Yesterday, at the Gugenheim Museum in New York City, Apple announced a new version of its iBooks app that supports enhanced, interactive textbooks, and also announced software to create these cool e-books. For now, the focus is on education, the idea being that instead of students carrying tons of heavy books that get outdated, they carry one iPad with textbooks that are updated and more engaging. I'm reminded of my science textbook when I was in First Grade at St. Edward's in 1975 that opened with a picture of the moon and the statement that "someday, man will walk on the moon." Time will tell what impact this has on schools, but as a member of a profession that does a heck of a lot of reading and writing, I'm intrigued to see the future of iBooks beyond the education field. If you want to learn more, Macworld has comprehensive coverage of yesterday's announcement. As for the rest of the news of note from the past week:
- Virginia attorney Rob Dean reviews Notability, an app for taking notes.
- South Carolina attorney Bill Latham provides some basic, but nevertheless very helpful, iPad tips useful to lawyers (and others).
- Massachusetts lawyer Robert Ambrogi reviews iProBono, an app that helps Arkansas attorneys sign-up for pro bono cases.
- Litigation consultant Ted Brooks reviews iJury, an app to assist with voir dire.
- South Carolina attorney Justin Kahn mentions an update to the WestlawNext app for the iPad; now you can share folders with others.
- Charles Starrett of iLounge reports that Apple has joined the Fair Labor Association and is seeking to improve working conditions at manufacturing facilities in countries like China that assemble Apple hardware such as the iPhone and iPad.
-
John Brownlee of Cult of Mac reports on iConvert, a product sold at Brookstone (shown at the right) that converts your iPad into a scanner.
- Jim Dalrymple of The Loop reports on a new survey from IDG Connect that shows that shows an increasing use of iPads by business professionals.
- Daniel Eran Dilger of AppleInsider reports on a new study from security firm Check Point that surveyed thousands of IT professionals and concluded that the iPhone is overtaking the BlackBerry in popularity, while Android is considered the "most risky" mobile platform.
- Similarly, Brad Reed of Network World reports that the iPhone 4S sold very well in November and December, according to the latest data from Nielsen, while BlackBerry market share continues to decline.
- Matt Brian of The Next Web reports that Japanese car manufacturer Nissan is launching an iPhone case that uses special paint (already used on Nissan cars) that will allow the case to repair itself if it gets scratched.
- I reviewed the Camera+ iPhone app back in August of 2010 when it added what was at the time a unique feature — the ability to press the iPhone's volume button to take a picture. Apple wasn't thrilled about an app developer using the hardware button this way, so the app was removed from the App Store for a while and then allowed to return when the feature was removed. Of course, Apple itself added this feature to its own Camera app when iOS 5 was released in October of 2011. I mention Camera+ today because even though the app only costs a buck (it used to cost $2), the developer recently revealed that it has earned $5,125,844 to date, and that is after Apple takes its 30% cut of the sale price. It just goes to show you that with a good product (and some good luck), an iPhone app developer can do quite well.
- Attorneys love the Dropbox service, especially on the iPhone and iPad, and Jessica Guynn of the Los Angeles Times interviewed Drew Houston, the developer of Dropbox, and wrote this interesting article.
- A man in the front row at a performance of the New York Philharmonic had a brand new iPhone in his pocket. He had the mute switch enabled, but for some reason an alarm had been set on his iPhone and it went off during the performance — causing the conductor to halt the performance. This resulted in a flurry of stories from sources such as The New York Times and editorials from people like John Gruber, Andy Ihnatko and Calfornia attorney David Sparks. Those are all good reads, but the morale of the story is: remember that just becuase your iPhone is in "mute" mode, it can still make noise. For example, an alarm will still sound — good if you are using your iPhone to wake up in the morning and forgot that the mute switch was on, bad if you are in court.
- That reminds me of an embarrassing situation that I once created with my iPad during a meeting, and hopefully you can learn from my mistake. I was typing notes on my iPad during a conference using the Apple external Bluetooth keyboard, and apparently I hit the F8/play button without realizing it. That triggered the Music app to resume playback, and caused a song that I had been listening to on my iPad earlier that morning start to play again, causing quite a few people around me to stare and wonder I was disrupting the meeting by playing music. Oops. That experience led me to remove all music from my iPad so that it would never happen again. (I use my iPhone to listen to music, not my iPad.)
- And finally, if you are going to make noise with your iPhone, why not go all the way? At this year's CES convention, Behringer introduced a $29,999 product called the iNuke Boom, a REALLY REALLY BIG speaker for the iPhone. Click here for the story from Buster Heine of Cult of Mac, although perhaps the picture from that story really says it all:
