Yesterday, Apple previewed the next version of the iPhone operating software, version 3.0, which is due out this summer. I hope that means June, not August. Apple says that there are over 100 new features, and they announced a bunch of them yesterday. Harry McCracken counted 81 different announcements yesterday, although he was purposefully being quite generous in the way he counted. Here are the announcements that I think will be of the most interest for attorneys (any many others!) who use iPhones. [UPDATE: This follow up post lists even more new features.]
Cut, copy and paste. Finally! Double-tap a word to bring up a menu, easily adjust how much text you are selecting, and if you make a mistake you can just shake the iPhone to undo. It will be great to be able to paste text into an e-mail that you have copied from another e-mail, a court's website, a legal reference app on your iPhone, etc. We've waited a long time for this, and it looks like Apple has a great implementation. For many lawyers, this will be the best new feature.
- Spotlight and search. I have thousands of e-mails and calendar entries and dozens of notes on my iPhone, and it is sometimes difficult to find the specific item that I need. Apple is adding robust search features, both within an app and across all of your apps. It is unclear whether you can search the body of an e-mail -- yesterday, Apple only talked about searching the From, To, Subject and Header fields. You can use Spotlight not only to find an e-mail, contact, song, etc. but also to find apps by name. Type "tim" and you will see a link to the New York Times app -- saving you the trouble of flicking across multiple screens to find the app.
Notes. The Notes app will sync with your computer using iTunes. This is fine, but even better would be for Notes to sync with the notes in Microsoft Exchange, for those of us at a law firm that uses Outlook. I'm sure that Apple (or a third party) will let you sync notes on your computer with Exchange. It would be easier if the Notes app just synced wirelessly with Exchange, as the Mail and Contacts and Calendar apps do. (And what about syncing of To Do items?)
- Subscriptions and updates within apps. Right now, when you buy an app, updates are free. While this sounds good, it reduces the incentive for a developer to add new content and features, and forces some developers to create multiple apps with somewhat different features to get paid again. Apple will allow a developer to sell an app on a subscription basis, and will also allow developers to charge for updates within the app itself. A publication like the Wall Street Journal could sell a WSJ app along with a monthly subscription charge. I am sure that legal reference app developers will use this to charge users for regular updates to these apps so that the reference apps can always be kept up to date. And this is a good thing. Lawyers always want to have the latest information, and now developers have the incentive to provide it within an app. I can easily see Westlaw and Lexis using this feature to create apps in which you pay a small fee to pull a case or statute. I could also see a developer like Cliff Maier create a single legal reference app that contains whatever sources you want to purchase -- I want Fed. R. Civ. Pro. and Fed. R. App. Pro., but I don't need to buy the criminal rules. And of course, a game developer could sell you a game with levels 1 through 10 and you have the option to later purchase levels 11 through 20. This one change in 3.0 will forever change iPhone apps.
Push notification service. Speaking of staying up to date, Apple will now allow apps to get alerts, even if the app is not running. Notifications can be text, audible alerts, or a numbered badge on the app icon (much like the Mail icon always shows you the number of unread messages). Yesterday, ESPN showed off getting updated scores automatically pushed to the iPhone, which would be nice. But Oracle also showed business apps getting updated information, such as updated information from a customer relationship manager (CRM) app. I look forward to seeing what creative developers dream up.
- Tethering. You will be able to use your iPhone to give Internet access to your laptop. Details of this are up to the carrier, so we will have to see what AT&T announces. I'm sure there will be a monthly fee, but considering that many hotels charge $10 or more a day for Internet access, frequent travelers may find it easier and cheaper to just use the 3G connection on the iPhone as a modem for their laptop.
Peer to Peer Connectivity. I am always amazed how often I see other people around me with an iPhone. With the 3.0 software, iPhones that are close to each other will be able to talk to each other. We'll have to see what Apple and other developers do with this. Game developers will love this for multiplayer games, but I expect we will also see an easy way to send your contact information to another nearby iPhone -- the digital version of sharing business cards.
- Share contacts via MMS and e-mail. Speaking of which, you will be able to share the information contained in one of your Contacts entries over MMS using the vCard standard. You can also attach a vCard to an e-mail.
- Performance improvements. The iPhone should be faster and even more stable, which is always good.
- Safari improvements. Improvements include auto-fill of forms on a webpage, enhanced phishing protection, VPN on demand for secure websites, Safari will remember your log-in information for websites, etc. Safari is one of the most useful apps on the iPhone, so any improvements are welcome.
