My law firm was closed yesterday for Good Friday, but I went to my office anywayāwearing shorts and an Emory T-shirt instead of a button-down shirtāto record the latest episode of the In the News podcast, and it came out great. Brett Burney and I started by explaining why you should immediately update to iOS 18.4.1, then we discussed the latest news on Apple tariffs and the recent rumors from Mark Gurman about the sequels to the Apple Vision Pro. We also talked about the multiple ways that Apple is celebrating Earth Day on Tuesday, a fun new look for the Apple Pencil Pro, what is so magical about Hex Code #242424, a few great iPhone tips, the latest features of Apple Maps, and nano-texture screens.
In our In the Show segment, we discuss the Apple TV+ shows The Studio and Mythic Quest.
In our In the Know segment, Brett shares a tip for using Focus Mode to adjust your Home Screen, and I explain how and why it can be incredibly useful to create and hide home screen pages.
I love using my Apple Vision Pro, but I know that it is tough to recommend because it is an expensive, first-generation device. (I love my iPhone too, but even I didn’t own the very first one that was released in 2007.) Thus, I’m incredibly curious about where the product might go in the future, not only to make the product better but also to increase its appeal. This week, Mark Gurman of Bloomberg reported a rumor that Apple has two new devices in development. And while you need to be a Bloomberg subscriber to read that article, his article has been discussed extensively on other sites, such as this article by Aminu Abdullahi of TechRepublic. Rumor has it that one model will be a cheaper and lighter version of the Apple Vison Pro. That seems obvious to me. Indeed, I always assumed that this first model was called the Apple Vision Pro specifically because there would at some point be something called “Apple Vision” or “Apple Vision Air” that is cheaper and lighter. The rumor is that the second model will be a cheaper device that must be tethered to a Mac to work. I guess the idea is that you leave the two screens in the Vision Pro but that is about it, turning it into a display that is connected to a Mac. It is easy for me to understand how this would work because I routinely use my Apple Vision Pro in Mac Virtual Display mode where I use the keyboard, mouse, and brain of my Mac Mini, and the Apple Vision Pro connects (wirelessly) and becomes a huge virtual screen for my Mac. Indeed, there would be an advantage to tethering: the connection could be much faster than my current wireless connection, which Gurman says would be perfect for low-latency tasks like surgical imagining or flight simulators. These two new versions of the Vision Pro both sound like great ideas, so it seems highly likely to me that Apple has been at least trying to make these two devices. Whether either or both will ever be released as shipping products remains to be seen. And now, the other news of note from the past week:
Apple released iOS 18.4.1 this week and similar updates for its other platforms. As Marko Zivkovic of AppleInsider reports, this update fixes two security exploits that were actively being used by bad guys. If you have been waiting to update your device, I encourage you to go ahead and do so now.
The two security flaws Apple patched have the security designation CVE-2025-31200 and CVE-2025-31201. The “CVE” part refers to the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures system, a critically important system used by everyone to identify and address security flaws. The system is maintined by a not-for-profit organization founded in 1958 called The Mitre Corporation, and it is funded primarily by the U.S. federal government. It looked like that was going to change this week when the Trump Administration inexplicably decided to stop funding the CVE program, as reported by Jessica Lyons of The Register. Fortunately, as Lyons reported in a follow-up article, saner heads prevailed at the 11th hour, and the Trump Administration reversed course. Thank goodness, but it is astonishing that this was even a possiblity this week.
Last week, I discussed the impact of the Trump Administration tariffs on Apple. Jeff Stein, Elizabeth Dwoskin, and Cat Zakrzewski of the Washington Post report on how Apple CEO Tim Cook worked behind the scenes with the Trump to get an exemption for some of those tariffs, at least for now.
Earth Day is on Tuesday, April 22. To celebrate, Apple announced that the day will be Global Close Your Rings Day on the Apple Watch. If you close all three Activity rings that day, you will earn a limited-edition award, plus 10 animated stickers and an animated badge that you can use in the Messages app.
…but that’s not all. From now until May 16, 2025, Apple is running a 2025 Earth Day Promotion. If you go to an Apple Store and turn in an old device for recycling, you can get 10% off the cost of over a dozen Apple items such as Apple Watch bands, the Apple Pencil, iPhone cases, and AirPods 4. The discount doesn’t apply to other popular products like the iPhone, AirPods Pro, or Macs. Details are on this page of the Apple website.
If you want to get a cable from Apple but you want something more exciting than the color white, Malcolm Owen of AppleInsider reports that this week the Beats division of Apple has launched a line of colorful, premium cables featuring a woven design to avoid tangles and fraying. The colors offered at this time are Bolt Black, Surge Stone, Nitro Navy, and Rapid Red.
Speaking of colors, ColorWare has long offered the ability to sell Apple products painted with vibrant colors. Marko Zivkovic notes that ColorWare is now selling a custom-painted Apple Pencil Pro that looks like a crayon. They are very cute. I certainly don’t need one, and I suppose that it wouldn’t look very professional to use one in court or in a deposition. But I cannot deny that a part of me really wants one.
David Sparks of MacSparky has used some interesting home screens for his iPhone in the past, but his latest home screen is particularly interesting and unlike anything I have seen before. He created it using the great Widgetsmith app. Check it out.
The staff of Wirecutter, part of the New York Times, identified 18 iPhone tips and tricks that you might not know about.
Last year, Apple released a beta version of Apple Maps that you can access using a web browser. Filipe EspĆ³sito reports that Apple Maps on the web is no longer in beta, and it now works on many new devices. You can also now use the service on an iPhone (maps.apple.com), but I’m not sure why you would do so when you can just use the native Maps app. But it is nice that you can share an Apple Maps link and know that someone else can open it, even if they are not using a device with an Apple Maps app.
Speaking of Apple Maps, I just noticed that the the Look Around service of Apple Maps (which is similar to Google Street View) came to New Orleans in January 2025ājust before the Super Bowl took place in this city, although maybe that is just a coincidence. So if you cannot come visit me in the Big Easy, you should now feel free to take a virtual look around. You can tell when Look Around is available for a location because a binoculars icon appears at the bottom left of the Maps app. The images of New Orleans in Apple Maps seem to be from 2023 and 2024, which, for now, makes them a little more recent than the images in Google Maps. But Google Maps has the advantage of including multiple images taken over one or two decades. In my law practice it is sometimes more useful to see what a location looked like many years ago.
Along with adding Look Around, New Orleans now has the Apple Maps Detailed City Experience, which means that when you are using the Maps app (not the web browser version), there is considerably more detail, such as 3D buildings, trees, crosswalks, turn lanes, etc. And many landmarks have detailed 3D models, such as the St. Louis Cathedral in Jackson Square in the French Quarter. There is a page on the Apple website that identifies 27 cities with a Detailed City Experience, but it doesn’t yet include New Orleans on that list, nor does it include Amsterdam, which was added in October 2024, according to Bogdan Popa of Autoevolution.
One of the new hit shows on Apple TV+ is The Studio. Russ Milheim of The Directinterviewed co-showrunner Alex Gregory to discuss the show. One thing Gregory noted is that while Apple has yet to pick up the show for a second season, the creators of the show have no specific endpoint in mind, and they can see the show going on for many seasons. Gregory says “I think we’d like to keep doing it indefinitely.”
I’m a fan of the Apple TV+ show Mythic Quest. The fourth season just ended, and while a fifth season had been planned, Apple apparently decided that four seasons were enough. However, as reported by Joe Ottreson of Variety, an alternative version of the last episdoe of Season 4 was filmed, and that different version of that epside is now being released to provide more finality to the series. I plan to watch that tonight. A four-episode anthology series called Side Quest was also released in 2025, and it is also quite good.
And finally, certain Apple devices such as the iPad Pro and the MacBook Pro provide the option of purchasing a nano-texture display, which reduces glare. I’ve never felt the need to add it to any of my devices (it is rare for me to use them for long periods of time in the bright sun or a bright light that I cannot avoid), but many people tell me that they love this feature. Apple released a new commercial this week called Low Glare that emphasizes the advances of a nano-texture display. (And for another funny commercial released by Apple this week, check out Up to 24 hours.)
Brett and I start this weekās episode of the In the News podcast discussing the impact of the new U.S. tariffs on the cost of the iPhone and other Apple products. And itās not just Apple products; products sold by Anker are already considerably more expensive. Next, we explain why you need to be careful when your device offers to update a contact entry, preparing for a potential interaction with U.S. customs agents, and some great tips for using the Goodnotes app.
In our Where Yāat? segment, we discuss two ways in which an Apple Watch can save lives. Then we discuss the Apple Vision Pro and the new Apple TV+ shows.
In our In the Know segment, Brett shares a tip for creating a PDF file on the iPhone or iPad, and I share a tip for the pinch-and-zoom gesture.
I wish I could just talk about useful apps today, but this week, it is impossible to talk about Apple news without talking about politics. For example, Aditya Kalra, Abhijith Ganapavaram, and Munsif Vengattil of Reuters report that Apple chartered planes to bring 600 tons of iPhones to the United States from India to get them in the United States before President Trump’s tariffs began, and I’ve seen similar reports about Apple bringing in more iPhones from China and elsewhere. And yet, that might not make much of a difference. John Gruber of Daring Fireball discusses some math done by Ryan Jones: five freight plans full of iPhones is only 12 days of sales, at most. And it may be even less than 12 days because I’ve heard numerous anecdotal reports that people packed Apple stores this past weekend to purchase iPhones before they became subject to a potential Trump Tax in the event that Apple raises prices to compensate for the tariffs. Raising prices is one of Apple’s options, but Jason Snell of Six Colors notes that Apple has a few other options as well, not that any of them are good. Richard Luscombe of The Guardian reports that the White House asserts that Apple can simply make iPhones in the United States to avoid the tariffs, but experts who actually know what they are talking about have explained that the United States doesn’t have the workforce or the manufacturing capacity to do so, and it would take years for Apple to try to compensate in this way. To be fair, I recognize the need for perspective: the misfortune resulting from President Trump’s executive orders on people who want to purchase Apple products pales in importance compared to what many other people are going through right now as a result of this administration. Nevertheless, this is undeniably the big news for Apple this week. And now, the rest of the news of note from this week:
One of the recent Trump administration scandals involving the iPhone was when National Security Advisor Mike Waltz discussed plans for an airstrike in Yemen using the Signal app instead of normal governmental channels and then added a reporter, Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, to the chat group. We now have an answer for why Goldberg was added to the group. Anthony Ha of TechCrunch reports that the iPhoneās contact suggestion update feature caused Waltz, in the past, to mistakenly add Goldbergās phone number to his contact entry for Brian Hughes, who is now a Trump spokesman. I recommend that you read this report so that you donāt make a similar mistake when you update one of your own contact entries. As for the even bigger question of why they used Signal to discuss incredibly confidential military secrets, we still donāt have a satisfactory answer to that one.
Apple is not just dealing with the United States government. The UK government has ordered Apple to break its encryption so that the UK can access confidential information that it deems important about people located anywhere in the world. Moreover, the UK has prohibited Apple from even talking about that order or Appleās challenge to the order in the courts. Nevertheless, the press found out about it anyway and challenged the confidentiality requirement. James Warrington of The Telegraph reports that media organizations prevailed in their challenge to the secrecy order. As a result, we should be learning more about what Apple and the UK government are arguing and how the UK court ultimately rules.
One thorny issue for U.S. lawyers who travel outside of the United States is what to do when federal customs agents demand to search your iPhone when you return home. You are likely to have confidential information on your iPhone that is protected by the attorney-client privilege and the work product doctrine, so you donāt want to reveal that information to the federal government as a condition for your returning home. But you also cannot just ignore customs agents. I first wrote about this issue back in 2017, and unfortunately, I donāt have much of a better answer today than I did back then. Attorney Amir Makled recently dealt with this issue, as reported by Tresa Baldas of the Detroit Free Press. Because he had happened to represent someone who had been arrested during a college protest, the attorneyās name was placed on a government list. Thus, when he came home after taking a family vacation out of the country, customs agents stopped him at the Detroit airport, brought him to an interrogation room, and demanded access to his phone. The article describes how Makled responded. If you are a U.S. attorney and you plan to travel outside of the country, I urge you to think about what you will do if you are subject to a similar interrogation so that you will have an action plan in place.
The Zens Quattro Charger Pro 4 is an interesting charger that was recently released. It costs $149.99, and it lets you charge four different devices at the same time on two shelves. Zac Hall of 9to5Mac wrote a review, and he is impressed.
Jason Cross of Macworld explains why he is a big fan of using Comply foam tips with the AirPods Pro. (They are about $20 on Amazon.) Iāve used them and been a fan for many years, for the reasons I explained in this post. I recently went back to using Apple’s tips just to remind myself of the differences. I like that Appleās own tips do a better job of fitting in the case. However with Appleās tips, I have had an AirPod fall out of my ears twice over the last few weeks, and for that reason, I am thinking about going back to the Comply tips.
The latest version of Appleās HomeKit technology supports robot vacuums. Rajesh Mishra of the Mac Observer recommends specific models that now work with HomeKit.
Chris Keall of The New Zealand Herald reports on a woman who learned that she had cancer because of her Apple Watch. The Vitals app alerted her that her heart rate had increased substantially, and that prompted her to see a doctor and learn that she had blood cancer that could have killed her within days. She is now receiving treatment.
Rudie Obias and Danielle Directo-Meston of The Hollywood Reporter note that for the next few weeks, you can sign up for Apple TV+ for only $2.99/month, a 70% savings. Thatās a great discount, and with so many fantastic shows on Apple TV+ right now, I encourage you to take advantage of it if you donāt currently subscribe.
The new show on Apple TV+ that starts today is Your Friends and Neighbors, a dark comedy starring Jon Hamm, Olivia Munn, and Amanda Peet. The early reviews have been quite good. For example, John Powers of NPR calls it “a perfect role for Hamm, who carries with him our memories of Don Draper’s dark-souled charisma, then takes this sort of character in a new directionāfunnier, sadder and more sympathetic. He’s never been better.” I’m excited to start watching it.
