The Attention War — iPhones only vs iPhones & Mac/iPad vs iPhone & Mac & iPad💻

( Let’s not even get into Apple watch & Apple TV)📱

I came across a post on Facebook by my friend Kyle Ryan today. He posted a screenshot of his iPhone’s homescreen. It is a very common thing to do among techies. Some of my favorite analysis of home screens include those by M.G. Siegler and Stephanie Engle.

(Highly recommend reading them here and here)

It is very fascinating how these apps on our home screens aren't just a bunch of squares in a tabular format. They really reflect our behaviors, what matters to us, what our frequent wants/needs are and how we use our phones which have now become an integral part of our lives.

So, I am not going to just talk about what my home screen looks like. Rather, I want to analyze how my home screen changed with the change in usage of the devices and how that change reflects and causes a different behavior.

So, lets get started.

I have been using Mac and iPhone for both work and school. The system has worked well for me. It was fully in sync. iPhone was meant for on-the-go reading, communicating and miscellaneous utility like maps. Mac was mostly used when I sit down to work. My Mac took over all the activities that I normally did on my iPhone. And, on top of that, there was coding, accessing college systems and things like that.

A little over a month ago, I decided, for better or worse, to bring an iPad mini into my healthy twosome iOS system. I had never been an iPad guy. I was curious to see how what the use case for the iPad will be.

Four weeks into this experiment, I have noticed that the iPad has really displaced the Mac from my daily system. Turns out, I don’t really need my mac for most of the things I do. Besides coding, I realized, my Mac serves no purpose that my iPad cannot serve.

So, now comes the screenshot.

My iPhone’s home screen is mainly social, communication and reading apps. Out of all of these apps, Podcasts, Twitter, Snapchat, Slack and Messenger take up most of my phone time. I still use Pocket, Medium, Emails, Nuzzel and Feedly, but significantly lesser than how much I did when I did not own an iPad. I use Bloomberg app for listening to news on Bloomberg West first thing in the morning while working out. Tapingo is a life savior. It has cut down my waiting time in lines for food and coffee. Yes, I use Apple’s client for emails. I love Soon. It helps me jot down books, shows, movies and restaurants that my friends recommend me every now and then. Forevery is slowly replacing Photos for me. Fred Wilsom wrote a great piece about it. 📷

It really fascinates me how my behavior and use cases for an existing product changed by bringing in a new device in my life. 🙃

Here’s what my homescreen on iPad looks like. 😅

So, my iPad has mainly become my reading device. I spend extensive time reading on Nuzzel, Medium, Pocket, and Twitter. I have started to not like to read on my iPhone’s smaller screen. I find myself listening to podcasts, snapchatting and messaging more on the go when I don’t have access to my iPad. I use Blinkist and Netflix every now and then. ( Ask Chris Sacca how much he likes Blinkist )

It amazes me how I would be hesitant to read much on my iPhone now. I think this is a good thing. I find myself engaging more with people on social media and in real life and be aware of my surroundings while I am on the go between classes or waiting in lines.

I really love how I have unconsciously developed this new behavior. This has a couple but manageable side-effects. My “save for later” habit on Pocket has turned into “save for later for reading on iPad”. Therefore, my pocket unread count is exploding. And, naturally, since I spend most of my time juggling between these two devices, my poor Mac has gotten lonely. It’s slowly losing my attention.

I am adjusting to that as well.