iPhone J.D.

In the news

Another week, another gazillion articles, blog posts, etc. about the iPhone.  Here are some of the interesting iPhone-related articles that I ran across this week that I want to highlight in case they might interest you:

• Nicole Black lists some of her favorite iPhone apps that she uses in the practice of law in her post Practicing Law:  There's an iPhone App for that.
• David Pogue of the New York Times offers his top 10 tips for the iPhone 3GS, an excerpt from his updated version of iPhone: The Missing Manual.
• Macworld reviews PDF Reader Pro for iPhone, an app that lets you store and view PDF files.  I understand the usefulness of storing PDF files on an iPhone, something that I can already do with many other apps such as Quickoffice, Documents to Go and Apple's new MobileMe iDisk app.  It is unclear to me from this review whether this app offers any advanced features for viewing PDF files.
• Macworld also reviews Twitterena, a new Twitter client for the iPhone.  Looks nice, but I think I'll still stick with Twitterific (which I briefly discussed here).
• Yesterday's TechnoLawyer newsletter linked to an interesting series of articles by analyst Henry Blodget about his switch from the Blackberry to the iPhone.  There are still things he misses from the Blackberry, such as some e-mail features, but the iPhone is growing on him every day and he feels that the iPhone's other advantages outweigh the Blackberry's e-mail advantages.  And he hasn't even started downloading apps yet, one of the best features of the iPhone.  The four articles are:  Decision Time: Should I Stick With BlackBerry or Switch to iPhone?; How I Ended My Affair With BlackBerry and Eloped With the iPhone; The Truth About the iPhone; and The Truth About the iPhone, Week 2.
• iLounge reviews Sygic Mobile Maps US, a a $60 GPS navigation app for the iPhone.  They previously reviewed Navigon MobileNavigator, a similar app that costs $70 to $100.  I might decide to get one of these apps one day, but because they are expensive, I'm waiting for a couple more companies to release other versions first so that I can see which one is the best before investing that much money.
• Daniel Eran Dilger has an interesting article on multitasking on the iPhone (and the Pre) on his RoughlyDrafted website.  He points out, for example, that while the Pre gets a lot of press for being able to run multiple apps at once, few people point out that because of the limitations of the Sprint (and Verizon) network, you cannot use data and the phone at the same time.  I frequently find myself talking on my iPhone while at the same time I am looking up an e-mail, finding something on the Internet, search Google maps, etc., so this limitation must be very frustrating for Pre owners.
• Like many others, I often find myself saying that I wish they would just add this one feature to an iPhone app, as if that is easy to do.  This post by Brent Simmons, developer of my favorite iPhone newsreader NetNewsWire, explains why what seems like a simple addition for a software developer is really not.  (Thanks to Daring Fireball for the link.)
• This isn't directly related to the iPhone, but Jason Calacanis makes an interesting argument that the proposed search agreement between Yahoo and Microsoft makes no sense for Yahoo.
• And finally, Art of the iPhone has a collection of some of the funniest iPhone videos ever.  Several of these are rather cute.

Review: Apple's MobileMe iDisk app

Subscribers to Apple's $99 a year MobileMe service (even cheaper from Amazon) get 20GB of space on iDisk, a server on the Internet that can be accessed from any Mac or a PC.  Yesterday, Apple released a free iDisk app that allows MobileMe subscribers to view and share files on an iDisk.

Launch the app and you will be prompted to provide your MobileMe username and password.  You will then see a list of all of your MobileMe folders.

  

Tap on a folder and you will see a list of the files in the folder.  Tap on a file supported by the iPhone such as a Word or Excel document, an iWork document, a picture, a video or a song, and the file will be downloaded from your iDisk to your iPhone so that you can view the file.  You can quickly see a list of files that you have recently viewed by tapping on the Recents icon at the bottom.  In the Settings, you can decide how much space to devote to iDisk files that you download (the default is 100MB) so that when you return to a file that you recently viewed, the file pops up instantly without having to download it again.  In addition to viewing files on your own iDisk, you can tap on the Public Folders icon to view the public files of other MobileMe users.

Viewing files works great, and while there are other apps that currently allow you to do the same thing (such as Quickoffice) it is nice to have a free app from Apple.  But what makes the iDisk app really powerful is the ability to share files on your iDisk, especially larger files that would be a hassle to attach to an e-mail.  I'll walk you through an example to show you how it works. 

In my Music folder I have two songs that my father (an architect by day and amateur musician by night) wrote.  Let's say I am out and about and I want to send the song to a friend of mine.  I have the song on my iPod, but of course you cannot e-mail files from the iPod.  However, because I have a copy of the song on my iDisk, I can load up this app and tap on the share icon to the right of the song.  This creates an e-mail from my MobileMe e-mail account.  I choose a recipient by tapping the plus sign to choose from my address book (or just type in any e-mail address).

  

I now have access to the advanced MobileMe file sharing options.  By default, the recipient will have one month to download the file and will not need to enter a password, but you can change those options if you want.  Enter any message that you want and then hit send.

  

The recipient then gets an e-mail that doesn't have the file attached but instead has a button that can be clicked to download the file to their computer.  It looks much like this:

Again, this is great for large files because you avoid dealing with the problems of big attachments such as slow e-mail.  Once you are sharing a file, you will see an indication in the form of a green icon that the file is being shared.  You can also tap on the Shared Files icon at the bottom of the screen to see all files that you are sharing.  At any time, you can change the sharing status for any file by tapping the sharing icon, so you can make the file available for a longer time, or you can stop sharing the file completely.

  

Apple has also posted this video to show you more about the app, but I don't think you really need to read any further; if you use MobileMe, then you will want to get this free app.  Not only does it give you an easy way to view your iDisk files, but it also gives you a great solution for sharing larger files, even when you are on the go and only have access to your iPhone but not your computer. 

By the way, if you want to download the song I am using in my example titled "The New New Orleans," click here to download it (for free!) from my iDisk.  It's a fun, toe-tapping song recorded in late 2005 which, as I mentioned in my sample e-mail, captures the positive spirit of post-Katrina New Orleans.  My father Bob Richardson (who wrote the song) is on guitar, and the other great New Orleans musicians who recorded the song are Dave Carboni as lead vocal and on bass, Jason Lohmeyer on keyboard and Buzzy Beano on guitar and banjo.  I'd love to hear from you if you like the song; my Dad will get a kick out of knowing that others are enjoying it.

Click here to download MobileMe iDisk (free): 

Apple rejects Google Voice app

Google Voice is a service that provides you with a single phone number that people can call and the call will automatically be routed to multiple phones at the same time, such as office, cell and home.  The service used to be called GrandCentral, before Google bought it in 2007.  The service has other neat features such free transcriptions of your voice mails so that you can view them like e-mails and cheap international calls (just like Skype).

You can already use Google Voice with any cell phone, but Google has recently released mobile apps for phones like the Blackberry and the Android.  The advantage of using these apps to make calls is that the person you are calling sees your Google phone number on caller ID, not your cell phone number, plus these apps include nice features for managing voice mail, sending and receiving free text messages, etc.

Several developers had created Google Voice client apps for the iPhone, and Google itself created the definitive app—only to see Apple reject it.  A Google spokesperson revealed to the New York Times and other media outlets that Apple rejected the app several weeks ago, and Apple has now removed from the App Store all of the other Google Voice client apps, such as GV Mobile.

John Gruber writes on his site Daring Fireball that sources have told him that it was AT&T that pressured Apple to remove the apps because it was a threat to AT&T's business model.  You would still use AT&T minutes on a Google Voice app, but you could avoid text messaging fees, surcharges on international calls, and certain other AT&T sources of revenue. 

Of course, as I recently wrote in my review of the Skype iPhone app, you can also use Skype to make essentially free international calls.  But the New York Times says that the Skype app is different because it only works over Wi-Fi and doesn't use AT&T's network.  Google Voice would use the AT&T network, so presumably AT&T has the final say on whether the app is allowed.  It is strange, though, that AT&T hasn't blocked a Google Voice client for the Blackberry, which also runs on the AT&T network.

The internet is full of posts from people complaining about the rejection of Google's Google Voice app.  I understand their point; in a perfect world, every app would be loved by all and approved by Apple.  As Harry McCracken writes, the iPhone seems like a computer, and we are used to being able to install whatever we want on our own computers.  But the reality is that AT&T subsidizes the iPhone so that you can pay only $200 for it instead of $600, and as a result they get to decide what you can do with it on their network.  Hopefully the restrictions imposed by Apple or AT&T will never get so severe that people will decide that the restrictions outweigh the advantages of the iPhone, but it is unrealistic to expect no restrictions.  (Having said that, I do hope that Apple continues to let the Skype app work on the iPhone because it is great when you are traveling internationally.)  In the meantime, you can still use Google Voice with an iPhone or any other cell phone.  You don't get all of the fancy features like a caller ID that displays your Google Voice number, but you can still use the mobile web interface to access many Google Voice features using the Safari web browser.

[UPDATE:  I should add that I do feel bad for developers who it would seem are not getting sufficient information from Apple.  It would be a shame to see good developers walk away from the iPhone because of fiascoes like this.  For example, see here and here, both links via Daring Fireball which has been all over this story.]

Macworld iPhone & iPod Touch Superguide

Macworld has been publishing "Superguide" guides for the iPhone since September 2007.  A few weeks ago, they updated the Macworld iPhone & iPod Touch Superguide to the Third Edition to account for iPhone Software 3.0 and the iPhone 3GS.  iPhone experts won't find much in here that they don't know, but for anyone who is new to the iPhone and is looking for an easy to use guide to the iPhone, the Macworld Superguide is great. 

This is a 170 page long PDF file with full color, easy to understand text and lots of pictures.  Topics covered include four chapters on getting started on the iPhone, four chapters on staying in touch including managing contacts and checking e-mail, five chapters on using multimedia on the iPhone including navigating videos and music and converting video into files that the iPhone can use, four chapters on maximizing productivity, two chapters on troubleshooting tips, four chapters on recommended third party apps and four chapters on the best accessories.  Questions answered include:

• What are the biggest differences among the various iPhone models?
• How do iPod touch and iPhone features compare?
• How do I conserve battery power while still receiving calls and messages?
• How do I turn on Vibrate mode?
• How do I "favorite" a contact and access her phone number quickly?
• How do I assign a custom ringtone to a contact?
• How do I set my iPhone phone number to do Caller ID?
• How do I save an email-attached photo to my Camera Roll?
• How do I do text messaging and what charges apply?
• How do I create an On-The-Go playlist?
• How do I add and delete bookmarks from Safari?
• How do I access RSS feeds?
• Which third-party instant-messaging apps are worth a look?
• How do I customize the controls in the iPod app?
• How do I "scrub" (fast forward or rewind) more precisely in the iPod app?
• Can you give me some examples of smart playlists?

If you are looking for a great beginner guide to the iPhone, this $12.95 electronic book is a great read.  Click here to get the book via Take Control.

Review: Court Days -- calculate dates on your iPhone

Earlier this year, I reviewed three date calculator apps for the iPhone.  Lawyers might find any of those useful, but they were not specifically created by lawyers for lawyers.  Dan Friedlander, a land use attorney and litigator practicing in the Los Angeles area, decided to come up with a date calculator that lawyers would appreciate, and in my opinion he has succeeded with his new $0.99 app Court Days sold through his company Law on my Phone.  (And a special thanks to Joanne Frasca, a litigator in Southern California, for first making me aware of this app.)

Most of the activity in this app takes place in a single, main screen that you see after a short splash screen.  Tap on the Start Date area of the screen and a wheel comes up for you to select a date.

  

With a date selected, you can tap to indicate whether you are looking for dates BEFORE the target date or AFTER the target date, and then you tap on the three white buttons on the bottom left of the screen and indicate the number of days you want to count.  What makes the app particularly useful for lawyers is that you can indicate for each computation whether you want the app to skip court holidays.  So in these two screens, the first screen does not count holidays and just counts days on the calendar, but the second screen excludes legal holidays, only counting "court days."

  

Unlike the previous apps that I reviewed that allow you to exclude weekends or major U.S. holidays, this app aims to exclude the legal holidays in your specific jurisdiction.  You do this by tapping the jurisdiction button at the top and selecting a specific state or federal court (62 are included in the current version, with five years worth of holidays in it for each jurisdiction).  For example, if I choose the jurisdiction of Louisiana and make my start date Friday, February 12, 2010, and tell the app to count three court days forward, the app knows not to count Saturday and Sunday, knows that Monday, February 15 is President's Day and Tuesday, February 16 is Mardi Gras, so the first day counted is Wednesday February 17 and the third and final day is Friday, February 19.  (For all of you who live in a part of the country that doesn't celebrate Mardi Gras, you should take advantage of the President's Day holiday in 2010 and come down and join us next year.)

I love that this app is trying to be jurisdiction-specific, and it was a lot of work for Friedlander to figure out all of the holidays, although even he acknowledges that the app is not complete.  For example, the application description on iTunes notes that Wisconsin and Massachusetts are not included in the database because each individual courthouse has its own holiday schedule which varies from year to year. Friedlander also inserted a disclaimer in the jurisdiction page (tap the "info" button) noting that the calculator should be used as a guide and dates should be verified:

Unique holidays are difficult to handle.  For example, although this app has one set of holidays for the whole of Louisiana, attorneys practicing in Crowley, Louisiana know that one of the official court holidays in Acadia Parish is Friday, October 16, 2009, a state-sanctioned holiday in that parish only (La. R.S. § 1:55(A)(3)) for the International Rice Festival.  If would be a useful addition to this app to tell you exactly which days are being counted as holidays in the particular jurisdiction so that you can be sure whether a specific holiday is being counted or not.

Although the ability to handle specific court holidays is one reason that attorneys will like this app, another useful feature is the ability to make sequential date calculations.  These are date calculations that build upon a prior calculation.  For example, here in Louisiana, I know that once an appeal record is lodged, an appellant's brief is due 25 calendar days later, the appellee's brief is due 45 days after the lodging date, and the appellant's reply brief is due 10 days after the appellee's brief is filed.  Let's say that I have a record lodged on September 10, 2009.  This app can compute each of these three deadlines:

Unfortunately, the app isn't perfect on making these calculations because of Louisiana court rules on counting dates.  As you can see above, the app tells me that the appellee's brief is due on October 25 and calculates the reply date deadline from that, but because October 25 is a Sunday, I know that the brief is not actually due until Monday, October 26, and that pushes back the reply due date one more day.  But at least this app is helpful enough to give you not just the date but also the day of the week so that you can (hopefully) see these sorts of issues yourself.

Every attorney knows that calculating dates can be a little complicated, and doing so correctly is very important; missing a deadline can potentially result in a waiver of a client's rights and a large malpractice suit.  Date calculator apps can be very helpful, but attorneys need to make sure that they do not blindly rely on these apps without taking into account the issues that an app might not factor in, whether it be the rule for what happens when the due date for a brief falls on a holiday or the International Rice Festival holiday in the heart of cajun country.  Having said that, many attorneys will find that Court Days is the best of the date calculator apps, and it has now become my personal favorite. 

Now all this talk of rice is getting me hungry, and since today is Monday in New Orleans, perhaps I should look into getting some red beans and rice for lunch.  Yum.

Click here to get Court Days ($0.99): 

In the news

It's Friday (TGIF!) so that means it is time to share some of the interesting iPhone-related news items that I ran across this week.

• Ars Technica reports on AT&T's latest financial quarter.  With the release of the iPhone 3GS and the cheaper iPhone 3G, AT&T activated 2.4 million new iPhones during the last quarter, which means over 10.4 million iPhones have been activated by AT&T since the iPhone was introduced.  I wonder how many of the 10 million iPhone users in the U.S. are attorneys?  The iPhone remains a key reason that AT&T has been able to increase its number of subscribers, although AT&T's CEO Randall Stevenson acknowledged yesterday that, at some point, there will be a day when the iPhone is not exclusive to AT&T.
• Kensington announced an interesting nightstand charging dock, available for pre-order for $40.  It plugs in to your iPhone to charge it overnight, and also places your iPhone in a landscape position so that you can run the Rise&Shine app to act as a bedside clock.  Whether you buy the charging dock or not, you can get the Rise&Shine app for free here:
• Immigration attorney (and internet marketing pioneer) Greg Siskind writes about why he likes his iPhone on the ABA TECHSHOW blog.
• I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit that I have previously discussed the legal wranglings between the makers of two of the most popular iPhone fart apps.  The Daily Show did a funny piece on the lawsuit if you want to learn (and laugh) more.
• Google Latitude is a product that allows you to see where your friends are located on a map and for them to see where you are located.  If you want to share this information with your friends, the iPhone would seem like a natural client because it is always with you and it knows where you are.  Thus, Google developed a Google Latitude iPhone app.  But as this post from the Google Mobile Blog reveals, Apple wouldn't add it because users might get confused between this app and the built-in Maps app.  Perhaps Apple will be adding Latitude functions to the iPhone Maps app?  Google then changed it to a web app, so it only works when your Safari web browser is on the Google Latitude webpage.  I could still see this being useful under the right conditions, and to see how it works just go to www.google.com/latitude on your iPhone.  But Latitude would be even more useful if it could run in the background—which is possible if Apple decides to add Latitude support to the Map app.  (Google provides the maps for the Maps app, but Apple develops the app.)  We'll see.
• What did you use as a cell phone before your iPhone?  According to Silicon Valley Insider, about a third of you were using Motorola phones.  Click here for an interesting pie chart showing the prior phones of iPhone users.  (Thanks to Ernie Svenson for the link.)
• According to this Wall Street Journal article, quoting data from Deutsche Bank analyst Brian Modoff, Apple and RIM (which makes the Blackberry) accounted for 3% of all cell phones sold in the world, but account for 35% of all cell phone profits.  The analyst predicts that in 2009, they will sell 5% of all cell phones but reap 58% of total operating profits.  There are also recent reports that Apple, which sells about 9% of all computers in the U.S., is selling about 91% of all of the computers that cost more than $1,000.  There is a lesson for all of us lawyers:  It doesn't matter how many clients you have, what matters is that you have good clients and that you provide them quality services.
• Sebastian Page of the iPhone Download Blog writes about the features that are missing from the iPhone 3GS, even though he concludes that "the iPhone 3GS is still my favorite phone ever."
• Jeremy Horowitz of the great site iLounge wrote an interesting article about updates to iPhone apps, noting that some developers use the ability to deliver updates as a crutch, shipping apps before they are really ready, whereas other developers delight users with very useful updates.
• And finally, the GeekDad column in Wired has a fun list of 100 mostly tech-related items that your kids may never know about. The list will both bring back happy memories and make you feel old.

Using Gmail to create a unified inbox

One feature that I have often heard people request for the iPhone is the ability to have a unified Mail inbox so that your iPhone can sync with multiple e-mail accounts but have all of the new messages show up in one location.  I actually prefer the current system; I have both my work e-mail and my iPhone J.D. e-mail on my iPhone, and I prefer to choose whether I am focusing on work or focusing on this website.  Nevertheless, even I agree that it would be nice for Apple would add a unified inbox as an option for those who want it.

In the meantime, San Jose, CA attorney Greg Charles tells me that he has come up with a reasonable workaround.  Greg has three POP e-mail accounts, so normally he would have to check each one manually.  But instead, he has configured his Gmail account (click Settings at the top of the Gmail screen and then click the Accounts tab) to get mail from all three of his POP accounts.  Now, all three of his POP e-mail accounts can be checked in a single Gmail inbox, plus, he gets the benefit of the Gmail spam filters.  On his iPhone, he set up a Gmail IMAP account to be handled by the Mail app which lets him use the folders that he set up in Gmail to organize the mail with filters.  Greg also tells me that when he responds to an e-mail, the iPhone responds using the e-mail account that received the mail.  Kudos to Greg for coming up with the very creative solution, and I hope it gives others some ideas for managing e-mail.

By the way, if you use Gmail with your iPhone, you can certainly set up the Mail app to handle it, but I prefer to just access the Gmail website using Safari on the iPhone.  Gmail is formatted for the iPhone screen, and I put a shortcut icon on my Home screen so I can just tap that as if it is a dedicated app to launch into Gmail.

Apple 2009 fiscal third quarter -- the iPhone angle

Yesterday, Apple announced its 2009 Fiscal Third Quarter results.  As in the past, I have reviewed the transcript of this earnings call (provided by Seeking Alpha and available here) to report on the significant news from an iPhone perspective.  Here is the significant iPhone news from Apple's Chief Operating Officer, Tim Cook:

• Revenue for the quarter was $8.34 billion, 12% growth over this same quarter in 2008.  While sales of Macs increased 4% year over year, and sales of iPods declined 4% year over year, iPhone sales were huge for Apple.  Apple sold over 5.2 million iPhones in the quarter, thanks to the new iPhone 3GS and the discounted iPhone 3G.  It only took three days of the iPhone 3GS being on the market for the company to sell over 1 million of them.
• Apple said that the App Store has over 65,000 apps.  To put this in context, Cook pointed out that RIM's Blackberry app store and Nokia's app store are between 1,000 to 2,000 apps, and there are around 5,000 apps for Android.
• When Tim Cook was asked whether Apple had anything to announce on U.S. carriers besides AT&T, Cook simply said that Apple and AT&T have an "excellent relationship and we are very happy with it" and that he had "nothing to announce today in terms of other things with the carriers."
• Two different analysts asked Cook to provide details on how the iPhone 3G was selling at its newly reduced price of $99 compared to the iPhone 3GS.  Both times, Cook avoided answering the question, just saying that when looking at both the 3G and the 3GS there was a "significant acceleration in total unit sales."
• Cook was asked about the use of iPhones by enterprise customers.  (I consider law firms to be enterprise customers.)  Cook responded:

Well, I think it’s a great opportunity for us and as you might guess, we are seeing growing interest with the release of the 3GS and iPhone OS 3.0, due in part to the new hardware encryption and the improved security policies.  The phone is particularly doing well with small business and with large organizations that allow people to purchase the phones for individual use, and this is both in corporate and government settings.  Specifically, to give you some numbers, almost 20% of the Fortune 100 have purchased at least 10,000 units or more and there’s now multiple corporations and government agencies who have purchased in excess of 25,000 each. We also had the iPhone approved in over 300 higher education institutions and so we feel really good about how we are doing and you may have noticed also that the most recent study by J.D. Powers has ranked the iPhone the highest in overall satisfaction with business customers, and so we think that we are just at the tip of the iceberg in terms of what the iPhone can do with the business customer.

• When asked about Apple's iPhone inventory, Cook said that the company is essentially selling them as fast as they are making them, and there have been some stock outages with the iPhone 3GS, so the demand has been exceeding the supply.
• Cook refused to answer a question on the percentage of iPhone sales that were in the U.S. versus international, saying that this is competitive information.  However, in answering a different question, Cook did say that most countries now selling the 3G would have the 3GS in a few months.

I'm glad to see that Apple had another great quarter and that the iPhone was a big reason for that.

Review: TuneWiki for iPhone -- lyrics for your songs and more

  We all love music, and because the iPhone is also an iPod, it is a great way to listen to music.  If you are like me, you often find yourself singing along with music.  If you are like me, you also often find yourself not knowing all of the words (although I can do a mighty fine job of mumbling along as if I do know what I am singing).  Wouldn't it be great if the iPhone could automatically give you the lyrics?  One of my law partners in my firm's Birmingham office, Bob Eckinger, recently told me about a new, free iPhone app called TuneWiki that shows you the lyrics of a song while it is playing.  I've just started to play with this app, and I cannot believe how powerful it is.

The marquee feature is the ability to show you lyrics.  Launch the app and it will show you whatever song you are playing on your iPhone.  Or, if you are not already listening to a song, start a song from within the app.  You will then see a screen that shows the song information at the top and the album art in the middle, and superimposed on top of the album are the lyrics which, for most songs, scroll along with the music just as if you were watching a karaoke screen. 

If that were the only feature, it would be enough for me to love this app.  But that is just the beginning.  You can also tap a single button to find YouTube videos of the song that you are listening to.  I was listening to the Barenaked Ladies song "If I Had $1,000,000" the other day and I tapped on the video tab and suddenly saw tons of different versions, even a live performance with "Weird Al" Yankovic playing along.  Here is an example of the music screen (showing synced, scrolling lyrics) and the video screen while I was listening to a fun but silly song from the great Jonathan Coulton—and yes, for the other fans out there, I realize that "fun but silly" accurately describes most of his songs:

  

The app also includes a directory to thousands of streaming internet radio stations, one for almost every possible genre, so you can easily listen to something beyond the music synced to your iPhone.  While you are listening to streamed music, you also can see the lyrics.  And even if you don't have a particular song on your iPhone (or it is not playing on an internet radio station), you can also search for lyrics for a song. 

There are also some community features that I have just started to explore.  For example, you can see what other people are listening to around the world, or just around the corner from you, on an interactive map.  The app also includes lists of the top TuneWiki songs and artists, etc.

Did I mention that this app is free?  Run, do not walk, to your nearest App Store and download this one now.

Click here to get TuneWiki (free): 

Quickoffice for iPhone update adds e-mail attachment downloads, improved copy and paste, other features

It's nice that the iPhone has two great options for storing and editing Word files: Documents to Go (DTG) and Quickoffice.  As one of those products is updated and temporarily takes the lead in features, it isn't long before the other is updated to match or surpass the features.  The competition means better apps for us users.  For example, Friday night, Quickoffice was updated to version 1.3, and there were some pretty major improvements.  By the way, when I say "Quickoffice" I referring to Quickoffice Mobile Office Suite, the most full-featured version of the app, but the company also sells Quickword if you just want to edit Word documents, Quicksheet if you just want to edit Excel documents, and Quickoffice Files if you don't want to edit files at all but just access them.  Here are the new features in Quickoffice:

Download e-mail attachments.  DTG can access your e-mail attachments if your firm uses a Microsoft Exchange Server.  The DTG app essentially works as an e-mail client, connecting with your firm's Exchange server and directly downloading the attachment to your iPhone.  Quickoffice takes a different approach: you forward an e-mail containing an attachment to [email protected], and then you can access those attachments on your iPhone. 

Before you first use this feature, you must set it up.  To do so, start the Quickoffice app and provide it with your e-mail address.  The Quickoffice server will then send an e-mail to that address and once you receive the e-mail on your iPhone, you simply tap a link to validate the e-mail address.  From then on, you simply forward any e-mail with an attachment to [email protected].  (To make this even easier, I recommend that you set up a new entry in your Contacts that you call something like "Quickoffice" and assign the e-mail address as [email protected].  That way, in the future you can just forward your e-mails to "Quickoffice" or whatever you called that entry.)  Once you do so, the files are sent to the Quickoffice server, a server which the Quickoffice app on the iPhone can access.  The next time you start Quickoffice on your iPhone, just select Attachments from the main screen (the file manager screen) and you will see a list of attachments that you have forwarded.  Click any one and the attachment will be downloaded from the server to your iPhone and deleted on the server.  You can store up to 50MB worth of attachments on the server.  (Once you download an attachment to your iPhone, because the attachments are removed from the server, they no longer count against the 50MB file limit.)

  

Quickoffice points out the attachment feature works with any e-mail account.  Unlike DTG, it doesn't have to be an Exchange account.  This is definitely an advantage.  At the same time, I have questions about security.  When you use DTG, the app directly connects to your firm's Exchange server and downloads the attachment to your iPhone.  No third parties are involved.  But with Quickoffice, your attachment is forwarded to the Quickoffice server, where it lives until you download it to your iPhone.  I have asked Quickoffice to provide me with information on the security and privacy of these attachments during the time that they live on the server and after they are downloaded to your device and Quickoffice says that they are deleted from the server.  Any time that a lawyer provides confidential attorney-client or attorney work product information to a third party vendor such as a copy service or a commercial carrier, the lawyer must consider whether doing so could constitute a waiver of a privilege or could violate any specifically confidentiality requirements of a client.  I don't provide legal opinions on this website so I'm not going to analyze the risk associated with your forwarding attachments to Quickoffice, but I will tell you that this is an issue that I am thinking about, and for now I will probably stick with DTG to handle attachments.

Copy and paste.  Quickoffice was released long before Apple released iPhone Software 3.0, so Quickoffice originally implemented its own version of copy and paste.  Quickoffice, like DTG, has now abandoned its proprietary system to adopt the standard iPhone 3.0 copy and paste system, which means that you can now copy from a Quickoffice file and paste elsewhere or vice versa.  It was obvious that this change was coming, but it is still quite welcome.

Undo/redo.  Quickoffice now supports the full iPhone 3.0 undo/redo functions, which includes shaking your iPhone to undo and up to 10 levels of undo.

Paragraph alignment.  In addition to left, right and center alignment, you can now control the indentation of the first line of each paragraph (a feature missing from DTG).  Quickoffice still does not allow you to fully justify text (both left and right margin justification).  I'm not a fan of full justification in my Word documents such as briefs—long live the ragged right!—but others might miss this feature.

Find in spreadsheets.  You can now find text in spreadsheets and search for next or previous occurrences.

Cell text overflow.  Previously, if you had text in one cell of a spreadsheet that did not completely fit within the cell, the text would just end at the end of the cell.  This was a real pain because spreadsheets designed in Excel are made to have text overflow into the next cell if that cell is empty.  Quickoffice has now fixed this problem, so now cell text overflows and is correctly alligned.  For example, in my February 20, 2009 review of an earlier version of Quickoffice, I showed an example of a legal interest spreadsheet that I use.  Notice that in cells G19 and G20, you cannot see all of the text:

 

Now here is the same spreadsheet in Quickoffice 1.3, which now displays all of the text that I have in those two cells, and it also correctly understands that the text is formatted to flow to the left:

What is still missing?  Quickoffice is still missing some features that are in DTG.  The biggest omission for me is the ability to view and add underlining.  Case names are frequently underlined in my briefs, but I don't see that in Quickoffice.  [UPDATE 10/23/09:  Quickoffice 1.5 now includes underlining.  Finally!]  DTG also includes the ability to view (although not edit) footnotes, and this is another critical omission as many of my briefs have footnotes.  DTG and Quickoffice both allow you to create a bulleted list, but only DTG gives you the option to create a numbered list. 

On the other hand, Quickoffice has long had support for spreadsheets, while this is still a "coming soon" feature for DTG.  [UPDATE 10/1/09:  Documents to Go 2.0 adds support for Excel spreadsheets.  Finally!]  And if you don't use Exchange for your e-mail, Quickoffice is the only option for editing attachments to an e-mail on the iPhone.

Thumbs up to Quickoffice for adding these latest improvements.  I look forward to even more, both from Quickoffice and DTG, and I continue to believe that any attorney who wants the most sophisticated ability to edit and view Word documents on an iPhone will want to have the flexibility that comes with owning both apps.

Click here to get Quickoffice ($12.99): 

Click here to get Quickword ($4.99): 

Click here to get Quicksheet ($4.99): 

Click here to get Quickoffice Files ($0.99): 

In the news

There was quite a bit of iPhone news this week.  Here are the items that I ran across that I thought you might find interesting:

• Yesterday, Google updated the version of its website used by iPhones.  Now, if you go to www.google.com on your iPhone, you will be given the option to let Google determine your location.  Once Google knows where you are, it will tailor its search results (when appropriate) to show places that are close to you.  I also notice that possible search terms pop up as you start to type, another time saver.  Click here to read more from the Official Google Mobile blog, or just start trying it yourself to see how it works.
• Ryan Kim of the San Francisco Chronicle compares using the iPhone 3GS to take video versus the Flip Ultra HD.  The Flip uses HD which gives it an obvious edge, but the iPhone has other advantages.  If you enjoyed the camcorderinfo.com review of the iPhone 3GS that I previously noted, you will enjoy Kim's article.
• Macworld identifies the 12 most significant iPhone apps over the last year.
• The New York Times recommends some iPhone apps to help you organize your life.
• Do you remember buying 45 rpm records with a hit on the A side and a lesser known song on the B side?  MacNN reports that iTunes now has Digital 45s for sale, combining one hit and one lesser known song (or sometimes a live version, a remix, etc.) for one price.
• Employment law attorney Jay Shepard asks "What if Apple Stores Billed by the Hour?  Lessons for Law Firms" in this month's Law Practice Today from the ABA Law Practice Management Section.
• Infrageeks has an interesting article noting an advantage of the iPhone's virtual keyboard:  the ability to easily switch between international keyboards.  Most of what I type is in English, but I do sometimes type in other languages and it is so incredibly easy to switch keyboards on the iPhone that I find it faster to type in other languages on my iPhone then on my computer with a full keyboard, and that's not something that I say very often.
• David Pogue of the New York Times has an interesting post on using the iPhone's VoiceOver feature to make the device more usable for the blind and vision impaired.
• I'm a big fan of Apple's $79 In-Ear Headphones, as noted in my review.  AppleInsider reports that Apple is now selling a slightly upgraded version of those headphones, replacing the rubber plug with a more sturdy plastic plug.  I've never had trouble with the rubber plug, but apparently Apple thinks that the plastic will be even better.
• Some indie filmmakers in Boston are looking to cast a white male, age 25 to 30, to star in a 15 minute film about a lawyer who is so obsessed with his iPhone that he loses his job, his girlfriend and his home.  I know that there are quite a few iPhone-obsessed lawyers in the New England area who read this website, so if you want an opportunity to play yourself, check out this site for more information.
• Here's a fun idea: send a real postcard with your iPhone.  The Apple Blog describes how you can use either Postino (free) or PicCard ($0.99) you can take a picture with your iPhone and provide an address and then have the app send the picture to the AmazingMail website which will send a real postcard with your picture on it for $0.99 to $1.99.  This sounds like a cute way to send custom postcards to your loved ones while you are on vacation.
• And finally, wouldn't it be neat if you taped your brand new, expensive iPhone 3GS to the bottom of a remote control airplane and took some video?  Kids, don't try this at home, but you can live vicariously through this YouTube video which is appropriately titled "Crazy guy puts new iPhone 3GS on RC plane."  (Link via Engadget.)

iPhone apps requiring 3GS or 3.0

Since the iPhone Software 3.0 and the iPhone 3GS were introduced, I've been looking forward to new apps that take advantage of the new features.  I'm particularly curious to see companies create hardware that interacts with custom iPhone apps, something we saw a preview of back on March 17, 2009.  None of those are out yet.

There are a few apps out now that take advantage of some of the other 3.0 features.  Yappler recently listed some of the best of them in this post.  As interesting as some of those are, none of them strike me as something that I want to start using today.  Take a look at the list and see if anything grabs your attention.

As an owner of an iPhone 3GS, I'm also very interested to see what developers come up with that takes advantage of the unique features of the iPhone 3GS.  With the speed of the 3GS and improved graphics capabilities, we should soon start to see some amazing games that use the 3GS to its fullest, but I am even more interested in seeing apps that take advantage of other 3GS features such as video, the better camera and the compass.

Yesterday, the Daring Fireball site linked to one such upcoming app called New York Nearest Subway from Acrossair.  The app, which has already been submitted to Apple and is now just waiting for approval, uses augmented reality to show you the nearest subway in New York using GPS, the compass, and some of the iPhone 3.0 video technology.  The best way to understand it is to see it in action, so here is a video preview:

This is the first 3GS or 3.0 specific app that really makes me take notice.  I lived in New York City for about 8 months after Hurricane Katrina, and this app would have come in very useful had I had it when I was there, but forget the utility of the app—this is way cool technology.  I suspect that we are just seeing the tip of the iceberg and there are lots of smart developers working on innovative 3GS or 3.0 specific apps.  It should be a fascinating second half of the year for iPhone apps.

1.5 billion served

I've been keeping an eye on the number of iPhone apps that have been downloaded because, frankly, the growth has been amazing.  (See 1, 2 and 3.)  When Apple got close to selling its billionth app in April of 2009, it held a contest.  Its home page counted the apps downloaded, and the lucky person to download app number 1,000,000,000, got a $10,000 iTunes gift card, an iPod Touch, a Time Capsule, and a MacBook Pro.  The winner was Connor Mulcahey, age 13, of Weston, CT and the app that he downloaded on April 23, 2009 was Bump.

Yesterday, Apple announced that more than 1.5 billion apps have been downloaded and that there are now over 65,000 apps available to customers in 77 countries.  There was no similar contest or fanfare this time, but Apple did issue a press release to spread the good news in which Steve Jobs is quoted as saying:  "With 1.5 billion apps downloaded, it is going to be very hard for others to catch up," an obvious swipe at everyone and their brother who seems to be opening up a new app store almost every day.  (The latest:  Verizon announced yesterday that it has an app store and that all of its phones will be required to include the Verizon app store, and only the Verizon apps store, although customers will be able to install additional stores if they choose.)  Of course, other companies copying Apple is nothing new.  I remember the late 1990s when Apple released the iMac with translucent, colored plastic and before long everyone was selling products with translucent, colored plastic, even George Foreman grills.

Congratulations, Apple, and here's looking forward to the 2 billionth app, which at this rate I'm guessing will be downloaded around October 1st.

Get an Apple USB power adapter for only $7

When I bought my new iPhone 3GS, it of course came with a USB power adapter.  I already had one from my old iPhone, so this meant I had two of them.  I put the new one in another room in my house.  It is handy to have an extra charger to keep one in a different location in your house, in your office, in your summer home, in your yacht, etc. 

You can buy a replacement USB Power Adapter from Apple for $29, but Art of the iPhone points out that you can currently get one from a vendor on Amazon for less than $7.  Click here to get an Apple USB power adapter for only $6.91.  Unlike the one from Apple, it appears that this one doesn't include the cord that goes from the USB adapter to your iPhone, but you can click here to get one of those cords from another vendor on Amazon for only $0.43.  Note that for both of these sellers, you will also need to pay for shipping, even if you are an Amazon Prime customer.  Thus, in addition to the $7.34 for the two products, you will need to pay another $9.88 for shipping for both.  But at $17.22, you are still saving a little bit of money over the $29 (plus shipping) that Apple's online store charges.

By the way, for many of the items that I link to on Amazon, if you make a purchase after clicking on the link here, Amazon pays me an incredibly small percentage as a referral fee.  You have likely seen this before on other websites.  The same is true for items such as apps that I link to on iTunes, although since most iPhone apps are so cheap that doesn't amount to very much.  It doesn't cost you any extra when you buy things from these links, and the referral fees to me are very small, but they do help to defray some of the costs for this website such as the $15 a month I pay to Six Apart (who runs TypePad) to host this website.  So if you want to help support iPhone J.D., click on Amazon and iTunes links on iPhone J.D. to purchase products.  And if you want to really help iPhone J.D. whether or not you own that yacht yet, feel free to use this link and buy a few dozen copies of this book.

Using search to launch apps

In my first post on iPhone 3.0 shortcuts, I mentioned that when you are on the search screen (which is to the left of your first home page of app icons), you can easily find and launch an app just by typing the first letter or two of its name.  I also mentioned that this shortcut works even faster if you change the search sort order so that apps come up first in the list when you do a search.  For example, if I want to launch a Twitter client, I can just type tw and I see Twitterific (my current favorite) and TwitterFon:

Friday night, New York Times technology columnist David Pogue posted an interesting tip to his Twitter stream:  because of the search-to-launch-apps shortcut, you can actually install unlimited apps on the iPhone.  iPhone Software 3.0 only has 11 screens to hold apps (up from 9 in 2.x), and with 16 apps per screen plus the four on the bottom of every screen, your iPhone can display icons for 180 different apps.  But David figured out that you can keep adding more apps then that—he got up to around 250—and even though you won't see those extra apps on any of the 11 pages of your home screen, you can still launch those hidden apps by using the search-to-launch-apps shortcut.  Just start to type the name of the app and the iPhone will let you launch apps that are not shown on a home page.

I doubt that many of you have over 180 apps on your iPhone, but David's tip underscored for me of the power of the search-to-launch-apps shortcut.  I keep the apps that I use the most either on the bottom row or on one of my first two or three pages, but for any app that I have on page 4 or later, I find that it is much faster to launch the app from the search screen then to scroll all the way over to the app and then have to scroll back to the first home page screen after I am done with the app. 

No matter how many apps you have on your iPhone, if you haven't started using the search-to-launch-apps shortcut, give it a try for a few days.  You just may find that you like the shortcut as much as I do.

In the news

Here are some of the news stories about the iPhone that caught my attention this week, along with a few other tidbits that might be of interest to you.

• Today marks the one year anniversary of the App Store, which opened on July 10, 2008.  Happy Birthday!  Apple is celebrating by posting a list on iTunes of favorite games and non-game apps.  It is amazing how much the iPhone—not to mention the mobile phone industry as a whole—has changed over the last year simply because of the App Store.
• Some people don't like the iPhone because it doesn't have a physical keyboard.  John Gruber writes a great essay on this issue on his Daring Fireball website, explaining that "Apple tries to make things that many people love, not things that all people like."  I agree 100% with what he says.
• Documents to Go by DataViz (my review is here) was updated to version 1.1 on Tuesday.  New features include (1) DataViz abandoned its proprietary copy-and-paste system for the iPhone 3.0 system.  This means that you can copy from a document in DtG, paste into another app, and vice versa.  (2) You can now use pinch to zoom in and out, and the line breaks on the text reformat as you do so, which is nice.  (3) You can now view Word documents full screen, either in portrait or landscape mode, another very nice feature.  It's a nice update to a great app that every attorney who uses Exchange e-mail should have.
• I frequently talk about the speed of the AT&T 3G connection on the iPhone 3G and 3GS, most recently here.  Glenn Feleishman wrote an interesting article for Macworld reporting that because of the chip Apple put in the iPhone 3GS, the fastest that it can upload data is 384 Kbps, regardless of what AT&T supports.  I don't see this as a big deal—download speeds are far more important, and that is a reasonable upload speed—but if you upload a lot of videos to YouTube or MobileMe, then you might be interested to know that this is a limitation of the device.
• I got a report from a Miami attorney that his new iPhone 3GS was freezing up on him.  According to this thread on the Apple Discussions, others have had the same problem.  His solution was to bring his iPhone to the Genius Bar at the Apple Store and they swapped it out for a new iPhone 3GS which, fortunately, doesn't have this problem.  If you are having similar troubles, I suggest you head to your friendly neighborhood Apple Store.
• Have you ever bought an app and then realized that you made a mistake?  I didn't think it was possible to return an app, but iPhone Download Blog explains that you can get refunds from Apple if you submit a nice request.  Read their post for more info.
• And finally, for those times when you want to get dressed up for a night out on the town, you won't want to leave home without your iPhone cufflinks from Cufflinks.com.  (Via CraziestGadgets.com, submitted to me by Ernest Svenson.)  These are too funny:

  

Fun with iPhone app numbers

Thanks to a link on Gizmodo, I just learned of a new company called Busted Loop run by Josh Kastelein and Dan Bachelder in Maine.  It's not exactly clear to me what Busted Loop plans to do; Kastelein's LinkedIn page says that Busted Loop, LLC was founded in June of 2009 "to create innovative solutions targeting emerging software markets" and the company's website says:  "At Busted Loop we make things out of information. We invent new uses for data as a reflex, and materialize those ideas every single day. It's what we do for fun and profit."  Well that clears it up. 

The one currently visible portion of the new company is the company's blog, and the last ten posts or so have included some interesting data and conclusions about iPhone apps.  For example: 

• As of July 7, 2009, there were 55,977 apps in the App Store, the largest category of which is games at between 10,000 and 13,000.
• Only a small minority of iPhone apps are free, around 12,000 of them, but a large majority of the most popular apps are free.  No real surprise there since many of us download lots of free apps just to see what they are about, but we don't download a paid app unless we think we might really want it.
• "Most paid apps fail," selling just a few or no copies.  This is an interesting counterpoint to the stories you sometimes see in the media about a few lucky iPhone app developers making buckets of money.  There are a whole lot of app developers who barely see a dime.
• The most expensive apps in the App Store tend to be medical apps.
• If you want to buy every single app in the app store, it would cost you about $144,326.00, an average of $2.59 per app (or an average of $3.34 an app if you don't include the 12,538 free apps).
• Look at the chart on this page and you can see which app developers would make the most money if you bought every single app.  Some developers are near the top because they have a ton of apps.  Brighthouse Labs has around 1,600 apps on the app store for about $0.99 a piece.  On the other extreme, Lextech Labs has only four apps, but iRa Pro (a surveillance camera app that I discussed here) is one of the most expensive at $899.99 and iRa Direct is $499.99.

Thanks to the guys at Busted Loop for these interesting numbers.  Hopefully the product that they are working on is as interesting as their analysis of the data from the App Store.

More on iPhone 3GS video

In my review of the iPhone 3GS yesterday, I noted that one of the features I really like is the ability to record video.  I just ran across a website called The Automatic Filmmaker which is published by Steve Ellington, an independent film director from the U.S. who currently lives in Switzerland and who knows a thing or two about video.  He recently posted this great article that includes a lot of information about recording video on the iPhone 3GS, including tips on using focus, how the auto exposure works, etc.  He even has an educational video that shows you exactly what he is describing.  If you plan to use your iPhone 3GS to record video, you should definitely take a few minutes to read his post and view the video.

While you are there, you might also want to take a look at what he says is the first music video shot on an iPhone 3GS, titled Technologic Overkill.  

Yesterday, I talked about how difficult it can be to hold the iPhone 3GS steady while you are taking video.  At least two companies have announced products to compensate for this.  Both seem a little over the top to me, but I love the creativity, and I'm sure that many will consider these useful and worth the money.  

First, Zacuto, a company that sells and rents professional video cameras and equipment for filmmakers, has announced the Zgrip iPhone PRO, an adjustable and quick releasable handgrip system for shooting professional, stable video using the iPhone 3GS.  Here is what it looks like:

The Zgrip iPhone PRO is for professionals, and the price reflects that:  $295, plus you can add extras like a $40 ten inch rod that allows you to get your iPhone 3GS up above the crowd for taking shots and a $50 tripod mount.  If that price is too steep for you, a consumer version is coming out "soon" that will be cheaper but offer fewer options.  Here is a video that shows you more about this product:

Second, a company called Optical Widgets for Life Enhancement (OWLE) has announced a product called BUBO.  It is a gadget with two handles that surrounds the iPhone 3GS and adds a widescreen lens (to which other filters or lenses such as a telphoto can be added) and an improved microphone.  It looks like this:

The BUBO is in production now and will be released later this year for between $30 and $50.  The best way to see what the BUBO can do is to watch this video from one of the developers of Qik, an iPhone app that allows you to stream live video from your iPhone to the web.  At least, that is what they want to do.  Right now, Apple and AT&T are holding up the approval of this app, presumably because of concerns about how much pressure this would put on AT&T's network.  The first few minutes of this video are recorded using a BUBO, and the quality is quite good.  Then, around the 4:30 mark, they remove the iPhone from the BUBO and you can immediately see and hear the difference. 

Thanks to Engadget for the post that first informed me about these two devices.  I'm sure that they are the first of many video-related add-ons for the iPhone 3GS.

Review: iPhone 3GS

Over 40 million people owned an iPhone (or an iPod Touch) before Apple released the iPhone 3GS.  Because you are reading this website, chances are that number includes you.  Should you upgrade to a new iPhone 3GS?  It's a big decision, and one that I tried to focus on as I have been using my iPhone 3GS over the past week.  If you are a heavy iPhone user and if you are eligible for the discounted price, I think you will really appreciate the upgrade.  Here is why.

How much will it cost?

If money was no object, everyone would want to upgrade.  For example, virtually every iPhone owner should upgrade to iPhone Software 3.0 because it includes great features and it is free.  But there is a cost, and that cost depends upon your particular circumstances.  AT&T has this page describing its upgrade policy for the iPhone 3GS, but here it is in brief:

1. If you own the original iPhone, sold from June 29, 2007 to July 10, 2008, then it is virtually certain that AT&T will let you take advantage of the discounted prices that it offers new customers, especially if you bought that iPhone in 2007.  For you, an iPhone 3GS will cost $199 for the 16 GB version or $299 for the 32 GB version.  By paying this price, you will lock in to a new two year commitment with AT&T.
2. If you own an iPhone 3G, sold from July 11, 2008 until today, then the formula becomes somewhat more complicated.  You can purchase a new iPhone 3GS for the discounted prices only if (1) you purchased your iPhone 3G during July, August or September of 2008, (2) you have been paying your bills on time and your account is in good standing and (3) you pay AT&T over $99 a month.  All AT&T iPhone owners must pay $30 for the data plan, but if you have the minimum 450 minute $40 voice plan, then you are only at $70 (or $90 if you add on the top $20 unlimited text messaging plan) so you are not over the $99 threshold.  But if you have the 900 minute or higher plan and/or have text messaging on your account, then you are over the threshold.  Even if you have the minimum minute plans with no text messaging, you may still be paying over $100 a month if you have a family plan.  This was the situation that I was in; although I have the cheapest phone plan and no text message plan, my wife also has an iPhone, so AT&T views my total account as an over $100 a month account because of my wife.  (Thanks, honey!)
3. If you are an iPhone 3G owner but don't meet those three requirements, then you cannot take advantage of the discounted price.  You will likely than have to pay the Early Upgrade price of $399 for the 16 GB / $499 for the 32 GB.  Ouch.
4. Any customer always has the option of paying the No Commitment price of $599 / $699 which gets you the new phone without a two year commitment to stay with AT&T.  Of course, you cannot (legally) use your iPhone with any other carrier in the U.S., so this option will appeal to few people.

What are the new features?

Compared to the iPhone 3G, here is what is added:

1. Speed
2. Better camera for still pictures
3. Video camera
4. Voice Control
5. More storage: 32 GB in the higher end model, 16 GB in the entry model
6. Compass
7. Slightly better battery life
8. The included headphones now have volume buttons (and you can now use the volume controls on the Apple In-Ear Headphones)
9. Support for Nike + iPod, which you can use if you have Nike+ shoes (or a shoe-mounted pouch) and the $19 Nike Sensor for your shoe
10. An optional battery percentage indicator next to the icon at the top of the screen showing remaining battery life.
11. An oleophobic coating on the screen which helps to resist fingerprints

In my opinion, the first five features are real reasons for iPhone 3G owners to consider upgrading.  The remaining features are nice, but unless you have special needs (perhaps you run with your iPhone and would really appreciate the Nike + iPod feature, or you are a boy scout leader and really want a compass on your iPhone) the remaining features are unlikely to be worth the upgrade price.

Thus, I will focus the rest of this review on those first few features.  Having said that, I do encourage you to read some of the more comprehensive reviews of the iPhone 3GS to get all of the nitty gritty details on all 11 new features.  The brand new website gdgt has lots of great information on the iPhone 3GS, including this helpful page which links to around three dozen iPhone 3GS reviews (although it misses some good ones, especially Andy Ihnatko's review in the Chicago Sun Times).  To narrow down the list for you, I think that these are the best reviews to read if you are trying to decide whether to upgrade:

• Macworld
• Ars Technica
• iLounge
• New York Times
• Engadget
• Wall Street Journal
• Chicago Sun-Times

Speed

There is no real question about the #1 reason that I am happy that I upgraded to the iPhone 3GS.  Apple says the "S" in 3GS is for speed, claiming that the iPhone 3GS is twice as fast as the iPhone 3G.  I haven't tested the speed myself—and some people who have done so find that the 3GS is even more than two times faster—but what really matters to me is the responsiveness of the phone.  The 3GS is much more responsive that the 3G.  Launching apps is so much faster.  Switching apps happens very quickly.  The typewriter is much more responsive, and not once have I seen a key freeze for a second as it raises while I am typing, something that my old 3G did from time to time.  Web browsing is so much faster that when you are on 3G, you will think you are on Wi-Fi, and when you are Wi-Fi, you will think that your bandwidth somehow increased.

The increased responsiveness makes the iPhone much more pleasant to use.  My calendar and contacts have tons of entries, but on the 3GS they pop right up with no lag as I scroll.  Safari on my iPhone 3G was a great experience because Safari does a great job of rendering web pages, but Safari on my 3GS is an excellent experience because pages jump up almost as quickly as they do on my computer.  And it is no longer any bother at all when one of my apps (such as a Twitter client or an RSS reader) wants to open another app (such as E-mail or Safari or YouTube) because it all happens so quickly.  Also, because part of the speed increase comes from more internal memory on the iPhone, [UPDATE 7/8/09:  see here for more on this] games that are memory hogs run much much better on the iPhone 3GS.  For example, I have a game called Guitar Rock Tour which, on my iPhone 3G, would sometimes have the flying notes get ever so slightly out of sync with the music, which is frustrating in any Guitar Hero-type game.  The game doesn't have that problem on the 3GS, nor have I seen the game crash once.

I realize that part of the charm is that the iPhone 3GS is new.  We all know what it is like to get a new computer and have it feel so fast, but a year later the speed just seems "normal" and by two or more years out that same computer starts to feel slow.  Perceived speed is relative.  There will surely come a time when the speed of the iPhone 3GS will start to feel normal, but even then I suspect that I will still appreciate having a very responsive device in my hands.

In sum, the added speed to the iPhone 3GS is really great.  If you are a frequent user of your iPhone, then you will find yourself appreciating the increased speed every day, throughout the day.

Better camera

The 3GS camera is better in two ways.  First, it is a 3 megapixel camera versus the 2 megapixel camera in prior iPhones (2048 x 1536 versus 1600 x 1200).  That alone makes pictures look better.  Many of the iPhone 3GS reviews have done an excellent job of showing side-by-side pictures that compare the 3G to the 3GS.  For example, look at these pictures in the Macworld and the iLounge reviews.  Those examples do such a good job that I haven't set up any side-by-side tests myself, but I can definitely tell that my pictures are better.  For example, here are two pictures that I took this weekend  Click on each picture to see the full size, unedited pictures.

  

As you can see, the picture quality is actually quite good when you are in daylight.  But even more than the increased pixels, what really makes this a better camera is the improved ability to focus.  Just tap on an area of the screen.  A box will go around whatever is in the image where you touched and the iPhone will adjust not just the focus, but also the exposure and white balance. For example, in the first of these two pictures, I tapped on the desk, and on the  second picture I tapped on the face of the watch.  Again, you can click for full-size versions, but even from the smaller version you can see that the difference is dramatic.

  

With the ability to control focus, the camera on the iPhone becomes much more powerful, and this is often the difference between having a usable picture or a useless picture.  For example, in the past, I have tried to take a picture of a page of handwritten notes on a legal pad, and the results were almost always terrible.  But with the iPhone 3GS I can use the manual focus feature to get images that are very readable, saving me the trouble of taking home a note pad when I just want to have quick access while I am at home to what I scribbled down during a meeting in the office.

Let's be perfectly clear:  the iPhone camera is still just a phone camera.  I own a great digital SLR camera (a Nikon D50 with an amazing 18-200 mm lens) and for times when I want to take good pictures, there is no question what I will want to use.  But for those times when you just want to take a quick picture, having the iPhone 3GS with you means that you can take decent pictures when the light is good, and often a merely decent picture is fabulous when the alternative is no picture at all.

Video camera

Another key new feature is the ability to take video. Much like with the still camera, when the light is good, you can get decent quality video.  For example, here is a quick video I shot of one of my son's games.  The quality of what YouTube is showing you seems a little worse than the original file on my computer (the original is a little sharper and less jerky), but this gives you an idea of what you can get with an iPhone 3GS.  The colors are actually quite good.

One problem with using something like an iPhone as a video camera is that it is very difficult to keep the iPhone still, resulting in video that can cause motion sickness.  You can see this in the video I posted above:  watch the pattern in the carpet during the video and you will see it jump all over the place even though I did my best to hold my hand steady.  But if you have a Mac, one nice feature of the built-in iMovie software (the current version, iMovie '09) is the ability to stabilize video.  The software zooms in slightly to do this trick, so you lose a little around the edges, but the results are quite good.  Here is that same video, stabilized.  You can click play on both this one and the above one at the same time to easily compare the difference:

The point is that even though hand shake is one of the major problems with a video camera in a device like the iPhone, it is easy to correct this on a Mac.  (I don't know if there is anything as cheap and powerful as iMovie for the PC, but I presume that there is software out there that does this same trick.)  

Another problem with the video is that you have little control over the focus.  Just like with the still camera, you can tap on an object to tell the iPhone to focus on that object.  But then once you start taking video, that focus point stays the same and cannot be changed.  Since videos inherently involve motion, this can be a problem as the subject of the video moves.  For example, here is a short video I took of a streetcar passing through the Garden District in New Orleans.  I'm not sure what the iPhone was focusing on at the start of the video—I guess something across the street or maybe a passing car—but when the streetcar passes, it is not in focus.  Note that this version was stabilized using iMovie to save you from feeling nauseous due to my hand shaking:

Enough about the negative, let's focus on the positive.  The iPhone 3GS takes 640 x 480 video at 30 fps.  This doesn't compare to an HD video camera, but it is better than then the VHS-C video camera that I used from 1995 to 2007, and I created a lot of great memories with that old video camera.  And that is really why I love having video in the iPhone 3GS.  Often, the quality comes not from the number of pixels but instead from the content.  The video quality of the iPhone 3GS is good enough that you will pay attention to the content.  Perfect example:  while playing around with the video functions this past weekend, I took a short video of my son while my wife and I were playing the board game Candy Land with him.  The video is great, even when viewed on a large 57" TV screen, because my son said a lot of funny things that were captured in the video.  I suspect that years from now I will find myself watching the video again to remind me of the the funny things that a three year old can do and say.  I would have never bothered to go and find my HD video camera, but my iPhone 3GS was there, so I used it, and I'm glad I did.

One of the more interesting iPhone 3GS reviews is by camcorderinfo.com, a site that—you guessed it—reviews camcorders.  They prepared an exhaustive, 17 part review of the iPhone 3GS the same way that they would review any other camcorder, humorously throwing all of the other features of the iPhone like phone, e-mail, apps etc. into the "other features" category.  While obviously not in the same league as any HD video camera, they found that the video camera on the iPhone 3GS is actually quite good, concluding:

Apple-haters, you may want to look away. The iPhone 3G S performed very, very well under our battery of tests. The color accuracy rivaled that of camcorders in its class and better, including the high definition Flip and Sony Webbie. The low light performance was impressive, making it a good choice as a party camera, considering its diminutive size.

                            *    *    *

In short, the iPhone 3G S is a surprisingly capable camcorder. It's at least as good as the standard definition Flip Mino, and offers an exceptionally intuitive interface that far exceeds the typical, labyrinthine experience of a full-featured video camera. Lacking HD, it falls short of being a complete replacement, but we are very impressed with Apple's first time out on the field.

Speaking of HD, I have to think that just as Flip and other manufacturers of tiny video camera started out with SD versions and then came out with equally small HD versions, Apple will one day have an HD video camera in the iPhone.  In fact, I've seen reports that the iPhone 3GS can technically handle HD 720p video, but presumably Apple is not enabling that feature because, among other problems, it would severely drain the battery.  I wonder if the June, 2010 version of the iPhone will be called the iPhone HD and add HD video and better pictures?

Voice Control

Hold down the Home button on the iPhone 3GS and you jump into Voice Control mode, where you can talk to your iPhone to have it call someone or play music on the iPod app.  Helpfully, the possible commands that you can say float by in the background when Voice Control is on.  In my experiences, sometimes this feature works great, but other times it misunderstands me and reminds me of that classic clip from the Simpsons that makes fun of the handwriting recognition on the Apple Newton.  

Because it sometimes doesn't work, and because I don't find that I have much of a need to use Voice Control, I really haven't used it very much this past week.  And I was tempted to tell you that Voice Control isn't a good reason to upgrade when I ran across this post from my friend and fellow New Orleans lawyer Ernie "the attorney" Svenson.  I respect Ernie's opinions quite a bit, and he believes that Voice Control is the "best new feature" of the iPhone 3GS.  He demonstrates why in this part of his post:

The advantage of the headset becomes obvious once you've used it a few times.  Before I got the new phone here's what would happen if wanted to make a call.  

1. Take phone out of pocket
2. Swipe to turn on 
3. Navigate to phone, and then to contacts within phone 
4. Slide finger carefully along right side to zero in on the contact I want to call 
5. Tap the contact's name 
6. Locate the best phone # to call for that contact 
7. Tap the desired phone # 

  Now, I do this if the phone is in my pocket and I have the headset in my ear

1. Hold down the middle button (equivalent to the 'Home button') until Voice Command announces 
2. Say "call John Appleseed [short pause] mobile'
3. Wait for confirming announcement, which if correct means I just wait for the phone to start ringing. 

Ernie makes a compelling argument, and I suppose I'll have to give Voice Control more time.  If you are trying to decide whether to upgrade, this feature might be an important consideration.

Increased storage

There isn't much to say here.  If you find that your current iPhone is often full, then you can use more storage.  If not, then you don't need this feature. 

I was frequently running low on space on my 16 GB iPhone 3G, so I appreciate the increased elbow room on the 32 GB iPhone, but it all comes down to video and music.  If you don't store a lot of video and music on your iPhone, then you probably won't need extra storage space.  With few exceptions like this one, it is rare for iPhone apps to take up much space, and you would have to have an insane number of e-mails, contacts and calendar entries for that data to take up much space.

...and the rest

Although I don't consider the other six new features of the iPhone 3GS important enough to justify the upgrade, they are certainly nice.  For example, the compass makes it quick and easy to orient yourself in the Map app.  I don't like the feel of the included iPhone headphones so I use the the Apple In-Ear Headphones, but on either headphone I love being able to change the volume on the headset without having to touch the buttons on the side of the iPhone.  And the oleophobic coating really does work, helping to resist fingerprint smudges and making removing smudges on the screen as quick as a simple swipe on my shirt.

Recommendation

If you use the first generation iPhone, now is the time to upgrade.

If you use the iPhone 3G, and if you consider yourself just a casual iPhone user, then I probably wouldn't worry about upgrading.  Most of what is great about the iPhone 3GS is also in the iPhone 3G.  Wait until next year and you can take advantage of these 11 new features plus presumably many more.

But if you are a more serious iPhone 3G user, one who uses the iPhone every day throughout the day, you will want to give serious consideration to the five new features I outlined above.  There is little question that the new iPhone 3GS would make you happier, and if you are eligible to take advantage of the $199 or $299 price, then for you it may well be worth it.  For less than a dollar a day over the next year, you can have a much more enjoyable iPhone.  It was well worth it for me.  But it would have been a much harder decision if it would have cost me $499, so if you are in that boat, then that's a tough decision and you have my sympathy.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the iPhone 3GS, including why you did or did not upgrade and, if you did, what you like best about the 3GS.  If you have a moment, share your views in the comments.

More iPhone Software 3.0 tips and shortcuts

Following up on my last post on this subject, here are some additional tips and shortcuts that I have come across in iPhone Software 3.0.  You might also want to check out this post and this post from last year regarding shortcuts in the prior version of the iPhone software because many of those shortcuts still work today.

Search, ASAP!  The iPhone has long had a shortcut to bring you back to your first home screen.  When you are on one of the later pages of your Home screen, press your Home button once to jump to the first page.  That shortcut still works today.  Additionally, with 3.0, if you press your Home button when on your first home page, the iPhone brings you right to the search screen.  You could do the same thing by just swiping to get to that screen on the left, but I find it faster to press the physical button.  And when you are on the search screen, you can press the Home button again to get right back to the first home screen.

Ellipses.  I recently wrote about how you can hold down the hyphen key for a second or two to have the option to make an em dash.  There is a similar shortcut for and ellipses.  You can always just type the period three times ... for a makeshift ellipses, but if you want to make a proper ellipses with the dots even closer together, you can now hold down the period for a second or two and a menu will pop up that allows you to insert a single character ellipses, such as …

E-mail pictures at highest quality.  If you take a picture with your iPhone and then tap the icon on the bottom left of the photo, the iPhone gives you the option to E-mail the photo.  That button makes it easy to do so, but note that the iPhone will automatically scale down the photo to 800 x 600 if you do so.  To send the highest quality version of the photo, go to the camera roll and hold down your finger on the thumbnail of the photo until the Copy menu pops up, which you can tap to copy that one picture.  (Or alternatively, tap the icon at the bottom left of the camera roll, and then tap multiple pictures that you want to send and then tap the copy button at the bottom to copy them all at once.)  Then go into an e-mail, and paste the photo(s) into the body of the e-mail.  This will send the photo at full resolution, which is 2048 x 1536 on an iPhone 3GS, and is 1600 x 1200 on an iPhone 3G.  Most of the time that I send a picture via e-mail on my iPhone, I'm just looking to send a "hey take a quick look at this" type of e-mail so I don't really mind the scaled down 800 x 600 photo, but if you want to send the highest possible quality version, this is how.  (Thanks to Jon Martin and his Geek Stuff website for this tip, and to Daring Fireball for the link.)  Note that pictures in your iPhone's Photos app that were synced to your iPhone from your computer are already scaled down (such as 640 x 426 format), which is just a slightly higher resolution than the iPhone's 480 x 320 screen, so it doesn't much matter whether you let the iPhone e-mail the photo directly or if you copy-and-paste into an e-mail.  Either way, you will be sending a scaled down version of the original picture.  So this tip only makes a difference for pictures that you take using the iPhone that are still in your camera roll.

Hold on links.  In Safari, if you hold your finger down on a link, you will get three options:  (1) open the link (which is the same as just tapping it), (2) open in a new page, a handy way to look at the linked item but keep your current page, and (3) copy the link URL.  Very useful.

Share contacts.  There is a new "share contact" button at the bottom of each individual contact on the iPhone.  If you tap it, it loads the contact info into a vCard and attaches it to an e-mail, which you can then send to one or more friends.  You could even share yourself -- make a nice contact entry for yourself with all of your addresses and numbers, and then send it to your friends.  (Thanks to Ernie Svenson for this tip.)

Share text messages.  You can now forward an individual text message.  Just tap the edit button and tap on the text message you want to forward.  You'll be given the option to delete that individual message or forward it.  The message arrives without any indication that it's being forwarded so you'd have to alert the recipient of that fact in a previous text message.  And, obviously, this process allows you to delete individual text messages, which I don't believe was an option before.  (Thanks to Ernie Svenson for this tip.)

Flick to select.  Apple has done a very nice job implementing cut, copy and paste.  One little detail that I noticed is in the text selection.  Double tap on a word and you will see the lines with blue dots indicating the end of the selection.  I'm sure that you know that you can tap and drag a blue dot to extend the selection, but one neat feature is that you can just flick a dot in a direction and the dot will keep moving until it hits the end of the word.  This shortcut can make it faster when you are selecting text.

Shake to undo.  [UPDATE]  I have previously noted that shake to undo is a feature of the 3.0 software, and I should have included it in this list of shortcuts.  Thanks to Jerry for reminding me by posting a comment to this original post.  In my prior post on 3.0 shortcuts and tips, I noted that I personally don't like the shake to shuffle feature.  But shake to undo can be a time saver, not to mention it is sort of fun. 

If you have any other iPhone Software 3.0 tips or shortcuts, please post a comment or send me an e-mail so that we can share the tips or shortcuts with others.