesome that we can do such things. Xbox One Smartglass is an excellent way to interact with the console without actually being in front of it.

So, that's the main collection of apps on my iPhone. There are also a bunch of others I use often such as Starbucks, British Airways, and I've just started using Medium, too. I haven't gotten into much gaming yet with the iPhone 6, but I am enjoying Beach Buggy Racing at the moment.

Be sure to share your own favorite apps with us in the comments below!

My gold 64GB iPhone 6 is my daily driver and goes pretty much wherever I go. I'll start this off by saying that if you ask anyone that knows me personally, or even some of my colleagues, they'll all tell you that I'm a little over compulsive about being organized. At times, annoyingly so. And you probably could have guessed, my iPhone 6 is certainly no exception...

• Wallpaper - I change my wallpaper compulsively and since it's fall, I have a random leave image I found on Google images. I get lots of questions about my wallpapers from readers all the time and my typical answer is, "Google search fall leaves iPhone wallpaper", because that's all I do.
• Dock - In my dock I have four stock apps that I use most often — Phone, Messages, Mail, and Safari. I used to use Mailbox as my default Mail app but I've been giving the iOS 8 Mail app a try since early betas and so far, it's kept me pretty happy.
• Camera, Photos, and Clock - As long as I can remember, these three apps have always been in these positions on my iPhone. It just seems wrong to put them anywhere else.
• Fantastical 2 - I've been using Fantastical since it was available for iOS and I couldn't imagine using any other app for my calendar and reminders. It's simple, elegant, and has one of the most responsive developers you'll ever meet.
• App Store, iTunes, Music, Passbook - The second row on my iPhone houses a few more stock apps that I use on a regular basis. App Store and iTunes are a given. I use the Music app for iTunes Radio more than anything else. As for Passbook, it's in a location where my right thumb can easily tap. I use Passbook for everything from buying a cup of coffee at Starbucks to boarding a plane and redeeming movie theater rewards. With Apple Pay coming soon, I have a feeling Passbook is going to be even more indispensable to me.
• Weather Line - I've been using Weather Line as my main weather app for almost a year now. I love the layout and simplicity of it. I've also always found historical weather data to be helpful and Weather Line does a great job of showing daily, monthly, and yearly averages in a meaningful way that just makes sense. I've also become convinced that Dark Sky is one of the most reliable forms of information when it comes to rain and Weather Line pulls straight from it. I've never liked the Dark Sky app layout so this gives me the best of both worlds.
• iMore - Did you really expect anything less?
• Newsify - This spot on my Home screen had previously been occupied for years by [Reeder](but was recently ousted as it hasn't been updated for the iPhone 6 just yet. Even so, I'm skeptical as to whether or not I'll switch back. I've really been liking Newsify and how much customization it really does allow. Want to casually browse news? Check out the magazine style view. Want to quickly triage your feeds? Just toggle to list view in two taps.
• Tweetbot - If I had to choose one app that I use more than any other, it'd be a tie between Fantastical 2 and Tweetbot. When it comes to Twitter on iOS, there's no better experience than Tweetbot, at least on the iPhone. With a beautiful interface and a feature set that'll make your jaw drop, it sets the mark for every other Twitter app in the App Store.
• Facebook - It's a necessary evil. Not one that I particularly care for but one that I tolerate.
• Instagram - I love taking photos and I've been using Instagram since it launched. From posting my own photos to checking out #doge and #instashibe hashtags, there isn't really anything you can't find on Instagram photo wise.
• Settings - The Settings app has always been the very last icon before the endless barrage of folders start. It's varied in position a few times but is always the last single icon not contained in a folder.
• Faves folder - My favorites folder contains apps that I use fairly regularly but don't feel need to be on my actual Home screen within one tap access. A few highlights that I can't live without include BillGuard for tracking and monitoring my financial accounts, Acorns for small savings investments, 1Password to remember all the password things, and a few news apps including Pocket.
• iMore folder - All of these apps are ones I need to do my job here at iMore everyday. We use Slack for group chat, Trello to plan content and stay organized, Skype for quick calls when needed, Screens for remote logging in to all the things when away from the office, and a few others that involve tracking analytics, beta testing, and just plain getting the job done.
• Social folder - This folder is only one page, all of which you can see. There aren't any surprises here really but if I had to pick my most used social app in this folder, it would have to be Foursquare, which is indispensable to me while traveling.
• Travel folder - Last year my girlfriend and I promised each other we'd make more time for travel and so far, we've made good on that promise. We recently started using Airbnb rather regularly, and we typically fly American Airlines which has a great app including widget support for boarding passes in iOS 8. Tube Deluxe also gets a place next to Google Maps and Apple Maps since it's one of the best Underground apps I've found. So if you're in London, be sure to give it a try. The rest of my travel folder is filled with a plethora of currency conversion, transit, and translation apps.
• Media folder - This is where pretty much all my media lives from my Sonos Controller app to control our home audio system to all my music streaming services. My three most used are Rdio and Spotify while on the go while Pandora typically reigns supreme when I'm working during the day. I also have TeeVee 3 in my media folder since it's hands down the best app available where tv episode guides are concerned. It even offers a nifty Notification Center widget that shows an overview of all your upcoming shows for the week.
• Entertainment folder - This folder is pretty predictable and basically contains anything from video streaming apps such as Netflix to ESPN SportsCenter. I've also got a few podcast apps including Overcast loaded up.
• Photo folder - This folder currently runs almost 6 pages long and contains a plethora of photo editing and filter apps that I use. Most of which offer great photo extensions in iOS 8 for the Photos app. The most notable ones that I use regularly include Storehouse and Lightroom. I use a lot of the filter and basic editing apps via the Photos app now, so I don't really care what page of the Photo folder they fall on anymore.
• Games folder - No iPhone Home screen is complete without a few games! I have about 7 pages of games on my iPhone and my most played ones get a first page spot. They include Threes!, TwoDots, the original Dots, Smash Hit, Monument Valley, and several others.
• Blank space - I don't know if it's my OCD or what, but I've always felt wrong completely filling my iPhone Home screen. As long as I can remember, I've always left one blank space. And as you can see, it's a habit that's carried with me for several years.
• Second page - My second page consists of all the rest of my apps that I don't use regularly or really only need to see notifications for. Everything from financial apps to productivity apps and back again. Some of these are also there because I review apps as part of my job, so I like to stay informed of updates on popular ones, whether I use them regularly or not.

And that pretty much wraps up what I'm currently using on my iPhone 6. Only two pages but those two pages are packed with apps and games that I use on a regular basis.

Everyone here at iMore will be telling you in the coming weeks what they have on their iPhone 6 or 6 Plus, so be sure you check out our What iMore's Using page regularly for all the updates!

And as always, if you have any questions about apps I'm using, feel free to let me know in the comments! And if you've found an app that you think is better than what I'm currently using, I of course want to know that too!

• What everyone else at iMore is using right now!

I like to use my iOS devices as extensions of each other. The Home screen of my retina iPad mini in many ways mirrors the one on my iPhone because these are the apps that I want to have access to no matter which screen I'm using. I use one of Apple's iOS 7 wallpapers, and I keep only a few of Apple's stock apps on my screen, but they are the ones I use constantly.

• Wallpaper: While I change my wallpaper frequently, my current favorite is iPad variant of the Seas by Louie Mantia, and you can find this and more like it over on his website.
• Fantastical: I was so happy when Fantastical came to iPad back in April. Flexibits did a great job in turning Fantastical into a full-fledged iPad app. The iPad is the tool I use for scheduling, and Fantastical makes it easier than it's ever been. $14.99 - Download Now
• Youtube: I find that a lot of the video watching that I used to do on a laptop now takes place on the iPad. That includes a lot of YouTube videos. Just as I do on my phone, I make use of AiRPlay to send videos from my iPad to my Apple TV. Free - Download Now
• Dark Sky: - Dark Sky replaced The Weather Channel as my go-to weather app on the iPad. It makes good use of the screen real estate of the iPad, confining the three different weather readouts to one screen as oppsed to three on the iPhone. $3.99 - Download Now
• Editorial: I write mostly on my Mac, but every now and then I like to get some work done on my iPad. Editorial is the best text editor for iPad that I've used, bar none. It supports Markdown, supports Dropbox exactly how I need it to (you'd be surprised how hard that is to find), and features TextExpander support. The workflows you can build turn Editorial into a mobile blogging powerhouse. $6.99 - Download Now
• Simplenote: Simplenote is for in-depth notes that I need to be able to access on my iPhone, iPad, and Mac. The syncing is easy to set up and very fast and reliable. Free - Download Now
• Facebook: I don't make as much use of Facebook for iPad as its place on my Home screen would suggest, but it's good to have there when I just want to browse through Facebook on my downtime. Free - Download Now
• Tweetbot: Tapbots hasn't released an iOS 7-style refresh of Tweetbot for iPad as they have on the iPhone, but Tweetbot remains my iPad Twitter client of choice none the less. While the asthetics are outdated, the functionality is not. I have yet to find a Twitter client that meets my needs quite like Tweetbot. $2.99 - Download Now
• Tumblr: Tumblr's official app is just as fun to use on the iPad as it is on the iPhone. Searching through popular and recent posts in tags is easy, and the number of apps and services that Tumblr can connect to gives me a number of sharing options beyond the standard iOS set. Free - Download Now
• Instapaper: This app has been one of my favorites since before the iPad. Instapaper has been my go-to read-it-later service for years now. $3.99 - Download Now
• Audible: As with Pocket Casts, i find the iPad version of Audible useful when I need to charge my phone or listen to audiobooks through a speaker. Free - Download Now
• 1Password: My password manager of choice on my iPhone, iPad, and Mac. I have a lot of accounts, and I use the app's password generator to create new passwords that are unique, complex, and secure. Because I've started using more complicated passwords, I keep 1Password on my Home screen to quickly access them when I need them. It's especially useful when I need my complex passwords in apps, where iCloud Keychain doesn't work. $17.99 - Download Now.
• iBooks: I mostly read books on my Kindle Paperwhite, but every now and then I purchase something from the iBookstore. I also use iBooks to read and organize my gaming-related PDFs and any user guides I might have. Free - Download Now
• Launch Center Pro: If I'm creating something on my iPad, Launch Center Pro is usually how I get it started. While the iPhone app mostly facilitates communication and scheduling, on the iPad Launch Center is my go-to to start documents, launch bookmarks, and open entertainment apps. $4.99 - Download Now
• Beats Music: This is my streaming music service of choice. I prefer the curation features to those of other services, and I think that it does music organization the best of all of the services that I've tried. Free - Download Now
• Pocket Casts: I actually use the iPad version of Pocket Casts frequently. I find it especially useful when I wish to listen to new podcast episodes through a speaker and the battery on my iPhone has worn down. $3.99 - Download Now
• Mailbox: I complete the same sorts of tasks on multiple devices, and I like to use the same app on all of them whenever I can. As on the iPhone, Mailbox is my email client of choice on the iPad. Mailbox lets me easily sort and archive my mail with gestures that are easy to use. Saving and email for later is easily my most-used feature. Free - Download Now

So that's my first Home screen. My second page holds interesting or fun apps, but I don't use most of them regularly. My third page is full of folders. My first page never stays exactly the same for very long. What do you keep on your Home screen, and how do you decide what goes on your front page?

Since all of the cool kids are doing it, I thought that I'd show you what's on my iPhone. My iPhone is the single most important piece of technology in my line-up. It goes with my everywhere, and is my primary method of communication. I keep the most important apps on my first Home screen. I don't use most of the stock apps enough for them to merit a place on my first screen. Those few that remain, however, I use every day without fail. Messages, Camera, Maps, and Safari all remain on my Home screen.

• Wallpaper: I like to rotate my wallpapers quite a bit, and I love some of the ones that Apple included in iOS 7, but I'm always on the lookout for wallpapers from around the internet. My current favorite is the phone variant of the Seas wallpaper by Louie Mantia. He has a number of different wallpapers that he's made, all available from his website.
• Fantastical 2: I've been a Fantastical user for awhile, first on Mac, then on iPhone. I bought Fantastical 2 as soon as it was available from the App Store. The reminder integration in Fantastical 2 means that I have more space on my Home screen. $9.99 - Download Now
• Carousel: I've tried a few photo storage and organization solutions, but recently I've been taking a look at Dropbox's own photo app, Carousel. I was using Dropbox as my backup photo storage, and Carousel lets me view and share photos stored in Dropbox better than the actual Dropbox app. The only problem I've had so far is the inability to hide a selection of photos at once, like those stored in a shared folder. Free - Download Now
• Dark Sky: Dark Sky moved up to my main screen after its major 4.0 update, which made the app a lot more useful as a general purpose weather app without dumbing the hyperlocal prediction that made it an essential app to begin with. $3.99 - Download Now
• YouTube: I don't watch a lot of video on my phone, but I use the YouTube app with AirPlay to watch things on my Apple TV, rather than using the built-in Apple TV YouTube app. The app also occupies the same position as the stock YouTube app did pre-iOS 6. Free - Download Now
• Vesper: While I use apps like Evernote and Simplenote for more in-depth note taking that I need to access anywhere, Vesper is the perfect app to just get down a quick note right when I need it. Now that Vesper has added sync, it's even better, and it might even replace Simplenote for me one day. $2.99 - Download Now
• Flipboard: Opening Flipboard is for me what reading the newspaper in the morning was for my parents. It's usually the first or second app that I go to in the morning, after checking email and sometimes Twitter. Opening Flipboard is a lot easier than using Twitter to catch up on the news I may have missed overnight. Free - Download Now
• Paper: Facebook's Paper is a great app for browsing Facebook posts. It is, in fact, much better than the standard Facebook app. Paper is especially great for looking at photos, and makes good use of gestures for navigation and viewing.
• Tweetbot 3: I've been a Tweetbot user since day one. When they launched Tweetbot 3 last year, I bought it without hesitation. It's everything I want in a Twitter app. $4.99 - Download Now
• Tumblr: Tumblr has created an excellent app for the iPhone, and it's one of those apps that's just fun to use. It's dead simple to create any type of post using the app, browsing is fast and fluid, and each section is easy to find. The recent addition of mobile themes let you put your personal flair on part of the app. Free - Download Now
• Beats Music: Beats Music has become my streaming service of choice. I enjoy the discovery features of Beats, and it's superior to Spotify when it comes to organization. Additionally, it allows me to select when high quality music is streamed to my device, and automatically switches to streaming lower-quality music when I turn off Wi-Fi so I don't use as much data, something I have to manage manually on Spotify. Free - Download Now
• Pocket Casts: I listen to a lot of podcasts, and I've found Pocket Casts by Shifty Jelly to be the perfect tool for the job. The use of color and animation, along with highly customizable episode filters, make Pocket Casts a joy to use. $3.99 - Download Now
• Audible: Audible is the app for listening to audiobooks. I don't always have time to sit down and read, but I can listen to a book while doing other things. Audible uses Amazon's Whispersync to sync the listening position of many audiobooks with their ebook counterpart in my Kindle library. Free - Download Now
• 1Password: My password manager of choice on my iPhone, iPad, and Mac. I have a lot of passwords, and I need not only to keep them secure, but also to make them unique. I use the app's password generator to create passwords that are unique, complex, and secure. Because I've started using more complicated password, I keep 1Password on my Home screen to quickly access them when I need them. $17.99 - Download Now
• Launch Center Pro: After using it sporadically for a little while, Launch Center Pro earned a place on my dock. It's just so versatile, a Swiss Army knife of apps. I use it to write text messages to friends and family, to start searches, to create text files, and open specific functions of other apps. Creating and discovering new workflows for Launch Center Pro is always interesting and fun. $4.99 - Download Now
• Mailbox: Mailbox became my go-to email app on iPhone shortly after its launch last year. Working with email on my iPhone is rarely about responding to it, and almost always about organizing or getting rid of it. Mailbox lets me easily sort and archive my mail with gestures that are easy to use. Saving and email for later is easily my most-used feature. Free - Download Now

So that's my first Home screen. My second page holds interesting or fun apps, but nothing I would call "mission-critical". My third page holds all of the rest in folders. My first page never stays exactly the same for very long. Tomorrow I'll probably move Soulver on there because I'll convince myself I absolutely need a calculator app on the first page. What do you keep on your Home screen, and how do you decide what goes on your front page? Let me know in the comments, and show us what's on your home screen over in the forums.

About 5 months ago, in response to a ton of questions about how we handle podcasting here at iMore and Mobile Nations, I took everyone on a virtual tour of my studio. Well, I've made some changes since then. Some things have moved and some new things have been added. So, what's where now and why?

Last time the setup changed was because we switched from Skype and WireCast to Google Hangouts for video podcasts. That was for both simplicity — I no longer needed a mix-minus setup — and security — we no longer lost entire shows when a single app crashed. This time the changes were for productivity and aesthetic reasons. I needed to make better, more comfortable use of the odd 10x20 foot studio space so I could both work better and it would look better on camera. A lot of that had to do with improving the lighting.

If you're primarily interested in the mics, headsets, cameras, computers, and interfaces I use, that hasn't changed. Check them all out in the previous walk through. If you're interested in the lights and set dressing, keep reading.

I'm using two bi-color 500 LEDs as primary lighting. They were recommended to me by John P. of Geek Beat because bi-color means they can be adjusted specifically adjusted to match or correct the lighting in the room to result in something not too yellow, not too blue, but just about right. For my current setup, they're mounted on tripods (sold separately).

For my standing desk/counter I"m using two Ikea Expedit 2x2 units. Ikea discontinued Expedit earlier this year and replaced it with Kallax, which has thinner tops and bottoms and will reportedly save on wood/material costs. I don't know if the change in thickness will affect how it feels as a desk, but the Kalax 2x2 units look otherwise similar. I have them on caster sets for the extra mobility and height.

The shelving unit behind me is an older Expedit living room model with space for a small TV in the middle. I haven't seen a Kallax version yet, but the Kallax 4x4 unit looks roughly similar in size. I was originally going to try and mount the Samsung TV I'd been using onto the shelves so I can change up the background but I haven't figured out how to do that effectively yet. So, I've filled the shelves with what I hope are interesting visuals, including iOS product boxes, old iPhones and iPads, old smartphones from other vendors, a couple of Steve Jobs toys, and a Lego Batman Arkham Asylum model.

I still have a lot more work to do. Right now I'm staring through the camera at the LED TV, which mirrors the Apple LED display, and that causes eye strain. I want to get a proper stand to set the Apple LED display on, and place the camera on top of that. I'm also thinking about switching the location or mounting for the Heil microphone to something more discreet. And I'd still love to get some kind of video display back behind me.

I also have shelves that need filling, so I'm looking into what other kinds of great gadgets or geeky fun stuff I can put there. If anyone has any ideas on further improving the studio, or on more great set decorations, let me know!

We've told you about what's on our iPads and Macs before, explaining our choices in apps, desktop wallpaper and more. It's my turn again so I thought I'd share with you the contents of my Mac's menu bar. I've customized the bar with a bunch of applications and tools that I think are indispensable.

I'll skip most of the basic Apple stuff like Date & Time, the system's standard battery gauge, volume level and Bluetooth. I assume you're familiar with them and know what they do. You will notice, however, that Time Machine is active. I feel very strongly that Time Machine is the best way to make sure you can easily recover from a major problem and strongly advocate that you use it by whatever means you prefer - external hard drive, Time Capsule or compatible NAS system.

• iStat Menus: One of my favorite system add-ons, usually one of the first tools I'll install on any new Macintosh. iStat Menus lets me visualize CPU and network traffic, memory status, disk usage, battery life and even temperature and voltage readings with a single click. $16 - Download now
• Creative Cloud : I was skeptical at first about paying for software as as service, but Creative Cloud has changed the way I use Adobe products. They're frequently updated with new features, and it's an impressive range of features across the different apps, most of which I underutilize, if I use at all. I mainly stick to Photoshop, InDesign, Lightroom and Acrobat Pro. $49.99 per month - Download now
• TextExpander: Smile Software's typing shortcut utility is a godsend for anyone who writes or has to input repetitive data on their computers. We use it to add snippets of information and links to pages quickly and easily when we're writing the content you read on iMore. (Buy it from Smile's web site — the Mac App Store version is crippled thanks to Apple's sandboxing requirements.) $34.95 - Download now
• Airspace: The control software for the Leap Motion Controller. The Leap Motion Controller lets you gesture in space rather than using a trackpad or mouse; it's a bit like having a Kinect on your Mac. Terrific fun, and loads of games designed to support it. Airspace acts as a portal to the Airspace Store, where you can download new Leap Motion Controller-optimized apps. $79.99 - Buy now
• Crashplan: While I depend on Time Machine for regular backups, that's not where my backup strategy ends. Having offsite backup is important if a catastrophe occurs. I can't rotate out Time Machines on a regular basis, so I've retained the services of CrashPlan instead. This service enables me to back up every Mac on my home network, including the ones used by my wife and kids. It's my second line of defense. Family plan: $149.99 - Download now
• gfxCardStatus: I use a Retina MacBook Pro, which has both integrated video and a discrete video system for higher-power work like image editing and gaming. This handy little passive tool shows me at a glance if the energy-saving integrated video mode is on, or if the more battery-hungry discrete graphics system is being used. What's more, I can use it to force the integrated video on; it slows down graphics-intensive apps but helps my battery live a bit longer between charges. Donationware - Download Now
• Dropbox: The popular cloud storage service is vital to us at iMore - we use it for common files we use throughout our work, templates, source art and more. What's more, I use it to share files I need to get to other people - it's as simple as moving a file into my Dropbox folder and control-clicking it to get a link I can drop in an e-mail or share via social media. Free - Download now
• SugarSync: Dropbox is great for shared repositories, but those files need to live in the Dropbox folder. SugarSync helps me synchronize the rest of my files. My Documents folder contains dozens of subfolders I use for various work and personal files - my archive of iMore articles, for example, receipts, stuff I've written for other publications and much more. Those are files I want instant access to regardless of what Mac I'm using - SugarSync makes it happen seamlessly. $7.49 per month - Download now
• Flint: Campfire is an essential communication tool for the iMore staff - it's our editorial bullpen, for all intents and purposes. Flint is an excellent Campfire client that lets me know at a glance if there's anything going on that I need to pay attention to. It maintains transcripts and can also ping me with a Notification Center alert if messages containing any words (like my name) are posted. $7.99 - Download now
• Echofon: My favorite Twitter client for the Mac. Syncs between its OS X and iOS counterparts, so I don't have to read the same tweets twice. Clean interface, fast, and well supported. $9.99 - Download now
• Fantastical: Flexibits' calendaring app provides me with an instant view of my upcoming appointments along with reminders, and lets me enter new items in my calendar using natural language parsing. It's a great replacement for Apple's own Calendar app. $19.99 - Download now
• Skype: I have to admit that I'm not the most enthusiastic Skype user. But Skype is an essential business tool. I used it to talk with other iMore folks, I use it to interview people, I use it to get in touch with friends and colleagues. The big advantage to Skype is that it's multiplatform - something that despite Apple's initial promises, FaceTime is not. Free - Download now

That's it! Those are all my menu items. See any common tools that you rely on? What other menu tools do you find completely necessary? Sound off in the comments.

And so it comes back around to me, this time to guide you through what I use on my iPhone 5s. It's a little more tricky than when I talked iPad for one main reason. I use my iPhone a whole lot more and for much different reasons. If I told you about every single thing on my iPhone, we'd be here a very, very long time. You'd get bored.

That's because the majority of apps I try out – either for personal reasons or for my work here on iMore – are put onto my iPhone. Since it's always in my hand or my pocket it's a better device for this type of thing than my iPad. But, I do have a staple of apps which have a permanent home and which I use practically every day. So let's take a look at those, and my current choice of wallpaper.

The wallpaper is the same as I have on my iPad. It's one of Apple's stock iOS 7 choices and I like it because it's colorful.

• Stock apps: Some of the stock iOS 7 apps remain on my main homescreen, but only the ones I actually use. Photos, Reminders and Clock stay up top. I use Reminders a lot, more like an alarm than a to-do list. Settings has a place as do the iTunes Apps – Music, Videos, App Store and iTunes Store – in a folder together. I do have iBooks and iTunes U installed – just to keep up to date with them – but these are rarely used and live elsewhere.
• Apple Remote: I use this almost exclusively to control my Apple TV. I think it's a much preferrable experience, namely scrolling and typing to search with an actual keyboard. And since I use my Apple TV most days, I use this app a lot.
• Calendars 5 by Readdle: My favorite calendar app. I can't pinpoint exactly why I like it so much, but Readdle is one of my favorite developers. I really like their work, and this has replaced the stock Calendar app for me.
• Google Apps: Pretty much all of them is the easiest way to say it. I don't use the Gmail app, though. I never really got along with it that much. But I live in Google services so I've got pretty much everything. Authenticator, Hangouts and Google+ are the three most used.
• eBay: I spend too much time looking on eBay for things. More than Amazon or any other store. I have a problem and should probably move this app and hide it!
• Yahoo Weather: The best weather app there is in my opinion. The data comes from the same source as the iOS 7 Weather app but those Flickr sourced photos make all the difference. I'm constantly looking at the weather just to have an excuse to open this app.
• PayPal: Essential to me. I move a lot of money around using PayPal, and the iOS app is actually really nicely done.
• Sky News: I wish this app looked better and I wish it was nicer to use. But Sky News is where I get my regular, non-tech news and this the only iOS app they have.
• mSecure: I chose mSecure initially because it better supported Android as well as iOS and Mac. And I stand by that. 1Password is going to get better on Android, but I'm invested in mSecure as my password manager and I'll be sticking with it.
• TripIt: I don't travel nearly as much as some of the Mobile Nations staff – and when I do it often doesn't involve planes – but TripIt is an absolute essential. Hooked in to my Gmail account I don't need to worry about keeping track of my travel plans because TripIt does it for me. I use the train a lot here in the UK and TripIt still pulls in those reservation details – albeit thinking I'm in the U.S. which is massively irritating – and organizes everything for me. It's the best at what it does, I think.
• Instashare: Until Apple makes AirDrop work between iOS devices and Mac, this is how I'll be transferring my stuff.
• MLB At Bat: I'm a Brit that loves Baseball. I'm also an MLB.tv subscriber, so this app becomes not only free but ultra useful. Since I'm not subject to any local blackout restrictions over here, I can watch all the Baseball I want wherever I am.
• Social Apps: Only three that I really use. But I use them a lot. Flint is a Campfire client for iOS and the very best one at that. Campfire is what we use at Mobile Nations as our company office chat and it's a real bonus having such a great mobile client to use. Skype needs little introduction. It's how we call each other, so there's no reason not to have it on my iPhone. And then there's Tweetbot 3, which is the best Twitter app I've ever used. Doesn't need much more than that, really.
• Productivity Apps: Another couple of Readdle apps live in this folder; Documents and Scanner Pro. I really wish I used Documents to its full potential, but it's the only way I manage documents from different sources including Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive. I've got different things in different places and this helps keep track of everything. Scanner Pro is a pretty fantastic app at scanning documents and creating a pdf copy. I also use Any.do quite a lot to plan out tasks because it's cross platform and has a great, offline Google Chrome app too. I also use Simplenote in place of the standard Notes app for similar reasons, and it has a nice, simple Mac app. The other two apps in here are predominantly for work purposes. Trello is something we use to plan out our editorial content, and of course, Dropbox.
• Entertainment Apps: I consume a lot of media content on my iPhone, and there's a bunch of different apps I use to do that. Spotify, Netflix, BBC iPlayer and TuneIn Radio are the main ones. Well known, popular and great to get my fix on the go. Other British TV channels have apps too, and I keep ITV Player and 4oD close at hand, too. My podcast app of choice is Shifty Jelly's excellent Pocket Casts which allows me to sync between iOS and Android. That and it's just an awesome app. And pour one out for Twitter #Music. I actually like it, and I'll keep hold of it until it finally shuts down forever.
• On my dock: Google Chrome has replaced Safari, mainly because I use it on the desktop. The stock Mail app is there – for now – as are the Phone, Messages and FaceTime apps in a folder. Oh, and the iMore app. Because it's iMore!

So, that's the main collection of apps on my iPhone. There are also a bunch of others I use often such as Starbucks, British Airways, and I've just started using Medium, too. It's a gorgeous iPhone app and there's some really great stuff being written over there. Any of these match up with your own preferences? Share your own iPhone setups in the comments below!

Following my Mac dock inventory, I thought I'd share with you what my iPhone looks like. If you want more of this sort of thing, check out how Ally has her iPhone set up and how Rene has configured his iPad Air.

Just like Rene, I'm something of a Mr. Default for my home screen. I can't blame taking screenshots and not wanting to confuse people as the reason. I just like the "standard" app configuration. Beyond that, though, I'm a big believer in using folders to keep my iPhone organized.

• Wallpaper: I turned off dynamic wallpapers almost immediately after I started using iOS 7 because I find the animation distracting. I found this shot of the Earth in the default wallpapers folder and have stuck with it ever since.
• Stock apps: Surprisingly, I do use most of the stock apps. Stocks is probably the old one I don't use with any regularity — all the rest of them are crucial to my workflow. It's muscle memory to pull them up, so I leave them where they are.
• Utilities: This folder contains an assortment of apps that I can't really find a better place for — Contacts, Calculator, Compass, Voice Memos, Find My iPhone, and a lot of third party tools like XfinityConnect, which I use because I'm a Comcast customer, Ookla's Speedtest app, which I keep handy when I'm testing network speeds, and a few other tools.
• Games: While I find that I have a lot less time than I used to to play games, I still keep a few favorits around for those spare moments. I have Puzzlejuice, the Tetris-meets-Scrabble game from the makers of Threes, Color Zen, Pocket Trains, Hay Day and a few others around.
• Passbook Apps: I try to use Passbook apps whenever I can. My two most frequently-used Passbook-capable apps are Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts, because coffee.
• Social: I like to stay in touch with my social networks on my phone, so I've grouped all my social networking tools together. Echofon Pro is my go-to Twitter client. I also keep Skype and Facebook handy, occasionally check Klout and LinkedIn, view Vine videos, keep Flint handy for Campfire-based conversations with other iMore staff, and use Avocado, a social networking app for couples, to send kisses and hugs to my wife from time to time.
• Travel: I usually stay close to home but when I travel I like to keep a few apps handy just in case. Transit helps me figure out how to get around using public transportation — something that Apple's own Maps app doesn't do. I also have Google Maps if Apple's Maps comes up short. I love the Uber car service — not something I use all the time, but something that's handy to have in a pinch. And Guidebook is a cool app that's useful for finding your way around conventions and other gatherings.
• Photography: I love taking pictures on my iPhone. I have an Olloclip photo lens kit, and their free app helps me make adjustments to images that I take with those lenses. iPhoto is absolutely crucial for me for effective photo management. Big Lens is a cool tool for adding depth of field effects to images, to help me highlight what I'm taking a picture of. I also keep Readdle's phenomenal Scanner Pro in here for when I need to scan a document; between the iPhone 5s's great camera and Scanner Pro, I no longer need to use the flatbed scanner on my multifunction printer.
• Entertainment: I occasionally need to program the TiVo to record something when I'm out, so I keep the app handy in this folder. I also use Spotify when iTunes Radio comes up short, and occasionally hear music I'd like to know more about, so I keep Shazam handy for figuring it out.
• Payment Tools: I do a fair amount of purchasing on my iPhone. Cumberland Farms is a local convenience store chain that I buy gas from; using their iPhone app saves me 10 cents per gallon. I also order pizzas from Dominos, pay my T-Mobile bill, buy concert tickets via TicketMaster and check my bank account balance.
• Lifestyle: The iPhone came up with this description when I created this folder and I've been too lazy to rename it. Pages is in here, along with the Day One journaling app, Nike+ Move, Pocket, iBooks and iTunes U.
• iMore: The most important app on my phone! You must download this immediately!
• Doge Weather: Ally Kazmucha and I are big fans of the doge meme that's been bouncing around the Internet the last few months. Doge Weather is a fun little weather app that shows Doge (a shiba inu with a curiously round head) in various weather gear (a yellow slicker when it's raining, sunglasses when it's sunny) with doge-like observations about the weather, like "much numb" and "many popsicle" for the wintry conditions we've been suffering with.

That's my iPhone, in a nutshell. How about yours? Do you use any of the same apps? Let me know, let hop onto our forums and [show us what's on your Home screen.

My iPad Air serves a different purpose in my workflow than my iPhone 5s. The apps I have installed on each sometimes overlap but for the most part, they're set up completely different. My iPad is what I turn to at home for media and to wind down and relax while my iPhone is my on-the-go choice. I've already given you a look at what apps I have on my iPhone so here's a look at what's currently on my iPad!

• Wallpaper: I change the wallpaper on both my iPhone and iPad quite often but lately I've been a huge fan of regular gradients. In this instance, I just did a Google search for iPad gradient wallpaper and found a nice pink and blue one I really liked. It's been there for about a month now and I've yet to grow tired of it. When I do, it'll get swapped for either a different gradient, or a photo of my dogs.
• Stock apps: There are a few stock apps I always keep floating around my main Home screen and those are Calendar, Messages, Music, Safari, Reminders, FaceTime, Photos, Camera, Contacts, App Store, iTunes Store, Videos, and Settings. These are here because they're the apps I use the most out of all the stock apps. However, I can't wait to eventually replace the stock Calendar and Reminder apps with Fantastical if and when an iPad version is available.
• Mailbox: I've recently found email harmony between Mailbox for iOS and Airmail for Mac. So I've ditched the stock email app and have turned my inboxes into productivity powerhouses. Mailbox is in the dock on all my devices and will stay there unless something better comes along.
• Yahoo Weather: I have several weather apps on my iPhone since that's the device that's with me most often when I'm outside. However, when I'm on my iPad and want to check the projected forecast, Yahoo Weather more than gets the job done, in the most beautiful way of any iPad weather app I've ever seen.
• Flint: - We use Campfire to communicate here at Mobile Nations and Flint by Big Comet is the best Campfire app I've found so far. I use it across my iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
• Byword: I nail out some serious writing on my iPad when paired with my favorite keyboard case. Byword has been helping me do that on iPhone, iPad, and Mac for years now. I couldn't be happier with it and don't hesitate to recommend it to anyone who's looking for a great writing or Markdown app.
• Reeder 2: I've tried many RSS apps on my iPad and I always end up coming back to Reeder. It's clean, easy to use, and keeps me up to date on all the news I care about most. I've been using Unread on my iPhone but when it comes to iPad, Reeder 2 is still king.
• Facebook: As much as I hate to admit it, I still use Facebook pretty regularly. The official Facebook app is much better than Facebook in Safari and until there's a version of Paper for the iPad, the official Facebook app it is.
• Twitterrific: I frequently switch between Tweetbot and Twitterrific on my iPad but since the Tweetbot app for iPad hasn't been updated yet, I've been sticking with Twitterrific until that happens since it fits iOS 7 much better. I'll re-evaluate when Tweetbot 3 is made available for the iPad.
• Sonos: I recently set up a Sonos system throughout our condo and I'm absolutely in love with it. Whether I want to listen to music in the office, adjust the volume in the living room, switch songs, or group different speakers together, I can do it all from my iPhone or iPad. The app does need an iOS 7 overall badly but it still gives me complete control over my entertainment system and because of that, it earns a spot on the Home screen of every iOS device I own.
• Songza: I love Songza because it does a great job serving up electronic and trance music I actually like. For that reason I gladly pay to be a premium member and it's on the Home screen of every device. I use it at home, in the car, and when I'm at the gym. If you haven't tried Songza, you're missing out.
• 1Password: I use 1Password across every device I own, including my Mac. I depend on it heavily to remember all my passwords and autofill them. I couldn't live without it and that includes on my iPad.
• Trello: We've recently adopted Trello as our content planning tool across Mobile Nations. Being able to launch it on my iPad and view what I have due for the next several days in invaluable. I can even add content, edit things, assign other members of our staff content, and more. It's a great planning and project management tool, all completely free.
• Games folder: Part of winding down for me is playing my favorite games. My current vices seem to be Candy Crush, Farm Heroes Saga, Threes!, Clumsy Ninja, and Octagon. Which one I pick up ultimately depends on the kind of time I have to play. There are also classics in my games folder that I play from time to time including Dots, Bejeweled Blitz, Plants vs Zombies, and more.

That about covers what's on the first Home screen of my iPad. My second Home screen is chock full of folders that are separated by groups like Productivity, Entertainment, Reference, and more. They're apps I don't use nearly as much as everything on the first page. Now I want to hear from you guys! What apps deserve a spot on the first Home page of your iPhone or iPad? Do we have any in common? Let me know in the comments!

We spend a lot of time throughout the weeks talking about new, exciting and updated apps and games, but we don't often take the time out to share what we use on our own devices. The apps and games that we love and put to use in our own everyday lives. So, following from Rene, Ally and Peter's reports of what's on their devices, it's now my turn. Here's what's currently taking residence on my Retina iPad mini!

My iPad homescreen isn't quite as stock as say, Rene's, but I do keep many of the stock apps on there. Well, the ones I actually use from time to time anyway. I don't really have any organisation or folders on my iPad's main home screen. I have promoted some stuff to the front though, including:

• Wallpaper: Not the standard one you see when you fire it up for the first time, but it's one of Apple's own choices. I also have this wallpaper on my iPhone. Not quite sure why, but I like its colorful nature.
• Remote: I use my Apple TV a ton and I'm always too lazy to get up and find the physical remote so this is always coming in handy.
• Skype: The Mobile Nations office phone. I don't work much when I'm relaxing with my iPad, but at the same time I like to stay as connected as possible.
• Instashare: The best way I've found to send images from my iPad to my Mac. Quick, easy, and it's what we all really hope that AirPlay will become eventually.
• Simplenote: I use this for jotting down basically anything I think of because I can get my notes on the various different platforms I'm using throughout the days.
• Deezer: I've been trying Deezer for a while in place of Spotify because of a special offer pricing in the UK. Not sure if I'll be sticking with it, though.
• Byword: When I do decide to do something productive with my iPad, I always do it in Byword. iCloud syncing to my Mac and Markdown support are the biggest reasons why. And it's so simple to use.
• Netflix: Because, Netflix.

I've also promoted two apps to the dock because I like having quick access to them:

• Yahoo! Weather: Now on the iPad, just as gorgeous as ever.
• Flint: The Mobile Nations way of group chat is Campfire, and Flint is the absolute best way to do it on iPad.

Swiping over to the next (and final) screen, there's more stuff packed in there. I'm not one for having too many pages on my iOS devices. Some of my lesser used Apple apps have been relegated to page two; Notes, Photo Booth, Newsstand and Game Center. To this day, I wish Photo Booth wasn't there at all. I don't like it one bit. The other apps that I do like include:

• Entertainment folder: This houses my other media focused apps. BBC iPlayer, TVCatchup, Apple's Podcasts app and Google's pairing of YouTube and Chromecast all have a place in here. TuneIn Radio is the only Internet Radio app I use on any device, on any platform. It's that good.
• Productivity folder: Not used all the time, but full of essential work related apps that I do call upon from time-to-time. Trello is how we're organising a lot of our content production right now, and Numbers is there for the occasional need to edit some spreadsheets. Otherwise I'm using: Dropbox, SkyDrive, Google Drive, Quickoffice and Readdle's Documents. Oh, and TextExpander. Possibly the best productivity tool I've ever come across.
• Shopping folder: Just the three apps, but it keeps that stuff grouped together. Amazon, Amazon Local and eBay. Pretty straight forward.
• Travel folder: Again just the three apps at the moment. If iPad had Passbook there would probably be the British Airways app in here, but alas, that stays only on my iPhone for that purpose (giant boarding passes would be killer, though!) TripIt needs little introduction. If you travel a lot, TripIt is an essential. Hooked up to my inbox, I need never go to any other app to look through my travel details. Skyscanner is pretty handy for pricing up flights, and App in the Air is there because it's my absolute favorite flight tracking app.
• Games: A few games currently still have a home on my iPad. Despicable Me: Minion Rush, Riptide GP 2 and Castle of Illusion.
• Find my iPhone: I don't want to lose my iPad, but if I ever do i'll be glad this is on here.
• mSecure: I use mSecure over 1Password because it has had better support over the years outside the Apple ecosystem, and is a ton cheaper. Not as elegant, but does an equally good job.
• Eye-Fi: Primarily because I'm currently reviewing a new Eye-Fi card. I'm not going to say more than that before writing a review!
• Kindle: Three reasons for Kindle over iBooks. Price, cross-platform and the fact I've been using it long enough I'm happy not to even consider changing.
• Air Display 2: The Retina iPad mini isn't the greatest device to use for a secondary display for your Mac, but you know what, it's handy to have in a pinch, especially travelling. Air Display is how I do this, and I'm very happy with it.

And that's the lot! Every app I currently use on my Retina iPad mini. I use my iPad very differently to my iPhone, and as such it isn't loaded up as much with apps. Any of these match your own iPad app preferences? Drop us a line in the comments with your own iPad preferred setups!

Shopping lists and reminders are easily shared between iPhones with the stock Reminders app. That means adding something to a shopping list on one iPhone automatically updates it on the other person's. While this is a great option if both parties use iPhones, what if one of them uses Android? That's exactly the question one reader asked us. He currently uses an iPhone while his wife is sporting an Android. They want to be able to share lists and notes with one another but aren't quite sure what the best solution is. Luckily, there are some awesome third party apps that are available for both iPhone and Android that do just that. Here are my suggestions...

Wunderlist

My top recommendation is Wunderlist since it supports every platform I can think of and doesn't cost a dime, unless you want the extra premium features. Not only can you create and share lists, you can collaborate and leave notes on them. If you want to get even more serious, Wunderlist Pro is $4.99 a month or $50 a year and lets you add attachments and assign tasks and add due dates. This is geared more for work groups but is a nice option for more time sensitive type lists.

If you're more concerned with list making than note taking, Wunderlist is the best option.

• iOS, Free - Download Now
• Android, Free - Download Now

Evernote

Evernote is more of a note taking app than anything but you can create lists inside of it and share them. It's also available for a huge variety of platforms which include iOS and Android. Like Wunderlist, it's also free unless you need premium features. One thing Evernote does without a premium subscription that Wunderlist does not is attachments. The only catch is you're limited in storage space each month. You'll also need Evernote Premium on both ends if you want to edit each other's notes and lists, otherwise they're read only. A premium subscription is $5.00 a month or $45 per year.

If you want free hand notes and image uploads more than true lists, get Evernote.

• iOS, Free - Download Now
• Android, Free - Download Now

Thanks to Wilson for the question! We hope this answered it for you and that you and your wife can enjoy grocery list harmony now! If you have a question for Ask iMore, please email it to podcast@imore.com, or tweet it to @iMore with the hashtag #askimore.

What apps do you use for cross-platform notes and lists?

If you've been in a situation where you've had to find a solution to sharing notes and lists cross-platform, let us know what service you went with, and why. Also, if there's any pricing involved, let us know that too!

iPhone 6. I should have known. The moment after I said we'd be restarting Ask iMore we got flooded with questions, and roughly half of them were variations on — What's the iPhone 6 release date? Should I buy the iPhone 5s now or wait for the iPhone 6? It's amazing that Apple manages to maintain such a high level of interest in the iPhone line even as it approaches the mid-point in its annual product cycle. It's also perfectly reasonable that people considering big electronics purchases — or contract extensions — want to make informed decisions. It's challenging to come up with an answer that both satisfies people's genuine curiosity, reasonably sets their expectations, but also points out Apple hasn't announced anything and likely won't for months and months to come. However, if you're not adverse to playing the odds, there is an answer I can give you now...

iPhone 6 release date if past is prologue

Apple announced the iPhone 5s on September 10, 2013 and released it on September 20, 2013. Apple announced the iPhone 5 on September 12, 2012 and released it on September 21, 2012. If Apple sticks to that pattern — big if — they'll announce the iPhone 6 on or around September 9 or 10, 2014, and set the release date for September 19, 2014.

Of course, Apple doesn't always stick to patterns. The iPhone 4s was announced on October 4, 2011 and released on October 14, 2011. The iPhone 4 was announced on June 7, 2010 and released on June 24, 2010. Hell, Apple announced and released the iPad 4 only six months after the iPad 3. Apple can always push back a production schedule if some hardware, software, or services component won't be ready in time, and they can always move it up simply to break patterns. So, it's a gamble. It's basically playing iPhone 6 release date roulette.

iPhone 6 later vs. iPhone 5s now

Here's the standard Mobile Nations advice — if you need a new iPhone now, today, get the iPhone 5s. If you don't need a new iPhone, now, today, wait as long as you can and then get whatever the best iPhone is when you do need it. After all, there will always be something better on the horizon.

However, if it's less about need and more about want, then you can always buy an iPhone 5s now, keep it in great condition, and then sell it when the iPhone 6 comes around. iPhones hold their value remarkably well, and we have a ton of readers who make sure they buy the new iPhone every year by selling their old iPhone.

It takes some work, and assumes some risk, and it's certainly not for everyone, but if you really want to have and iPhone 5s and an iPhone 6, it's something to consider.

Let me know what you're going to do in the comments below, and if you want to Ask iMore, email podcast@imore.com, Tweet @iMore with #askimore, or show up for the iMore show podcast and ask live!

We've already decided on our best apps of 2013 but we still want you to know our most personal ones — the apps we have given primetime spots on our Home screens. Rene's already shared his iPad Air setup so now I'm going to share what's on my iPhone 5s, at least for right now. See, the first page of my Home screen rarely ever stays the same for more than a few weeks. I switch apps based on what I need and like at the time. There are a few staples, however, that might get shuffled but never get bumped. Here they are!

