In the news

Today is the day that the iPhone 4S goes on sale.  There are already lines outside of many stores.  For example, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak tweeted last night that he was first in line at the Los Gatos, CA Apple Store:  “The long wait begins. I’m first in line. The guy ahead was on the wrong side and he’s pissed.”  (My guess is that anyone who gets to be second in line behind Steve Wozniak won’t mind it too much.)  And if you pre-ordered your iPhone 4S, it should be arriving at your house today.  (As of the last UPS update last night, mine was on a plane from Dallas to New Orleans.)  There was so much iPhone and iPad-related news this week that I couldn’t possibly keep track of every notable story, but here are a few that you might have missed:

• In addition to being iPhone 4S Day, somebody designated today Steve Jobs Day and there are meet ups around the world — from Atlanta, GA to St. Petersburg, Russia — where people will wear Levi’s 501 jeans, a black mock turtleneck and New Balance sneakers.  One couple is even celebrating the day by getting married in an Apple Store today.
• If you want to know the story behind why Steve Jobs in recent years always wore the jeans and mock turtleneck, Ryan Tate of Gawker has the explanation courtesy of an excerpt from Walter Isaacson’s upcoming biography of Steve Jobs.  (It goes on sale October 24th.)
• Attorney Jeremy Horwitz of iLounge reviews the iPad versions of four magazines (Businessweek, Fortune, Time, Wired) with special editions devoted to Steve Jobs.
• Adam Satariano, Peter Burrows and Brad Stone of Businessweek profile Scott Forstall, the Apple executive in charge of the iPhone who has worked with Steve Jobs for 20 years.
• Have you had a chance to update your iPhone and iPad to iOS 5 yet?  I am really enjoying all of the new features.  Chris Herbert of Macstories posted a good set of iOS 5 tips, tricks and hidden features.
• California attorney David Sparks pointed out some small, but appreciated, features of iOS 5.
• One iOS 5 feature that I am still getting my arms around is iCloud, the feature that makes it easy to sync between devices.  David Pogue of the New York Times has a good explanation of iCloud.  
• One feature of iCloud that I find problematic is that if you have Photo Stream turned on, every photo you take from your iPhone is automatically and instantly streamed to your iPad and your computer.  Georgia of TiPb warns that this could be embarrassing if you take intimate pictures with your iPhone.  While I don’t foresee that being a problem for me, I do hate the fact that you can’t remove a picture from Photo Stream.  So if I take five pictures before I decide on the one that I want to keep, I can delete the four bad ones from my iPhone but all five of them are already synced to my iPad and computer and I cannot remove the four bad photos from the Photo Stream.  Thus, for now, I have Photo Stream turned off, and I hope that Apple refines the Photo Stream feature in a future iCloud update.
• Apple’s iPhone and iPad apps Pages, Numbers and Keynote have been updated to add iCloud support and other new features. Leanna Lofte of TiPB explains what is new.
• If you want an alternative service for storing documents in the cloud, Christian Zibreg of 9to5Mac reports that, starting today at Noon and for a limited time, Box.net will let anyone using its iPhone app get 50GB of storage for free.  (50GB of storage on iCloud costs $100 a year.)
• Customers are clearly excited for the new iPhone 4S given the record pre-orders, but some members of the press looking to add the drama of a controversy to their stories are suggesting that the iPhone 4S is somehow a disappointment just because Apple kept the same (fantastic) exterior and only changed the interior.  Attorney John Kheit exposes the flaw in this argument in an article for The Mac Observer.
• On a related note, Harry McCracken describes what was new with each generation of the iPhone.  Comparing the iPhone 4S to the original iPhone, it is amazing how much the product has been improved since 2007.  Makes you wonder what the 2015 version of the iPhone will be able to do.
• If you want to get a close look at everything that is new inside of the iPhone 4S, iFixIt has done another one of their famous teardowns where they disassemble a product and then photograph and explain each of the components.
• Kentucky attorney Finis Price just started a new blog devoted to iPad apps for lawyers called iPad ESQ.  He already has two good reviews posted.
• Have you had trouble using the federal court PACER system from an iPhone or iPad?  There is now a version of the PACER website that is specially-formatted for mobile devices, and it works with all district, bankruptcy and appellate courts.  You can access it here.  Unfortunately, this is just a case locator, and once you find the right case, you are often switched to the regular PACER site, which doesn’t have full iPad and iPhone compatibility.  However, you can get it to work in a pinch, and I understand that upcoming versions of the PACER website software will add more support for mobile devices.
• Catherine Dunn of Corporate Counsel magazine has an article about Daniel Cooperman, the former General Counsel of Apple.  Cooperman retired two years ago and was replaced by Bruce Sewell.
• How many tablets are being used that are not iPads?  Chris Rawson of TUAW writes about a new comScore report that finds that the iPad accounts for 97.2% of tablet internet use in the U.S.  Wow.
• David Walker of photography website PDN wrote an interesting article on how difficult it was to photograph Steve Jobs, including the story of the famous 2006 photograph by Albert Watson that Walter Isaacson selected for this cover of his upcoming biography.
• And finally, Bashir Sultan is a artist who sketches using salt.  He displays videos of his fascinating process on his website Art With Salt, and his version of that famous Albert Watson photograph of Steve Jobs is really amazing.  Watch this: