phone home

One of the best ways to learn something about someone is to look at their bookshelf. This doesn't work as often anymore. People have moved from real books to digital books. And a lot of interaction with people is done digitally.

I'd argue the new bookshelf is the phone home screen. This is my partners screen below. You can actually tell a lot about someone from this I realize because I know him well.

It also seems somewhat nosy to look at someone's home screen. I feel a little bit like that's something you don't stare at and should ask permission to see. And so with that thought let's look at his, lol.

• Leaning towards technical illiteracy - The Yahoo! Mail is a dead giveaway here. He redeems himself with the use of Gmail. But even that is telling because while gmail is the de facto email service, most technically literate people would use Mail or use a hipper email client like Spark
• News junkie with a conservative / Republican bent - Wall Street Journal and the New York Post are so fitting. Both couldn't be more conservative and the Post is such a gossipy rag and he is definitely gossipy.
• Old-school Wall Streeter - HP-12C is the dead giveaway. This is the app that replicates the old Hewlett-Packard 12C financial calculator. To me it means nothing. Since I was in science the 15C is my baby. He has been on Wall Street since Day 1.
• NYer - To have Uber that prominent in his list tells you he is in a major city.
• Music lover - 3 apps and all prominently high on his list.
• Book lover - 3 apps and all prominently high on his list.
• Single - 3 food delivery apps and all prominently high on his list
• Option-Open - I'm not sure what you call this type of person. My wife is like him. 93 email messages unread. 61 text messages unread. 101 slack messages unread. My wife takes this to new limits. I believe one of her email clients has over 1,000 unread emails. There's definitely a personality type that operates in this way and I believe it has to do with leaving things open as to provide additional options. But I'm not sure.

Conversely here is mine:

• Doesn't like to mess around with things - I'm not a customizer. For the most part I tend to leave the home screen as is. Most of my apps are on the second page in folders for music, books, work, travel, finance, entertainment, etc.
• News junkie - New Yorker, Apple News, Twitter, Breaking News, NY Times are all grouped under newsstand. Even my social bucket is largely a news feed with the Reddit app
• Los Angelean - Waze installed prominently in my list of apps
• Electronic pay lover - Wallet is high up and I use it. Apple Pay, rewards cards, Starbucks, etc. I use it every chance I can over cards and cash
• Organized - Calendar, contacts the most prominent. I use these a lot
• Media consumed electronically - The App Store and iTunes Store are pretty prominent and I use them. I also have the AppleTV app upfront. And Music is prominent in my lower tray. I buy everything electronic when I can and I consume it on a device