• Wallpaper: I've always been a fan of plain gradient wallpapers mainly because they don't compete for attention with app icons. I can easily pick things out without straining my eyes. When the iPad Air came out, I loved the wallpaper on it so much I searched for an iPhone version and saved one off Google images. It's been alternated between other gradients ever since.
• Stock apps: Six of the spots on my Home screen that never change are occupied by the native Camera, Photos, Clock, App Store, Passbook, and Music apps. Typically they always remain in the same place too. I always know exactly where they are and they've become pretty much muscle memory.
• Fantastical 2: Ever since the first version of Fantastical came out I've never even thought about returning to the default Calendar app. It's just too good. And now that the new version integrates reminders, it's another spot I've been able to open up on my Home screen since I don't have to have the native iOS Reminders app taking up space.
• Beats Music: Beats Music has replaced the spot Rdio previously occupied on my Home screen, at least for now. I stream a lot of music during the day and even though I like iTunes Radio, I've always depended on a premium streaming service when it comes to downloading music for offline listening. I'm far too finicky with music to buy everything I like. Subscriptions suit my personality far better since I tire of things quickly.
• iMore: I am pretty sure this one speaks for itself. If you don't have it already, stop what you're doing, download it, and then continue as you were.
• Reeder 2: I've turned to Reeder for a long time when it comes to RSS feeds. Perhaps it's out of habit, I'm not sure. When Reeder 2 came out it was a no brainer for me and I haven't been disappointed. It sorts my feeds how I want and sends them to all the services I care about. It isn't too over the top which is what I love about it.
• Podcasts: I've made a New Years resolution to actually attempt to keep up with the podcasts I enjoy. I've been bad at this in the past and I'd like to change it. But I'm not a hardcore podcast listener so Apple's Podcasts app more than suits my current needs.
• Remote: There are very few things in life I despise more than the tiny silver remote that comes with every Apple TV. It buries itself in any couch crease or bed sheet it can find, and I've given up looking for it. If you own an Apple TV, the remote app is a must have on every iOS device you own.
• Tweetbot 3: I have a nasty habit of switching between Twitter clients frequently. I always come back to Tweetbot. Its feature set is pretty much unmatched, at least for what I use it for. It's also the most reliable in my experience.
• Facebook: As much as I'd love to hate Facebook, I still find myself checking my news feed whenever I'm bored. Possibly out of habit. I already know none of it is relevant and all of it is pretty much crap ads nowadays. Perhaps just moving it altogether would be a good idea...
• Facebook Messenger: Hate if you want, but the voice calling and messaging capabilities of Facebook Messenger are hard to put down. When traveling internationally it's saved me a few times especially when calling someone who didn't have FaceTime. For that it earns a spot on my Home screen. And it lets me not really open Facebook if I don't have to.
• Instagram: As much as I hate to admit it, I take far too many photos of my dogs and my dinner. Where else would I slap a fancy filter on them and upload them for all of your viewing pleasure?
• BillGuard: It's the best damned credit card monitoring service on the planet. Not only does it monitor for fraud, but hidden fees, deals, and savings. All for a one time in-app purchase of $9.99. If you own a credit card or checking account it's a no brainer.
• MyFitnessPal: We all know how it is. The holidays are over and it's time to get back in shape. MyFitnessPal is a great way to do so, no subscription service necessary.
• Faves folder, page 1: I have the usual suspects such as Dropbox and Settings. From there I've got Chase which I use to manage my personal accounts, deposit checks, and QuickPay money. Foursquare and GetGlue are my favorite check-in apps and I use them both fairly regularly, when I remember that is. Trello is what we use here at iMore to manage and plan content so that's a must. The next two are iMore related too and they are Flint which lets me sign into our Campfire chat system while on the go. Chartbeat then lets me monitor iMore's traffic and see what you, our readers, are currently reading. Creepy right?
• Faves folder, page 2:The last page in my Faves folder contains some basics such as the AirPort Utility to manage my home network and my Pebble app. Other than that I've got more iMore stuff such as Skype and Evernote. I use the first to communicate with my colleagues and the latter as a way to take notes or jot down thoughts throughout the day. Any RSS stories I want to remember to read later get sent to my Pocket app. As for weather, I'm currently using BeWeather due to the beautiful design and in-depth information. mydlink Lite lets me monitor our home cameras and last but not least, TeeVee 2 keeps me up to date on all my favorite shows including reminding me an hour before a new episode is going to air.

And that brings me to the end of the first page of my iPhone Home screen. The next several pages are filled with folders of even more apps. Important ones but ones that aren't used nearly as much as the ones mentioned above. So what's on your Home screen? Do you share any of the same first page habits I do? Be sure to let me know in the comments and then jump in our forums and show us what's on your Home screen!

One of the most frequent questions I've been getting lately, both here and on Twitter, is — how do we run podcasts on iMore and Mobile Nations? So, we grabbed some video gear, hit the studio, and knocked out this quick behind-the-scenes tour of all the equipment I use, and how I currently use it. Check it out!

What I do now is very different than what I did last year. The main reason for that is because we switched away from a Skype-asaurus to Google Hangouts. Not only does that prevent crashes from wiping out entire shows (!!!), it's free, easy to use, and available to just about everyone. Switching to Hangouts also allowed me to pull out the complicated mix-minus audio setup, which involved 6 PC laptops, a mixer, a pre-amp, a compressor, and more. So many boxes gone. So many cables. So much cleaner! So what's left?

The heart of my setup is a first generation Nehalem Mac Pro. That's right, an old-school cheese-grator! Ethernet comes into it from my cable modem, and that's important because Wi-Fi is just never reliable enough for podcasting.

Yes, my keyboard and trackpad really do sit on top of an old Xbox 360 box right now. I haven't found anything aesthetically pleasing to do the job properly, and its the right hight. If you have a better idea, let me know! As for the Magic Trackpad itself, I use a MacBook most of the time and multitouch is muscle memory for me now, which makes trackpads simply a better and more consistent interface for me than a mouse.

I use two different headsets, one for audio podcasting, one for video. The AKG K240 don't look great but they're super comfortable and sound terrific. The Ultimate Ears 600vi all but disappear, and include a very convenient shirt clip that helps prevent them falling out, even when I move around a bit.

For a microphone, I use the Heil PR-40 because, Leo Laporte. My voice isn't great, so I can use all the help I can get, and once you go Heil, there's no going back. Because it's an XLR mic, and because I dumped all the audio boxes from my setup, I now use an Apogee One as my USB interface. It's compact and convenient.

The primary screen on my Mac Pro is a 27-inch Apple Cinema Display. It's the predecessor of the Thunderbolt Display, but for computers like my old-school Mac Pro that have mini-DisplayPort instead of Thunderbolt out. Instead of the built-in iSight camera, however, I use a Logitech 920 because, Alex Lindsay. Along with the Webcam Settings app, it provides for amazing HD video out and an incredible level of control.

The Mac Pro and display are both connected to separate universal power supplies (UPS), as is the modem and Airport Extreme Time Capsule router. I get a lot of power failures, but the internet connection almost never fails. This way, even if the lights go out, the show goes on.

I also have a 46-inch Samsung TV behind me so I can vary up the background during shows. It's connected via DVI to HDMI out from the Mac Pro, and also has an Apple TV setup so I can AirPlay apps to it in a pinch.

Everything is currently lit by Phillips Hue lightbulbs, which I can control via my iPhone or iPad. I'm looking at getting some LED panels because I think, ultimately, they'd be a better solution.

As mentioned, we use Google Hangouts for the video shows. Google is always screwing around with how to start Hangouts on Air, and it's incredibly annoying, but the technology itself is amazing. I've heard through the grapevine that Google is beginning to understand how broadcasters work, and the consistency they need, so hopefully it'll be improving for the better — and staying that way — soon. After a show, I download the video from YouTube in MP4 format, edit it in Final Cut Pro X, and re-upload it to YouTube for distribution.

For the audio shows, we use Skype and capture it with Audio Hijack Pro. I save the file in AIFF, run each channel through The Levalator, and then edit it in GarageBand.

The Mac Pro has a — now old — Intel SSD as the boot disk, and a WD caviar black internal drive as backup. Everything gets saved to the SSD for speed, and the HD mirrors it via SuperDuper! as a backup. As soon as a show finishes, the file gets put in Dropbox, so there's an offsite backup as well. Lastly, the good folks at Synology sent over a NAS for us to review, and I'm currently testing that out as a networked backup for additional security.

I'm continually evolving what I use and how I use it, and always looking for better, more efficient gear and workflows, so if you have any suggestions or recommendations, please let me know. And if you have any questions, fire away!

Since there aren't a ton of iOS devices — like there are Android or smartwatches — the staff at iMore has traditionally shared our favorite apps instead. We didn't get to it at the end of last year, what with the best app awards and CES and all, so we decided to do it now, as a way to ring in the new year. Last week I shared what's on my iPhone for The Sweet Setup, so I'm going to focus on the iPad now. Here's my current iPad Air Home screen, and a few words on why I have it just exactly that way...

Okay. So... Yes, boring. My iPad Home screen is pretty much stock as the day it was unboxed. That's because I'm Captain Default. I keep all my stuff as close to stock as possible. It makes things simple when I reinstall, it makes things familiar for people when I do screen or hero shots, and, frankly, this way I'm never more than a new device or a reset away from knowing exactly where everything is. I have gotten in the habit of swapping the wallpaper occasionally, and filling the extra slots on the Home screen. Currently those include:

• Wallpaper: Recreation of Apple's 2013 iPad and Mac event invitation design by our own Derek Kessler.
• Entertainment folder: I watch a lot of video on my iPad. Netflix gives me all the catalog content, Global Go, the Bell-ruined-and-now-almost-unwatchable-CTV Go, and City Video give me the local broadcast stuff, and Air Video HD lets me stream just about anything from my Mac. With the exception of CTV Go, they're all easily beam-able to my Apple TV as well, thanks to AirPlay.
• Reading folder: My eyes weren't made for viewing alone! iBooks, Kindle, Comics, and Marvel Unlimited are where I read my —surprise — comic books. (Thanks to pricing and regional restrictions, they're spread all over.) Flipboard lets me read social, and Storehouse is new and interesting.
• iMore: Yes, it's not iPad optimized (yet!), but it's iMore!
• Tweetbot: Yes, it's not iOS 7 optimized (yet!), and I try not to Tweet from iPad, but it's still the fastest way I've found to triage Twitter.

To make up for the lack of excitement on the main Home page, I'll swipe on over to the right and share what's on screen two as well.

• Extras folder: An ode to the default Extras folder on iPhone, I throw the Apple utilities into here. Airport Utility to configure my router, Remote to control my Apple TV, Find my iPhone in case of emergency, and WWDC for the session videos. (Since Apple doesn't make Calculator for iPad, and Apple Store for iPad isn't available in Canada (yet!), it's a little under-filled for now...)
• iApps folder: I vastly prefer my MacBook for productivity but if I ever have to edit a file on my iPad, Keynote, Pages, Numbers, GarageBand, iPhoto, and iMovie are there for me.
• Social folder: I like Twitterrific as a reading experience, I have to use Google+ and Google Hangouts for work, and I keep Facebook around for friends and family.
• Podcasts: I mostly listen to podcasts on my iPhone when I'm driving between malls and coffee shops, but since it syncs, and just in case I want some late night listening material, it's here for me.
• Instagram: There's no iPad version (yet!) so I'm stuck with the iPhone version.
• Hue: Phillips Hue app lets me control the lights in my podcast studio, kitchen, living room, and hall, bulb by bulb, color by color.
• Sonos: My home theater, at my finger tips. (And in desperate need of an iOS 7 make-over!)
• TV Remote 2: Panasonic makes the app, and while it's not great, it's there in case I'm desperate to control my TV.
• Google Drive: Whether its for Mobile Nations's day-to-day management, or TWiT's podcast prep, or the stuff we partner with Geek Beat for, it all lives in Google Docs, which means I need the Google Drive app.
• Dropbox: My Document folder is in Dropbox. Mobile Nations' shared folders are in Dropbox. My synced files and databases are in Dropbox. Which... kinda makes it feel like, for better or for worse, a whole chunk of my life is in Dropbox... After logging into iCloud, it's the first thing I install on any new device.
• 1Password: All my web logins and licenses, all in one place. Security, meet convenience!
• Screens: For whenever I can't — or simply don't want to — get to my Mac, this is the VNC client that best takes me back. I've said it before, I'll say it again, you haven't lived until you've administered your servers from poolside!
• Editorial: Again, I prefer writing on my MacBook, but when I'm ultra-mobile, and I'm working in Text and Markdown, I'm working in Editorial.
• Flint: We use Campfire for our virtual office and Flint is the best client for it on iOS.
• Procreate: I like to pretend I still have time to draw, and Procreate has the most granular, deep drawing tools on the iPad.
• Paper: Goofy rewind control and a palette that pops up whenever I draw up not withstanding, the pencil tool in Paper by 53 is incredible.

And... that's it! At least for the first two pages! Is there more? Is my Retina iPad mini setup any different? What's on my Mac dock? If you're interested, let me know, and I'll address all of that, and more, in the future. In the meantime, do check out my Sweet iPhone Setup, and let me know in the comments — are your go-to iPad apps very similar or incredibly different?

When Apple introduced iOS 7 back at WWDC 2013, the new look and new experience forced a lot of developers to put their update plans on hold and scramble to rethink and redesign their apps to fit into the brave, bold new world. That's precisely what happened to us with the iMore for iPhone app. Rebuilt practically from scratch, iMore for iPhone 3.0 is now iOS 7 native in every sense of the word, and we can't wait for you to try it!

• Free - Download now

Now, some things have moved or changed in the transition. You can no longer re-arrange and customize tabs, because the tabs are gone and an iOS 7-style sidebar is in its place. Favorites are gone, as are options for Instapaper and Pocket, but iOS 7 Reading Lists is now supported. (We didn't have time to re-add Instapaper and Pocket, but if you want it, let us know and we'll include it in one of the next updates.) Podcasts are still there, of course, but we're letting Control Center handle the persistent play, pause, skip, etc. duties.

What we've gained, however, is all shades of awesome. We've still got all the recent news, editorials, help and how-tos, app and accessory reviews, and podcasts you can handle, and a new feature section right on top so you can always, easily find the big stories. We've also got a screaming fast new display engine that feeds you articles pretty much as fast as you can get to them.

You can also still login with Twitter, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, as well as Mobile Nations Passport, and comment right from the app - now with avatars and new, nifty, threaded view. And you can still share via Messages, Mail, Twitter, and Facebook.

As to the future, yes, we're busy working on dynamic fonts, push notifications, and on an iPad version. We're also working on forum integration so that you can have all your iMore, all in one place. And that, still, is only the beginning.

If you have feedback for the tech team or want to report any bugs you might come across, please use this forums thread so we can track everything in one place:

• iMore 3.0 feedback and bug reports

We really appreciate all of the time and attention you give us, and we want to give you best app we can in return. So. download it, try it out, and let us know what you think!

• Free - Download now

Special thanks to our app developer, Neil Sainsbury, to our web developers Tom Kaminski and Steph Koenig, to Marc Edwards for our awesome new icon, to Silvia Gatta for making the Essence glyphs, and to Nick Arnott and all of our beta testers for their feedback.

As much as we hate to say it, summer is coming to an end. It's back to school, back to work, and depending where you live... back to cold weather. We're going to keep the heat with us a little longer though thanks to some sizzling savings in our iMore Store End of Summer Sale!

iMore readers can save 15% on ALL iOS accessories for the next few days when using coupon code SS13 at checkout. We have tons of cases, battery extenders, chargers, bluetooth accessories and more for all your devices!

The sizzling savings won't last forever though, so take advantage while you can. The sale ends at Midnight PST on Sunday, September 22nd.

Take me to the iMore Store

While we love everyone who visits iMore on the web - we are a website, after all! - we realize that it's even more important for us to be where you are. That's why we make it as easy as possible for you to follow us everywhere and anywhere you may be!

• App Store: Official iMore app
• RSS: iMore RSS feed
• Twitter: @iMore
• App.net: @iMore
• Facebook: imorecom
• Google +: +iMore
• YouTube: iMoreVideo
• iTunes: Podcasts

You can also find us on Flipboard under Technology in the Apple section, in Google Currents, and hopefully everywhere else you go on the web to stay informed and entertained. And if we're not somewhere you want us to be yet, let us know in the comments and we'll do our best to get it done!

(And if you want to follow our writers, be sure to check them out on the official iMore about page.)

Today's Talk Mobile was all about helping developers better market their apps. Media outlets like iMore are an important part of that marketing, yet like any resource, we have our limits. We get dozens of app submissions a day and sometimes hundreds a week, but we only have time to cover a handful. And as much as we love developers and apps, we love our readers even more, and take our responsibility to them incredibly seriously. We're only ever going to offer them the very best apps and games we can find. To put it bluntly, if something looks or works like crap, we're not going anywhere near it.

