Month: July 2010

No iPhone J.D. this week.  See you in August!

Most of the iPhone news of note this week concerns updates to iPhone apps that may be of interest to attorneys:

• Dragon Dictation is one of my favorite apps for the iPhone.  (My review is here.)  You can often dictate a quick e-mail or text much faster than you can type one.  The app was just upgraded to version 2.0 and adds several new features such as (1) the ability to paste text directly into an SMS client (the old version just put it on the clipboard so you had to manually paste into a text message), (2) the ability to paste the text directly into Facebook or Twitter, (3) multilingual support and (4) iOS 4 compatibility so, for example, dictated text in a scratchpad isn’t lost if you accept an incoming phone call.  Click here for Dragon Dictation (free): 

  

• Courtroom Objections (which I reviewed last month) was updated to add references to rule numbers in the Federal Rules of Evidence and the Texas Rules of Evidence, making this app much more useful (especially for Texas attorneys).  The update also adds iOS 4 compatibility.  Click here for Courtroom Objections ($2.99): 

  

• Trying to come up with a good quote to spice up a speech?  Joel Mathis of Macworld reviews Who Said, an app that offers quotes by subject.
• If you want to use your iPhone as a remote control for your TV, Christopher Breen of Macworld reviews two options.
• Fred Vogelstein of Wired wrote an extensive article on the relationship between Apple and AT&T.
• Earlier this year, I reviewed Note Taker, an app from Dan Bricklin (who created the legendary VisiCalc app in 1979).  It is a neat app, although the iPhone screen is a little small to do much handwriting on it.  But the iPad is much larger, so Bricklin developed Note Taker HD.  Fritz Nelson of InformationWeek reviews the iPad version.  Click here for Note Taker ($1.99): 

  

  .  Click here for Note Taker HD ($4.99): 

  

• It is hard for me to believe that there is a popular video game based on being an attorney, but Phoenix Wright is a popular game on the Nintendo DS that was ported to the iPhone earlier this year.  I haven’t tried it myself, but if you want to, it is currently on sale for $2.99 instead of the normal $4.99.  Click here for Phoenix Wright ($2.99 on sale): 

  

• And finally, the UK rock band Squeeze (who had so many great songs in the 1970s) appeared on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and played a version of Pulling Mussels from a Shell that featured a solo on the iPad.  Yes, the iPad.  Look at the video at the 2:25 point:

One of the most powerful things that an attorney can do with an iPhone is use it as a mobile law office, allowing the attorney to get work done no matter where the attorney is located.  Clark Stewart, a solo practitioner in Gadsden, Alabama who specializes in criminal defense and family law, demonstrates this in the following story that he sent me about how his iPhone helped him to get a client out of jail:

Back in May, my wife and I were enjoying a quiet night of sleep before driving the 6 hours with a toddler to Panama City for a much needed vacation. I got up to get a glass of water around 4am and checked my iPhone for new mail out of habit. I had several missed calls and voicemails. Upon playing my messages I learned that one of my clients was in jail on a bench warrant. The problem was that the judge in her case had recalled said warrant the afternoon before!

I called the booking officer on duty at the jail who was less than sympathetic to my client’s plight since he didn’t have a copy of the order quashing the writ. However, I did.

Earlier that day his Honor had e-filed said order. Since any new filings in all cases assigned to me come directly to my iPhone via email I now had proof for the jailer. But how to get it to him? He was unable to access his email from the booking computers due to policies and security firewalls. He could receive a fax though.

Being a sole practitioner at 29 years old, I don’t have the capital for a fax machine and all the extra expenses they entail, but I do have the fax to email services of MyFax for $10 a month. I simply forwarded the judge’s order to the jail’s fax machine while I was talking to the officer, all from my iPhone.

30 minutes later my client was back on the street, and I could go back to sleep rather than facing the moral dilemma of sleep versus a cross town drive to my office to print out the order had I not had an iPhone.

In short, MyFax and my iPhone saved the day — at least, as far as my client was concerned. The next day drive to the beach with Elmo playing over and over on my kid’s DVD player is another story!

What a great story.  Because my practice is mostly class actions, complex litigation and appeals, I know that my natural tendency on iPhone J.D. is to talk about the use of iPhones in civil litigation.  I’d love to hear from more criminal defense lawyers and prosecutors who have made good use of the iPhone in their practice.

I started posting an iPhone-related recap of Apple’s quarterly fiscal earning conference calls back in early 2009.  Back then, the calls were about all sorts of topics, and I thought it useful to tease out the iPhone-related angles from the call.  But over time, the calls have become more and more iPhone-centric as the iPhone, and now the iOS, have become so much more important for Apple.  We reached a turning point yesterday because it appears that around half of Apple’s quarterly revenue came from iOS products.  Wow!

If you want to hear the full call yourself, you can download
it from iTunes or you can read
the transcript provided by Seeking Alpha.  You can also read Apple’s press release here.  Here are the iPhone-related highlights for the quarter that struck me as interesting:

• Apple’s total revenue for the quarter was $15.7 billion.  The
  
  company recognized $5.33 billion in revenue from iPhone sales (and
  
  related sales like iPhone accessories and carrier payments).  The
  
  company recognized iPad and iPad-related revenue of $1.27 billion.  Together that is $6.6 billion, which was 42% of Apple’s revenue.  Apple also had $1.5 billion in iPod revenues, which was
  
  9.6% of Apples revenue.  Apple didn’t reveal what part of that 9.6% was
  
  iPod touch units (running the iOS) versus other iPod models except to
  
  note that there continues to be a shift towards iPod touch sales and
  
  away from other models.  If those iPod touch sales were 8%, then Apple is
  
  now getting 50% of its revenue from iOS devices.  It may be that the
  
  iPod touch sales are not quite that high, but the point
  
  remains the same — around half of Apple’s revenue now comes from the
  
  iPhone and its siblings.
• 
  And it’s not like the percentage increases are just the result of declining Mac sales.  Apple said that it sold 3.46 million Macs last quarter, another quarterly record for Apple (topping the previous high by about 100,000 units). 
• Apple sold 8.4 million iPhones last quarter, 20% of which (1.7 million) were the iPhone 4, even though it only became available on June 24, 2010 and the quarter ended on June 26, 2010.  It will come as no surprise that Apple called the iPhone 4 launch the most successful product launch in the company’s history.
• One analyst asked whether Apple causes iPhone (and other product)
  
  shortages during the initial days in which the product is on sale just
  
  to create buzz.  Tim Cook, Apple’s COO, strongly disagreed.  “In terms of the new product, we do not purposely create a shortage for
  
  buzz. I’m not sure where that comes from, but that is certainly not our
  
  objective. We would like to fill every customer’s order as quickly as we
  
  can. The demand for iPhone 4 is absolutely stunning. And we’re working
  
  very hard to catch up with demand and I can’t predict when that will
  
  occur that I can tell you that everyone is working very hard to do it. … [L]et me be very clear on this. We are selling every unit we can make currently.”
• Combining the sales to date of the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, Apple says
  
  there are now 100 million devices running iOS.  By my calculations from past earning call announcements, almost 60 million of those are iPhones.  We know that 3.27 million iOS devices were iPads (because that is how many Apple said that they sold this past quarter and the iPad started selling on April 3, which was during this last fiscal quarter).  That leaves around 36 million of the iOS devices sold as of June 24, 2010 that must have been iPod touch devices.  Going forward, it will be interesting to see how this mix changes.
• Apple said that there are over 225,000 apps in the App Store, and over 5 billion apps have been downloaded, resulting in Apple paying over $1 billion to app developers.
• 
  Apple estimates that it will cost $175 million to provide cases to iPhone 4 owners.  Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said that “our most important objective there is to take care of every customer and delight them.”
• The iPhone is doing well in corporate America.  More than 80% of the Fortune 100 are deploying or piloting the iPhone, and that percentage is over 60% in the Fortune 500.  And 50% of the Fortune 500 are deploying or testing the iPad.
• When asked about the acceptance and rejection of new iPhone apps in the App Store, Tim Cook noted that “the vast majority of Apps are retrieved within seven days of their
  
  submission” and “many of the apps that aren’t approved have bugs in
  
  them, and are eventually resubmitted and approved.”
• One analyst asked Apple when FaceTime (the iPhone 4 video chat software) would be available on the Mac or Windows PCs.  Tim Cook punted, saying merely:  “I want to make sure that we get to all of the financial related questions today. So I’m going to hold that one for another day.”
• One analyst asked about the future of Apple’s exclusive relationship with AT&T in the U.S.  Tim Cook gave a non-answer:  “I would say that we’re very happy to be a partner with AT&T, and you
  
  know, they have been a first-class partner and have really pioneered
  
  the smart phone growth from a network point of view in the US, and
  
  that’s all I have to say about that.”

So in short, Apple had another phenomenal quarter, and the iPhone was a huge part of the reason why — so much so that it is now impossible to think about Apple’s product line without thinking of the iPhone.  Hard to believe that the first iPhone just came out in 2007.

[NOTE:  This app was purchased by Corel and is now called WordPerfect Viewer.  Click here for a review of the current app.]  Although Microsoft Word is the dominant word processor used by lawyers, there was a time when WordPerfect ruled the legal market and the program still has loyal fans in the legal community.  Unfortunately, if someone e-mails you a WordPerfect document on the iPhone, you cannot view the document with the iPhone’s native document viewer.  The smart folks at LawBox LLC (makers of the LawBox app that I’ve previously reviewed) have come up with a solution, a $4 app called WPD Viewer for iPhone that lets you view WordPerfect files.  (There is also a $6 version for the iPad.)

To use the app when someone e-mails you a WordPerfect file, simply tap and hold down on the attachment.  This will cause a pop-up box to appear in which you can tell the iPhone to open the document in WPD Viewer.

The iPhone will then launch the WPD Viewer app and the app will translate the document into a format that the iPhone can display (HTML) and then you can view the document.  Some of the formatting gets lost, but the text is all there.  You can scroll through and read the document, and if you want to search for terms just enter a search term at the top and the words will be highlighted in the document.  Using the iPhone’s standard copy-and-paste features, you can select text to copy and then paste into some other app. In fact, when you select text the pop-up menu allows you to not only copy but also bookmark or email, so in just one step you can select some text and then email only that text to someone.

If you double tap anywhere on the screen, or if you press the button at the top right with the arrow pointing to a line, a menu bar pops up on the left side.  The four buttons on the menu bar allow you to (1) e-mail the text of the document (the text becomes the body of your e-mail), (2) bookmark the document, (3) export an HTML version of the document to another app (such as Good Reader) or (4) refresh the document.  The refresh document button is necessary because in addition to getting documents into WPD Viewer via e-mail attachments, you can also use iTunes to send a document to the app, and using the refresh button you can reload the file list.

Speaking of file lists, the app stores the WordPerfect files that you send to it so that you can view them later.  If you are done with a document, just swipe to delete it.

This is not a document editor app like Documents to Go or Quickoffice so you cannot revise WordPerfect documents with this app.  Nevertheless, if you just want to be able to read a WordPerfect file when someone sends it to you, plus have the ability to copy and paste text from that document or convert the file into a pure text format, then this is the app for you.  Indeed, to my knowledge, this is the only app for the iPhone or iPad that allows you to view WordPerfect documents, and thus I can pronounce that this is THE BEST WordPerfect viewer for the iPhone.

This past Friday, Apple announced that because a small number of people are experiencing problems with phone reception on the iPhone 4 when they touch the antenna on the bottom left side of the device, Apple is allowing all iPhone 4 customers to get a free iPhone case.  Apple will allow you to select either its own Apple iPhone 4 Bumper case or other select cases.  We don’t know yet what the other choices will be, but I have been using the Bumper on my iPhone 4 for about a week now, and for the most part I like it, although there are some drawbacks.  If you are considering whether to select the Bumper as your free case, perhaps my experiences will help you make your decision.

 

THE GOOD

Easy to put on and off.  Putting on the bumper is easy, as demonstrated by the simple instructions printed on the back of the packaging.  You just slip it around the iPhone 4.  It only takes a few seconds.

  
 

Doesn’t distract much from the feel of the iPhone.  I am not a fan of cases for the iPhone, and I have never used a case for my prior iPhones (the iPhone 3 and the iPhone 3GS).  For the most part, I feel the same way about the iPhone 4.  I like the feel of the iPhone in my hand, and I don’t like the feel of anything on the glass of the front of the iPhone.  For people like me, the Bumper has the advantage of being the “un-case” because it is so minimal and does not cover the front or the back of the iPhone.

Doesn’t distract too much from the design of the iPhone.  Another reason that I don’t like traditional cases is that they completely cover up the iPhone.  I love the design of the iPhone and I hate to hide it.  Although the Bumper does hide the distinctive stainless steel antenna that surrounds the iPhone (a look that I really like), the design of the Bumper itself is very nice.  I’ve heard people say that you can just take a rubber bracelet and wrap it around the iPhone to duplicate the bumper.  That is wrong.  The bumper is not just a piece of rubber.  The actual sides of the bumper are a nice, smooth plastic, and the feel is similar to the feel of the curved sides of the iPhone 3 / 3GS.  The rubber part is about and below that strip.  As a result, you don’t feel like you are holding rubber in your hand when you hold an iPhone in a bumper, instead the feel is quite smooth.  Nevertheless, the presence of the rubber part of the Bumper does add friction (which I discuss below).

Additionally, the case doesn’t just have cutout holes for the buttons, but instead includes its own very nice volume and power buttons that sit on top of the iPhone button.  There is just a hole for the ringer on/off switch, which means that you need to use a fingernail to really reach that switch.  If you frequently turn your ringer on and off, this might be a problem for you.  But using the other buttons works great and looks great too.

If you want some great close-up pictures of the Bumper, check out this iLounge post by Jeremy Horwitz (who happens to be an attorney, just FYI).

Keep a grip on your iPhone.  Many case manufacturers advertise that their product provides added protection for the iPhone.  Interestingly, Apple does not.  Here is how Apple describes the Bumper on the iPhone portion of the website:

Nevertheless, I do think that the Bumper gives you real protection, not so much because it can withstand a fall onto concrete, but instead because the Bumper reduces the chance that you would drop the iPhone in the first place.  The added friction of the rubber portion of the Bumper makes it much less likely for the iPhone 4 to slip out of your hand or out of your pocket. 

Indeed, this is both a blessing and a curse.  At work, I always keep my iPhone in my shirt pocket, and without a case it is easy to slip the iPhone in and out.  With the Bumper, it is more difficult to do so.  I have less concern about the iPhone falling out by accident if I lean over (the good) but it is more of a pain to pull out my iPhone and return it to my pocket when I am done (the bad).  And this humorous post points out how this might be a problem if you wear tight blue jeans.

Indeed, this is the #1 reason that I like the Bumper.  It significantly reduces the chance that I will drop the iPhone when it is in my hands.  Just yesterday, for example, I decided to use the Bumper while I was in my house, and while I was walking upstairs my foot caught a stair the wrong way and I started to trip.  Yes, I really am that graceful sometimes.  I have no doubt that but for the Bumper, I would have dropped my iPhone, and I can only what would have happened to it as it fell down each of the stairs in my house.  Ouch.  But with the Bumper, I kept my grip on the iPhone.  It was at that moment that I realized the true value of the Bumper.

Fashion.  Since Apple plays up the fashion aspect of the Bumper, I suppose I should mention it here.  Apple offers bumpers in different colors, so if you are looking to add a splash of color to the iPhone 4, you can get that with a Bumper.  I’m not looking for that, so I just chose the basic black.  But if you want to add color without getting in the way of the beautiful glass front and back of the iPhone, the Bumper will give you what you want.

Antenna.  And of course, if you find that you accidentally touch the part of the iPhone antenna that reduces reception, you won’t have that problem with the Bumper.  Obviously, that is the reason that Apple decided to give away cases like the Bumper for free.  If you usually talk with your iPhone in your left hand, and if you are often in areas with marginal AT&T coverage, the Bumper may make it less likely for you to lose a signal and drop a call.

THE BAD

Accessories.  My main gripe with the Bumper is that it doesn’t work well with many accessories.  It has a hole in the bottom for the connector port, so you can easily plug in the cord that connects to the USB port on your computer.  But I also have a similar cord on the equipment that I use to connect my iPhone to my car stereo, and I suppose that plug must be a tad bigger because I cannot get it to fit in the slot of the bottom of the Bumper.  I can see what is happening — Apple doesn’t just cut a hole in the bottom of the Bumper, but also reinforces the hole with a plastic frame, as you can (sort of) see in the following picture.  (You can click to enlarge.)  That design decision helps to keep the Bumper more sturdy because there is a plastic frame around the Bumper, but because of the amount of plastic in the hole, it reduces the size of the hole for the connector port.  It’s a tight fit, and while it works for the cord that Apple gives you to connect to your computer, it doesn’t work with some other cords.

 

Similarly, I use (and love) my Bose SoundDock Portable speaker system but the connector doesn’t make sufficient contact when the Bumper is around the iPhone 4.  And it’s not just third party accessories:  I use an Apple iPhone 4 Dock and because that dock is molded to the exact shape of the iPhone 4, you have to remove the Bumper every time you want to use the dock.  What a pain.  On the other hand, you can use a Bumper with the Apple Universal Dock if you don’t use any insert adapters.  (To be more specific, none of the iPhone adapters work; there might be a larger adapter made for an iPod that could be used.)

The headphone jack hole is also more recessed when you use the Bumper and the hole itself is tight.  So far, all of my headphones do fit, but it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that some third party headphones don’t fit as well with a Bumper.  For example, Art of the iPhone reports that a pair of Sennheiser CX300s headphones wouldn’t fit with the Bumper attached.

[UPDATE: Attorney Katie Floyd — who hosts the great Mac Power Users podcast along with attorney David “MacSparky” Sparks — posted a long comment to this post that is worth reading.  Regarding accessories, she had this to say:

1) My
friend Allison Sheridan of the Nosillacast Podcast hosted at podfeet.com
notes that if you use a dremmel tool and file out the little “ledge” on
the inside of the bumper at the dock connector, you can get a few more
connectors to fit. I’ve been a little hesitant to do so.

2) I spoke with the folks over at SendStation about their Dock
Extender product. Unfortunately, it does not work with the Apple bumper.
But they’re working on an updated model that will. They say it will
likely be a few months before they have something in production.

3) SendStation’s suggestion was to “modify” your existing peripherals
by slightly filing off the edges of the plugs by a few millimeters to
make them fit. Again, makes me nervous so I haven’t tried this myself.
Apparently there are some videos on YouTube of people doing this. I
advise caution.

4) The Universal dock sold by Apple will work with the bumper but
without any inserts. It won’t work even with larger iPod insets. The
problem is that because the case ads a few millimeters of distance
between the dock connector and the port the connector isn’t long enough
to fully connect. You have to remove the universal adapters all together
and you’ll find that this allows the connection. This approach works as
well with some of my third party accessories including my iHome
speakers with a dock connector. Of course, the universal dock connector
is $50 compared to the iPhone dock’s $30 price tag so you’re spending
$20 more per dock.

Thanks, Katie, for the information.]

Oleophobic Screen.  One of the things that I love about the iPhone 3GS and the iPhone 4 is the oleophobic screen.  I get smudges on my iPhone screen all the time, but with just a simple wipe on my shirt, the smudges disappear thanks to the coating on the screen.  Unfortunately, with the Bumper on the iPhone, this is harder to do.  The rubber around the edges causes friction so you cannot easily slide an iPhone in a Bumper against your shirt.  Instead, you have to more deliberately take a part of your shirt or some other cloth to wipe the screen without touching the Bumper.  It’s a minor inconvenience, but one that I don’t like.

Minimal Protection.  I noted above that an advantage of the Bumper, for people like me who are not big fans of cases, is that it is so minimal.  But if you are looking for more protection, the Bumper might not be enough for you.  For example, my wife tells me that she likes knowing that she can toss her iPhone into a purse without worrying about keys or some other items scratching the iPhone.  Thus, she wants a case that completely covers the back and sides of the iPhone and wants something like the InvisibleShield protecting the front screen.  Of course, you could just use the Bumper along with an InvisibleShield on the front and back, but with a full rubberized style case that surrounds the entire iPhone, you are likely to have more protection if you drop the iPhone and something (like a concrete sidewalk) hits a corner or the back.

Conclusion.  Because I know that I normally don’t like to use cases, I forced myself to use the Bumper for an entire week so that I could get to know all of the advantages and all of the quirks.  Now that my self-imposed deadline has passed, I plan to remove the Bumper for most of my everyday use.  But that doesn’t mean that I don’t like the Bumper and won’t use it from time to time.  Hopefully, I’ll be using it the next time I trip on the stairs.  I also plan to use the Bumper whenever I travel to make it less likely for the iPhone to slip out of my hand at an airport or out of my pocket in a cab.  And I’m sure that I will use it from time to time at home or at the office when I want to more easily prop up my iPhone on its side or when I want to put the iPhone on a flat surface such as a table without worry about it sliding off.

At its original price of $30, I would have said that the Bumper was overpriced but valuable enough that you should consider getting it for your iPhone 4, even if (like me) you are normally not a fan of iPhone cases.  But now that Apple is giving Bumpers away for free, it seems like an easy decision to get one — unless you prefer the features in another case that Apple will be offering starting later this week.

The big news this week has been commentary, speculation, conjecture and downright silliness about the iPhone 4 antenna issue.  Who knows what Apple will say at 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern today (although Scoopertino has a humorous prediction).  I’m sure that the announcement will be analyzed six ways to Sunday, but hopefully it will move us towards the end of this unfortunate chapter in iPhone history.  There were a few other news items this week of note, such as:

• David Pogue of the New York Times wrote (again) about Line2, an iPhone app that provides you with a second phone line.  The app is ever more useful under iOS 4.
• Pogue also iPhone apps that we wish we had, although frankly I think that several of these already exist.  For example, he wants an app that can tell you the aisles for items in the grocery store, but I’ve been using an app called Grocery IQ for a while now that groups like items together based on where they are likely to be in a typical grocery store (even if it doesn’t specifically say “in this store, Aisle 4, left side”).
• As David Chartier of Macworld reports, yesterday Apple released iOS 4.0.1, which changes the formula used by the iPhone to determine how many bars of signal strength to display.
• If you are in the market for an external battery for your iPhone, I use the RichardSolo batteries.  The company sent me free samples almost two years ago, and they are still working great.  The RichardSolo 1200 normally costs $45 but is on sale until Monday for only $20.  My review from 2008 is here.
• For just $10, you can buy a device that plugs into your headphone port and turns your iPhone into a universal remote control.  MobileCrunch has the details.  Looks neat.
• Dan Frakes of Macworld takes a first look at several cases for the iPhone 4.
• Rosa Golijan of Gizmodo reports that if you are a student with an e-mail account that ends in .edu, you can get a free year of Amazon Prime.  I’ve long been a subscriber and my wife and I use Amazon all the time.  iPhone J.D. is an Amazon Affiliate, which means that if you click here before you purchase something, for some of the items on Amazon, Amazon pays a tiny percentage of the sales to support iPhone J.D.  It doesn’t cost you anything extra.
• Steve Sande of TUAW has some tips for using FaceTime.
• Sebastien of the iPhone Download Blog describes how he went through three different iPhone 4s in three weeks.
• And finally, Benjamin Reece is a New Orleans-based filmaker who got a lot of press in 2008 and 2009 for his series of Fifty People, One Question short films (all worth watching).  Reece and filmmaker Philip Bloom announced plans to team up to create a cinematic short film shot completely with an iPhone 4.  They set up this site to solicit funding for a movie to be shot in Brooklyn, NY, but it appears that they didn’t get the necessary funds in time.  That’s a shame because the following teaser film, shot in New Orleans on an iPhone 4, gives you some sense of how cool the final film could be.  Hopefully it will still get made.

the first iPhone 4 cinematic film. from Benjamin Reece.

And by the way, here is one of the Fifty People, One Question films, one called PostSecret.  It interviews interesting people and features Mastermind Theatre‘s great Pictures of Audrey in the soundtrack:

I believe that the iPhone 4 is the best smartphone ever sold, and every day I am finding new things that I love about it.  One of its many advantages is that it does a much better job of getting a 3G signal.  Areas that used to be dead zones for me — such as certain locations in my office, 46 floors up in the air and far from cell towers — are now areas in which I can initiate and receive calls.  I don’t know if the improvement comes from better internal circuits, updated firmware, or the unique antenna on the outside of the phone, but the better reception is certainly real.  

Unfortunately, much recent media attention has emphasized reception problems with the iPhone 4 instead of the reception improvements, including the possibility that an iPhone 4 user can get worse reception if the user places a hand over the bottom left portion of the phone, something that a right-handed person like me would rarely do when using the phone but might be more common for lefties.  In my experience, this is not an issue in areas with strong 3G coverage, but if you are in an area with weak coverage — including, for example, areas where you could never get coverage with prior iPhones and are only now getting coverage with the iPhone 4 because of its improvements — then the problem is real.  I have not been able to force a call to drop under these circumstances, but I have been able to slow down downloads of data, so I can see how it is possible that others might see dropped calls with a hand touching that part of the iPhone 4.  A good recent post on Engadget evidenced how different people are seeing different issues, some seeing no iPhone 4 reception problems and others seeing real problems.  All in all, I think that Harry McCracken summed it up best when he recently wrote:

The iPhone 4′s innovative
antenna-wrapped-around-the-case improves reception.  Except when you use
the phone in an area with marginal reception, aren’t using a case, and
bridge the gap in the lower left-hand corner with your hand.  In that
situation, it can be deadly.

Had Apple simply told all iPhone purchasers from the outset something similar to what McCracken wrote, perhaps we wouldn’t have seen all of the media attention, especially the attention that resulted from Consumer Reports articles concluding that the iPhone 4 is the best smartphone on the market and yet also stating that because of this antenna issue, Consumer Reports doesn’t want to recommend that anyone buy the iPhone 4.

Last night, Apple announced to media outlets such as Macworld and Engadget that it will hold a press conference tomorrow, Friday June 16, at 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern to address the iPhone 4 — and presumably to address this antenna issue.  I’m curious to see what Apple says, and I’m hopeful that Apple’s announcements will allow people to move past this issue, because for me, the bottom line is (1) the iPhone 4 is an amazing smartphone, truly the best in class and (2) if you want to get better reception, that is a reason to BUY the iPhone 4, not a reason to avoid it, although you may have to be careful about how you hold it (or use a case) in those weak signals areas in which, before the iPhone 4, you might not have gotten a signal at all.

You can charge your iPhone by plugging a cord into the iPhone and plugging the other end either into a USB port on a computer or by plugging the other end into a USB power adapter that is plugged into the wall.  Which charges more quickly?

Justin Horn of the When Will Apple? blog ran some tests two years ago and found that his iPhone 3 charged in 90 minutes when plugged in to a wall outlet and in 140 minutes when charging over USB.  He recently ran similar tests on the iPhone 4, and his results are described in a post on Justin’s blog and shown in the following graph, which Justin gave me permission to republish here:

In his test, it took Justin an extra 30 minutes (130 minutes versus 160 minutes) to get a full charge on USB versus plugging it into a wall outlet.  And perhaps just as importantly, his tests show that you get more charge along the way using a wall outlet, so if you only have 30 minutes to spare, in Justin’s test you’ll go from zero to 25% over USB and zero to almost 35% with a wall outlet.

Different computers have different USB charging capacity, and the latest Apple computers provide more power over USB than earlier models.  Thus, I expect that if you expanded this chart to cover different Mac and PC computers, you’d see different results charging over different USB ports.  Having said that, I think that it is fair to say that if you want the fastest charge, use a power outlet.

Many attorneys who read iPhone J.D. write to tell me how they are using their iPhone in their practice.  I love to read these stories, and with your permission, I’d love to share your stories with others.  I find that when I hear what others are doing, it usually gives me more ideas for making the most of my iPhone in my practice.

I received a note the other day from Oxford, Mississippi attorney Tom Freeland.  Tom’s law firm Freeland & Freeland (and its predecessors) has been in the same location for over 100 years, but having one foot in history doesn’t stop Tom from having another foot in high technology.  He runs the great NMissCommentor blog which discusses everything from Mississippi and federal Fifth Circuit law to technology to food and drink.  (One recent post on the Ramos Gin Fizz spawned a vigorous debate in the comments over how to best make that drink and whether to use soda water.  Like Tom, I’d trust the New Orleans restaurant recipes over anything on Wikipedia!)  Tom is also on Twitter as @NMissC.

Tom Freeland wrote to me the other day to share this story on successful use of his iPhone and laptop at trial.  And as Tom suggests, I suspect that he could rely even more on the iPhone and less on a laptop in the future.  Here is Tom’s note:

I’m just at the end of a criminal trial in federal court (the jury is deliberating) that was estimated to take four to six weeks; we’re at four weeks plus a day now. [Jeff notes:  Tom’s trial is now over; Tom represented a defendant in a Medicare and Medicaid fraud trial, and while some defendants were convicted, Tom’s client was found not guilty.]

At the pretrial conference, I pointed out to the judge that many of the lawyers were from small firms in other towns (and states) and asked if we could bring smart phones and computers with
wireless access into the courtroom to stay in touch with our offices, something that is not allowed under the local court rules.  (The rules were amended last year to prohibit wireless “broadcasting” from courtrooms to
assure, among other things, that liveblogging would not happen from the courtrooms. While this was apparently because of the experience in the Northern District in the Scruggs cases, as one of the bloggers who actually blogged those hearings, I am unaware of any blogger who was “live”— it was explicitly against the court rules.)

The court allowed it, and has been extremely tolerant of the lawyers use of these devices as long as they do not make a sound.  (Any ringers going off result in a $100 fine, something that two lawyers have experienced. I have a very careful check-the-phone process precourt, and have just had the sound off on my computer all through the trial.)

The devices have been heavily used and very handy, such as being able to text my office with research projects or in search of documents.  (I’ve a full set on my laptop and if they get me a bates or exhibit number, we’re in business.)  A couple of times, wireless access to cases to respond to factually distinguish a case has been critical.  I’ve had intermittent access to wireless, and so have relied mostly on Westlaw on my laptop, although your comment about FastCase today on your blog has made me wish
I’d thought of it on occasion when a new case was cited in chambers.  I would be a little self conscious about staring at my phone in that  context, although with as many as a dozen lawyers in chambers at once that might not be that attention-drawing.

I’ve used my iPhone in trial for the exact same purposes — keeping in touch with folks at the office so that they can bring us what we need in court, and looking up cases on Fastcase.  I’ve also used Fastcase on an iPhone when in chambers during a jury charge conference, and to avoid being disrespectful it is helpful to have one of your partners on the front-line talking with the judge while you are in the background pulling up and reading a case, but then once you are done you can talk about the case and distinguish it as appropriate.  I feel bad for attorneys in courts that prohibit the use of an iPhone and similar devices during trial because they are incredibly useful.

If you have a story about the successful use of an iPhone in your law practice, please send me an e-mail at jeff@iphonejd.com
and I’d love to share the story here.