John Gruber of Daring Fireball wrote a great article on the 30th anniversary of the Mac. He focuses on how Apple employees really think through the details — something that was true not only for the first Mac in 1984 but also for the first iPhone in 2007, and subsequent generations of both. The article is called “Special” and you’ll find out why when you read it. And now, the rest of the news of note from this week:
San Francisco attorney Morgan Smith explains how you can use the Personal Hotspot function on your iPhone to create a private WiFi zone in a courtroom so that you can using an iPad and an Apple TV to give a presentation. I haven’t had an opportunity to try something like this in a trial, but I’m glad to hear that it is working for others.
Ohio attorney Joseph Hada provides tips for using an iPad to give presentations in this article (PDF file).
Los Angeles attorney Mary Der-Parseghian created a $5 app called CourtDial that has court and judge information so that you can easily look up addresses and phone numbers. For now it just contains California state court data, but she plans to add information for courts in other states.
If you need to use an iPhone or iPad when you are outside in the cold weather, you’ll want gloves that keep your hand warms but that also work with a touchscreen. Clifford Agocs reviews the best options in this article for The Wirecutter.
Dan Moren of Macworld explains how to schedule recurring events on an iPhone or iPad.
And finally, if you want a way to carry both your iPhone and forms of payment without being obvious about it, the Push from Dapperbox is an iPhone case that includes a hidden wallet compartment that can hold three cards (license, credit card, etc.) or two cards and some folded cash.
If you ever practice in federal court, then using PACER is a part of your job. PACER websites typically let you select a mobile option so that you can access PACER on an iPad or an iPhone, but the experience isn’t ideal. You cannot save your username or password, it is difficult to manually enter case numbers, and every time you access a docket sheet or a document you have to pay to do so. Matthew Zorn, an attorney at a large New York law firm, decided to do something about that, so he spent nine months writing a useful and beautifully designed app that he calls DkT. The DkT app is free and can access PACER for federal appellate, district and bankruptcy courts.
When you first use the app, tap the house icon at the bottom left to save your user name, password and default client number information. The app then saves and encrypts that information for future use, although you can logout when you want. Zorn tells me that the app interacts directly and only with PACER/ECF, so no third party (including Zorn) ever sees your password.
Once logged in, you can use one of the three main parts of the app, each of which is selected by tapping the tab on the right: Search, Bookmarks and Documents.
You use the Search screen to find a case. The available fields or Case Type, Region, Case Number, Date Filed, Date Closed and Party Name, and you can use as few or as many of those fields as you want. The Region is organized by federal circuit, so when I selected the Fifth Circuit I was able to find both Eastern District of Louisiana cases that I am working on and a single Southern District of Mississippi case where I am admitted pro hac vice.
Once you find your case you can view the docket. Docket entries are clearly displayed on the left. You can use a finger to scroll up and down. You can also scroll up with two fingers to quickly jump to the top, and scroll down with two fingers to quickly jump to the bottom to see the most recent entries. If this is a case that you will access in the future, tap the bookmark icon above the docket entries.
When you are at the top of the docket list, you can pull down on the entries to review a search bar, where you can search for specific entries. When you are at the bottom of the docket list, you can pull up to refresh with any more recent docket entries (which will incur PACER charges).
To see a particular document, tap on an entry on the left to see the document on the right.
It is easy to view a document on the screen. Buttons at the top right let you print the document, save the document, or email the document. If you have previously saved a document, a disk icon appears next to the entry so that you know that you can view it again without having to pay PACER to download a fresh copy.
If you want to open the document in another app that reads PDF files, you cannot currently do that directly from this screen; you do it from the Documents section of the app, discussed below.
The second part of the app is the Bookmarks section. Tap the large Bookmarks tab on the right of the main screen to see the cases that you have previously bookmarked while you were looking at the docket entries. This gives you a fast way to access a case without having to perform another search.
There are two ways to look at a bookmarked case. If you tap the disk icon you will see a saved version of the docket sheet. This is a nice function because you can view a docket without having to pay PACER to download it again — something that you cannot do when you use PACER in the Safari app. If you want to view both saved docket entries and all of the newest entries in the docket, then tap the second icon. PACER will charge you for the new entries.
The third part of the app is the Documents section. This is where you will see all of the documents that you have previously saved, each organized by case. You can tap on a document to view it again (without having to pay PACER to download a new copy). You can tap and hold on a document in the list to choose to open the document in another app on your iPad that can read PDF files. If you want to send all of the documents from a case at one time, tap the paperclip icon to create and email a .zip file with all of the documents.
This app is probably most useful on an iPad where you can read a document on the large screen, but it works on the iPhone too.
PACER is a useful service, but the biggest complaint is its cost. For example, every time you view a docket sheet, you need to pay to download the docket sheet. And over time, as docket entries grow, that gets more expensive. DkT is built with cost saving and accessibility in mind. For example, as explained above, you can bookmark a docket the first time you view it, and then in the future the app only downloads new entries to limit your additional PACER expenses.
Speaking of costs, Zorn spent a lot of time creating this app, and yet he is giving it away for free. He even made the code open source so that other app developers can learn from his work. I asked Zorn about this, and he told me: “There are two main reasons why I chose to publish it for free and open source. First, I used a lot of open-source code myself, and used a beautiful, free icon set, which is the only way I could have produced a high quality product on my own. Second, this is my first major iOS release, and I’m looking for users, not money.”
DkT is obviously a version 1.0 app and I see room for future improvement. For example, I’d like to be able to open a document in another app without having to first save the document and then go to the Documents tab. I’d also like a quick way to access recently viewed cases even if I forgot to bookmark them. But these are minor issues, and DkT is without a doubt the absolute best way to access PACER on an iPad or iPhone. If you practice in federal court, download this app now so that you have it whenever you need it. And thanks to Matthew Zorn for creating such a useful app for the legal community.
Click here to get DkT (free):
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This article won the LitigationWorld Pick of the Week. LitigationWorld is a free weekly email newsletter that that provides helpful tips regarding electronic discovery, litigation strategy, and litigation technology.
Yesterday, Apple released the results for its 2014 fiscal first quarter (which ran from September 29, 2013 to December 28, 2013, and did not actually include any days from calendar year 2014) and held a call with analysts to discuss the results. This is typically Apple’s best quarter of the year because of holiday sales. It turned out to be Apple’s best fiscal quarter ever, with revenue of $57.6 billion and profit of $13.1 billion. Indeed, Apple set new records for iPhone and iPad sales.
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 executives during the call that are of interest to iPhone and iPad users. Here are the items that stood out to me:
Apple sold a record 51 million iPhones last quarter. By my count, as of December 28, 2013, Apple had sold over 472 million iPhones.
There were two new iPhones for sale last quarter. The good news is that Apple couldn’t make enough of the iPhone 5s. If you want to be a pessimist, reading between the lines, it does seem based on yesterday’s conference call that Apple had expected to sell more iPhone 5c devices then they actually did last quarter. Indeed, outside of the Apple Store, I’ve only seen a single person using an iPhone 5c — albeit a very important person. (Hi, Mom!)
Apple executives indicated that they are excited about future iPhone sales. One reason for excitement: just last week, the iPhone became available on China Mobile, the largest cellphone network in the world with around 750 million subscribers.
Apple sold a record 26 million iPads last quarter. Apple did not disclose how many of those were iPad minis, but it did say that throughout the quarter it could not make enough iPad minis to keep up with demand. By my count, as of December 28, 2013, Apple had sold over 195 million iPads.
Apple says that 7 million iPads to date have been sold to U.S. educational institutions. And this football season, Apple says that nearly every NFL team is using iPads as playbooks instead of three-ring binders.
That means that Apple has now sold over 667 million iOS devices to date. Apple is now two-thirds of the way towards being able to say that it has sold a billion iOS devices.
The App Store now offers over 1 million apps. Based on data previously released, over 30% of those are native iPad apps.
Apple CEO Tim Cook emphasized that Apple wants to sell a lot of iPhones and iPads to companies: “It’s clear that the enterprise area has huge potential, and we’re doing well from a percentage of companies that are using iPhone and iPad. It’s up to unbelievable numbers. The iPhone is used in 97% of the Fortune 500 and 91% of the Global 500, and iPad is used in 98% of the Fortune 500 and 93% of the Global 500. And we have a number of accounts … that have tens of thousands of iOS devices working. And also, as I think was mentioned earlier, 90% of tablet activations in corporations are iPads. And 95% of total app activations were on iOS. And I think that’s an incredible measure of ultimately how sticky the products are because you can get so much productivity out of an iPad and an iPhone. And so I think the road in enterprise is a longer one. The arc is longer than in consumer, which can immediately go out and buy things, etc. And I think we’ve done a lot of the groundwork as you can tell from these numbers that I’ve given you, and I would expect that it would have more and more payback in the future.”
In prior calls, Apple CEO Tim Cook has indicated that Apple has a new type of product that it is working on. In April of 2013, Cook indicated that it would likely come out in late 2014. When asked yesterday whether the plan was still to come out with something new by the end of 2014, Cook said simply: “Yes. Absolutely. No change.” Who knows what that new product will be, but now that 2014 has started, the countdown clock (perhaps an iWatch countdown clock?) has started.
I don’t use a case with my iPhone because I prefer not to add any bulk or weight to it. That means that my iPhone lacks the protection of a case if I drop it, which of course I have done, but I have avoided any major calamity over the years, and I figure that minor nicks and scratches just give it some character. Having said that, I’d obviously rather not drop the iPhone at all. The Maxxable is a small clip that attaches to an iPhone and provides two rings that you can put your fingers in to reduce the risk of your iPhone falling out of your hand. The company sent me a free review unit of this $14 product and I’ve been trying it out for the last few weeks. The product works and is useful.
The Maxxable is a plastic clip, available in black or white, that firmly attaches to the sides of your iPhone. Simply fit your iPhone into one side and then push down to snap the other side.
The inside of the Maxxable, both the back and the edges, has a soft foam rubber to provide some cushion against your iPhone.
The back of the Maxxable has two rings which are attached to a ball and socket joint. Place two fingers in the rings and you can easily use your thumb for one-handed operation of the iPhone. The rings spin 360º so you can hold it in just about any position.
The website says that it doesn’t matter if the rings fit down around your knuckles. I have larger hands, the Maxxable doesn’t fit around my knuckes, and I often find myself wishing that it did. If the Maxxable offered a larger ring size as an option, I would get it to be a little more comfortable in my hand. Nevertheless, the device works well enough with just the top of my fingers in the Maxxable.
In my tests, the Maxxable has worked well. I have a much better grip when I hold my iPhone using the Maxxable versus just holding the iPhone by itself. I’ll admit that I have on occasion worried about whether the plastic ball and socket joint will fail over time with use; hopefully that is just me being paranoid.
When not in use, It is easy to remove the Maxxable. Or you can keep it attached and fold down the rings, which snap to either side. In that position, the Maxxable doesn’t add much thickness and adds virtually no weight so it is easy to slip an iPhone in your pocket even when the Maxxable clip is attached.
The Maxxable website advertises that you can also use the device as a kickstand to prop up your iPhone. In my tests, that has not worked well because it is easy for the rings to turn in the ball and socket joint, which causes the iPhone to fall down. Get the Maxxable to use it as a way to hold your iPhone; don’t buy it just because you are looking for a kickstand.
I wish that the Maxxable was a little more comfortable in my hand, and if you have smaller hands you may have better luck. But the Maxxable still works well, and at $14.00, the device is inexpensive enough that it is worth you considering it if you don’t use an iPhone case and you want a way to minimize the risk of an iPhone slipping out of your hand. You can find a version that works with the iPhone 4 / 4s / 5c on Amazon, but if you want a version for the iPhone 5 / 5s you currently need to get it directly from the manufacturer.
I am a big fan of all of the new features in iOS 7, but one thing that I don’t like is that my home screen will sometimes reboot. I know that I’m not the only one to have this problem, and this week Apple told the news organization Mashable: “We have a fix in an upcoming software update for a bug that can occasionally cause a home screen crash.” I’m glad to hear that a fix is coming soon. And now, the rest of the news of note from the past week:
Minneapolis attorney Sam Glover of Lawyerist.com reviews three apps that you can use to annotate PDF documents on an iPad.
South Carolina attorney Ben Stevens of The Mac Lawyer says that the Adonit Jot Script is his favorite iPad stylus. I testing that stylus now and will post my thoughts in an upcoming review.
California attorney Scott Grossberg recommends apps for accessing documents and other information when you don’t have an Internet connection.
California attorney David Sparks reviews the Belkin QODE iPad Air keyboard case.
John Moltz reviews the Zagg Keys Cover for the iPad Air, another combination keyboard and case.
Thirty years ago, Apple introduced the Macintosh. I remember when I first saw the Mac, and I was amazed by the graphical user interface and the overall friendliness of the computer. Four years later, in 1988, I used the money I made working a summer job during college to buy my first Mac, and I’ve been buying Apple products ever since. Jason Snell of Macworld interviewed three Apple executives to talk about the 30 year anniversary, and the iPhone and iPad were a part of the discussion too. And tonight at 6:30 Eastern, Apple CEO Tim Cook will be interviewed on ABC World News with Diane Sawyer to talk about the 30th anniversary.
Fantastical 2, a calendar app, is one of my favorite iPhone apps. I loved the first version when I reviewed it in December of 2012, and now version 2 offers even more features. Steven Owens of The Sweet Setup recently declared it the best calendar app for the iPhone. The app is currently on sale for $1.99, a 60% discount, so if you haven’t checked it out yet I strongly encourage you to do so now. Click here to get Fantastical 2 ($1.99):
LogMeIn has long been my favorite remote access software. I use it all the time to access the PC in my office from my Mac at home and vice versa, and to access both my PC and my Mac from my iPad or iPhone. For a long time you could use many of the features for free, but this week LogMeIn announced that they will now charge yearly subscriptions to use the service. This has made some people upset, but I agree with Florida attorney Rick Georges of FutureLawyer who points out that the service is worth paying for.
Planning to buy an iPad Air this weekend? Lance Whitney of CNet reports that Best Buy is cutting the price of the iPad Air by $50, but the sale only lasts today and tomorrow. The iPad Mini is $30 off.
Brent Dirks of AppAdvice notes that this week Apple updated the Pages, Numbers and Keynote apps.
And finally, I recently reviewed the Powerocks Super Magicstick, a small tube-shaped charger for the iPhone and iPad. If you like the idea of using that sort of product but want access to not just battery power, but also the Dark Side of the Force, Brando is now selling the Star Wars Darth Vader Lightsaber Portable Battery Charger for $49.90. The Force is strong with this one.
You can do a lot of interesting things with an iPhone, but until recently it never occurred to me that an iPhone could be a laser pointer. But then the folks at Conary Enterprise sent me a free review sample of the iPin, a tiny laser pointer that fits into the headphone jack of an iPhone and is activated by an app. Why might you want to add a laser pointer to your iPhone? I’ll admit that the first justification that occurred to me was that I could do my best Dr. Evil voice and brag that my iPhone had a frickin’ laser beam attached to its head. But the real answer is that many folks like to use an iPhone to run a presentation on a computer, and since some of the best presenter remote controls have a laser pointer built in, the iPin adds that same capability to your iPhone.
Hardware
The iPin hardware is only .75″ long and it fits into the headphone jack of your iPhone. Using an app (discussed below) you press a large button on your screen and a red laser shoots out of your iPhone.
I tested the standard model. I see that there is also an extended model that sticks out from the iPhone just a tiny bit more to accommodate iPhone cases that are less than 2 mm thick.
The technical specs say that the iPin uses a Class II 635 nm laser pointer. According to Wikipedia, that is a good thing: “The least expensive laser pointers use a deep red laser diode near the 650 nanometers (nm) wavelength. Slightly more expensive ones use a red-orange 635 nm diode, more easily visible because of the greater sensitivity of the human eye at 635 nm.” I cannot comment on wavelengths, but I will tell you that from my tests, the laser is more than strong enough to remain very bright across a very large conference room like the one that you might use when giving a presentation.
The iPin is so small that the package comes with a plastic white square that holds the iPin so that it doesn’t get lost in your briefcase. The iPin really is quite tiny, and there were a few times that I lost it for a minute when it was sitting on my desk (without that white square) and got buried under papers.
However, you might not even need to use that white square because the iPin is so small that you can actually just keep it plugged into your iPhone whenever you go to give a presentation. I kept an iPin plugged in for an entire week in which I flew to another city for a meeting for two days just to see what it was like to have the iPin in my iPhone for a long period of time. It was fine. I sometimes noticed the iPin, but it only sticks out of the iPhone just a little bit so it wasn’t uncomfortable when I put my iPhone in my shirt pocket.
You might fear that keeping an iPin plugged in risks having a laser beam shoot out of your iPhone by accident. Fortunately, there are three reasons that isn’t going to happen. First, the laser beam only activates when the app is running and you hold down your finger on the iPhone screen. Second, when you are not using the iPin, you can turn it 90 degrees which disables it. Here is a picture of the iPin in my iPhone when it is in the off position.
Third, if you exit the app without turning off the iPin by rotating it, your iPhone will show an alert reminding you to do so.
Software
One part of the iPin software is the app that runs on your iPhone. When you first start the app on an iPhone 5 or 5s, you will notice that it is upside down, but that actually makes sense because the headphone port (and thus the iPin) is on the bottom of the iPhone, so you hold your iPhone upside down when you use the iPin and thus see the app in the correct orientation.
The main use of the app is to activate the laser. Just tap anywhere on the screen. The large circle in the middle of the screen gains a red glow to alert you that the laser is on, as does a yellow warning triangle.
The app also shows you the current time, your remaining battery life, and an optional countdown timer if you want the app to help you know when you are getting close to the end of your allotted time for your presentation. Speaking of battery life, the iPin gets its power from your iPhone. The website states that it uses the same amount of power as playing a song. I would not dispute that; I did not notice any major battery drain while using the device.
If that was all that the iPin did, it would be little more than a novelty that you might use to amuse (or annoy) friends and pets. As noted above, the goal of the iPin is to help professionals giving presentations. Thus, you can download free software for your Mac or PC that allows the iPin app to control your computer as long as you are connected to the same Wi-Fi network. Simply swipe left and right on the iPhone screen to advance to the next of previous slides of a presentation. The app also lets you use your iPhone as a wireless remote to control your mouse cursor and click.
I tested the Mac software with the iPin and it worked as advertised. My only complaint was that I sometimes lost a connection, and I don’t know if the iPin software was at fault or it was just a problem with my Wi-Fi network. Fortunately you can tap a few buttons on the app to reestablish a connection. Note that there was also a single occasion when even that didn’t work and I had to quit and then restart the iPin software on my Mac. But for the most part it worked well, and it was very nice to be able to control a presentation on my Mac using just the iPhone in my hand, and any time that I wanted to emphasize something in a slide by using the laser pointer, I simply held down my finger on the iPhone screen to activate the laser.
Is this iPin right for you? I give presentations all the time, but it is very rare for me to do so from a computer. Instead, I typically use the Keynote app on my iPad and connect my iPad to a VGA projector, swiping my iPad screen to advance slides. Keynote even includes a virtual laser pointer; simply tap and hold on a part of your iPad screen and a bright red dot will appear there so that they audience will see a red dot similar to, but less bright than, a real laser pointer. So for me, I can’t imagine many times when I will have a need for an iPin.
But if you give presentations using a Mac or PC and you like the idea of controlling the presentation using a handheld device, the iPin is a reasonable alternative to buying a handheld presenter that includes a laser pointer. Those products appear to cost around $35 on Amazon, and you can get the iPin on Amazon for $40. For the slight difference in price, you gain the ability to not have to carry around another device that you need to keep track of and keep charged with fresh batteries.
And you also gain the knowledge that your iPhone has a frickin’ laser beam attached to it.
If you bill by the hour like I and many (most?) other attorneys do, the start of a new year means the resetting of your personal odometer — zero hours to date out of the total number of hours that you plan to bill during the year. Many of us divide our billable hour goal by 12 to have a rough sense of how much we need to bill a month, or divide by 52 to have a rough sense of how much we need to bill a week, but of course that is not very precise because it doesn’t not take into account vacation days, personal days, holidays, etc. Elliott Mason, a non-attorney who holds a Ph.D. from MIT, is a patent agent at the Boston law firm Occhiuti & Rohlicek LLP. A few months ago, he created an iPhone app called BillablePlan that helps you to perform precise billable hour calculations. The app costs a $2, or you can get a free version of the app that includes ads and is missing an auto-update feature. Mason sent me a free review copy of the full version of the app so that I could check it out.
To use the app, you first need to tap on the Settings button at the bottom right and give the app your data. This includes your billable hours goal for the year, the number of day that you work in a workweek (presumably five), the hours that you have already billed this year, the number of firm holidays remaining in the year and the number of personal days left in the year. Then you select a Calculation Period for all of the calculations that the app will make for you. The most useful one is “Auto Update” (available in the paid version of the app) which means that every time you start the app it makes calculations from the current date to the end of the year. Another useful one is “Full” which makes calculations for the entire year, regardless of how many days have already passed. There are some other things you can adjust in Settings for more advanced calculations.
Once you have finished in Settings, you can start making some calculations using the other three buttons at the bottom of the screen.
The Vacation button lets you calculate how many vacation days you can take in a year based on how many hours you plan to work, on average, every workday. For example, if I tell the app in Settings that my annual billable hour goal is 2000 hours and that I have already billed 80 hours this year, the Vacation calculator tells me (as you can see below) that as of Jan. 19th, if I work an average of 8.5 hours every workday I can take 10 vacation days on top of my 12 holiday/personal days. If I instead tell the app that I will bill an average of 9 hours a day, the app tells me that I can take 23 vacation days.
On the other hand, if in Settings I tell the app that I plan to bill 1800 hours this year, I can now bill 8 hours each workday and still get 21 vacation days in addition to holidays/personal days.
The second calculation button is called Work Hours, and it performs a calculation from the other direction — if you plan to take a certain number of vacation days, how many hours do you need to bill on each of your workdays? In the next example, with a 2000 billable hour goal selected in the Settings, I tell the app that I plan to take 10 vacation days. The app tells me that to do that I will need to bill 8.5 hours a day. If I instead tell the app that I’d like to have 15 vacation days, the app tells me that I will have to bill 8.7 hours every workday to meet my 2000 billable hour goal.
Finally, the app has a Progress button that simply shows how many days are remaining in the year and— based upon what you put in the Settings — how many hours you have left to bill in the year.
If you are interested in being able to make precise billable hour calculations, BillableHours is a helpful app. You can download the free version to get a feel for how the app works, and if you like it, you’ll definitely want to pay $2 to get rid of the ads and to enable the useful Auto Update function.
Sorry for the delayed In the news post this week; I first had to finish up the papers for the sessions I’m teaching at ABA TECHSHOW in March. It’s been fun working with my co-presenters, and as we brainstorm and collaborate, I’m getting very excited for the conference. I hope to see many of you in Chicago. And now, the news of note from the past week:
Daniel Sockwell, a student at Columbia Law School, suggests in an article in the Columbia Business Law Review that you make some changes to how you write your brief if you know that the judge will be reading it on an iPad (as more and more judges are doing nowadays). (via Sara Austin).
John Edwards of Law Technology News recommends time and billing apps.
If you are looking for a really cool way to share photos, videos and text that you write, check out the new (free) iPad app called Storehouse. Find more info on Storehouse.co. Neat stuff.
MG Siegler explains that if you want to use a tablet in place of a computer, you need to give up some of you old habits.
Gregory Schmidt of the New York Times reviews the Typo Keyboard for the iPhone 5, a device that aims to add a BlackBerry-like hardware keyboard to the iPhone.
Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal also reviews the Typo Keyboard.
The iPhone is now available on China Mobile, the biggest cellphone carrier in the world. Paul Mozur of the Wall Street Journal interviews Apple CEO Tim Cook to discuss the implications.
And finally, wouldn’t it be nice if your iPhone or iPad could make you a cocktail? Now it can. The new Perfect Drink from Brookstone is a scale that attaches to the headphone port on your iPhone or iPad. You place a glass on the scale and a special app tells you how much to pour of each ingredient. If you overpour, the app helps you to adjust other ingredients. The app can also suggest recipes based on the ingredients you have at your bar, you can add your own recipes, and it works with any size glass you put on the scale, so you can make an entire pitcher of a cocktail if you want.
Here on iPhone J.D. and when I speak at seminars about integrating an iPhone and iPad into a law practice, I frequently talk about the best iOS apps and strategies for working with Microsoft Word files. From time to time, I am reminded that not all lawyers use Word as their primary word processor. There are still some attorneys who prefer to use WordPerfect. Moreover, even attorneys who use Word for their own drafts sometimes encounter WordPerfect files, either from opposing counsel or from a court.
The iPhone and iPad cannot natively view WordPerfect files, but a few years ago, LawBox came up with an app called WPD Viewer that let you view WordPerfect files in iOS. The app does not let you edit WordPerfect files, but you can select some or all of the text and copy it and paste it into a new document created with another app such as Pages. I reviewed that app in 2010. Corel, the company that sells WordPerfect, liked the idea so much that it purchased the right to sell WPD Viewer and, effective January of 2011, renamed the app WordPerfect Viewer.
For three years, Corel sold an iPhone version of the app for $4.99 and an iPad version for $5.99. Unfortunately, Corel did not introduce very many new features during that time — just some minor things like adding folders in late 2012.
As of January of 2014, the app is now back in the hands of LawBox, the original developer. California attorney Nicholas Zeltzer, the founder of LawBox, tells me that he has already updated the app for iOS 7, and I see that the app does now have a new look on both the iPad and iPhone.
Zeltzer also tells me that more updates are planned for the future.
[UPDATE: Zeltzer tells me that unlike the original transition from LawBox to Corel, those of you who purchased the Corel version of this app need not pay again to get the upgrades. LawBox inherited all of the users of the Corel version of the app.]
The WordPerfect Viewer app is a useful tool to have on your iPhone or iPad, especially if you use WordPerfect in your law office, but also if you are just someone who encounters WordPerfect files from time to time. I’m happy to see that the app is back in LawBox’s hands, and I look forward to seeing future updates to the app.
Click here to get WordPerfect Viewer for iPhone ($4.99):
Click here to get WordPerfect Viewer for iPad ($5.99):
Thank you to Connected Data and Drobo, maker of the Transporter, for sponsoring iPhone J.D. this month. Last year, the company sent me a review unit to check out the product when it first sponsored iPhone J.D., and now I use it every day and recommend it to other attorneys all the time. It is a great solution if you want many of the advantages of Dropbox — such as having your files available online 24/7 and the ability to have your files synced between all of your computers and mobile devices — but you also want (1) to have a lot of storage without paying the high fees charged by Dropbox and (2) you want the security of knowing that your data is only stored on hardware that you control, not on a server located who-knows-where controlled by others. I wrote extensively about how the Transporter works in a three part series last year (1, 2 and 3) and I also talked about the product last year when Connected Data was nice enough to give away two free Transporters to two lucky iPhone J.D. readers (Nashville attorney J. Britt Phillips and Maryland attorney Jack Sturgill, Jr.).
But as much as I wrote about the Transporter during the first half of last year, a lot has changed since then. First, the company expanded the hardware line. You can now buy the original Transporter (the cone-shaped device) that I reviewed last year in three sizes: $199 for 500 GB, $249 for 1 TB or $349 for 2 TB. Additionally, the company sells the Transporter Sync, a small device that costs only $99 and to which you connect your own USB drive of whatever capacity you want. The Transporter Sync looks like the Transporter with the top part chopped off — which actually makes some sense because the top part of the Transporter is where the hard drive is stored.
New hardware is nice, but what really makes this a better product now is the improved version 2.0 software that came out in the middle of 2013 and has been updated many times since then. The new software is much easier to use and is similar to using Dropbox. You simply have a folder on your computer in which you can store your files and folders. Files are stored on your local hard drive (so that they open and close quickly) but are also copied to your Transporter hard drive and from there are shared to your other devices — just like Dropbox, except that the online version of your file is stored on a hard drive located in your secure office. Or if you want, you can use a folder on the Transporter called the Library. If you put a file in the Library, a local copy is not kept on your computer. You can still access it whenever you want from whatever computer or device that you want (more slowly because you are accessing it from a network) but it doesn’t take up space on your computer’s hard drive. For example, if I have a large video file or a huge number of large exhibits that I might want to access in the future but are so large that I don’t want then taking up space on my work computer and synced to my home computer, I just put them in the Library on my Transporter. Note that the Library function currently only works with the Transporter, not the Transporter Sync, but the company announced that this feature will soon be added to the Transporter Sync.
In my practice, I use both Dropbox and a Transporter. I use Dropbox to store my not-so-confidential files, such a complete copy of pleadings (in PDF format) for all of my cases, papers I am working on for CLE conferences or other presentations, miscellaneous pictures, etc. I like that so many apps can easily sync with Dropbox, such as GoodReader on my iPad. (I’d love to see GoodReader add direct Transporter support.) But when I want to sync documents between my office and home computer and my iPhone and iPad that are more confidential, I put them on the Transporter. I can easily access those files by just opening up the Transporter folder on any of my computers or by using the Transporter app on my iPhone and iPad. I feel secure knowing that no third-party has access to any of my confidential documents. I also use my Transporter to use lots of other large documents that I probably could put in my Dropbox but I have so much space on my Transporter drive that it is just as easy to keep it there.
Which reminds me — before I used a Transporter, the size of my Dropbox went over 20 GB, the limit of the free Dropbox service, so I had to pay $100/year to upgrade to a 100 GB a year Dropbox Pro account. But I now have hundreds of GB of space on my Transporter so frankly I no longer need the Dropbox Pro account. If you are thinking about getting a Transporter, as you consider the price — $100 for the Sync up to $349 for the 1 TB model — remember that if you have a lot of files you will be paying between $100/year for the 100 GB version of Dropbox up to $500/year for the 500 GB version of Dropbox, so the Transporter (which has no recurring fees after you purchase the hardware) ends up being less expensive at the same time that it is more secure and offers more storage space.
If you own a single Transporter, you have multiple copies of your files — a copy on the local hard drive(s) of whatever computer(s) you sync to Transporter plus the copy on the Transporter itself — so that if any one hard drive crashes you still have a backup elsewhere. I actually have two Transporters — one located in my office and one located at my home — and they are set to automatically sync to each other so that even if the hard drive in one Transporter fails (and remember, all hard drives eventually fail, so backups are essential) the other one is ready to go. This is also a good way to have a backup copy of the files in my Transporter Library because remember those files only live on the Transporter so as to not take up space on your local hard drive.
As you consider your online storage options, I urge you to take a look at Transporter and Transporter Sync. They are great products that have worked very well for me. You can buy them from the company and pay $10 shipping and handling, or if you are an Amazon Prime customer with free shipping, it might be cheaper for you to get one through Amazon.
