The iPad was the news of the week, and much of the iPhone news from this past week relates in some way to the iPad. For example, I couldn’t help but chuckle when I saw Andy Ihnatko referring to his iPhone as his “iPad Nano.” The initial reviews of the iPad are mixed, but as attorney Erik J. Heels notes, when the original iPod came out in 2001, a lot of people thought it was a dumb idea too. As Steve Jobs remarked this week during the iPad announcement, Apple has now shipped over 250 million iPods. It may take a few years to figure out how important the iPad is, but I think it has a lot of potential. Here are some of the news items from this past week thought I thought were noteworthy:
Attoney Reid Trautz predicts that “2010 will be the year that being small, mobile, and almost expense-free went mainstream,” and he sees the iPad and the iPhone as prime examples of that.
Ernie “the Attorney” Svenson says that it may be too early to call the iPad a “game changer” but says that “for lawyers I can see it as a very versatile tool.”
Ben “The Mac Lawyer” Stevens says “iPad = iWow” and that “I can think of so many legitimate situations in which attorneys can use the iPad, and I expect it to be a huge sucess, perhaps even more so than the iPhone.”
If you use the Documents to Go app, you might be interested to learn that DataViz is now hosting a forum for discussions on the app. For example, one of the features in Quickoffice missing from Documents to Go is support for the MobileMe iDisk. One of the threads includes a statement by a DataViz employee that they are looking into this for a future update.
Earlier this week, Apple announced that it sold over 8.7 million iPhones last quarter. Apparently, just over a third of them ended up in the U.S. Paul Miller of Engadget reports on AT&T’s announcement that it activated 3.1 million iPhones last quarter.
Jenna Wortham of the New York Times reports that AT&T believes that its network is ready for all of the new iPhone and iPad owners.
The iBooks app on the iPad looks similar to an e-book reader app for the iPhone called Classics. To celebrate the imitation, AppAdvice reports that the Classics app, normally $2.99, is now free, for a limited time.
Roy Furchgott of the New York Times reports that Apple and AT&T are now allowing iPhone apps to do VOIP over 3G. Previously, apps like Skype could only do VOIP over a Wi-Fi connection. This should make it cheaper for people to make international calls on an iPhone by using a VOIP app, and can also be helpful if someone calls you via VOIP, you are notified via a push notification, and you want to answer when you are not near a Wi-Fi network.
Toby Brown, a marketing manager at Fulbright & Jaworski, writes that he thinks that the Blackberry is a better choice for lawyers over the iPhone because “1 – BBs focus on the core uses for lawyers. And, 2 – As a mature technology, BBs are stable and more importantly, secure.”
And finally, the Appolicious website has announced its crAPPies awards: the 29 worst iPhone apps of all times. And if you want to know how apps, good and pad, get approved by Apple, this funny video from Julian Smith shows a sneak peak into the Apple app review process:
Apple introduced its new tablet computer yesterday, the iPad. The press coverage is extensive so I won’t run down the details of the iPad itself here. If you want a good report, Dan Miller wrote a good one for Macworld, as did Daniel Eran Dilger for AppleInsider. I can see attorneys really loving the iPad. It could be a wonderful way to sit back and read and highlight cases and read a brief. And I’m sure that attorneys in trial will soon be reading their cross examination outlines off of an iPad instead of using a legal pad and a stack of papers, with quick access to depositions for impeachment and other material with just a simple tap.
For now, though, I have been thinking about the iPhone implications of the iPad. I had hoped that Steve Jobs would devote some time yesterday to making new iPhone announcements. Instead, his focus was on the new iPad, but that doesn’t mean that we didn’t learn something about what might be in store for the iPhone in the future.
You see, much like the iPod touch is a close cousin to the iPhone, the iPad is also a cousin of the iPhone — the cousin on the other, larger and more athletic side of the family. The iPad screen is about four times the size of the iPhone and its processor is much faster (more on that in a moment), but like the iPod touch, the iPad runs the same operating system as the iPhone. Indeed, people who want to write software for the iPad go to this page on the Apple website to download a beta version of not the iPad development kit, but instead the iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK) version 3.2. Thus, whenever iPhone OS 3.2 comes out of beta for the iPad (which Apple says will hit the market at the end of March) perhaps a version of 3.2 will be available for the iPhone itself. Or, perhaps, we will have to wait until this summer for new software for the iPhone.
Steve Jobs showed off many new features on the iPad yesterday, and it is unclear which of them will trickle down to the iPhone itself and which are unique to the iPad implementation of iPhone OS 3.2, but I have a few guesses. First, the iPad makes extensive use of pop-up menus so that when you tap a button, instead of being taken to a new screen, you just get a menu that appears on top of the current screen. Will we also see more of this on the iPhone? An Engadget report claims that Apple says that these new “popovers” are for the iPad only. However, the current iPhone OS already uses these types of menus to a certain extent — for example, the pop up menu to cut, copy and paste — and I suspect that we will see a lot more of this for the iPhone in the future. The larger iPad screen makes these menus more appropriate, but I can see smaller versions fitting in quite nicely on the iPhone.
Another potential new feature is a shared file directory. Currently, iPhone apps can only share access to a few types of files contained in the built-in apps. For example, any app can access your Photos, your iPod songs and videos, and your Contacts. But a Word file attached to an e-mail cannot be accessed by other iPhone apps, unless the developer comes up with a creative work-around such as what Dataviz did with Documents to Go (including what is essentially a built-in Mail app with the program so that it can independently access an Exchange or Google Mail server and get those attachments for itself). It would be useful to be able to download a Word, Excel or PDF file from an e-mail into a central location — much like the Documents folder on a Mac or the My Documents folder on a PC — so that any other app could access those files. Apple has come out with three iWork apps for the iPad (Keynote, Pages and Numbers) and according to MacRumors, the iPad features a shared file directory that can be accessed on your computer. Thus, you can create a Keynote presentation on your computer, dump it into that shared file directory on your computer, and then the file will be accessible from the Keynote app on the iPad. If Apple opens up this central file directory to third party apps, and if Apple includes this feature on the iPhone as well as the iPad, we will see a flood of new apps, and upgrades to existing apps, to take advantage of this easy way to share files and data between apps.
Apple also announced yesterday that you can plug a connector to an iPad and hook it up to an external monitor. Currently, third party apps cannot display to an external monitor. If iPhone OS 3.2 includes this feature for iPhones as well as iPads, then you would be able to easily run a PowerPoint presentation via a projector from an iPod app.
What about an external keyboard? I find the iPhone virtual keyboard very easy to use, but there are times when I carry an iPhone instead of a laptop and I would appreciate having the ability to type more quickly on a “real” keyboard from time to time. The iPad works with a $69 external keyboard that connects via the dock connector, the exact same connector on an iPhone. The iPad can also work with the Apple Bluetooth keyboard, and the iPhone, like the iPad, has Bluetooth. With the iPhone soon gain the ability to work with external keyboards? That would be nice.
I’m also very interested in the increased speed in the iPad. Joshua
Topolsky of Engadget had a chance to try the iPad yesterday, and he reports:
“The speed of the CPU is something to be marveled at. It is blazingly
fast from what we can tell. Webpages loaded up super fast, and
scrolling was without a hiccup. Moving into and out of apps was a
breeze. Everything flew.” In the past, Apple had to rely on other companies to
make the chips for its computers, using companies like Intel to
make the processor for the Mac and ARM for the iPhone processor. But
in early 2008, Apple purchased a semiconductor design company in Santa
Clara, California called P.A. Semi. That company had expertise making
powerful yet power-efficient chips, and we are seeing the first fruits
of that purchase in the iPad, which uses a new chip that Apple calls
the Apple A4. Apple has always had the advantage on both the Mac and
the iPhone of designing both the hardware and the software, allowing
the company to fully integrate those equally important parts. Now that
Apple is making its own mobile chips, it can come up with the best chip for the
function that Apple wants for its mobile devices, without needing to
worry about the R&D focus of companies like Intel. It’s a given
that each new generation of the iPhone will be faster than its
predecessor, but when Apple announces the 2010 version of the iPhone
(presumably in June), I wouldn’t be surprised to see Apple use the Apple
A4 or something similar (the A3?). With a specially designed chip,
Apple might be able to do even more than would have otherwise been
possible to boost the speed and the power-efficiency (and thus the
battery life) of the next generation of the iPhone.
Apple also showed off the new iBooks Store for the iPad. You can already run the Amazon Kindle app on the iPhone, but I wonder if there will soon be an Apple iBooks app as well. Likewise, it will be interesting to see if slimmed down versions of the iWork apps are at some point available for the iPhone. (My guess is no because Apple would consider the iPhone screen too small for those types of apps, but who knows.)
Apple also showed some user interface tweeks to apps like the Calendar (which now has a week view) and Photos (which can now display a visual stack of photos). Some of these improvements are simply to take advantage of the additional space on the iPad, but perhaps we will see something similar on the iPhone in the future. Nothing more than eye candy? Perhaps, but sometimes it is nice to get a new fresh look.
The only thing that we know for sure is that Apple will improve the iPhone this year. Some improvements will be in software and will work on current iPhones. Some improvements will require new hardware. But because of the similarities between the new iPad and the iPhone, I strongly suspect that yesterday’s iPad presentation was also, in part, a preview of what lies ahead for the iPhone.
Yes, yes, I know, every other Apple-related website on earth (and perhaps beyond) is focused on the Apple announcement this morning. By the time you read this, the Apple event may already be over. But I typically update iPhone J.D. in the wee hours of the morning, so I can’t say much about Apple’s “latest creation” yet (although I will tomorrow). Instead, let’s look at another new iPhone app.
Last week I reviewed The White House app. If the Legislative Branch is of interest to you, you will definitely want to check out the free Real Time Congress app from The Sunlight Foundation, an organization dedicated to making government transparent and accountable. The app compiles a ton of timely information relating to everything going in Congress into one easy to use app.
The app has five main sections, four of which appear on the bottom of the screen at all times and you can customize which buttons appear there. The Floor button includes live updates from the House and Senate floor as they happen, so you can always have the latest information on what is announced, considered and voted on. For many congressional junkies, this button will probably be the most useful part of the app.
The Whip Notices button provides links to daily and weekly notices from the House Majority and Minority Whips. When I tested the app, only the Republican Whip Notices were working. Hopefully this will be fixed soon.
The Hearings button provides a schedule of upcoming committee hearings, with a button to select either House or Senate. The Documents button provides links to reports and memos as they are published online from the Congressional Budget Office, Congressional Research Service, Democratic and Republic Policy Committees, General Accounting Office, Office of Management and Budget, and several others.
Finally, the News button provides links to Congressional stories from a variety of top news services such as the The Hill, the Washington Post, and the New York Times.
If you practice governmental relations work, work for a government advocacy group or have an interest on what is going on at Capitol Hill, you will find this app very handy. And even if you just have a passing interest — perhaps you just know most of the words to the classic Schoolhouse Rock song “I’m Just a Bill” — the app is free, so it won’t cost you anything to check it out.
Like many other companies, Apple starts its fiscal year before the calendar year. What most of us consider the last few months of the year is, in the eyes of Apple, the beginning of a new year. Thus, Apple’s 2010 fiscal first quarter began on September 27, 2009 and ended on December 26, 2009. Apple’s first fiscal quarter always includes the holiday buying season, and in recent years, it has been a great quarter for Apple.
Yesterday, Apple announced its 2010 Fiscal First Quarter results, and once again Apple shattered its previous, already impressive records. To avoid confusion, I’m going to refer to this as the 2009 holiday
quarter in this post so that it is clear that I’m talking about what
Apple did at the end of calendar year 2009. If you want to hear the call yourself, you can download it from iTunes or you can read the transcript provided by Seeking Alpha. As has become a tradition here on iPhone J.D., here is my take on
the significant iPhone-related news from the conference call, which came from Apple’s Chief Financial Officer, Peter Oppenheimer, and Apple’s Chief Operating Officer, Tim Cook. If you want a broader view of the other Apple announcements including those that relate to the Mac and the iPod, take a look at Macworld’s good report.
Apple sold over 8.7 million iPhones last quarter, which is both a
new record and double the number sold during the holiday quarter in
2008. Of course, in 2008, Apple saw a huge spike in iPhone sales in
the late Summer when the iPhone 3G was released with almost 6.9 million
sold. Thus, holiday iPhone sales in 2008 were only about 4.4 million,
and the decrease seemed understandable coming off of such a hot quarter. But in 2009, Apple saw both a
spike in the late Summer when the iPhone 3GS came out (almost 7.4
million sold) and a spike in the following holiday quarter. No matter
how you look at it, iPhones were selling like hotcakes last quarter.
So much so that perhaps we should now start referring to hotcakes
selling like iPhones. Those 8.7 million iPhones sold brought in $5.4
in revenue, an average selling price of about $620. (That $620 is the
price for carriers like AT&T; carriers typically subsidize that
price when you lock in to a contract and thus the user pays much less
than $620 for an iPhone.)
As if 8.7 million isn’t impressive enough, Tim Cook said that Apple
“could have sold a lot more” iPhones in the 2009 holiday quarter but
“elected not to because we are managing inventories very tightly.” One
of the reasons that Apple is so profitable is that it does a very good
job managing inventory, trying to keep just the right amount of product
available for sale without having a glut in the market. So if you
tried to buy an iPhone last quarter but had to wait a few days for it
to come in stock, now you know why.
Corporate users — and I count most lawyers in this category — love
the iPhone. The iPhone continues to be ranked the number one
smartphone in JD Power’s customer satisfaction surveys. Perhaps more
significant for many lawyers, Oppenheimer said that Apple has
“continued to see a rapidly growing number of enterprise CIO’s who have
added iPhones to their approved device list.” Currently over 70% of
the Fortune 200 are supporting iPhones, which is double from when the
iPhone 3GS started shipping in the Summer of 2009. Internationally,
50% of the Financial Times 100 companies are supporting iPhones. Tim
Cook pointed out that “those are some pretty staggering numbers when
you think about the time period we have been in the business. It is
only 2.5 years.” Cook further pointed out that the growth in iPhone
corporate use is not accidental, noting that the corporate iPhone
market “is a key focus of ours” and that Apple has “done a tremendous
amount on the product side itself by implementing
tons of features in the latest OS for iPhone that several of our
enterprise customers had desired.” In my opinion, the sheer number of
Fortune 200 companies supporting iPhones is a clear rebuttal to those who suggest that iPhone security may be insufficient for serious business use. (By the way, the American Lawyer noted a few months ago that over half of the most profitable law firms in the U.S. support the iPhone, and I’m sure that law firm support has only increased since then.)
The iPod Touch, which I think of as the iPhone without the phone, also had amazing sales. iPods always sell well during the holiday quarter, and Oppenheimer said that Apple sold 55% more iPod touches then they did a year ago. Considering that the iPod touch is such a great music player, video player and game machine, it is no wonder that it is becoming an even more popular present. Indeed, the nice thing about the iPod touch is that you can give it as a gift and the recipient gets most of the utility of an iPhone without the monthly service contract.
Apple also announced that it had added 17 new iPhone carriers last quarter, including Canada Bell, meaning that Canadians now have a choice of carrier when they buy an iPhone. In the U.S., of course, the iPhone is still AT&T-only.
Speaking of which, Analyst Gene Munster asked Apple about continuing to stick with AT&T as the only carrier in the U.S., a reference to media reports about AT&T coverage problems in some areas. Tim Cook responded that in the “vast majority of locations” iPhone users have a “great experience” with AT&T, and further noted that it should be remembered that AT&T has “more mobile broadband usage than any other carrier in the world.” It seems that Cook was suggesting that AT&T may see more service strain than other carriers, such as Verizon, because AT&T has so many iPhone users and those iPhone users use so much more data on their phones than non-iPhone users. Finally Cook noted that Apple has taken a look at AT&T’s plans for addressing those cities that do have issues and that Apple has “very high confidence that they will make significant progress towards fixing them.”
There was some discussion of the iPhone being released in China.
The iPhone was long available in China in the gray market, but now it
can be purchased through official channels and Apple sold 200,000 of
them last quarter. Tim Cook said that while Apple is just getting
started in that market, he likes what he sees so far because China has
a significant middle and upper class, even though the average income is
lower in China than other countries like the U.S.
Tim Cook also pointed out that the iPhone is a “runaway hit” in Japan, with sales up 400% since the end of 2008.
that there were more than three billion downloads to date from the App
Store, and Oppenheimer repeated that number yesterday, noting that
iPhone and iPod touch users are downloading apps in 77 countries.
Oppenheimer specifically declined to give more information, such as the
number of free versus paid apps, for “competitive reasons.”
Some iPhone app developers have been very vocal in their complaints about the App Store review process. Analyst Charles Wolf asked about this, and Tim Cook responded that over 90% of new apps are actually approved within 14 days of submission, and for the 10% that take longer to approve it is usually because Apple finds bugs in the software and asks the developer to fix it to protect the customer.
Speaking of app developers, Oppenheimer noted that Apple recently bought a company called Quattro which sells ads on mobile devices. Oppenheimer said that mobile advertising is “just in its infancy,” but that Apple is planning to “offer a seamless way for our developers to make more money on their apps, especially those that are providing free apps.” Once Apple implements the technology it purchased from Quattro, expect to see even more free apps that contains ads. Hopefully, Apple will find a way to make ads in iPhone apps tasteful and unobtrusive.
And finally, while I my focus is on the iPhone angle of the conference call, everyone knows that the big Apple news this week will not be the iPhone, but the new product that Apple will announce tomorrow. Analyst Mike Abramsky asked Tim Cook to say something about that. Of course, nobody likes a surprise more than Apple, so Tim Cook declined, saying that he “wouldn’t want to take away your joy of surprise on Wednesday when you see our latest creation, so I’ll just delay that for Wednesday.”
The “joy of surprise.” I like that. I’m looking forward to tomorrow.
Most of the Apple-related news this week consisted of speculation about next week’s big announcement, but there were a few other stories, including one about an iPhone saving a person’s life. MSNBC and iPhone Savior tell the story of Dan Wooley, who was in Haiti earlier this month working for a mission organization and making a film about Haitian poverty. When the earthquake hit on January 12, he was in hotel and soon found himself trapped under tons of wreckage in the hotel lobby. Thanks in part to the American Heart Association’s Pocket First Aid & CPR iPhone app, he was able to stay alive until help arrived. The MSNBC article explains: “[T]hanks to the iPhone first-aid app he’d downloaded, he knew how to fashion a bandage and tourniquet for his leg and to stop the bleeding from his head wound. The app also warned him not to fall asleep if he felt he was going into shock, so he set his cell phone’s alarm clock to go off every 20 minutes.” 65 hours after the earthquake, a French rescue team arrived and Wooley was returned to safety. Wow. I feel like we all need to download some First Aid apps now. Click here for the American Heart Association’s Pocket First Aid & CPR ($3.99): . Also, I’ve previously reviewed the Merck Manual, and Art of the iPhone lists some other first aid app selections. Other, less dramatic, iPhone stories of the past week:
According to a report by Zusha Elinson of The Recorder on Law.com, Apple’s top corporate lawyer, Charles Charnas, left the company this month. Apple’s current General Counsel is Bruce Sewell, who I wrote about back in September of 2009. Charnas was hired by Sewell’s predecessor, Daniel Cooperman, back in April of 2008 and Charnas oversaw several acquisitions by Apple such as its purchase of streaming music site Lala in late 2009. Before Charnas, the top corporate law position at Apple had been vacant for several years, so we’ll see if and when Sewell hires a replacement.
California attorney Rachel Lamkin posts on her blog TheGeekTrifecta a video of an iPhone app called iTrust that you can use to find out if your spouse is snooping on your iPhone behind your back. Funny idea for an app, and I hope that you never, never, ever need to use it.
Some people (especially those who don’t own an iPhone) complain that the iPhone’s virtual keyboard is slow to type on. But in this test by Phil Gyford, the iPhone was only slightly slower than a full size keyboard and faster than other mobile devices. Interesting. (Link via Daring Fireball)
Quickoffice is, along with Dataviz’s Documents to Go, one of the two best document viewer and editors on the iPhone. The list price of Quickoffice is $19.99 but it has been “on sale” for $9.99 for as long as I can remember. It is currently even more on sale, only $7.99 for a limited time. I’ve discussed Quickoffice many times here, so if you click on the iPhone J.D. Index on the right you will see links to a lot of posts on the app. Click here for Quickoffice Mobile Office Suite ($7.99 for a limited time):
Thinking about getting a Bluetooth headset for your iPhone? Art of the iPhone has a list of their top 10. Their favorite is the Aliph Jawbone Prime, which I also really liked when I reviewed it a few months ago. Keep in mind, though, that Aliph recently came out with the new Jawbone ICON, and the initial reviews that I have seen have been excellent. For example, here is a glowing review from Jim Dalrymple.
If your office uses Lotus Notes, eWeek reports that IBM recently announced iPhone apps that work with Notes.
New York attorney Nicole Black lists some good iPhone apps for lawyers on her blog Sui Generis.
Ars Technica reports that, according to a report from market research firm Gartner, Apple was responsible for 99.4% of all mobile phone app sales in 2009. Gulp!
And finally, the often amusing fan of all-things-Apple iJustine released an iPhone-themed video that spoofs the song Tik Tok by Ke$ha. (And no, I had no idea who Ke$ha was before I saw the iJustine spoof.)
President Obama is well known to be a Blackberry user, but yesterday his administration released the official The White House app and you will only find it in the iTunes App Store. The app essentially takes the content from the (very nice) official white house website and formats it for the iPhone.
The app includes content from the somewhat informal White House Blog, official statements from the Newsroom such as transcripts of the President’s speeches and archived photos and videos.
My initial reaction to an iPhone app that repackages the content from a website is usually lukewarm. For any news or blog format website that has an RSS feed, I find it far more efficient to use a single news reader app to collect all of the RSS feeds in one place. (I currently use NetNewsWire, which works with Google Reader.) But the White House website has a ton of content and it is nice to have it all nicely organized in a single app, especially since the website is so packed that it doesn’t display as well on the iPhone as some other sites do. Plus, the video on the website requires Adobe Flash and thus does not play on the iPhone, whereas the video in the iPhone app plays quite well.
The iPhone app also includes an interesting Live button that will let you stream selected events as they happen. Right now there are two events scheduled, a town hall address tomorrow afternoon and the State of the Union speech on January 27, 2010.
Politicians are always looking for ways to reach out to their constituents, and this is clearly a good thing. We ought to have easy opportunities to keep in touch with our elected officials. Many iPhone owners will download this app just because it is free and we always love to try out the latest apps, but I hope that a lot of people keep this one on their iPhone and fire it up from time to time as another way to check the pulse of what is going on in Washington. Informed readers will also want to get their news from trusted journalists, but this is a nice supplement. Indeed, I’ve been very impressed with this administration’s use of technology to keep in touch with Americans, from the nice website to an active Twitter feed to the gorgeous and fascinating photographs displayed on the White House photostream on Flickr (which, by the way, I encourage you to check out immediately if you haven’t seen it before; I’m not sure if these were all taken by the official White House photographer Pete Souza, who also took pictures for President Reagan, but they are amazing pictures).
Future lawyers preparing for the California bar frequently spend thousands of dollars to take a preparation course such as BarBri. Now there is an iPhone alternative called BarMax CA. The BarMax app costs less than BarBri, but at $999.99, it is now the most expensive app in the App Store. MG Siegler writes an extensive and interesting article on the app in TechCrunch. It seems like a great idea for an app for any iPhone-using lawyer-to-be in The Golden State.
The app was the brainchild of Mike Ghaffary, a 2006 Harvard Law/MBA graduate who was just admitted to the California bar himself in December of 2009. Yesterday, the Above the Law website named Ghaffary its Lawyer of the Day for all of the publicity he has received for this app.
The app is quite large, a full gigabyte. Right now, the largest app on my iPhone is Dragon’s Lair, which weighs in at 215 MB thanks to all of the high quality video. Black’s Law Dictionary is also large at 152 MB. I believe that the game Myst is over 500 MB and some of the GPS navigation apps with built-in apps are even larger than BarMax. Suffice it to say that you won’t be downloading BarMax over a 3G connection.
The large size seems to be worth it, though. You get thousands of pages of materials, hundreds of hours of audio lectures, over a thousand flashcards, 1,371 MBE questions from previous exams categorized by subject, and California practice examples with sample answers. The app also includes exam taking tips and a calendar to plan your exam preparation. And apparently you can make use of the app outside of the app because the website says that you also get a “Welcome packet with all the materials in MS Word format and hard copy printout option.”
According to Gizmodo, “there are plans to roll out versions for New York and five other
popular states by the end of the year.” That site also notes that the developers are working on a $500
version that features only the multiple choice questions.
Not being a California lawyer and not wanting to relive the experience of studying for the bar exam, I decided not to ask for a review copy of this app. However, if you want to try before you buy, the description page on iTunes says that you can send an e-mail to info@getbarmax.com to get a free trial version. I would love to hear from anyone who uses this app to prepare for the bar.
On Friday, Verizon announced that it was reducing the cost of its unlimited calls plan, and AT&T quickly responded with similar discounts. Thus, you can now get an unlimited voice and data plan for the iPhone for $100, which is $30 cheaper than it was before Friday. If you have a Family Talk plan, you can have unlimited voice and data on two iPhones for $180 a month.
From what I am reading, you can go online to www.att.com/wireless and change your current plan to take advantage of the lower prices without any penalty or contract extension. If you have success doing so, I’d love to hear about it. I don’t use an unlimited plan myself; while the Phone feature of the iPhone is essential for me, my wife and I rarely use more than a few hundred minutes a month so we have the smallest Family Talk plan.
If you don’t need unlimited voice calls, the other monthly choices for iPhone users (including unlimited data) are 900 minutes for $90 or 450 minutes for $70. If you have a Family Talk plan with two iPhones, your choices are 2100 minutes for $170, 1400 minutes for $150, 700 minutes for $130, or 550 minutes for $120.
For all of these plans, you still need to pay extra for text messages, and that price remains
$20 a month for unlimited texts ($30 for two phones on a family plan). Cheaper text plans are 1500 texts for $15, 200 texts for $5, or pay-as-you-go texts for no monthly fee and a charge of $0.20 per Text/Instant Message and $0.30 per Picture/Video Message.
Apple just announced that on Wednesday, January 27, at 10am Pacific, it will unveil “our latest creation.” The picture at the top comes from the invitation sent to select journalists, as shown at Engadget. The rumors are that Apple will announce a new tablet computer, but I am just as interested in rumors that Apple will also preview version 4.0 of the iPhone operating system. We haven’t seen an iPhone update since September of 2009, which is a long stretch for Apple not to update the OS. Many have speculated that Apple has been waiting to release an update to the iPhone OS to version 4.0 until it was also ready to preview a new tablet computer because the iPhone and tablet operating system will share system code.
All of this is speculation for now, but my hope is that we will have some major iPhone news next week.
