Apparently these have been around since July of 2010, but until recently I had not paid much attention to a section of the App Store called App Store Essentials. This is a part of the App Store that recommends apps in several different categories.
For example, the Apps Starter Kit section recommends 25 apps for the new iPhone owner looking to cover the basics. It is a pretty good list of apps:
Last week while I was on vacation, Apple was certainly busy. Most notably the iPad 2 was released on Friday, and I see from the e-mails that I received that many of you were lucky enough to get one. Congrats! I plan to get one soon, most likely the black 32 GB Wi-Fi model. My current iPad has 3G, but now that iOS 4.3 is out and the iPhone 4 on AT&T has a Personal Hotspot feature, I can just use my iPhone to provide 3G data to my iPad when I’m not in a Wi-Fi hotspot, so I don’t see a need to have 3G on the iPad 2 itself.
Speaking of iOS 4.3, Apple released it on March 9, 2011. There were many improvements, and the ones that struck me as most significant are the following:
Personal Hotspot. In the Settings App on an iPhone 4, if you go to General –> Network –> Personal Hotspot, you can now share the 3G data on your iPhone with other computers using Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or USB. If you have AT&T, this means that you need to change your rate plan to the DataPro 4GB plan that allows for tethering and which costs $45 a month. I had been using the $30 unlimited data plan so by changing to this plan I lose unlimited data, but in my experience I rarely go over 1GB of data a month so the 4GB plan should be more than enough even when I start sharing data with my iPad. And while I don’t plan to share much data with my laptop, it is nice to know that I can also do that in a pinch.
Wait and pause. When you assign a number to a contact, you can now add a wait within the number by pressing the “wait” button, which is displayed as a semicolon. This is useful if you have a voice mail system or a conference call where you need to wait before sending another string of numbers. There is also a “pause” button, which is displayed by a comma, if you just need a slight pause before more numbers are entered. This is a useful feature that I have wanted for a long time.
Safari speed. Safari is now faster thanks to the new Nitro JavaScript engine.
Side switch (iPad). On the iPad, you can now choose in Settings whether the side switch mutes the volume or locks the screen orientation. I find it easy enough to quickly mute the iPad by tapping the volume down button a few times so I have assigned the side switch to the screen rotation lock.
Password required for in-app purchases. In-app purchases now require a password, solving the problem that I noted in this post where a child might make purchases without you knowing about it.
Better security. Every iOS update brings security improvements, and this one does as well. Apple provided this list of what was improved.
Other minor changes. There is a new font in the Notes app called Noteworthy and which is more cursive. The expanded AirPlay feature allows Safari and third party apps to send video to another device such as an Apple TV.
If you want to learn more about all of the nitty gritty details of the changes in iOS 4.3, I recommend this post by Rene Ritchie of TiPb.
It’s Mardi Gras season right now in New Orleans. If you are here in New Orleans, I’m sure that you are enjoying the parades and good times with friends and family. If you are not in the Big Easy right now, well, you should be, and you ought to try to make up for it by coming in town for Jazz Fest next month.
Normally there wouldn’t be much connection between the iPhone and Mardi Gras, but the theme of one of the parades this past Saturday (the Krewe of Tucks) was “iTucks: What’s APPening,” as you can see from these pictures of the title float in the parade:
Many of the floats made fun of apps and most of the floats found a way to stick a small “i” at the start of various words. And if the theme itself didn’t do enough to emphasize the popularity of the iPhone/iPad and the App Store, the fact that this little fellow preferred playing with an iPhone over catching beads from floats speaks volumes:
Many businesses shut down for a few days during Mardi Gras and those people who don’t stay home to watch the parades often use this as an opportunity to take a vacation, so iPhone J.D. is taking a break this week. See you next week, and laissez les bons temps rouler!
Steve Jobs said on Wednesday that 2011 will be the year of the iPad 2. We’ll see whether that is true, but there is no question that this was the week of the iPad 2, evidenced by the bulk of the news items of note from this week:
Yesterday, I gave you my thoughts on why lawyers will like the iPad 2. Brett Burney shares his thoughts on the subject here.
Brendan McKenna is not as excited about the iPad 2 in this article for Law Technology News.
John Gruber of Daring Fireball wrote a fantastic analysis of the iPad 2 introduction.
Jeff Gamet of the Mac Observer notes that Apple is still selling the original iPad wit the prices dropped $100, so you can get the 16 GB Wi-Fi version for only $399.
Want to pay even less? You can get a refurbished iPad for as low as $349 directly from Apple. $349 for an iPad? Wow.
Did you buy an iPad after February 16, 2011? Bryane Wolfe of App Advice notes that you can get a $100 rebate from Apple.
The site iLawyerApps discusses LogMeIn Ignition, a $30 app that I use all the time on both my iPad and my iPhone.
A competitor to LogMeIn Ignition is GoToMyPC, and Tony Bradley of PC World has a review of the new GoToMyPC iPad app from Citrix. The app is free, but you need to have a $10 a month subscription to the GoToMyPC service.
Joshua Topolsky of Engadget wrote an interesting commentary on the Post-PC World, a concept that Steve Jobs discussed during the iPad 2 introduction.
Eric Slivka of MacRumors cites recent reports by Bloomberg and Reuters that Verizon will drop its unlimited data service this summer. AT&T used to offer an unlimited data service for the iPhone, but now only those grandfathered into an old plan can use it. That includes me, but I am thinking of switching to AT&T’s current 2GB/month plan. I’ve never used more than 2GB a month, and with that plan selected I can take advantage of the new Mobile Hot Spot feature in iOS 4.3 that is coming out in a few days, which means that I can just get the Wi-Fi version of the iPad 2 and piggy-back on my iPhone’s data plan. If any of you have been thinking about doing the same thing, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the subject.
The ABA TECHSHOW blog notes that there will be lots of opportunities to discuss the iPad at the upcoming conference next month. That is true, and there will be also lots of opportunities to discuss the iPhone as well.
Joel Johnson wrote an interesting article for Wired about the conditions at Foxconn, the massive manufacturing company in China that makes (among many other things) the iPhone.
Peter Cohen of The Loop notes that the developer of the Angry Birds app is very happy about Apple.
There is a good comparison of four different iPhone apps that you can use to take notes on the And Now It’s All This blog.
Divorce lawyer Paul Talbort writes on The Huffington Post about using spying on your spouse using their iPhone or BlackBerry.
Josh Barrett of Tablet Legal writes about apps that you can use for Word and Excel compatibility.
And finally, when Steve Jobs introduced the iPad 2 this past Wednesday, he also showed this video looking back on the uses for the original iPad over the previous year. Like many videos produced by Apple, it is incredibly well done, and may even provoke a tear or two. Worth watching:
Yesterday, Steve Jobs introduced the iPad 2, which will be available at the same price as the original iPad starting Friday, March 11 at 5pm. The original iPad sold 15 million units from April to December of 2010, and a lot of those sales went to lawyers. The iPad 2 will appeal to lawyers even more. If you want all of the nitty gritty details, check out the information and videos on the iPad 2 page on the Apple website and the article by Roman Loyola on Macworld. Or if you have an hour, you can watch the video of the entire presentation. In short, though, the iPad 2 is thinner, lighter, faster, has cameras, and works with a neat new cover sold by Apple. Here is what I think that this will mean for lawyers.
Easier to hold
Working with documents is essential to the practice of law, and I love storing all of my important documents on the iPad. But when I hold up my iPad for an extended period of time, it starts to feel somewhat heavy in my hand and I fear that it might slip out. This is the reason that products such as the FreeOneHand can be so useful for lawyers with the original iPad.
The iPad 2 has a different design than the original iPad. The original iPad has an edge on it (sort of like the iPhone 4). The iPad 2 has a back that curves up to meet the front so there is essentially no side at all, as you can see in this picture:
Also, the iPad 2 is 33% thinner than the original iPad (indeed, it is even thinner than the iPhone 4). It is also lighter than the original iPad (1.3 pounds instead of 1.5 pounds).
When I first saw those specs, I thought that they sounded good but was curious how much difference it would really make. But Steve Jobs emphasized yesterday that these seemingly small differences in design, thickness and weight work together and are significant. He said:
It’s dramatic. … When you get your hands on one, it feels totally different. … Going from 1.5 pounds to 1.3, and you might not think that is a lot, but when you get down to 1.5 pounds a tenth of a pound is a lot, and it feels quite a bit lighter.
I have read and listened to several reports by folks who were at the introduction yesterday and got a chance to handle the new iPad, and they all say that the iPad 2 really is much easier to hold. The curved design, the thinness and the reduced weight make holding the iPad a dramatically better experience. Jason Snell of Macworld remarked in a podcast yesterday that holding the iPad 2 feels almost like holding a magazine. After holding the original iPad for a while, my hand can feel like it is holding a large hard cover book. Having a case on the original iPad (or something like the FreeOneHand) can help, but the reports make me think that with the iPad 2 it will be much easier to get by without those extra contraptions.
Faster
The original iPad is usually pretty fast, but can sometimes lag in certain tasks. For example, whenever I am doing legal research, I like to download cases in PDF Format and then read and highlight them on my iPad using the GoodReader app and a stylus. Sometimes when I am highlighting a document, or marking up a PDF by drawing a circle or an arrow, there is just enough of a slight lag that it breaks the illusion that I am actually writing on a document.
But the new iPad 2 is, in the words of Steve Jobs, “dramatically faster.” It has a new chip inside called the A5 that has two processors instead of one, and a CPU that is up to twice as fast. Moreover, the graphics are up to nine times faster. According to those who handled the iPad 2 yesterday, these improvements make the iPad feel much more responsive. We’ll see when I get my hands on one, but I hope that this eliminates those slight lags that I see on my current iPad. And I understand that using the Safari browser to surf the Internet is much zippier on the iPad 2.
Cameras
The iPad 2 has a camera on the front and a camera on the back, just like the iPhone 4. The back camera on the iPad 2 is not as good as the camera on the iPhone 4, but I don’t see that as very important. I often use my iPhone 4 to take pictures, but I can’t see holding up something the size of a legal pad to take many photographs. On the other hand, the cameras let you use FaceTime on the iPad, which in my experience is a nice way to keep in touch with family when I have to travel on business. Having a bigger screen will make FaceTime more enjoyable.
Video out for presentations
The new iPad 2 can work with a $39 device that provides HDMI mirrored video output at up to 1080p and works with all apps and supports rotation. Apple has more information on this page. For lawyers, this means that you can use your iPad to give a presentation on a large TV screen and the audience can see whatever you see on your iPad.
According to a page on the online Apple Store, the new Apple Digital AV Adapter also work with the iPhone 4 and iPod touch (4th generation). (I’m not sure if it works with the original iPad.) So this should mean that you can even just use your iPhone to easily display a document, slide, etc. with other counsel or clients as long as you have access to a TV with an HDMI port. [UPDATE 3/4/11: Apparently, you can’t do as much with this adapter on an iPhone. Macworld reports: “However, when used with an iPhone, iPod touch, or original iPad, the adapter doesn’t support systemwide mirroring and is limited to displaying video from apps that explicitly support video output, such as the stock Photos and Video apps and the Netflix app. In addition, that video is limited to 720p resolution. (When used with an iPad 2, the adapter lets you mirror anything and everything, including the Home screen, and supports resolutions up to 1080p.)”]
Smart Covers
Apple (and many third party companies) made cases for the original iPad. But for the iPad 2, Apple decided that it wanted to come up with a way to protect the screen without adding as much thickness and weight. The result is what Apple calls the Smart Cover. It attaches to the iPad with magnets, covering the screen and automatically putting the iPad to sleep. It also folds up into a triangle that can prop up the iPad either slightly for typing or more for watching videos, doing FaceTime, etc. This short video does a great job of showing how it works:
The covers come in a polyurethane version in five colors for $39 each and a leather version in five colors for $69 each. I suspect that almost all iPad 2 owners will want to pick up one of these. Time will tell whether the Smart Cover makes other iPad cases obsolete, but it is great to have such a sleek option that adds so little size and weight to the iPad so that it will be even easier to carry the iPad 2 around.
Lawyers will love it
I’m just touching on the major features. The iPad 2 also has a lot of fun new features, such as the Photo Booth app (your kids will love it), and the (optional) new GarageBand and updated iMovie apps look really neat. The new three-axis gyroscope (just like the iPhone 4) will be useful for augmented reality apps. And while the original iPad only came in black, you can get either a black or white model of the iPad 2. In short, though, it looks like the iPad 2 will add a lot of useful features to a device that lawyers already love, and will address some of the few shortcomings of the original iPad.
I know a lot of lawyers who have been waiting for the next model to get their first iPad. Their time has come. I also suspect that a lot of lawyers who currently have an iPad will be gifting it to a spouse or other loved one to take advantage of the new features. I feel that I should note that John Gruber and Jim Dalrymple — two folks who tend to have very good sources and good insight on unreleased Apple products — have bothguessed that Apple will announce an iPad 3 (or perhaps the iPad 2 HD), a version of the iPad 2 with a retina display like we have on the iPhone 4, in September of this year to have a new model for the holiday buying season. Will this happen this year? Well, maybe we can read something into the statement on this slide that Jobs displayed yesterday: “2011: Year of iPad 2.” Perhaps that means that the iPad 2 is all that we will see this year and the third generation iPad won’t come out until 2012. We just don’t know.
Of course, you never know when the next great technology product will come out, and if you keep waiting for the next model, you’ll never get anything at all. One thing that is for sure: I am positive that many lawyers will soon be very happy owners of the new iPad 2. And I suspect that I will be one of them.
At 10:00 Pacific / 1:00 Eastern today, Apple will host an event in San Francisco at which the next version of the iPad will be announced. I suspect that Apple will also announce when iOS 4.3 will be available, and it is also likely that Apple will preview the next major revision of the iOS, perhaps called iOS 5.0. I doubt we will learn much about new iPhone hardware, but who knows.
If you want to follow the event live as it happens, I recommend the live blogs at the following locations:
If you want to watch the event yourself but are not a member of the press with an invitation, I suspect that tonight, Apple will also provide a video of the event on the Apple website.
I often find myself wanting to use my iPhone to find places that are close to my current location, such as nearby restaurants, banks, and parking lots. There are some ways to do it using the built-in apps on the iPhone, such as going to the Maps app, finding your current location, and then doing a search for “restaurants” but the list returned is limited. Localscope is a very useful app dedicated to finding places close to you by using several different tools at once: Google, Bing, Foursquare, Twitter and Wikimapia. I wasn’t aware of this $1.99 app until the developer sent me a free copy for review purposes, and after using it for a few weeks, I now find that it is the first app that I launch when I want to find places around me.
When you first launch the app, it uses the iPhone’s GPS to find your current location, which is displayed at the bottom of the screen in the form of a street address. You can modify that address by tapping the small arrow at the bottom left of the app to move the pin to any other location. Or you can enter a specific street address, which makes it possible to find what is near a location even if you are not currently in that location.
As a side benefit, whenever the pin is in a location, you can tap the circle at the bottom right to quickly share that location with someone else via a text message or e-mail or post your current location to Facebook or Twitter. (The app sends a Google Maps URL and shortens the URL using Bit.ly‘s j.mp service.)
Once the app knows where you are, you can tap on one of 35 different categories (restaurant, pub, gas station, hotel, hospital, police, post office, etc.) Or if those categories don’t cover your need, just type something else in the search bar. The main screen always lists items in the order in which you searched them, most recent searches at the top of the list, so if for example you mostly use this app to find restaurants, that choice will always be at or near the top.
Once your search term is entered, you get results from Google with key information such as the name, address, phone and distance from where you are now. I like viewing the results in a list view, but you can also tap the rectangle at the top right to change to a map view.
Tap on any result to get more information. For example, one field contains the phone number, which you can tap to quickly place a call. Or you can tap the URL to launch Safari and get information on the restaurant through a Google search.
If that was all the app did, it would be a great, clean interface for a Google search. But what I really like about this app is the ability to get a second opinion from other search engines. On the main search results screen, just slide at the bottom to run the same search in Bing or Foursquare. You will likely see results that are similar, but not identical, so it is a great way to double-check if something might have been missed on the first search on Google.
In my expereience, the Twitter searches were usually not that helpful, but Wikimapia was a good alternative place to search.
In addition to the list and map views noted above, you can also select an augmented reality view. In this view, your iPhone uses the camera on the back of the iPhone to show whatever is in front of you and superimposes on top of that image information on what is nearby, including how many places are to the left and how many are to the right. I didn’t get a good image of this on my iPhone, but here is an image from the developer’s website to give you a sense of how it works:
The app also has some advanced features that I haven’t tried. It integrates with the Facebook app on the iPhone, but I am not the sort of person who posts this sort of information on Facebook. It also integrates with the TomTom navigation app if you use that one, which I can see being very useful. And if you find a location and start walking (or, I suppose, driving) towards it, a compass will update in real time to point you in the right direction and tell you how far you have left to go.
The above screen shots give you a sense of the results that you can get by running a search, but what they don’t show you is how fast this app works. This app is without question the fastest method that I currently have on my iPhone for figuring out what is around me, and the two primary reasons that I really like this app are its speed and the well-designed interface.
If you ever want to use your iPhone to figure out what is around you, this app is easily worth $2. Localscope is a great, useful app.
