Month: July 2013

Every year, the ABA Legal Technology Resource Center conducts a survey to gauge the use of legal technology by attorneys in the United States.  My thoughts on the prior reports are located here:  2012, 2011, 2010.  No survey is perfect, but the ABA tries hard to ensure that its survey has statistical significance, and every year this is the best resource I am aware of to reveal how the approximately one million attorneys in the United States are using technology.  Yesterday, the ABA released Volume VI of the report titled Mobile Lawyers.  This year’s report shows that a huge and growing number of attorneys are using iPhones and iPads.

Over half of all attorneys now use an iPhone

This year’s survey reveals that 91% of all attorneys use a smartphone, and that percentage increases with the size of the law firm.  For example, smartphones are used by 85% of solo attorneys, 90% of attorneys in a firm of 10 to 49 lawyers, 97% of attorneys in firms of 100 to 499 lawyers, and 99% of lawyers in firms of 500 or more lawyers.  About two-third of attorneys using smartphones are using a device that they own, while about one-third are using a smartphone assigned to the attorney by their law firms.

For the 91% of attorneys who are using smartphones, what smartphones are they using?  The survey reveals that 62% are using an iPhone, 22% are using an Android phone, 16% are using a BlackBerry, about 1% are using Windows Mobile, and about 1% either don’t know or selected “other”.  Yes, that adds up to 102%, but perhaps some folks use more than one device.  Here is a pie chart to give you a sense of the big picture:

As you can see, 2013 is the first year in which we can say that over half of the attorneys in the United States are using an iPhone.  

This is the third year in a row that the ABA survey has collected this kind of information, which gives us the ability to see how the percentages have changed over time:

Over just the last two years, we have seen the BlackBerry drop from being an item used by 40% of all attorneys to only 14%: a drop of 26 percentage points.  At the same time, the iPhone has grown from 31% to 55%: a gain of 24 percentage points.  Android has also seen some growth, from 15% to 20%, and the number of attorneys who don’t use a smartphone at all has dropped from 12% to 9%.  Thus, while some former BlackBerry users are now using Android phones, it appears that for the most part, BlackBerry’s loss from 2011 to 2013 has been the iPhone’s gain.

What are attorneys doing with their smartphones?  The survey reveals that most attorneys are using their smartphones for e-mail, telephone, calendar, contacts, the Internet and text messaging.  Less than 10% of lawyers report using their smartphones for expense tracking, time and billing, document creation, spreadsheets, web conferencing or presentations.

Over 400,000 attorneys use an iPad

Apple released the first iPad in 2010.  The survey data for 2011, 2012 and 2013 has been consistent in one respect; every year, about 9 out of every 10 attorneys using a tablet have used an iPad.  Specifically, the percentage was 89% in 2011, 91% in 2012, and 91% in 2013.  (For those few attorneys who use a tablet but don’t use an iPad, more than half of them use an Android tablet and the small remainder use a Windows tablet or something else.)  The survey reveals that over 80% of attorneys using a tablet own their device; less than 20% of tablet users are using something issued to them by their law firm.

While the iPad’s incredibly dominant marketshare for attorneys has remained relatively steady over the years, what has changed is the number of attorneys using a tablet at all.  In 2011, about 15% of attorneys used a tablet.  In 2012, about 33% of attorneys used a tablet.  This year, 48% of all attorneys report using a tablet.  With about a million attorneys in the United States and with the iPad being used by 91% of the 48% of attorneys using a tablet, this means that in 2013 there are around 436,000 attorneys using an iPad.

These numbers are impressive in their own right, but I also see a lot of room for growth.  We now see 9 out of every 10 attorneys using a smartphone, and while I don’t expect tablet use by attorneys to get quite that high in the short term, it could get close.  The iPad is ideal for reading and carrying around documents, managing email and using the Internet, tasks that attorneys do every single day.  I rarely make it through a week in my office without another attorney sticking his or her head in my door to proudly announce that they “finally” got an iPad.  I expect this trend to continue.

A large market

With around a million attorneys in the U.S., these number suggest that there are over a half a million attorneys using an iPhone and almost a half a million attorneys using an iPad.  That’s a lot of potential customers for law-related iOS apps.  This is good news for those who already create apps for lawyers, and hopefully will encourage others to create even more great legal apps. 

As reported by Lex Friedman of Macworld, Apple announced this week that over 1 billion podcasts have been subscribed to on iTunes.  I love listening to podcasts on my iPhone in the car or when doing things around the house, although sometimes I instead use my iPod nano which is convenient because it is so portable.  My
favorite podcasts currently include MacBreak Weekly, Mac Power Users, The Talk
Show with John Gruber, This Week in Law, the Macworld podcast, the iMore
show and The Incomparable, but I’m listening to new ones all the time.  So far I like the new Clockwise podcast from TechHive, and my brother recently encouraged me to start listening to the Radiolab podcast from WNYC and the Accidental Tech Podcast.  Too many podcasts, not enough time … especially considering that I also like to listen to audiobooks on my iPhone every once in a while.  And now, the rest of the news of note from the past week:

• Virginia attorney Rob Dean discusses building a trial notebook on an iPad on his Walking Office site.
• New Jersey attorney Richard Console explains why he likes the apps Fishead Analytics, SpeakWrite and JotNot Scanner Pro in a post on Attorney at Work.
• Rulebook is a great app that I’ve reviewed in the past (here and here).  Not only can you download statutes in it, you can also purchase a digital copy of the Bluebook.  This week, the Rulebook announced that it is adding new sources from the Texas Law Review Association:  (1) The Greenbook: Texas Rules of Form (a style guide for legal citation in Texas) and (2) Manual on Usage & Style (a writing guide).
• South Carolina attorney Bill Latham of The Hytech Lawyer reviews the New Trent Arcadia Grabbit iPad case that lets you hold an iPad with one hand while you are giving a presentation.
• Kevin Parrish of Tom’s Hardware reviews an interesting iPad (or iPhone) accessory, the SanDisk Connect.  It is a tiny device — either a small flash drive or a slightly larger hard drive — that connects via WiFi to your iPad.  They come in capacities of 16, 32 or 64 GB, and the larger model also has an SD slot.  The idea is that you can store lots of media on these devices, such as pictures or video, so that they don’t take up space on your iPad, but the devices are so small that it is easy to carry them around with you.  I often tell attorneys that documents and apps are only going to take up so much space on an iPad; the real deciding factor on whether you need to spend extra money on a larger model is how much space you want to have available for photos and movies.  But if you keep your media on a SanDisk Connect, I suppose you can get a less expensive iPad.  As you can see, I’m intrigued by this new device.  Prices range from $49 for the 16 GB flash drive to $99 for the slightly larger 64 GB Media Drive (with SD slot).  (Thanks to Houston attorney Reginald Hirsch for the link.)
• Mary Ellen Gordon, Ph.D., has an interesting post on the Flurry site analyzing the price of apps.  She notes that the average cost of an iOS app is 19 cents.
• Nick Bilton and Brian Chen of the New York Times speculate on what might be Apple’s next new product.
• If you use DirecTV, you can now talk to your iPhone to find a show.
• And finally, Mike Wehner of TUAW shows off some of the more ridiculous iPhone-related items on Etsy, such as the Cowboy Hat iPhone Charger, perfect for all of the times when you … um … oh I give up.  

Whenever a litigator asks me to recommend useful iPad apps, one of my first recommendations is TranscriptPad.  If you own an iPad and you work with depositions, you will love this app.  And if you don’t have it yet, I encourage you to buy it immediately before the price goes up, as noted below.

First, a little background on what this app does.  As I explained in my January 2012 review, TranscriptPad imports the text versions of depositions provided by a court reporter and organizes them into cases.  [UPDATE: If you need to work with .ptx files, read the very helpful comments to this post that discuss strategies for doing so.]  You can then use the app to read and annotate the deposition.  And instead of simply marking all of the important stuff with a yellow highlighter (although you can do that too), TranscriptPad lets you add issue codes as you review a deposition.  So if a Question and Answer are relevant to damages in a case, you can select those lines and apply the “Damages” issue code (or whatever other issue codes you want to create).  When you are finished reviewing the deposition, the app creates a handy report organized by issue code so that you can, for example, see all of the key “Damages” testimony at one time, all of the key “Comparative Fault” testimony at one time, etc.  I’ve used TranscriptPad extensively in my own practice for the last 18 months and the app has been very helpful for many of my cases.

Last night, the app was updated to version 1.6.9.  Several new features were added, but by far the most important addition was a vast improvement to the reporting feature.  The best addition is the ability to run a report across several transcripts.  For example, if a deposition of a plaintiff is in three different volumes, you can now run a single report on all three volumes.  Or even more useful, you can now run a report across an entire case.  Thus, you can easily see the most important testimony of every single witness that was deposed on the issue of damages or comparative fault or whatever in a single report.

To run these new reports, first navigate to the level on which you want to run a report.  In the following example, I have navigated to the top case level where I have all depositions in the case.  In this example, I have depositions from Joe Plaintiff and Polly Plaintiff.  Simply tap the Reports button at the bottom of the left column.

Tapping that button brings up the new and improved Report dialog box:

To prepare a report that shows you the actual transcript testimony (the report that I find most useful) select “Detail” type of report under PDF Reports on the left.  You can then decide what to include in the report.  By default, every annotation will be included and every issue code, but you can turn off particular types of annotations.  For example, if you are only interested in Damages, you can just run a report on the issue code of damages.

Once your report is prepared, it is displayed on the right so that you can preview it. 

If you like what you see, then tap the export button at the top right of the screen.  That gives you the option to email the PDF report, print the document to an AirPrint printer, send the document to your Dropbox, or open the PDF file in another app.  In the following example, I chose to open the file in iAnnotate PDF, another app that I am currently evaluating for an upcoming review.  As you can see, the PDF reports are easy to read with the page and line numbers and the full testimony.

These reports are incredibly useful to me because with the passage of time, I often forget all of the important testimony from a deposition.  A TranscriptPad report allows me to quickly see all of the key testimony in a case, organized by topic.  After spending a few minutes reviewing a report, I am once again up-to-speed on what is good for my client (or sometimes, not so good) about the testimony of a witness.

Note that the text of the report is in black and white.  If you chose to highlight or underline text (instead of applying an issue code) as you were reading, that is simply treated as another type of annotation.  So just as you might have a report on the “Damages” issue code, the app creates a report of all testimony that you highlighted in yellow, all testimony that you underlined in blue, etc.

The Detail PDF Report is the most useful report for me, but you can create other types of reports.  The Summary PDF Report will give you the page and line designations but not the actual testimony.  The Annotated (Full) and Annotated (Mini) reports prepare a PDF version of the entire deposition with your annotations included.  You can also create reports in .txt format (useful if you want to work with the file in Microsoft Word), Excel format, Sanction format and TrialDirector format.

The ability to create reports across several depositions is a key feature for me, but there are lots of other useful improvements in version 1.6.9.  For example, you can now create a mini report with four transcript pages on each page, useful if you are printing out the annotated transcript and you want something that doesn’t take up much space in your briefcase.  There are also improvements in the ways that issue codes are handled across a case, including the ability to hide issue codes that are not used in the particular deposition that you are reviewing.  The full list of improvements in this update is as follows:

 What’s New in Version 1.6.9 

◆ New and updated report options, including new “Annotated (Mini)” report.

◆ Reports of Flags and Notes are now included in all reports, and can have unlimited text.

◆ Create reports at any level of your organizational structure: at the transcript level, the folder level, or even across a whole case.

◆ Highlights and Underlines can now be included in reports.

◆ Create report as an Excel file with Issue Codes, Flags, and other annotations in separate Sheets.

◆ Easily show/hide Issue Codes used in other transcripts, e.g. only have medical Issue Codes show in a doctor’s deposition.

◆ Added Copy Text option to Create Designation dialog, and pasted text will include the sources page and line information.

◆ Double-tapping a page/line designation jumps to that area of transcript and brings up the Create Designation dialog.

◆ Search field now also finds exhibit, file, and folder names, in addition to text in transcripts.

◆ Now supports 4 character page numbers for large depositions (current page indicator, page number on slider, page number in transcript, and search result hits).

◆ Added Recent button to allow you to easily and quickly jump back and forth between different transcripts.

◆ Enhanced transcript import to handle additional formatting scenarios.

◆ Rename dialog now updates immediately.

◆ Search results now sorted alphabetically.

◆ Renamed “Pack Case and Send” to more intuitive “Email Case”.

◆ Various minor bug fixes and improvements.

If you haven’t purchased TranscriptPad yet, I encourage you to do so today because the price is about to increase.  Ever since the app was first released, it has cost $49.99, but because Apple doesn’t allow developers to charge for app updates, the developer told me that he is raising the price of the app to $89.99 to cover the future cost of development.  I believe that the price increase will occur on Monday, July 29, 2013.  Even $89.99 is a great price for useful litigation software, but if you don’t have TranscriptPad yet and you want to save $40, you have a few days left.  Whatever price you pay, you’ll find that TranscriptPad transforms your iPad into a sophisticated tool for reading and annotating transcripts.

Click here for TranscriptPad ($89.99): 

Yesterday, Apple released the results for its 2013 fiscal third
quarter (which ran from March 31, 2013 to June 29, 2013) and held a
call with analysts to discuss the results.  This is typically not a big
fiscal quarter for Apple; the important quarter for Apple every year is
the first fiscal quarter containing the holiday sales season.  And many potential Apple customers have been in a wait-and-see mode because it is widely known that Apple will be announcing new products in just a few months.  Nevertheless, it was yet another profitable quarter for Apple, with
Apple announcing quarterly revenue of $35.3 billion (essentially the same as the $35 billion that Apple saw this time last year) and and quarterly net
profit of $6.9 billion (down from the $8.8 billion in profit this time last year).  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.  Here are the things said on the call yesterday that I think would be of interest to iPhone and iPad users:

• Apple sold 31.2 million iPhones, which is pretty impressive considering
  
  that there is a large number of people who are waiting until this Fall
  
  to purchase an iPhone when Apple announces the new model for 2013.  That’s the largest number of iPhones that Apple has ever sold in a fiscal third quarter.  Apple CFO Peter Openheimer said:  “iPhone sales were ahead of our expectations, and we were particularly
  
  pleased with very strong year-over-year growth in iPhone sales in a
  
  number of both developed and emerging markets including the U.S., UK,
  
  Japan, Brazil, Russia, India, Thailand and Singapore.  iPhone 5 remains
  
  by far the most popular iPhone, but we were also very happy with sales of
  
  iPhone 4 and 4S.”  By
  
  my count, as of June 29, 2013, Apple had sold over 383
  
  million iPhones.
• Oppenheimer emphasized the success of the iPhone for corporate users:  “iPhone also continues to be the smartphone of choice for business.  Given the security and stability of iOS, enterprise and government customers continue to deploy iPhone on their networks in ways that go far beyond personal productivity.  Companies have built tens of thousands of custom apps to improve every aspect of their business.  Global companies including American Airlines, Cisco, General Electric, Roche and SAP have deployed more than 25,000 iPhones each across their organizations.  U.S. government organizations such NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the ATF and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency are supporting and managing thousands of iPhones on their networks and continue to create both customer facing and internal iOS apps.  In just this past quarter, iOS 6 was granted FIPS 140-2 validation by the U.S. Federal Government, and approval by the U.S. Department of Defense to connect to their networks.  Combining sales for business, government and education customers, iPhone holds a 62.5% share of the U.S. commercial market based on the latest quarterly data published by IDC.”
• The iPhone accounted for 51% of Apple revenue last quarter.  Apple may have once been known as a computer company, and perhaps at some point in the future they will be known primarily as an iPad company, but right now it would be fair to think of Apple as an iPhone company.
• iPhone market share is always difficult to determine because other companies don’t report precise numbers like Apple does.  But Apple noted yesterday that according to business analytics company comScore, the iPhone had 39% of the U.S. smartphone market in March through May of 2013.
• Apple sold 14.6 million iPads.  By my count, that means that as of June 29, 2013, Apple had sold over 154 million iPads.
• Just as he did for the iPhone, Oppenheimer emphasized that corporate customers love the iPad.  “In every major industry around the world, companies are developing, deploying and supporting apps for iPad.  Government organizations as well as global enterprise companies across diverse fields, including automotive, insurance, energy services and healthcare, are using iPad and custom apps to create unique, meaningful experiences for their employees, partners, and customers.  The USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service has deployed thousands of iPads to in-person interviewers resulting in higher response rates and decreased cost.  And companies including Eli Lilly, Novartis, Cathay Life, Roche, and SAP have deployed over 20,000 iPads each across their organizations.”
• The iPad accounted for 18% of Apple’s revenue last quarter.  Put that together with the iPhone and that means that almost 70% of the company’s revenue came from iOS devices.
• Apple never announces new products in a fiscal results conference call, but when asked about new product categories, Apple CEO Tim Cook did say: “We are working on some stuff that we are really proud of and we will see how it does, and we will announce things when we are ready.”  Recall that three months ago, Oppenheimer said:  “I don’t want to be more specific, but I’m just
  
  saying we’ve got some really great stuff coming in the Fall and across
  
  all of 2014.”
• I think it is safe to assume that some of the “great stuff” coming in “Fall” of 2013 is a new iPhone.  But when will we see it, September or October?  (The iPhone 5 was announced on September 12, 2012 and went on sale September 21, 2012.)   We are currently in the Apple fiscal fourth quarter, which will end in late September, and an analyst asked on the call whether we would see new products in the Apple fiscal fourth quarter.  Unsurprisingly, Apple executives declined to answer the question, so we will just have to wait and see.

After discussing Wireless Emergency Alerts last week, I thought I’d discuss another topic related to alerts on the iPhone — the Do Not Disturb feature of iOS 6.  From conversations I’ve had with others, I know that there is some confusion about how this feature works, and it is important for iPhone users to understand when alerts can occur.  After all, you don’t want to be this guy who brought a performance of the New York Philharmonic to a halt, nor do you want a similar thing to happen to you in court.

[UPDATE 10/24/13:  Note that Do Not Disturb works a little differently in iOS 7.  For example, in iOS 7 it suppresses alerts even if you are using your iPhone.]

It is easy enough to activate the Do Not Disturb feature.  Just open the Settings app and on the first screen you will see an option called Do Not Disturb.  Turn it on to activate it.  You can tell when the feature is activated because a moon icon appears to the left of the time at the top of your iPhone’s screen.

 

When the feature is enabled, your iPhone will not disturb you (subject to settings discussed below).  Phone calls to your iPhone will go straight to voice mail without the phone ringing at all.  Thus, the feature gives you a way to silence phone calls, FaceTime invitations, alerts, and notifications. 

You need to be careful about the Clock app, however.  When it sounds an alarm, the alarm always goes off.  This means that an alarm trigged by the Clock app will make noise even if the iPhone is in Do Not Disturb mode.  It makes noise even if your ringer switch is turned off.  I suspect that this is how most of us will want the function to operate; if you ask your iPhone to wake you up in the morning, you probably intend for an alarm to go off even if you don’t want to be disturbed by other alerts.  Just be aware of this and don’t assume that the Do Not Disturb feature makes it impossible for your iPhone to make noise.  An alarm that you set in the clock app to go off at a specific time, and an alarm that sounds when the countdown timer reaches zero, is going to make noise.

Even when Do Not Disturb is turned on, it only goes into effect when your device is locked — in other words, the screen is turned off.  If you turn on Do Not Disturb while you are in court but you are using your iPhone such that the screen is on, then calls, alerts and notifications will still come through (and will make noise if your ringer/silent switch is in the up position).  The point of the Do Not Disturb feature is to keep your iPhone quiet and unobtrusive when you not otherwise using it.  

In the Settings app, just below the on/off switch for Do Not Disturb, you can tap the word Notifications and then, on the next screen, tap the word Do Not Disturb to change the settings for this feature. 

 

One option is to automatically use Do Not Disturb on a schedule.  I like this feature because I keep my iPhone in an iHome device next to my bed to charge it at night so it is very close to my bed.  I don’t want to be awoken by a simple alert such as a notification that I have a new email.  Even if the ringer switch is turned off, many alerts will still appear on my iPhone’s screen and turn on the screen for a few seconds — which can seem quite bright in an otherwise dark room at night — and some alerts such as incoming phone calls may also make your iPhone vibrate, which can seem quite loud in a quiet room.  Thus, as you can see above, my iPhone turns on the Do Not Disturb feature automatically every night between 1:00 AM and 6:00 AM.

You can create two types of exceptions so that alerts pass through even when the Do Not Disturb feature is turned on.  First, you can allow calls to ring through to your iPhone either from everyone (which somewhat defeats the purpose of the setting), everyone in your contacts (which helps guard against unsolicited calls), everyone in a subgroup of your contacts (you can create such groups using iCloud; click here for instructions), or everyone in your Favorites, which is the setting I have enabled.  My Favorites on my Phone include people such as my close family members and a few folks at my law office including my secretary.  If one of them calls me in the middle of the night or when I otherwise have Do Not Disturb turned on, I figure that there could be a good reason for it.

The second exception that you can create is for Repeated Calls.  The idea is that if someone calls you from a number that is not in your exception list — such as a family member calling you from a pay phone — and they do so more than once, the second such call will go through because, presumably, it is important. 

While I’m talking about the Do Not Disturb feature on your own iPhone, keep in mind that other people might use it as well.  If you ever need to urgently reach another person on their iPhone, if your first call goes straight to voice mail, that might mean that the person’s iPhone is turned off or it might mean that the person has the Do Not Disturb feature enabled.  Thus, if your call is important, consider calling a second time to see if the call goes through because the Repeated Calls option is turned on.

If you’re only concerned about blocking normal phone calls, one alternative is to use Airplane mode, which disables the cellular data service on the iPhone.  Once airplane mode is turned on you can then turn WiFi on, but note that if you do so alerts such as iMessage text messages and emails will still come through, and even phone calls from other services such as Skype or FaceTime will come through.

There is always one guaranteed way to make sure that your iPhone doesn’t bother you.  Just turn it off.  Hold down the on/off/sleep/wake button at the top right of the iPhone until you see the Slide to Power Off option, and then select that option.  But if you don’t want to shut down your phone and you find yourself in a place where you are supposed to be quiet, make sure that you understand the ins and outs of iPhone alerts so you can take the necessary precautions.

As Apple and iOS app developers continue to focus their efforts on getting ready for iOS 7 later this year, the world of iOS was relatively quiet this week, but there were a few interesting stories that caught my attention:

• New York attorney and TechnoLawyer publisher Neil Squillante reviews the new 2.0 version of  NoteSuite, an iPad (and Mac) app for taking, organizing, and searching notes.  The app lets you import a Word document and then convert it to PDF so you can annotate it.
• St. Louis attorney Todd Hendrickson discusses whether the iPad or the iPad mini is more valuable in the practice of law in this post on Lawyerist.com.  I use both of them extensively and have a different favorite depending upon the task.
• If you need to book a hotel room but you can wait to do so until Noon on the day when you need it, Florida attorney Rick Georges discussess an app called Hotel Tonight on his FutureLawyer site that can get you some good deals.
• South Carolina attorney Bill Latham of The Hytech Lawyer explains how to give a wireless presentation with an iPad, an Apple TV and a VGA projector.
• Joe Patrice of Above the Law describes a lawsuit filed by a lawyer (on his own behalf) who asserts that Apple’s is responsible his ruined marriage because Apple made it possible for him to view pornography using the Safari web browser.
• Microsoft released a version of Outlook for the iPhone and iPad, but it is only for a small group of Outlook users.  If your office subscribes to Office 365 and you can already use the Outlook Web App, then the new OWA app for iOS provides a native client.  But as Tom Warren of The Verge reports, support for Exchange on-premises is planned for the future.
• Ashton Kutcher, who plays Steve Jobs in a movie being released next month, explained on Quora why he took the part.
• Brad Molen of Engadget reports on new plans offered by AT&T, T-Mobile and (possibly) Verizon that let you pay for an iPhone in monthly installments and get new phones every year.  It sounds sort of like leasing a car versus buying a car.
• If you ever need to charge up to five iPads and/or iPhones at the same time, this week Griffin announced the PowerDock 5, a $99 relatively small charging station that provides a place to hold and store up to five devices.  We already have four iPads in my house (I have an iPad and an iPad mini; my wife has an iPad; and we have an older iPad 2 that my kids use) and I suspect we are not alone in having many iOS devices in one house.
• Killian Bell of Cult of Mac reports on an Oregon man who was looking at vintage cars on the eBay app on his iPhone and didn’t sign out of the app before he let his 14 month old child play with his iPhone.  Apparently the child opened the eBay app again and bid on a car, and the man subsequently “won” the auction and became the proud owner of a 1962 Austin Healy Sprite.  Oops.
• And finally, I don’t play a lot of games on my iPad but I did enjoy playing Angry Birds Star Wars.  It mixes the fun Angry Birds concept with sound effects and characters from the original three Star Wars films that I loved as a child.  This week, Rovio announced that it will release Star Wars II on September 19.  The second version will track the Episode I, II and III movies and works with 30 collectable figures sold by Hasbro.  You buy a figure, such as a Chewbacca Angry Bird, and place it on a pod place on top of your iPad’s camera to insert the character into the game and play it.  Interesting idea.  Here is a video showing the upcoming game, and in the meantime, you can currently get the original Angry Birds Star Wars HD (normally $2.99) for free: 

I’ve reviewed quite a few external speakers for the iPhone, but I’ve never seen or heard anything like the Damson Twist.  The iPhone’s tiny built-in speaker has very little bass, and a typical criticism of portable Bluetooth speakers is that they sound good but still don’t have a lot of bass.  That complaint cannot be made against the Damson Twist.  This speaker is very small and portable (only about three inches high) but uses an interesting technology to deliver serious bass.  Damson sent me a free unit to review and I’ve been testing it for the last few weeks.

The Twist works by pushing sound across the surface on which the Twist is sitting.  If you pick up a Twist and hold it in your hand without the bottom touching anything, you can barely hear the sound at all.  But when you place the Twist on a flat surface, the surface becomes a part of the speaker and the sound travels throughout the surface to deliver sound with deep bass.  Damson says that it uses something called resonance technology rather than the traditional cone approach to amplification.  Here is a short video demonstration of me picking up and putting down the Twist on top of my piano:

Damson says that the Twist works with virtually any surface including wood, plastic, metal and glass, but in my tests it works best on a large, flat wood surface such as a wood desk.  Note that in my tests it didn’t seem to matter if the desk was messy or had lots of other objects on it. 

If you have previously paired the Twist with your iPhone, using it is very simple.  Twist the Twist in the center to switch it from “Off” to “BT” and it automatically connects to your iPhone and tells your iPhone to play (whatever you were last listening to).  So you simply twist the Twist, place it on a surface, and then your music (or podcast or audiobook or whatever) starts to play.  There are no volume controls on the Twist; you just use the volume controls on your iPhone.

Note that if you want to use the Twist with a device that does not have Bluetooth, you can twist it the opposite direction, from “Off” to “On,” and then just plug in a standard 3.5 mm cord that is connected to your iPod or other device. 

You can get the Twist in black, blue, red or silver.  As you can see, Damson sent me a blue one.  Here is a picture from Damson showing a red one.  This picture also gives you a view of the small base underneath the Twist.

I’m no audiophile, but I have mixed feelings about the sound.  It is not as loud as other (and admittedly larger) Bluetooth speakers that I have tested such as the SuperTooth DISCO 2 although it does seem about as loud as the similarly-sized (and non-Bluetooth) Scosche BoomCAN that I reviewed back in 2011.  Thus, the Twist is fine for providing sound to an indoor room, but I didn’t find it to be loud enough to be satisfactory to use outside.

And aside from sheer volume, to my ears, the quality of the sound is too bass-heavy when I’m listening to music.  But of course, that is the point.  The Twist is designed for people who want to hear a lot of bass, and while I don’t count myself in that camp, perhaps you do.  I should add that the Twist is for people who want to “feel” a lot of bass because if you are working on a table with a Twist playing music, you can literally feel the music playing through the table.  It is an odd feeling.  I liked the Twist much better when I was listening to podcasts or audiobooks; the extra bass gives voices a fuller sound that is a huge improvement over the iPhone’s built-in speaker.

Importantly, however, how the Twist sounds will depend heavily on the surface on which it is placed.  In fact, testing the Twist almost felt like a game.  What does it sound like on this surface?  How about this one?  What about over here?  In fact, if you want to use the Twist and you don’t have a suitable surface, the carrying case that comes with the Twist is designed to serve as an emergency flat surface.  It does work in a pinch, but the sound quality is inferior to a large wooden surface.

Damson says that the Twist will last for up to 9 hours on a charge.  I didn’t push the speaker to the limits enough to test that, but I certainly got many hours between charges. 

If you want to try to get a free Twist, Damson is currently running a contest on Facebook.  Watch a short video that shows the Twist being used in nine different cities, then guess what those nine cities are, and you might win a prize pack of four Twist speakers.  Click here to enter.  The contest ends July 23, 2013 at midnight Eastern time.

At a list price of $69 (and you can get it for less on Amazon), the Damson Twist is less expensive than many other portable Bluetooth speakers and is much more portable.  If you want a small Bluetooth speaker that delivers a lot of bass, and if the idea of using a flat surface as a part of the speaker appeals to you, you’ll find the Twist to be both useful and fun. 

Click here to get the Damson Twist on Amazon (about $64.00).

Last week while I was drafting a brief in my office, I heard a tone coming from my iPhone that I had never heard before.  In fact, at first I didn’t think that my iPhone was the source of the noise; I thought it was some alarm tone broadcast over the emergency speaker system in my office building.  It turns out that it was a Wireless Emergency Alert for a flash flood in my area.  Here are the details on Wireless Emergency Alerts so that if you hear one on your iPhone you will know what is going on.  I’ll start by explaining what they are, and then I’ll discuss how they are implemented on the iPhone and how you can manage them.

The WARN Act and WEA

Title VI of PL 109-347 (Oct. 13, 2006) is titled the Warning Alert and Response Network Act, sometimes called the WARN Act.  The WARN Act, in 47 U.S.C. § 1201, gives the FCC the authority to adopt standards for cell phone companies to transmit emergency alerts.  Participation by cell phone companies is voluntary — they don’t have to participate — but if they do, the law states that cell phone companies may not impose an additional charge for such alerts.  47 U.S.C. § 1201(b)(2)(C).

Pursuant to the WARN Act, the FCC worked with FEMA to create a program called Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA).  The system was based on the existing Emergency Alert System (EAS), which are the warnings that you get on a television and radio when there is a weather or other emergency. 

Alerts are sent to cell towers providing wireless service to a target geographical area, and then all WEA-capable phones using those cell towers receive the alert.  Thus, you will receive an alert if you are in a targeted area even if you are just visiting that area.

WEA delivers only three types of alerts:

1. Emergency Alerts.  These are alerts issued because of an imminent threat to public safety or life, such as evacuation orders or
shelter in place orders due to severe weather, a terrorist threat or
chemical spill.  For example, the National Weather Service says that it sends WEA alerts for tsunami warnings, tornado and flash flood warnings, hurricane, typhoon, dust storm and extreme wind warnings and blizzard and ice storm warnings.  The way it works is that a pre-authorized national, state or local government agency sends an emergency
alert to FEMA, which then sends
the alert to the participating cell phone companies, each of which then sends the alert to WEA capable phones in the zone of emergency.

2. AMBER Alerts.  AMBER officially stands for America’s Missing: Broadcasting Emergency Response, but that is a backronym as the system was really named for Amber Hagerman, a 9-year-old girl who was abducted in 1996 while riding her bicycle in Arlington, TX and was subsequently murdered.  The killer was never identified.  The incident, and others like it, led to the AMBER Alert system, a method by which police officers may quickly publicize information when a child age 17 or younger is abducted such as the name and description of the child, a description of the suspected abductor, a description and license plate of the abductor’s vehicle, etc.  According to the U.S. Department of Justice, 158 AMBER Alerts involving 197 children were issued in the U.S. in 2011.  144 of those children were eventually found, and AMBER Alerts played a role in 28 of those cases.  The original AMBER Alert system was opt-in only, and sent a text message based on a cell phone owner’s pre-defined geographical location regardless of where a cell phone was actually located when the alert was issued.  That system was retired on December 31, 2012 to be replaced by the new, improved WEA system.

3. Presidential Alerts.  I am not aware of any official standards for when the President will issue a WEA Presidential Alert.  No president has ever issued a Presidential Alert under WEA or similar prior systems (and hopefully, no president will ever have a need to do so).  The WARN Act provides in 47 U.S.C. § 1201(b)(2)(E) that while cell phone users may opt-out of emergency alerts and AMBER Alerts, a user may not opt-out of Presidential Alerts.

WEA capable devices are designed to reject duplicate alerts, so you should receive each alert only once.  However, subsequent alerts may be issued that contain information similar to a prior alert.  You might not receive an alert at all if you are on the phone.  The AT&T website says that you might not receive an alert if “your device was in an active voice call or data session during the time period that the Wireless Emergency Alert was broadcast.”  And the Verizon website says that “if you are engaged in a voice or data session when alerts are released,
you will not receive the alert.  Alerts may be re-broadcast at specific
intervals in the targeted geographic locations, in order to reach as
many devices as possible. However, after that interval has concluded, or
the alerts have been superseded, the original alert will no longer be
released.”

AT&T just turned on the WEA system for iPhones in June of 2013,
which is why I had not heard one before last week.  AT&T did so by pushing software updates to iPhones starting on June 14, 2013.  To receive the update  you had to be using an iPhone 4S or iPhone 5 running iOS 6.1 or later.  (I believe that if you sync your iPhone with iTunes on a computer, you might be able to receive the AT&T update even if your device doesn’t quite meet those specifications.) 
After the update was installed last month, if you were paying attention, you saw an alert that
said:  “Carrier Settings Update:  new settings required for your device
have been installed.”  I understand that Verizon and Sprint enabled WEA
for iPhones in 2012.  I don’t believe that T-Mobile has enabled WEA for iPhones yet.

WEA on the iPhone

If your iPhone supports WEA and the carrier has turned it on for your phone, then the default setting is that you receive all three types of alerts.  When an alert comes in, you will hear a tone and see a message on the screen. 

As noted above, when I first heard the sound last week, it was a tone that I had never heard before from my iPhone so it caught me by surprise.  The following YouTube video shows a WEA alert triggered by a hack on an iPhone and a Samsung Galaxy G3.  I’m fairly certain that this is the same sound that I heard:

The tone only sounds if your ringer/silent switch is in the “up” position.  With the ringer switched off, the phone just vibrates when you get an alert.  This is yet another reason to keep your iPhone in silent mode when you are in court; your judge might not be happy that you disrupted the proceedings because there was a flash flood alert.

The message itself looks like a text message but it actually is not.  A different technology called Cell Broadcast is used to send the alerts, which is important because after a disaster, cell phone service can get highly congested which can result in delays for text messages.  This also means that you can receive alerts even if you have text messaging turned off.  I didn’t take a screen shot of my iPhone last week when I received an emergency alert, but here is one that I found in the MacRumors forum that shows you what a WEA alert looks like:

Even after you dismiss the alert, you can still see it in the Notifications Center.  Here is the alert that I saw last week:

While all three WEA alerts are turned on by default, you can turn off two of them if you want to do so.  Open the Settings app and go to Notifications and then scroll all the way down to the bottom.  You will see switches that let you turn off AMBER Alerts and/or Emergency Alerts.  As noted above, the WARN Act prohibits turning off Presidential Alerts, so there is no option for that.

Although WEA alerts are based on your location, you do not need to have Location Services on the iPhone turned on to receive alerts.  Your iPhone’s GPS radio is irrelevant to the WEA system.  As noted above, alerts are issued based upon your location as determined by cell towers. 

After the flash flood alert went to iPhone users in downtown New Orleans last week, I spoke with many New Orleans attorneys who were annoyed with the alert because it caught them by surprise.  Having said that, I think that the main problem was a lack of prior knowledge; I myself wasn’t fully aware how this system worked until I researched this post.  My guess is that once people understand why these alerts are sent and understand that they have the ability to manage them, most folks will appreciate the value of the WARN Act and the WEA system.

The more I read about the changes in iOS 7, the more excited I am for the release of this major change to the iPhone and iPad interface in just a few months.  For example, Rene Ritchie of iMore wrote a great article explaining why the new interface on the upcoming iOS 7 is truly a radical change.  Moreover, I suspect that there are other cool parts of iOS 7 that haven’t been revealed yet because they will require the next version of the iPhone, which I expect Apple to release around the same time that iOS 7 becomes available.  As we look forward to the future, let’s also take a look back at the news items of note from this past week:

• South Carolina attorneys Jim McLaren and Jonathan Lounsberry wrote two posts (part 1, part 2) on The Mac Lawyer blog run by Ben Stevens about how apps can make you a better litigator.
• The DOJ was successful in the liability phase of its antitrust lawsuit against Apple regarding ebook pricing.  Adam Engst of TidBITS wrote an excellent explanation of the opinion.  Engst links to an a good article by Philip Elmer-DeWitt of Fortune that discusses the arguments that Apple might pursue on appeal.
• ALM recently launched free iOS apps for 14 of its publications including The American Lawyer, Law Technology News, The National Law Journal and the New York Law Journal.  For at least some of these apps (such as Law Technology News), all content is complementary through September 30th.
• The ABA Journal is starting to compile its annual list of the best legal blogs, the Blawg 100.  If you would like to nominate one of your favorite blogs, click here before August 9th.  And if you nominate iPhone J.D., thanks!
• I missed this one a few weeks ago, but last month Massachusetts lawyer Robert Ambrogi discussed LawSauce, an app to help you locate legal research materials around the world.
• California attorney Scott Grossberg has tips for working with time zones on the iPhone and iPad.
• UK solicitor Jon Bloor discusses the confidentiality of data stored on DropBox.
• It’s not just attorneys like Jon Bloor who think about document confidentiality; governments worry about that too.  According to Cyrus Farivar of Ars Technica, Russia is addressing this problem by buying typewriters as a way to avoid digital leaks at the Kremlin.  I don’t see any holes in that plan at all.  It’s not like anyone could simply use an iPhone to take picture of a document and email that around the world.
• Alexander George of The Wirecutter has looked a lots of iPhone 5 cases and he believes that the best one is the SwitchEasy Tones.
• Google will soon release a Google Maps app for the iPad.  David Pogue of the New York Times wrote an early review.
• Kit Eaton of the New York Times identifies some apps that can help you in an emergency.
• Verizon offers 4G LTE in more places than AT&T, but in places that have AT&T 4G LTE the speed is often faster.  Kevin Fitchard of GigaOm explains why.
• Josh Winning of the Fancy Dress Costumes blog interviews Lisa Jensen, the costume designer for the movie about Steve Jobs starring Ashton Kutcher.
• Have you ever thought that your iPhone was vibrating only to look at it and see that it is not?  That happens to me from time to time.  Tom Stafford of the BBC says that it is a common phenomena and explains what is happening.
• And finally, the folks at EverySteveJobsVideo.com created a compilation video of the funniest Steve Jobs moments from 1978 to 2011.  The iOS era begins just before the 6 minute mark when Jobs introduced the iPhone by first showing a mock-up of an iPod with a rotary dial on it.

Five years ago today, on July 10, 2008, Apple launched the App Store.  When the virtual doors were opened, the App Store proudly included 500 apps.  Just a few months later, when iPhone J.D. started, there were 10,000 apps available.  A year later, there were 100,000 apps available.  By the Fall of 2011, there were over 500,000 apps available.  Today, there are over 900,000 apps available, and it won’t be long before there are a million apps in the App Store. 

Apple didn’t invent the idea of buying software for a mobile device — back in the day, I purchased quite a few apps for my Palm Treo 650, including Documents to Go, an app that I still use today on the iPhone — but Apple made it so easy (and comparatively inexpensive) to purchase apps, and gave developers such a great platform for releasing apps, that nobody can deny that Apple’s App Store was a game-changer. 

In fact, Apple thought that the “App Store” was so much its own that when Amazon came out with an “app store” for Android devices, Apple sued Amazon, claiming that the term was its alone.  Yesterday, on the eve of the fifth anniversary, Apple dropped the lawsuit, stating:  “We no longer see a need to pursue our case.  With more than 900,000 apps and
50 billion downloads, customers know where they can purchase their
favorite apps.”

Over the years we have seen a large number of high-quality apps written especially for lawyers.  The first law-related app that I reviewed on iPhone J.D. was a free version of the Constitution produced by Clint Bagwell Consulting that is still available today.  In fact, that app was just updated in March of 2013 to note Mississippi’s official ratification this year of the 13th Amendment (which abolished slavery).  The first app-related lawsuit that I discussed was in early 2009; one fart sound app developer sued another such developer over the use of the phrase “pull my finger” in the app — which sounds silly, but those apps made their developers hundreds of thousands of dollars.  In fact, for some lucky developers, the App Store has been a gold rush; Apple has already paid app developers over $9 billion.

Today, we have many sophisticated law-specific apps such as TranscriptPad, WestlawNext, LexisAdvance, Fastcase, Rulebook, Black’s Law Dictionary, plus a ton of general-purpose apps that lawyers use all the time such as GoodReader, Documents to Go, GoodNotes, 1Password, and many, many others. 

Apple has retired the “There’s an app for that” campaign — a phrase that Apple trademarked in 2010, and that even inspired a Sesame Street video.  Nevertheless, the sentiment remains as true today as ever.  You can find an app for almost any need, and the quantity and quality of apps is a big part of what makes the iPhone and iPad so special. 

To celebrate the fifth anniversary, Apple arranged to make a five of the most popular game apps and five of the most popular non-game apps free this week.  Game developer EA followed suit, so right now you can get the following apps for free:

• Barefoot World Atlas:
• Day One (diary/journal):
• How to Cook Everything (cookbook normally $9.99):
• Over (photo-captioning software):
• Traktor DJ iPhone (normally $19.99):
• Badland (game):
• Infinity Blade II (game):
• Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP (game):
• Tiny Wings (game):
• Where’s My Water? (Disney game):
• Dead Space (EA game):
• Mirror’s Edge (EA game):
• The Sims: Medieval (EA game):

It’s amazing to think how far the App Store has come in only five years.  One cannot help but be excited for the future of iOS apps.