Maps and turn-by-turn directions. I frequently use the Maps app to find out where I am and where I need to go. Apple will allow developers to integrate maps directly into apps, which means that we will see even more sophisticated use of maps in future apps. Developers can even sell a turn-by-turn GPS system, although because of Google license requirements the developer has to provide its own maps. This is actually a good thing; as Alex Lindsay pointed out in this week's MacBreak Weekly podcast, even though a map of the U.S. can take up a full gigabyte on your iPhone, this is worth it because a GPS app works much faster if the maps are local on your iPhone, plus you want to store maps locally for those times when your iPhone doesn't have 3G or Edge access. I'm sure it is just a matter of time before a well-known company like Tom Tom or Garmin sells a turn-by-turn GPS app for the iPhone.
Landscape keyboard. I prefer to use my iPhone in the normal portrait mode when I type, but I always hear from lawyers who say that it is easier to type when they turn their iPhone on its side and use it in landscape mode. You can currently only use this in a few apps, such as Safari. With 3.0, you can use the landscape mode keyboard in all of the Apple apps, including most importantly, Mail. If you prefer a little more elbow room in your iPhone keyboard, then you will like this feature.
- iPhone app interaction with accessories. This is another neat one that I am sure has ramifications that I haven't even begun to imagine. The iPhone will be able to talk to and control accessories, either wirelessly (using Bluetooth) or by connecting the accessory to the port on the bottom of the iPhone. Apple gave an example of connecting the iPhone to a speaker and using the iPhone to control levels on the speaker. A medical company showed off a glucose monitor that can communicate with the iPhone wirelessly so that a diabetic can log and monitor blood sugar using the iPhone. I can see the iPhone communicating with document scanners, bar code readers, printers, etc. And it would be nice to be able to connect the iPhone to a small external keyboard to type longer e-mails, messages, etc. (Apple was specifically asked yesterday if this would work, and simply answered that they had nothing to announce. But I presume this will be possible.) Like many of the other improvements announced today, I'm sure we can't even begin to predict what imaginative developers will do with this feature.
Voice memo. There are already lots of nice third party voice recorder apps, but Apple has developed its own that will be included for free with 3.0. It includes the ability to trim the start or end of the recording and e-mail the recording. It will work either with the iPhone's built-in microphone or with an external microphone.
- Stereo bluetooth. You will be able to use the iPhone with wireless headphones to listen to your music (or, presumably, talk on the phone). I haven't yet had the occasion to use wireless bluetooth headphones to listen to music or a bluetooth stereo in a car, but this sounds like a useful feature.
- Wi-Fi auto login. Useful if you travel frequently and use Wi-Fi at waypoints that require a username and password.
- Select multiple photos. Currently, you can only e-mail one photo at a time. With 3.0, you can select multiple photos and then e-mail all of them at the same time.
- Improved call log. Apple hasn't provided details on what is improved, but any improvements could help with billable time and client management. [UPDATE: It appears that improved log lists you who you talked to and when, whether it was incoming or outgoing, and the duration of the call.]
- Create meeting invitations. Presumably this will work with Exchange, but again Apple has not yet provided full details.
And of course, there are a whole bunch of other features that might not be useful as you use your iPhone to practice law, but will be fun or useful: shake the iPhone to shuffle songs on the iPod, send photos using MMS, subscribe to YouTube videos, better support for live streaming of video and audio, improved parental controls, etc.
Harry McCracken makes an interesting observation in a post he calls "The Curious Case of iPhone 3.0" -- the iPhone was originally revealed in 2007 with advanced features and a breakthrough interface that forever changed the cell phone market, but now two years later, some of the features being added to the iPhone are features that other smartphones have had for a long time, such as copy-and-paste, tethering, share pictures via MMS, etc., so it is sort of like the iPhone is going back in time. It's a good point, but whether these features are new or old, I can't wait until my iPhone is updated with the new 3.0 software, not just because of the immediately useful improvements, but also because of the features that third party developers will use to create amazing new apps and hardware accessories for the iPhone.
And remember, all we know about now is the new software. Apple will surely have new hardware this summer, and I can't wait to find out what currently undisclosed features in 3.0 will take advantage of the next generation iPhone. And it might not just be a new iPhone announced this Summer -- perhaps the reason that Apple was so tight-lipped on whether an iPhone with 3.0 could work with an external keyboard is that Apple plans to start selling such a keyboard this summer.
I also find it interesting how many new features are packed into this software update. I have previously used a Palm Treo, a Blackberry, a Sony Ericsson, and other phones. Updates on those phones were rare to nonexistant, and NEVER would include the types and variety of improvements we are seeing with 3.0 (or for that matter, last year's 2.0). Apple is constantly adding great features to the iPhone, making the phone more and more valuable. Thus, as amazing as the iPhone is today, we know that it will only get better with time. We may not know all of the improvements coming with 3.0, but even with just the sneak peak we got this week, any lawyer who uses an iPhone has a lot to be excited about.
