The ABA Journal maintains the definitive directory of law-related blogs — “blawgs” — with over 3,000 entries. At the end of every year, the editors of the ABA Journal pick their 100 favorite blogs in 12 categories and include them in the ABA Journal Blawg 100, which is the cover story for the December issue of the ABA Journal. Readers are then invited to vote for up to 12 of their favorites, and the winners in each category are announced in January. The contest is fun, but the real value of the list is that it helps lawyers become aware of 100 great websites. Every year when I go through the list, I discover lots of well-done websites that are new to me. (For example, I learned about First One @ One First, which looks like an interesting blog related to the U.S. Supreme Court.)
This year, I am thrilled to see that in the “Legal Tech” category, there are two iOS-related sites listed: iPhone J.D. (yeah!) and Josh Barrett’s Tablet Legal. I’m a big fan of Tablet Legal, and a few weeks ago when I got an iPad, I went back to the first Tablet Legal post and read through every post again to get up to speed on how I can use my iPad in my law practice. I don’t know how many blogs out there focus on lawyers using smartphones that run the Blackberry, Android, Palm, Windows Mobile, or other operating systems, but the fact that no such sites were among the nine listed in the Legal Tech category says a lot to me about the enthusiasm that many lawyers have for their iPhones.
I encourage you to take a look at all 12 categories of sites on the list to learn about some great sites. While you are there, if you already have an ABAJournal.com account, you are probably already logged in and can just start voting. Otherwise, simply register (which is quick) and then the website will let you vote. Obviously, I would be honored if you would vote for iPhone J.D. You can vote for up to 12 sites (and you can vote for multiple sites in the same category, so feel free to vote for both iPhone J.D. and Tablet Legal). A few of my favorites on the list: SCOTUSblog, Above the Law, the Wall Street Journal Law Blog, The AmLaw Daily, Drug and Device Law, Jonathan Turley, Taxgirl and the always funny Lowering the Bar. You can also see the list and vote by clicking this very subtle (ahem) picture helpfully provided to me by the ABA Journal:
Thank you to the editors of the ABA Journal for naming iPhone J.D. to the list for the second year in a row, and thank you to all of you who take the time to vote. I know that all of us who publish blogs appreciate the recognition.
It’s Cyber Monday and there are lots of deals on the Internet today. Here is what I have found so far that might be of interest to iPhone J.D. readers. I’ll update this post during the day on Monday if I run across anything else noteworthy.
Update #1: The online Apple Store has modest discounts today on various third party items, plus is offering free engraving and free gift wrapping today on many Apple products.
The iPhone and iPad app The Night Before Christmas starring Meryl Streep is free today. The app features (1) a video of The Night Before Christmas narrated by Streep, (2) an e-book that you can read to your kids and (3) a feature that lets you record a voice for each page of the e-book, so you can record you reading the story, or your kid reading the story. My kids and I started to check out the app last night and it looks pretty good on an iPad, especially considering that it is free if you get it today. Click here to get The Night Before Christmas (free today) for iPhone and for iPad
Star Walk is an interesting iPhone and iPad app that helps you learn about the stars and more in the sky. You can hold up your iPhone or iPad and get the names of the stars that you are looking at as you move your device. Normally it is $2.99 for iPhone / $4.99 for iPad, but today it is $0.99 for either device. Click here to get Star Walk for iPhone and for iPad
The TomTom U.S. & Canada GPS app is normally $99.99, but today it is $39.99. Click here:
The CoPilot Live North America app is normally $34.99, but today it is $9.99. Click here:
Buy an iPod touch from BestBuy and you get a free Insignia GPS. I’m not sure what the two items have to do with each other — it’s not like the GPS unit plugs into the iPod — but if you are in the market for both, this might be a good deal for you.
Buy an iPod touch from Walmart and get a free accessory kit with items like a car charger, a USB cable and an audio splitter.
It may be a short week here in the U.S. due to Thanksgiving, but it was certainly an eventful one for iOS devices, with updates to the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad and the second generation Apple TV. Here are a few of the news items that caught my attention. I hope that you and your families have a wonderful Thanksgiving.
Lex Friedman of Macworld notes the many security fixes in iOS 4.2. I see that one security flaw that I noted a few weeks ago seems to be fixed now.
Electronista reports that the iPad leads Oprah’s annual list of her favorite things.
Alexander Vaughn of AppAdvice reports that Apple has begun replacing the tiny Phillips screws at the bottom of the iPhone 4 with Torx screws to reduce the temptation to open the iPhone yourself.
Now that you can stream Netflix to an iPhone, iPad or Apple TV, you may wonder whether you really need the physical DVDs any more. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has noted in the past that there is a reason that the company is called Netflix, and not DVDFlix. Living up to its name, Electronista reports that you can now purchase a streaming-only Netflix account for $8 a month. At the same time, the company bumped the prices of its other plans.
Patrick DiDomenico of iPad4Legal noticed in an article by David Lat of Above the Law a reference that Justice Scalia uses an iPad to read briefs.
And finally, M.I.C. Gadget, a blog about items Made In China, got its hands on an interesting Steve Jobs figure holding an iPhone from a Chinese retailer. It advertised the figure for sale on its blog, until Apple sent a cease-and-desist letter. Still, it looks like it was a fun idea. I love that you could add baloons with sayings. Here is one picture, and you can see many more on this post on the M.I.C. Gadget website:
With Black Friday and Cyber Monday just days away, I know that a lot of people are thinking about shopping for holiday presents. Your iPhone and iPad can help you prepare for your holiday shopping. New Orleans attorney Ernie Svenson passed along to me this great article by Steve Olechowski of Google. Olechowski talks about the Target and Best Buy apps, but far more interesting is his discussion of how apps like this have replaced the desire to read Sunday Circulars, the ads from the Sunday paper. I remember that when I was young, I would often read circulars from consumer electronics retailers from the Sunday newspaper to learn what was new related to computers. As Olechowski points out, sites like Engadget now fill that need, but these shopping apps can be satisfying for the same reason.
David Martin of Cult of Mac wrote a fairly comprehensive article on shopping apps for Black Friday and Cyber Monday: Amazon, Best Buy, eBay, Target, Toys “R” Us and Walmart. Yardena Arar of Macworld also writes about some Black Friday apps and websites. And Mike Schramm of TUAW reviews mGifts, an app that helps you keep track of the gifts you plan to purchase.
This is also a good time to note that Apple always has Black Friday sales at the Apple Store (including the online store) and this is traditionally the only time of the year when Apple reduces the prices on its current products. (Otherwise, the only sales you see from Apple are on previous generation products.) Apple just posted a teaser page for its Black Friday sale, which you can see here. If you are in the market to buy an Apple product for yourself or someone else in the near future, the price offered by Apple this Friday is likely to be the best price that you will see for the rest of the year.
The latest version of the iOS operating system for both the iPhone and iPad will be available this morning. I’ll post my thoughts after I have had a chance to try it out. It is a big update for the iPad, bringing folders, the ability to run apps in the background and major improvements to the Mail app. For both platforms, it adds features such as AirPlay (the ability to send video or audio from your iPhone or iPad to an AppleTV) and AirPrint (the ability to print, although right now it only works with a very small number of printers). And as Jason Snell of Macworld reports, the Find my iPhone feature that used to be one of the biggest advantages of paying for the $99 MobileMe service is now free if you have an iPad, an iPhone 4 or the latest version of the iPod touch.
I am always on the lookout for statistics on the adoption of iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad in law firms. We got one number this week from Good Technolgy, Inc. Good has been making enterprise software for mobile devices for a long time. Back in 2002, they even sold their own hardware device, the G100, which I used at my law firm for a while. Then Good gave up the hardware business and focused on making software for mobile phones like the Palm Treo, and now Good sells software for many mobile devices (including the iPhone) that provide a secure connection to enterprise servers. This week, Good released the result of a survey of its 4,000 enterprise customers which tried to determine what kind of companies are adopting the iPad. John Herrema, senior vice president of corporate strategy at Good Technology, said: “We found that the financial services sector dominated, accounting for 36 percent of Good’s iPad activations to date. The technology sector came in second at 11 percent, followed closely by healthcare at 10 percent. We believe these industries are embracing the iPad because its unique design makes it easier to perform time-sensitive, mission-critical tasks.” Fourth place was the legal market at 8.8%. You cannot read too much into this survey without knowing other information, such as how many of Good’s 4,000 customers are law firms, but still this report provides some evidence of increasing acceptance of iOS devices in law firms. There is lots of other iOS news of note from the past week, so let’s get to it:
For those of you who (like me) are waiting for iOS 4.2 to appear, Serenty Caldwell of Macworld reports that Apple has been fixing some final, last minute bugs and that yesterday afternoon, Apple provided developers with a third proposed final version of 4.2. I’m sure that we are very close. Maybe before Thanksgiving?
The cheapest version of the iPad retails for $499, but Joseph Flatley of Engadget reports that TJ Maxx stores are selling it for $399 in a pre-Black Friday sale. I’m not sure how they can afford to do this — I seriously doubt that Apple gave TJ Maxx a discount price — unless they are selling below cost to get people in the stores.
Also, Joe White of AppAdvice reports that Sam’s Club is selling iPads starting at $488.
John Biggs of MobileCrunch reviews two iPhone scanning apps, SayWhat and Scanner Pro.
Brian Tufo of TiPb reports that you can now edit a Google Docs document on an iPhone.
I recently reviewed Calvetica, an alternative calendar for the iPhone that I really like. San Jose, CA attorney Greg Charles recently wrote to tell me about another calendar program for the iPad that he really likes called Pocket Informant. Charles writes: “It integrates tasks using Toodledo and supports Exchange calendars. Small firms can use the Google Exchange function to achieve the same result. It also can use the native iPhone calendar as its database and that eliminates a lot of double syncing.” This looks like a really interesting and powerful app.
David Pogue of the New York Times writes about the Google Voice app, which Apple finally approved after a VERY long review period.
David Pogue also provided a list of his favorite iPhone apps.
Correy Stephehenson of Lawyers USA reports on a proposed Florida ethics opinion discussing a lawyer’s duty to protect confidential data on devices like the iPhone.
CivilMap is an interesting iPhone app for process servers. The app records the GPS location of the service, can record audio when service is made, and allows attorneys to track service in real time. If you are an attorney who uses a lot of process servers, you might want to insist that they use this app.
Dan Friedlander writes for TechnoLawyer about how to create a smartphone app that promotes your law firm.
Do you have a need to manage a large number of incoming requests at your law firm such as requests for documents or potential clients? If so, Richard Felix is a software developer in Louisiana who created a program called Dispatch, and the software has an iPhone app with push notifications for new requests and replies quickly. Felix tells me that lots of lawyers are using the software, including the iPhone features.
Pulse News Reader is a neat, graphical reader of RSS feeds for the iPhone and iPad, and Richard Gaywood of TUAW reports that starting this week, it is free.
Did you know that companies can create iPhone apps just for their employees and distribute them outside of the App Store? Tom Kaneshige of CIO.com reports on the program and some of its shortcomings.
Here’s a story that I wish was a joke. Andrew Jacobs of the New York Times reports that a Chinese woman was arrested, on her wedding day, and sentenced to a year in a labor camp because she forwarded a satirical tweet written by her finance. Unbelievable. If you want to read the tweet that sent her to jail (and you can read Chinese) it is here. The Times translates the tweet as follows: “The original message sarcastically goaded protesters to go beyond the smashing of Japanese products and express their fury at the heavily policed expo site. Ms. Cheng added the words: ‘Charge, angry youth.'” By the way, Twitter is officially banned in China, although obviously tech savvy Chinese can figure out ways around that.
And finally, here’s something sort of neat. Artist Jitsuro Mase created a 3D device for the iPhone that he showed off at an Australian exposition. iSmashPhone provides some background, but I think that the video speaks for itself:
Since 2006, Avvo has provided an online database of attorneys, making it easier for clients and others to locate attorneys. Avvo (which the company says is short for “avvocato,” the Italian word for lawyer) seeks to include profiles of every lawyer in the United States. Avvo approached me about being an iPhone J.D. sponsor because they are trying to spread the word and get more attorneys to update their online profiles. Avvo often does a good job of figuring out the basic information on attorneys, but by updating your profile, you can add information like a picture, your practice areas, your education, associations, reported cases, etc. If you want to see an example of an Avvo profile (besdies your own), here is what mine looks like. Avvo also purports to rate attorneys, although frankly that’s not something that I pay any attention to.
You never know how a potential client — or just an old friend — is going to track you down, so why not make it easy for them? It doesn’t cost you anything to update your profile, and it just takes a few minutes to do so Plus by clicking here to update your profile (or on the banner on the left) you can support iPhone J.D.
Two years ago today, I took a picture of my iPhone sitting on a legal pad (you can see the 17 on the Calendar icon in the image at the top of this website) and started iPhone J.D. with the post “Why I use an iPhone.” In the over 500 posts since then, I have reviewed over 200 apps and hardware devices, posted countless tips and tricks on using the iPhone, and given you my thoughts on everything that I think that an attorney (or other professional) using an iPhone would need to know.
The sophomore year of iPhone J.D. was a great one. I spent a lot of time talking about the iPhone 4 and iOS 4, fabulous new products with tons of useful new features. Plus, there were so many interesting third party apps to discuss. While Apple still keeps track of the total number of available apps and publicizes that number from time to time, it is probably easier today to just mimic the Apple advertising line and assume that there is an app for that. And I’ve shared lots of advice from iPhone J.D. readers as the number of attorneys using iPhones, iPads and iPod touch devices seems to be increasing in leaps and bounds. (No, I haven’t seen any reliable figures quantifying this, but anecdotally I’m seeing attorneys everywhere using iPhones — and I suspect that you are seeing the same thing.)
Most popular posts. In case you are curious, here are the three most popular posts from the second year of iPhone J.D.:
1. iPhone tip: create and Apple folder and the follow-up post on creating a folder with a color Emoji icon. Over 40,000 different people read that first post and many read the follow up. Folders are one of the best features of iOS 4 on the iPhone, and I’m glad that any day now we will have this function on the iPad.
2. Blue Marble. In terms of page views, this is the second most popular post from the past year, but it is my personal favorite post from the second year of iPhone J.D. Perhaps in part it is because space exploration excites me as much today as it did when I was a child, but mostly it is because I cannot think about that beautiful picture of the Earth without feeling a sense of awe and gaining a new perspective on life and our place in the universe. It is not often that a simple technology blog like this can provoke such profound thoughts.
3. Review: Dragon Dictation — iPhone voice transcription by Dragon NaturallySpeaking. The free Dragon Dictation app for the iPhone is so useful it is magical. Whenever a new iPhone owner asks me to show off some useful apps, I always see their eyes light up when they see how easy this one is to use. Everyone with an iPhone should have this app, and since so many people read that post, hopefully a lot of people do.
Remember that if you want to catch up on the past, all significant posts are indexed at the iPhone J.D. Index link on the top right of every page of this website. If you are new to the iPhone, I encourage you to see what you may have missed. Some of those old posts are just as valuable today as they were way back when, such as the many tips and shortcuts posts.
Visitors to iPhone J.D. As I did this time last year, this seems like a good time to stop talking about me and turn the attention to you. I can do that thanks to the tools provided by Google Analytics. More than 250,000 different people have visited this website over the past year and there have been well over half a million page views.
What do I know about you? Half of the visitors were using Windows, just over 30% were using a Mac, about 15% were using an iPhone, and almost 3% were using an iPad. One visitor used OS/2, an operating system that I didn’t think anyone had used since the 1990s (and it’s not like a lot of people were using it back then, either) and I find it funny that someone would use an operating system that old to read about the latest and greatest smartphone. As for the browsers, about a third used Safari (which includes all of the iPhone users of course), Firefox and Internet Explorer were at 25% each, and about 10% of visitors used Chrome.
As you may know, I live in New Orleans. If you’ve visited New Orleans before, you may have heard the popular local phrase “Where Y’at?” The phrase means “what’s up” and isn’t really a request for your physical location, but I can’t say much about what has been going on for visitors to iPhone J.D., so instead let’s look at where you are at. Almost 75% of you are in the U.S., but there have been visitors from 201 different countries. Almost 5% of you are in the U.K., and the next most popular countries are Canada, Australia, Sweden and Germany. There was only one visitor this past year from Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean, but with a population of only 1,403, that’s almost .1% of the total populace, which I suppose is something.
In terms of cities, the Big Apple continues its reign at the top:
New York
London
San Francisco
Washington, D.C.
Los Angeles
Chicago
Atlanta
Houston
Dallas
New Orleans
I appreciate all of my friends here in the Big Easy doing what they can to keep New Orleans on the top ten list, but considering that last year New Orleans was #4, I wonder if the city will even make the list next year.
Feedback. The best part of publishing iPhone J.D. is hearing from readers. I love hearing about how other attorneys use their iPhones, and I try to share that knowledge here when I can. If you ever find that you have a few spare minutes, please send me a note letting me know what you love about your iPhone and how you are using it. And of course if you have any comments or suggestions for this site, I’d love to hear that as well. You can always e-mail me at jeff@iphonejd.com, and if you would rather tweet than e-mail, you can contact me at @jeffrichardson. Additionally, although my focus here will always be the iPhone, I’m a new iPad owner as well so I suspect that I will be writing about iPad apps in the next year from time to time. If you have anything iPad-related to share with me, I’d love to hear that as well.
Thanks for a second great year, and I know that the third will be the best one yet!
Earlier this year, I purchased a Kensington device for my car called the LiquidAUX (which I reviewed here) that allows me to charge my iPhone and play my iPhone through my car’s stereo. The LiquidAUX is special because it includes a wireless remote, which I really enjoyed using. But a few weeks ago, Kensington sent me a (free) sample of its latest iPhone automobile device, the AssistOne, which was just released on October 31, 2010. It retails for $99.99, but you can currently get it on Amazon for only $78.20. This is a fantastic device that I have really enjoyed using, and if you are looking for a single device that can handle virtually all of your iPhone in a car needs, this may be the solution for you. Here are the key features.
1. Hold the iPhone. The AssistOne is a car mount that gives you a spot to place your iPhone where you can easily glance at it while you are driving. You insert an iPhone by sliding the bottom of your iPhone into a dock connector and then pushing back the top of the iPhone. A clip grabs the top of the iPhone and then it is held securely in place. I use an iPhone 4 but it adjusts to work with other models as well, and can even adjust to work with many iPhone cases.
The AssistOne can be mounted in your car one of two ways. First, there is a flexible arm with a suction mount so that you can attach it to the bottom of your windshield. Second, there is an attachment that connects to your AC / heater vent.
I haven’t tried the vent attachment because the flexible arm works so well. The suction cup seems to have a strong hold. I’ve heard people complain about windsheield suction cups in general (not this specific device) because when the weather gets cold they can lose their grip. I haven’t had any cold weather in New Orleans to test this out, and I’ll update this post in the future if that ever is a problem for me. But this does seem to be a very secure connection. It is one of those suction cups where you place it on the windshield and then push down a lever to secure the connection. You lift the lever to remove the device.
I was also worried that the mount would get in the way of my area of vision for driving. To my surprise, it doesn’t interfere at all. It sits low enough that I have never found my view of the road impaired.
With the iPhone mounted in the AssistOne, you can easily see the iPhone screen for information such as a map (if you are using a GPS turn-by-turn program), see the album art for the song that is playing, etc. The part of the AssistOne that holds the iPhone can also rotate, which is helpful if you want to view your iPhone in landscape mode.
2. Charge the iPhone. The AssistOne comes with a cigarette lighter adaptor and a cord that connects to the bottom of the AssistOne. Thus, whenever your iPhone is in the AssistOne, it is being charged.
3. Auxiliary out port. There is an AUX out port on the bottom of the unit. You can attach a cord (not included) to that port and then connect to your car stereo. I don’t have an AUX in port on my car stereo, but I do have a cassette deck. (I’m suing this Sony model right now. It works fine and is inexpensive, which is good because in my experience you need to replace these cassette adapters every year or so.) I plug the cord from my cassette adapter into the bottom of the AssistOne. Thus, any music playing on my iPhone or other iPhone audio gets played through my car stereo.
4. Bluetooth. If you just look at the AssistOne, you’d probably guess that the audio goes from your iPhone to the AssistOne through the dock connector. But actually, the AssistOne connects to your iPhone via stereo Bluetooth (version 2.1 + EDR). I didn’t notice any loss of audio quality over Bluetooth, and using Bluetooth is pretty smart for a number of reasons. First, it means that if you get in your car with your iPhone playing music or a podcast just using the built-in speaker, simply tap the button at the bottom of the AssistOne to turn it on, and even if your iPhone is still in a pocket, it will start playing over your car stereo (assuming that you are using the AUX out port). For short trips where I’m not worried about charging my iPhone, I often just leave my iPhone in my front shirt pocket but still take advantage of the AssistOne. Neat trick.
5. Handsfree calls. A second reason that using Bluetooth is useful is that the AssistOne provides handsfree calling, and it does this very well. When your iPhone is docked in the AssistOne, if a call comes in you will hear your phone ring, and you can either tap that single button on the front of the AssistOne to answer the call or you can just say “answer” and the AssistOne will hear you and answer (or say “decline” and the AssistOne can do that too). The AssistOne includes an echo cancelling microphone so you can just talk normally while you are sitting in you car and the person on the other end of the line can hear you quite well. The quality seemed to me to be on par for a Bluetooth device, and I don’t mean for that to be a criticism. Everyone I talked to said that I sounded quite good. And the other person’s voice is routed through your car stereo (if you are using the AUX out) so you can hear them very well.
6. Voice activation. As I just mentioned, you can just say “answer” or “decline” and the AssistOne responds. This works because the AssistOne listens to you. If your iPhone isn’t already playing music, you can at any time just say “Launch Voice Control” and the Voice Control feature of the iPhone starts up. I’ve talked about Voice Control before and, for the most part, I consider it a mixed bag. Sometimes it does a great job of understanding me, other times not so much. Every time that I told the AssistOne to call my wife, it understood me perfectly and asked whether I wanted to call her cell, home, work, etc., and when I selected it put me right through. Great. But when I tried to use the AssistOne to ask it to start playing music from a particular artist, it was about 50-50 in guessing correctly what I said. (I suppose there is something to be said for serendipity; when it guessed wrong, it played another artist, often something good that I forgot was even on my iPhone.)
To be clear, I’m not blaming the AssistOne; the problem is just that voice control on the iPhone itself is not perfect. Note that if the iPhone is already playing music, a podcast, etc. through the AssistOne, the AssistOne doesn’t seem to hear you when you say “Launch Voice Control,” but you can always just launch Voice Control by pressing the button on the front of the AssistOne. The button is within easy reach so this is simple to do. Quite a few times over the last few weeks, the glare of the sun made it impossible to read my car’s clock, so I would just tap the button and say “What time is it” and my iPhone dutifully told me “The time is….” Very useful, and does make you feel just a little like you are Knight Rider.
7. Sound amplification. I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want to connect the AssistOne to your car stero using the AUX out port, but you don’t have to do so. The AssistOne includes a built-in speaker, so it amplifies sound. This is just mono so you probably won’t want to listen to music, but it does work fine for a podcast, an audiobook or if you are using an app to give voice turn-by-turn directions.
My experiences. I’ve been using the AssistOne for a few weeks now, both for short trips around town and for one long trip that I had last week. (I had to drive from New Orleans to Shreveport, LA and back — about 700 miles total — for a summary judgment hearing.) The AssistOne has worked great. When I start my car, I press the single button on the front of the AssistOne to turn it on. Then I pick something on my iPhone that I want to listen to, such as a playlist or a podcast (or for that long trip to Shreveport, the audiobook The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson). I press play on the iPhone, then place the iPhone into the AssistOne (because of Bluetooth, it starts playing through my car stereo even before I place it in the unit) and then I go on my way. You can tap the AssistOne button to launch Voice Control and say “pause” if you need to pause the audio. Whatever you are playing pauses automatically if a call comes in (or if you initiate a call) and then resumes when you are done. For that Shreveport trip, I also used MotionX GPS Drive (which I reviewed here) so that my iPhone could help me with navigation. It was nice to be able quickly glance at the iPhone and see how many miles I had left and my estimated time of arrival, what my next turn would be, the 3D map, etc.
I did notice one annoying thing when I was driving across the state in pockets with no AT&T coverage; with the iPhone in the AssistOne, I could hear some slight beeps and chirps as the phone was struggling to get a signal. You may have heard the same thing in the past when a phone that is struggling to get a signal is placed next to a speaker phone. When this was happening, sometimes my iPhone would actually tell me on the screen that it had lost the signal; other times it would claim that there was an Edge signal although I’m not so sure:
To solve the problem, I just removed the iPhone from the AssistOne and placed it in my shirt pocket. The audio continued to play via Bluetooth and with my iPhone away from the AssistOne speaker, the annoying noise went away. After a while I would just slip it back in the AssistOne so that it would be ready if I received a call. I am no expert on this, but my suspicion is that if the AssistOne used a shielded speaker, then this would not be a problem. Fortunately, this has never been a problem for in-city driving, it just happened those two or three times during my road trip.
Another small issue: I noticed that whenever the iPhone starts to play audio, it takes about a second for the Bluetooth to kick in. I don’t know if this is unique to the AssistOne or typical for any Bluetooth stereo device. Missing the first second (or maybe even half a second) of a song as music starts to play is no big deal. It only happens when you start, and then as your iPhone continues to play audio for additional songs, there is no problem. But for a GPS app providing voice turn by turn directions, the audio starts at the beginning of each direction and then stops when the direction is over, which means that you miss about a second at the beginning of every direction, which is annoying. If you are already playing audio through the iPhone, switching from the iPhone playing music to the iPhone giving a turn by turn direction works great, presumably because Bluetooth audio is already in use. Thus, I have decided that every time I use MoxtionX GPS Drive for directions, I always play a song, podcast or something at the same time just so that Bluetooth stereo is already in use when it is time to hear a direction.
The Kensington website has a special address — car1.kensington.com — that includes helpful videos for all of the Kensington car devices, including the AssistOne. There is a helpful video guide for initial setup of the AssistOne that is frankly a lot more useful than the included manual. There is also a promotional video that shows off the key features, and I’ll embed that one right here as it does a good job of showing you much of what I explained above:
Should you get it? Depending upon your car model, you may not need all of the features of the AssistOne. For example, a lot of new cars have Bluetooth handsfree calling built in, and some new cars already know how to work with an iPhone via Bluetooth, in which case all that you need is a simple iPhone mount. But if your car doesn’t already have Bluetooth, the Kensington AssistOne is a fantastic device that I think you will really enjoy using. It grips your iPhone in a convenient location, charges it, gives you handsfree calling, and plays music and other audio through your car stereo (although you need to add a cord to do so and a way to connect to your car). This is just about everything that you would want any iPhone car device to do. Beatweek Magazine posted a very short review of the AssistOne and called it a “a jack of all trades product which may finally solve all the tasks you’re likely to perform with your iPhone in your car.” I agree.
Having said that, I do miss one feature of the LiquidAUX that I had been using — that remote. I liked that if my iPhone was playing music in shuffle mode, if a song came up that I didn’t feel like listening to, I could just tap fast-forward to skip to the next song, plus it was nice to tap a button to play/pause. You can do all of this using handsfree voice navigation on the AssistOne, but talking isn’t as quick and convenient as tapping that button.
Nevertheless, the advantages of the AssistOne far outweigh that one feature that I miss from the LiquidAUX. If you are on the market for an iPhone car device and you don’t have a new car that already has Bluetooth or iPhone integration, I suspect that you will love the Kensington AssistOne as much as I do.
Click here for Kensington AssistOne from Amazon ($78.20; MSRP is $99.99).
When I talk with other iPhone users, we often discuss apps — the ones we use the most, new favorites, etc. People often ask me how many apps I have installed, and are often surprised that I can give them a precise answer very quickly. You can easily get statistics on your iPhone within the Settings app. Just go to General –> About and you will see lots of useful information on your iPhone, including the number of songs, videos, photos and apps installed and the version of the iOS that you have installed.
New York
