I contemplated ending 2009 with a review of the last year of the iPhone, but Dan Moren of Macworld did such a great job that instead I encourage you to read his article. For lawyers, the increased speed of the iPhone 3GS, the addition of features like copy and paste in iPhone 3.0, and the explosion in the quantity and quality of third party apps have all made 2009 a great year for the iPhone. I am incredibly excited to see what 2010 will bring. Other recent news items worth reading:
Marc Ferranti of IDG News Service lists for PC World the “Top 10 Tech Stories of the Decade.” Apple appears on the list twice, once for the debut of the iPod and then again for the iPhone.
TouchArcade, which specializes in reviewing iPhone games, has come up with its list of the Best iPhone Games of 2009. If you are more interested in retro games from the good old days, the site also has a list of the Best Retro Ports of 2009, including Dragon’s Lair which I reviewed here.
Documents to Go with Exchange Attachments has been renamed Documents to Go Premium, is now at version 3.0, and adds (1) the ability to edit and create PowerPoint presentations and (2) support for Gmail attachments in addition to Exchange attachments. Great additions! Click here for Documents to Go Premium ($14.99):
Lawyerist reports on iPhone-optimized websites from online law practice management websites Clio, Time59 and Rocket Matter.
A lot of current iPhone owners previously used iPods, and as those iPods get older they sometimes no longer function as good as new. Kirk McElhearn writes for Macworld about uses for old iPods. For example, I have an old first generation, 5 GB iPod and an old iPod mini. The batteries in both of the old iPods have essentially died, but the iPods still work if you keep them plugged in. I have given both iPods a new life by buying inexpensive (under $40) iPod speakers including a dock from Amazon and setting them up in my kids’ rooms with a mix of children’s songs, including some calming music to help them go to sleep.
Tyler Tschida reports for App Advice that Christmas Day was a banner day for iPhone (and iPod touch) app sales.
Apple’s website has a series of iPhone in Business pages that profile companies using the iPhone. There has long been a profile of the Sonnenschein law firm in the U.S., but I just noticed that Apple added a profile of an Australian law firm, DLA Phillips Fox. Click here for that page, which includes a video.
CNBC is planning to show two Apple-related movies. First, CNBC is airing the great movie Welcome to Macintosh, a movie that I loved and reviewed this past March. The movie will air on January 4th at 6:30 pm Pacific / 9:30 pm Eastern.
behind them, and figure out just how big a business they really are.” That show airs Thursday, January 7 at 10pm Pacific / 1am Eastern. (Thanks to Alan Cohen for that link.)
One of my law partners bought a new iPhone only to find that the phone
would only work when in speaker mode. I thought this was a very
strange problem, and fortunately the local Apple Store swapped his
defective iPhone for a new one, but I have since learned that this is a
known, occasional problem with the iPhone. If it happens to you,
attorney Mike Mintz has some good advice on his Mintz’s Wordz blog of the steps that you can take to try to solve the problem.
This has absolutely nothing to do with the iPhone, but I loved watching the six minute animated film Pigeon Impossible so much that I couldn’t resist posting about it here. I cannot believe that this was the first effort by animator/writer/director Lucas Martell (although it did take him five years). Pixar needs to hire this guy.
Thanks to everyone who attended the Digital Workflow CLE in New Orleans today. It was great to meet so many iPhone J.D. readers. I look forward to meeting more of you at ABA TECHSHOW 2010 in Chicago in late March.
And finally, today is the last day to vote in the ABA Journal’s Blawg 100 competition. I suspect that many of you have not voted, but could I entice you to do so if I PAID YOU COLD HARD CASH??? Well, I’m not doing that, but someone else actually is. The TechnoLawyer Blog may pay you up to $500 if you vote for them. What a way to get out the vote! All you need to do is vote for TechnoLawyer in the “technology” category and then send an e-mail listing your full name, city, state, telephone number, and e-mail address to sweepstakes1209@peerviews.com letting them know that you voted for TechnoLawyer. Get more details here. Two first prize winners will each receive $500, and five second prize winners
will each receive $100. I am not sure what the ABA will think of this effort to get out the vote, but TechnoLawyer does publish some great newsletters so they are certainly a deserving winner. And remember, you can vote for up to ten websites, including multiple websites in the same category (iPhone J.D. is in the technology category, along with TechnoLawyer), so while you are there trying to get some cold hard cash from TechnoLawyer, feel free to share the love and vote for iPhone J.D. as well. Click here to get started, and good luck!
As the new year approaches, this is the time to make resolutions and contemplate what you want to accomplish in 2010. Two second year law students at UCLA, Hector Pacheco and Daniel Carter, created the app DreamList to help you keep track of those thoughts for the future.
The app lets you create lists of dreams (things you want to do) and lists of wishes (items that you want to have).
Enter whatever dreams or wishes you have and you can optionally choose a target completion date. If you are having trouble coming up with things to put on your lists, the app even includes hundreds of preloaded activities, sites and experiences that you might want to strive for. I actually found that to be one of the most interesting parts of the app as it gave me lots of ideas of things that I want to do at some point in the future.
You can mark a dream or wish as completed, which gives you a nice feeling of accomplishment to see what you have done. The app also allows you to share your dreams and wishes with your
friends who use the app and see which of your friends have completed their own dreams. You can also search to see which of your friends have the same dreams or wishes as you. Or you can search your friends’ wishes list to see what they want, which could give you ideas for birthday presents. This video from Daniel Carter shows you all of the ins and outs of the app:
This is an interesting idea for an app, and a timely app with the new year approaching. But what I really love about this app is that it is an example of lawyers — or, in this case, future lawyers — coming up with creative ideas and then turning those ideas into iPhone apps. Whether such apps are geared to other attorneys or, as here, suitable for the general public, I hope that more and more lawyers make it their resolution to develop iPhone apps next year.
By the way, the origin of this app is a cute story. Hector and Daniel tell me that they created this app after experiencing the “bloody” on campus interview process. To take a break from the stress of OCI and focus on something productive, they decided to write an iPhone app. I recall that my post-OCI activities when I was in law school primarily consisted of walking down the block to consume pints of beer at The Irish Times. If only I had been as productive as Hector and Daniel. Good luck to them on their future legal and iPhone endeavors.
If you are a Lexis subscriber with an iPhone, you can now view cases and get a Shepard’s Summary of the case on your iPhone with the LexisNexis Get Cases & Shepardize app that came out last month. The app does what it says, but the current 1.0 version suffers from some major limitations that I hope will be remedied in an update.
The first time that you use the app you are prompted for your Lexis username and password. My understanding is that there is no charge to use the app and that the username requirement is there simply because LexisNexis limits use of the app to current subscribers. Having said that, I am still trying to get official confirmation of this from LexisNexis, and I will update this paragraph of this post as I get more information.[UPDATE 12/30/09: LexisNexis sent me confirmation that there is no charge to use the app. Great news!]
Once your username and password are stored, the app will not ask you for them again. To get a case simply enter the citation.
After a few seconds, you will be given the case. The useful editorial content that Lexis adds to cases is included, such as (when available) Subsequent History, Procedural Posture, Overview, Outcome, Core Terms, Headnotes, Counsel, etc.
You can tap the Shepardize button at the top to see a Shepard’s Summary to get a sense of whether the case is still good law, including the Shepard’s Signal circles — green means good, red means caution.
Unfortunately, there are some major omissions from this version of the app that limit the app’s usefulness. First, you are going to most likely want to use this app when you are out of your office, on the go. Perhaps when you are in court and hear opposing counsel mention a case. But unless you know the case citation, you can’t use the app at all. It would be so helpful to be able to search by title and jurisdiction, so that when the other party mentions the “Morial v. Smith & Wesson” case, or even just the “Morial” case, you can pull it up. No such luck, unless the other party also says “785 So. 2d 1” in the same breath.
Second, when you are viewing a case, there are no hyperlinks. Thus, if the case you are reviewing cites another case, you cannot just click to see how the case is being cited. You can use the standard iPhone copy function to copy the cite and then do a new search and paste that cite, but that is a real pain and I see no justification for this cumbersome workaround. Moreover, there is no back button so you cannot then jump back to the original case after you have viewed a second case.
Third, the app does not let you view statutes, just cases. I don’t understand this limitation; obviously Lexis has statutes in its database as well.
Fourth, the Shepard’s feature is far too limited. This has the potential to be the killer aspect of the app — Shepardize a case while you are in court, and instantly telling the judge that your opponent is citing bad law. But no, not really. As you can see from the pictures posted above, all that you get is a Shepard’s Summary. So, for example, when I ran a report on a case I recently argued and won before the U.S. Fifth Circuit, Audler v. CBC Innovis, Inc., 519 F.3d 239 (5th Cir. 2008), I am told that the case was superseded (and thus has a red warning signal) and was also distinguished. This could be critical information … but I can’t really make much use of it, because the app doesn’t list any of the cases themselves. I just get this summary. So I know that the case was cited 80 times, was supposedly superseded, and was supposedly distinguished, but I cannot see a list of those cases or read the cases themselves to determine if the Audler case is still good law and was just superseded or distinguished on a point that doesn’t matter. I don’t consider this to be a userful Shepardizing exercise. It is just a big tease, and a confusing one at that considering that once I Shepardized the Audler case on Lexis.com, I discovered that (1) the “superseded” cite is just an unreported case distinguishing Audler’s applicability under a different statute in another state, which I would never even call “superseding” law anyway (Inclusive Cmtys. Project, Inc. v. Tex. Dep’t of Hous. & Cmty. Affairs, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 101240 (N.D. Tex. 12/11/08)) and (2) the “distinguished” case is simply one holding that the result is different under Mississippi law (Paul v. Landsafe Flood Determination, Inc., 550 F.3d 511 (5th Cir. 2008)), which has no effect on the Audler case still being a correct interpretation of Louisiana law.
Fifth, the app can really use some user interface improvements, although I readily admit that these are just my personal preferences and are minor points. It would be helpful to resize the font size. You can pinch to zoom, but then you have to scroll back and forth to read which can give you a headache after a while. I also wish that there was some pop-up window to populate the source such as So. 2d, F.2d, etc. when you are entering a cite. Switching back and forth between the number keyboard and the letter keyboard to manually enter every letter and number of a cite wastes time when the app could just let you enter the two numbers, perhaps pre-populating your last used source and letting you easily tap to select a different one. It would also be helpful to have a history button so that you can pull up a case you recently viewed, which would also alleviate the omission of a back button as I noted above. Having said that, they should also add a back button.
To be clear, I am offering only constructive criticism of this 1.0 version of the app. All of these omissions can be easily addressed in a future update, at which time this app could become insanely useful. In its current state, however, I prefer to just use the free Google Scholar website on your iPhone, which I reviewed last month. You can find a specific case on Google Scholar using either a citation or a case name. For example, I can find that Audler case by citation, but can also find it if I just run a search for “Audler CBC.” Indeed, I could even just do a search for “Audler” and in this example, the right case would be the second search result. While Google Scholar omits the editorial content that Lexis gives you such as a case summary, it does let you click on a hyperlink for any cited case to view that case, and then you can hit your Safari back button to go back to the original case. With Google Scholar, you can even tap the “How Cited” tab to get a list of citing cases. Google Scholar doesn’t tell you whether these cases distinguish, overrule or just follow the original case, but you can see excerpts that might tell you what you need to know. For example, as you can see in this picture, Google Scholar doesn’t list the unreported case that Lexis (incorrectly) claimed was a superseding case, but does list the Paul case and I can guess from the brief excerpt’s use of the word “In that case” that Paul is likely a case distinguishing Audler.
Additionally, Google Scholar even lets you search for caselaw by searching for words and phrases, something you can’t do on the Lexis app, although to be fair the Lexis app doesn’t intend to be a research tool, and the title itself tells you that this app is just a way to get a case and Shepardize it. Finally, Google Scholar is incredibly fast, even on an iPhone. The Lexis app takes several seconds to load a case, which can get annoying. I know that Google has some really fast computer servers sending the data to my iPhone, but you would think that Lexis does too.
I’m glad to see this app. Westlaw doesn’t offer anything similar. Some people might find the current version useful in some situations. For example, George Mason University third year law student Adam Aft told me that he “could see the value of pulling up a case [in class] to glance at the case summary, especially if there is no other lifeline while drowning in a sea of socratic dialogue.” But Adam agrees with me that the shortcomings of this app are frustrating. If Lexis adds some or all of these missing features, they will have a real winner on their hands. But in the current 1.0 version, this is not an app that I will often use or recommend over the free Google Scholar.
Click here to get LexisNexis Get Cases & Shepardize (free):
The free Clink-Clink app from Waterford presents you with a virtual glass of champagne or wine so that you can clink glasses with another iPhone user also running the app. Is it gimicky? Does it get old soon? Is it just a promotion for Waterford Crystal? Yes to all three questions, but the app is free, and it might be something cute for you to play with this week as you are waiting for the ball to drop on New Year’s Eve.
Choose a Waterford glass (you have five choices) and the glass appears on the screen, filled with champagne or wine. As you move the glass back and forth, the virtual liquid moves as if it were real.
The app has three modes. If you and a friend are both using the app, choose the “Toast a Friend” option and you will hear the sound of glasses clinking as the iPhone’s motion accelerator senses movement, followed by the app presenting you with a toast. In the Settings, you can choose one or more toast categories such as New Year, International Cheers, Wedding and Birthday.
You can also choose the “Make a Friend” option to share your own Contacts card, or your Facebook information, with the person with whom you are sharing a toast. (If you choose the Facebook option, the app will post your toast to your Facebook wall.) You both have to also specifically enable Contacts and/or Facebook sharing in your Preferences for this to work.
Finally, if you are alone, you can choose the “Just Play” option to just toast yourself. I suppose virtual toasting is better than drinking alone.
After you have used the app a few times, you will be given the option to provide your e-mail address to Waterford. And when enough people use the program, all users will get some sort of coupon from Waterford. This is a promotional app, after all. According to the Creativity advertising website, ad agency Gotham created this app for Waterford.
This is a cute little app that might provide you with a few minutes of amusement, and with the contact sharing component could even help you land a new client or make a new friend.
A friend at my law firm received a Christmas card from the Compensation and Benefits Strategies division of J.P. Morgan with a fun iPhone theme. Kudos to them for coming up with a memorable card, at least for iPhone enthusiasts:
The Washington Post carries a Reuters story about how Tapulous, the developer of the iPhone game Tap Tap Revenge, is bringing in almost $1 million a month.
And finally, are you ready for the announcement of the next model of the
iPhone? Apple traditionally introduces new models in June, and
AppleInsider speculates that in 2010 it will be on June 28th. This
is because the Moscone Center in San Francisco is booked for a
anonymous “corporate event” June 28 to July 2, 2010, which AppleInsider
believes will be the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), a
natural venue to introduce the 2010 model of the iPhone. The original
iPhone was released on June 29, 2007, the iPhone 3G was announced at
WWDC on June 9, 2008, and the iPhone 3GS was announced at WWDC on June 8, 2009.
Have you ever been out of your office and realized that you need to look at a file that is sitting right on the desktop of your office or home computer but that you forgot to take with you? Or maybe you need to access an e-mail that you have already moved to your office document management system for which there is no iPhone interface, so just having access to your Inbox in the iPhone’s Mail app won’t let you get that e-mail? Or maybe you need to look something up in a database that cannot be accessed from an iPhone? Or maybe you just want to use a website that doesn’t work in Safari on the iPhone, such as a website that requires Internet Explorer? A solution to all of these problems is to view and control your PC or Mac that is sitting in your office at your home. With the LogMeIn Ignition app, you can now do all of this from your iPhone.
To start, you need a free LogMeIn Ignition account, and you need to install software on your computer(s). (There are also paid LogMeIn accounts available that include a few advanced features, but you don’t need one of those paid plans to use the iPhone app.) Once you install this software, you can use any web browser on any computer to control your computer that has the LogMeIn software installed. Making your computer accessible on the Internet raises obvious security questions, but LogMeIn appears to have thought through all of these issues, as you can see on the company’s Security page. When you start the iPhone app and log into your account, you will see a list of all of the computers associated with your account, such as your office PC and your home iMac. Select the computer that you want to access and enter the username and password for that computer. (By the way — ignore all of the black boxes in these pictures; those are just my redactions to these images.)
Once connected, you will see your computer’s screen on your iPhone. At first, it will be incredibly tiny of course, but you can pinch to zoom in which makes everything easy to read. By the way, I’m showing these screens in portrait mode, but you can turn your iPhone on your side if you would prefer a wider, landscape mode.
The default mode is for the cursor to remain fixed in the middle of the screen. Use your finger to scroll around to the part of the screen where you want to click, then tap once on the screen to click, or twice to double-click, or tap twice but hold down on the second tap to drag. If you need to do a right click, just tap the third of the six icons at the bottom of the screen to change into right click mode. (There is also a tap shortcut that lets you do the same thing, but I find that icon easier to use.) You can even swipe with two fingers at once to scroll a window, a gesture that will be familiar to anyone who uses the same gesture on a MacBook. If you need to type something, just tap the second icon on the bottom to bring up a keyboard. It is not a standard iPhone keyboard so it takes a little getting use to, but this is necessary because the app gives you all of the keys that you would have with a full keyboard:
The fourth icon across the bottom, the magnifying glass, can be tapped to zoom in or out. I find that zooming is usually easier if you just pinch your fingers, but it is nice to be able to tap one button when you are zoomed in to instantly zoom all the way out and see the entire screen at once. The fifth icon at the bottom brings up various settings that you can adjust. The sixth and final icon brings up a quick and easy way to Alt-Tab to switch applications or Ctrl-Alt-Del to lock your screen and perform the various other functions associated with that. (If you are controlling a Mac, the options are Command-Tab and Command-` which allow you to switch applications or switch windows within the same application.)
Here is a video from the developer that shows the app in action:
Click here for another promotional video on the LogMeIn website.
The real question for me when I contemplated buying this app was speed. Would it really be fast enough to make reasonable use of a computer from a tiny little iPhone? To my utter surprise, the answer is yes. Even on 3G, but especially on WiFi, the app is very responsive and speed was never an issue for me. The small screen size is a limitation, and you find yourself moving around the screen a lot whenever you are zoomed in enough for text to be reasonably legible, but fortunately the app is zippy when you are moving around the screen. You wouldn’t want to use this app to write a long brief in Microsoft Word, but it is a snap to use this app to fix a few words in a Word document on your desktop and then use an e-mail program such as Outlook to send the file around. As a test, I even connected to my Mac and started playing a movie in half-size so that it would roughly match the size of my iPhone screen. On the iPhone, the screen refreshed quickly enough (on WiFi) that I was able to view the video on the iPhone. The frame rate was lower, and the app has no audio so I couldn’t hear the video, but the movie was certainly watchable. I was amazed that it worked as well as it did.
There are a few iPhone apps out there that work very well, are incredibly useful, and really push the platform beyond anything that you thought would be possible. These rare apps can be almost magical when you first use them. Several of the iPhone’s built-in apps meet this test, as does the Dragon Dictation app that I recently reviewed. LogMeIn Ignition also falls in that category. If you are in a pinch and really need to access your computer when you are away from that computer, the iPhone now allows you to do something that was previously impossible. And of course, you never know when that moment will arise, so you should consider getting this app set up now so that it is there for you when you need it. This app has been out for a while but for a long time I put off trying it, thinking that it would be difficult to use and not that helpful. I was wrong, and I wish I had purchased it earlier.
Indeed, this app has even started to change my habits. I used to frequently bring home my work laptop, especially on weekends, just in case I needed something on it. But now, I am starting to think it is better to default to leaving my laptop at work, because that way I can access that laptop both from home (using LogMeIn either on my iMac at home or on the iPhone) or if I am away from home. Just the other day, I needed to get a home address for one of my colleagues while I was running errands over the weekend. I didn’t have the address in my iPhone contacts, but I knew that I could get it from my firm’s intranet website, a website that only works on Internet Explorer so I couldn’t even use my iPhone to VPN to my law firm and get it that way. This was no problem with LogMeIn Ignition; I just connected to my work laptop, started Internet Explorer, and then got the address. It only took about a minute. My experiences are consistent with study findings released in a set of LogMeIn promotional slides that “57% of [LogMeIn Ignition] users in our survey are ditching their laptop in favor of their iPhone with Ignition at least half the time.”
As good as this app is, there are reasons to consider not getting it, at least not yet. First, if you don’t mind waiting, at some point I’m sure that LogMeIn Ignition will have some real competition. There are other remote access programs for computers, perhaps the most famous being GoToMyPC by Citrix. I saw reports earlier this year that an iPhone GoToMyPC app was in development, so hopefully we will see that soon. If you use the similar WebEx PCNow, I understand that you can use the service in Safari on an iPhone, but not to control a PC; you just see a big list of the files on your PC, which depending upon your needs might be sufficient.
Also, if the $30 cost seems a bit much for you, you should know that I have seen at least two times this year when LogMeIn dropped the price to $20 for
a few days. (I bought my copy during one of those brief sales.) If I
see a price drop again, I’ll be sure to mention it on my Twitter feed.
Finally, if even that discounted price seems too much, note that there is at least one other iPhone app that does the same thing, a
$5.99 app called Mocha VNC, but I understand that it is difficult to
set up and I don’t know enough about security of that product to recommend it one way or the other. LogMeIn does not require you to do any complicated configuring
on your computer or iPhone. It just works. For me, that ease of use makes it well worth the cost, especially considering that if you really need to access your computer in a pinch, that $30 (or $20) could pay for itself in a single use, depending upon the emergency.
Earlier this month, the iTunes Store announced “Rewind 2009” identifying the best of 2009 on iTunes. The iTunes App Store Rewind 2009 page lists the best apps of 2009 as selected by the App Store staff and the top selling apps of the year. There are separate lists for game apps and non-game apps. Browsing these lists is a useful way to discover some great apps. Since I don’t really talk about games on iPhone J.D. (with one recent exception), I’ll just list here the “best” and “top selling” non-game iPhone apps. These are in alphabetical order; Apple doesn’t rank the lists. All prices are current, but note that many of these prices reflect holiday sales so these apps may cost more in a few days.
Best of 2009, as selected by the App Store Staff:
20 Minute Meals – Jamie Oliver ($4.99)
Awesome Note (+ToDo) ($3.99)
BeejiveIM with Push ($6.99) — supports all the major instant messaging protocols, and because it uses push notifications it works even when you are not running the app
CBS Sports: Live College Games ($4.99)
CNBC Real-Time (free) — the only free app that provides real-time stock quotes
ColorSplash ($1.99) — converts a photo to black and white and lets you add color to a specific part of the picture to create a dramatic effect
Convertbot ($0.99) — I use this one all the time to convert between various units
Credit Card Terminal ($0.99)
ESPN ScoreCenter (free) — I have several apps to track sports scores, but this is probably my favorite
Fandango Movies – Times & Tickets (free)
Flight Update Pro – Live Status + TripIt ($9.99)
Golfshot: Golf GPS ($29.99) — keep score, GPS rangefinder with distances, aerial views of 26,000 courses, etc.
I Am T-Pain ($0.99) — Auto-Tune your voice to sing along with music
Leaf Trombone: World Stage ($0.99) — my review is here
Magellan RoadMate 2010 ($79.99)
Mathemagics – Mental Math Tricks ($1.99)
Mover+ ($1.99) — send files between two iPhones
Musée du Louvre (free)
NBA League Pass Mobile ($39.99) — watch live games on your iPhone
NearestWiki ($1.99) — requires iPhone 3GS; provides information about your surroundings
Pano ($1.99) — turn iPhone pictures into panoramas. I haven’t tried Pano, but I use a similar program called AutoStitch ($1.99) which works very well.
ReelDirector ($7.99) — turn video clips into polished movies on the iPhone 3GS
(Shazam)RED ($4.99) — (PRODUCT) RED version of the popular Shazam app
SketchBook Mobile ($1.99)
SmackTalk! ($0.99) — a voice-altering app featuring animated animals
Star Walk – 5 Stars Astronomy Guide ($2.99)
Storyboard Composer ($19.99)
Tweetie 2 ($2.99) — I haven’t tried this Twitter client, but it gets great reviews. I instead currently use and love Twitterific Premium ($4.99)
Vintage Video Maker ($2.99) — make your video look like a movie from the 1920s or the 1960s. I haven’t tried this app, but you can see some sample videos here. What I find interesting is that even though the iPhone 3GS takes videos of somewhat limited quality, that doesn’t matter when you apply effects like this.
Zipcar (free)
Top Selling of 2009:
AIM ($2.99)
AppBox Pro ($0.99) — contains 18 different utility apps
Camera Genius ($1.99)
Camera Zoom 2 ($0.99)
CNN Mobile ($1.99)
ColorSplash ($1.99) — converts a photo to black and white and lets you add color to a specific part of the picture to create a dramatic effect
Documents to Go [the version without Exchange support] ($9.99) — I’ve discussed this app many times on iPhone J.D. including: 6/22/09, 6/25/09, 8/4/09, 8/17/09
ESPN Radio ($2.99)
Family Guy ($1.99)
FlightTrack Pro – Live TripIt Flight Status Tracker ($9.99)
Golfshot: Golf GPS ($29.99) — keep score, GPS rangefinder with distances, aerial views of 26,000 courses, etc.
I Am T-Pain ($0.99) — Auto-Tune your voice to sing along with music
iBird Explorer PRO ($29.99)
iEmoji ($0.99)
iSoda (iWater, iCola and more) ($2.99)
MobileNavigator North America by Navigon ($59.99)
MLB.com At Bat (free) — this app is currently free because the season is over; during the 2009 season, you could use this $9.99 app to watch live games on your iPhone
The Moron Test ($0.99) — I haven’t tried this, but it actually gets good reviews; the app includes lots of trick questions
Pocket God ($0.99) — this is a game app, so I’m not sure why it is on this list
Proloquo2Go ($189.99) — for people who have difficulty speaking, this app lets them type text or select pictures and then the app speaks for them. The reviews are amazing because this app lets someone just carry an iPhone or iPod touch instead of a 10 pound AAC device that can cost thousands of dollars.
Quickoffice Mobile Office Suite ($9.99) — I’ve discussed this app many times on iPhone J.D. including: 2/20/09, 4/22/09, 5/5/09, 7/20/09, 8/4/09
RedLaser ($1.99) — scan bar codes and compare prices on items
SlingPlayer Mobile ($29.99)
Textfree Unlimited – Send Text Messages (SMS) Free! ($5.99)
TomTom U.S. & Canada ($69.99)
ViewTi Golf ($0.99)
The Weather Channel Max ($3.99)
Wolfenstein 3D Classic Platinum ($0.99) — once again, this is a game app so I’m not sure why it is on this list
Only three apps made both lists: (1) ColorSplash, (2) Golfshot and (3) I Am T-Pain. I haven’t tried any of them, but now I’m starting to think that I am missing something.
These lists reveal some disagreements on which apps are best. For example, if you are looking to track flights, it looks like you have to choose between the “best” Flight Update Pro and the “top selling” FlightTrack Pro. I haven’t tried either yet. Likewise, if you want a turn-by-turn GPS app, the App Store editors pick Magellan RoadMate 2010 as the best, whereas Navigon’s MobileNavigator, TomTom and MotionX GPS Drive were apparently better sellers — the peoples’ choices, I suppose you could say — in 2009.
A lot of people will be traveling for the holidays, and if you have been waiting until now to get a GPS navigation app for your iPhone, you’ll be glad that you did because of the comprehensive reviews and deep discounts that came out over the last few days. Here are those stories, plus the rest of the news that caught my attention this week:
Glenn Fleishman is normally known as the guru of wireless networking, but this week he showed that he knows his way around GPS as well. He wrote the most comprehensive review I have seen to date on the GPS navigation apps for Macworld. As he notes, the one that is right for you depends on the features that will interest you most, but his wrap up notes: “Overall, AT&T Navigator was the best app among those with low
prices, recurring monthly fees, and small app sizes; among the large
apps with pre-loaded maps, Navigon MobileNavigator scored the highest.
Combining decent quality with a low price, MotionX was the best bargain
among all the apps I reviewed.” MotionX, which I reviewed here, is a great bargain, but I keep thinking about getting another app that can announce street names, a big omission in MotionX. [UPDATE: Text to speech is planned for a future update to MotionX, as noted below in the comment and just confirmed to me by the company, but the company isn’t saying when this feature will arrive.]
There are also some big sales on some of the major GPS navigation apps. TomTom has been selling a $99.99 U.S. & Canada app, but from now until December 28, TomTom is currently selling that app for only $69.99. Better yet, TomTom has come out with a U.S. only version that only costs $49. I know a lot of people bought the $99 version with no intention of traveling north of the border, and if you were thinking of doing the same, you can now get what you need from TomTom for essentially half the price. Click here for TomTom U.S. & Canada ($69.99 sale): . Click here for TomTom U.S.A. ($49.99 sale):
Similarly Navigon MobileNavigator, which Fleishman gave the highest score, used to cost $89.99 but from now until January 11th only costs $59.99. Click here for Navigon MobileNavigator ($59.99 sale):
By the way, if you get a GPS navigation app, you might want to get a car mount as well. If you use the TomTom app, they sell a $120 car kit that improves the GPS signal and speakers, but I hear that stock is limited. (The Apple Store seems to have some.) If you already have a cigarette lighter power cord for your iPhone and just want a simple mount, I hear good things about the Kensington mounts for your dashboard
or your windshield that cost under $25, and I’m thinking about getting one of those.
With Tiger Woods on everyone’s minds nowadays, Art of the iPhone reviews the Tiger Woods golf app, which apparently is excellent. Click here for Tiger Woods PGA Tour ($4.99):
With so many games for the iPhone, it sometimes seems that attorneys need to defend the iPhone as also being a serious business tool. Proving that the iPhone can be used for even more important tasks, Roy Furchgott reports for the New York Times on a new app by military contractor Raytheon that “tracks friends and foes, shows their positions on live, real time maps and provides secure communications.” Raytheon sees possible applications both on the battlefield and for first responders such as police and firemen. (Thanks to Marshall Hevron at my firm for the link.)
It used to be that if you wanted to record video on your iPhone, you had to have the latest model, the iPhone 3GS. Art of the iPhone reviews a cheap app called iVideoCamera that allows you to record video on the original iPhone and the iPhone 3G. The video quality and length is limited, but at least you now have an option. Click here for iVideoCamera ($0.99):
Do you have a stereo in your house or office? Would you like to wirelessly send music from your iPhone to that stereo? Macworld notes a new $50 device from Belkin that turns any stereo into a Bluetooth speaker.
Scott Kleinberg reports on iPhone, Therefore iBlog about an iTunes problem that I have been having as well. iTunes tells you that you have updates for an app, but then after downloading and installing the updated app on your iPhone, iTunes continues to insist that the same update is still available. Hopefully Apple will come out with a fix soon.
Gregg Keizer reports for Computerworld that the iPhone user base is now the second largest among smartphones in the U.S. Nine million people use the iPhone as their primary smartphone. RIM is still in the lead with 15 million Blackberry users. For now, at least.
I previously reviewed two new Take Control books relating to the iPhone, Take Control of iPhone OS 3 and Take Control of Your iPhone Apps. For a limited time, you can get either book for half price ($6.50 or $5.00) by clicking this link.
Randall Stross writes an interesting article in the New York Times asserting that AT&T coverage problems are due in part to iPhone design problems. Others have written harsh rebuttals to the article, including John Gruber at Daring Fireball, Daniel Eran Dilger at Rougly Drafted and Chris Foresman at Ars Technica. You be the judge.
If you’ve visited the App Store in iTunes recently, you’ve seen a whole new look. TUAW and Macworld discuss the redesign.
At the end of 2007, U.S. Supreme Court practitioner and SCOTUSblog co-founder Tom Goldstein released a funny YouTube video playing off of the early Apple ads for the iPhone. Click here for my post from last year containing that video and another funny one from Goldstein; both are still worth seeing today if you missed them in the past. This year for the holidays, Goldstein released another funny video called “The Public Apology of Tom Goldstein.” The iPhone makes only a minor appearance in the latest video, but it is worth watching. (Thanks to Ray Ward’s Minor Wisdom for the link.)
And finally, if you are looking for a way to avoid spending tens of thousands of dollars on a Steinway grand piano, apparently you can just purchase six iPhones instead:
During this time of giving and holiday cheer, I know that a lot of you have been thinking about what you can give to iPhone J.D. this year. Well, maybe some of you have been thinking that. OK, maybe just one. (Hi, Mom!) But if you do enjoy reading iPhone J.D. and you are interested in supporting the site, there are two easy things you can do that won’t cost you anything.
First, if you make any purchases from Amazon, just click right here before making that purchase and Amazon will provide a tiny percentage of whatever you buy to iPhone J.D. It doesn’t cost you anything extra.
Second, even if your holiday shopping is done and you have nothing to purchase from Amazon, it would be so nice if you take the time to vote in the ABA Journal’s Blawg 100. This year, the ABA makes you register before you can vote, and I know that is a deterrent. But registration really is painless and only takes about a minute, and once you register you can vote for up to ten favorite blawgs among the 100 nominees. I’d like to show the ABA Journal editors that they did the right thing by selecting this site because there is a lot of iPhone interest out there. To vote, you can click on the link at the top right of this page, or just click on the following large, obnoxious banner helpfully provided by the ABA Journal to go directly to the “Tech” category. Once you are there, click the links at the top for the other categories:
By the way, you really should check out some of the other nominated sites. There are some great ones.
For all of you who decide to support iPhone J.D. through either of the above, not to mention though your continued readership and enthusiasm, thanks so much. It means a lot.
CNBC is planning to show two Apple-related movies. First, CNBC is airing the great movie Welcome to Macintosh, a movie that I loved and reviewed this past March. The movie will air on January 4th at 6:30 pm Pacific / 9:30 pm Eastern.
With Tiger Woods on everyone’s minds nowadays, Art of the iPhone 
Do you have a stereo in your house or office? Would you like to wirelessly send music from your iPhone to that stereo? 