There is a new show coming to Apple TV+ on May 16 that looks very interesting called Murderbot. It is a Sci-Fi workplace comedy, which is a genre you donāt see very often, starring Alexander SkarsgĆ„rd, and it is based on the award-winning book The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells. Ryan Christoffel of 9to5Mac describes the show and shares the trailer.
There is a new movie coming to Apple TV+ on May 23 called Fountain of Youth. It is from director Guy Ritchie, it stars John Krasinski and Natalie Portman, and it looks to have an Indiana Jones vibe to it. Christoffel describes the show and shares the trailer.
It is now much easier for an Apple Vision Pro owner to let someone else try out the device, thanks to improvements in visionOS 2.4. Devon Dundee of MacStories explains what is new. I tried out this new system a few times nowāincluding with Brett Burney when I was at ABA TECHSHOW last weekāand it works really well.
At the end of 2024, Apple released Ice Dive, an episode in its Adventure Immersive Video series for the Apple Vision Pro. It shows diver Ant Williams attempting to break the world record for swimming the longest distance under ice with just one breath. As Chance Miller of 9to5Mac notes, the latest episode of the Voices of PR podcast interviews Williams to talk about the making of that video. It is fascinating to learn how the video was created. And as Williams notes, it is incredible to have something like this filmed in an Immersive Video because it allows others to understand what Williams did in a way that a traditional 2D video simply cannot convey. I agree with that 100%, and this is why I believe that, at some point in the future, Immersive Video is going to be an incredible tool for lawyers to use to let a judge and jury understand a setting in a way that traditional demonstrative exhibits simply cannot convey. Of course, because it is such a powerful tool, it also has the potential to be prejudicial, but lawyers have navigated those waters in the past with high-quality photos, videos, accident reconstruction demonstrative exhibits, etc.
As a reminder, you can find an updated list of all of Appleās Immersive Videos on this page.
If a law firm website is something that is of interest to you, my firm Adams and Reese now has a new logo and a new website. While I wasnāt involved in the rebranding, I think it came out really well. On the other hand, here at iPhone J.D., my current plan is to keep using the same banner I created in 2008. It makes me smile to remember my old iPhone 3G and think about how far the iPhone has come since then.
And finally, this week, Apple released a video called Rickās Rescue to share the true story of how Rick Sherman used the Emergency SOS feature on his Apple Watch to call for help when he was swept out to sea while swimming off the coast of Australia. For more on this dramatic story, includng details on how the Apple Watch saved his life, here is a 2024 report from ABC News in Australia.
Last week, I attended the American Bar Association’s annual legal technology conference, ABA TECHSHOW 2025. It was the 40th year of this conference, and in light of that anniversary, there were parts of the conference that looked back on how far legal technology has come over the decades. But as always, the core focus was on how technology can improve the practice of law today and in the future.
Unsurprisingly, AI was a major theme of this year’s conference. There were tons of educational sessions specifically devoted to that topic. Even in the sessions with a different focus, there was often at least some reference to AI. And on the Expo floor, almost all of the vendors were talking about how they were incorporating AI to make their products better. Seeing one topic become so predominant throughout the conference reminds me of 2009, when the iPhone was just taking off and there was so much excitement at TECHSHOW about the best iPhone apps for attorneys, and 2013, when so many attorneys were starting to understand the promise of the iPad and so many of the TECHSHOW vendors were emphasizing how well their services worked on an iPad. Of course, nowadays, being able to use a legal technology product on the iPhone and iPad is virtually a given, so much so that the only thing considered remarkable is when an offering lacks iPhone/iPad support.
Last week, one of the sessions that I taught was a fast-paced, jam-packed hour-long session on tips and tricks for being more productive with an iPhone and iPad in a law practice. There was so much to discuss, and I could have easily gone for at least another hour.
The other session that I taught, along with Prof. Kenton Brice of the University of Oklahoma College of Law, focused on the newest technology from Appleāthe Vision Proāand explored not only how lawyers can use this product today but how future VR and AR technology will allow lawyers to represent their clients more effectively, especially in litigation.
The keynote address was delivered by technology activist Cory Doctorow. It was incredibly thought-provoking and addressed numerous topics that are at the intersection of technology and the law, such as antitrust regulations and user privacy. I donāt agree with everything that Doctorow said, but he made a lot of good points and delivered them eloquently.
As always, there were lots of interesting sessions and not enough time to see everything, but I enjoyed the sessions that I did see. Here are Texas attorneys Mark Unger and Mitch Zoll discussing ways to use AI in a law practice:
Here is my podcast co-host Brett Burney along with Tara Cheever of Lit Software presenting a slide to discuss the exciting technology of USB-A. (Just kidding; they were talking about presenting evidence at trial using an iPad.)
On Thursday night, Brett and I hosted a fun dinner at the Italian restaurant Petterino’s. We were joined by North Carolina attorney Shaunis Mercer, Prof. Savanna Nolan of the University of Georgia School of Law, Atlanta attorneys Mike Dunham and Gregory Jacobs, San Antonio attorney Mark Unger, Ian O’Flaherty of Lit Software, and Cleveland attorney Paul Schumacher. In this picture, we are joined by Bill Vance (CTO of my law firm, Adams and Reese) and his wife who shared some laughs with us during the evening.
Friday morning, Brett Burney and I recorded the most recent episode of the In the News podcast from the Expo floor. It is rare to have the chance to record while we are in the same room, and it was especially nice that we had some guests on the podcast, including Vance and Washington, D.C. attorney Michael Eisenberg.
Friday night, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of TECHSHOW, there was a 1980ās-themed party. A few folks at the party looked like they were still in the 1980s, including Barron Henley and Gina Roers-Liemandt, and I got a chance to use a cellphone that was about the same size as the one that my father used in the 1980s.
Reid Trautz of the American Immigration Lawyers Association wore items from TECHSHOW 1998 and TECHSHOW 2011.
Here is Steve Embry, one of the co-chairs of TECHSHOW 2025.
The Expo floor was very active this year, with vendors showing off the latest and greatest in legal technology. I found it valuable to talk directly to many of these companies about their products, and I saw quite a few things that I hope to soon have at my own law firm so that I and others can use them. Unfortunately, I was too busy to spend any time in the Puppy Lounge sponsored by Clio, but I did enjoy watching the puppies march in Friday morning as Brett and I were recording the podcast. (Check out the video at 52:37.)
Finally, it was fantastic to talk to so many iPhone J.D. readers and In the News podcast listeners at TECHSHOWāsome of whom I have met in the past and others who I was meeting for the first time.
Brett and I recorded this weekās episode of the In the News podcast on the Expo floor of the ABA TECHSHOW conference in Chicago. Unfortunately, the sound is not as good as our normal episodes because we had bleed through from one microphone to the next one. I apologize that it is a little distracting when you first start to listen, but my hope is that you will get used to it pretty quickly and then you can just enjoy the episode. And there was so much to talk about this week from iOS 18.4 and the other big software updates of the week and some of the latest developments in the world of legal technology. Thank you to special guests Michael Eisenberg of The Tech-Savvy Lawyer, Bill Vance of Adams and Reese, and a bunch of cute puppies for joining me and Brett during the podcast.
In our In the Know segment, Brett discussed the QR code feature of LinkedIn, and I discussed using the Shared With You feature on the iPhone and iPad, especially in Safari.
Apple released lots of updates this week. For the iPhone and iPad, we now have iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4. It adds new emoji, the Apple News Food section in Apple News+, four different Ambient Music selections that you can trigger using the Control Center, priority notifications, EU support for Apple Intelligence, iPhone 15 Pro support for Visual Intelligence, a new Sketch style in the Image Playground app, support for robot vacuums in the Home app, and much more. For the Apple Watch, we now have WatchOS 11.4, which gives you the option for your wake up alarm to make a sound even if your watch is in silent mode assuming that you are using the Sleep focus mode to trigger the alarm. The Apple Vision Pro gets visionOS 2.4 which makes it much easier to share your Vision Pro with someone else thanks to a companion app for the iPhone/iPad, plus it adds the cool Spatial Gallery app and initial Apple Intelligence support. And there are updates for the Apple TV and the Mac. I suspect that these are the last significant operating system updates before we learn about major new features at WWDC in two months and those features are released this Fall, but we will see. And now, the news of note from the past week:
Iām in Chicago right now at ABA TECHSHOW. Brett Burney is here as well, and our plan is to record this weekās episode of the In the News podcast on the Expo floor this morning. Hopefully, all will go well, but if there is any delay in the episode showing up in your podcast app or on YouTube, Iām sure it will be because we are switching up our normal routine.
Joe Rossignol of MacRumors discusses the new Ambient Music feature in iOS 18.4, which you can add to your Control Center. I’ve checked it out, and it is nicely done. I like the Chill and Productivity channels for having something in the background while I get work done. On the other hand, the Wellbeing channel doesn’t do it for me.
In iOS 18.4, Safari works differently when you open a new tab: it shows your recent search terms. If this is a privacy concern for you (because you share your device), Tim Hardwick of MacRumors explains how to disable this feature.
Of course, there are also security fixes in iOS 18.4, as noted by Ryan Christoffel of 9to5Mac.
Malcolm Owen of AppleInsider notes that the Mail interface on the iPad has been updated in iPadOS 18.4 to match the recent update to the Mail interface on the iPhone. This includes the Inbox categorization feature, which I immediately turned off but perhaps others will find it useful.
As noted by Amber Neely of AppleInsider, on Monday, Apple very briefly released watchOS 11.4 for the Apple Watch, but before I could try to download it, it disappeared. Then it reappeared on Tuesday morning, then it disappeared again. Then it came back again on Tuesday afternoon. I took a risk and installed it on Tuesday afternoon, and nothing bad happened to my Apple Watch. Yet.
Apple is releasing a new Immersive Video for the Apple Vision Pro today. VIP: Yankee Stadium features an all-encompassing look at how elite athletes, die-hard fans, dedicated staff, and epic moments make the Bronx ballpark legendary.
As a reminder, I keep an updated list of all of Appleās Immersive Video content on this page.
Twenty Thousand Hertz is a great podcast about sound. The latest episode discusses sound aspects of Apple accessible technology and it is really interesting. It includes interviews with Apple employees who work to make Apple products more accessible.
Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac reports that five VPN apps in the App Store have been found to have links to the Chinese military, according to a report in the Financial Times.
Since President Trump has allowed Elon Musk to control so much of the U.S. government at the same time that Musk owns Starlink, Musk has been able to convince federal regulators to make life more difficult for Globalstar, a competitor of Starlink, as reported by Drew FitzGerald, Mich Maidenberg, and Keach Hagey of the Wall Street Journal. This has important implications for the iPhone becuase Apple is investing heavily in satellite technologies through Starlink.
The amazing show Severance on Apple TV+ may be over, but now we have a new great show to start watching on AppleTV+: The Studio. I really enjoyed the first two episodes, and I agree with almost everything that John Gruber of Daring Fireball says about the series in this post. If you haven’t checked out the show yet, you should do so.
Ryan Christoffel of 9to5Mac shares a tip for creating a shortcut to trigger Noise Cancellation mode on the AirPods Pro 2.
And finally, AirPods Pro 2 is now available in Australia, and Sarah Berry of The Sydney Morning Herald and Age flew to Cupertino to interview Kate Bergeron and Dr. Rajiv Kumar of Apple to discuss the product and the hearing aid feature in this video:
The shortlist of app developers that have made the biggest contributions to iPad use by lawyers since the iPad was announced in 2010 includes two huge companies (Apple and Microsoft) and one small company that is hyper-focused on lawyers: Lit Software. Lit Software has been making great iPad apps for lawyers since the year that the iPad was first introduced. Almost fifteen years later, its apps, such as TrialPad and TranscriptPad, are essential tools for many litigators. As of just a few weeks ago, the company now has five apps, and you get access to all of the apps as a part of the Lit Suite subscription. The fifth and newest member of the suite is TimelinePad.
The name of this new app tells you what it does. TinelinePad lets you create and interact with timelines so that you can organize the evidence in your case. Better yet, since Lit Software knows quite a bit about presenting evidence thanks to its work on TrialPad, the TimelinePad app was built from the ground up with the ability to present interactive timelines to jurors, judges, mediation participants, or any other audience. Lit Software has been working on this app for years, and the care that went into creating this app really shows. This is a great new app for lawyers.
Creating events
The purpose of this app is to show events on a timeline, so of course, the first step in using this app is to create events associated with specific dates. For each event, you can assign either a date or a date range (and you have the option to assign a time). You can assign a title of up to 64 characters and, optionally, a subtitle of up to 128 characters and a description of up to 256 characters. To make it easier to associate similar events on a timeline, you can assign a color and/or a symbol or emoji with each event, such as a telephone, envelope, document, dollar sign, etc.
You can attach documents to an event to make it easy to see the document associated with an event whenever you look at it.
You can also assign one or more tags to an event. A tag can be something like an issue in your case, a specific person, a specific company, or a specific place. Tags are my favorite feature in the TranscriptPad app, so Iām glad to see this feature implemented in this app as well.
Although it is easy to create events in the TimelinePad app itself, you can also import them from a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. Because so many apps for lawyers have an export to spreadsheet option, this option makes it easy to transfer dates and events from another system to TimelinePad. Also, it can be faster to get up and running by entering most of the information for events in Excel and then exporting to TimelinePad for the final adjustments. To make that easy, there is an option in the app to export a blank Excel template that has all of the fields created for you: state date, start time, end date, end time, title, subtitle, description, and even tags: you type words separated by commas, and each of them will become a tag. When you are done typing your information in the spreadsheet, import the spreadsheet into TimelinePad, and your events will be created. At that point, you can customize things like color and the symbol/emoji.
Speaking of Excel, you can also export a timeline to Excel. Or you can export to PDF.
Viewing events on a timeline
Although it is nice that you can export a timeline, you are most likely to want to view it in the appāeither on your iPad, or, more likely, when connected to an external monitor. You can view a timeline in many different ways.
Of course, you can view everything on a traditional timeline, and that is probably the main thing that you will do with this app.
You can pinch to zoom in or out of the timeline, and that gesture is great because it is so easy and intuitive, but I actually prefer to use the sliders at the bottom of the timeline because I find that to be more precise, plus it gives me a sense of the big picture at the same time that I decide how much I want to focus on a specific date range.
You can also see a list of the events in date order. Or you can see list of events that are associated with a tag.
Presentations
Creating a timeline for your own use can help you to gain perspective. However, I suspect that most people will want to use this app to show timelines to others. There are two different and equally useful ways to do this in the app.
First, there is War Room mode. Connect your iPad to an external monitor (for example, use AirPlay to wirelessly connect to an Apple TV that is connected to a monitor, or you can directly connect an iPad to a monitor). Everyone looking at the screen will see everything that you see on your own iPad screen. For example, if you are discussing a case with your colleagues, it can be useful for you and your team to see the list of events associated with a specific tagāfor example, a specific company or a specific issue in the caseāand seeing those events in date order may help you with your strategy, such as preparing your theory of the case. Seeing events on a timeline in date order grouped by something like an issue or a person is a great way to explore the relationships between the events in your case.
A second presentation mode is called Present. If you have used TrialPad before, you will understand this mode: you see everything on your iPadās screen, but the audience sees just the timeline. In this mode, you can pick a tag on your iPad and then tap each event associated with a tag. As you do so, the audience that is only seeing the timeline will see different events highlighted on the timeline. There are two modes for doing this: one where the event is highlighted, and another where the event is enlarged and floats above the overall timelineāsimilar to a callout in TrialPad. These two modes make it easy for the audience to follow along as you guide the audience through the events in date order (or reverse date order or whatever makes more sense for you) while still understanding where each event falls on the overall timeline. When you are going through events in date order, you can use the left and right arrows at the bottom of the screen to move forward or backward through events.
If you know that you will want to focus on a specific part of your timeline when you do a presentation, you can create a Scene. A Scene is a snapshot of time, such as a particular month or series of months. By creating multiple scenes, you can quickly zoom to specific parts of the timeline that you selected beforehand without having to pinch and zoom to recreate it while you are in front of a jury.
Layers and more
Even though this app was released very recently, it has already received numerous updates, including a significant one to add a new feature called Layers. You can assign specific events to a layer and then turn specific layers on or off to show just certain events in a timeline at once. I suspect that this feature will be popular.
Other new features for TimelinePad are in the works, including the ability to annotate an attachment to an event (which sounds to me like bringing some of the power of TrialPad into this app), the ability to add a video to an event (such as surveillance video or a deposition clip), and the ability to import from from other Lit Software apps (such as impeachment slides from TranscriptPadāa feature that I discussed in this post).
One feature that I think that would improve this app is an Undo feature. The developer tells me that this feature exists on the Mac version of the appāwhich I had not noticed because Iāve been using this app exclusively on my iPadābut he says that Undo is still a work in progress on the iPad. [UPDATE 2/2/2025: See the comments to this post for an update from Ian OāFlaherty, the developer of this app, on the Mac version of this app.] Of course, you can manually undo something that you did; for example, if you change an event color from blue to red and then change your mind, you can just assign it a blue color again.
It is not surprising that so many updates have been released and are planned because in the almost 15 years that I have been using LitSoftware products, the company has always been very good about adding new features to its apps. For example, TranscriptPad has been available since 2012, but it still receives significant updates, such as the useful ability to sync video that was added just over a year ago.
Price
Lit Software no longer sells individual apps. Instead, you purchase a subscription to LitSuite. That gets you all of the companyās apps: TrialPad, TranscriptPad, DocReviewPad, ExhibitPad, and TimelinePad. It is similar to purchasing a subscription to Microsoft Office 365 and getting Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, etc. For a single user, the price is $600 a year, which gives you all of the apps for the iPad and for the Mac (except for ExhibitPad, which is an iPad-only app). If you want to purchase a subscription for multiple people in your organization at a discount, you can reach out to LitSoftware to take advantage of the companyās Enterprise Program.
Conclusion
I first heard about the idea of this app a few years back when I was talking to the developers at the ABA TECHSHOW conference in Chicago. This yearās conference starts tomorrow, and it is great that this app is no longer just an idea but instead is now a tool that I and other lawyers can use when working on our cases. And with this app, there is now one more reason that the iPad is such an essential device for so many lawyers.
This article won theĀ LitigationWorldĀ Pick of the Week award on April 10, 2025. The editors of LitigationWorld, a free weekly email newsletter for litigators and others who work in litigation, give this award to one article every week that they feel is a must-read for this audience.
Thank you to Sanebox for sponsoring iPhone J.D. this month. SaneBox is a service that changes your relationship with email. Looking at your Inbox no longer means having to weed through tons of messages that you donāt need right and now may not want at all. Instead, when you open your Inbox, you essentially see just the good stuff that matters.
How does SaneBox do this? Less important emails, such as newsletters, are moved to subfolders so that you can deal with them when you have time, and it is often faster to deal with all of those at once. And if you tell SaneBox that there is an email sender from which you never want to see email again, those go to the Black Hole folder.
If this general approach sounds familiar, it should. Apple started doing something sort of similar in iOS 18.2, where it tries to manage your mailbox by sorting messages. However, the way that SaneBox does this is infinitely better than what you get in iOSājust like many other third-party apps for things like calendars, podcasts, reminders, passwords, etc., are much more sophisticated than Appleās built-in apps.
First, the mail sorting feature introduced iOS 18.2 only applies to the iPhone, so when you use a Mac or an iPad, you donāt see it at all. SaneBox works at the mail server level so it works no matter what you use to read your emailāiPhone, iPad, Mac, PC, Apple Watch, etc.
Second, SaneBox gives you complete control over how the sorting takes place, and as IāveĀ explained in the past, that makes all of the difference. For example, if SaneBox moves a newsletter into its @SaneLater folder, but you know that this one particular newsletter is important to you and that you want it to always stay in the Inbox so that you see it right away, simply drag an email containing the newsletter from @SaneLater to your Inbox. Thatās it. That teaches SaneBox that you want future issues of that newsletter to go to your Inbox.
The end result is that SaneBox lets you avoid the distraction of dozens of non-essential emails in your Inbox. Instead, your Inbox just contains the few messages that really matter, the ones that you want to know about and/or need to act upon. When you have more time, you can click the sub-folder in your Inbox into which SaneBox stores items like email newslettersāthings that you want to see at some point, but there is no urgency to read right away. Or you can click the sub-folder in your Inbox into which SaneBox filters items to be read later. For me, these are mostly junk messages missed by my emailās built-in spam filter. For unwanted items, you can drag them over into your @SaneBlackHole folder, which teaches SaneBoxās brain that you never want to see items from that sender ever again.
SaneBox offers much more than what Iāve just described. For example, it can remind you when you havenāt received a response to an email, and it can filter emails in countless other ways. But those core features make the process of reading your email so much faster and so much less annoying.
Iāve been paying for and using SaneBox for over two years, and I find the service well worth it. For my iPhone J.D. emails, when I look at the Inbox, I can quickly focus on the messages that matter the most to me, such as a reader sending in a suggestion with a news story for my Friday In the News post or interactions with someone who matters to me. From time to time, I look at the other folders used by SaneBox, and I can quickly deal with those emails, but they are virtually always the emails that donāt really matter to me. For my Gmail account, SaneBox has been a incredibly valuable. I use Gmail when I make purchases from websites, stores, services, etc., and as a result, there is so much in there that I donāt really care about. But I donāt want to miss my Gmail emails that do matter. Before I started using SaneBox, I would open up Gmail and see over a hundred messages, most of which didnāt really matter to me. Now, I often see less than 10 messages in my Inbox. Every few days, Iāll take the time to look at the folders used by SaneBox, and I can easily read things that I want to see or quickly delete all of them that I donāt care about. It has made a huge difference in my life, and it saves me so much time.
If you want to try out SaneBox to see what a huge difference it can make in your life,Ā click here to get a 14-day free trialĀ with no credit card required. If you donāt like having a clean and tidy Inbox and decide to return back to how you had it before, no sweat. But if you appreciate having a better way of working with email,Ā using this link in this postĀ will give you a generous $25 credit for when you pick a planāand there are lots of different plans offered so that you can choose the one that gives you just what you want.
Thanks again to SaneBox for sponsoring iPhone J.D. this month and for giving all of us a more efficient way to work with email.
The iconic Apple Store cube on Fifth Avenue in New York is covered with an interesting structure. It makes sense that this is a temporary structure erected to renovate the glass on the cube, but based on the picture that Brett Burney took in New York this week, it doesn’t look like any ordinary temporary structure. We begin this week’s episode of the In the News podcast discussing the cube. We then discuss our plans for ABA TECHSHOW in Chicago next week, what we expect to see announced in iOS 19 in two months and what we expect to see available in iOS 18.4 perhaps as soon as next week. We also discuss the original and latest versions of the AirFly from Twelve South, music updates, and the latest news relating to Apple TV+. We also discuss the great behind-the-scenes video associated with the Spike Jonze commercial for AirPods noise cancellation called Someday.
In our In the Know segment, I preview my upcoming ABA TECHSHOW presentation on iPhone and iPad tips by sharing some tips that are definitely both oldies and goodies.