So, if you're a developer and you've made an amazing app or game, what's the best way to ensure it gets featured on iMore? There's no absolute answer to that question -- it's a classic chaos equation -- but there's a lot of things that can help, and a few that can hinder:

Things that make our lives -- and covering your apps -- easier

1. Do direct your app submission to the appropriate email address. If you flood our inboxes with multiple emails to multiple people, it'll be harder for us to find it, and figure out who's looking at what. Here are your go-tos: iosapps@imore.com and macapps@imore.com.
2. Do send personal notes. If it's not written by a human, it's not reasonable to expect it to be read by a human. Over time we come to know and trust you, and that can't happen with robots.
3. Do keep it short. 1 to 2 paragraphs about why your app is awesome will always be read. Multiple paragraphs or pages of text are almost impenetrable. What kind of app is it, what does it do, and why's that super compelling for our readers -- that's all you ever have to tell us.
4. Do include pre-release options, when available. If it's a major app release, or a complicated app, we appreciate TestFlight or Hockey builds so we can do a good job, rather than a rushed one.
5. Do include an App Store link, post-release. If we can't find your app, we can't cover it.
6. Do include a link to a YouTube video, if you have one. Yes, we know the cool kids prefer Vimeo, but YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the world. (Would you refuse to list your website on Google and keep it exclusive to Bing?)
7. Do follow our writers on Twitter and App.net, and don't hesitate to message us there. The character limit means it's easy to get into quick back and forth discussions, and you can more easily find out which of us is into what kinds of apps, and target us more specifically. Again, be human.

Things that make our lives -- and covering your apps -- harder

1. Don't send us pages of text, .PDF or .DOC attachments, or canned press releases. We have to filter somehow, and that's a great sign there's no one who cares about the app or game behind it.
2. Don't contact us the day of release and expect coverage that day. It didn't take you an hour to make your app, it won't take us an hour to cover it. We actually try out the stuff we cover, and we appreciate the time to do it right.
3. Don't send us to Facebook pages, web sites, or anything other than your App Store page. Those are great for reaching potential customers and fans. We need a direct way to find your app so we can help you reach more potential customers.
4. Don't offer to write your review for us, or pay for us to do a review. We'll cut off any and all communications at that point. Integrity matters a great deal to us.
5. Don't be a dick. We'll cover your apps regardless because we're professionals, but we appreciate dealing with professionals as well.

Our ultimate goal here at iMore is to delight and serve our readers. That means finding them the best apps and games possible. If that app or game is yours, we want to know all about it so we can tell our readers all about it. Help us help you help them.

(And if any of this comes off as obnoxious, that's absolutely not the intent. It's simply the best way we've come up with to date to deal with the incredible amounts of app submissions we get on a daily basis, and balance it with the best interests of our readers. Wow them, and you'll have our attention, support, and gratitude.)

Use coupon HOP13 at checkout to save 15% on ALL iOS accessories

Take me to the iMore Store and let the savings begin!

If you are a regular iMore reader, you're probably already aware that we have lots of great podcast content from the iMore show to Debug and many more. Regardless what podcast you listen to or watch, our new iMore 2.0 app gives you the ability to not only listen to, but watch podcasts directly on your iPhone. You can even queue them up for offline listening if you want. This includes all our sister sites too such as AndroidCentral and CrackBerry. All your podcasts, in one app, ready to be enjoyed whenever you'd like.

Follow along and we'll show you how.

If you haven't already picked up the iMore app for iPhone, it's available now in the App Store and you can grab it by hitting the link below directly from your iPhone.

• Free - Download Now
• How to stream audio and video podcasts directly with the iMore app
• How to download podcasts for offline listening or viewing with the iMore app

How to stream audio and video podcasts directly with the iMore app

1. Launch the iMore app from the Home screen of your iPhone.
2. Tap on the Podcasts tab along the bottom. If it isn't viewable, tap on the More tab and then choose podcasts. (You can also rearrange tabs in the iMore app if you'd like.)
3. Along the top you can choose sections. To view all shows, tap on the All Shows option in the middle.
4. Now tap on the show name you'd like to see episodes for. You'll notice that you can toggle between audio and video podcasts along the bottom. Toggle to the one you'd like by tapping on it.
5. Tap on a specific show that you'd like to stream and tap the Play button in the lower right hand corner.

That's all there is to it. You can close out of the app and audio will continue to play. If you're playing a video, it will be brought up in an in-app browser window.

How to download podcasts for offline listening or viewing with the iMore app

1. Launch the iMore app from the Home screen of your iPhone.
2. Tap on the Podcasts tab along the bottom. If it isn't viewable, tap on the More tab and then choose podcasts. (You can also rearrange tabs in the iMore app if you'd like.)
3. Along the top you can choose sections. To view all shows, tap on the All Shows option in the middle.
4. Now tap on the show name you'd like to see episodes for. You'll notice that you can toggle between audio and video podcasts along the bottom. Toggle to the one you'd like by tapping on it.
5. Tap on a specific show you'd like to download. Tap on the Download button in the bottom right hand corner (it's to the left of the play button for streaming).
6. Your episode will begin downloading and it will now show up in the Queue tab in the podcasts section. You can access here whenever you'd like.

That's it. You can access all your downloaded podcasts whenever you'd like from the Queue section of the Podcasts tab.

With the release of the all new iMore 2.0 app, we've added a ton of new features to make using iMore on your iPhone and iPod touch even better. One of these new features is the ability to leave comments on articles directly within the app.

Here's how to start leaving comments in-app on your favorite iMore articles.

Register for a Mobile Nations Passport account

Before leaving comments, you'll need to make sure you're registered for a free Mobile Nations Passport account. It's super easy to set up and the best part is you'll be ready to go across any of our sites including iMore, Android Central, Crackberry, wpCentral, and WebOS Nation. You can utilize your existing social media logins or make your own. Whichever you prefer.

Register Here

Once you've got your username and password, go ahead and continue on.

How to leave a comment in the iMore app

1. Launch the iMore app from the Home screen of your iPhone or iPod touch.
2. Find the article you'd like to leave a comment on and tap into it.
3. Scroll all the way to the bottom and you'll see a section labeled Comments. Tap on it.
4. Here you can read existing comments, create a new one, or reply to someone else's comment. Choose to either create a new comment by tapping on the + sign in the upper right hand corner, or hit the reply button on any comment you'd like to reply to.
5. You'll be asked to sign in, so go ahead and enter your Mobile Nations login info.
6. You can now type your comment. Once you're done, hit send and that's it. You'll now see your comment appear in the thread as well.

Now what are you waiting for? Get to commenting!

The official iMore for iPhone app has just gone 2.0! That's right, we've taken everything you loved about the original, listened to all your super-smart feedback, carefully selected the new features we knew we could hit out of the park for you, and made them all so!

• Free - Download now

Commenting

You can now log into iMore and leave comments right from the app. It's been the number-one most requested feature, and now it's here. And it's awesome. You can see comment counts right next to the articles in the main list, and you can view the comments from the bottom of any article. The + button lets you add a new comment, or you can hit "reply" beneath any existing comment to join the thread. Love it.

Landscape mode

We get it, some of you like wide-screen. Well, now you've got it. Pretty much everything you can do in the iMore app in portrait mode now works in landscape mode as well. Enjoy!

Font resizing

Some of our eyes aren't getting any younger, and they certainly aren't getting any stronger. That why we've added big, bold font resizing buttons at the bottom of every article. Just tap and change the font size to whatever best suits you and your eyes. (We're working on a system-wide font size setting for a future update, stay tuned!)

Favorites

You can now Favorite any article in the iMore app simply by tapping the star button at the bottom. When you Favorite an article, not only does it save it for off-line reading, but it adds it to the all-new, all-special Favorites tab in the app so you can easily find it again later. To un-Favorite, simply tap the star button again. (A golden star means it's Favorited.)

In-article navigation

Gone are the days when you had to tap and article, tap back, and tap the next article just to keep reading. Now handy, dandy arrow buttons can be found at the bottom of every article. Tap them and you can move back and forth through all the articles in a given category.

And if that's not fancy or fast enough, we've added a new gesture shortcut as well. Simply swipe horizontally and you can page right through, same as hitting the arrow buttons. Time saver!

Sharing and read-later

We've added an all-new iOS 6 share sheet to the iMore app, and it includes options like sharing via Mail, Twitter, Messages, and Facebook, copy to the clipboard, save to Instapaper, Pocket, and Readability, and open in Safari.

An accounts tab lets you login or logout of Instapaper, Pocket, and Readability right inside the app. It makes it easy to share and save your favorite stories any time, and anywhere, you like!

Video podcasts

Not only have we updated the podcast player to make it even better, and better looking, we've added support for video podcasts. Any of our shows that have video versions will now show up with video as an option. Just choose it and hit the play or download button at the bottom. (Sadly, we haven't been able to get cellular streaming approved, but we want it too so we'll keep trying!)

And, of course, we have all the new podcasts, and podcast art. Snazzy!

Rebuilt for speed

The entire iMore app has been rebuilt. As in new project in Xcode, start fresh rebuilt. That was done for speed. We wanted it to be fast. Screaming fast. We also went all-in on iOS 6. Even the custom pull-to-refresh we had has been replaced with the standard world-of-goo-to-refresh Apple provides.

The article view has also been updated to be edge-to-edge awesome.

That's all thanks to Tammy Caron's coding ninjary, Seth Clifford's pixel-perfect project management, and Nickelfish's overall outstanding-ness.

And to top it all off, the amazingly talented Marc Edwards of Bjango made us a brand new app icon that's beyond even Apple-level gorgeous.

Your turn!

So now it's your turn. We've built it and Apple's put it in the store. We'd love for you to download it and give it a whirl. Make sure you leave a rating and review on iTunes. Anything over 11 stars is fine! Joking! Not really!

• Free - Download now

And If you find bugs or have additional feature requests (or are wondering why certain things we wanted to do, we couldn't do) head on over to the iMore Forums and let us know!

• iMore app 2.0 feedback and bug reports

February is Fitness Month at iMore and Mobile Nations, and that means our whole community is involved -- readers, listeners, viewers, and most of all, forum members. I wrote my Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu routine up a couple of days ago, but all week you've been sharing how you use your iPhone and iPad to stay in shape, and the apps and accessories you use along with it. Sure, we sweetened the deal by putting a $100 iTunes gift card up for grabs -- and we'll do it again next week -- but you guys brought serious game.

So what did you tell us?

Our winner, msiry, had this to say:

I use My iPhone to help me stay in shape. Below are the Apps and Accessories I use:

• Lose It: I use this app every single day to help me track how much I eat. Its very useful as I try to keep my carb intake at a minimum of 18% daily. I believe it is free in the AppStore as well, and very simple to use. Just recently it has added an extra bonus for users with the Nike FuelBand, which leads to me my next section.
• Nike+ FuelBand: Best thing to ever happen to me to keep going at the gym, and stay active. It's worn on the wrist, and actually has taken place of my watch. So, each day you set a goal for yourself and how many FuelPoints(its a measurement of how active you are) you think you will achieve. I started out low around 1500 FuelPoints for my first week, but when I was destroying those goals, I decided to up it up 2000 for my second week. I am now consistently at around 3200-3800 after a month of use. To reach my goals, I do what I have to stay active, as I no longer take escalators and take the stairs when available to me. I try to walk everywhere, and my dog loves it, as she gets extra long walk walks now. A friend of mine actually got one as well, and we have a daily competition of who is where, and what they set their goal too for the day, if it's too low, we talk trash to each other about it. Also, the FuelBand keeps track of Calories burned, Steps taken, and has a pretty nice watch on it as well. The one downfall of the FuelBand is the price tag, as it retails around $150 dollars. Luckily, I found a good deal on Ebay and was able to score one for $100 dollars after shipping and handling. Nike has a wide range of products to track your daily activities, so If you're interested, I would visit your local sports store, nike store, or google, and do as much research as possible before getting any product.
• [Nike FuelBand App](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/nike?at=10l3Vy&ct=UUimUdUnU17376 -fuelband/id493325070?mt=8&at=10l3Vy&ct=d_im): My FuelBand goes hand in hand with the Nike FuelBand App for the iPhone. It syncs via BlueTooth, and keeps track of all your goals, how far you've traveled that day, how many calories you've burned, and it has fun little animations when reaching certain goals. The App is Free in the App Store.
• Evernote: I use this app to track my workouts, and setup new workouts for myself. I basically follow a Circuit training workout I found online, that I feel has been very beneficial for me, I do that every other day, and the other days are just cardio/core exercises.

Overall these are the 4 main apps I use on a daily basis, and since January 1st, I am currently down 11 pounds to 200lbs, my goal is to be at 175 by May 30th. I am a competitive baseball player, as well as a casual golfer & surfer, and I have been out of shape for way too long. I feel great, I've received many compliments that It shows that I've lost weight, and a lot of my clothes that didn't fit me this time last year, I am now able to wear them, or the're too big on me.

Thanks msiry! We also had great tips from many of the other entrants.

Darthgreg, among other things, bought his analog fitness content with him to iOS:

• AirVideo: The DVD workout system p90x was what really got me started taking fitness seriously. Since I finished it, I've expanded my workout regime quite a bit into other workout videos as well as some self designed stuff. Consistently, however, I want easy access to p90x or another workout video, and since I've ripped them all to a computer, AirVideo gives me access to them no matter where I am or who is using the main tv. AirVideo streams all of my workout movies to my iPhone or iPad whether at home or abroad. I don't always use it, but I can always turn it it if I need it. It is very, very handy.

Daspoo has been using, among other things, the new incarnation of iFitness Pro for recording and storing routine stats

• Full Fitness : Exercise Workout Trainer: The app allows for entry of weight, reps per set, and set counts per exercise, lets you save routines for repeated use, and even allows for backup/restores of data in case something ever happens to your phone; not to mention it shows vids explaining how to perform many exercises. It's a fantastic tool for tracking your steady improvements and also for remembering baselines for starting exercises during workouts. There was drama in the past with the older version of the app (something about the dev creating false 5-star reviews, or something to that effect), but it really is a handy thing to have at the gym when you want to graduate from the notebook of set/reps info. Highly recommended!

Gregory Schneider, among other things, used Zombies 5K to get to the point where he could run a full 5K. But he also used the more general version:

• Zombies, Run!: Zombies 5k helped me get to the point where running more than 100m wasn't a struggle but Zombies Run! keeps me motivated not just on runs, but on walks with my dog too. I still use runtastic in the background as I prefer it's stat tracking over that of zombies run but the story pieces and voice acting in zombies run keep me thoroughly entertained while I'm out and about.

TheBiggMann, who works as a personal trainer, has even incorporated the cloud into his regime:

• Dropbox: This app saves my life on a regular basis. I upload all my clients workouts to my Dropbox because it seems like every week I need a new log or to change something on someone's workout. Having all my files at my fingertips allows me to do just that, all from the comfort of our training studio.

We had a lot of other great posts as well, and a lot of great recommendations, so make sure you check them all out, and if you haven't already, please add yours to the thread!

• How the iMore community uses their iPhones and iPads to stay in shape

Never mind rumors of an awkwardly named 4.8-inch "iPhone Math", the concept of a much larger iPhone has been floating about ever since the realities of early LTE chipsets -- and the batteries that came with them -- forced Android and Windows-based competitors to break the size barrier. Before the 16:9 iPhone 5 was announced, I examined some of the different ways Apple could go to 4-inches. More recently, following the launch of the iPad mini and the Droid DNA, I took a quick look at how Apple could achieve a 1080p+, 440ppi+ phone, one that would sit between 4-inches and 7.9-inches.

But it's worth a deeper look. Because, when you're dragging hundreds of millions of users, hundreds of thousands of developers, and hundreds of... hundreds of accessory makers behind your platform, it makes turning on a dime hugely problematic. Small, incremental steps, with adjustment periods after each, is the prudent way to go. And that's exactly how Apple has handled the iPhone so far.

Update: How Apple could scale iOS to 5-inches

Apple introduced the now-standard 1x pixel density, 3.5-inches at 480x320 and 163ppi, with the original iPhone in 2007. They introduced the Retina 2x density, 3.5 inches at 960x640 and 326ppi, with the iPhone 4 in 2010. They introduced the 16:9 aspect ratio, 4-inches at 1136x640 and 326ppi, with the iPhone 5 in 2012. If -- an it's a big if, no pun intended -- Apple intends to offer a larger screen alternative one day, it makes sense they'd do it in the same way. Let everyone get used to 16:9, let developers update their apps and accessory makers update their products, and then take the next step. Whether that's in 3 years like the switch to Retina, or 2 years like the switch to widescreen, or 1 year if acceleration continues, keeping things grounded as you push previous limits, and balancing stability with change, is how you move a platform forward.

I still believe 2013 needs to be more about iOS and iCloud than new hardware, but putting that aside, and asssuming we've not seen the last or the largest iPhone screen Apple ever makes, what steps could they take to get to 5-inches?

5-inches at 2x

The first way Apple could go to, or at least get closer to, 5-inches is simply by increasing the physical size of the current iPhone 5 display and keeping the 1136x640 pixel count the same. That would result in larger pixels, however, meaning lower pixel density.

At 4 inches, the the 1136x640 iPhone 5 has the same pixel density as the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S, or 326ppi. What happens if you stretch that out close to 5-inches? Interestingly, it goes to 264ppi. That's the pixel density of the Retina iPad. It's a density Apple already manufacturers, much like the shrunken iPad mini display was also a density Apple already manufactured, the 163 ppi of the original iPhone, iPhone 3G, and iPhone 3GS.

Retina is a function of pixel density at distance. That's why, from 10-feet away, a reasonably sized 1080p television looks "Retina", and why the 264ppi iPad 4 looks as good from your lap as the 326ppi iPhone 5 does from your hand. Similarly, a 5-inch phone wouldn't need to be held as closely as a 4-inch phone. So, while it would certainly lose sharpness, there'd be some mitigation.

Developers and designers wouldn't have to create any new graphical assets to support a 5-inch iPhone at 264ppi. However, it would increase the size of existing interface, text, and other pixel-based on-screen elements and touch-targets, which could make them overly, borderline comically, large. (Except for people with visual accessibility issues who currently find the iPhone's interface elements and text too small to read comfortably.)

For videos and games, a scaled up screen is a plus. You could even shrink down a website or photo smaller to see more if it at the same physical size. Unlike to switch to the iPhone 5's 16:9 screen, however, there aren't any additional pixels. You're getting bigger, not more.

Going to 5-inches while staying at 2x could work, especially considering the step-by-step approach Apple's taken so far, but it's not ideal

5-inches at 3x

That's an example of, from left to right, of what happens when a display goes from standard, to Retina, has its size changed, or gets scaled by a non-integer amount (i.e. 1.5x). As you can see, it's fine in all cases but the last. That's the reason Apple went to 2x for Retina and not some arbitrary size -- it allowed them to maintain as much app compatibility as possible. When 1 standard size pixel becomes 4 Retina pixels (2x in each direction) everything still falls "on the grid" and stays nice and sharp.

Arguably, as densities get high enough, and displays far away enough, you no longer notice the blurring. But phones aren't held at arms length like a Retina MacBook Pro. If Apple wants to go closer to 5-inches, and add more pixels to do it, it makes sense they'd stick with multiples of the original screen size. So, after 2x, we have 3x. After 1136x640, we have 1704x960 which at roughly 5-inches is 391ppi. That's more pixels than 720p, and well past Retina.

Just like when Apple switched from 1x to 2x, a switch from 2x to 3x would mean developers and designers would need to create new @3x assets for their apps. Depending on how many graphics are in an app, that can be a lot of work.

The benefit is that you're not just getting bigger, you're getting more. Small text continues to look great, and when you zoom out, details on web pages or photos are still crisp.

On the downside, the more pixels you have, the more graphics power you need on the chipset to drive them, and the denser they get, the more LED you need to punch through and light them. That means more battery to drive them, and that's the reason the iPad mini isn't Retina.

Granted 1704x960 isn't 2048x1536 like the Retina iPad, but few people would want an iPhone anywhere nearly as thick and heavy as the Retina iPad either. (At least as it exists now...)

Going to 5-inches and increasing density to 3x feels like a double-step, but if the technology is in place to do it at the right lightness and thinness, it could also be the best compromise.

5-inches at 4x

That's how the various 5-inch iPhone options look when you compare them both in terms of pixel count (top) and physical scale (bottom), with an iOS standard touch-target grid overlay (44px). From left to right, the iPhone 5 (black), theoretical iPhone @3x (purple), theoretical iPhone @4x (red), theoretical iPhone with iPad display @2x (blue), with the HTC Droid DNA 1080p (green) thrown in for good measure.

Yes, HTC has made 1080p (1920x1080) phones at 440ppi, which while positively pornographic, show what's already out and on the market. If Apple decides it wants to exceed that the way the original Retina display exceeded other panels at the time, they'd have to skip 3x and go straight to 4x -- 2272x1280 at 522ppi.

It would require even more graphics processing power, more light, and more battery, and it would be absolutely batshit insane, but hey, we're considering all options here.

Going to 5-inches at 4x probably isn't something within the current realms of technology, economics, or reason, however.

5-inches using the iPad mini display

While I won't call them phablets -- or tablones -- devices that blur the boundary between phone and tablet continue to be released. However, they're typically larger than 5-inches. 5.5-inches and now 6-inches are the norm. Also, unlike the iPhone 5, which has a 16:9 aspect ratio, and previous iPhones, which had 3:2 aspect ratios, the iPad has a 4:3 aspect ratio. In other words, it's wide. 1024x768 at 5-inches works out to 256ppi. If it were technologically possible cram a 2x iPad Retina display in there, 2048x1356 at 5-inches works out to 512ppi.

On the plus side, it would unify the app ecosystem and let the iPhone run iPad apps. On the minus side, if an iPhone interface starts to look ridiculously large at 5-inches, an iPad interface would be ridiculously, likely unusably, small at that same size. Existing iPhone apps, letterboxed, would probably be okay if they filled something close to their current 4-inch size. iPad apps would be another story entirely. The iPad mini is probably represents the bottom end of tap-target size, and shrinking from 7.9 to 5 would necessitate a stylus. The size of a toothpick.

Going to 5-inches by switching to an iPad display is a non-starter.

5-inches at some arbitrary or standardized pixel count

Other options include Apple switching from the traditional iPhone screen size, and its more modern multiples, to something arbitrary -- keeping the same 326ppi and just adding pixels to fill 5-inches -- or switching to a standard display size like 720p or 1080p.

To hit 5-inches at 326ppi, Apple would need to go to 1420x800 for the iPhone display size.

720p translates into 1280x720 and at 5-inches, that's 294ppi. 1080p translates into 1920x1080 and at 5 inches, that's 441ppi.

Neither approach seems to offer Apple any advantage over pixel trebling or even quadrupling, would result in scaled apps and interface elements falling off the grid and looking fuzzy, and create huge compatibility headaches in general for Apple, developers, and users.

Going to 5-inches at some arbitrary on standardized pixel gives you some of the benefits but all of the drawbacks and also seems like a non-starter.

4.5- or 4.8-inches

If Apple considers a screen size of 4.5- or 4.8- instead of 5-inches, the basic premises stay the same. Either way, if Apple stays at 2x, interface elements wouldn't be blown up as much at 4.5- or 4.8- as they would at 5-inches, nor would density decrease as much. At 4.5-inches the current 1136x640 display would be 290ppi, and at 4.8-inches it would be 272ppi. 3x would be 435ppi or 408ppi. 4x would be a silly 560ppi or 543ppi.

Given that, going to 4.5- or 4.8-inches could be a more reasonable alternative to 5-inches.

Yeahbuwhy?!

Apple has said as recently as the iPhone 5 introduction that they don't want to make a screen that the average person can't reach, corner-to-corner, with the thumb of one hand. And just like never making video iPods, or 7-inch tablets, Apple absolutely means that. Until they don't. That's why you can never say never with Apple.

For the sake of this discussion, lets assume there's a larger screen iPhone in the labs or sketched out on a napkin, or something. One handed ease of use is a feature that can be tackled in both hardware and software. Right now Apple's handling it in hardware. BlackBerry 10 will be tackling it in software, using corner gestures to allow for more navigation with less thumb travel. (Apologies for the gobsmacking cheesiness of this video, it's the only BlackBerry Flow example I could find.)

Apple's a really smart software company. If they ever go to 5-inches, they'll figure it out. (Hell, they'll invent it. But will they ever go to 5-inches? Not surprisingly, the go-to-market for a bigger iPhone echo and mirror those for a smaller iPad. From my previous post:

Or more simply put, if people are buying massive amounts of premium large-sized handsets, Apple could one day decide they'd rather those people buy premium Apple-made large-sized handsets than competing brands. If Apple sees value in increasing the scope of their addressable market, and thinks it will help them make a better product and sell more units, then that's why Apple would add a bigger iPhone to the mix.

And that's when as well.

You can now follow iMore, and our Mobile Nations sibling sites on the new app.net social network/micro-blogging service:

• @MobileNations
• @AndroidCentral
• @CrackBerry
• @iMore
• @webOSNation
• @WPCentral

And you can follow many of our editors, writers, and hosts there as well:

• @reneritchie
• @cbk (Kevin Michaluk)
• @philnickinson
• @kessler (Derek Kessler)
• @llofte (Leanna Lofte)
• @iMuggle (Ally Kazmucha)
• @azeis (Adam Zeis)
• @sethclifford
• @marcedwards

app.net is a Twitter-style social network that, instead of selling advertising based on reader engagement, charges an up-front fee to end users -- $50 for individuals or $100 for developers who want API access. Neither service is "free". With Twitter, you pay with your content and attention. With app.net, you pay with your money. They're simply different business models. Neither is inherently better than the other, the important thing is different is good, and options are good. Especially options that make app.net stand apart from Jaiku, Pownce, Buzz, and other not-Twitters that came before.

There's an argument to be made that app.net isn't different enough from Twitter in one crucial regard -- it's run by one company, rather than being a open standard like email or RSS. The worry is, if someone already sees Twitter becoming too much of a dictatorship, even if app.net is a more benevolent dictatorship, one day that too may change. Fair point.

Also, at $50/year to play, it probably won't appeal to casual users, or to the very people Twitter wants to target -- those who follow a hundred celebrities and #hashtag the crap out of their American Idol and similar TV-driven tweets. But it will likely appeal to the same people who originally used Twitter, who helped spread and grow the platform. And even if it's never big enough for Twitter to notice or fear, it could just become big enough for us geeks to notice and enjoy.

It's smaller, quieter, almost more intimate than Twitter at this point -- or more like the way Twitter was at the beginning. And it's still in alpha, with native apps for iPhone and iPad still very much private betas and works in progress.

But app.net is there, and for right now, for Mobile Nations, for iMore, and for us geeks, that's what matters.

If you're using app.net as well, drop a link for your @name in the comments and @iMore will follow you, and continue the discussion there...

The question sounds ludicrous, right? But iMore member motoleo posted on the iPhone Forums that he'd pay as much as $2000 for the next iPhone.

He continued:

It's currently the hottest thread on our iPhone Forums, prompting many of the replies you probably think it' prompting. Member JustMe'd got in early with:

The original iPhone was ludicrously expensive -- $499 at 4GB and $599 for 8GB on a 2-year contract. That compares to $199 for an iPhone 4S today, and $99 and $0 for an iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS respectively. Where the very first iPhone owners paid exorbitantly just to be one of the few with an iPhone, now pretty much anyone who wants one can have one, and it remains one of, if not the single most popular line of phones in the world.

This isn't the first time the iPhone-as-status-symbol debate has reared its head either. When the iPhone 3GS came out, and looked the same as the iPhone 3G, there were those upset that people wouldn't be able to tell at a glance they had the new iPhone.

The same thing happened when the iPhone 4S came out looking like the iPhone 4. Certain users were upset that they couldn't easily show off that they had the latest, greatest device.

Apple is clearly aiming for the mainstream market, not the high end. They're using carrier subsidies to provide a premium product to a huge customer base. Apple as a brand is still highly valued, but Apple is making sure it's also highly accessible.

There is a $2000+ Porsche designed BlackBerry P'9981 on the market, after all, and some people are buying that.

Luxury brands aren't anything new. Cars, fashion, watches, and more all have their luxury players. Should Apple introduce a more exclusive iPhone? An iPhone Pro to go along with their MacBook Pro and Mac Pro branding? Or is bringing exclusivity to everyone the whole point of Apple's brand and the iPhone?

Weigh in on our iPhone Forum thread now!

There's been a lot of discussion surrounding why Apple would release an iPad mini, but maybe even more concerning how Apple would go about implementing it. iMore originally heard back in May that the so-called iPad mini would be almost identical to the current 9.7-inch iPad, simply shrunk down to a 7.x-inch form factor. (I'm using 7.x-inch in lieu of a specific size since we haven't heard a specific size yet, but AppAdvice's A.T Faust III made a great case for 7.85 inches, so feel free to substitute that in.)

Some people, designers and end-users alike, feel the iPad interface won't scale down elegantly -- that touch targets will be too small and interface elements will feel too cramped. I've had the same concerns.

With that in mind, it's worthwhile considering the different 7.x-inch options Apple might choose to implement, and the benefits and compromises inherent with each.

Note: Joel Bernstein of Cast Irony did a lot of the heavy number lifting on this subject already. Rather than repeat it here, just go read his article first.

Interface realities

The original iPhone had a 320x480 pixel and point resolution, for a density of 163 ppi. The original iPad had a 768x1024 pixel and point resolution, for a density of 132 ppi. When Apple went to Retina displays, they doubled the pixels vertically and horizontally (@2x), but left the point resolution the same. In other words, where older iPhones and iPads had 1 pixel per point, and new Retina iPhones and iPads have 4 pixels per point.

This means the pixel density of the Retina iPhone jumped to 326 ppi and the Retina iPad jumped to 264 ppi, yet the point size, however, remained the same. That's why the physical size of buttons, sliders, and other default (UIKit) interface elements did not change from non-Retina to Retina devices -- they simply looked sharper.

The reason Apple stuck to @2x is that other, rather than arbitrary scaling factors, is that it allowed existing @1x apps to run without appearing blurry (due to pixel scaling interpolation) or shrinking beyond useful size on the already small 3.5-inch iPhone screen (due to physical scaling). @1x apps on @2x displays may look decidedly low-res, but all their pixels fall exactly on the point grid.

(To better understand the complexities that come with non @2x scaling factors, see Marc Edwards' explanation on Bjango.com.)

When Apple introduced the iPad, however, they didn't scale the iPhone interface. They created a new screen size, screen resolution, and aspect ratio, and used a lower pixel density. Because big tablets are generally held further away than small phones, the difference in pixel density isn't readily apparent to the naked eye.

Having a lower point density, however, does make a difference when it comes to usability -- interface elements are slightly bigger on the iPad than on the iPhone.

There's an important reason for this -- accuracy decreases over distance.

The iPhone is small enough that it can generally be used one handed, and small enough that even when a finger is displaced, it's a short, incredibly easy-to-judge distance. The odds of missing even a smaller button are low.

The iPad is big enough that it cannot generally be used one handed, and big enough that when a finger is displaced, it's a longer, not always as easy-to-judge distance. The odds of hitting a bigger button are higher.

The 9.7-inch iPad has considerably more screen space than the 3.5-inch iPhone, and Apple wisely leveraged it with bigger interface elements to increase usability.

(That's especially important for children, seniors, and people who have found pre-iOS computing devices intimidating or inaccessible, and might be in a higher stress state to begin with when faced with interface elements.)

Apple's 7.x-inch options

Given the above, there are several ways Apple could go about producing a 7.x-inch iPad mini, including scaling the iPhone interface up, creating a new interface size, and scaling the iPad interface down.

Instead of scaling the iPad iOS interface down from 9.7- to fit 7.x-inches, Apple could theoretically scale up the iPhone iOS interface from 3.5- to 7.x-inches. Gabe Glick on MacStories.net has gone over some ideas in this vein already.

In order to be a proper, scaled-up iPhone, a 7.x-inch iPad would have to have the same screen pixel and point size as the iPhone, and the same aspect ratio. That would mean 640x960 pixels at a 3:2 aspect ratio, which at 7.85-inches pixels works out to 137ppi. That might sound similar to the original iPad's 132 ppi, but the original iPhone was 163ppi and that's what the 3.5-inch iPhone interface was designed for. (Apple redesigned the interface for the 132 ppi iPad.) Scaling up would mean really big interface elements. Really big.

If, instead of stretching 640x960 to fit 7.x-inches, Apple instead kept the pixel size the same and simply added more pixels to reach 7.x-inches, or did some combination of scaling up and adding pixels, they'd run into a few problems.

"Design once, deploy everywhere" is every bit the joke today that "write once, run everywhere" was a decade ago. It doesn't work. Pixel-perfect designers will always want pixel perfect design. Excellence isn't "free".

Given that reality, technologies like Auto Layout and HTML5 might make apps and interfaces more resilient to scaling, but they don't and won't make them bullet proof or let them automagically swell or cramp to fit any arbitrary screen size.

Apple does have some non-@1x or @2x scaling options on the Retina MacBook Pro, but they're not set as default, and either way, a mouse-driven interface used at a greater distance than a mobile device is far more forgiving of stretching and spacing. Apple went with @2x (pixel doubling) on the iPhone and iPad for a reason.

There have been a variety of 7.x-sized Android tablets on the market for a long time now, and many of them simply have run scaled up phone-sized versions of Android apps, to deleterious effect.

Apple CEO Tim Cook pointed that out at the iPad 3 event, calling the Android apps "blown up" or "stretched out" phone apps. (Circa March, 2012 Android Twitter app on the top, Loren Brichter's Twitter for iPad below.)

Increasing the size of iPhone interface elements and/or the amount of white space between them doesn't lead to good looking, great working apps. It doesn't properly leverage the increase in screen size. And it seems to be of limited benefit to the platform.

When Apple introduced the iPad in 2010, they didn't simply scale up the 3.5-inch iPhone iOS interface. They created a new interface for iOS that better utilized the 9.7-inch, 768x1024 at 132 ppi iPad size.

Apple did provide the ability to run iPhone apps boxed or in fuzzy-double-chunky 2x size, but that very fuzzy-double-chunkiness put considerable pressure on developers to create either iPad-specific apps, or iPad-specific interfaces combined into a universal app.

If a 7.x-inch iPad brings with it an entirely new screen size , for example, 1152x1536, than this approach might make sense. Rather than having blurry @1.5x iPad apps, a new interface that keeps pixels on the grid, and somehow exists between the single column view of the iPhone interface and the double/multiple column view of the iPad interface, could well be a better alternative.

Likewise, if Apple changes the aspect ration, neither cropping nor letter- or pillar-boxing existing apps is a good long-term solution.

Either way, separate apps mean separate downloads and potentially separate purchases for users, and triple-packed universal binaries mean larger download sizes and larger storage requirements for users, even if they only have one of the device sizes to run the app on.

Since current universal apps already have to support both @1x (for iPhone 3GS and iPad 2, both still on the market), and @2x (for iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, and the new, gigantic iPad) assets for both interfaces, the file sizes are big to begin with.

A third screen size would mean apps and interfaces specifically designed to look and work great at 3.5-inches, 9.7-inches, and 7.x-inches. But it would also mean having to buy Angry Birds, Angry Birds HD, and Angry Birds 7 (or whatever developers come up with as classification), or having to download Infinity Blade 3 at a whopping 2+ GB.

And if an initial iPad mini isn't Retina, it will be one day. adding @1x and @2x assets will make an already bloated universal binary even more so.

Universal binaries are often too big for the 50MB 3G/4G download limit as it is, how many more would be pushed over the limit to support a unique 7-inch interface?

Multiple screen sizes increases complexity and overhead for developers and users alike. This solution might provide the best apps, but at considerable opportunity cost.

As mentioned, this is the solution iMore originally heard Apple was going with. Essentially, iOS 6 as it's running on the current iPad would simply run, scaled down, on the 7.x-inch iPad. Pixel size would be the same the 9.7-inch iPad, 1024x768. (Getting 2048x1536 down to 7.x-inches for around $200 may not be doable until future generations.)

Pixel density would be around the same as the original 3.5-inch iPhone, 163 ppi. (Or 326, the same as the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S, if and when it goes Retina.) Quite the coincidence, as noted by Daring Fireball's John Gruber.

Everything would then simply stay the same. Buttons and touch targets would be smaller, but not unusably so. The "slack" that currently exists between 3.5-inch iPhone interface elements and 9.7-inch iPad elements would just disappear, and you'd have the same basic iPad look with the same basic iPhone feel.

A 7.85-inch iPad would still require two hands to use, but the shorter distances would allow slightly better accuracy, again equalizing out the slightly smaller interface elements and touch targets.

Keeping the current iPad interface and scaling it down would mean developers and users could run the same iPad apps they do today. Universal binary sizes could likewise remain the same, since no new interface sizes or asset sizes would be necessary. White space wouldn't increase, so the visual density of apps would remain the same.

It's the simplest solution, and those are the ones Apple typically implements.

How other platforms have handled 7.x-inch form factors

Other tablet vendors have had 7.x-inch form factors on the market for a while, and different platforms have handled the interface size and usability challenges differently.

The original Samsung Galaxy Tab had a 7-inch screen and ran Android 2.2 Froyo. While Samsung made optimized versions of contacts, calendars, email, reading, and music apps for the 7-inch screen, in general, apps ran very much in the model of the "stretched out" or "blown up" smartphone interface on a tablet Apple CEO Tim Cook referred to at the iPad 3 event.

Amazon forked Android to create the 7-inch Amazon Kindle Fire, which runs a proprietary interface designed to facilitate buying and consuming content from the various Amazon stores. That focus allows for a big, bold look that's easy to use as intended.

Perhaps not satisfied with their own Android 3.0 Honeycomb efforts, or the efforts of their partners' tables, including updated Samsung tabs and the HTC Flyer, Google has just released their own Google Nexus 7 tablet. It runs the latest Android 4.1 Jellybean operating system.

On Google+, Dianne Hackborn shared a lot of insight into how the Nexus 7 handles interface scaling. Here's a brief excerpt:

The BlackBerry PlayBook launched a completely new platform for RIM, and that meant they didn't even try to scale the existing BlackBerryOS interface to tablet scale. Instead, they started fresh and they made a purpose-built -- if clearly webOS influenced -- interface entirely for the 7-inch form factor.

According to Kevin Michaluk of CrackBerry.com, the 7-inch scale was usable but cramped.

For BlackBerry 10, their upcoming new smartphone platform, RIM will now be facing a similar challenge -- scaling down and re-imagining the 7-inch PlayBook experience to run on a 4.x-inch or smaller BlackBerrys.

Sadly, the 7-inch webOS tablet, called the TouchPad Go, was never released. It was manufactured, however, and some of the units did make their way into the hands of webOS enthusiasts. Interestingly, the TouchPad Go took exactly the same path to 7-inches that iMore heard Apple is taking -- they shrank their existing 768x1024, 9.7-inch TouchPad screen down to a 768x1024 7-inch screen, and took the existing interface down with it. The pixels were smaller, so everything from buttons to touch targets were simply smaller.

According to Derek Kessler of webOS Nation, there was little to no loss of usability, though the original Touchpad felt more natural in portrait orientation while the Go felt more natural in landscape.

And it's interesting to note that shrinking 768x1024 down to 7-inches is slightly smaller than the rumored 7.85-inches Apple is rumored to be considering.

Conclusion

If you've ever watched an Apple engineer "test" an app -- by which I mean grab a device and start rapidly putting it through every permutation of interactivity imaginable, trying to break the experience in every way possible -- you know that it'll be a challenge for anything truly unusable to exit Apple. Of course there will be disagreement over the degree of usability, and the compromises Apple takes to get there, but that's always the case.

When rumors of the original iPad first started to circulate there was endless debate about how Apple could implement the multitouch keyboard. It had to be a fan. No, a circle. No, a fanning circle! But when the iPad debuted in 2010, it was just a keyboard, not dissimilar to the iPhone keyboard before it. Later, Apple added a split keyboard. That's Apple's modus operandi.

If and when Apple decides to bring the 7.x-inch iPad mini to market, they'll more than likely do it the same way they do most things -- in the simplest manner possible.

• The 16:9 iPhone
• The 4-inch iPhone

It's been a week since Apple released iOS 5.1.1 for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad so I'm wondering -- have you updated yet? Now that we're footloose and PC-free, and have over-the-air (OTA) updates, it's easier than ever to make sure your device is always running the latest and greatest version of iOS. The minute a software update hits, we post about it here on iMore and with only a few quick taps you can manually start the update process on your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad. Eventually, Apple will send you a pop-up notification to tell you an update is ready, and you can tap to get it started. Apple will badge the Settings icon as well, so you know you need to go in and look for... something.

But there are still some reasons people may not want to update. At least not yet. Some may be waiting to see how battery life and performance work out (it's fine, according to our readers). This is especially true for users of older devices like the iPhone 3GS.

Others might be jailbroken and be waiting on an iOS 5.1.1 untethered jailbreak before they update. If you rely on certain jailbreak features, there's no reason to lose them just for a minor bug fix or performance fix update, especially if you've been waiting on an iOS 5.1.x untethered jailbreak for your device for months already.

Still others might simply not see any compelling reason to update to iOS 5.1.1. If your device is working fine, if security patches aren't a big deal to your, and since there are no new features to be had, it may not seem worth even the small amount of effort OTA takes.

I've updated my iPad but not my iPhone. My iPhone is jailbroken so I won't be updating any time soon. Even if I wasn't jailbroken, I probably wouldn't update until Apple released a new feature I really wanted. I rely on my phone for my work, and its working, and I won't mess with a stable environment if I don't have to.

How about you? Have you updated to iOS 5.1.1 yet? If you have more than one iOS device, have you updated all of them? If you haven't updated yet, why not? Vote in the poll up top and give me all the details in the comments below!

Siri, the iPhone 4S' flagship feature has been on the market now for 6 months. On one hand, Siri is absolutely amazing -- the first real virtual personal assistant with a personality right out of Pixar. On the other hand, Siri is obviously still in beta and often fails or works just enough to frustrate more than any outright failure. That makes it an odd choice for a flagship feature, but given the lack of a physical redesign and the obvious potential for awesome demos, rightly or wrongly, Siri was what Apple had to work with.

But does it work for us?

Survey says: Siri usage is low

iMore is an iPhone enthusiast site, so our community is predisposed to adopt new features quickly and use them extensively. Yet Siri usage among the iMore nation remains curiously low. As of today, with over 4000 votes cast, nearly 50% of our readers seldom, if ever, use Siri.

That's... astonishing. Here's the full break down:

• Almost 5% use Siri often, many times a day.
• Over 15% use Siri frequently, on a daily basis.
• Roughly 23% use Siri infrequently, at least several times a week
• Nearly 50% almost never use Siri, monthly or less.
• Just over 7% might use Siri, but it's not yet available in their native language.

Taken together, only 20% of our iPhone 4S users are using Siri on anything approaching a regular basis. That leaves 80% using it irregularly at best, and 50% barely using it at all.

This in spite of Apple showcasing Siri during the iPhone 4S introduction, putting it front and center on Apple.com, and making Siri the focus of most of the iPhone 4S advertising. They gave it the iPhone event keynote. They gave it Santa. They gave it Samuel L. Jackson.

And still few of our readers are using it.

That's not unprecedented, of course. The 2010 iPhone 4 launch saw a lot of attention placed on Apple's video calling service, FaceTime. But it's still interesting.

Siri community commentary: six months later

So why are -- or mostly aren't -- you using Siri six months after it was introduced? Here's what you've told us:

• Cody Hahn

• Chris Flowers

• Dave D

• West

• Craig

• Tytanious

• Sherlock

• Alli

• JustMe'd

• jb 1007

Deciphering the disuse and discontent

For a few readers Siri has become important or even quasi indispensable. (Some of our editors have even joked Siri has made them so lazy that, if it's unavailable, they'll wait rather than actually type out a text message...) However, for many more readers, Siri simply wasn't part of their iPhone usage pattern. Based on the feedback we've gotten, it seems the disuse or discontent with Siri can be broken down into a few categories.

1. Some people just forget Siri is there. Siri is something new and new things don't always enter into, or find a place in, established workflows.
2. Siri not working -- either because it doesn't understand certain accents, because the required network connection fails, or because it simply takes too long to respond -- causes enough frustration that some users simply abandon it and don't go back. How many people would use Google if searches routinely took 30 seconds or more to return?
3. The inconsistent implementation -- ability to read texts but not emails, ability to launch some apps for specific functions but not simply launch an app, etc. -- creates an unpredictable or incomplete enough usability model that many simply exclude it entirely.
4. The lack of timely and consistent updates from Apple -- only one new language in 6 months and no new features or integration -- creates a wait and see attitude that, so far, is still waiting but not seeing.
5. The amount and type of Siri advertising creates expectations that the actual service (point #2) and support to date (point #4) don't live up to, leading to dissatisfaction.

There's also another alternative -- Siri is a new kind of interface meant for a new kind of user. iPhone sales numbers indicate it's the first smartphone to capture a predominantly mainstream audience. That audience isn't familiar with how smartphones historically worked, and something like Siri might ultimately prove more accessibly and less intimidating than a traditional app-launcher style interface. All of the factors listed above absolutely hurt Siri's chances of achieving that right now, but Siri could still achieve that in a future where it's both more reliable and more functional.

If that's the case, our iPhone enthusiast audience may never be the target for Siri, but the mainstream audience that is its target isn't using it, or isn't enjoying the use of Siri just yet.

Siri next steps

So six months later and Siri usage among iMore readers is low. What can be done to change that? The opposite of what we conjecture is causing it.

1. There's not much more Apple can do to boost Siri awareness, given that it's already the centerpiece of their iPhone 4S advertising, and making Siri popup like Microsoft Assistant would cause most of us to throw our phones at a wall. They can't just make people more aware of Siri, they have to make Siri more usable.
2. Improve Siri's ability to understand accents in the U.K. Since Siri claims to support U.K. English, supporting U.K. English is something important to do. No doubt the beta period, where Siri is fed more and more voice data, will help with that. Network connection issues are tougher. There's absolutely no excuse for Siri's servers on Apple's data centers to go down or even be slow to respond. Apple is rich enough to support the best technology and ensure among the best up times and availability in the business. Carrier connection problems. especially notorious in the U.S., are beyond Apple's ability to address unless/until they can put some base level of Siri functionality locally, on-device, as a fallback.
3. Adding more well-rounded features may be non-trivial but is necessary to create consistency in the Siri experience. If text entry or basic navigation was different, or non-existent, from app to app, it would make the iPhone unusable (see early versions of Android). Siri working differently, or not working at all, with some core apps makes it likewise difficult to count on. Adding the basics like Settings toggles, app launching, email reading, etc. would increase consistency and also solve general iOS pain points. ("Siri, turn Bluetooth off!" alone would likely bolster usage considerably.)
4. Roll out incremental updates. The power of online services is that they can be updated on the server-side, which means they're less disruptive and can be more frequent than larger software patches. Updates create confidence. Japanese was a great addition in iOS 5.1, but it was the only addition in 6 months and that's a long time.
5. Obviously Apple isn't going to stop advertising Siri unless and until they have something just as compelling to replace it with, and they're not going to make it tell Zooey Deschenel it can't connect to the network when she wants to get her dance on. That's the cost of marketing based on a beta feature that sets expectations the product can't meet. Apple doesn't often do it, but they've done it in this case and they're stuck with it now.

No doubt Apple is working away on Siri, and adding Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, and other languages is certainly non-trivial. Nothing about voice and context parsing is easy. Yet positioned the way it is, as the flagship feature of the iPhone 4S, Siri legitimately brings equal and opposite expectations down on Apple.

Conclusion

Six months later and a lot of you simply aren't using Siri. If you're one of them, let us know what Apple could do to get you on board. If you are using Siri, why do you think so many others aren't? The first developer betas for iOS 6 may be just around the corner, and the next generation iPhone 5,1 may just be on track for a fall release. What does Apple have to do to turn the corner on Siri and make it as mainstream and popular a feature as the iPhone itself?

Georgia contributed portions of this article

Image credit: iDoodle by Jason Harrison

At Macworld 2007 Steve Jobs pulled the original iPhone from his pocket, held it up high above the stage, and showed off the app launcher-based Home screen... that's pretty much remained the same ever since.

That's not entirely true, of course. Apple quickly added the ability to create WebClip icons for websites, and to re-arrange and delete them. With iOS 2 (iPhone OS 2) they added native apps to that mix. They increased the number of Home pages. They added Spotlight. They added wallpaper. With iOS 4 they layered in the multitasking fast app switcher. They layered in folders. The iPad, and the iPad alone, got landscape Home screen support. With iOS 5 they layered in Notification Center and Siri.

Is it time for something more?

Familiarity is a feature

To a casual user -- someone who only makes calls, plays music, takes photographs, and runs the occasional app -- the iPhone today works almost exactly as it did back in 2007. Just like a casual Mac OS X user can ignore the Terminal, iOS users can happily ignore Spotlight, the fast app switcher, folders, Notification Center, and Siri, and still fully use and enjoy their iPhone. They can wait years between hardware upgrades (and sometimes, because of that, software upgrades) and still pick up the latest iPhone and use it exactly as they used the first iPhone.

That may not matter to gadget geeks who change their platform as often as they change their jackets, but to mainstream users, to those for whom technology has traditionally been intimidating and inaccessible, that familiarity is a huge feature.

It's why Apple made the iPad work almost identically to the iPhone and said as much -- hundreds of millions of people already know how to use it.

It's why Home screen interface and experience isn't fashion. If you're bored by the iOS UI or UX, consider how little computer UI and UX has changed much over the last few decades. For all its other advances, for all it's design tweaks, OS X still has icons and folders on a desktop, the same as the classic Mac OS had generations ago. For all of Windows 8's Metro skins and finger-friendliness, it will still ship on beige boxes with full mouse and pointer support at its core.

That being said, mobile is moving at a blisteringly fast pace. While the iPhone and iOS were the startling new in 2007, they're now one of the oldest mobile experiences in the space. Interface and experience aren't fashion, but users are fashion conscious, and phones are subject to fashion trends.

Android has a huge marketshare. Windows Phone is getting a lot of attention, not just from AT&T but from designers. BlackBerry 10 may bring a new level of gesture-based interface to the table (if they can solve the discoverability issues).

These Home screen experiences not only look different to iOS and the traditional app launcher, but they function differently as well.

App launchers and information density

iPhone wasn't the first app launcher style Home screen. Not by a long shot. Long before smartphones, Palm Pilots were based entirely on the icon grid. When smartphones came along, the Treo retained the app launcher. Windows Mobile adopted it as well. Even today, you can find app launcher Home screens on webOS, BlackBerry OS, and Android. Some of them also add other layers, like Cards or widgets, but for the most part app launchers are never far away.

That's because they're familiar, as mentioned above. You see an iconic representation of something you want to do, you tap it, and it opens up. Because they're iconic (or supposed to be), and because human brains are great at pattern recognition, they scale well and can (usually) be picked out even among a large quantities of other icons.

What they lack is information density.

With very few exceptions, all an icon on an app launcher tells you is which app will launch when and if you tap it. They're static images and there's typically no information about the current state of the app, or any relevant data beyond the static image.

In the case of Apple's iOS, Calendar will show you the current date on its icon, and Apple created a badging system to overlay the number of outstanding alerts an app has pending. But that's it. With Notification Center, with a little extra effort, you can pull down snippets of those alerts, and see widgets for Weather and Stocks. However, the level of immediately available, glanceable data remains low.

Even if we consider the status bar, which shows carrier and Wi-Fi, time and battery, location and Bluetooth, none of it is actionable. It can't provide additional information or take you to it. (Although it has added persistent color bands for tethering, voice recording, VoIP or telephone calls, etc. and tapping those will take you to the associated app or Setting.)

Widgets and cards and tiles, oh my

There's no consistent Android interface, but stock Google, Sense, TouchWiz, "Blur", and other manufacturer implementations typically offer some variety of widgeting system. With them, you can have social statues, search boxes, clocks, news feeds, and a huge amount of glanceable data available right on the Home screen. They typically take up more space, however, might use slightly more battery and bandwidth as they keep up-to-date, and add an element of chaos to the layout. However, the amount of time they can save makes for an excellent tradeoff. (If that type of data is important to you -- some users simply don't find a use for widgets on computers or smartphones.)

webOS takes a different approach, shrinking entire apps down into "Cards" that stay live-ish on the Home screen, and thanks to more recent updates, can be stacked together. Flipping through Cards doesn't give you an iconic view or a widget-ized extract, but a look at the entire app, in its current state, with its current data. BlackBerry's Tablet OS essentially aped this approach as well. The only drawback is that sometimes some apps aren't as identifiable by their actual screen as they are by their icon (long white list views just look like long white list views). So, it might take a moment to find the exact Card you want, but probably not longer than finding and launching an app.

Both Android and webOS have easily accessible app launchers as well. Both also typically provide more information in the status bar, including the ability to tap into icons to activate drop down menus or initiate other functions.

Windows Phone 7 took an even more radical approach. They threw away the Windows Mobile app launcher and replaced it with a tile-based Home screen. Squares or rectangles represent categories of functionality, and can show a small amount of live content -- a picture, an avatar, a number, an icon, etc. It's not always great, however, since at times they take up the space of a widget while not showing much more data than an icon. (They're not as informationally dense as they could be, at least not yet.) And because they update, they're not as visually persistent, which means they lose the advantage of pattern recognition.

BlackBerry 10, which will only be released later this year, seems to be taking a hybrid approach. In the little they've demonstrated so far, they've shown something akin to a set of four cards, one per corner. Sliding panels also allow access to notifications, messages, and more. (Somewhat like Twitter for iPad. There's likely a lot more to it as well, and we'll hopefully see it as time goes on.

Siri

Siri is and isn't a Home screen. It isn't the traditional implementation of a Home screen -- something you can sit in and navigate around. It demands immediate interaction. But Siri can be used to access data and apps without having to move through the traditional Home screen. Rather than unlock, look for an icon, and launch, with Siri hold down a Home button, wait for a double tone, and speak.

Siri can by no means replace the traditional iOS Home Screen, but it can and does sit in parallel to the traditional iOS Home screen, and can replace its use in a few very specific ways. Yet it's clear Apple put significant work into Siri, not just into the server-side voice and context parsing engine, but the interface as well. Siri got a lot of the widgets that the traditional iOS Home screen hasn't. Depending on what you ask, all manner of clock and alarm and to-do and information snippets pop up. All incredibly well thought out and incredibly well rendered.

Getting a Reminder into iOS using the traditional Home screen, icons, buttons, and gestures is a chore. Getting a Reminder into iOS with Siri is remarkably fast. (Granted, when Siri works.)

Siri is still in beta, it's still not fully baked, Apple hasn't implemented it on the iPod touch or iPad. So, while Siri is no doubt part of the future, how much of the future is still to be determined.

iOS 6 and the Home screen

There's not a lot of low-hanging fruit left in iOS. Over the years, Apple has slowly but steadily added in most of the features that most of the people thought were missing in the original iOS (iPhone OS) -- apps, copy and paste, multitasking, notifications. There's a lot of ways to improve the existing functionality, but not a lot of functionality that's still missing. So on what tent poles will Apple hang its iOS 6 keynote this year?

Sure, Apple's bought 3 map visualization companies (but no map tiles), so a new Maps App could be one. I'd still sincerely love a Files.app repository, now iCloud enabled. Georgia still wants her Theme Store, where users can choose between a small amount of Apple designed iOS skins. But over the years, as iOS has matured, the amount of features truly "missing" has reduced considerably.

That leaves improving existing functionality. And that brings us neatly back to the question asked in this article's title.

Is it time for Apple to revamp the iOS Home screen?

Do you want them too? Do you need them too? If so, how so? Is it as simple as adding a widget layer to the existing multitasking and notification layers? Is it increasing Siri to the point where the app launcher becomes secondary? Or does it require something completely new, something that makes Windows Phone Metro and webOS and the upcoming BlackBerry 10 look old and outdated?

If Apple does make a substantive change to the Home screen, what does that mean for the hundreds of millions of mainstream users who are used to, perhaps dependent upon, the way things work now?

Apple has always been fearless when it comes to driving the future. They obsolete hardware and software often faster than the market itself. Is it time for Apple to apply that fearlessness to the iOS Home screen?

• iOS 6 wants: Files app and documents picker with iCloud
• The 4 inch iPhone
• iOS 6 wants: The opposite of widgets
• The challenge of bringing Siri to the iPad
• iOS 6 and privacy: How Apple should draw inspiration from Android for better app

I've been using mobile devices since the Handspring Prism and switched to the iPhone in 2010 when it first arrived in Canada. Slowly but surely, I've come to rely on it more and more, not only for blogging here on iMore, but for managing my day job as a therapist.

My iPhone's built-in alarm wakes me up in the morning. With eyes still half closed, I fumble for it, and peer at Intelliscreen X, my jailbreak Lock screen extender, to see if any urgent SMS messages or emails have come in over night. If nothing's there, I freely admit to hitting snooze and getting as many more winks in as time and family will allow.

Since I spend most of my day seeing clients at my office, where I'm offline and petty much unreachable while in session, I depend on SMS and email to stay in touch and keep track of any scheduling changes and additions. I can't have sound alerts on so unobtrusive visual notifications are really important to me. In between sessions I need to be able to look and see a list of everything that's come in while I've been busy, and respond as quickly and efficiently as possible. I use BiteSMS for jailbreak to handle my SMS heavy lifting. It lets me quickly see and reply to SMS messages even if I'm busy using another app (or game, shhh!) at the same time.

Since I'm often in a rush to get out of the house in the morning, I've come to rely on the Nexia Home Security System so I can do everything from lock my doors to turn on or off lights no matter where I am.

On my way to work I listen to music in the built-in Music app. I actually listen to music all the time. Whenever I'm out and about and hear something I like, I use Shazam [Free - Download now] to identify and buy it, and musiXmatch so I can -- yes, I can't believe I'm admitting this! -- sing along!

I'm also constantly taking photos with the built-in Camara app. I take photos of everything -- beautiful skies, outfits that look interesting, nail polish I'm testing out, hairstyles I've tried. You name it, I shoot it. I haven't gotten into any of the App Store photography or sharing apps, but I have used the amazing olloclip to do wide-angle, fisheye, and macro shots.

If I have to set Reminders or create quick Notes while traveling or in between sessions, I use Siri. I've played around with a number of jailbreak Siri extensions, but I don't use any of them regularly.

At work my iPhone becomes -- steady now! -- a phone! I use it to make an return calls. (And yes, I still remember phone numbers and use the dialer to place calls...) I also use the built-in Calculator for book-keeping. I have some events in the Calendar app but those are mostly for family and personal appointments. I still use a good old fashioned agenda book for client appointments.

Whenever I have a free moment, I love to decompress with casual games. My current favs include Draw Something and Zuma's Revenge [$1.99 - Download now]. It's not exactly the same as my long, lamented Stoneloops, but it's close.

I now use the awesome iMore app to keep up-to-date with the site, and Tapatalk to read and reply to the iMore forums. I don't use Twitter much, but when I do I'm now using Tweetbot. I also use Notes to rough out my reviews.

When I finally get home, I switch to the iPad and enjoy surfing the web, gaming, and watching videos the bigger screen. When I go to bed, however, it's back to the iPhone. Nothing can beat its mobility.

I'll check my schedule for the next day, catch up on any remaining emails and texts, maybe play a few more games. Then I set my alarm and catch as much sleep as I can before repeating it all the next day!

Interest in seeing how other members of the iMore nation use their iPhones and iPads at work? Check out the full series! Want to share how you use your iOS device? Add your story to our official iPhone at Work or iPad at Work threads in the iMore Forums!

iCloud has been called Apple's key to the next decade, an online hub in the clouds to replace the outdated Mac hub in your home -- but are you using it?

Introduced alongside iOS 5, iCloud was the subject of Steve Jobs' final keynote appearance and the way Apple finally "cut-the-cord" to iTunes and kicked off their Post-PC era. For the first time, iPhones, iPod touches and iPads could be set up, backed up and restored and updated over-the-air (OTA) without having to be plugged into a Mac or Windows PC. In fact, iCloud solved the age-old problem of getting users to backup and update in an entirely new, and even easier way. I used to be terrible when it came to backups, now they just happen. (I still don't update, however, due to jailbreak

Along with PC-free, iCloud also formalized the ability to re-download App Store apps and games, and iBookstore iBooks, and added the ability to re-download Music in the Cloud, and now TV in the Cloud and Movies in the Cloud (where they're available). If you don't mind spending an additional $24.99 a year, you can even get iTunes Match and have your entire music collection scanned and store on Apple's servers, with any low-quality songs that are available on the giant iTunes catalog replaced with Apple's higher-quality versions. Then you can re-download those from up to 10 devices on the same Apple ID as well.

Photo Stream tries to provide a seamless way to have any photo taken on your iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, or in iPhoto or Aperture on your Mac stored on iCloud and pushed down to every other device on your Apple ID. It works much better now that, thanks to iOS 5.1, you can delete individual photos (or photo bombs!).

Documents in the Cloud intends to replace our local files and file systems with a worry-free online repository. There, our Pages, Keynote and Numbers files just kind of hang out until we need them. Unfortunately, Apple hasn't updated iWork on the Mac to support iCloud, and it looks like we'll have to wait for OS X Mountain Lion before any of that "just-works". What I was most excited about -- the idea that my Angry Birds levels on iPhone would simply sync to my iPad so I could game interchangeably on either one -- hasn't happened yet either. Hopefully we're getting there and it's just taking a little time.

MobileMe's Mail, Contacts, and Calendars have moved over to iCloud. I don't use them, but they're free now and they seem to be quite reliable lately as well so for many people they're a good option. Find my iPhone, which lets you track down a missing or stolen device, is also part of iCloud now. It is joined by Find my Friends, which may let you track down a missing or stolen friend but is really meant as a way to keep track of family or meet up with friends, if such a thing doesn't creep you out the way it does me.

iCloud isn't even 6 months old yet, and Apple has been adding new features like TV Shows and Movies in the Cloud, and if it's as important to their future as it seems to be, no doubt that will continue. So here's where I go back to my original question -- are you using iCloud? If so, which features? Vote in the poll up top and then tell me how you're using it -- and liking or not liking it -- in the comments below. And for more, jump into our iCloud Forum and have at it!