Month: September 2012

Apple will announce the next version of the iPhone tomorrow, which may be called the iPhone 5.  Only Apple knows what features the new iPhone will have, but my hope is that it will include access to the fast 4G LTE network in addition to the 3G network supported by current iPhones.  Earlier this year, Apple added 4G LTE to the iPad, so it makes sense to me that this feature will be extended to the iPhone tomorrow.  Additionally, the Wall Street Journal has reported that the new iPhone will include 4G LTE, and their reporters typically have good sources for Apple information.

We’ll have to see how fast 4G LTE on the new iPhone will be, but on other smartphones 4G LTE can be up to ten times faster than 3G, so this feature on the new iPhone should make it considerably faster to surf the web, download music, stream video, etc. even when Wi-Fi is not available.  If you are at your home, office, etc. where Wi-Fi is available, Wi-Fi will typically be about twice as fast as 4G LTE, but this can vary based on many circumstances so there will be times when 4G LTE is actually faster than Wi-Fi.

But even if the new iPhone supports 4G LTE, is 4G LTE available where you live?  The answer varies based upon the carrier that you use.  Here in the U.S., the iPhone is available on three carriers, and they all offer 4G LTE, but not in all cities.

AT&T currently has 4G LTE in 60 markets:

1. Akron, OH
2. Anchorage, AK
3. Athens, GA
4. Atlanta, GA
5. Autin, TX
6. Bakersifield, CA
7. Baltimore, MD
8. Baton Rouge, LA
9. Bloomington, IN
10. Boston, MA
11. Bridgeport, CT
12. Buffalo, NY
13. Burlington, NC
14. Byan-College Station, TX
15. Canton, OH
16. Chapel Hill, NC
17. Charlotte, NC
18. Chicago, IL
19. Cleveland, OH
20. Corpus Christi, TX
21. Dallas-Fort Worth, TX
22. Fayettevile-Springsdale-Rogers, AR
23. Fort Lauderdale, FL
24. Gainesville, GA
25. Greensboro-Winston-Salem, NC
26. Houston, TX
27. Indianapolis, IN
28. Jacksonville, FL
29. Kansas City, MO
30. Lafayette, IN
31. Las Vegas, NV
32. Lawrenceburg, TN
33. Los Angeles, CA
34. Miami, FL
35. Modesto, CA
36. Muncie, IN
37. Naples, FL
38. Nashville, TN
39. New Orleans, LA  [yeah for me!]
40. New York, NY
41. Oakland, CA
42. Oklahoma City, OK
43. Omaha, NE
44. Orlando, FL
45. Phoenix, AZ
46. Raleigh-Durham, NC
47. San Antonio, TX
48. San Diego, CA
49. San Francisco, CA
50. San Jose, CA
51. San Juan, Puerto Rico
52. Sarasota-Bradenton, FL
53. St. Louis, MO
54. Syracuse, NY
55. Tampa-St. Petersburg, FL
56. Waco TX
57. Washington, DC
58. West Palm Beach, FL
59. Wichita, KA
60. Worcester, MA

AT&T will add 4G LTE to the following cities by the end of 2012:

1. Albany, NY
2. Albuquerque, NM
3. Allentown, PA
4. Birmingham, AL
5. Boise, ID
6. Boulder, CO
7. Cincinnati, OH
8. Charleston, SC
9. Columbia, SC
10. Columbus, OH
11. Denver, CO
12. Detroit, MI
13. El Paso, TX
14. Fayetteville, NC
15. Fort Myers, FL
16. Gary, IN
17. Grand Rapids, MI
18. Green Bay, WI
19. Harrisburg, PA
20. Hartford, CT
21. Honolulu, HI
22. Knoxville, TN
23. Lancaster, PA
24. Little Rock, AR
25. Louisville, KY
26. Memphis, TN
27. Milwaukee, WI
28. Minneapolis-Saint Paul, MN
29. Nashua, NH
30. New Haven, CT
31. Philadelphia, PA
32. Pittsburgh, PA
33. Portland, ME
34. Providence, RI
35. Reading, PA
36. Rochester, NY
37. Sacramento, CA
38. Salinas-Seaside-Monterey, CA
39. Seattle, WA
40. Springfield, MA
41. Toledo, OH
42. Tucson, AZ
43. Tulsa, OK
44. Wilkes-Barre, PA
45. Wilmington, DE

Verizon has a much larger 4G LTE coverage with 371 cities.  That’s too many markets to list here, but here is a map from the Verizon website with red dots on the cities that have 4G LTE, and you can click here to check the Verizon website to determine your city is on the list.

If you use an iPhone with Sprint, 4G LTE coverage is currently available in these 18 cities:

1. Atlanta, GA
2. Athens, GA
3. Baltimore, MD
4. Calhoun, GA
5. Carrollton, GA
6. Dallas-Fort Worth, TX
7. Gainesville, GA
8. Granbury-Hood County, TX
9. Houston, TX
10. Huntsville, TX
11. Kansas City, MO / Kansas City, KS
12. Manhattan-Junction City, KS
13. Newnan, GA
14. Rome, GA
15. San Antonio, TX
16. Sedalia, MO
17. St. Joseph, MO
    
18. Waco, TX
    

Sprint says that in the “coming months” (who knows if that means before the end of 2012 or not) 4G LTE will come to 100 additional cities.  Click here for a page on the Sprint website that lists those cities.

There was no In the news last week because my house had no electricity due to Hurricane Isaac, so in today’s issue I’m pointing out some interesting articles I’ve seen over the last two weeks.  Of course, the biggest news right now is that in just a few days, on September 12, Apple is going to announce the new iPhone, and presumably will also release iOS 6.  As we wait to learn more about that big news, here are the other news items of note:

• Rocket Matter is a cloud-based legal billing and law practice management solution for small and medium larger firms, and I know many attorneys who use and love the service.  This week, Rocket Matter announced a new iPhone app, so attorneys who use the service while on-the-go no longer need to use a more cumbersome web-based interface.  The app looks really nice.
• San Francisco attorney Deanne Katz of FindLaw recommends external keyboards for the iPad.  My favorite combination is the Apple Wireless Keyboard with the Incase Origami Workstation.
• Saul Elbein of the New York Times reports that Paris, Texas Judge Bill Harris decided a complicated and controversial oil pipeline condemnation suit by sending a 15-word ruling from his iPhone.
• California attorney Morgan Smith explains his verdict calculator for iPad and gives you a link so that you can download it yourself.  It requires Apple’s Numbers app.
• iOS 6 will have a lot of great new features for iPhones and iPads when it comes out (presumably next week).  One change is that the Maps app will no longer use information from Google Maps and instead will use Apple’s own map information.  This means that we will no longer have Google Street View, but we will have Flyover, which uses detailed 3D models.  Daniel Eran Dilger of RoughlyDrafted Magazine has a great explanation of what will be new in Maps.
• David Pogue of the New York Times recommends apps that let your iPhone act like a walkie talkie to send quick voice messages to another person instead of text messages.
• Joe Kissell of Macworld recommends apps to edit Microsoft Excel files on the iPad.  I usually use Appple’s Numbers app to do this.
• Dan Miller of Macworld discusses three cloud-based solutions for running Microsoft Office on an iPad.
• Jeff Gamet of The Mac Observer reports that Delta Airlines is providing 4,500 iPads to airport restaurants so that diners can order meals using the iPads, and then use them to check news, weather, etc.  I’d much rather use my own iPad when I travel, but I’ll be interested to see what becomes of this.
• Speaking of flying, I wish that I could use my iPhone or iPad during takeoff and lasting — not to talk on the phone, but just to use the device.  Todd Shields of Bloomberg reports that the FAA is now studying letting people do that.
• Reporter Harry McCracken of Time explains whey the iPad is his favorite computer and what he uses to do most of his work.
• Katherine Boehret of the Wall Street Journal / All Things D has a good list of iPhone tips and tricks.
• TeleNav, a company which provides GPS navigation software, conducted a national survey and learned that 83% of iPhone users believe that other iPhone users make the best romantic partners, and 33% of respondents would rather give up sex for a week than give up their mobile phone.
• If you are around my age, then chances are you remember using an Atari 2600 in the early 1980s, and you know that some of the best games were made by Activision — the first third-party publisher of video games for consoles.  Last week, Activation released a free app called Activision Anthology that lets you play some of those great 2600 games on an iPhone or iPad.  You need to buy the classic games (like Pitfall) in the app, but it comes with one free game, and it was one of my favorite games when I was a kid:  Kaboom!  Using a finger to play the game doesn’t seem right — that game was the best ever use of a paddle controller — but it is fun to see the sights and sounds of a great game from 1981.  (I wonder what ever happened to my Activision Bucket Brigade patch?)  Click here for Activision Anthology (free): 

  

• And finally, while you are playing those video games from the early 1980s, why not also blow the dust off the box containing your old cassette tapes and convert them to MP3 files that your iPhone can play?  Later this month, Hammacher Schlemer will start selling the Cassette to iPod Convertor, an $80 device that turns your iPhone or iPod touch into a cassette player and recorder.  I think I still have some cassette tapes stuffed into a box somewhere around here, but I can only imagine how disappointing the sound quality would be if I tried to play them today.  You may make better use of your $80 by just purchasing those songs from iTunes.  Nevertheless, this device does look amusing:

Yesterday, Apple announced that it will make an announcement on September 12th.  Apple didn’t actually say what the announcement is for — the invitation to select journalists simply states “It’s almost here” —  but we all know that it will be the new iPhone.  The invitation includes this picture:

The “12” surely corresponds to September 12, and the shadow shows the number five.  That could simply refer to the fifth anniversary of the iPhone (which debuted in 2007), but I think it more likely means that the next iPhone will be called the iPhone 5.

We’ll find out next week what the new iPhone will include, but Macworld has a good summary of the current best guesses, including fast LTE connectivity, a bigger 16×9 display, a smaller dock connector, and an improved camera.

The announcement will occur at 10 Pacific / 1 Eastern on September 12 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco.

Thanks to all of you who sent kind notes over the last week.  Hurricane Isaac was “only” a Category 1, but it was slow-moving and packed a real punch for the City of New Orleans and especially for some surrounding areas such as Braithwaite.  Being without power for four or more days caused all sorts of issues, but fortunately most of New Orleans now has electricity again.  I did learn every trick there is for squeezing the most battery life out of an iPhone while you are simultaneously making extensive use of it to get news and to communicate using an overloaded 3G network  — multiple backup batteries, brightness turned way down, shutting down the phone between uses, etc.

Now it is time to get back to work.  Give me a few days to catch up and I’ll get iPhone J.D. running again.