Month: December 2008

As 2008 draws to a close, this is a natural time to look back at the last year of iPhone J.D.  Natural, but impossible, because the site has only been around for about six weeks.  Even so, I’d like to thank everyone who has helped to make this the #1 site for lawyers using iPhones … a claim that I make with some authority because I believe this is the only such site.

Thanks to my wife (an iPhone-using lawyer) for her support, and to my son for showing me that even a three year old can figure out how to use an iPhone.

Thanks to my blogger friends such as Ernie Svenson (Ernie the Attorney), Robert Peyton (Appetites), Ray Ward (Minor Wisdom) and Ben Stevens (The Mac Attorney) for educating me, inspiring me to start a blog, and linking to this site when it first started.

Thanks to my law firm and the increasing number of iPhone-using attorneys there who are frequently giving me ideas for this blog

Thanks to Daring Fireball and TechnoLawyer (and its TechnoFeature newsletter) for bringing thousands of visitors to iPhone J.D., many of whom have become regular readers.

Thanks to iFUN.de/iPhone, also known as iPhone-ticker.de, for sending thousands of visitors from Germany due to a link several weeks ago that is still sending traffic today.  If there are any German lawyers reading this site — Willkommen!  The Internet really does make the world feel like a small place.  For example, using Google Translate, you can easily read that site in English and readers in other countries can easily read this site and others in their native language.  Amazing technology.

Thanks to Steve Matthews for his interesting thoughts on how blogs like this can be marketing tools.  The truth is that this site is just a hobby, not some elaborate marketing plan, but Steve’s blog offers tons of useful advice that can help all lawyers market ourselves better.

Obviously, thanks to Apple for all that it has done with the iPhone in 2008.  It is hard to believe that when this year started, the iPhone had no third party apps, no 3G, didn’t work with Microsoft Exchange e-mail (and lacked MobileMe as another push e-mail alternative beyond Yahoo! Mail), and maxed out at 8 Gigs.  When the 16 Gig iPhone was introduced in February of 2008, it cost $499.  Dan Moren of Macworld has an excellent article on how the iPhone has evolved in 2008.  Check it out.  Considering all of the hardware and software features added to the iPhone in 2008, I am very excited to see what Apple has in store for 2009.

But most of all, thanks to all of you for reading and contributing to iPhone J.D.  I know it is a little cliché for a blog to thank its readers, but your comments and e-mails have given me so many ideas for getting more out of my own iPhone and have resulted in dozens of posts to this website.  Thanks!

Happy New Year, and please keep your comments and e-mails coming in 2009.  Let’s all plan to meet up this time next year to look back on all of the improvements to the iPhone that we saw in 2009.  I predict that it is going to be an awesome year.

-Jeff Richardson

The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) recently added a post listing a few ways that your iPhone can come in handy when you are traveling.  Click here to read it.  They discuss using an iPhone as an electronic boarding pass (a topic I recently discussed), getting movies on your iPhone using Handbrake so that you have something to watch on the plane, using Google maps to get travel directions and public transportation information, etc.

I recently traveled to New York over the holidays and my iPhone was incredibly helpful and fun while traveling.  I kept up with e-mail.  I took a few pictures of interesting sights with the iPhone camera.  I used the recently added public transportation information in the Maps app to figure out which New Jersey Transit trains to take to get to and from Newark airport.  While I was riding a train, I used the Wikipanion app to quickly access information from Wikipedia (even with a slow Edge connection) and learn a lot of interesting historical facts about the route I was taking.  I listened to music and podcasts and played a few games to pass the time on the plane (and I finally got far enough in the game to unlock all of the songs on Guitar Rock Tour, a fun Guitar Hero type game for the iPhone).  I kept my three year old son entertained during down time at the airport with games like Preschool Pals and videos he likes on YouTube such as the Maurice Sendak classics Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen.  And my RichardSolo external battery was essential to keep my iPhone running from early in the morning when my travels started until 10pm when I landed in New Orleans.

I have traveled with various smartphones and PDAs for over 15 years, but the iPhone far surpasses any other device I have previously used.  It is amazing to have something almost as powerful as a laptop that weighs practically nothing and slips into a pocket.  The iPhone is a great travel companion.

If you are willing to buy a refurbished phone — which AT&T says is a previously owned phone that was returned during the 30 day trial period and has been tested — AT&T will sell you an 8 GB iPhone for only $99 and a 16 GB iPhone for only $199.

Click here for more details.

UPDATE on 1/6/08:  The AT&T promotion is now over, but Best Buy will now sell you a refurbished iPhone for $50 off ($149 for 8GB and $249 for 16 GB).

Those of you who have read iPhone J.D. from the beginning (thanks!) know that I am a big fan of Citrix and I am eagerly looking forward to the app that they are writing for the iPhone.  In fact, I was using Citrix earlier today.  Even though I am currently with my wife’s family in New York for the holidays, I was able to fire up the Citrix client on a Mac and connect to my office to revise an appellate brief.

The Citrix Receiver for iPhone will not only look and feel native to this platform but it will leverage many of the software and hardware advancements incorporated into this ingenious device. Expect a rich combination of multi-touch gestures, great usage of the iPhone’s accelerometer and many more.

This video shows pictures of 30 years of Apple products in just over 3 minutes.   It’s not complete — where is the Apple Hi-Fi?  the Apple iPod socks? — but it is a fun trip down memory lane.  Perhaps many of you, like me, have actually used a large number of these products.  I remember using an Apple ][+ to program in BASIC in middle school, using my summer job earnings in college to buy a Mac Plus, my first exposure to digital photography with the Apple QuickTake 100 camera, etc.  I never owned a Newton, but I was always intrigued by it, and today’s iPhone is clearly what the Newton always wanted to be.  Anyway, I hope you enjoy this video.  Thanks to BuzzNewsRoom for posting it and to iPhone Savior for pointing it out.

There are not many lawyer-specific iPhone apps available, and many of the most useful — for example, the great FRCP app recently reviewed on this site — have been written by attorney Cliff Maier of WaffleTurtle Software.  Cliff is an Intellectual Property attorney in the Palo Alto office of the prestigious Mayer Brown law firm.  Click this button to see all of the current iPhone apps by Cliff Maier: 

I recently caught up with Cliff to talk to him about his double-identity as an IP lawyer by day and an iPhone app programmer by night.  Cliff has some interesting thoughts and the road that led him to developing apps for the iPhone is fascinating.  I hope you enjoy reading this interview as much as I enjoyed talking to Cliff.

iPJD:  What kind of law do you practice?

Maier:  My
practice is now almost entirely intellectual property litigation, and,
of that, almost all of the litigation is patent-related.  I do a little
licensing work, a little of what patent folks call “clearance” work,
and a little bit of “opinion of counsel” work, as well.  Although I
don’t do much now, I’ve also done a fair amount of patent prosecution
work (I am a registered patent attorney). 

iPJD:  Can you tell us a little bit more about the patent law work do you do?

Maier:  My
practice has specialized in the technical areas associated with patent
and copyright cases.  My practice is probably not the sort of practice
that would be very familiar to most attorneys, even most patent
attorneys.  I do my best to become an expert in the underlying
technology, whether it be cryptographic algorithms, memory circuit
designs, or software user interfaces.  I try to get to the point where
I could go get a job in that industry.  This helps me make our expert
witnesses more efficient, helps me locate potentially invalidating
prior art, helps me communicate with our clients’ engineers, helps me
figure out reasons our client doesn’t actually infringe, etc.   It also
enables me to easily punch holes in opposing experts’ testimony and
reports. In one big recent case, I actually got to use a couple of my
own engineering journal publications as prior art in our patent
invalidity case.  That was great fun.

iPJD:  What type of work did you do before you went to law school?  I know that you obtained a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering in 1996.

Maier:  After
I got my Ph.D. in New York, I came out to
Silicon Valley and worked at a start-up.  It was the most fun I’ve ever
had, but we went out of business eight months later.  I was a chip
designer, working on super-high-end microprocessors for Apple’s Macintosh computers.  I had a ton of responsibility because, despite being a youngster, I had spent four years working on exactly
the same technology for my Ph.D. (and no one else in Silicon Valley
other than the folks I was working with really understood the
technology).

iPJD:  Many readers of iPhone J.D. are Macintosh users and are familiar with the different microprocessors that Apple has considered using over the years.  Which one did you work on?

Maier:  The name of the
company was Exponential Technology.   We were working on a 500MHz
PowerPC back in the days of the PowerPC 601.  Apple was an investor, back in the days when Gil Amelio was the CEO of Apple.
 We had working silicon and a big coming-out party at the Fairmont in
San Jose with all the tech press.   Apple fans used to send us mail
offering to be janitors just so they could work for us.  Then Steve
Jobs came back to Apple and sort of put the kibosh on the whole thing.

iPJD:  Where did you go after Exponential Technology? 

Read more

Over the last several months, I’ve read with interest articles about airlines such as Continental and Delta starting to allow digital boarding passes on your iPhone or other cell phone.  (The photo on the right is from this post on Engadget.)  One of the things that I love about my iPhone it that it allows me to keep all of the information that is important to me in one place, replacing the countless pieces of paper that I am likely to misplace.  So moving my boarding pass from a piece of paper to my iPhone is just another step in my attempt to reduce the paper in my life.

While I have seen a few articles about digital boarding passes, I haven’t come across many first-hand accounts about how it works in practice, with the exception of this one post by Grant Martin a few weeks ago on the Gadling travel website.  Martin describes how he was able to use his iPhone as his boarding pass.  It is worth reading his entire post to get the full story, but he ends it as follows:

The reason for my post is that I am curious to hear from others who have used a digital boarding pass on their iPhone at one of the few airports that allows them to learn about how the process has worked in practice.  Except for that one post from Grant Martin, I haven’t come across much more on the Internet, even on FlyerTalk which is usually one of the best places to get advice and stories from frequent flyers.  Here is a story about someone using a PDF version of his boarding pass on his iPhone with success, which is not the same thing but is certainly related.

A lot of you will, like me, be traveling over the next few weeks for the holidays.  If you have the opportunity to use your iPhone as your boarding pass, I would love for you to share your experiences.  Post a comment or send me an e-mail.

On July 19, 2000, I had a chance to attend a Steve Jobs keynote address at the Macworld Expo in New York.  It was a memorable presentation.  Jobs gave an early sneak peek at the first version of Mac OS X, replaced the infamous round “hockey puck” mouse with an optical mouse, and for his “one more thing” introduced the G4 Cube — a computer that was not a financial success, but was a design marvel and had devoted fans.  Plus, Steve Jobs surprised all of us in the audience by telling us to look under our chairs to find a certificate we could use to get one of the new mice for free.  Ever since that Macworld, I’m told that attendees always look under
their chairs before a keynote address just to see if that stunt is
repeated.

And while that show was memorable, the award for best Steve Jobs keynote ever has to go to the keynote address at Macworld San Francisco in January of 2007.  That was when Jobs introduced the iPhone.  It was Steve Jobs bravado at its finest:

This is a day I’ve been looking forward to for two and a half years.  Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything.  And Apple has been, well, first of all, one is very fortunate if you get to work on just one of these in your career.  Apple has been very fortunate.  It has been able to introduce a few of these into the world.  In 1984, we introduced the Macintosh.  It didn’t just change Apple, it changed the whole computer industry.  In 2001, we introduced the first iPod.  And it didn’t just change the way we all listen to music, it changed the entire music industry. 

Well, today, we’re introducing three revolutionary products of this class.  The first one is a widescreen iPod with touch controls.  [Crowd cheers]  The second is a revolutionary mobile phone.  [Crowd cheers even louder]  And the third is a breakthrough Internet communications device.  So, three things.  A widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone, and a breakthrough Internet communications device.  An iPod, a phone and an Internet communicator.  An iPod, a phone and an Internet communicator.  [Crowd goes wild]  Are you getting it?  These are not three separate devices.  This is one device.  And we are calling it iPhone.  Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone.

Given the history of great Steve Jobs keynotes at Macworld conventions, it was a little sad to hear Apple announce this week that after the Macworld Expo being held in San Francisco in a few weeks, Apple will no longer participate in Macworld conventions.  And to underscore that Apple would no longer be using the Macworld Expo to make great product introductions, Apple also announced that Steve Jobs will not give the keynote in a few weeks — instead, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, Phil Schiller, will give the address.

A lot has been written about Apple’s decision.  While I understand why so many people are disappointed, Apple’s decision makes sense for the future.  First, now that Apple has Apple Stores in malls across the country, a customer no longer needs to attend a big Macworld Expo to get the full Apple experience.  Also, I’m sure that Apple was frustrated with having to introduce new exciting products every January.  That timing is horrible — it is just days after the holiday buying season ends — plus Apple would prefer to make big product announcements whenever big products are ready to announce.

There are dozens of articles analyzing Apple’s decision, but these are some of the best:

• Glenn Fleishman and Adam Engst, TidBITS
• Jason Snell, Macworld.com
• Rob Griffiths, Macworld.com
• Ted Landau, The Mac Observer
• Andy Ihnatko, Chicago Sun-Times
• John Siracusa, Ars Technica

(My views are closest to those of John Siracusa.) 

While many are now thinking about what Apple’s decision means for the future, this seems like an appropriate time to reflect on the past.  Apple still has a page on their website on which you can watch the January 2007
iPhone introduction (or, if you want, the entire keynote).  Even
two years later, it is still a good show and I encourage you to watch it.  I would love it if, just once in my life, I could channel that famous Steve Jobs charisma and enthusiasm as I am making a jury closing argument or giving a CLE presentation.

[UPDATE on 1/23/09:  John Gruber has an excellent, poignant post reflecting on Macworld Expo.]

 From August 2006 to July 2008, Dan Lyons published the amusing blog The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs writing as “Fake Steve Jobs” or just “FSJ”.  After over a year of people incorrectly guessing the identity of Fake Steve Jobs, Brad Stone of the New York Times finally figured out that FSJ was Lyons, who at the time was a writer Forbes.  Lyons wrote a humorous book under his Fake Steve Jobs name called Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs – A Parody.  This fictional story talks of Fake Steve Jobs dealing with the very real stock options backdating scandal that ended the careers of corporate executives and in-house counsel at many companies, including Apple.  (By the way, if you are reading this and you are inside counsel for a corporation, consider taking a look at the white paper that I co-authored last year for the Association of Corporate Counsel describing liability risks faced by corporate counsel including options backdating issues.)

A few months ago, and as a result of his FSJ fame, Lyons was offered the position of chief technology correspondent for Newsweek.  That position had previously been held by Steven Levy, who left to become a full time writer for Wired magazine.  Levy is one of my all-time favorite technology writers, and I love the book he wrote about the history of the iPod called The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness.  It would be great if someone who is as good a researcher and writer as Levy wrote a similar insider’s tale on the history of the iPhone.  Given the success of the iPhone, I suspect that someone will.

That is a lot of background for today’s post, but with Christmas around the corner I thought this would be a good time to recommend both of these books as gifts for the Apple enthusiast in your life.  They are both short but very enjoyable reads, especially Levy’s book on the making of the iPod.  And they are inexpensive enough that they also make great gifts for yourself.  (Full disclosure:  if you buy something from Amazon using the links to Amazon that I sometimes place on iPhone J.D., Amazon gives me a very small referral fee, which helps to defray the costs of running this site.)

But the real reason for my post today is to point out that the current issue of Newsweek includes an interesting article by Dan Lyons about how some iPhone programmers are making a lot of money, even though most iPhone apps are really cheap, virtually all in the $1 to $10 range (if not free).  This is great because it only serves to encourage more smart people to create more great iPhone apps, something that benefits us all.  The Newsweek article is a good, quick read, and if you enjoy reading iPhone J.D., I think you will enjoy the latest article from Lyons as well.

I previously reviewed an app from Clint Bagwell Consulting called Constitution for iPhone. 
That company has a few more reference texts for the iPhone, including
one that the author calls Manual for the United States of America.  I have a better name for it:  Civics for a Buck.

This $0.99 app collects some of the great texts in U.S. History and related information, including:

1. Declaration of Independence
2. Articles of Confederation
3. Articles of Confederation
4. U.S. Constitution
5. Federalist Papers
6. Washington’s Farewell Address
7. Emancipation Proclamation
8. Gettysburg Address
9. United Nations Charter
10. Censure of Joseph McCarthy
11. 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
12. Indian Bill of Rights
13. 2001 Patriot Act
14. List of U.S. Presidents
15. List of U.S. States
16. U.S. Flag Code

My law partner Katherine Mize recommended this one to me, pointing out that it is sometimes nice to have these texts at your fingertips to quote in a brief or in court. Time will tell how useful this is for me; the only document I see myself frequently using is the Constitution, and I already have the free version of Constitution for iPhone noted above.  But the other documents included are undeniably important documents that play an important role in U.S. history, and I enjoyed looking at them.  Also, the information contained in the lists of Presidents and States is quite comprehensive and may prove useful for solving a crossword puzzle or settling a bar bet.  For example, for each President you get a picture, signature, dates in office, vice president, party, spouse, dates of birth and death, other offices held, nicknames and published works — all stuff you could probably find in Wikipedia or elsewhere on the Ineternet, but now you have it in one easy to find place.  

The application design is very nice and easy to use, and very similar to the Constitution for iPhone app.  Some of the documents include scans of the original documents in two resolutions, which is a very nice touch.

If you are a U.S. citizen, you will probably enjoy this app, and it is well worth the price.  Download Manual for the United States of America for $0.99 from iTunes by clicking this button: