Month: October 2012

I ordered an iPad mini so that I could see how it might be used in a law practice and compare it to the iPhone and the iPad.  It is due to arrive on Friday, so you can imagine my surprise when I received a small package from Apple yesterday.  When I opened it I saw my very own iPad mini … Smart Cover.  Oh well. 

As I await the iPad mini, this Smart Cover gives me a preview of the size of the iPad mini, plus it was interesting to see what has changed from the Smart Cover for the iPad.  Here is what it looks like in the box:

As I held the iPad mini Smart Cover in my hand, I started to get a sense of the size of the iPad mini, and I have to admit that I really liked it.  It reminds me of a small 5″ x 8″ legal pad that you might use to take notes in your office.  (The iPad mini is 5.3″ x 7.87″ according to Apple.)  If a size can be “friendly” this is it.  Indeed, when my wife saw me holding it, she immediately said:  “That’s cute.  I want one too.”  She may have only been half-joking.  Placing the iPad mini Smart Cover on top of my iPad with Smart Cover gives you a sense of the difference in size:

In fact, I noticed that you can even attach the iPad mini Smart Cover to an iPad.  Of course it doesn’t cover much, and thus appears to be somewhat risqué:

The back of the iPad mini Smart Cover has a microfiber lining to help keep you screen clean, just like the iPad Smart Cover.  Unlike the iPad Smart Cover, the iPad mini Smart Cover doesn’t come in leather and only comes in polyurethane.  It comes in six colors:  dark gray (what I purchased), gray, pink, green and blue.

Another difference between the model for the iPad mini and the model for the iPad is the lack of the metal hinge.  The metal hinge generally works well for me on my iPad Smart Cover, but every once in a while it won’t catch the right way and I need to adjust it to get the right connection.  If you have an iPad and a Smart Cover, you probably know what I am talking about.  But the iPad mini Smart Cover has a hinge that is part of the fabric itself so it should do a better job of connecting.  And I like the way that it looks wrapped around the side of the iPad, so I imagine it will look very nice around the iPad mini:

Select members of the press were given an iPad mini to review last week, and the reviews were posted last night.  All of them are pretty glowing, but this paragraph from the review by Scott Stein of CNet struck me as I contemplated the new size:

What’s unique about the Mini? Without a doubt, it’s the design. It’s
cute, it’s discreet, and it’s very, very light. It feels like a whole
new device for Apple. It’s light enough to hold in one hand, something
the iPad was never really able to achieve for extended periods of time.
It’s bedroom-cozy. Other full-fledged 7-inch tablets feel heavier and
bulging by comparison. This is a new standard for little-tablet design.
It makes the iPad feel fresh. After a week of using the iPad Mini, it
seems to find a way to follow me everywhere. It’s extremely addicting,
and fun to use.

The size of the iPad mini Smart Cover is starting to get me excited
about the size of the iPad mini itself.  Of course I knew that it would
be smaller, but now I’m starting to think about what that actually
means, how I might find myself using an iPad mini in ways that I would
never use an iPad.

As for the Smart Cover itself, this is only “sort of” a review because I have not yet had the opportunity to try it with the iPad mini itself.  Nevertheless, it looks like another fine Apple product that will become an essential part of using the iPad mini.

Click here to get the iPad mini Smart Cover from Apple ($39.99).

On October 25, Apple released the results for its 2012 fiscal fourth
quarter (which ran from July 1, 2012 to September 29, 2012) and held a
call with analysts to discuss the results.  This is typically a transitional quarter for Apple considering that so many sales take place in the October to December quarter that contains holiday sales.  Even so, this was Apple’s best fiscal fourth quarter ever, with revenue of $36 billion and net profit of $8.2 billion.  If you want to get all of the nitty gritty
details, you can download the audio from the announcement conference
call from iTunes, or you can read a rough transcript of the call prepared by Seeking Alpha.  Apple’s official press release is here.  As always, however, I’m not as concerned about the financial details as I
am the statements of Apple executivies during the call that are of interest to iPhone and iPad users.  Here are the items that stood out to me:

• Apple sold 26.9 million iPhones last quarter, the most that Apple has ever sold in a fiscal fourth quarter.  By my count, that means that as of September 29, 2012, Apple had sold over 267 million iPhones.
• Apple sold 14 million iPads last quarter, the most that Apple has ever sold in a fiscal fourth quarter.  By my count, that means that as of September 29, 2012, Apple had sold just over 98 million iPads.  Apple CEO Tim Cook announced on October 23, 2012 (the event at which the iPad mini was announced) that as of that date Apple had sold over 100 million iPads.
• Almost all of the Fortune 500 companies are
  
  using or testing the iPad.  Over 80% of the Global 500 are using the
  
  iPhone and iPad.
• There are over 700,000 apps in the App Store, and 275,000 of them are designed for the iPad.
• Apple continues to think that there is a potential to sell many more iPads.  Tim Cook stated:  “We continue to be very confident that the tablet market will surpass the
  
  PC market.  There is incredible development in both ecosystems and
  
  product going on in the tablet space.  It is already extremely compelling
  
  for many, many customers to choose the tablet, in particular an iPad,
  
  over PC.  And when you look at the size of the PC market, there is an
  
  enormous opportunity for Apple there.  Pretty much each quarter you see 80
  
  to 90 million PCs being sold.  And so, we do think that the iPad and the iPad Mini and the iPad 2 will all
  
  be extremely attractive offerings for people in lieu of PCs, and we are
  
  going to continue to be very much focused on the future of iPad, and we are
  
  very, very confident with what we have in the pipeline. And we are
  
  extremely pleased to have launched iPad mini and can’t wait until next
  
  Friday, when we begin selling the very first unit.”
• Microsoft launched its own tablet computer this week, the Surface.  When asked to comment on it, Tom Cook said:  “I haven’t personally played with the Surface yet, but what we are reading
  
  about it is that it’s a fairly compromised, confusing product.  And so I
  
  think one of the toughest things you do with deciding which products is
  
  to make hard trade offs and decide what a product should be, and we’ve really
  
  done that with the iPad and so, the user experience is absolutely
  
  incredible.  I suppose you could design a car that flies and floats, but I
  
  don’t think it would do all of those things very well, and so I think
  
  people, when they look at the iPad versus competitive offerings, are going
  
  to conclude they really want an iPad and I think people have done that
  
  to-date and I think they will continue to do that.”
• When asked about the $329 introduction price of the iPad mini and why it wasn’t even cheaper, Apple’s CFO Peter Oppenheimer stated:  “When we set out to build the iPad Mini, we didn’t set out to build a small cheap tablet.  We set out to build a smaller iPad that offers the full iPad experience as our customers would expect.  As a result, the difference between the iPad Mini and the competition is profound. Our iPad Mini begins with a 7.9 inch display, which is 35% larger than 7 inch tablets, providing a much better experience.  We are shipping two great cameras, FaceTime HD front, and a 5 megapixel 1080p iSight rear camera, versus typically one from our competition.  We are shipping our fastest communications with dual-band Wi-Fi and it included the A5 chip, which has higher performance than our competitors.  And finally, the fit and finish of our precision, unibody aluminum closure is breathtaking when held in your hands.  And so that’s what we’ve done.  The iPad mini has higher costs, and the gross margin is significantly below our corperate average.  We are beginning at the height of the cost curve, but in addition to wanting to make a large number, we are going to work to try and get down the cost curves and be more efficient in manufacturing as we have been in the past with our other products.”  Tim Cook then stated:  “One of the things we try to do is to create a product that people will
  
  love for months, years after they purchase it and continue using it in
  
  a robust way.  So that’s what iPad Mini has been designed to do.  And you
  
  can really see that more broadly on iPad by looking at the usage
  
  statistics.  As I had mentioned earlier this week, over 90% of the web
  
  traffic from tablets are from iPad.  And so Apple will not make a
  
  product that somebody may feel good about it for the moment that they’re
  
  paying for it and then when they get it home they are really never using again.  That’s
  
  not what we’re about.  It’s not a kind of experience we want our
  
  customers to have.  And I think when you – I would encourage you to use
  
  an iPad Mini and I don’t think you’ll be using anything other than maybe
  
  another iPad or something after you do that.”
• One of the first things I thought about when the iPad mini was announced was a comment that Steve Jobs made two years ago when Apple announced the results for the 2012 fiscal fourth quarter.  He talked about a 7-inch tablet extensively, and said that it was a bad idea because the screen is too small.  He joked that someone would have to use sandpaper to make their fingers smaller to use a 7-inch display, and that 10-inch was the “minimum” size for a great tablet.  I still have a recording of that conference call, and here is what Steve Jobs said two years ago:

“I’d like to comment on the avalanche of tablets poised to enter the market in the coming months.  First, it appears to be just a handful of credible entrants, not exactly an avalanche.  Second, almost all of them use 7-inch screens as compared to iPad’s near 10-inch screen.  Let’s start there.  One naturally thinks that a 7-inch screen would offer 70% of the benefits of a 10-inch screen.  Unfortunately, this is far from the truth.  The screen measurements are diagonal, so that a 7-inch screen is only 45% as large as iPad’s 10-inch screen.  You heard me right.  Just 45% as large  If you take an iPad and hold it upright in portrait view and draw an imaginary horizontal line halfway down the screen, the screens on the 7-inch tablets are a bit smaller than the bottom half of the iPad display.  This size isn’t sufficient to create great tablet apps in our opinion.  While one could increase the resolution of the display to make up for some of the difference, it is meaningless unless your tablet also includes sandpaper, so that the user can sand down their fingers to around one quarter of their present size.  Apple’s done extensive user-testing on touch interfaces over many years, and we really understand this stuff.  There are clear limits of how close you can physically place elements on a touch screen before users cannot reliably tap, flick or pinch them.  This is one of the key reasons, we think, the 10-inch screen size is the minimum size required to create great tablet apps.

*    *    *

The reason we wouldn’t make a 7-inch tablet isn’t because we don’t want to hit a price point, it’s because we don’t think you can make a great tablet with a 7-inch screen.  We think it’s too small to express the software that people want to put on these things.  And we think, as a software driven company, we think about the software strategies first.  And we know that software developers, they’re not going to deal real well with all these different size products when they have to redo their software every time a screen size changes.  And they’re not going to deal well with products where they can’t put enough elements on the screen to build the kind of apps they want to build.  So when we make decisions on 7-inch tablets, it’s not about cost, it’s about the value of the product when you factor in the software.  You see what I’m getting at?  So we’re all about making the best products at aggressive prices.  And that’s what we will do, and that’s what we’ve done with the iPod, and that’s what we will do with the iPad as well.”

• During last week’s conference, Tim Cook was asked about that prior statement.  How can Apple now sell the Apple mini in light of Steve Jobs’ comments two years ago.  Here is how Tim Cook responded to what a litigator might try to characterize as a prior inconsistent statement:  

“On your question about iPad mini, the comments that I think you are referencing are comments that Steve had made before about 7-inch tablets.  And let me be clear:  we would not make one of the 7-inch tablets.  We don’t think they’re good products, and we would never make one.  Not just because it is 7 inches, but for many reasons.  One of the reasons, however, is size, and so I’m not sure if you saw our Keynote, but the difference in just the real estate size between 7.9, almost 8, versus 7 is 35%.  And when you look at the usable area, it’s much greater than that, it is from 50% to 67%.  And also the iPad mini has the same number of pixels as iPad 2 does. So you have access to all 275,000 apps that are in our App Store that have been custom-designed to take advantage of the full canvas.  And so iPad mini is a fantastic product.  It’s not a compromised product like the 7-inch tablet.  It’s in a whole different league.”

Did Tim Cook have a legitimate response to the prior statement of Steve Jobs?  Is there really that much difference between 7.9 inches and 7.0 inches?  Is that really the difference between a screen that is large enough to be useful versus a screen that should come with sandpaper?  And how much of Steve Jobs’ statement can be attributed to the lack of good software for a 7-inch Android tablet, something that doesn’t apply to the iPad mini that will run apps that already exist for the the full-size iPad?  We’ll find out this Friday when people start to receive the first shipments of the iPad mini.

The new iPad mini was the big topic of discussion this week, especially the starting price of $329.  Is that too expensive considering that you can get some Android tablets for around $100 cheaper?  As several have pointed out, including California attorney David Sparks in a well-written post, Apple’s goal was not to create something cheap.  Apple’s goal was to create a thinner, lighter, smaller iPad, but one that still has all of the qualities of an iPad including all of the premium features.  The fact that the end product is more expensive than some cheap Android tablets is irrelevant to Apple (and many consumers).  Andy Ihnatko of the Chicago Sun-Times makes a similar argument.  So perhaps that just leaves the question:  should you get an iPad mini, especially if you already use a full-size iPad?  I decided to bite the bullet and order one early this morning when they first went on sale so that I can see how it works in my law practice and provide an answer to that question.  I’ll let you know what I think.  And now, the rest of the news of note from the past week:

• New York attorney Neil Squillante, publisher of the TechnoLawyer newsletters, has one argument for lawyers using the iPad mini that I had not thought of myself:  it might be the perfect size for note-taking.
• California attorney Monica Bay, editor-in-chief of Law Technology News, talked to lots of different attorneys to get their take on the iPad mini and published this report.
• California attorney Scott Grossberg offers advice to attorneys looking to use Siri.
• Bellefield’s impressive iTimeKeep app gained support for LexisNexis JurisSuite, according to this press release from Bellefield.
• South Carolina attorney Bill Latham of The Hytech Lawyer recommends iPad apps to create photos, videos and audio.
• Macworld published one if its “what you need to know” articles on the new fourth generation iPad and the iPad mini. 
• Jason Snell and Dan Moren of Macworld published this hands-on report on the iPad mini.
• I suspect that many of you, like me, have been using a small handheld electronic device of some sort since the 1990s.  Shaun McGill wrote an extensive article on his Lost in Mobile site about the history of these devices that led up to the iPhone.  It’s a good read and brought back memories of numerous devices that I have used and loved in the past, including for example my Palm III that I purchased in 1998 and the Treo 650 that I used for years before becoming an iPhone owner.
• The iPhone continues to dominate U.S. phone carriers.  AT&T announced this week that it activated 4.7 million iPhones in the past quarter, which is 77% of its smartphone activations, as noted by Sam Oliver of AppleInsider.
• Sprint announced that 10% of its 32.1 million postpaid subscribers upgraded their handsets during the last quarter, and of those 3.2 million, 1.5 million got an iPhone.  This data comes from a Sprint news release linked to in this report by Bryan Wolfe of AppAdvice.
• Verizon announced that it sold 6.8 million smartphones last quarter, and 3.1 million were iPhones, according to a report by Scott Moritz and Cornelius Rahn of Bloomberg.
• Apple announced its quarterly results at the end of the day yesterday, and I plan to have a full report on Monday.
• The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency announced that its 17,600 employees will start using iPhones instead of BlackBerries, according to this report by Nicola Leske of Reuters.
• Trying to figure out the name / artist for a song?  Michael Gowan of TechHive compares the leading iPhone apps that do this: Shazam and SoundHound.
• If you want another take on the Apple’s new product announcements from earlier this week, check out the outlandish “live blog transcript” posted by Scoopertino.
• And finally, are you still using an iPhone 4 or 4S but envious of your friends using the taller iPhone 5?  The fine folks at Etch have come up with just the solution for you, and it won’t cost you anything but your own time.  Simply click here to get information on the iFaux 5, a project you can print out and attach to your current iPhone to make it look exactly (ahem) like an iPhone 5, complete with an extra row of icons.  (via Cult of Mac)

Yesterday, Apple unveiled a bunch of new products:  new iMac, new Mac mini, new MacBook Pro, new iBooks app, new Final Cut Pro, new Lightning connectors, and more — and all of this comes on the heels of the new iPhone 5 announced last month.  Whew.  But today I want to focus on just two of yesterday’s announcements, the two new iPads:  the fourth generation iPad and the iPad mini.

Fourth generation iPad

Although I had heard rumors that it might be announced, I was surprised to see Apple announce a new iPad yesterday.  The third generation iPad was just announced on March 7, 2012, and I have gotten used to one new iPad and one new iPhone a year.  But here we are only 7 months, 2 weeks and 2 days later, and now the device that Apple had been calling the “new” iPad becomes the “old” iPad.  Let’s take a look at what is new in the fourth generation iPad.  (And although Apple doesn’t use these names, just to save space I’m calling the new one the iPad 4 and the previous model the iPad 3.)

Faster processor.  I’ve definitely noticed that my iPhone 5 is faster than my iPad 3.  The iPhone 5 contains what Apple calls the A6 chip, and lab tests show it twice as fast as the A5X chip that is in the iPad 3.  Apple now has a version of the A6 chip for the iPad 4 called the A6X so that we will see iPhone 5-like speeds on the iPad.  That means that apps open in an instant and the entire device seems much more responsive.

Lightning connector.  Also like the iPhone 5, the iPad 4 uses the new Lightning connector instead of the old 30-pin connector.  I really like this connector on my iPhone 5 because it is so small and easy to use, especially since you can plug in the connector either way.  With the 30-pin connector, it seems like I am always trying to plug it in one way, realizing that is wrong, then turning it over.  Ugh.  Of course, in the short term, the new Lightning connector isn’t going to work with many accessories unless you use an adapter.  But over time we’ll see all accessories using the new Lightning connector.

Better 4G LTE and WiFi.  I use the WiFi-only version of the iPad 3, but if you like to have connectivity on your iPad even when there is no WiFi, you can pay $130 extra to get an iPad 4 model that supports 4G LTE.  The iPad 3 also supported 4G LTE, but the iPad 4 uses the same improved LTE contained in the iPhone 5.  That should mean better connections, plus the option to use Sprint as a carrier.  Even if you are just using WiFi, all of the iPad 4 models use the improved WiFi found in the iPhone 5.

Better front-facing camera.  When you use FaceTime to videochat on an iPad 3, the front-facing camera which is only VGA quality.  On the iPad 4, just like the iPhone 5, the front-facing camera is FaceTime HD camera which takes 1.2MP photos and HD video at 720p up to 30 frames per second.

Faster charging.  The iPad 3 came with a 10W charger.  The iPad 4 comes with a 12W charger, which should speed up charging times although I haven’t seen confirmation of this yet.  You can also purchase the new 12W charger for $19 and it works with the iPad 2, 3 and 4 and the iPhone 4, 4S and 5, although I don’t yet know if it speeds up charging on any of those other devices.  [UPDATE 10/25/12:  According to 9to5Mac, Apple has confirmed that the new charger will speed up charging.  The article suggests it will speed up charging for the iPad 3 as well.  I’m sure it won’t be long before someone runs a test to show how much of a difference it makes.]

What does it all mean?  The iPad 4 gives you everything that lawyers would love about the iPad 3 — the 9.7-inch Retina display, the 10 hours of battery life, the same prices starting at $499 for the 16 GB model — and adds most of the great new features that we saw in the iPhone 5 last month.  About the only thing missing is the iPhone 5’s amazing new design (taller, thinner, lighter); the iPad 4 is the same size and weight as the iPad 3.

If you already have an iPad 3, you are unlikely to have a reason to upgrade.  But if you are still using an original iPad or an iPad 2, the upgrade to the iPad 4 is even more compelling than the upgrade to an iPad 3, which is really saying something because I love the iPad 3.  And if you don’t yet own an iPad, boy are you in for a treat.  A lot of good-little-litigators are going to be thanking Santa and others when an iPad 4 shows up under the Christmas tree, on a night of Hanukkah, or wherever fine presents appear in your household.

iPad mini

It is easy to describe the appeal of the iPad 4:  take most of what you love about the iPhone 5 and combine it with everything you already loved about the iPad 3.  But the iPad mini really is something altogether new, and I have only begun to understand all of the reasons that this will be a compelling products for lawyers.  Let’s look at what makes this product different from a regular iPad.

Smaller.  The most noticeable difference is, of course, the size.  The display is 7.9 inches diagonal instead of 9.7 inches on the iPad.  It is shorter (7.87 inches versus 9.5 inches) and not as wide (5.3 inches versus 7.31 inches).  In fact, the iPad mini is even skinnier than you might think because in addition to shrinking down the overall size, the iPad mini has a much smaller bezel on two sides.  Apple says this makes the screen even more prominent on the iPad mini and makes it easier to hold the iPad mini in one hand.  Of course, with a reduced bezel, you are more likely to touch the screen while you are holding the iPad.  To address this, Apple changed the iOS software for the iPad mini so that, according to Apple’s website, it “intelligently recognizes whether your thumb is simply resting on the display or whether you’re intentionally interacting with it.” 

Lighter.  The iPad is incredibly thin and light compared to a computer, which is why it is such a great travel companion.  On the other hand, when you hold an iPad in your hand to read a long transcript or long brief, your hand gets tired.  That’s one of the reasons that I often find myself reaching for a FreeOneHand to make it easier to hold. The iPad mini is as thin as a pencil.  The WiFi version of the iPad mini weighs only 308 grams, compared to the iPad 3 and 4 which weigh more than twice as much at 662 grams.  (At the risk of comparing Apples and oranges, the iPhone 4S weighs 140 grams and the iPhone 5 weighs 112 grams.)  My guess is that you’ll be able to hold the iPad mini in your hand for a considerably longer time when reading before experiencing any discomfort in your hand and arm.  Anand Lai Shimpi of AnandTech wrote after trying out the iPad mini:  “[T]he easiest way to describe the device is that it’s lighter than you’d
expect. The build quality and finish both feel good as you’d expect, but
the device is just considerably lighter than the iPad which results in
superior in hand feel.”

Cheaper.  Specifically, $170 cheaper.  The iPad starts at $499 for the 16 GB model and goes up in $100 increments for more storage, plus you can add $130 for 4G LTE.  The iPad mini starts at $329 for the 16 GB model, and then goes up in $100 increments for more storage, plus you can add $130 for 4G LTE.

Resolution.  The display looks better than an original iPad or an iPad 2, but not as good as an iPad 3 or 4.  Like the first two versions of the iPad, the iPad mini has a pixel resolution of 1024 x 768, but because the screen is smaller, more pixels are packed in per inch: 163 pixels per inch (ppi) on the iPad mini versus 132 ppi on the iPad 2. Thus, the screen is better than the first two versions of the iPad.  On the other hand, the iPad mini screen is not as good as the Retina display on the iPad 3 and 4 (2048 x 1536 at 264 ppi).  If you used (or still use) an original iPhone, an iPhone 3G or an iPhone 3GS, then you know what 163 ppi looks like.  In fact, 163 ppi on the iPad mini looks better than 163 ppi on those older iPhones becasue of an improved display that puts the pixels closer to the glass.  (The iPhone 4, 4S and 5 feature an amazing 326 ppi, but of course you hold those devices closer to your face than an iPad so pixel density is more important on an iPhone than on an iPad.)  My guess is that whenever we see the second generation of the iPad mini, Apple will find a way to add the same Retina display used by the iPhone 5.  For now, the resolution of the iPad mini appears to be very good, but (unlike the iPad 3 and 4) not amazing.

Design.  The edge of the iPad mini looks more like an iPhone 5 than an iPad.  As Joshua Topolsky of The Verge wrote after spending some time with the iPad mini: “The thinness and sleekness of the casing cannot be overstated. It feels
as high-end as the new iPhone, but even sharper in the hand — like a
slice of solid aluminum. The chamfered edges present on the iPhone 5
have been continued here, as well as the all-black treatment seen on the
latest phone.”

Camera.  While the iPad mini is similar to an iPad 2 when it comes to the display, the cameras are the same improved cameras found in the new iPad 4.

Radios.  Similarly, the 4G LTE cellular radio is the same as the iPad 4.  Thus, for example, you can use the iPad mini with Sprint, something that you couldn’t do with the original iPad or the iPad 2.  You also get the improved WiFi radio and Bluetooth 4.0.

Siri.  Siri works on the iPad mini, unlike the original iPad and the iPad 2.  Thus, you can just talk to the iPad mini to dictate emails, set reminders, get the latest sports scores, find out the weather, etc.

What does it all mean?  If the iPad is too big, heavy or expensive for you, than the iPad mini is the answer.  I expect that female attorneys will be pleased to discover that the iPad mini fits in smaller purses that could not hold an iPad, and if you have a large pocket in a jacket, the iPad mini just might fit.  And as noted above, for extended reading — whether you are on a plane or just on your couch — I’m sure that the iPad mini will be much more pleasent to hold.

On the other hand, one of the main reasons that I love my iPad 3 is that it has a large Retina display.  John Gruber of Daring Fireball got a few minutes with the iPad mini yesterday and stated:  “It runs iPad apps, but feels like a a ‘big iPhone’ in use. It feels smaller than I expected it to.” 

I have no doubt that the iPad mini will be perfect for many attorneys.  I need to get my hands on one myself to understand the pluses and the minus for those of us who are long-time, happy users of the full-size iPad.

Today at 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern, Apple will hold a media event at at the California Theatre in San Jose, California.  Apple has not disclosed what it will announce, but the rumors are that the main announcement will be a smaller, 7.85″ version of the iPad.  What will be the major distinguishing features, besides the obvious — smaller, lighter, easy to carry and less expensive?  How much will it cost?  What will it be called — the iPad mini, the iPad Air, just “the iPad” or something else?  And most importantly, should you get one?  We’ll start to get these answers in just a few hours.

The theater will be full of members of the press, and many of the people who are attending plan to
live-blog the event as it happens.  Here are direct links to the live
coverage at some of the sites that I expect to provide the best live
coverage:

• Macworld.  Jason Snell and Dan Moren are perhaps the best live-bloggers in the world for Apple announcements and they will be Macworld’s team today.
• GDGT.  Ryan Block has a great track record of providing excellent live coverage of events.
• The Verge.  The Verge has quickly became one of the very best sources of tech
  
  news, including live coverage of tech announcements.
• Engadget.  I believe that Tim Stevens is covering the event.
• Time.  Harry McCracken and Doug Aamoth will blog the event for Time magazine’s Technologizer column.
• Ars Technica.  Sometimes Jacqui Cheng does these live blogs; I’m not sure who will do it today.
• TWiT.  If you want to watch video or listen to audio instead of reading text, Leo Laporte and others will provide live commentary on the event as it happens.

Apple usually posts a video of the event later on in the day, so you
should be able to watch it on Tuesday night.  I look forward to
finding out what Apple has to announce, and I’m sure I’ll be posting my
thoughts on Wednesday.

[UPDATE:  Apple will be providing a live video stream of the event that you can watch on a Mac, iPhone, iPad or Apple TV.  Click here for more details.]

When participating in a conference call, it is often helpful to let everyone on the call see a shared screen at the same time.  GoToMeeting from Citrix is software that let’s you do exactly that.  If you use the free GoToMeeting app, you can view the shared screen on an iPad or iPhone.  I haven’t tried doing so on an iPhone yet; it seems to me that the shared screen would be very small, although I suppose if you were out of the office and only had an iPhone with you that could be better than nothing.  On a large iPad screen, however, the GoToMeeting app has more than enough space. 

I used the GoToMeeting app during a recent conference to get some screenshots for this post, but unfortunately I cannot simply show you the actual images without revealing confidential information.  Instead, I redacted large parts of these images, but trust me that I saw everything on the iPad that I needed to see.  During that meeting I actually had GoToMeeting running on both a computer and my iPad at the same time just to confirm that everything I could see on my computer screen could also be seen on the iPad screen — and yes, it was the same.

To participate in a meeting, just start the app and enter the meeting ID, along with your name and email address.  Or, if you receive a meeting invitation in an email, you are supposed to be able to just tap on a link in the email, although I haven’t tested that yet.  Note that you can only participate in a GoToMeeting conference with this app; you cannot currently initiate the conference from an iPad or iPhone, although Citrix says that this feature is in the works for a future update.  [UPDATE:  It appears that feature is now added, although I haven’t tried it myself.]

In just a few seconds, you will see the screen of the person sharing their screen.  It will look something like this, without the big blue redaction box:

In my prior experiences with conferences like this, it works best to have a regular telephone conference call and then use GoToMeeting just to share a screen and not audio.  Having said that, I understand that the app will allow you to listen and talk, if that is how the conference is being conducted.

If you tap the people icon at the top, you can see a list of who is participating in the conference.  You can also “chat” (like instant messaging) with a specific person on the call or with everyone on the call.

Instead of or in addition to sharing one person’s screen, I understand that it is also possible to use GoToMeeting for a videochat.  I haven’t tested that feature, except to tap the camera button to see how I would go about sharing my camera.

The settings icon will let you get information on the call or change some of the basic settings.

Although the iPad screen is smaller than most computer screens, I actually think it is better for a task like this.  First, you can easily pinch to zoom the screen up to 3x.  That’s larger than you will see on your computer’s monitor, so with a simple gesture you can see all the details that you want.  Second, I like being able to devote my iPad to the shared screen of the conference and constantly have it shown while I use my computer screen to type notes or look something up in a file.  In this way, the iPad is a substitute for a second monitor on the computer.

There is not much more to say about this app.  It does what you would expect it to do, and it is free.  The main reason for this post today is to alert you that the app exists.  The next time that you are asked to participate in a conference call using GoToMeeting, I recommend that you download this app and see what it is like to participate from your iPad.

Click here for GoToMeeting (free): 

I was a little surprised to hear iPhones and iPads mentioned during the presidential debate this past week.  Candy Crowley, the moderator, asked Obama and Romney:  “iPad, the Macs, the iPhones, they’re all manufactured in China.  One of the major reasons is labor is so much cheaper there.  How do you convince a great American company to bring that manufacturing back here?”  Romney answered that China has been cheating and pointed out that there is even a counterfeit Apple Store in China.  Obama answered that there are some jobs that are not going to come back because they are low wage, low skill jobs, but Obama wants to improve educational opportunities so that we have more high wage, high skill jobs. 

Obama’s answer was interesting because I believe it came from Steve Jobs himself.  In February of 2011, a number of technology titans had dinner with President Obama, including Steve Jobs.  According to Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher of the New York Times, Obama asked Jobs the same question that Crowley asked the candidates.  “Mr. Jobs’s reply was unambiguous. ‘Those jobs aren’t coming back,’ he said, according to another dinner guest” because the factories and skilled workers available in China simply do not exist here.  As Walter Isaacson explained in his biography of Steve Jobs, Jobs told Obama at that dinner that if there were more educated engineers in the U.S., “we could move more manufacturing plants here.”  Issacson states:  “The argument made a strong impression on the president.  Two or three times over the next month he told his aides, ‘We’ve got to find ways to train those 30,000 manufacturing engineers that Jobs told us about.'”  And sure enough, in the debate this week, Obama continued to speak about the need to educate more engineers so that we have more high wage, high skill jobs.  We know that Steve Jobs continues to have a huge impact on Apple, but apparently he also continues to influence the President.  And now for the rest of the news of note from the past week:

• Speaking of the iPhone being manufactured in China, according to Lorraine Luk of The Wall Street Journal, there is still an iPhone 5 supply shortage because it is the most difficult device that Foxconn
  
  (in China) has ever assembled.  “‘To make it light and thin, the design is very complicated,’
  
  said an official at the company who declined to be named. ‘It takes time
  
  to learn how to make this new device. Practice makes perfect. Our
  
  productivity has been improving day by day.'”  I know of several attorneys who are still on a waiting list for an iPhone 5, plus a law student who tweeted to me yesterday.  Hopefully supply will increase soon.
• New York attorney Nikki Black reviews the Typi Folio Case, an iPad case that includes a Bluetooth keyboard, for the GP Solo eReport.
• Minnesota attorney Randall Ryder discusses using iOS 6 in your law practice in this post for Lawyerist.com.
• Localscope, a useful app I reviewed about a year and a half ago, was updated to version 3.0 this week to add iOS 6 support, proximity based push notifications, and other new options.  It’s a neat app for discovering places around you.  Click here to get Localscope ($1.99): 

  

• My favorite Twitter app for the iPhone and iPad is Tweetbot.  Yesterday, a version was released for the Mac, and I immediately purchased it.  It looks and works great.  Highly recommended for anyone who uses the iPhone or iPad app.  Click here to get Tweetbot for Mac ($19.99): 

  

• A large amount of the iPad-related stories from this past week consisted of speculation about the Apple announcement coming up on Tuesday, October 23.  If you are interested in reading some of the most interesting articles, I can recommend this one from John Gruber and this one from Rene Ritchie of iMore.
• And finally, it’s almost time for Halloween, which means it is now time for someone to figure out the latest and greatest way to integrate an iPhone or iPad into a costume.  Mark Rober — a NASA Jet Propulsion Lab engineer — has come up with a fun idea:  T-shirts in which you place an iPhone or iPad to make the shirt come to life.  The following video shows how it works, and you can get more information and download the free app that works with the shirt on the Digital Dudz website.

The track changes feature in Microsoft Word is a critical feature for many attorneys because it provides a way to suggest edits to a brief, contract, or other document while making those edits obvious so that someone else can accept or reject individual edits.  Although the iPad and iPhone have been able to view Microsoft Word files since Day 1 using the built-in file viewer, the ability to work with documents containing redline “track changes” edits has been limited.  For a while now, Documents to Go has been able to view those redline edits but not make them.  A few months ago, Office² HD from Byte² was updated to add full support for track changes — the ability to both view redline edits and create your own.  Unfortunately, the interface is not great, with track changes shown in very tiny type on the side of the screen:

This week, the Quickoffice Pro app (now owned by Google) added the ability to both view and create redline edits using the track changes feature.  I like the implementation in Quickoffice Pro much better than the implementation in Office². 

To turn on the feature, tap the track changes icon, which is at the top right of the screen, fourth from the right.  Once selected, a green ON circle appears on the icon.

To create edits in the document using the track changes mode, tap the
Track Changes button just above the keyboard so that it both turns green
and says “ON” to the left.  Now, edits that you make appear in
redline.  (Well technically, the color is blue.)  For example, in the next screen I am updating a Lexis cite with a So. 3d cite now that a case has appeared in the official West reporter:

Every change made in the track changes mode will have a line with a plus and minus button.  Tap the plus button to see what was added in this edit.  Tap the minus button to see what was deleted in this edit:

Using the track changes menu bar which appears just above the keyboard, or at the bottom of the screen if you have hidden the keyboard, you can easily tap the arrows to go through each of the redline edits and choose to accept or reject each one.  Or tap the button at the left of the menu bar to accept or reject all edits at once.

I’m thrilled to see track changes added to Quickoffice Pro.  However, I still have one very serious reservation about using the app:  it does not support footnotes at all.  For example, if you look at my first Quickoffice Pro picture above, I have part of a sentence displayed before the ARGUMENT section of my brief begins.  Viewing the file in Quickoffice Pro, you might think that there are no footnotes.  But if I view the same file in Documents to Go or Office², footnotes appear.  For example, here is the file in Documents to Go, first showing how it normally looks, and second showing how it looks when I tap on the footnote number:

You cannot edit footnotes in Documents to Go or Office², but as a litigator, the ability to know that they are there and read them is usually pretty critical for me.

So with this update to Quickoffice Pro, what is the state of viewing and editing Word documents on the iPad or iPhone?  Documents to Go, Quickoffice Pro and Office² will all let you view a Word document, including any redline edits.  I like the Documents to Go interface the best because it is so easy to zoom the text size larger or smaller as you are reading a document, but something can be said for the interface of each of these apps.  To create redline edits, you can use Quickoffice Pro or Office², but Quickoffice Pro doesn’t show footnotes, whereas Office² does. 

This might lead you to conclude that Office² is the app to use because it has the most features, but I have two issues with Office² that make me hesitate to recommend the app.  First, as noted above, I don’t like the way it handles track changes in the margin.  Edits are very hard to read.  Quickoffice Pro does a much better job of handling redline edits.  Second, Office² seems to crash on me all the time when I open a complicated document — and by complicated I mean any document of around 15 or more pages with footnotes.  That covers most any file that I would want to edit on my iPad.  When I reviewed Office² in June I noted that I was having a lot of trouble with the app crashing, but at the time I assumed that an update to the app would fix that.  But it has now been four months and I’m still having the same problems with no fix in sight.

If Quickoffice Pro were to simply add the ability to work with footnotes, that would probably become my go-to app for Microsoft Word files.  For now, because I tend to review documents on my iPad or iPhone far more than I edit them, I’m sticking with Documents to Go because I can see footnotes and redline edits and I otherwise like the Documents to Go interface.  Hopefully track changes support will be added to Documents to Go at some point, although it is perhaps worth noting that Documents to Go is now owned by RIM, the manufacturer of the BlackBerry, and that company has a lot more to worry about right now than iOS apps.  If I really need to use track changes and other sophisticated features of Microsoft Office on my iPad, I often will just use LogMeIn to create a remote connection to my PC and handle it that way.  (If remote access to your own computer is not an option, you might consider a service like CloudOn which provides online access to a virtualized version of Office 2010.)  All of this means that if you are trying to pick an app to handle Word documents (and other Office documents such as Excel files) on your iPad or iPhone, you are going to have to decide what features and limitations of these three apps are the most important to you.

And when you make your decision, you also need to think about the different versions of the apps.  There are two versions of Documents to Go.  The regular version costs $10 and probably does everything you need, but for $17 you can get the Premium version that adds the ability to create and edit PowerPoint files (the regular version only views PowerPoint files) and the ability to edit and sync files stored in cloud services (Google Docs, Box.net, Dropbox and SugarSync).  But both versions of Documents to Go work on both the iPhone and the iPad.  With Quickoffice Pro and Office², you don’t pay extra for features, but instead you pay extra for other devices because both apps come in a regular version for the iPhone and an “HD” version for the iPad.  So if you own an iPhone and iPad, you’ll probably have to buy Quickoffice Pro and Office² twice, whereas you only need to buy Documents to Go once.

And to make all of this more complicated, we continue to hear rumors that Microsoft itself will release a version of Word (or Office) for the iPad.  As I noted this past Friday, the latest rumor is a launch in early 2013, but note that we have been hearing rumors like this for almost a year now, so I’m not sure how much faith we can put in any of these rumors.

Click here for Quickoffice Pro HD [for iPad] ($19.99): 

Click here for Quickoffice Pro [for iPhone] ($14.99): 

Click here for Documents to Go [both iPad and iPhone] ($9.99): 

Click here for Documents to Go Premium [both iPad and iPhone] ($16.99): 

Click here for Office² HD [for iPad] ($7.99): 

Click here for Office² [for iPhone] ($5.99): 

Yesterday, Apple announced that it will hold a media event at 10am Pacific on Tuesday, October 23, 2012.  As is the norm, Apple did not say what it would be announcing, but Apple is famous for including small clues in the words or graphics used on the invitation.  The invitation for next week’s event includes the following:

The use of the word “little” in the tagline “We’ve got a little more to show you” might be a clue that Apple will unveil a smaller version of the iPad next week, something that has been the subject of countless rumors throughout 2012.  There is also speculation that Apple may also announce updates to its Macintosh computers and/or make announcements related to the use of Apple products in education.

The event will be held at the California Theatre in San Jose, California.  The theater has a Jazz Age décor and opened in 1927 as a grand movie palace.  It is now used for concerts for the Symphony Silcon Valley and the Opera San Jose.  You can find a number of pictures of this historic site here.  Apple previously used the California Theatre to announce updates to the iPod in 2004 and 2005.  The San Jose Mercury News republished some pictures from those announcements.

The iPhone 5 was announced on September 12, 2012, and it is exciting to have another Apple announcement only six weeks later.

Transcripts can come in many formats such as ASCII text, a PDF file or the E-Transcript format.  If I am working with transcripts on my iPad, I prefer to work with a transcript in a text format that I can send to the fantastic TranscriptPad app or in a readable PDF format that I view and annotate in GoodReader.  But sometimes you receive a file in the E-Transcript format, a file with “.ptx” as the extension.  The E-Transcript format was originally created by
RealLegal, which was acquired by LiveNote and is now owned by Thompson
West.  A long time ago it was possible to view a .ptx file on a Mac, but in recent years you have only been able to view a .ptx file using the E-Transcript Viewer software on a PC or other PC-only software.  This changed a few weeks ago when West released Westlaw Case Notebook Portable E-Transcript, a free app that lets you view and even annotate .ptx files on an iPhone or iPad. 

When you receive an email with a .ptx file attached, simply tap the attachment and choose Open in E-Transcript.

 

The transcript will then open in the E-Transcript app, and you can read the deposition on your iPhone or iPad. As you can see from these images, the app is not yet updated for the longer screen on the iPhone 5.  Flick your finger to scroll through the document.  Tap the information icon to get metadata regarding the transcript such as the name of the witness, the date, etc.  If you want to search for a term, tap the magnifying glass.  This brings up a screen where you can type a term, or you can scroll through a list of every term in the document along with the number of hits.

 

You can turn your iPhone to landscape mode to make the text larger.

You can use the app to annotate a transcript.  Simply select some text and then you can copy, add a note, or highlight the text in yellow.

 

If you choose to add a note, the text is highlighted and a small green box appears next to the text for which there is a note.  If you tap the bookmark icon at the bottom, you will see a list of all text that you have either highlighted or added a note to, with the note text indicated.

 

If you tap the Pg. icon at the bottom left, you can jump directly to another page by number.  If you tap the button at the top left, you go back to the main screen of the app with a list of all depositions that you have stored in the app.

 

Unfortunately, the export options are very limited and you only have two choices.  If you select Share with Notes, the app will create an email with a .xml file attached, and I believe that you need the Westlaw Case Notebook software on your computer to access the file.  If you select Share without Notes, the app will create an email with the original .ptx file attached.  There is no way to export the entire transcript as a text file or a PDF file, nor is there a way to export a version of the transcript with your annotations if you are not using Westlaw Case Notebook.

The above images are taken from an iPhone 5, but the app also works great on an iPad.  The text is (obviously) larger and easier to read on an iPad, and windows pop-up on top of the transcript.

If you already use Westlaw Case Notebook to manage your litigation files, then I imagine that this app would be very useful.  If you don’t use that product, then I doubt that you will want to use this app to highlight a transcript because you have no easy way to export the file with your annotations.  Even so, this is an app that every litigator should keep on their iPhone and iPad just in case they receive a .ptx file from a court reporter or another attorney.  With this app installed, at least you can look at the transcript immediately without having to go to a PC or ask to
have the file sent to you again in another format such as pure text or
PDF.

Click here to get Westlaw Case Notebook Portable E-Transcript (free):