I've been thinking about all of the new features coming to the iPhone when iOS 5 is released later this year, and the more I do so the more I really look forward to the update. Features like iCloud have the potential to fundamentally change the way that we work with our iPhones, plus the update will provide numerous small improvements and fixes that will make the overall experience of using an iPhone much, much better. Here are the news items of note from the past week:
- Speaking of iCloud, New York attorney Niki Black discusses a proposed North Carolina bar opinion restricting cloud computing.
- Virginia attorney Rob Dean shares his initial thoughts on iCloud on his WalkingOffice site.
- It has been 10 years since Apple opened the first Apple Store, and Apple prepared an interesting poster regarding the perspective gained during those 10 years. Gary Allen has details on his ifoAppleStore site.
- Attorney Bill Latham of The Hytech Lawyer discusses apps for taking handwritten notes on an iPad.
- Bob Tedeschi of the New York Times reviews apps that help you order sushi.
- Roy Furchgott of the New York Times reviews the JBL On Air Wireless AirPlay Speaker Dock, a speaker that can play music from an iPhone or iPad without you having to dock the device.
- Evan Anderson, a law student working as a law clerk, wrote me to say that he was looking for a good iPhone app to use to track his hours. Obviously there are many choices in the App Store (I surveyed the field two years ago, and the choices have exploded since then), but Anderson said that he really likes HoursTracker. Click here for HoursTracker ($2.99):
- Leander Kahney writes that two iPhone 4s will be loaded on the last Space Shuttle mission to go to the International Space Station. Finally, I can stop drinking Tang and eating freeze-dried ice cream just to feel like an astronaut.
- This talk of astronauts reminds me of my fascination of space when I was a child, and also reminds me of this recent tweet that I saw by Matt Watson: "I kind of miss when a built-in crayon sharpener was the most amazing technology in the world." Funny.
- And finally, WWDC wasn't the only presentation by Steve Jobs this week. He also gave a presentation to the Cupertino City Council on a proposed new building for Apple employees. The building itself is very impressive — a huge circle, larger than the Pentagon, on a site with tons of green space — but even more impressive was the presentation by Jobs. New Orleans attorney Ernie "the Attorney" Svenson wrote a good post on why the presentation serves as a master class in persuasiveness and is worth watching for any attorney. Here is the video:
