Month: February 2013

About nine months ago, I reviewed the Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo for iPad.  It remains one of two favorite styluses for the iPad, and I use it almost every day.  (The other one that I really like is the Adonit Jot Pro.)  One of the best parts about it is the tip, the “nib” of the stylus.  It feels great against the iPad screen and is a little smaller than traditional stylus tips, which makes it a little more precise. 

About a month ago, West Virgina attorney Roger Lambert asked if I had tried out Wacom’s new firm replacement nibs, posting the following comment on this website:

Have you tried the new firm replacement nibs for the bamboo stylus? I think that they might be the perfect solution to the mushy/durability problem people have been complaining about. In my opinion, the firm nib feels more like a real pen when writing than the soft nib that comes with the bamboo. I’ve seen some reviews saying that the firm nibs are not as responsive when using the stylus to tap icons, but I have not had this problem and am, in fact, typing this post on my iPad mini with the firm nib.

On February 12, 2013, Amazon was selling them for $10.58.  (I see that the price has now dropped to $8.08.  Who knows why.)  They come in a pack of three nibs.  So I decided to buy a set of three firm replacement nibs to try them out, and over the last two weeks I’ve been going back and forth between the original nibs and the firm nibs.

The nibs look exactly the same.  You can only tell the difference by touching the top.  The original nib gives more easily.  The firm nib is more… well, more firm.  In the following pictures, the original nib is on the left, the firm nib on the right:

Lambert is correct — the firm nib is less mushy that the standard tip.  With the firm nib, you have to push down a little bit harder for the stylus to work.   When I am writing in a program like GoodNotes I find that I feel like my writing is slightly more precise as a result of my exerting more effort into writing.  However, the need to push extra hard makes my hand a little more tired when using the firm nib, and I also find that it slows down my writing.  Also, when I want to tap on a button on the screen, I often find that the button doesn’t respond when I am using the firm nib, so I have to go back and push down harder.

It may just be that I am too used to the feel of the traditional nib.  Perhaps if I had started with this firm nib I’d be used to the need to apply extra pressure.  But switching back and forth between the original nib and the firm nib, I always find myself preferring the original nib.

Lambert also mentions the “durability problem.”  I had heard about this and noted the rumors that nibs are fragile in my original Wacom stylus review.  And it must be true that nibs crack for some people because Wacom sells replacement nibs.  But in my own experience, after nine months of regular use, I’ve haven’t yet seen any problem with the original nib that came with my Wacom Stylus duo.  Indeed, I purchased replacement nibs nine months ago just in case I needed them, and now I’m not quite sure where I stored them — which means that when the time comes that I do need them, I’ll need to go hunting in my office.

If you like the Wacom Bamboo Stylus but find the tip too mushy, follow the advice of Lambert and buy the firm replacement nibs.  But I prefer the feel of the original nibs, and now that this review is written, I’m removing the firm nib and storing it in my desk.  (And, in nine months, I’ll probably forget where I put them.  Note to self:  top drawer, left side, in the back.)

Click here to get Wacom Bamboo Stylus Firm Replacement nibs from Amazon ($8.08)

In early April, I’ll be in Chicago at ABA TECHSHOW 2013, the best conference for lawyers interested in technology.  My favorite part of TECHSHOW every year is talking with other attorneys who love gadgets, and one great way to do that is to attend one of the Taste of Techshow dinners on Thursday, April 4th or Friday, April 5th to eat at great Chicago restaurants with a group of a dozen attorneys interested in a topic.  TECHSHOW opened the registrations for this year’s dinners just a few days ago.  The “bad” news is that the first such dinner to fill up is the one that I’m hosting on April 4th with Tom Mighell to talk about iPhone and iPad related topics.  The good news is that this year TECHSHOW scheduled quite a few other dinners for iPhone/iPad enthusiasts.  As of this morning you still have time to sign up for “iPad—I’ll Show You Mine if You Show Me Yours” with Victor Medina and Mark Metzger, “iPads” with Rob Dean and Britt Lorish,”App-Etizers, iEntrees and Home Button Cooking” with Brett Burney and Mark Unger, and “Presentations From a Pad or Tablet” with Diane Ebersole and Chuck Diard — or about two dozen other dinners.  Click here to sign up before the other dinners are all booked up.  And now, here is the news of note from the past week:

• Clever California attorney David Sparks explains on his MacSparky website how you can use a Satechi Bluetooth Smart Pointer Mobile Presenter to control a Keynote presentation run on an iPad with remote control.
• New York attorney and TechnoLawyer publisher Neil Squillante describes Remarks, an iPad app from Readdle for taking handwritten notes.
• New Orleans attorney Ernie Svenson discusses, and provides perspective on, the security of online services like Dropbox that are so incredibly useful on the iPhone and iPad.
• Speaking of Dropbox, the Dropbox app was recently updated to add more features for viewing PDF files as noted by Killian Bell of Cult of Mac.
• Horace Dediu of Asymco wrote an interesting article wondering why more companies don’t copy Apple’s approach as opposed to just the products that Apple sells.
• Speaking of Apple’s approach, Apple’s chief designer Jony Ive talks on a British children’s program Blue Peter about thinking outside of the (lunch) box.
• Brian Chen of the New York Times writes about the business implications of Apple’s Lightning connector.
• Office² HD is an iPad app that lets you view and edit Microsoft office documents (my review).  Rene Ritchie of iMore interviewed one of the developers of Office² HD at Macworld and has this video.
• Alan of Art of the iPhone explains that we are finally about to see cars with Siri Eyes Free, technology that makes it easier to get information from your iPhone while you are driving.
• David Carey of Hearst Magazines (publisher of titles such as Esquire,
  
  Cosmopolitan, Popular Mechanics, Good Houskeeping, Road & Track and
  
  Town & Country) discusses
  
  digital magazines on the iPad at the All Things D conference, as noted
  
  by Darren Murph of Engadget.  One interesting revelation:  men’s
  
  magazines sell better on the full size iPad, while women’s magazines
  
  sell better on the iPad mini.
• And finally, popular magazines are not the only publications on an iPad.  Firefighters in Atlantic City recently attended a promotion ceremony at which they would traditionally take an oath with a hand on the Bible, except that nobody remembered to bring a Bible.  But there was an iPad available … and you can guess the rest.  The local NBC affiliate has the story. (via Kevin Bostic of AppleInsider)

Yesterday, Apple released a new version of the iOS operating system with a minor update:  iOS 6.1.2.  This update fixes a bug that I mentioned just a few days ago for people who use Microsoft Exchange, which I suspect includes many attorneys — a bug that could occur when you respond to an exception to a recurring calendar event.  I’m happy to see that Apple addressed the bug so quickly, although as I mentioned this past Friday, there is yet another bug in iOS 6.1, one that someone could exploit to bypass a lock screen.  My guess is that it won’t be long before we see a second update to fix that bug.

For now, if you use Microsoft Exchange for your email and calendar, I recommend that you open your Settings app, tap General and then tap Software Update to install the fix.  I updated my iPhone, my iPad and my iPad mini yesterday and had no problem running the update on any of those devices.  Each took under 5 minutes to install the new version of iOS.

From time to time, attorneys who read iPhone J.D. write to tell me
how they are using
their iPhone or iPad in their practice.  I love to read these stories,
and with permission I like to share some of them here on iPhone J.D.  I recently heard from William Axtell, a solicitor in London with the law firm Charles Russell LLP. Will is a corporate lawyer, and his areas of practice include equity capital markets and mergers and acquisitions.  Before joining his current law firm, he worked in-house at Vodafone, so he has a background as well as a passion for the technology and telecom sectors.  He currently uses an iPhone 5, an iPad 2 and a Macbook Air.

I asked Will to describe the apps that he uses in his law practice that he would recommend to others.  Here is what he told me:

• OmniFocus — a powerful task manager which allows you to organise tasks by project and context.  OmniFocus syncs across all my devices and is a great personal assistant.  This has pride of place in my iPhone real estate — it lives on the dock together with Phone, Mail and Safari.  Getting into the OmniFocus ecosystem is not cheap but it helps me everyday and I would very much recommend it.  [Click here for OmniFocus for iPhone ($19.99): Click here for OmniFocus for iPad ($39.99): ]
• NotesPlus — a fantastic notes app.  I tend to use a stylus but you can type as well.  It can record audio (useful for meetings) and you can also insert pictures and grab stuff from websites.  The great thing is that you can erase stuff, move things around, change font colours etc.  It even converts handwritten text to typed text!     You cannot do that with a Moleskin!  The developer also gives great support and keeps pushing the boundaries.  Check it out!  [My review is here.  Click here to get Notes Plus ($6.99):  

  

  ]
• GoodReader — I use this to store documents that I need to use on the go.  It contains marketing material that I can show to clients, key statutes and cases that I may need to refer to, partners’ meeting notes and agendas etc.  [My latest review is here.  Click here to get GoodReader for iPad ($4.99):  ]
• TextExpander — this is a great utility that converts small “snippets” into longer chunks of texts.  For example, after a meeting with a contact I will open TextExpander and type “-exp” and this will create a pro forma email asking my secretary to fill out an expenses form, update our CRM database etc.  This saves me having to type out the same thing over and over again.  [Click here to get TextExpander ($4.99): ]
• 
  
  Jotnot Pro — this is a great scanner.  I can scan business cards, receipts etc. on the go.  [Click here to get Jotnot Pro ($0.99): ]
• Meeting Planner — most of my work in international.  As such I often need to be able to find a slot for a conference call between many different time zones (e.g. the UK, India and New York).  This app works out the best time to schedule such a call.   No more scheduling calls when it is 4am in the Big Apple!  [Click here to get MtgPlanner (free): ]
• GetPacked — If I am actually travelling then I find this to be a very useful app to make sure I have packed all I need for the trip.  [Click here to get GetPacked ($1.99): ]  
• Reeder — my go to app for RSS.  I commute to work by train.  This gives me time to read.  RSS feeds
  
  are great and give me a bespoke newspaper every morning of stuff that I
  
  know will be of interest to me.  [Click here to get Reeder for iPad ($4.99): Click here to get Reeder for iPhone ($2.99): ]
• Daily Telegraph — for a more traditional experience, this newspaper has a decent app.  [Click here to get Daily Telegraph (free): ]
• Instapaper — this app works very well for saving interesting web articles for reading later on (including offline).  [Click here to get Instapaper ($3.99): ]
• Tweetbot — my app of choice for Twitter.  I find this a great tool to see what my clients are up to, seeing trends in the marketplace and just having fun.   I am @oxfordlawyer and am nudging up to 1000 followers.  [Tweetbot is also my favorite Twitter app.  Click here to get Tweetbot for iPhone ($2.99): Click here to get Tweetbot for iPad ($2.99): ]
• Buffer — a great app for scheduling tweets throughout the day rather than bombarding people in one go.  [Click here to get Buffer (free): ]
• Flipboard — a beautiful way to consume your social media and other content on the iPad.  This is my preferred way to look at my personal Twitter account and Facebook.   [Click here to get Flipboard (free): ]
• LinkedIn — I like the iPad app and find it useful to way to stay in contact with my business community and network.  [Click here to get LinkedIn (free): ]

Other great utility apps I use are 1Password (just need to remember one password!), Dropbox (great for finding my personal docs on the go), Evernote (so many different uses) and PDFpen (my go to pdf application that syncs with iCloud).

[Click here for my reviews of 1Password, PDFpen for iPad and PDFpen for iPhone and the links to get those apps.  I’ve never formally reviewed Dropbox, but it is an essential app.  Click here for Dropbox (free):   And click here for Evernote (free): ]

On the way home I will check UK Train Times [$6.99: ] to see that my train is not delayed and which platform it is going from, I will update my journal in Day One [$4.99: ] and may even have a quick go on Angry Birds Star Wars!  [$0.99: ]

My work life is so much more productive with these great Apple products and apps.  I would also recommend checking out macsparky.com, which is run by US attorney David Sparks.  He has some great workflows for Apple-loving lawyers.

Best wishes from across the Pond!

– – – – – –

Thanks, Will, for all of your app recommendations.  We use a lot of the same apps, but you also recommend quite a few that I am now interested in checking out.

If you are willing to share your experiences using an iPhone or iPad
in your law practice with other iPhone J.D. readers, I’d love to
hear from you!  And in case you missed them, here are the reports that I
previously shared from other attorneys:

• Zane Cagle:  1/1/12
• Megan Erickson:  5/11/11
• Tom Freeland:  7/13/10
• Cliff Maier:  12/22/08
• Lindsay Rakers:  12/18/12
• Alfred Saikali:  5/4/11
• Mike Schneider:  4/28/09
• Clark Stewart:  7/22/10

The iPhone 5 has a reasonably good camera that is incredibly convenient because it is always in my pocket.  Unfortunately, I noticed a few weeks ago that there were two spots on pictures that I took with my camera.  In most pictures the spots were almost invisible, but a picture of a light, solid color would reveal the spots.

For example, here is a picture that I took using the ABBYY FineReader Touch app that I recently reviewed, and another picture that I took of the floor of an Apple Store.  I’ve added red ovals to emphasize the spots:

At first I thought my lens was just dirty, but cleaning was not a solution.  Then I thought that the lens had gotten scratched, but I try as I might, I certainly couldn’t see anything.  Some research on the Internet led me to discover others with this problem, and the working theory was that dust had somehow gotten inside of the iPhone 5.  I gave my phone several vigorous shakes to try to dislodge any dust, but that wasn’t a solution either.

So I decided to make an appointment at the Genius Bar at an Apple Store.  As always, the experience was fantastic.  Before I left home, I backed up my iPhone to iTunes on my computer.  As I entered the store I launched the Apple Store app, which instantly noticed that I was in an Apple Store and knew that I had an 11am appointment, so it immediately asked me if I wanted to sign in.  I tapped one button to do so, and a few minutes later, the Apple Genius called my name.  Perhaps he had seen this problem before because as soon as I started to describe it, he quickly said that he would just swap out my iPhone 5 for a new one.  A few minutes later I had a new iPhone 5 in my hand, and when I got home I connected it to my computer, restored from a backup (which took a long time … maybe two hours for my 64 GB iPhone 5), and then I was back in business again.  A shiny new iPhone 5 with no dots in my pictures.

I have not had many hardware problems since I started using an iPhone in 2008, but it is nice to know that if there is a problem, the Apple Store makes it as fast and easy as possible to get customers up and running again.  Can you imagine if other business worked the same way — car mechanics, cable companies, the DMV?

If you see consistent, reproducible spots in the pictures you take, I recommend that you swap it out at an Apple Store.

Before Mardi Gras was even over in New Orleans this past Tuesday, I had to jump on a plane for depositions in another state.  The New Orleans airport underwent a major renovation for the Super Bowl and it looks amazing — new restaurants, new furniture, new amenities, etc.  Of course, being in the airport on Mardi Gras day, there were many other sights to see as I found myself walking behind people in costumes such as this:

While making a connection in the Atlanta airport, I was surprised to see an Apple presence.  The BlackBerry Store that had been at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport for the last few years was replaced with a store called iTravel, an authorized Apple reseller.  So the next time that you make a connection through Atlanta, if you need to pick up some extra cables and accessories — or for that matter, a new iPhone or Mac computer — you can do so right in the airport.  Although I first noticed this store this week, I see from an article by Kelly Yamanouchi of the Atlanta-Journal Constitution that the iTravel store actually opened in August of 2012, and apparently there is a similar store at the Boston airport.  The Atlanta iTravel store is located next to gate B18, near the middle of the concourse.

Enough about travel, let’s get to the news of note from the past week:

• I led off last week’s In the news with a story of New Orleans attorney Andrew Legrand making effective use of iThoughtsHD on an iPad mini.  Here is a post from Legrand himself on PaperlessChase.com with more details on using the app.
• California attorney David Sparks explains in a Macworld article why users of Apple’s products shouldn’t get too worked up about the rise and fall of Apple stock prices.
• Speaking of David Sparks, he and New Orleans attorney Ernie Svenson teamed up to teach an iPad Basics Webinar on Friday, March 1 at 10 Pacific / 1 Eastern.  No CLE credit, unfortunately, but Sparks and Svenson are both excellent speakers who know this subject well — Sparks literally wrote the book on using an iPad at work — so I suspect it will be an excellent presentation.  The cost is $50, but if you use the promo code “iphonejd” you can save 10%.
• South Carolina attorney Ben Stevens of The Mac Lawyer reviews JuryPad, a jury selection app for the iPad.
• John Paczkowski of All Things D reports that Microsoft could make billions of dollars if it released a version of Office for the iPad.  Paczkowski correctly notes that even if that number is too high, the fact remains that Microsoft could make serious money if it released such an app.  Microsoft is focused on its new Surface tablet right now, but of course Microsoft has sold a version of Office for Mac since the 1980s while at the same time Microsoft promoted Windows, so there is a precedent for Office being on competing platforms at the same time.
• If you need a Lightning cable for your iPhone 5, iPad mini or fourth generation iPad, Juli Clover of MacRumors notes that both Monoprice and Amazon now sell low cost, Apple-certified cables.  Click here for the Amazon cable which is only $14.99, versus Apple’s $19.99 cable.
• Dan Moran and Lex Friedman of Macworld compiled a great list of 33 tips and tricks for iOS 6.
• Similarly, Rob LeFebvre of Cult of Mac offers tips and tricks for using Siri to dictate.
• GoodNotes, which is still my favorite app for taking handwritten notes on an iPad, was updated to version 3.7 this week.  As noted by the developer, the new version is much faster handling PDF files, and I can confirm this from my tests.
• Apple CEO Tim Cook gave a presentation to Goldman Sachs this week.  Macworld has excerpts of the highlights of his speech.
• One of the things that Cook discussed was the Apple Stores, and Horace Dediu has an interesting post at his Asymco website juxtaposing what Cook said with charts showing what it means.
• Apple recently released iOS 6.1, and apparently there are two problems with it.  First, Apple issued an alert that “When you respond to an exception to a recurring calendar event with a
  
  Microsoft Exchange account on a device running iOS 6.1, the device may
  
  begin to generate excessive communication with Microsoft Exchange Server.”  Apple says that a fix is coming in a software update.
• Second, Lex Friedman of Macworld notes that if someone gets physical access to your iPhone or iPad running iOS 6.1, and if they press a complicated series of buttons on the device, the person can gain access to your Contacts.  And because the Contacts app lets a person add a picture from the Photos app to a contact, that means that a person can also view the Photos on your device.  How in the world someone discovered this is beyond me, but now anyone who reads that article can figure out how to do it.  Once again, Apple says that a fix is coming in a software update, but in the meantime, keep an eye on your iOS devices.
• Infinity Blade, one of my favorites games on the iPad, is currently free due to Apple’s app of the week promotion, as noted by Eli Hodapp of TouchArcade.  I was happy to spend $5.99 on this app.  If you don’t have it yet, get it now for free:
• And finally, it appears that Doctor Who predicted the iPad back in 1980, as shown in this clip from an old episode of the TV show.  (via @Jason Snell and @Dalek Thay)

Whether you are in New Orleans today in person or just in spirit, have a Happy Mardi Gras!

 

The iPad is powerful and plentiful, can be used to defend food trucks, and can even be used in the bathroom, all in today’s edition of In the news:

• Restrictions on food trucks are being debated before the New Orleans City Council right now.  New Orleans attorney Ernie Svenson tweeted a link to a video of a presentation before the City Council by attorney Andrew Legrand.  Legrand made effective use of iThoughtsHD on an iPad mini to visually go through each argument against food trucks and show why the argument lacked merit.  Watch a few minutes of the video to see what he did; it is impressive, and may inspire you to do a similar, effective presentation with your iPad.  Click here to get iThoughtsHD ($9.99):
• Ohio attorney and legal technology consultant Brett Burney discusses using an iPad in a law practice in a podcast with Ed Poll on the Law Biz Blog.
• Craig Timberg of The Washington Post explains one more reason that iPhone users are safer than Android phones:  iPhone users are able to upgrade their phones when the operating system is updated, and most do so, whereas many Android phones make it difficult to upgrade, and they do not do so.
• According to Philip Elmer-DeWitt of Fortune, if you count iPads as a type of PC, then Apple is the world’s #1 PC maker.
• Is it fair to count an iPad as a PC?  According to a post on gdgt.com, an iPad mini is actually faster than a Cray 2, which was the fastest supercomputer in the world in the 1980s.
• If you want an iPhone 5 case that includes a battery, the Juice Pack Helium from Mophie is the first Apple-certified device with a Lightning connector.  Dan Frakes of Macworld offers this initial take while working on a full review.
• Apple sold the 25 billionth song on iTunes, and Eric Slivka of MacRumors reports that the man in Germany who downloaded that song got an iTunes Gift Card worth €10,000.
• And finally, for those who love their iPad and like to take it with them everywhere — really everywhere — you can now buy on Amazon for the low price of $44.99 the CTA Digital Pedistal Stand for iPad with Roll Holder:

There are many ways to use an iPhone to scan a document.  The simplest way is to just take a picture with the Camera app, but there are other apps that let you do more.  For example, a few months ago I reviewed an app called Scanner Pro by Readdle that does a very nice job of creating a PDF file from something that you scan.  However, the PDF file merely contains a picture of the document; Scanner Pro does not create a searchable PDF.  ABBYY FineReader Touch is a new app that lets you scan a document using your iPhone and then OCR the image (read all of the words) and save the file in one of many formats such as Word or PDF.  ABBYY sent me a free review copy of the app and I’ve been testing it out.  The app works pretty well, although it did leave me wanting for even more.

To use the app, you start by taking a picture of one or more pages in a document.  You can turn on the iPhone’s flash to try to get a better picture.

Once you scan the document, you can tap the image to make simple modifications:  rotate the image (if necessary) and crop to the document edges.  When you tap on a corner, a zoom circle appears to help you to get the four corners just right.

 

Once you have the page or pages scanned, you tell the app to convert
the image, which involves selecting a file format and a language.  The
app supports a number of file formats including Word, Excel, PDF, text
and RTF.  I only tested Word and PDF.  Also, I only tested the app with the English language, but ABBYY is
an international company and the app supports 42 languages (up to three
different languages in a single document). 

 

When you tell the app to start recognizing the document, the app will bring you back to the home page of the app, which lists all of your documents.  Documents that are processed and downloaded have a green bar.  Documents that are processed but not yet downloaded have a blue bar.  (Or, you can flip a switch in settings to tell the app to automatically download every file once the processing is finished, which in my opinion should have been on by default.)  Documents that are still being processed have a yellow bar.  In my tests, it took only about a minute to process a one page document.  Note that you
need to have an internet connection for the app to recognize the
document because all of the processing takes places on the ABBYY
website.  Indeed, this app is really just an iPhone interface to the FineReader Online OCR Service. 

 

Once the document is downloaded you can view it in the app or (probably more useful) choose to open the file in another app.  For example, I scanned a letter that I created last August when I was testing Scanner Pro by Readdle, converted the letter to Word format, and then sent the file to Apple’s Pages app.  As you can see from the below image, the OCR is almost 100% perfect.  (The app thought that the “R” in “Reese” of my law firm name was instead a “K” but everything else looks good.)  The formatting is not perfect and some fonts are confusing (such as in the date), but overall it is not a bad OCR.  You can tap/click the below image to see it larger and read the words.  (Indeed, you can tap most images on iPhone J.D. to see the images twice as large.)

I saw worse results with some other files.  For example, I scanned a page from one of my son’s books that had a picture at the top and two columns of text.  FineReader did a great job of recognizing what was a picture and saw the two columns without any trouble, but the OCR had a few more mistakes than I saw with the simple letter although it still got almost all of the words correct.  Here is what the document looked like in MS Word on a computer:

One great feature of this app is that it not only lets you scan to PDF, but lets you create a readable PDF file.  Readable PDF files are so much more useful because you can search for words within the file. Back to that letter I mentioned above, click here to see a sample of a PDF file that was created with FineReader Touch.  Once again, the OCR accuracy was almost perfect.  (This time it had no trouble recognizing “Adams and Reese” and the only mistake I saw was that instead of seeing the word “attorney” in the body of the letter the app saw the non-word “attomey”.  But I never expect OCR to be 100% perfect, so this result is satisfactory.  I do, however wish that this app would let you convert a document to black and white to make a better looking file.  Compare that (searchable) PDF that I just referenced with this (non-searchable) PDF file that I created last August with Scanner Pro by Readdle; the Scanner Pro PDF file is black and white but looks much nicer.

Since I have both apps, I tried to get the best of both worlds.  I scanned a letter using Scanner Pro by Readdle, then saved the cleaned up black and white scanned image to my Photos app, then I told ABBYY FineReader Touch to load the image from the Photos app and process it into a readable PDF.  Unfortunately, the end result was a lower quality document that looked like a second-generation fax, although FineReader Touch did an almost perfect job with the OCR.  I guess you lose something converting from a picture to a PDF then back to a picture and then back to a PDF again.

This app costs $4.99 and that includes the processing of scans of 100 pages.  If you want to scan more than that, you need to pay more:  $2.99 for 20 pages, $4.99 for 50 pages, $6.99 for 100 pages and $9.99 for 200 pages.  Although I do scan documents on my iPhone from time to time, I don’t do it that often, so 100 pages will likely last me for a very long time and this price strikes me as very reasonable.  On the other hand, if you plan to use this app to do a lot of scanning, you will have to pay a little more.

I haven’t yet tried all of the other iPhone apps that let you scan and create readable PDF files, and it looks like many of them are a little cheaper than ABBYY FineReader Touch.  I will note, however, that ABBYY is a well-established company has been in the document scanning business for a very long time, so that makes me trust the quality of this app.

ABBYY FineReader Touch lives up to its name.  It is a fine app.  It does a nice job (although not a perfect job) of reading words in images.  It does a very good job of turning a scanned document into a Word document (frankly, about as good as any product I’ve seen on a desktop computer).  The readable PDFs that it creates are not nearly as good as what you would get using a flatbed scanner and a computer, but for the most part that is not ABBYY’s fault — the iPhone 5’s camera is no match for a large, dedicated scanner.  I do, however, wish that ABBYY would let you convert the file to black and white or otherwise optimize the scan to make the most of the images that the iPhone can take.  While I see some room for improvement in what is only version 1 of this app, there is a lot to like.  If you need to use your iPhone to scan and OCR documents to create Word or PDF files, you’ll definitely want to check out this app.

Click here for ABBYY FineReader Touch ($4.99):

A picture taken with a real camera, especially an SLR camera, is usually of much better quality than a picture taken with an iPhone or iPad.  But once you take some pictures, it is so much more useful to have them on an iPad so that you can view them on the large screen, edit or crop them, and even email them.  Although the iPad does not have a port for SD cards, you can add an SD port with an accessory.  I’ve been testing an SD Reader with a Lightning connector from Photojojo.  Photojojo is a company that specializes in photography-related items — their website has a great design and is full of fun products — and they sent me a free review unit so that I could check it out.  This product is an inexpensive ($20) and compelling alternative to what Apple sells.

Using the Photojojo SD Reader is very simple.  Just remove your SD card from your camera and insert it upside down (label face down) into the SD Reader.  Then plug the SD Reader into the Lightning connector of a fourth generation iPad or an iPad mini.  The Photos app will automatically open and ask if you want to import the pictures.  (Videos are also imported.)  You can import all pictures or select individual pictures to import.  When finished, the app will ask if you want to delete from the camera (i.e., the SD card) the pictures that you just imported.

Once the pictures are on your iPad, you can do just about anything you want with them.  It is especially nice to be able to view the pictures on an iPad screen, which is much larger than the screen on your camera.  You can easily delete the pictures that you don’t want to keep.  If you want to edit the pictures on your iPad, you can do that using the edit features of the Photos app or any of the more sophisticated third party apps.  Whenever you get back to a computer, simply connect your iPad to your computer using the USB to Lightning connector, and your computer will import the pictures just as if you had connected your camera or an SD Reader to the computer.

The Photjojo SD Reader includes a Micro SD slot.  I don’t use Micro SD cards so I wasn’t able to test that.  It also includes a USB slot that you can use to connect directly to a camera using the cord that came with your camera.  I tested the USB slot by taking some pictures with my iPhone 5 and then using the Lightning to USB cord that comes with the iPhone to connect the iPhone to the Reader.  It worked great and transferred all of my pictures from my iPhone to my iPad.  If you use the Photo Stream feature to automatically send pictures from your iPhone to iCloud then you won’t need to use a physical connector, but I don’t use Photo Stream so this is useful.

I previously reviewed a similar product from Apple for the 30-pin connectors, the Apple iPad Camera Connection Kit.  I like that product because for $29 you get two tiny, well-made items, one with an SD card slot and one with a USB slot.  But if you have an iPad 4 or an iPad mini, you cannot use that 30-pin connector kit.  Instead, Apple now sells two different items.  For $29 (a little cheaper on Amazon) you can get a cable with a Lightning connector at one end and an SD slot at the other end, and for another $29 ($21 on Amazon) you can get a cable with a Lightning connector at one end and a USB Camera Adapter at the other end.  So you have to pay up to almost $60 for the same type of product that used to cost $29.  Moreover, unlike the 30-pin versions that were small and compact, the products sold by Apple are long with cords, making it less convenient to pack them into a camera bag.  Here are the Apple products:

 

So how do you decide between these Apple products and the Photojojo SD Reader?  First, you should consider quality, and while I haven’t tried the Lightning versions of these products, based on my extensive experience with the 30-pin versions, I suspect that the Apple products win in this category.  My biggest gripe with the Potojojo product is that it feels very cheap.  It uses very light plastic, the connections are rather tight, and the build quality is not that impressive.  Second, however, consider price.  Instead of almost $60 for both of the Apple products, you can get the Photojojo product which handles both SD and USB (and even Micro SD) for only $20.  Third, I love the small size and design of the Photojojo product which is similar to the versions that Apple made for the 30 pin connectors.  It takes up very little space making it easy to toss in a briefcase, bag, or even your pocket.  The following picture shows the old Apple 30-pin products on the left and the Photojojo SD Reader on the right.

If you plan to get heavy use out of a product like this, and if you don’t mind having only an SD slot or only a USB slot, then the Apple product may be worth it for you because Apple’s products are always well made.  But if you want to have versatility, or if you want something that is small and compact, or if you don’t plan to use this product all the time and just want to have something inexpensive for when you need it, then the Photjojo SD Reader is the one to get.  As much as I liked the 30-pin products I bought from Apple in 2011, I have used them maybe 10 times a year, making it tough to justify spending another $60.  But at $20, the Photojo SD Reader is a perfect alternative.

Click here to get the SD Reader with Lightning Connector from Photojojo ($20.00)