Month: April 2014

A stylus is a very useful accessory if you want to take notes on an iPad or annotate a document.  I often use the Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo, an excellent stylus with a soft tip that is 5 mm in size — smaller than other styluses which are often 6 mm.  A smaller tip is better because it allows you to be more precise.  I was impressed when I reviewed the Adonit Jot Pro stylus back in 2012 because the company had come up with an innovative way to put a sharp, tiny tip on a stylus by placing a clear disc on the end of the tip.  Your eyes see the small tip making it easier to write, but the iPad senses the larger, clear disc.  I still think that Adonit’s Jot Pro is a great stylus.

For the last few months I’ve been testing another innovative stylus from the smart folks at Adonit called the Jot Script.  This stylus has a sharp tip that is only 1.9 mm.  That is much too small for an iPad to normally sense it — remember, the iPad was made to recognize something the size of a finger tip — but Adonit found a workaround, a technology that Adonit calls Pixelpoint.  The Adonit website explains Pixelpoint as follows:  “Touch screens emit a capacitance signature.  Each of the iOS devices has a slightly different capacitance signature coming from their touch screen.  When Pixelpoint detects the unique signature of a particular screen, it inverts the signature and sends it back.  Just hit the power button and start making.” 

So in other words, the iPad senses not just the tiny tip of the Jot Script but also the signals emitted from the pen itself.  Pretty cool.  As long as the Jot Script is turned on, the iPad recognizes it just as it would recognize your finger tip.  With other styluses you sometimes feel like you are using something with a thick tip like a crayon or a big marker to write on the screen, but with the fine point of the Jot Script you feel like you are using a pen to write on the screen.  You can look at where the tiny tip of the Jot Script touches the screen and see where the digital ink will appear on the screen.

So what do I think about the stylus?  Frankly, I’m conflicted.  The Jot Script has advantages over every other stylus that I have tried or read about, making it easy for me to understand why some people consider it the very best iPad stylus on the market.  Many attorneys told me at ABA TECHSHOW last month that it is the only stylus that they use.  But it also has some big drawbacks as well.  Here are the pros and cons.

[UPDATE 5/12/14:  Today I posted a review of the Cregle ink, another powered fine point stylus that fixes some of the shortcomings of the Jot Script but also has its own weaknesses.  If you are considering buying a Jot Script, you should also read my review of the Cregle ink to compare the devices.]

PRO:  Fine tip

I really cannot rave enough about the size of this tip.  It is far smaller than the tip on any other stylus, and that makes a big difference.  Whether I am taking notes with a note-taking app such as GoodNotes or drawing with an app such as Paper, it is so nice to have the extra precision that comes along with a smaller tip.  Going from a regular stylus to the Jot Script is not quite as dramatic as going from writing on paper with a crayon to writing on paper with a ball point pen, but it is that type of difference.

Here is a comparison of the tip on the Adoint Jot Script and the tip on the Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo:

The only real problem that I’ve noticed when drawing or writing with the Jot Script is that if you try to draw a diagonal line and you move the Jot Script very slowly, the line becomes wavy.  My understanding is that this is not Adonit’s fault and has to do with the way that the iPad works, and other active power styluses have the same problem, as noted in this review of the LYNKtec TruGlide Apex Fine Point active stylus by Julie Strietelmeier of The Gadgeteer.  In normal use, however, it is very unlikely that this will be a problem for you.

PRO:  Ignore unwanted strokes (with some apps)

The full name of the Jot Script is the Jot Script Evernote Edition.  When I first heard the name, I thought that the stylus only worked with the Evernote’s Penultimate app.  That’s incorrect.  You can use the Jot Script with any app on the iPad, even if Bluetooth is turned off on your iPad.  If an app recognizes your fingertip, it will also recognize the Jot Script.

However, when you turn on Bluetooth on your iPad and use an app that is designed to talk to the Jot Script, you get extra features such as the ability to ignore unwanted strokes.  I don’t use Evernote or Penultimate, but I do use GoodNotes 4.0.  Once you pair your Jot Script to GoodNotes (Tap … in the top right corner, then tap More Options, then tap Smart Stylus), GoodNotes becomes smarter.

GoodNotes knows whether you are touching the screen with the Jot Script or with something else, such as your finger.  The app lets you use either a finger or the Jot Script to tap on menus, pinch to zoom the screen, etc., but when you are touching a part of the screen where you can draw, the app only accepts input from the Jot Script.  Thus, if you rest your palm on, or otherwise touch, the area of the screen that is used to take notes, the app knows to ignore your hand and will only draw when you touch the tip of the Jot Script to the screen.  Similarly you no longer have to worry about accidentally drawing a line on the page when you were just trying to swipe or you just inadvertently touched your fingertip to the screen.  It’s a great feature that makes a drawing program like GoodNotes work even better. 

Adonit has a page on its website that lists Featured Script Apps which names ZoomNotes, Noteshelf, Penultimate, GoodNotes 4, PDFpen and Concepts.

So in short, you don’t have to use a special app with the Adonit Jot Script, but if you do, you get some great extra features.

CON:  Noise

My #1 complaint about the Adonit Jot Script is that it is noisy to use.  Every time the plastic tip touches the screen, you hear a tap — exactly the noise that you would expect to hear when a small plastic tip touches a glass screen.  It isn’t loud enough that the judge in the front of a courtroom will hear you taking notes, but it can be loud enough for people around you to hear it, and I find it annoying.  Here is a very short YouTube video I created that compares using a Wacom Bamboo Stylus (which is essentially silent) and using the Adonit Jot Script:

I filmed that video in a quiet room.  If you are in a noisier environment, it is less likely that you will hear the Jot Script over background noise.  Also, note that I write in print; if you use script, your stylus will spend more time touching the surface of the screen and less time tapping the screen, so the noise is less of an issue.  Finally, I realize that the noise that I am complaining about is not a very loud noise.  Having said that, it is loud enough that when I go to a meeting with other attorneys, I feel more self-conscious when using the Adonit Jot Script then when using other styluses.

I know I am not alone in thinking that this stylus is too loud.  For example, back in January when I mentioned on iPhone J.D. that I was starting to look at the Adoint Jot Script, I received an email from an attorney in Indiana who told me:  “I have personally found the Jot Script Evernote Edition to be far too noisy (the clicking on the screen of my 5th generation iPad) to be able to use when anyone else is around and in a quiet environment, such as almost any meeting, court, library … It calls attention to itself in an annoying way (to me).”

Is there anything that can be done about the noise?  Adonit could change the tip to something softer, which is an approach taken by some other manufacturers of powered styluses with fine tips such as the Cregle ink (which I reviewed here).  When I initially reviewed the Adoint Jot Pro back in August of 2012, I said that I loved the stylus but that it made too much noise when the plastic disc touched the iPad screen.  Adonit then came out when a second generation Jot Pro that specifically addressed this problem by adding a spring to the tip.  As I noted in my review of the second generation model, this was a huge improvement and made the stylus much better.  If Adonit can find a way to also make the Jot Script more quiet, then I would be much more likely to use and recommend it. 

I contacted Adonit to ask about the noise, and while I didn’t expect the company to tell me about any unannounced products that they may or may not be working on in their lab, the response was simply:  “Unfortunately, for any harder tipped styluses, the contact is going to generate some noise.”

CON:  Absence of a clip

The Adonit Jot Script doesn’t have a clip on the side.  A clip would of course be useful for when you want to put the Jot Script in a shirt pocket and don’t want it to move around too much.  More importantly, the clip would stop the Jot Script from rolling around.  It seems like almost every time I put the Jot Script on a flat surface, it starts rolling.  If I don’t notice it soon enough, the next thing I know I hear the Jot Script roll off of the desk and onto the floor.  The Jot Script is sturdy enough that this has never caused any damage, but this would never happen if the Jot Script simply included a clip.

I also complained about the lack of a clip when I reviewed the first generation Adonit Jot Pro.  That is not something that was updated when Adonit designed the second generation Jot Pro.  Indeed, none of the styluses sold by Adonit sells include a clip, so the company seems opposed to them for some reason.  I wish they would reconsider, or at least make it an optional accessory.

CON:  Battery

The Jot Script uses a AAA battery.  This results in a number of disadvantages.

First, it means that the stylus is thicker than a standard stylus (or a standard pen) to make room for a AAA battery.  (At least, I assume that the AAA battery is the reason for the large size; it could also be because Adonit couldn’t get the electronics any smaller in this generation of the product.)  The size is not a huge problem, and it is offset somewhat by the fact that the Jot Script is nicely weighted and otherwise feels pretty good in the hand.  But it does feel more awkward to hold the Jot Script than most other styluses becuase it is thicker than a pen.  Here is the Jot Script next to the skinnier — and perfectly sized, in my opinion — Bamboo Stylus duo:

Second, the use of a battery means that you have to worry about your stylus being charged.  With a traditional stylus, you just pick it up and go, and it always works.  With the Jot Script, you cannot tell how much power it has just by looking at the stylus, so you always want to keep an extra AAA battery nearby just in case you need it.  (Apps designed to work with the Jot Script can give you an indication of the remaining battery life.)  There is a small light next to the power button that is normally green but instead flashes red when the Jot Script is almost out of power, but you get no warning before that point, and when the Jot Script is without power, it will not work at all.  Having said that, the Jot Script can go a few weeks on a battery (depending upon your use) which is good, AAA batteries are easy to find when you need to buy a new one, and the the Jot Script turns itself off to save power if you haven’t used it in about a minute.

Third, the use of a battery means that you have to turn the stylus on in the first place.  That shouldn’t be a big deal, right?  But the tiny button on the side of the Jot Script is tiny, flush with the stylus itself, and is very hard to find and press.  I always find myself wasting a few seconds looking for the button whenever I want to use the stylus.  (Indeed, in the above video, you can see that I had to fumble around to find the button.) 

I wish Adonit had made the button more prominent so that it would be easier to find when need to turn on the Jot Script.  You can also hold down the button to turn off the Jot Script, but in my tests the power save feature results in the Jot Script turning itself off long before I think to do so, so you really just use the button to turn it on.

CON:  Multitasking gestures

When you have Multitasking Gestures turned on in the Settings app, you can use four or five fingers to switch apps.  It is the iPad equivalent of Control-Tab or Command-Tab on your computer, and I use this gesture all the time to switch between apps.  If you use this feature on your iPad, note that it is not 100% compatible with the Jot Script, and Adonit recommends that you turn off Multitasking Gestures.  The issue, as I understand it, is that if you are using an app that is designed to work with the Jot Script and you touch your iPad screen with another finger or your palm at the same time that you are using the Jot Script, the app itself is smart enough to ignore the input other than that from the Jot Script, but the iPad gets confused and can start to switch apps on you.

I like Multitasking Gestures enough that I usually keep them on even when using the Jot Script, but this means that every once in a while I am annoyed by the iPad thinking that I want to switch apps when that was not my intent.

Beware of lemons

I normally don’t take several months to prepare a review of a stylus, but it turned out that the first unit I tried was defective so I had to wait to get and use a replacement unit before writing this review.  I started testing the Jot Script in January after Adonit sent me a free review sample.  At times it worked great, but other times it would stop recognizing my writing while I was in the middle of a word.  I thought at first that I was doing something wrong, or that the battery was low, or that it was the Multitasking Gestures, etc.  When I could find nothing else to do, I contacted Adonit and they sent me a second free stylus.  This second one has worked well and does not exhibit any of the problems I saw with the first one.  I see that Warner Crocker of GottaBe Mobile had the exact same problem and he also had to request a replacement.  His post even includes a video that shows the defective unit in action.

If you get a Jot Script and find that it sometimes stops working while you are using it, ask Adonit to send you a replacement unit.  I don’t know how widespread the probelm is, but apparently there are some lemons out there.

Conclusion

The Adonit Jot Script is at times the very best stylus that I’ve ever used with my iPad.  I am truly amazed at what Adonit was able to accomplish with this device.  But other times, the Jot Script annoys me because it is too loud or because of its other idiosyncrasies like the lack of a clip and the hard-to-find button.  Of course I don’t expect every product to be perfect at all times, but this is a stylus that costs $75 — much more that you pay for most other styluses.  Paying that much for a stylus is fine if it is a great product, and in many ways the Jot Script is an amazing product, but in other ways it has some flaws.  Ultimately, the advantages are enough for me to say that anyone who is serious about taking notes on an iPad should consider the Jot Script.  But if you are on the fence, then this might not be the right stylus for you.  In the future, I plan to review other powered styluses that have a fine tip to see how they compare.  (Adonit was the first to come out with this type of stylus in late 2013, but other companies are now coming up with similar styluses.)

My hope is that Adonit will improve the Jot Script in a second generation model just like they did with the Jot Pro.  The existing Jot Script is very impressive, and if Adonit could keep what is great about the Jot Script and address some of the shortcomings, then they would have something really special.  As for this first generation of the Jot Script, I like it enough that I still plan to use it in the future when I take notes, and I know of many other lawyers who love theirs, but I’m sure that I will often instead reach for another stylus such as the Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo.

Click here to get the Adonit Jot Script from Amazon ($74.99)

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This article won the BlawgWorld Pick of the Week award. The editors of BlawgWorld, a free weekly email newsletter for lawyers and law firm administrators, give this award to one article every week that they feel is a must-read for this audience.

I often have trouble finding enough outlets when I travel.  Hotel rooms will frustratingly only provide a single wall outlet near a desk, with one of the two outlets already occupied by the desk lamp.  It is starting to become easier to find power outlets in airports, but you can still often find only a single outlet available for your use.  One solution is to use a power strip, but those are typically too large to take with you with you travel.  The Outlets To Go Power Strip from Monster seeks to provide a solution for travelers, and after seeing Tampa attorney Katie Floyd call it her favorite travel accessory, I purchased one from Amazon before I headed to Chicago for ABA TECHSHOW last month.  I have since used it on several business trips.  It has worked well for me and I can recommend it.

The device features two outlets on each side that are spaced far enough apart that you should not have a problem with even larger power adapters.  If you are plugging in three of four devices at once it can be a little awkward to have things plugged in on both sides, but it works, and designing the power strip this way keeps it as small as possible.

The cord is about a foot long when stretched out, which is sometimes not quite enough to stretch from a wall outlet to the top of a desk that is next to the wall.  On the other hand, it is nice to have a little space between where it plugs in to the wall and where you plug in your devices.

More importantly, the cord is short for a reason.  The marquee feature of this device is that when you are not using it, the cord can wrap around the device to make it portable for travel.  When you wrap the cord for travel, the device is just over six inches long and just over two inches thick.  This size is not ultra thin, but it is small enough to fit into a briefcase or easily fit in your suitcase. 

Katie Floyd recommends putting it in a shoe during travel, which makes some sense, but I prefer to keep in the same bag or briefcase where I store my iPad during travel for easy access.

For example, I was recently in the Orlando airport with over an hour before my next flight.  I wanted to charge my iPad and iPhone, and fortunately the Southwest waiting area had seats with outlets, but there was only a single outlet per chair.  I simply plugged in the Outlets to Go strip and I could easily then plug in the chargers for both my iPad and iPhone, and both devices were fully charged before I got on my flight.

Katie Floyd pointed out in her post that the Outlets To Go also works well when you are with others:  “I plugged my laptop into one outlet of my power strip and quickly made three new friends and business contacts who had depleted batteries.  Even when I arrive late and find the power outlets taken, I find if I bring a power strip, people are willing to let me unplug their devices and plug in my strip to add additional ports.”  I haven’t yet had the opportunity to use my Outlets To Go as an icebreaker to make friends, but I have no doubt that it will happen to me at some point.  (I still carry a USB to 30-pin cord with me, even though all of my Apple devices now use Lightning, because I freqently encounter folks asking me for help charging their iPhones and iPads and sometimes they are using older devices.)

At ABA TECHSHOW, I gave a presentation with Judge Hebert Dixon of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia.  He saw me using my Outlets To Go and mentioned that he has a similar model called the Outlets To Go Power Strip with USB.  That version costs the same and has three outlets plus a single USB port.  The advantage of that one is that you can simply plug a USB to Lightning cord directly into the Outlets To Go without having to also use a power adapter.  The USB port on that version only provides 1 Amp of power so it would be very slow to charge an iPad, although it should work OK with an iPhone.  I often bring two Apple 12W USB Power Adapters with me anyway when I travel, which charges an iPhone a little faster than using a 1 Amp USB port and provides the maximum charge for an iPad, but if you are thinking of buying Outlets To Go, consider which model will work best for your needs.

On the Monster website, the version of Outlets To Go that I have with four outlets sells for $19.95, but you can get the Outlets To Go for under $10 at Amazon, which is where I bought mine.  That is a great price for a very useful travel accessory that will help you to keep your iPhone and iPad (and any other devices) charged while you are on the go.

Click here to get Outlets To Go Power Strip from Amazon ($9.49).

Earth Day was this week, and this week we heard from Lisa Jackson, Apple’s Vice President of Environmental Affairs.  Jackson grew up in New Orleans (where I live) and after getting a B.S. from Tulane and a Masters from Princeton in chemical engineering, spent most of her professional life working for the EPA and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.  Before joining Apple, she was EPA Administrator from 2009 to 2013.  Steven Levy of Wired wrote an interesting article after spending time with Jackson looking at the renewable energy (such as solar) used to power Apple’s data centers — the massive computing hubs that power Apple’s Siri, iCloud, App Store, Messages, and other cloud-based services.  (You can also watch a video of Jackson showing off the data centers on NBC’s Today.)  I didn’t realize that data centers use up 2% of all of the electricity used in the U.S., so it is great that Apple now gets 100% of its data center power from renewable energy.  You can learn more about Apple’s environmental initiatives at this new page on its website as well as an Our Progress page.  And now, the rest of the news of note from the past week:

• California attorney David Sparks provides some perspective on the iWatch … or whatever new product Apple will release later this year.
• Ohio attorney Richard Weiner discusses WiFi security issues in an article for the Akron Legal News.
• I mentioned this earlier this week, but it is worth mentioning again.  One of the easiest ways to use and manage complex passwords it to get a password manager.  Robert Myers of The Sweet Setup looked at all of the top password managers and decided that 1Password is the best one.  (I also use and really like 1Password.)  It is 50% off through the end of the day today, so if you were thinking of trying it, now is the time to do so.  My review from early 2013 is here, but the app has been updated many times since then — and just this week the app got a new iOS 7-style look and some new features.
• On a related note, The Lawyerist published a password guide for lawyers and law firms.
• Brian Beam of Macworld reviewed iOS timekeeping apps.
• Farhad Manjoo of the New York Times discusses a hearing aid that works with your iPhone and which doesn’t just help people with hearing problems but can also help improving hearing for anyone.
• Jim Dalrymple of The Loop reports that J.D. Power ranked the iPhone #1 in customer satisfaction for all four of the U.S. carriers.
• Brent Dirks of App Advice discusses JUMPR, an upcoming battery charger that will cost under $100 and can not only charge your iPhone, it can also jump your car.
• David Chartier of Finer Things in Tech notes that you can setup an Apple TV simply by touching it with your iPhone or iPad.
• Apple released iOS 7.1.1 this week.  For the most part this is a minor update that improves things such as Touch ID on the iPhone 5S, as noted by Dan Moren of Macworld, but AppleInsider reports that some people are seeing much better battery life with iOS 7.1.1.  If it seemed like you were getting less battery life with iOS 7.1, then hopefully iOS 7.1.1 will fix that for you. 
• Eyefi cards are SD cards for a camera that have Wi-Fi built-in.  Harry McCracken of Time explains that with the new Eyefi Cloud service, the card works even better with iPhones and iPads.
• Read all about the new Squandr app in this article … from The Onion.
• And finally, Apple released a video this week called Better to note Apple’s environmental efforts.  The video is narrated by Apple CEO Tim Cook, and is worth watching.  Click here, or watch below:

Yesterday, Apple released the results for its 2014 fiscal second quarter (which ran from December 29, 2013 to March 29 2014) and held a call with analysts to discuss the results.  Apple always sees a big decrease in revenue in its second fiscal quarter because it comes right after the holiday quarter.  Nevertheless, Apple reported quarterly revenue of $45.6 billion and net profits of $10.2 billion, which is a record for Apple’s second fiscal quarter and is Apple’s best ever non-holiday quarter.  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, I’m not as interested in the financial details as I am the statements of Apple executives during the call that are of interest to iPhone and iPad users. Nevertheless, I did think it interesting that Apple announced a 7 for 1 stock split to take place in June, which will result in a change from the current approximately $525/share to about $75/share.  I don’t own Apple stock and I certainly don’t provide advice on Apple stock, but I suspect that this stock split will be seen as good news to some Apple investors.  Matthew Yglesias of Vox speculates that Apple might be doing the split in an attempt to get Apple included in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

But anyway, back to the product-related news.  Here are the items that stood out to me as of interest to iPhone and iPad owners:

iPhone

• Apple sold 43.7 million iPhones last quarter, which was the main reason that Apple had such a good quarter.  By comparison, in the 2013 fiscal second quarter, Apple sold 37.4 million iPhones.  By my count, as of March 29, 2014, Apple had sold over 515 million iPhones — over half a billion.
• Luca Maestri, who will be Apple’s new CFO later this year, said that a big reason for the increase in iPhone sales was strong iPhone sales in China and Japan.  He said that in China, the “affordably priced iPhone 4S” has sold particularly well.  Apple CEO Tim Cook said that in the U.S. there was more “pressure” on sales because of carriers being more strict in enforcing their upgrade policies — i.e., people may have wanted a new iPhone, but they need to wait longer before they an buy one at a subsidized price.
• Over half of the people who registered their iPhones in the past quarter were new iPhone owners.

iPad

• Apple sold 16.3 million iPads last quarter.  This was less than the 19.5 million iPads sold in the 2013 fiscal second quarter, but Cook explained that the cause was not a decrease in demand for iPads but instead a change in the way that Apple is handling inventory combined with a large backlog in orders for the iPad mini a year ago whereas lately Apple has been able to produce the supply to match the demand.  Whatever the reason, Apple still sold a lot of iPads.  By my count, as of March 29, 2014, Apple had sold over 211 million iPads.  (Cook said “over 210 million.”)

• Most iPads are being sold to first-time users.  Cook said that over two-thirds of people registering an iPad in the last six months were new to iPad.
• Cook noted that the iPad is the fastest growing product in Apple’s history.  Cook pointed out that the over 210 million iPads that Apple has sold in the four years since the iPad was introduced in April 2010 is almost twice as many iPhones as Apple sold in the first four years of the iPhone.  (By my count, Apple sold just over 108 million iPhones in the first four years.)  Cook also noted that the iPad is the only Apple product to be an instant hit in three key markets:  consumer, business and education.  In education, the iPad has over 95% of the U.S. tablet market.  In business, Cook said that “virtually all, 98% of the Fortune 500” are using iPads.
• Cook also noted that people really love their iPads.  “The other thing you look at on iPads that are just blow away is customer sat[isfaction] is 98 [percent].  There is almost nothing in the world with a 98% customer sat[isfaction].  And the ‘intention to buy’ numbers look good with two-thirds of the people planning to buy a tablet or planning to buy an iPad.  The usage numbers are off the chart, far and exceeding Android tablets, four times the web traffic of all Android tablets combined.”
• Cook was asked about the significance of the release of Microsoft Office for iPad.  He said:  “Office, I believe, does help.  It’s very unclear to say how much.  I believe if it would have been done earlier, it would have been even better for Microsoft, frankly.  There’s lots of alternatives out there from a productivity point of view, some of which we brought to the market, some of which many, many innovative companies have brought.  But I do see that Office is still a very key franchise in the enterprise, in particular, and I think having it on iPad is good, and I wholeheartedly welcome Microsoft to the App Store to sell Office.  Our customers are clearly responding in a good way that it’s available.  So, I do think it helps us particularly in the enterprise area.”
• Cook said that the “iPad has a bright future,” noting that “of course, the thing that drives us more than any of this are the next iPads, if you will, the things that are in the pipeline, the things that we can do to make the product even better.  And there is no shortage of work going in on that nor any shortage of ideas.  … I’m very bullish on iPad.”  He also noted:  “We continue to believe that the tablet market will surpass the PC market in size within the next few years and we believe that Apple will be a major beneficiary of this trend.”

iOS 7

• iOS 7, released in September of 2013, is now being run on 87% of iOS devices.

Apple Store

• Cook announced that next week, Angela Ahrendts will join Apple as the Vice President in charge of Apple’s retail and online stores.  Ahrendts was announced last October, but since then she has been winding down her job as the CEO of Burberry.  Most consider her perfect for the job, and it will be interesting to see what she does to improve Apple’s stores in the future.

iWatch?

• This time last year, Cook announced that Apple was working on “new product categories,” and three months ago Cook confirmed that new products are planned for the end of 2014.  The assumption is that this will be the iWatch.  Cook noted yesterday:  “We are expanding Apple’s products and services into new categories and we are not going to under invest in this business.”  Later on in the call, Cook said that “we currently feel comfortable in expanding the number of things we’re working on, so we’ve been doing that in the background.  And we’re not ready yet to pull the string on the curtain.  But we’ve got some great things there that we’re working on that I’m very, very proud of and very, very excited about.” 
• Cook also noted that Apple is not going to rush to introduce new types of products just to be first on the market; Apple will instead wait and take the time to get the product right.  “But for us, we care about every detail, and when you care about every detail and getting it right, it takes a bit longer to do that.  And that’s always been the case, that’s not just something that just occurred.  As you probably know from following us for a long time, we didn’t ship the first MP3 player, nor the first smartphone, nor the first tablet.  In fact, there were tablets being shipped a decade or so before then, but arguably, we shipped the first successful modern tablet, the first successful modern smartphone and the first successful modern MP3 player.  And so it means much more to us to get it right than to be first.  And I think you can see so many examples out in the marketplace where it’s clear that the objective has been to be first.  But customers at the end of the day don’t care about that, or that’s not what they look for from Apple.  They want great — insanely great — and that’s what we want to deliver.  And so that’s the way we look at it.”

On Thursday April 17th, criminals started a series of DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks on Typepad, the company that hosts iPhone J.D. (and tons of other websites).  These attacks typically involve bad guys getting countless computers around the world to simultaneously and repeatedly target a server with reqeusts, so much so that the server can no longer respond to legitimate traffic, which often causes the server to shut down from overload.  Sometimes the criminals just want to be destructive.  Other times they demand a ransom, and if it is paid they typically then demand an even higher ransom.  While it is possible to mount defenses against the attacks, the attackers will often respond by changing their tactics, starting the whole cycle over again.

As a result of the DDoS attack on Typepad, iPhone J.D. has been up and down … mostly down … for over five days.  Before this incident, Typepad had an excellent track record (the company has been around since 2003).  I can’t remember any time that iPhone J.D. was down for more than a few hours since I launched the site in November of 2008.  Even so, it was frustrating for me and the many other folks who use Typepad to see that anyone who came to our websites simply saw the bizarre message “unknown domain: www.iphonejd.com.” 

Sarah Perez of TechCrunch wrote an interesting article about this attack and how the criminals attempted to get Typepad to pay a ransom.  Typepad has been working with the FBI in responding to the attacks.

iPhone J.D. came back online around 9:00 p.m. Central last night.  I have no idea whether Typepad has effectively countered the attacks or if iPhone J.D. will go down again, but hopefully the worst is behind us. 

If there is a silver lining to all of this, the attacks serve as a reminder that there are bad guys out there on the Internet, so it is prudent to take steps to protect yourself.  Use passcodes on your iPhone and iPad.  Use complex, different passwords on the sites that you visit and consider using a password manager like 1Password to make it easier to do so.  (By the way, 1Password received a major upgrade yesterday and is half-price the rest of this week.)  And take reasonable precautions to preserve the confidentiality of attorney-client communications and work product.

Thanks for your patience, and if it looks like everything is working correctly again, regular posts on iPhone J.D. will resume tomorrow.  Fingers crossed.

It is a short work week, so here is a special Thursday edition of In the news.  I hope that you enjoy the long weekend!

• California attorney David Sparks reviews The Stump, an iPad stand that he really likes.  On Amazon for $24.95.
• Microsoft introduced a new subscription package this week that makes it a little cheaper to use Word for iPad.  For $6.99 a month or $69.99 a year, you can get Office 365 Personal, which includes copies of Office for a single PC or Mac plus the ability to use the Office apps including Word on a single iPad.  The account that used to be called Office 365 Home Premium is now simply called Office 365 Home.  It still costs $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year, and the extra $3 a month gets you Office on 5 PCs or Macs plus Office on 5 iPads — so this is the package that provides access to your entire family.  Microsoft also offers the free Office Online package, but that package doesn’t give you access to the iPad apps.  Paul Thurrott discusses and explains all of these packages on his Supersite for Windows.
• Thurrott also has an article discussing working with local documents in Word for iPad.
• John Martellaro wrote a good review of Microsoft Word for iPad for The Mac Observer.
• Serenity Caldwell of Macworld reviews the Olioclip 3-in-1 Macro Lens, an accessory that lets you take very cool macro photos with your iPhone.  Looks like fun, and costs $68.55 on Amazon.
• Liza Brown of Lifehacker offers 24 iPad/iPhone tips that “most people don’t know.”  I suspect that most iPhone J.D. readers actually know many or most of these, but there are probably a few that are new to you.  (A few were new to me.)
• Jeffrey Taylor reviews the Ten One Design Pogo Sketch Pro Stylus on his site, The Droid Lawyer.  He likes it, and I did too in my recent review.
• Taylor also wrote a review of the Poweradd Pilot 2GS 10,000 mAh external battery.  This sounds like a nice device.  10,000 mAh is a lot of power so it can charge both your iPhone and an iPad, and with two USB ports it can charge both at the same time.  (Although Taylor doesn’t mention this, I see on Amazon that one port has 2.1 Amps for an iPad and the other has 1.0 Amps for an iPhone.)  It looks small and only costs $25.99 on Amazon.  Looks like it could be useful when you travel.
• And finally, if you are in the market for an external battery but place a higher emphasis on “cute” than useful, meet the Mr. Pow portable charger.  It has a 3500 mAh battery and only a single USB plug, but you can tell that the charger needs to be recharged because its smile turns to a frown.  Cost is £24.99.  (via Gizmodo)

When you use public Wi-Fi, such as the service provided in a hotel or in a coffee shop, it is possible for someone else on the same network to use hacker tools to intercept data going to and from your computer, iPhone or iPad.  This makes it possible for a bad guy to get your password as you are logging on to a site, or possibly even to read your confidential attorney-client communications.  Is this actually happening to you?  Unfortunately, there is no way to know, so all you can do is guard against it.  A good solution is to use VPN — a virtual private network — to encrypt the communications from your device to some other location.  For example, your law firm may have a way for you to create a VPN to your office, so even if you are on public Wi-Fi the traffic between you and your office is secure, and then you are essentially just as safe using the Internet as you would be in your office.  But for this to work, your office must have VPN, and you need to remember to establish the VPN connection.

