There were lots of interesting iPhone articles and news this week, so lets jump right into it, shall we…
Bennett and Diedre Braverman write “iPhone, a Love Story” on their blog Strategic Attorney.
At $49.99, Black’s Law Dictionary (my review is here) is one of the most expensive apps that an attorney would buy for his or her iPhone. Nevertheless, the company tells a reporter for the ABA Journal that West has sold several hundred copies of the app so far. But you have to wonder, how many more would they have sold if they had priced it at $19.99? Or $9.99?
Rich Mogull writes this article for TidBITS explaining that there is currently a flaw with the security on the iPhone 3GS. Although you can protect your iPhone by requiring a password to swipe-to-unlock it, someone who obtains access to your iPhone and understands how this hack works can use a computer to bypass that security. I presume that Apple will fix this in the next software update.
I recently wrote about myMCLE California, a $0.99 app for California attorneys to keep track of their CLE hours. Author Dan Friedlander now has versions for Florida, Louisiana, California, New York and Texas. I just bought the Louisiana version. Great app. Click here for a list of all of these apps on iTunes:
Another security flaw with the iPhone recently came to light, but Apple fixed this one in iPhone Software 3.0.1, which was released this past Saturday. Security expert Charlie Miller discovered a way that a hacker could shut down your iPhone and even potentially take it over just by sending text messages to your iPhone. Pretty scary stuff, although I didn’t see any reports of any bad guys actually doing this. Nevertheless, if you haven’t updated your iPhone to 3.0.1 yet, you should plug it in to your computer and do so now to be safe. The website Tom’s Hardware has this very interesting interview with Charlie Miller describing how he did it.
I have frequently written about date calculator apps for the iPhone (1, 2, 3) but as Rick Georges writes on his FutureLawyer site, you can also just use Wolfram|Alpha to calculate dates. As I wrote a few months ago, that site works well on an iPhone.
I know that some people are frustrated about Apple rejecting several iPhone apps, although as I posted yesterday, I think this is going to improve soon. One man who goes by the alias Hyperplasia07 must have missed my post yesterday because he took out his frustration with Apple by shooting an iPhone with a Beretta 9mm, several times, and then setting it on fire. And of course he captured all of this on video and uploaded it to YouTube—not that this makes me think that the whole thing was staged as a publicity stunt or anything. Click here to see the video. (Link via BuzzFeed.)
MacNewsWorld reviews the Documents to Go app, saying it is not a corner office, but a decent cubicle.
Yappler has an interesting article about how Pixar animator Jessia Abroms hired a programmer for $700 to help her create an iPhone game called M.A.P.S. So far, she has seen over $5,000 in sales.
I sometimes hear people say that they wish that the iPhone was on Verizon instead of AT&T, but as Daniel Eron Dilger writes in his article “iPhone Wars: AT&T, Verizon, and the evil of two lessors,” the iPhone on Verizon would have problems as well. As he concludes: “There’s a lot not to like about AT&T. The problem is that there’s even more to dislike about Verizon.”
Apple has learned a lot from integrating the Mail app on the iPhone with Microsoft Exchange, so much so that Apple is including improved Exchange support with the Mail program that will come with the next upgrade to the Mac operating system, Snow Leopard. In an announcement that may have been timed to detract attention from that (since Snow Leopard will be out any day now), Microsoft announced yesterday that the next version of Office on the Mac, due in late 2010, will include for the first time a version of Outlook for the Mac (to replace Microsoft’s current Mac mail program, Entourage). By the way, if you use a Mac, you can pre-order Snow Leopard through Amazon for $29 by clicking here, and by doing so you will support iPhone J.D.
The New York Times has an interesting article on how more and more media outlets like TV news shows and public radio are coming out with iPhone apps, but everyone is still trying to figure out how to make money on it.
And finally, the long wait is over … you can now play poker using playing cards that look like iPhones. The Meninos Store has previously sold fun coasters that look like iPhone app icons, and now have these playing cards for $25.00.
1 thought on “In the news”
I feel funny defending West’s pricing policy on anything, but even if they could sell many more units of Black’s Law Dictionary at 10 or 14 bucks per unit (and I sincerely doubt it), West is right to price it where they do. Black’s is, or should be, an exception to the idea that all e-books should be cheap, because there are no costs involved with the production of the physical book. Black’s isn’t remotely in the same category as a best-selling novel or even a non-fiction book like Malcolm Gladwell writes. It’s an information tool, one that took thousands of hours of research and discussion by some very good lawyers and legal scholars to create. If West believes that $75, the current price for the dead-tree Black’s, is a fair price (and perhaps it is), then $50 is a fair discount for the same product with lower costs of production. I’m deliberately avoiding the question of whether Wexis generally charge too much for legal information– that is another discussion for another time.
More generally, I don’t think it’s realistic to look at the Kindle e-book model of nothing priced more than $9.99 and extrapolate it to the tools of one’s trade. Just because “The Da Vinci Code” and Wright and Miller’s “Federal Practice and Procedure” share a common medium based on dead trees doesn’t make them at all equivalent.
At $49.99, Black’s Law Dictionary (my review is here) is one of the most expensive apps that an attorney would buy for his or her iPhone. Nevertheless, the company tells a reporter for the ABA Journal that West has sold several hundred copies of the app so far. But you have to wonder, how many more would they have sold if they had priced it at $19.99? Or $9.99? 
I have frequently written about date calculator apps for the iPhone (1, 2, 3) but as Rick Georges writes on his FutureLawyer site, you can also just use Wolfram|Alpha to calculate dates. As I wrote a few months ago, that site works well on an iPhone.
I feel funny defending West’s pricing policy on anything, but even if they could sell many more units of Black’s Law Dictionary at 10 or 14 bucks per unit (and I sincerely doubt it), West is right to price it where they do. Black’s is, or should be, an exception to the idea that all e-books should be cheap, because there are no costs involved with the production of the physical book. Black’s isn’t remotely in the same category as a best-selling novel or even a non-fiction book like Malcolm Gladwell writes. It’s an information tool, one that took thousands of hours of research and discussion by some very good lawyers and legal scholars to create. If West believes that $75, the current price for the dead-tree Black’s, is a fair price (and perhaps it is), then $50 is a fair discount for the same product with lower costs of production. I’m deliberately avoiding the question of whether Wexis generally charge too much for legal information– that is another discussion for another time.
More generally, I don’t think it’s realistic to look at the Kindle e-book model of nothing priced more than $9.99 and extrapolate it to the tools of one’s trade. Just because “The Da Vinci Code” and Wright and Miller’s “Federal Practice and Procedure” share a common medium based on dead trees doesn’t make them at all equivalent.