Month: June 2010

If you tried to pre-order an iPhone 4 yesterday, I hope that you were successful.  Many were not, including me, as a result of a number of AT&T problems.

To put a positive spin on it, AT&T announced that it had its “busiest online sales day in AT&T history” and has already sold out of the iPhones that it expected to have available on June 24, 2010, the day that the iPhone is officially released.  To put a negative spin on it, what a fiasco yesterday!

As David Pogue of the New York Times reported, the first problem was that the AT&T web servers crashed.  “AT&T’s Web site has essentially melted down. You can’t order an
iPhone there.”   Engadget reported yesterday morning that “AT&T’s servers seem to be completely hosed here in America, and
since Apple’s own online order process has to ping those to check on
your contract status, neither option is… um, working.”  The situation got so bad that some AT&T stores had to resort to pen and paper to jot down customer information.

To make matters worse, it appears that some of the people who were able to use the website encountered a security flaw.  Gizmodo has reports of people who tried to sign in to their account to pre-order an iPhone 4, only to be shown someone else’s account information.

My own personal experience mirrored much of what I saw online.  I have split billing on my account, meaning that my law firm pays for my
data and I pay for the voice, so I knew that I would need to get an
iPhone 4 through AT&T and not someone else (like Apple) because my account is too complicated for Apple or other third parties to manage.  No problem, I would just use the AT&T website, and at first that seemed to work early Tuesday morning.  But then when I got to the order page, I was told would have to call a specific AT&T number to complete my order.  It took me 45 minutes to get through to someone at that number, only for the person to tell me that I actually had to call a different, Premier Support number.  Numerous phone calls and 45 minutes later, I was told by someone in Premier Support that they didn’t know how to help me and that I should just use the website, which at that point had melted down and wasn’t working for anyone.  Then, later in the day when the AT&T website finally started working again, I was again told that I needed to call Premier Support:

 

I then, once again, tried to call Premier Support, but I guess they stopped answering the phone at that point because every time I tried to navigate the automatic system, I was routed to a recording which cheerfully announced that AT&T could not help me today, goodbye.

According to a (very unscientific) poll on Gizmodo, thousands of other people also had problems with AT&T’s website that prevented them from pre-ordering a website.  But as noted above, some people clearly were able to get the system to work because AT&T sold out.  As has Apple, which according to Engadget is now listing July 2 as its earliest ship date for additional new iPhones.

So it looks like I will not be among the first to get an iPhone 4.  Hopefully, many of you reading this had better luck and will have your shiny new iPhone on or soon after June 24.  Just try not to rub it in for the rest of us who had a frustrating day yesterday.

I had hoped to give detailed, specific instructions on how to pre-order an iPhone 4 today so that you can have one as soon as they come out next week.  Unfortunately, as of the time that this post is going live (just after midnight Central time) this is still very uncertain.  Here is what I know:

• The two best, comprehensive posts with details on how to pre-order an iPhone 4 seem to be this post from Chris Ziegler at Engadget and this post from Jeff Gamet at The Mac Observer.  Both say that there are several options including the Apple, AT&T, Best Buy, Radio Shack and Walmart stores, plus the online Apple and AT&T stores.
• Gizmodo’s Kyle VanHemert also has a good post on how and where to get an iPhone 4.  First, Gizmodo suggests that you pay $5,000 to a guy in a bar….  (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)
• But just to make things confusing, Rene Ritchie at TiPb writes that you might not be able to pre-order at stores other than an Apple Store.  Hmm.
• And then there is the question of when today you can start to get an iPhone.  Michael Rose at TUAW tries to tackle this issue, but raises more questions than he answers.
• If you want a white iPhone 4, you might need to go to an Apple Store.  Kyle Matthews of modmyi.com asserts that you can get any color iPhone you want at the AT&T store, as long as it is black.  You’ll have to wait for white.
• What if you are not yet eligible to upgrade your iPhone at a subsidized price, but your spouse is?  According to Glenn Fleishman at TidBITS, you can upgrade your phone instead of your spouse’s phone.  Just make sure that you clear that with your beloved spouse first, or you might be using your new iPhone … while you sleep on the couch.

To everyone who plans to pre-order the iPhone 4 today:  GOOD LUCK!

There have been reports over the last few days of an AT&T security breach.  A group of hackers was able to obtain the e-mail addresses of over 100,000 iPad users from an AT&T server.  The hackers notified Ryan Tate of Gawker, who wrote about the incident a few days ago.  

If you want a comprehensive overview of the incident and the latest developments, Nick Bilton of the New York Times wrote a good article on it last night, including reports on an FBI investigation, correspondence that AT&T sent last night to its customers, and comments from the hackers seeking to justify their actions.

What a week!  It was great to learn about the iPhone 4, and now many of us are looking forward to next week when we can pre-order one and the following week when we can get one.  There wasn’t much iPhone-related news besides the iPhone 4 news I’ve been talking about all week, but here are the items I came across that might be of interest to you.

• When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone 4’s Retina display during the WWDC keynote this week, he explained it this way:  “It turns out that there’s a magic number right around 300 pixels per inch that when you hold something around 10 or 12 inches away from your eyes is the limit of the human retina to differentiate the pixels.  And so they’re close together when you get at this 300 pixels per inch threshold that all of a sudden things start to look like continuous curves.  Text looks like you’ve seen it in a fine printed book.  Unlike you’ve ever seen on an electronic display before.  And at 320 pixels per inch we are comfortably over that limit.  And it’s extraordinary.” Brian Chen, a former Macworld writer who now writes for Wired, wrote an article titled “iPhone 4 ‘Retina’ Display Claims Are False Marketing.”  That article cites an expert named Raymond Soneira who says:  “It is reasonably close to being a perfect display, but Steve pushed it a
  
  little too far.”  This prompted a rebuttal by Phil Plait, an astronomer who spent 10 years working on the Hubble Telescope.  Plait points out:  “As it happens, I know a thing or two about resolution as well, having
  
  spent a few years calibrating a camera on board Hubble. Having looked
  
  this over, I disagree with the Wired headline strongly, and disagree
  
  (mildly in one case and strongly in another) with Soneira. Here’s why.”  Read the rest of his rebuttal here.  In just a few weeks, we’ll be able to decide for ourselves when we get an iPhone 4.
• Dallas divorce attorney Michelle May O’Neil assisted with the development of a do-it-yourself-divorce app.  Victor Godinez of the Dallas Morning News has the story.  (via Brett Burney)
• Who founded Apple Computer?  Easy question, right?  Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, the “two guys in a garage.”  Except that there was also a third guy in the very beginning, Ron Wayne.  He’d be a billionaire today if he had held on to his original Apple stock, but instead he just gets articles like this one (by Bruce Newman of the Mercury News) written about him from time to time.  It’s an interesting story.
• David Pogue of the New York Times writes about the costs of upgrading to an iPhone 4.  (By the way; I’d bet anything that Pogue already has an iPhone 4 in his hands right now and is working on a comprehensive review to be published in two weeks.  Apple frequently gives Pogue advance review units of its hardware.)
• Mikael Ricknäs of Macworld writes about a Mastercard app that lets you send or receive money.
• With the right software, an iPad could be a great tool for reading and editing PDF files.  Brian Malcom of the Young Lawyers Blog reviews iAnnotate PDF, an app that allows you to do just that.
• Michael Shear of The Washington Post has a great article on the growing interest in the iPad among senior staffers at the White House.
• Chad Garrett of TiPb has a good review of Documents to Go for iPad.
• Quickoffice is now available for the iPad.  I love the app on the iPhone, and I’m glad to see another good option available for the iPad.
• And finally, a few weeks ago, someone reportedly sent Steve Jobs an e-mail about Apple banning pornographic apps from the iPhone, prompting Jobs to reply that “folks who want porn can buy an Android phone.”  This in turn prompted the creating of the following spoof of this week’s Steve Jobs WWDC keynote address, a parody of a song from Avenue Q, one of my favorite Broadway shows in recent years.  BE WARNED — THIS IS LIKELY NOT SAFE FOR WORK so if you start blaring the audio from this YouTube clip through your office speakers and the managing partner of your law firm happens to walk by your open door, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

We now know the details (or at least, many of the details) about the next version of the iPhone, the iPhone 4.  Some of the folks who got a chance to play with one on Monday have now written detailed posts on the experience that are worth reading if you want to know all of the details about the next model.  I previously mentioned this great piece by Joshua Topolsky on Engadget.  The staff of Macworld wrote a great article titled iPhone 4:  What you need to know.  MG Siegler of TechCrunch wrote a great article titled An iPhone Lover’s (Initial) Thoughts On iPhone 4.  And Kent German of CNET wrote a detailed iPhone 4 First Take.  Some of the features that I am still waiting to learn more about are the hardware and software enterprise improvements in iPhone 4 such as better security, improvements working with Microsoft Exchange, etc.

So now you are convinced and you want to get an iPhone 4.  Where do you get one?  Back in February of 2009, I wrote about the five places to buy an iPhone, and since that time (in fact, since December of 2008) that list has essentially not changed:  an Apple store, an AT&T store, Best Buy, Wal-Mart or Sam’s Club.  At least, not until now.

Late Tuesday night, RadioShack posted on its official Twitter account that it would have the new iPhone.  And then last night, RadioShack tweeted that you can preorder on June 15:  “JUST IN: #iPhone4 pre-orders start
next Tuesday @RadioShack…
and that’s only the beginning. RT!” 

There were signs in the past that this was coming.  Last November, for example, RadioShack announced that it was selling iPhones at a limited number of company-owned stores in Dallas and New York.  But now it looks like RadioShack will have the iPhone across the country.  And this is big news for RadioShack.  Jon Mooallem wrote a great article for Wired magazine earlier this year about RadioShack’s plans to change the focus of the stores to sell more cell phones:

The plan? The new bosses want to turn RadioShack into a hipper, more
mainstream place for “mobility” — which is what they insist on calling
the cell phone market. (In an interview, RadioShack’s marketing chief
used the word mobility an average of once every 105 seconds.)
Selling phones is central to the new RadioShack. And so far, it seems to
be working. Per-store sales are up, and corporate profits jumped 26
percent in the fourth quarter of 2009.

If RadioShack wants to be serious about being in the “mobility” space, it seems obvious that it needs to carry the iPhone, one of the most popular smartphones and arguably the best.

Thus, if you are trying to decide where to buy an iPhone, keep in mind that you now have six options.  The prices are virtually the same everywhere, so where you shop is largely a matter of convenience.  Note, however, that if your iPhone is part of an AT&T corporate account, in the past this has meant that you have had to go to an AT&T store to upgrade.  If this is you, just in case this hasn’t changed, I encourage you to shop at your local AT&T store.

  

    

 

Anthony Shorter is an attorney in Houston Texas who was in private practice for a dozen years and then joined the Texas Attorney General’s office in 1998, where he still works today in the child support division.  Computer programming is a hobby of his, and when deciding what to do for his first iPhone app he thought that attorneys might find it useful to have app listing objections that can be used at trial.  The result is his $2.99 app Courtroom Objections.  He gave me a free copy to review for this post.

The app is straightforward, so you can use it quickly when you are in court.  The app has two parts, accessed by buttons at the bottom of the screen.  The left button allows you to view a list of objections to admissibility.  The right button allows you to view a list of objections to form.

Tap an objection to see a sample of what you could say to make the objection, along with an explanation of the law that supports the objection.

I wish that the app would also tell you the rule number supporting the objection.  I realize that this can vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but it would be helpful to at least include the Federal Rule of Evidence number since so many states follow them.  Shorter tells me that he will likely include the numbers in an update.  I also think that the type is way too small on the page listing hearsay exceptions, and indeed I could see this app adding a third button at the bottom just to address all of the hearsay rules and exceptions.

When I was in law school, half of my credit hours my third year were devoted to participating in a criminal justice clinic program in which I tried cases (prosecution one semester, defense the other).  In the program, I was given a pocket-size book with content similar to this app.  Years later, I still sometimes refer to that book when thinking about the best way to phrase an objection.  Thus, I can see the value in having something like this on an iPhone because it is always with you, especially if this app is updated to add rule numbers and other useful content.  If you try cases, especially if you are still learning all of the objections, this app is worth a look.

Click here for Courtroom Courtroom Objections ($2.99): 

Yesterday, Steve Jobs introduced the 2010 version of the iPhone, which Apple is calling the iPhone 4.  It has a number of new features, many of which will appeal to lawyers.  The new model is available starting Thursday, June 24 and can be pre-ordered starting Tuesday, June 15.  The pricing is the same as what the iPhone 3GS has cost for the last year:  $199 for the 16GB version and $299 for the 32GB version (assuming that you are eligible for an upgrade from AT&T).  (You can also get last year’s model, an 8GB iPhone 3GS, for only $99.  Don’t do so; you’ll regret it later.)

Other sites have done a great job running down all of the new features, so you may first want to read the reports at sites like Macworld or Engadget, or you can now watch the entire Steve Jobs Keynote Address on Apple’s website  [UPDATE:  Late on June 8, Joshua Topolsky of Engadget published this excellent overview of the iPhone 4.]  My focus here is on what I expect lawyers to love the most.

Retina Display

Previous iPhones had an impressive 480 x 320 screen.  Doubling both dimensions to provide four times the pixels, the iPhone 4 has a 960 x 640 screen.  That’s a lot of pixels, but what will make the iPhone 4 really compelling for lawyers and others who read lots of e-mails or documents on the iPhone is that because the screen dimensions are not changing, that means that Apple is packing in 326 pixels per inch.  That is astounding.  There are a lot of printers that print at 300 dpi (dots per inch) and Steve Jobs said that at around 300 pixels per inch, held a reasonable distance from your face, the human eye cannot differentiate between the pixels.  Thus, text looks like it is in a printed book.  That is how they came up with the name “Retina display.”  MobileCrunch has a screen shot that can help you to get an idea of what the new display looks like.

The reviews of this new Retina display have been uniformly glowing.  Joshua Topolsky of Engadget — who is no Apple fanboy and therefore
provides balanced, if sometimes a little negative, review of Apple
products — said:  “The screen is truly outrageous — you basically cannot see pixels on it.
We’re not being hyperbolic when we say it’s easily the best looking
mobile phone screen we’ve ever laid eyes on.”  Harry McCracken of Technologizer said:  “In the demo area I visited after the keynote, it was a knockout — the text
was some of the crispest I’ve ever seen on any device that wasn’t made
out of ink and paper.”  Jeremy Horwitz of iLounge (an attorney who used to practice IP law) says:  “The improved screen resolution and colors are stunningly beautiful and
need to be physically seen to be fully appreciated; while impressive,
even the comparisons shown during the Keynote didn’t fully do justice to
how much crisper and richer the iPhone 4 screen is over the prior
models.”

John Gruber mentions another advantage of the new display:  the LCD and the glass touchscreen no longer have a tiny gap between them and are fused together.  Gruber explains:  “The effect is that the pixels appear to be painted on the
surface of the phone; instead of looking at pixels under glass,
it like looking at pixels on glass. Combined with the
incredibly high pixel density, the overall effect is like ‘live print’.”

Electronista adds that the new display “should be more scratch-resistant and as much as 20 times stiffer,
and 30 times harder, than plastic.”

I cannot wait to use this new screen during my daily iPhone reading.

More battery life

I usually carry an external battery with me when I will be using my iPhone away from a dock for a long period of time, but every iPhone owner has had some experience in which their iPhone starts to run out of battery power near the end of the day.  With the iPhone 4, this should happen less often. 

Apple said that last year’s model, the iPhone 3GS, had battery life of up to five hours of talk
time on 3G, five hours of Internet use
(nine on Wi-Fi) and 30 hours of audio playback.  With thew new iPhone 4, Apple claims to boost these numbers to seven hours of talk time on 3G, six hours of Internet use (10 on Wi-Fi) and 40 hours of audio playback.  (Video playback of 10 hours remains the same, as does the 300 hours of standby time.)  Your actual usage may vary, of course, but it appears that we should get an extra hour or so (maybe more) with the iPhone 4, which can make a big difference.

Thinner and feels great

The iPhone 4 weighs about the same as the prior iPhones, but is thinner:  .37 inches versus .48 inches.  Apple does the math and says that this means that the new iPhone is 24% thinner than the iPhone.  How does this feel qualitatively?  Topolsky of Engadget simply said:  “it’s shockingly thin.”  This should make the new iPhone feel better in your hand and in your pocket.

The iPhone 4 has a more squared-off look.  Devin Colewey of MobileCrunch reports that “the new flat back and squared-off edges will either delight or bother
you. I’m guessing delight.” 

Also, I like the feel of the glass on the front of my iPhone 3GS, and I look forward to having glass on the back of the device as well.

Faster?

One thing that is unclear to me is how much the iPhone 4 is faster that previous models.  The iPhone uses the new Apple A4 Processor, the same processor used in the iPad and most report that the iPad feels faster than an iPhone.  However, instead of advertising that this brings the iPhone more speed, Apple instead emphasizes that the new chip can do more, saying on its website:  “Apple engineers designed the A4 chip to be a remarkably powerful yet
remarkably power-efficient mobile processor. With it, iPhone 4 can
easily perform complex jobs such as multitasking, editing video, and
placing FaceTime calls. All while maximizing battery life.”  And as noted above, the iPhone 4 gets better battery life.  So maybe Apple decided not to emphasize speed for speed’s sake and instead decided to do more at the same speed with longer battery life.  Having said that, Jacqui Cheng of Ars Technica got to play with the unit after the keynote yesterday and wrote:  “As for speed, the iPhone 4 is fast. It’s hard to perceive the
differences between an iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS, but it’s definitely on
the speedy side, on par with the iPad. We’ll do more speed testing when
we get our hands on one for review, but for now, we’re optimistic.
Typing was very fast for me, whereas typing on the original iPhone
usually results in me getting several words ahead of the phone itself.”  Similarly, Topolsky of Engadget said:  “The general speed of the whole OS is way snappier. The camera app in
particular is noticeably faster — shots get snapped in an instant.”

On the other hand, Harry McCracken said:  “For what it’s worth, in the few minutes I played with an iPhone 4 after
the keynote, it felt speedy. But it didn’t feel any speedier than the
3GS, whose performance advantage over the 3G was instantly obvious.”

I suspect that on some tasks the iPhone 4 will be faster, and on others it won’t.  Nevertheless, there is certainly no downside to having a sophisticated Apple A4 Processor in this device.

Better 3G?

This one is just a guess on my part.  Apple says that the stainless steel band around the iPhone 4 functions as an antenna.  What Apple hasn’t yet said is whether this is an improved antenna for 3G.  Presumably, though, Apple wouldn’t have added the hardware if it didn’t think it was an improvement.  Similarly, will the glass back on the iPhone 4 improve 3G reception?  We’ll see.

Apple does brag that the new iPhone 4 includes quad-band HSPDPA/HSUPA networking with a maximum of 7.2Mbps
down and 5.8 Mbps up.  Jobs admitted yesterday that these increased speeds are just theoretical because AT&T doesn’t support them yet, but as I’ve discussed before, AT&T announced plans to improve its 3G later this year, so the iPhone 4 will be ready when AT&T is.

iOS 4

I’ve already talked about why lawyers will love iPhone Software 4, which Apple is now calling iOS 4.  For current iPhones, iOS 4 will be available on June 21, but I’m sure that the new operating system will work best on the newest device.

More fun

It seemed that Steve Jobs was most excited about the ability to video chat between iPhone 4 devices, a technology called FaceTime.  FaceTime is an open standard, so other developers could add this technology to computers, other phones, etc.  I rarely use video chat in the office, but I do use it a lot at home to talk to relatives across the country.  It would be neat to be able to video chat with and see my kids when I am traveling just using my phone.  For some people, this will be the #1 reason to get an iPhone 4.  For me, I suspect that it will just make it more fun.

I also look forward to the improved camera.  iPhone 4 takes five megapixel pictures (up from three on the iPhone 3GS) and takes HD 720p video at 30 fps.  It also has an LED flash, a slightly wider angle, and an improved ability to take pictures in low light.  Developers who make document scanning software for the iPhone must be thrilled, and I’ll admit that I have used my iPhone to snap a picture of a document on more than one occasion.  But this will largely be a fun feature for me; I’m most likely to love this better camera when I am taking pictures or video of my kids at the park, zoo, etc.

In addition to the accelerometer, the iPhone 4 adds a gyroscope.  This should allow even more sophisticated virtual features in apps, letting the apps know where you are in time and space.  I expect both improved games and improved mapping / augmented reality software.

In sum

If you are a lawyer, it doesn’t matter whether you currently have a 3GS or a 3G or if you are new to the iPhone — I suspect that you will really like the iPhone 4.  I plan to get one as soon as I can, and of course I will post my thoughts here once I do so.  Nevertheless, don’t wait up for me; it seems obvious that this is a fantastic new iPhone.  If you own an iPhone now and are not currently eligible for a subsidized upgrade, the decision becomes harder because it appears that AT&T will charge you $599 or $699 for the new iPhone (depending upon model), but for everyone else, this looks like a worthwhile new iPhone that you are going to want to buy.

Today is the start of WWDC, Apple's developer conference.  At Noon
Central today — that is 7am Hawaii, 10am Pacific, 1pm Eastern, 6pm
London, 7pm Paris, 9pm Moscow and 2am (June 8) Tokyo — Apple's Steve Jobs will give the keynote address.  There is no question that the iPhone will be a major focus of the keynote, as evidenced by all of Apple's WWDC banners.

Thus, in just a few hours, the world of the iPhone will change substantially.  Apple does not provide a live video broadcast of the keynote address, but I
expect Apple to post a recording via streaming video tonight or
tomorrow.  Nevertheless, there are lots of websites that you can follow
to get live coverage of Apple's announcements as they happen.  Here are my picks of the ones likely to be the best, and most of these links will bring you directly to the page
with live coverage:

• TWiT Live — streaming video (or audio) coverage by live commentators.  If you want to listen to or watch something, this is your best bet.
• Engadget — one of the best sites for live blogging
• GDGT — one of the best sites for live blogging
• Macworld — one of the best sites for Apple analysis, plus very good live blogging of Apple events
• The Mac Observer
• MacRumors — formats well for the iPhone screen, if that is what you are using to follow along
• Technologizer
• New York Times: Bits
• iLounge
• Ars
  Technica
• TUAW
• CNET

Enjoy the keynote address!

Photo Credit: Adam Jackson / Flickr 

Apple announced this week that it sold 2 million iPads in just under 60 days.  As John Gruber notes, it took Apple two years to sell 2 million iPods and four months to sell 2 million iPhones.  Apple is getting an amazing response to this product.  Other iPhone news of note from the past week:

• Mark your calendar and set your alarms:  on Monday, June 7, at 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern, Steve Jobs will give the keynote address at WWDC.  I fully expect that we will see the new iPhone debuted at that time, plus I suspect that we will learn the date that iPhone Software 4.0 will be available and the date that the new iPhone will be available.  And of course there is always the possibility of other surprise announcements.  The world of iPhone will change substantially on Monday.
• Matt Hamblen of Computerworld reports that according to a survey by ChangeWave Research, iPhone users are the most satisfied smartphone users.  77% of iPhone customers polled said they were very
  
  satisfied with their purchase, with Motorola customers coming in second at 64%.
• The “lost” iPhone saga continues.  As Greg Sandoval of CNET reports, the latest news is that the court in San Mateo, CA has appointed a Special Master to examine the contents of the computer equipment seized from the home of Gizmodo editor Jason Chen and determine what evidence (if any) relates to Gizmodo’s purchase of the allegedly stolen property.  The Special Master will report his results to the court under seal, and then Chen’s attorney will have a chance to make objections before the District Attorney will be allowed to see the evidence.  When Steve Jobs spoke at D8 earlier this week, Jobs made it clear that Apple considered itself the victim of a theft (when the iPhone was first acquired and then when Gizmodo acquired it) and extortion (when Gizmodo demanded something in writing from Apple that it could publish on its blog before returning the iPhone).
• iPhone security has been in the news because apparently, even if you have a passcode on it, if a bad guy gets your phone there is a way that he can connect it to a computer running a new version of Linux and access data on the phone.  I’m sure that Apple is working on this and hopefully will have a fix soon.  In the meantime, Daniel Eran Dilger has an interesting article putting this security flaw in context, pointing out that there are equally important security flaws with other products.
• If you are looking to get a GPS driving directions app for your iPhone, Navigon (which has gotten good reviews) is having a half-price sale.  Navigon divides the country into three regions, and while the app for each region is normally $30, for the next few days it is $15.  And you can add additional regions for $10 instead of the normal $15.  Click here for Navigon West, Central or East for $14.99.
• Darren Murph of Engadget reports that you may soon be able to use your iPhone to unlock the door of your hotel room.
• If you don’t have an iPad yet, should you get one?  Alan Cohen of The American Lawyer tacked that question in his excellent article “iPad:  Toy or Tool for Lawyers?”  He does a good job weighing the strengths and weaknesses.
• One thing making the iPad more attractive for lawyers is the introduction of apps that lawyers would find useful.  At the top of that list is a good document reader and editor.  Dataviz Documents to Go is now on the iPad as an update to the existing iPhone app.  (In other words, it is now a “universal app” that works well on both the iPhone and the iPad.)  Also, Quickoffice tells me that their app is coming in a few weeks.
• And when you are not working on your iPad, it is nice to relax with one and read a magazine, and now we are starting to see great magazine apps.  Newsweek is now available on the iPad and, unlike the Time app, you can download new Newsweek issues within the app (so you don’t have to clutter your iPad with a different app for each issue).  Wired magazine on the iPad has gotten rave reviews, and Adobe is making the software that was used to create the Wired app available for other magazine developers.  So I think that we will see a lot of improvement in this front over the coming months.
• Derrick Story of Macworld reviews the iPad Camera Connection Kit.
• And finally, for those of you who love your iPhone so much that you want to sleep with it, the iCushion may be the solution for you.  For only 19,800 South Korean won (about $16.50), the iCushion can be yours.  (via iPhone Savior)

AT&T announced new data rates yesterday.  These rates apply to all of their smartphones, including the iPhone.  Unfortunately, many of the headlines focused on the negative side of the new rates.  One New York Times headline was:  "AT&T Eliminated the Unlimited Data Plan."  MobileCrunch ran the sarcastic headline "Be thankful that AT&T is looking out for our best interests" and says "Like a wise king, AT&T has decided for us, its loyal subjects, that
all we need really in life, in the totality of existence, is 2GB
of data per month—or, for some of us, only 200MB of data! Either one!
You see, AT&T simply knows more than any of us could ever hope to
know. Thank you, AT&T, for being a shining beacon of hope in our
otherwise bleak, bleak world."  AppAdvice opts for the direct approach instead of sarcasm:  "AT&T Makes Their Plans Even Crappier."  I realize that almost any new plan will be better for some and worse for others, but to me it seems that those headlines are wrong and that AT&T's new plan will end up being cheaper for most, and fairer for all.  [UPDATE:  To be fair to the New York Times, David Pogue's article posted Thursday afternoon is very consistent with my view.]

The Plans.  Here are the new monthly plans:

• $15 for 200MB.  This is the "DataPlus" plan and AT&T says that 65% of its users use less than 200MB a month.  For example, looking at the data usage on the AT&T website, I see that my wife falls into this category.
• $25 for 2GB.  This is the "DataPro" plan and AT&T says that 98% of its users use less than 2GB a month.  I fit into this category; I rarely go above 500MB a month, and indeed I haven't gone much over 5GB total 3G data in the 11 months I've owned my iPhone 3GS, so 2GB in a single month seems extravagant.

When you get close to the monthly limit, AT&T says that it will send you a text message warning.  The AT&T Facebook page says:  "We want to help you know how much data you’re using to avoid any
surprises. So to keep you up to date we will send text notifications –
after you reach 65 percent, 90 percent and 100 percent of the threshold.
We’ll also send you email alerts if we have your email address."  If you are on the $15 plan and you go over 200 MB, AT&T will charge you another $15 for another 200MB.  If your billing cycle isn't over, you can instead upgrade your account to the $25 for 2GB plan, although it is unclear to me whether you can then change back to the $15 plan in the future.  On the $25 plan, if you go over 2 GB, you get charged $10 for another 1GB of data.

For most people, the new AT&T rates will reduce your AT&T
bill.  For example, Ted Landau wrote
on The Mac Observer that he uses just over 200MB a month and his wife
uses under 200MB a month.  That means he will get the $25 plan, his wife will get the
$15 plan, and the total is $40 — less than the $60 they pay now for two
unlimited $30 plans.  Ted's situation mirrors my own (except that my law
firm pays for my data) and I suspect mirrors many others.  Although AT&T points out that 65% of its users use less than 200MB a month, John Gruber points out that this is all AT&T users, not iPhone AT&T users.  Nevertheless, there are clearly many iPhone users who use less data and can now pay only $15 a month.

If you
are a current iPhone user and you want to keep paying $30 a month to get
unlimited data, AT&T says that you can do so — even if you decide
to buy a new iPhone, according
to TUAW.  I know that AT&T's statistics say that there are 2%
of users going over 2GB a month, but it seems to me that this is
difficult to do.  I suppose if you never have Wi-Fi access and you
always rely on 3G, and you download a bunch of video, then you might
have that much data use.  I'd be interested to hear from any of you who
use more than 2GB a month to find out how you are doing it.

Tethering.  Another advantage of the $25 plan is that users of that plan have the option to pay $20 for a month of tethering, allowing you to turn your iPhone into a Wi-Fi hotspot, sharing your 3G data connection with other devices.  According to TUAW, AT&T says that the $20 tethering is not a plan, just a feature that you can add when you want it and then drop it in a future month.  Some are complaining that tethering should be free as it is in many other countries, especially since AT&T doesn't raise the 2GB cap at all when you pay the extra $20 for tethering. 

The ability to tether presents an interesting situation for iPhone owners who are thinking about buying an iPad.  If you already own an iPhone, should you buy an iPad 3G or a Wi-Fi iPad?  I'm not so sure.  The 3G model of the iPad will cost you an extra $130 up front, plus you will have to pay for data every month (the same $15 or $25 plans noted above).  If you are like me and you know that you are going to get the $25 plan for your iPhone anyway but you don't plan to use all of that 2GB a month on your iPhone, it may make the most sense to just spend the extra $20 a month to enable tethering and share your iPhone data with a Wi-Fi iPad.  How the math works out depends upon how much data you plan to use with your iPhone and your iPad.  Macworld created a helpful chart in one of its articles, showing for example that if you don't plan to use much data on either device, it makes sense to get a $15 plan on your iPhone and a $15 plan on an iPad 3G, but if you plan to use over 200MB a month on each device, you can tether for $45 ($25 + $20) versus the $50 that you would spend on two DataPro plans.  Thus, you save $5 every month, and you don't have to spend the extra $130 at the outset for the 3G version of the iPad.  But of course there are downsides too; the iPhone and the iPad need to be in the same room for the 3G data to work on the iPad, so if your spouse borrows the iPad and leaves the house, there won't be any data until he or she finds a Wi-Fi hotspot.  Also, if you are a heavy 3G data user, by paying $50 both your iPhone and your iPad can use up to 2GB on each.  If you plan to tether your iPhone to a laptop, I can see you using close to 2GB a month.  On the other hand, if the only thing that you are going to tether is the iPad, it would be hard to use over 2GB on both devices unless you are streaming a lot of video (such as watching Netflix movies) and I would think that you would always want to stream video over a high bandwidth Wi-Fi connection, not 3G.  So as you can see, there are a lot of variables here, and the right answer will vary from user to user.

I know that some iPad owners have a Wi-Fi iPad coupled with a MiFi from Verizon and are paying $60 a month for 5GB of data.  If you don't really need that much data, $20 a month to share your 2GB of iPhone data with your iPad seems like a relative bargain.  Indeed, even if you do need to use up to 5GB of data and pay the $10 per GB AT&T overage charge, you are still only paying $50 to add 5GB tethering to your iPhone versus $60 for the monthly MiFi fee — which you must pay every month, even the months that you don't need more than 2GB.  Duncan Davidson noted on his blog (link via Daring Fireball) that if he had been tethering an iPhone instead of using a Sprint EVDO card for the last six months, he would have saved $260 over the last six months. (By the way, Thomas Fitzgerald wrote an article in yesterday's New York Times comparing the MiFi and similar devices.)

UPDATE:  As Josh Barrett and I have been discussing today in the comments to this post, and as noted most recently in this Engadget post Thursday night, there is a question whether the iPhone can be tethered to the iPad.  Apparently, Apple requires iPhone tethering to be over USB or Bluetooth, the iPad doesn't have USB, and the iPad would need a software update for it to be able to tether via Bluetooth.  Of course, all this means is that the iPad needs a simple software update.  We'll have to wait and see how this all plays out once iPhone Software 4.0 is out.  It would be a shame if Apple blocks iPhone-iPad tethering when there is no technical barrier.

AT&T's Interests.  Of course, I'm sure that AT&T isn't changing its plans just to lower rates and be generous to customers.  These new plans allow AT&T to charge much more to those 2% of all users who are using a ton of 3G data every month.  If this is you, prepare to pay more.  But it seems fair to me for them to pay more and the rest of us to pay less.

Moreover, I'm sure that AT&T knows that over time, people will be streaming more and more data on their iPhones.  AT&T is setting the stage now for charging more in the future to the users who take advantage of future data-rich uses of the iPhone.  For example, the rumor is that the next iPhone will have a front-facing camera to allow video chats, and I can envision many teenagers having long video chats and using a whole bunch of data.  If your children fall in this category, protect your pocketbook by making sure that they use Wi-Fi, not 3G, to do so.  And I'm sure that people will stream more background music once iPhone Software 4.0 allows apps to run in the background.

Overall, though, I like the new AT&T rates.  A lot of people will save money, and everyone pays closer to their fair share.  Of course I also wish the tethering fee was lower (or nonexistent), but I suspect that many will consider it worth it.