Cloak is a service that seeks to make it easy and automatic to use a VPN whenever you are using an untrusted public Wi-Fi network.  Once you install the app on your iPhone or iPad, whenever you start using a Wi-Fi network, Cloak kicks in automatically and creates a VPN connection to encrypt all of your traffic.  You can tell Cloak that a specific Wi-Fi network is trustworthy — such as the one at your home or at your office — and Cloak will remember not to turn on VPN at those locations.  But as soon as you connect to Wi-Fi somewhere else, Cloak turns on the VPN to protect you again.

Cloak costs $2.99/month for only 5 GB of data or $9.99/month (or $99.99/year) for unlimited data.  There is a free 30 trial if you want to see how the service works, and I’ve been trying it out for the last few weeks on my iPhone and iPad.  (Cloak also works on a Mac, but I haven’t tested that.)  I’m really impressed with the service.  It works behind the scenes so you don’t have to worry about it, it doesn’t slow down Internet traffic in any way that I could measure, and it provides protection.

When you first start the app, it will switch you over to a part of the Settings app that contains profiles, which is a part of Settings that you may never have used before.  Simply click the install button to install the Cloak profile.  You will need to enter your device password to confirm the installation.

Now, any time that you connect to a Wi-Fi network that you have not previously told Cloak that you trust, Cloak kicks in and establishes a VPN connection.  You probably won’t even notice that it happens because it happens quickly, invisibly and in the background.  But if you pay attention to the top of your iPhone or iPad screen, you will notice the letters VPN in a box to tell you that you are using a secure VPN connection.

For example, I recently traveled to Orlando on business, and while waiting in the airport for my flight, I connected my iPad to the free public Wi-Fi.  Without me doing a thing, Cloak realized that I had connected to an untrusted network and so Cloak established a VPN connection, as you can see from the VPN indication at the top left:

There is a Cloak app on the iPhone and iPad that you can launch to tell Cloak that you trust a network.  When you change settings such as adding a new trusted network, Cloak walks you through a simple process to sync your settings so that the same settings are applied to all of your other devices.  So if you are using your iPhone and tell your iPhone that you trust your home and your office networks, the next time that you sync settings on your iPad your iPad will also know to trust those networks.

When you use Cloak, you no longer need to worry about trusting everyone else who is on the same public network — which of course is usually impossible to do.  Instead, you only need to trust the guys who run Cloak not to intercept your communications.  Can you trust them?  I’m reminded of a story I recently saw on PCMag.com about an Android app called Virus Shield that was the top paid app on the Google Play store for a while and promised to protect an Android phone against viruses for only $3.99, but it turns out that all the app did was display a fake checkmark, only pretending that it had done something to protect the device.  You rarely see something like that on Apple’s App Store, but it just goes to show you that you always need to be careful.  So I asked the founder of Cloak, Dave Peck, to tell iPhone J.D. readers why we can trust his company. Here is his answer:

Q:  Why should users trust your company?

A:  That’s always a good question to ask for any third-party VPN service.  We’ve taken our best crack at this on our blog, here:  Why Trust Matters When Choosing a VPN

Q:  Couldn’t one of your employees access my traffic since I am on your network?

A:  Your traffic does flow through our network, so Peter, Nick, or I could indeed access it. (We’re currently a three-person company based in Seattle, WA.)  However, we have strict policies that fully enumerate the information we collect and what we do with it.  You can find our policies here:  https://www.getcloak.com/policies/

If you click on the links you get very complete answers on why Cloak is trustworthy.  The company consists of three guys who used to work at Microsoft — you can see their pictures here — and the whole point of their company is to protect your communications.  Obviously, it would destroy their business model if they broke this trust, and they have been doing this since 2012 and have received really good reviews over the years.  After reading all of the policies and researching the company, I feel comfortable trusting Cloak to do what it promises to do and protect my privacy — and I certainly trust them much more than I trust all of the random people sitting in the Starbucks with me.  Especially that one guy in the corner over there.

Cloak offers one more feature that I haven’t found a need to try out, but it might be useful to some of you.  When you use a VPN, it can appear to the outside world that you are accessing the Internet from another location.  Your iPhone might be in Miami, but a secure tunnel carries your traffic to Seattle so a website might think you are in Seattle.  Cloak includes a feature called Transporter that can let your iPhone or iPad appear to be in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, the United Kingdom or the United States.  So if you want to stream video from the BBC that isn’t available outside of the U.K., apparently you can make the BBC think that you are in the U.K.  Again, not something that interests me, but it is there if it interests you.

I’m impressed enough with this service that when my free 30 day trial ends, I plan to sign up for the basic $2.99/month service to get a sense of whether I use more than 5 GB a month on public Wi-Fi networks.  The company also sells through the iPhone app a one week unlimited pass for $3.99, which could be cheaper if the only time that you use public Wi-Fi is when you travel and you don’t travel more than twice a month.  Just don’t forget to buy a pass before you start using the Wi-Fi at the airport, your hotel, etc.

Click here to get Cloak (free): 

If you read my review of Microsoft Word for iPad Thursday morning, then you missed an update that I posted in the afternoon after I had a somewhat critical crash when using the app in a deposition.  I’m still thrilled to have the Word for iPad app, but the next time that I just want to take notes in a meeting and don’t need all of the bells and whistles of Word, I might just stick with Pages.  And now, the rest of the news of note from the past week.

• Speaking of Word for iPad, the folks who make the Niblstand — a useful iPad stand that also holds an Apple Wireless Keyboard (my review) — are producing a series of videos with iPad shortcuts.  The first episode covers the basics and is pretty good (and only 50 seconds long).  If you use an external keyboard with Word for iPad, I recommend that you check it out, and I look forward to future episodes.
• Microsoft has a series of short videos that show you how to use Word for iPad,  how to use Excel for iPad and how to use PowerPoint for iPad.
• Tampa attorney Katie Floyd talks about her favorite iPhone apps on The Sweet Setup.
• Boston attorney Julie Tolek explains what she liked about ABA TECHSHOW in an article for Law Technology Today.
• I know that a lot of people think that closing apps saves battery life on an iPhone and iPad.  It turns out that is wrong, according to Scott Loveless, a former Apple Store Genius who wrote an informative and extensive post on solving iPhone and iPad battery drain.  If you ever feel that your iOS device is losing battery power faster than it should, you’ll want to read this article.
• There has been a lot of discussion of the Heartbleed lately, and for good reason.  If you want a good description of what it means, Adam Engst and Rich Mogull of TidBITS wrote a good article:  The Normal Person’s Guide to the Heartbleed Vulnerability.
• Jeff Gamet of the Mac Observer reminds us that you can switch Siri’s voice to a male if you want.  I’m so used to Siri having a female voice that it seems wrong to have a male voice, but to each his own.
• And finally, speaking of Siri, Microsoft recently announced its answer to Siri, a technology called Cortana that will be on Windows 8.1 devices.  Arsenio Hall interviewed Siri and Cortana in a comedy sketch for his show.  (Warning: the language is likely not safe for work.)  It’s basically just one joke, but is somewhat amusing.  Video is below, or click here.

I’ve been using Word for iPad almost every day since it was released two weeks ago.  I really like it, and I’ve now used it enough to write a full review.  (I wrote a first look post while I was at ABA TECHSHOW two weeks ago.)  As a litigator who works with Microsoft Word documents throughout the day, it is incredibly useful to have a sophisticated and full-featured version of Word on my iPad.  Word for iPad has easily become one of the most important and useful apps on my iPad, and I suspect that many other attorneys will feel the same way.  The app has some limitations, and a few of them are big and I hope that they are addressed in a future update, but for 1.0 version of an app, Microsoft really did a great job. 

And when I say “Microsoft” I’m specifically talking about the Mac folks at Microsoft, a group that for years was called the MacBU (Macintosh Business Unit), and just recently changed its name to Apex (Apple Productivity Experiences) to reflect that they are working on more than just Mac software.  Earlier this week, the Office for iPad team answered questions in a Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA) session, and it was revealed that the folks at Microsoft who designed the Office iPad apps are the same folks who create Office apps for Mac.

Indeed, the Word for iPad team revealed that they started with the Mac version of Word to create Word for iPad, and Erik Schwiebert, the principal software designer in the MacBU/Apex, said that the work that Microsoft has been doing on Office for iPad is actually going to also be used for an upcoming version of Office for Mac:

The code for Office for iPad and Office for Mac is shared, as the development platforms for both are very similar. 🙂 The iPad work required us to create an all-new UI and to redesign the interface between UI and the internal logic. That work actually helps us with de-Carbonizing Office for the Mac, instead of delaying or hindering it. We’re able to create new Cocoa UI on the Mac and tie it into the new logic interface now.

It must be interesting to be a person employed by Microsoft who spends all of his or her time working on Mac, iPad and iPhone apps.  Sort of like the folks who work at Apple on the iTunes for Windows software.  But based on this short, fun video prepared for the Reddit session, The Mac BU looks like a good group.

(Trivia for long-time Mac users:  many folks believe that Word 5.1 for Mac, released in 1992, was the best-ever version of Word on a Mac.  A Microsoft employee named “Rick” said in Reddit yesterday that he been working on Word for Mac since version 5.0 and now he is working on Word for iPad.  That’s quite a resume over a long stretch of time.  I’m guessing it is Rick Schaut, who wrote this interesting post about some of the early versions of Word for Mac.  UPDATE:  Yep, it is him.)

So now that we know who made Word for iPad, let’s talk about the app itself.

Importing Documents

Unless you are starting a new document from scratch, the first step is to get a Word document into the Word for iPad app.  Importing documents into Word for iPad from another app is fairly easy because you can use the standard iOS Open in… function.  For example, if someone emails you a Word document, you can simply hold your finger down on the Word document icon for a second or two, then when the Open in… selection appears you can simply select Word for iPad.

What if your document is instead located on a cloud service, such as Dropbox?  Word for iPad doesn’t have built-in support for any cloud services other than Microsoft’s own OneDrive service, but since all of those cloud services have their own apps, this is only a minor limitation.  For example, to open a document in a Dropbox folder, just use the Dropbox app to select the document and then Open in… Word for iPad.

And as noted, Word for iPad has built-in support for OneDrive, so if a document is located in one of your OneDrive folders, you can easily open it from within Word for iPad.  The app also has built-in support for documents stored on SharePoint 2010 or higher.

Basic Reviewing and Editing

The main thing that you want to do with a Word document on an iPad is likely to be (1) read it and (2) perhaps make some minor edits.  For these basic functions, Word for iPad works well, and is overall better than any other iPad app.

Viewing documents works very well because Word for iPad preserves all of the original document formatting.  This is no accident.  As Erik Schwiebert of the Mac BU noted in the Reddit session, Microsoft uses the same text layout engine in Word for iPad that is used in Word for Windows and Word for Mac.  (Another developer also said the same thing.) 

The only other iPad app I’ve ever used that also does an excellent job preserving Word document formatting is Reader 7.  My only real complaint with viewing a document in Word for iPad is that you cannot view a document full screen, which is a nice feature if all you want to do is read a document.  For this reason, I recommend that all attorneys also keep a copy of the excellent (and free) Reader 7 app on their iPads, which has a full screen view.

Basic editing of documents also works very well, which is no surprise because this is the one function that the otherwise limited Microsoft Office Mobile for iPhone also does well.  So if someone sends you a brief and you want to add a sentence, delete a paragraph, move something from one section to another, Word for iPad works great.  You can edit the document without worrying about messing up the document properties so that it will look wrong when sent back to a computer.  And unlike the iPhone app, in Word for iPad you can also view, edit and add footnotes, a critical feature for litigators.

Typing on the on-screen keyboard works the same as most any other app.  This means, for example, that in addition to typing on the virtual keyboard, you can tap the microphone button (next to the space bar) to dictate, which Siri does quite well.  I often find that using Siri to take dictation is much faster than me tapping on a virtual keyboard when I just want to add a sentence or two.  Note that there are currently a few dictation bugs in Word for iPad — for example, you cannot dictate in a footnote — but Microsoft is aware of the issue and is working on a fix.

For more intensive editing, I recommend using an external keyboard.  I use the Apple Wireless Keyboard, but I know that some people prefer a smaller keyboard that also works as an iPad cover such as the Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover.  With an external keyboard you can type much faster, plus you can use standard keyboard shortcuts to undo, repeat, cut, copy, paste, select all, and you can also quickly apply bold, italics or underline formatting.  Word also supports standard keyboard navigation shortcuts such as Shift-Option-Right Arrow to quickly select text one word at a time.  Click here for a full list of Word for iPad keyboard shortcuts.

Buttons and Toolbars

Word for iPad has a few buttons at the top left and right and toolbars in the middle.

The buttons on the left let you return to your file list, edit document properties and duplicate the document (i.e. “Save as…”), undo and redo.  The buttons at the right let you do a full text search, and if you tap the magnifying glass and then tap the gear icon, you can do a Find and Replace.  The button at the far right lets you share a document … more on that below.

There are five ribbons.  The Home ribbon includes all of your basic formatting such font, bold, text color and highlighting, text justification, line spacing, bullets, numbered paragraphs, etc.  The first button on the Home ribbon is for Styles, and I discuss that in more detail below.  The Insert ribbon lets you add page breaks, tables, pictures, shapes, a text box, a hyperlink, and a footnote.  The Layout ribbon lets you change the page layout and margins, including page numbers.  The Review ribbon lets you track changes, and I have more on that below.  Finally, the View ribbon turns spell-checking as you type on or off, turns a ruler on or off, and gives you a Word count (which includes Page count and character count).

Styles

I always use the Styles function in Word on my PC and Mac and I recommend that others do too.  For example, I have pre-defined styles for Text in a brief (indent paragraph, double-space, etc.), Block Quotes (indented on both sides, single space), the text that comes after a block quote when I am still in the same paragraph that I call Post Quote (same as the Text style but not indented), etc. 

The current version of Word for iPad has only limited support for styles.  First, you cannot create styles in Word for iPad.  So in a new document, if you want to indent, change line spacing, change the font, etc., you will need to do that manually.

Second, if you open a document that you created on your computer using styles, Word for iPad will recognize those styles and will correctly display the document formatting.  But you cannot easily use those styles in your document to apply them to more text.  While there is a Styles button in Word for iPad, it comes pre-loaded with 15 styles that are always there and cannot be changed (and which are mostly useless for legal documents).  The Styles button will not show you the styles that exist in your document, so you cannot use that menu to select a style that exists in the document and apply it to different text.

However, Microsoft did provide one partial work-around.  If you copy text in Word for iPad to which you had applied a style on your computer, and then you select a different string of text, Word for iPad includes an option to Paste Format.  That option will apply all of the formatting, including the style name, to the new text.  So for example, if you have a Block Quote style that you like to use, and you are editing a document that already has that style in use, you are in luck.  Just copy that paragraph and then paste the formatting to a different paragraph. 

Unfortunately, if the style that you want is present in the document but not currently being used, you can’t use it.  My hope is that better support for styles is a feature that Microsoft is working on for a future update.

Track Changes

One of the very best parts of Microsoft Word for iPad is the track changes feature.  I say this because most attorneys are unlikely to write a brief from scratch using Word on an iPad (although you could do so).  Instead, most attorneys will find Word for iPad most useful when they are using an iPad away from the office and they just want to suggest some edits to a documents someone else created on a computer.

For the most part, track changes works great.  Just turn it on, and new text is underlined and deleted text is stricken. 

There is one quirk that I don’t quite understand.  When you make an edit, it shows up in one color.  You can then change what you just did for about a minute, but sometimes (and not all of the time) after a minute the color changes.  When this happens, if you want to alter your edit, it shows up as a redline to your redline.  I can’t think of any reason that anyone would want their edits to show up this way.  The only workaround that I have discovered is to go to your original edit, select it and tap the icon on the ribbon to reject your first edit (so that you go back to the original text), an then edit again as you now want it to read.  Although this workaround works, it seems silly that you have to do it in the first place.

Other Advanced Functions

It comes as no surprise that there are many other advanced functions supported by Word on the PC or Mac that are not supported on the iPad.  Other than the ones listed above, I really don’t miss them.

For example, while you can check spelling in Word for iPad, you cannot check grammar.  But grammar checking is a function that annoys me in Word on my Mac and PC, so I always keep it turned off on my computers.  I don’t miss it on the iPad.

Word for iPad supports footnotes but has only limited support for endnotes, captions (numbered labels for objects), citations (the bibliography function), and Table of Contents — namely, you can view them if they are already in a document, but you cannot add or update them.  Again, I don’t miss these features in Word for iPad, and I suspect that most attorneys who use Word for iPad will feel the same.

Word for iPad doesn’t support macros.  I stopped using macros in Word documents a very long time ago because they were sometimes used to spread Word viruses.  If you like to use macros in your Word documents, you can do so on your computer but not in Word for iPad.

Word for iPad also doesn’t support split windows.  I sometimes find split windows useful on my PC and Mac, but in light of the smaller size of the iPad screen, I can understand why this feature was omitted.  Having said that, if Microsoft were to add this feature in the future, I might find it useful, especially when in portrait orientation.

Exporting Documents

So now you have edited your document and you are ready to move it off of your iPad.  What are the choices?  Word for iPad sometimes feels like it has the Hotel California problem; you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.  Word for iPad has many limitations that make it more difficult than I would have expected to get a document out of the iPad.

First, you cannot print … yet.  Although this has resulted in some bad press, I don’t see this as a major limitation.  Although I do sometimes print from my iPad to an AirPrint printer, I don’t do this very often, and I don’t really miss it in Word for iPad.  Moreover, PC World is reporting that Microsoft will add this feature in a future update, and Microsoft Principal Group Manager Sangeeta Mudnal said in the Reddit this week:  “Print is a high demand feature that we intend to introduce in due course.”  [UPDATE 4/28/14:  Version 1.0.1 came out today, and it adds the ability to print.]

Second, Word for iPad doesn’t support the standard iOS export functions to Open in… another app or to share with another user using AirDrop.  The Open in… omission is a huge limitation, and is so obvious of an omission that I can only conclude that Microsoft deliberately chose not to support the feature, perhaps as a way to encourage users to use OneDrive.  My #1 feature request for Word for iPad is that Microsoft reconsider this decision and add the ability to open a document in another app.  This would let folks save to Dropbox (by opening in the Dropbox app), convert to PDF (by opening in any of the apps that convert Word files to PDF), add the document to an iPad-based folder (such as folder in GoodReader), etc.

So what can you do right now with a document?  First, you can save the document to the iPad itself.  This works fine if you don’t have a lot of documents, but there is no support for folders so you just have to work with a big long list of documents.  There is a Recent button that lists in order of use, so at least it isn’t too hard to find a document that you worked with recently.

Second, you can email the document itself, or a link to the document.  More on this in a moment.

Third, you can save the document to OneDrive.  Indeed, everyone who uses Office 365 has a OneDrive account, so by definition if you have the full version of Word for iPad, you have a OneDrive account.  But for me, saving confidential attorney-client documents and/or work product — such as the drafts of virtually every document that I work on — to OneDrive is not acceptable.  I’m sure that Microsoft has good intentions, as does Dropbox and other cloud storage services, but I would rather keep my confidential documents under my control, which means only storing the documents on devices that I or my law firm own unless there is sophisticated encryption.

Note that if you do save to OneDrive, you can then use the free OneDrive app to access the document, but the OneDrive app also doesn’t support the standard iOS functions so you cannot use the OneDrive app to open the document in another app.  [UPDATE:  I missed it at first, but now I see that you can do this in OneDrive; when the document is being shown on your screen, tap … in the bottom right corner and select Open in Another App.]  You can, also work with documents in your OneDrive with other apps, such as Documents to Go or GoodReader.

Note also that if you choose to email a link to someone instead of emailing them the actual document, it appears that Microsoft first uploads the document to OneDrive and then sends a link.  So if you want to avoid putting a confidential document on OneDrive, I recommend that you email the file itself and not a link.

Finally, I see that the Word for iPad app supports Microsoft SharePoint.  I know that you can open documents from a SharePoint location, and according to Priyanka Sinha, part of the PowerPoint for iPad team, “Office for iPad supports opening, editing, saving from [on-premise] SharePoint 2010+.”  I don’t use SharePoint, but if your law firm does, this is good news.

Of all of these options, email is the only one that will be useful for most attorneys, unless your office has on-premise SharePoint.  Indeed, if you want to edit a document and then send the revised draft to another attorney or your secretary, email is a great option.  So thank goodness Word for iPad includes the option to email the document because for many attorneys, this may be the only option that they really need.

If you instead want to open a document in another app, you can use the email function as a workaround.  Email the document to yourself, then open up that email, then hold your finger down on the attachment and you can then open up the document in another app — for example, open in Dropbox to save it there, open in another app that will convert to PDF, open in the Transporter app to save it to a folder on your Transporter, etc.

Stability

I rarely have problems with iPad apps crashing, but sometimes it happens, and it can be very annoying.  One of the things that I have always liked about Pages, the word processor for the iPad made by Apple, is that it is rock solid.  I have used it to take notes in day-long meetings and depositions many, many times and it has always worked perfectly and I have never lost even a line of text.

I’ve only been using Word for iPad for two weeks, and while the app has not crashed on me yet, UPDATE: SEE BELOW I’ll have to use it much longer to conclude that it is as stable as Pages.  However, I have had one occasion when I was using Word for iPad (and one occasion when I was using Excel for iPad) when I got a “Not enough memory” error.  I tapped OK and continued to use the apps without incident, but the error did make me nervous.

[UPDATE:  So just a few hours after this post went live, I had my first crash.  Thursday morning I was taking a deposition of a plaintiff.  An attorney for a co-defendant went first and asked questions and I was taking notes of the questions and answers on my iPad.  I usually use Pages for this, but today I decided to use Word for iPad with an external keyboard.  I was also frequently switching between Word and other apps on my iPad such as GoodReader, Mail, Safari and Maps to look up various items that related to what the plaintiff was saying.  Every time I switched back to Word I had to wait a short moment to load the document back into memory … until one time, about 45 minutes into the deposition, when instead of loading my document I just saw the main screen of Word.  Where was my document?  I looked at the list of recent documents and it wasn’t there.  Ugh.  After trying everything I could think of to locate my document, I gave up and I started a new Word document and used it for the rest of the deposition and all was fine.  It did occur to me that with my first document I never saved it under a specific name.  (Tap the second icon on the left of the screen and then select name.)  I didn’t think that I needed to do so since Word for iPad kept telling me that it was auto-saving the document even without a name, but maybe if I had given the first document a specific name it would have showed up in my recents list after the crash?  I’ll have to explore this more, and it turned out that the first 45 minutes of my depo were just background information anyway so I didn’t lose anything of value, but it could have been a big disaster.  In the future, perhaps I will stick to Pages for taking notes until I feel that this has been fixed.]

In the Reddit earlier this week, Rick Schaut said:  “The biggest challenge [porting Word from the Mac to the iPad] was working within the resource constraints of an iPad vs a desktop Mac, and the issues span a wide gamut from memory to processor speed to battery usage. Getting Word’s scrolling to be so smooth as it is, for example, took a fairly impressive engineering effort.”  I know that Microsoft has to use some major tricks to get so much of the full version of Word to work within the memory constraints of an iPad.  Hopefully, Word for iPad will remain stable; nobody likes to lose work.

By the way, here is a picture that the MacBU/Apex team shared of the equipment that they use to test Microsoft Office for iPad on multiple different iPads with different configurations:

Pricing

Word for iPad is free*.  The * indicates that you can download the app from the App Store for free, and you can use the app to view Word documents, but if you want to edit Word documents you need to have an Office 365 account.  And here is where things get confusing.  I think the following description is correct, but I might be missing something about all of the different plans.

One option is to get an Office 365 Home Premium account, which is what I have been using for the past year.  That lets me install Office on up to five computers (Mac or PC) at my house and also lets me use Word, Excel and PowerPoint for iPad on up to five tablets.  It costs $9.99 month or $99.99 a year.

If you want your law firm to pay for Office 365, then you need an Office 365 for Business plan that supports desktop and mobile apps.  Options include Office 365 Small Business Premium for $150 per user per year, for up to 25 users.  If you are in a larger law firm, you may need Office 365 Midsize Business, which is $180 per user per year, for up to 300 users.  For larger companies there are different rates.  [UPDATE 9/8/14:  For more information on the Office 365 licenses that can be used by lawyers, read this post.]

Of course, your law firm probably already has some sort of license agreement with Microsoft, and if you don’t currently use Office 365, then you need to investigate what it will cost to add mobile support for your users.  Talk to your Microsoft rep.

I hear some people complain about the price, but for lawyers I have no doubt that this cost is worth it.  Whether you are paying $100 a year for several of your home computers and tablets or $180 or more a year for a single user license in a large organization, you are paying for both the computer software and the iPad software.  Considering how important Microsoft Word is to attorneys, this is a small but essential cost of doing business.

Conclusion

I have been using Word for iPad for two weeks, but I have been using Microsoft Word, in one form or another, for over 25 years.  I think that almost every attorney should have Word on the computer in their office, and similarly, Word for iPad is so good, and such an important app, that I think that every attorney who uses an iPad should get Word for iPad.  If nothing else, just use the free version of the app as a great document viewer.  But to do real work with the app, you’ll want to have an Office 365 account.

As noted above, this 1.0 version of the app has some limitations.  For an app that I really like, I’m surprised how many times I had to use the word “workaround” in writing this review.  Hopefully many of these limitations will be addressed in future updates.  On Reddit this week, a member of the Excel for iPad team stated:  “One of the great things about Office 365 being a subscription is that you can expect to get frequent updates, so stay tuned!  We think you’ll like them.”  And Rick Schaut from the Word for iPad team stated:  “I can’t say what will or will not be in the next version of Word, because those decisions are always in flux. I can say that we’re always thinking about what we should include, and we’re always working to find the best mix of features across our broad base of users.”

Word for iPad is already a fantastic app today, and I look forward to seeing how it is improved in the future.

Click here to get Microsoft Word for iPad (free): 

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This article won the BlawgWorld Pick of the Week award. The editors of BlawgWorld, a free weekly email newsletter for lawyers and law firm administrators, give this award to one article every week that they feel is a must-read for this audience.

One of my favorite parts of ABA TECHSHOW a few weeks ago was a presentation that Ben Stevens and I gave on March 27, 2014 called iGadgets and iGear for the iLawyer.  In that session, Ben and I talked about and showed off some of our favorite iPhone and iPad accessories.  Most of them were items that we use in connection with our law practice, but some of them were just fun accessories that most anyone would like.  With more time we could have discussed so many more — there are just so many useful and/or fun things that you can buy to enhance your iPhone or iPad.

Here is a list of the items that we discussed.  I’ve added links for the ones that I have reviewed here on iPhone J.D., and for the others I added an Amazon link (when available) so you can see the item and get more information there.  A few of these will be the subject of upcoming reviews on iPhone J.D.  Some of my reviews were written a while ago and in some cases my views have changed, but suffice it to say that the fact that an accessory is on this list tells you that either Ben or I thought that it is still worth your consideration.

1. Wacom Bambo Stylus Duo
2. Pogo Stylus
3. LynkTek TruGlide Pro Precision Stylus [Amazon]
4. Adonit Jot Pro
5. Adonit Script [Amazon]
6. Adonit Jot Tote [Amazon]
7. Griffin No. 2 Pencil Stylus
8. iBoltz XS
9. iBoltz XL
10. Apple Lightning to USB Cable (2 m) [Amazon]
11. USB to dual Micro/Mini [Amazon]
12. ChargeKey
13. ChargeCard [Amazon]
14. iPhone 5s Dock
15. Apple 12W USB Power Adapter [Amazon]
16. Powerocks Magicstick 2800
17. iSound Portable Power Max
18. Griffin PowerDock 5 [Amazon]
19. Belkin WeMo [Amazon]
20. Kensington AbsolutePower 4.2 Dual Fast Charge for Tablets
21. Monster Outlets to Go [Amazon]
22. Stabile Pro by Thought Out
23. Apple Wireless Keyboard
24. Origami Workstation for iPad by Incase
25. Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover
26. Snugg Executive Case & Flip Stand [Amazon]
27. STM’s Studio Case [Amazon]
28. Aduro Rotata Folio
29. Snugg Squared Skinny [Amazon]
30. Snugg Ultra Thin Clear [Amazon]
31. Slim DODOcase
32. G-Form Extreme Sleeve
33. Lightning to SD Card Camera Reader [Amazon]
34. Lightning to VGA Adapter
35. Lightning Digital AV Adapter [Amazon]
36. Chef Sleeve
37. DryCASE
38. iShower
39. ECOXBT by ECOXGEAR [Amazon]
40. dockBoss Air by CableJive
41. iHome iDL100 [Amazon]
42. Lightning to 30 pin adapters
43. iPin
44. MOBiLE CLOTH
45. Transporter
46. Transporter Sync

As I mentioned last week, MyCase hired Stephanie Crowley to produce live murals based on what Ben and I were talking about during our presentation.  Here is what Crowley created: