After recently talking about your Tech Getting in the Way here is another post about your ‘dock’ showing what is a priority with the usage of your phone (obviously only phones with docks).

The Dock. That little area on your iPhone or iPad that contains a handful of apps which are available on every screen. It says something about what you’re about and what you want to achieve.

Assuming the above is true, lets have a look at the dock on my iPhone.

Curtis' iPhone Dock
Curtis’ iPhone Dock

So the 4 items that made the dock are.

  1. Rdio
  2. Phone
  3. OmniFocus
  4. Agenda

90% of the music I listen to daily is in Rdio, so it’s there. In all honesty, I actually listen to more podcasts with my iPhone than music. I use Instacast to do that because it sync’s between my iPad and iPhone.

Second up is the stock Phone app on the iPhone. I rarely make calls so I am not even sure why it’s there. I think it’s a stock application (at least in the dock) and I’ve just left it.

Now OmniFocus has an earned spot. I use it for all my task management on [Mac][mackof], iPad and iPhone. I open it daily on each device so it has to have a spot in my dock.

Finally is Agenda, which is the most useful calendar application I’ve found for iOS. I check it fairly regularly, maybe once or twice a day.

So I may not really fit the idea of the post, my most used applications are not in my dock. In reality I use Instacast, Sparrow, Tweetbot, WordPress, Reeder, OmniFocus and Path the most. I think the real difference is that I use my phone differently. Most of those apps (Reeder and Path being the exception) are on the home screen in much the same spot they have been since I had the phone (I did replace Mail with Sparrow but it’s the same function in the same icon position. I’m almost never on the second page of my phone, it’s reserved for things like the Keynote Remote, Meetup, Speedtest and the Apple Store App. These second page things are accessed infrequently so I really have no need to change away from my first page, which lessens the importance of the applications in my dock.

My dock does still say something about how I use my phone though, just not about which applications are the most important ones.