As a result of my crazy schedule last week — depositions. meetings, and a missed connection in Atlanta resulting in me being stuck there overnight — this In the news comes a little later than normal. As we finish up the first half of 2014, there were lots of interesting items in the news over the past week, including a big cellphone-related decision from the U.S. Supreme Court. Last week, the Court unanimously ruled in Riley v California (PDF opinion) that police must obtain a search warrant before examining the contents of a cellphone taken from a person that is arrested. Thus, the Court limited the scope of the search incident to a lawful arrest doctrine, accepting the argument that a cellphone is unlike the contents of your pocket, and can contain information for which a person is entitled to expect privacy. As Chief Justice Roberts wrote, “it is no exaggeration to say that many of the more than ninety percent of American adults who own a cell phone keep on their person a digital record of nearly every aspect of their lives — from the mundane to the intimate.” I agree completely. Lyle Denniston of the SCOTUSblog wrote an analysis of the opinion. And now, the other news of note from the past week:
Ian O’Flahery is the man behind some of the very best iPad apps for lawyers: TranscriptPad and TrialPad. In a post on MacSparky, Ian shows California attorney David Sparks what apps are on his iPad home screen.
The iPhone turned 7 yesterday. As Rene Ritchie of iMore notes, the first generation iPhone went on sale June 29, 2007. My first iPhone was the iPhone 3G that went on sale July 11, 2008. Four months later, iPhone J.D. launched on November 17, 2008.
Apple celebrated Pride Week by raising a rainbow flag at the company’s 1 Infinite Loop headquarters, and Seth Weintraub of 9to5 Mac notes that Apple CEO Tim Cook, Apple VP of Environmental Affairs Lisa Jackson, and 5,000 Apple employees and their family marched in San Francisco yesterday. The Apple rainbow T-shirts that they wore to support nondiscrimination remind me somewhat of the original multi-colored Apple logo. As Glenn Fleishman remarked on Twitter: “A world in which gay kids see [the] Apple CEO fully embracing Pride Week, posing with employees, is a piece of Making Things Better.”
Mike Beseley of 9to5 Mac reports that Apple has apparently started updating data in the Maps app every morning at 3 am.
Kate Renner of KSTP reports that a two-year-old used Siri to call for help when her mother fainted. She told Siri “Call Emergency” and the phone dialed 911. (via iMore)
A few days ago I reviewed the CaseMaker Pro, a device that lets you use whatever picture you want on an iPhone case. My wife owns a neat cutting device called the Silhouette Cameo — sort of like a printer that cuts paper instead of printing on it, a useful and fun product for any tech-savvy crafter in your life. She pointed out to me that folks who own a Silhouette can follow these instructions to do the same thing. And as she told me that, I think I heard the song “Anything you can do, I can do better” playing in the background, but that may have been just my imagination.
And finally, if you are of my generation, then you probably have fond memories of using a Trapper Keeper when you were in grade school. Kensington this week introduced the Mead Collection Folios to give you an iPad case with the Trapper Keeper look.
I recently reviewed three of the best active iPad styluses on the market (1, 2, 3), styluses that use tiny tips (around 2 mm or so) but which require power (battery or rechargeable) and are somewhat expensive ($50 to $75). But what if you just want a traditional stylus, one that is less expensive and that you can use without worrying about turning it on and making sure that there is a charged battery? There are probably hundreds of styluses on the market with 6 mm tips (some of which you can buy for less than $1 each), but for best results, I recommend that you instead go for a higher quality stylus with a 5 mm or smaller tip. It makes using a stylus with an iPad a much better experience. The one that I have used and recommended for years is the Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo, which you can get on Amazon for about $25. But several iPhone J.D. readers recommended that I also check out the Hand Stylus. The manufacturer sent me a free sample to review, and I’ve been trying it out for the last two weeks. I’m so glad that so many of you recommended that I check out this product. It is a fantastic stylus.
Origin
The Hand Stylus was started as a Kickstarter campaign in 2012. The goal was to create a stylus with the smallest possible tip that the iPad can recognize (around 4 mm), plus make the tip retractable by pressing a button on the back, plus make the stylus itself out of a high-quality anodized aluminum with lots of colors in a hexagonal barrel that reminds you of the feel of a Number 2 pencil. The creator sought to raise $25,000 on Kickstarter; instead he raised over $300,000 from over 7,500 backers. Clearly, there were folks excited about the idea.
The Kickstarter campaign is now long over, and you can buy a Hand Stylus directly from the manufacturer for $24.95, or you can get one on Amazon for $21.99 (with fewer colors available). They come in blue, pink, orange, green, red, black, silver or purple. The manufacturer sent me a black one.
Tip
The Hand Stylus has a great tip. There is a big difference between using an active stylus with a tiny 2 mm tip and a traditional stylus with a larger tip. The small tip on an active stylus gives you the great sensation of precision, much as if you are using a real pen. All other things being equal, I would prefer to use an active stylus with a much smaller tip.
But if you are going to use a traditional stylus with a larger tip, the one on the Hand Stylus is very good. At 4 mm, the tip on the Hand Stylus is about as small as you can get on a non-power stylus. By comparision, the original Wacom Bamoo Stylus duo had a 6 mm tip, and the second generation has a 5 mm tip. However, in actual usage, I don’t notice much difference between the Hand Stylus and the Wacom Bamboo Stylus in terms of the size of the tip. I did notice that the tip on the Hand Stylus is a little bit softer than the tip on the Wacom Bamboo Stylus, so I have to apply just slightly more pressure when using the Hand Stylus. If I go back and forth between the two, I slightly prefer the tip on the Wacom, but both work very well in normal usage. Both of these products are about as good as you can get with a tradtional stylus.
In the following picture, the first generation Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo is at the top; the Hand Stylus is at the bottom:
The marquee feature of the Hand Stylus is that the tip is retractable. This certainly sets it apart from any other stylus that I have ever used. In theory, it sounds like a great feature. Stylus tips are soft rubber and could certainly be cut or otherwise broken if something sharp makes contact. By simply clicking the button to retract the tip, the tip is protected.
In practice, I question how necessary this feature really is. In my many, many years of using lots of different iPad styluses, I have never once encountered a problem because the tip was exposed. Having said that, I can certainly imagine a scenario in which an exposed tip would get damaged but a retracted tip would not. One minor disadvantage of the Hand Stylus is that if you forget that you have not yet exposed the stylus and you go to write on your iPad, you might touch your iPad screen with the metal at the end of the stylus. I did that only once, and then quickly pulled the stylus off of the screen and clicked the button to expose the nib tip.
One unexpected benefit of the retractable tip that I discovered is that sometimes when I was feeling fidgety, it was somewhat calming to be able to press the button on the back of the stylus on and off and on and off again, much like I now realize that I’ve sometimes done with other pens.
Barrel
I prefer the feel of the barrel on the Hand Stylus over the Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo. The hexagonal barrel on the Hand Stylus feels really nice, and reminds you of a Number 2 pencil. The knurled collar near the tip of the pen ensures that the stylus doesn’t slip in your hand. The Hand Stylus weighs just slightly more than the Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo (my measurements showed the Hand Stylus at 26 grams and the Bamboo at 25 grams). Put it all together and the Hand Stylus feels like an expertly engineered premium product. My father is an architect, and as a child I used to like to go to his office and play with all of the neat drawing tools on his drafting table — high quality pencils and pens, drafting templates that could be used to create perfect circles and squares, etc. The Hand Stylus reminds me of the high-quality mechanical pencils I would always find on my father’s drafting table.
The Hand Stylus has a clip at the end, which makes it easy to put it in a shirt pocket or a pocket in your purse or briefcase. But if for some reason you don’t want the clip, you can remove it. (The Bamboo Stylus duo also includes a removable clip.)
A real pen: the Hand Combo
One feature of the Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo that I like is that it also contains a real pen under the cap. That’s what makes it a “duo”. So any time that I am in a meeting with just my iPad and my stylus, if I need to write something on a piece of paper, I also have a pen with me. It is far from the best pen in the world — it’s just a simple ballpoint pen — but it works fine when you need it.
The Hand Stylus lacks a pen. Instead, the manufacturer sells a different product called the Hand Combo. The Hand Combo has a 6 mm stylus tip on the back of the pen and has a twist-to-use ballpoint pen tip on the front. The company sent me a free review sample of the Hand Combo so that I could try it out in comparison to the Hand Stylus. In my tests, I didn’t like the Hand Combo at all.
First, when I use a stylus, I want to primarily use it as a stylus. But with the stylus end on the back of the pen, the stylus function of the Hand Combo feels like almost an afterthought, and the stylus is much less comfortable to hold upside down — unlike the Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo, which feels great in either direction because the pen top with a clip fits on either end of the stylus. Second, the larger 6 mm tip is not as nice as the 4 mm tip on the Hand Stylus. I can’t think of any reason that I would recommend the Hand Combo over the Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo for anyone who wants a pen included in their stylus.
Extra tips
The rubber nibs that form the tip over a stylus will eventually wear out from use, so all of the high-quality styluses on the market give you the ability to buy replacement nibs instead of buying a whole new stylus. You can buy a set of six replacement tips for the Hand Stylus for $9.95. They come in a round metal container, which is a nice change from all other manufacturers that seem to just send the nibs in a tiny plastic bag that you are more likely to lose in your desk drawer. The company sent me one so that I could see how it worked, and replacing tips was very easy to do.
In theory, because the tip of the Hand Stylus rotates every time you click the back, the tip on the Hand Stylus should wear more evenly on all of its sides even if you hold the stylus the same way every time. You would have to use a Hand Stylus and another stylus in the same way for a long time to determine whether the nib on the Hand Stylus does actually last longer as a result of these rotations. I obviously haven’t done that after just two weeks of use, but this does seem like another potentially nice feature of the Hand Stylus.
Conclusion
The Hand Stylus is a wonderful stylus. It does a great job writing on the iPad screen, it looks and feels really nice in your hand (better than any other stylus that I have ever used), and it is reasonably priced for such a high quality product. It doesn’t have the tiny tip that you find on an active stylus, but it costs much less and you don’t have to worry about giving it power. If you are in the market for a traditional stylus, this is an excellent one to get.
Two of my favorite iPad-using attorneys — Tampa, FL attorney Katie Floyd and Irvine, CA attorney David Sparks who together host the great Mac Power Users podcast — wrote this week about an iPhone dock that they both like called the EverDock. Katie’s article is here, and David’s article is here. I haven’t used the EverDock, but based on what both of them had to say, it sounds like a nice product.
What I instead use is the dock that Apple makes and sells. I reviewed it last year, and it is called, appropriately enough, the iPhone 5s Dock. (It also works with the iPhone 5.) Apple doesn’t sell it on Amazon, but you can get it directly from Apple for $29.00, which is cheaper than the EverDock that Katie and David use (normally $49.99, but currently on sale for $39.99). Note that if you use a case, the Apple dock will probably not work; it is molded to the shape of the naked iPhone. Note also that with any of these docks, you need to furnish your own USB-to-Lightning cord. And also note that many other companies sell docks that work with an iPhone.
The advantage of the EverDock over the dock sold by Apple is that it is designed to be a universal dock so it should work with future versions of the iPhone. My iPhone 5s Dock will almost certainly not work with whatever new version of the iPhone that Apple releases later this year. As I noted in my review of the iPhone 5s Dock, I’ve purchased many other docks for other iPhone models over the years.
I mention all of this today because Katie and David’s articles remind me that a dock is one of the best iPhone accessories that an attorney can buy — or anyone else who has a job that involves spending a lot of time working at a desk. When you have a dock on your desk, you have a central place to put your iPhone when you are working, so you never need to worry about it getting lost under a bunch of papers. And because docks hold up the iPhone at a nice angle, you can always see the screen while you are working, a nice way to see alerts for new emails, new text messages, calendar appointments, or whatever other alerts you have enabled on your iPhone. And best of all, because docks are made to have a cord attached that runs to a USB port (either on your computer, or on a power supply), your iPhone charges whenever it is sitting in the dock. So when you pick up your iPhone from the dock to head off to a meeting out of the office, chances are your iPhone will have a 100% charge and you don’t need to worry about running low on power.
If you don’t already own an iPhone dock, you should seriously considering getting one. It is an accessory that you will find useful almost every single day.
Except for a short period of time when I occasionally used the Apple bumper for the iPhone 4, I have never used a case for my iPhone. Yes, this means that I have gotten some minor nicks and scratches on the edges on my iPhones over the years, but I figure that they just add character. I prefer to keep my iPhone as small and light as possible, and I like the way that an iPhone fells in my hand without a case. That’s probably the reason that I haven’t reviewed an iPhone case in over three years. So when the folks behind the CaseMaker Pro offered to send me a free sample of their product for a review, I had some doubts about spending time with a case on my iPhone so that I could review it. But now that I’ve used it for a while, I have to admit that this is a pretty neat product. Originally an IndieGoGo campaign, it is now a shipping product that lets you use any picture as an iPhone case. If you want a case for your iPhone — and based on what I see around me, it seems like most attorneys do use a case — and you want a versatile way to make it both unique and changeable, you’ll want to look at the CaseMaker Pro.
The CaseMaker Pro consists of two devices. First, you get an iPhone case. It is a slim design case with a black silicon edge. The case does not cover the front of the phone, so you can touch your iPhone screen just like normal.
There is a slot opening for the mute switch, and the case includes buttons you can press which push in on the iPhone’s built-in volume up/down buttons and power on/off button.
There is also an opening for the speakers, microphone and the Lightning port on the bottom. Be warned that the opening for the Lightning port is very small. I was able to use the USB-to-Lightning cord made by Apple that came with my iPhone, but most of the third party Lightning cords in my possession had bases that were too big to fit through this hole in the case, so I had to remove the case to use the cable, which was annoying.
The second part of the CaseMaker Pro is the photo cropper, a stainless steel stamp with 14 blades. This is a substantial, heavy unit, not unlike the industrial-strength three-hole punch that you might have your office.
When you place a picture in the photo cropper and then firmly push down, the stamp cuts the outline of an iPhone and a hole for the camera and flash.
Take the stamped picture, place it in the case and then the picture will appear on the back of your iPhone.
Sometimes you have to experiment to get your stamped picture just right. If you want something precisely centered, or if you want to precisely align something right at the edge, you may want to experiment with how your crop a picture before you print it, and you may want to print out more than one picture, so that you can try a few times. When you place a picture in the photo cropper, the photo cropper does not show you precisely where your picture will be cut. But once you get the photo cropped like you want it, the end result looks nice.
My favorite feature about the CaseMaker Pro is that there are infinite possibilities. You can use any of your own pictures. You can use a picture in a magazine or a catalog. You can find a picture on the Internet and print it out. You can cut out pretty much any picture you can find as long as it is thin enough. So this means that if you want to have your iPhone stand out and grab people’s attention, you choose a colorful, eye-catching image. Or you might want to use a picture of your kids or your spouse or your pet. Or you might want to use a picture of your favorite team, actor, band, superhero, college, sportscar, or product. Or you could use a company logo. Or a pattern. And if you ever get bored with your picture, just make a new one. Your son just brought home the class turtle to take care of for a few days? Take a picture, and bingo, you have another iPhone case.
Thus, with the CaseMaker Pro, you don’t have to worry about being stuck with the leopard-print pattern that happened to strike your fancy when you were in the Apple Store buying your iPhone. You can change your picture as often as you like.
At first, I thought that the CaseMaker Pro would be best for folks who want to make a bold statement with their iPhone by using a picture that stands out in a crowd, but there is nothing stopping you from using a picture of a simple, dark, muted background. With the CaseMaker Pro, the back of your iPhone can look however you want it to look. You are limited only by your own imagination and creativity.
The CaseMaker Pro is designed for the iPhone 5 and 5s. If you upgrade your iPhone when Apple releases the new 2014 model later this year, I seriously doubt that the iPhone size will remain the same. Thus, this product is unlikely to work with your next iPhone. Of course, this is true with almost every iPhone case since Apple tends to change the shape of the iPhone every two years. And when I get a new iPhone later this year, if I pass on my current iPhone to my daughter to use (without a SIM chip) for entertainment purposes during a long car or plane ride, she will be able to select any picture or design that she wants to customize the look of the case just for her. (Were she to pick a picture today, I strongly suspect that it would be a character from Frozen; all of you who have six-year old girls know what I am talking about.)
If you like the idea of a slim profile iPhone 5/5s case that can look like anything you want and is infinitely changeable, then the CaseMaker Pro is a fun and useful product.
I frequently take handwritten notes using my iPad and a stylus. People sometimes ask me why I’m not just typing my notes, using an external keyboard. Sometimes I do, such as if I am in a meeting or monitoring a deposition and I want to capture as much as possible, almost as if I am transcribing. But I’ve often found that my notes are more helpful to me when I take them by hand. I have far fewer words on the page, but my handwritten notes capture what is most important. It turns out that I’m not alone in thinking this way. This week, Minneapolis attorney Sam Glover of Lawyerist.com wrote about new research confirming that taking notes by hand is often better than typing. It’s a fascinating article and worth reading. And now, the rest of the news of note from the past week:
Speaking of Lawyerist.com, this week the site produced a list of every iOS app created for lawyers. The site explains that some apps are purposely excluded (such as apps not updated in the last few years and apps that simply republish free content such as statutes), and once you take those out, I couldn’t find any apps missing from the list. Of course, there are also lots of incredibly useful apps for lawyers that are not created specifically for lawyers, such as Microsoft Word for iPad, Fantastical, 1Password, etc.
Attorney Andrew Weber, the Legislative Information Systems Manager for the Law Library of Congress, tells me that Congress.gov was updated this week with new information and the ability to save your searches. As I noted when I reviewed the site in 2012, the website works well on a mobile device. You can get more information on the updates in this post by Weber.
If you find that your iPhone or iPad is clinging to a weak Wi-Fi signal when it should instead be using 4G LTE, you can always turn off Wi-Fi to force your device to get off of Wi-Fi, but California attorney David Sparks explains why it may be better to toggle Wi-Fi off and then on again.
Erika Aguilar of KPCC (Southern California Public Radio) discusses a Los Angeles trial court that is giving jurors iPads to us to view evidence.
One of my favorite Apple Stores is the one inside of Grand Central Terminal in New York. What I like most about it is that this high-tech store greatly respects the traditional architecture of the building. Kevin Baker wrote an interesting article this week about how Grand Central Terminal was almost demolished. It’s an good read. (via Daring Fireball)
Harish Jonnalagadda of iMore writes that EA has cut the price of many popular games by up to 90%. For example, Battleship (normally $4.99), Monopoly (normally $9.99), Trivial Pursuit (normally $4.99) and Mirror’s Edge (normally $9.99) are each just $0.99 for a limited time. Click here to see all of EA’s games in the App Store.
Apple has done a lot to make it harder for a thief to steal your iPhone. For example, you can use Find My iPhone to locate and remotely erase your device. Brian Chen of the New York Times reports that, according to New York Attorney General Eric Schneidermn, these changes have resulted in a huge decrease in iPhone thefts.
Jason Gilbert of Yahoo Tech shows off some of the best photos of the year taken by an iPhone. These pictures may happen to have been taken by an iPhone, but they are just great photos, period.
This week, Matt Richtel and Brian Chen of the New York Times wrote a profile of Tim Cook’s tenure as Apple CEO. The analysis in the article suffers from many flaws, but the article does includes some interesting information including statements from Jonathan Ive, the head of design at Apple. I actually preferred reading the edited transcript of the interview with Jonathan Ive.
And finally, here is a short video of a woman wearing x.pose, which purports to be a “wearable data-driven sculpture that exposes a person’s skin as a real-time reflection of the data that the wearer is producing.” In other words, the more that you use your iPhone to share information about yourself, the more that this corset makes you naked. Mariella Moon of Engadget has some details, you can get more information on the x.pose website, or you can just click here or below for the video.
This week, a new fund-raising campaign launched on IndieGoGo to raise money to produce the oPhone DUO, a hardware accessory and app for the iPhone that lets you send someone a scent. The idea is that Person #1 takes a picture and then tags the picture with what he smells — much like when you sample a wine and then say that you smell hints of blackberry, chocolate, and oak. Then Person #1 sends that tagged picture to Person #2, who can see the picture on his iPhone and can — thanks to the connected oPhone DUO hardware — also smell the scent that was described by Person #1 because the oPhone hardware device can create over 300,000 different aromas. The product is being developed by David Edwards, a Professor of Engineering at Harvard, and some of his former students. This video does a nice job of explaining how it works:
When I initially saw this video for the oPhone, my first thought was that this is such a quirky idea that it would be perfect for the offbeat video that I typically post at the end of my Friday In the news posts. But upon further reflection, I’ve begun to think more seriously about what the oPhone might tell us about the future.
None of us are old enough to remember a time before the telephone was invented, but for those who encountered a telephone for the very first time, I imagine that it must have seemed incredible to hear the voice of a loved one from across the country. I am old enough to remember a time before cellphones, and I remember that when my father first brought home one of those large, clunky devices that debuted in the 1980s, it seemed amazing to me to be able to talk to someone wherever they were, even if they were far away from a house or a payphone. (For younger iPhone J.D. readers, here is a link to the Wikipedia entry for payphone so that you can read up on this device that you may have never used.) It wasn’t that long ago that the idea of taking a high-quality picture on a mobile device and then instantly sending it to someone else around the world seemed futuristic. And today, with my iPhone, I can easily have FaceTime videochats with people around the world, even if both of us are in the middle of parks. We now live in a world where sights and sounds can be instantly shared from anyone to anyone.
Which brings me back to the oPhone. I’m not sure that the oPhone itself will ever be commercially popular; the device would be far more interesting if it could automatically sense a smell and then recreate that exact scent for someone else without relying on people to choose the right words to describe an aroma. Nevertheless, it makes me wonder about what may be coming in the future. Will our children be using mobile devices that can instantly transmit not only sights and sounds, but also smells? Tastes? Or even the sense of touch, so that you could send someone a handshake or a hug or a kiss? It all seems pretty unbelievable right now, but if Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Watson were around today to see what I can do with my iPhone 5s, I suspect that they would be astonished.
I usually wear a shirt that has a pocket, and that is where my iPhone typically lives when I am out and about, so when my iPhone alerts me (such as when I receive a new text) it is easy for me to feel my iPhone vibrating even if my ringer is turned off. But what about women who have a different wardrobe and keep their iPhone in a purse? Susie Ochs of TechHive reviews a new piece of jewelry called Ringly, a ring that vibrates when your iPhone needs to get your attention (and which Ochs considers stylish; I’m not a good judge of that). I link to that article not so much because of the Ringly itself, but instead because it makes me wonder what features might be included in the iWatch that Apple is rumored to be working on right now for a possible debut later this year. And now, here are the news items of note from the past week.
The U.S. Fifth Circuit has gone almost completely digital, and many judges use iPads to read briefs that are full of hyperlinks thanks to the Fifth Circuit’s custom software. Texas attorney David Coale discusses this on his Fifth Circuit-centric blog called 600 Camp.
Rene Ritchie of iMore wrote an interesting analysis of Apple’s recent WWDC announcement in an article that he calls Timing. Another good one that he wrote about WWDC is called A Love Letter From Apple.
David Pierce of The Verge explains why the iPhone 5s is the best smartphone on the market today.
The iPhone 5s might be the best, but what if you wanted to use the most expensive smartphone on the market? Tim Moynihan of Wired reviews the Vertu Signature Touch, which starts at $10,300.
Allyson Kazmucha of iMore explains how to use Siri to create, view, update and cancel Calendar events.
Chris Welch of The Verge reports that Amtrak has plans to improve Wi-Fi on trains in the Northeast Corridor.
iOS 8 adds a time lapse feature to the Camera app. Dave Mark of The Loop shares a video that shows off this feature, and it looks great.
This has nothing to do with the iPhone, but FYI, today is Friday the 13th and we have a full moon, which won’t happen again until August 13, 2049.
Twenty years ago, Apple debuted eWorld, a competitor to the other services that you accessed with a dial-up modem such as America Online, Prodigy and CompuServe. I was a member of eWorld from the beginning to the end in 1996, and it was an interesting service in the days before the Internet became popular. Benj Edwards wrote an article about eWorld for Macworld.
And finally, what do you do if you are stuck overnight in an airport by yourself? If you are Richard Dunn, you take your iPhone and film yourself in a fun and deliberately cheesy music video. He posted it to Vimeo earlier this week and it went viral, and has now been viewed over 11 million times. When I first saw this video, I assumed that Dunn had help making it, but as Dunn explains in an interview on CNN’s HLN and an interview on USA Today, he really did film the video all by himself using items located in the virtually empty airport (tape, a ruler, a wheelchair, etc.) and then he later edited it on a Mac using Final Cut Pro. Jon Blisten of Rolling Stone even has a video response from Celine Dion.
[UPDATE 8/20/15: There is a new version of this stylus that is designed to work better with the iPad Air 2. It costs $59.99 on Amazon.]
I’ve reviewed lots of iPad styluses on iPhone J.D., and with this review of Lynktec’s Rechargeable Apex Fine Point Active Stylus, I feel like I have finished looking at the current state-of-the-art in iPad styluses. To recap, there are countless companies that sell standard styluses with a rubberized tip that is about the same size as a finger tip. My long-time favorite of that type of stylus is the Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo, which you can get on Amazon for about $25, although there are many other good options. Last year, Adonit shook up the stylus scene when it introduced the Adonit Jot Script with a tip as small as a ballpoint pen. When turned on, the stylus emits a signal that the iPad can sense, so you feel like you are using a fine point pen but the iPad senses something bigger. It costs about $75 on Amazon, so the price is much higher than a standard stylus, and it requires batteries. We then saw other companies come out with their versions of active styluses, and one excellent one that I recently reviewed is the Cregle Ink, which also uses batteries but costs less, about $50, and lacks the Bluetooth that the Adonit Jot Script uses to let compatible apps perform additional features, such as ignoring your hand when it touches the screen and only drawing when the stylus touches the screen. I can see why some would love the Bluetooth features, but I find them largely unnecessary and a little bit of a hassle. More importantly, I prefer the Cregle Ink over the Adonit Jot Script because the Jot Script has a hard tip that feels nice on the iPad screen but is noisy every time you touch the screen, while the Cregle Ink is silent to use. I also don’t like the absence of a clip on the Adonit Jot Script.
That brings me to today’s review of Lynktec’s Rechargeable Apex Fine Point Active Stylus. It costs about $70 on Amazon, and like the Cregle Ink, it is a powered stylus that lacks Bluetooth and has a tiny rubber tip that doesn’t make noise when you use it. The key distinguishing feature of the Rechargeable Apex is evident in its name: it is rechargeable. Thus, you don’t need to worry about buying batteries. Lyntec sent me a free Rechargeable Apex so that I could review it, and I’ve been trying it out for the last few weeks. I like it a lot, and it quickly became my favorite iPad stylus.
Fine tip
Like the other active stylus such as the Adonit Jot Script and the Cregle Ink, the best feature of the Rechargeable Apex Fine Point Active Stylus is the small tip. When you are taking notes or drawing on an iPad screen, it is much better to use a stylus with a fine tip that is about the same size as the line that you are drawing, and you notice a big difference when using any active stylus versus a traditional stylus. Unlike a standard stylus that has a 6 mm tip, or the Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo which has a smaller 5 mm tip, the Apex has only a 2.3 tip. That is just slightly smaller than the Cregle Ink (which has a 2.4 mm tip) and is slightly larger than the Jot Script (which as a 1.9 mm tip) but frankly all three of those tips feel the same when it comes to size, and all three of them work considerably better than a stylus with a 5 mm or 6 mm tip.
In this picture, the Jot Script is top left, the Rechargeable Apex is top right, the Cregle Ink is bottom left, and the Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo is bottom right:
One of the big advantages of the Rechargeable Apex (and the Cregle Ink) over the Jot Script is that the Jot Script can be noisy when using it because of its hard tip. (Check out the video in my review.) The Apex stylus makes essentially no noise when you use it.
The rubber polymer tip on the Apex feels great against the iPad screen. The stylus comes installed with a firm tip (nib) that is extra durable, and there is a spare located within the cap on the back of the pen for if/when the original one wears out.
The company sells two types of replacement nibs. You can get a 5-pack of firm nibs (the kind included with the stylus) for $4.99, or you can get a 3-pack of soft nibs for $2.99. After going back and forth, I think that I prefer the soft nib, which seems to me to glide a little more easily on the screen, but honestly both of them work really well and both of them feel great. Lynktec says that the soft nib is better if you use a screen protector on your iPad (I don’t).
Rechargeable
The key distinguishing feature of the Rechargeable Apex Fine Point Active Stylus is that it is rechargeable. To charge the stylus, you unscrew the cap on the back of the stylus and then plug in the included Micro-USB cord to the stylus and plug the USB end of the cord into a power adapter (or the USB port on a computer).
In my tests, the stylus went from completely drained of power to fully charged in about an hour.
The Lynktec website doesn’t say how long the stylus lasts on a charge, but a Lynktec marketing manager told me that a fully charged battery should last about 16 hours. In my tests, I went about a week between charges, but I honestly don’t know if I used it for more or less than 16 hours during each of those weeks. If you haven’t used the stylus in 30 minutes, it turns itself off to save power. I did have one time when I was in the middle of taking notes and suddenly the stylus stopped working because the battery was drained, and that was annoying because the stylus cannot work without power. I didn’t have another stylus with me, so I had to use my finger to take notes during the rest of the meeting. A light on the clip is supposed to change color when the battery is running low, and perhaps it did, but I must admit that I didn’t notice it.
The Rechargeable Apex uses a Micro-USB cord for charging. Technically that is a standard connector and you may have other Micro-USB cords already. Note, however, that the Micro-USB plug on the stylus is somewhat far inside of the back of the stylus. The included Micro-USB cord has a small enough plug that it works fine, but I noticed that some of my other Micro-USB cords were too large and could not be used to charge the Apex. For example, I typically carry in my briefcase a dual Micro- and Mini-USB cord (like this one) with the goal of only carrying around one cord for all of my Micro- and Mini-usb devices, but that cord does not fit in the back of the Rechargeable Apex stylus.
Other nice features
You need to turn on an active stylus, and it is very easy to turn on the Apex because there is an easy-to-press button on the side of the clip. One of my complaints about the button on the Adonit Jot Script is that it is tiny, flush to the side of the pen, and hard to find. To turn on the Cregle Ink you need to twist the pen, which is a little awkward. I far prefer the on/off button on the Apex.
The Apex also has a clip on its side, which makes it easy to carry the stylus in a shirt pocket or a pocket in your purse or briefcase. The lack of a clip is another thing I don’t like about the Adonit Jot Script — not only because you cannot attach it to a pocket, but also because the stylus tends to roll around, and off of, a table. You don’t have to worry about that with the Rechargeable Apex.
The front of the Apex has ridges that make it comfortable to grip without the pen slipping out of your hand. The Adonit Jot Script has a similar feature that makes it easy to hold. The Cregle Ink does not, which causes the Cregle Ink to slip a little in your hand when you use it.
Finally, the Rechargeable Apex is a longer stylus, about 5.9″ long. The Jot Script is about 5.7″ long, the Cregle Ink is about 5.5″ long, and the Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo is about 5.2″ long. I like the extra length of the Apex; it feels more like a normal pen and feels better in your hand. Having said that, all of these active styluses are (unfortunately) thicker than a normal pen, unlike the Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo which has a circumference much more like a regular pen. With any of these active styluses, you feel more like you are holding a Sharpie.
In this picture, the Adonit Jot Script is at top, then the Cregle Ink, then the Rechargeable Apex, then the Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo at bottom:
Conclusion
Do you prefer an active stylus that uses batteries, which you can replace if the power runs out, but which you have to buy and carry around? Or do you prefer an active stylus that has a cord and is recharged whenever you plug it in? I can see arguments on both sides, but after using both types of styluses, I prefer using a rechargeable stylus. Having to buy replacement batteries is a pain — especially the harder-to-find AAAA batteries used by the Cregle Ink — and I did not consider it to be much of a hassle to plug in the Rechargeable Apex for an hour every once in a while.
If you do like the idea of a rechargeable stylus, The Rechargeable Apex Fine Point Active Stylus is excellent. The small tip works incredibly well, and shows of why active styluses are so much nicer when you are writing or drawing on an iPad screen. Also, Lynktec clearly put a lot of time and effort into designing a great stylus. Indeed, the webpage for the Rechargeable Apex stylus lists a number of complaints that customers reported with Lynktec’s non-rechargeable Apex stylus (which is similar to the Cregle Ink) and explains how they have been addressed in the Rechargeable Apex. This is now my favorite stylus for the iPad, and if you are in the market for an active stylus with a fine tip, you’ll definitely want to consider the Rechargeable Apex Fine Point Active Stylus
In early 2013, Delta introduced its Fly Delta App for iPad. The app lets you book trips, get information on destinations, and get flight information during trips. One feature of the app that I had not tried until recently is called the Glass Bottom Jet. While you are in flight, this part of the app gives you a sense of what you are flying over at that very moment. It’s an interesting feature.
To take advantage of the iPad app during a flight, you need to be using an airplane equipped with in-flight Wi-Fi. Once you are over 10,000 feet, you can connect to the Gogo internet service. If you don’t pay for service, you are limited to accessing the Delta website in Safari or using the basic features of the Fly Delta App, but even that can be pretty useful. You can see information on your current flight such as the estimated time of arrival and the gate where you will be landing. (Which if helpful if you want to use the GateGuru app, which doesn’t require internet access, to get information on restaurants and other services close to the gate where you are landing and the gate where your next flight takes off.) The Fly Delta app can also give you an graphical overview of your current flight.
At the very top right of the screen, there is a toggle to turn on the Glass Bottom Jet feature. If you are not paying for the Gogo in-flight Wi-Fi service, then you won’t be able to use the feature, and instead the app offers to show you a video describing the feature.
But if you have paid for Internet access, then the Glass Bottom Jet feature shows you your plane superimposed on a map. On the map you will see pushpins with the Wikipedia W icon and pushpins with a camera icon.
If you tap a camera icon, you will see a preview of a picture taken at that exact longitude and latitude that was uploaded by a user to the Panoramio service. Tap the picture to see it full-screen. So in this way, the app let’s you virtually see what you are flying over right now.
Some pictures are stunning. Others are more mundane. But it is neat to be able to “see” what you are flying over. And you don’t have to worry about the pilot announcing that all of the cool stuff is on the right side of the plane when you are seated on the left side.
If you tap a Wikipedia pushpin, you get a link to the Wikipedia entry describing what you are flying over.
I’m not sure that it is worth paying for Gogo Internet access just to use the Glass Bottom Jet feature. Having said that, if you happen to be paying for the Internet anyway to catch up on your emails during the flight, this is a neat feature to entertain and perhaps even educate you for a few minutes while you are in the air.
Click here to get the Fly Delta App for iPad (free):
I’ve enjoyed reading about the reactions to Apple’s WWDC announcements earlier this week. Sure, there were lots of great individual announcements of new features that I’m going to love in iOS 8. But most of all, I love that Apple has set the stage to open up iOS and let developers do some really neat things with the iPhone and iPad that were never before possible, such as letting apps work within other apps and the sharing of files between apps. I completely agree with Jason Snell of Macworld (and I’m not alone) who said: “The ways Apple is opening up app access to iOS in particular will change the experience for users more than any single OS feature. And it will happen in unexpected ways, because those developers are very, very clever, and tend to think of approaches that nobody — not even the people at Apple who enable them — has anticipated.” We won’t see these advances overnight, but over the next year or two, the usefulness and magic of the iPhone and iPad is going to vastly increase. How awesome is that. And now, the news of note from the past week:
New York attorney Nicole Black notes in an article for The Daily Record that three more state ethics advisory authorities have weighed in on cloud computing.
North Carolina attorney Brian Focht recommends new apps for lawyers on his site, The Cyber Advocate.
Mark Gerlach of Law Technology News discusses the latest update to ABBYY Business Card Reader Pro. I reviewed an earlier version of the app in early 2012
Macworld put together an excellent FAQ on all of the highlights of iOS 8.
One of the cool new features of upcoming iOS 8 is that it makes it easier to find an iPhone or iPad via the Find My iPhone feature. Currently, if you try to use it but the device is turned off because the battery is died, the location service does not work. In iOS 8, you can turn on an option that your device automatically submit it location when the battery drains to a critical level so that when you use the Find My iPhone service, you will see the last known location of the device. AppleInsider provides this explanation of the feature.
Joshua Topolsky of The Verge believes that this year’s WWDC keynote reflects a new, better Apple.
Horace Dediu of Aymco tweets that Apple will cross the 1 billion iOS devices sold mark at some point this year.
Nick Guy of iLounge reviews Just Mobile’s AluCable Flat, a flat USB/Lightning cable that is supposed to resist getting tangled.
And finally, just in case you didn’t think that your iPhone was useful enough, you can now get the IN1 Multi Tool Utility Case for iPhone 5 and 5S, a case which adds to your iPhone (1) blue pen, (2) red pen, (3) Phillips screwdriver, (4) flat screwdriver, (5) kickstand, (6) nail file, (7) tweezers, (8) scissors and (9) toothpick And somewhat surprisingly, the company says that it is TSA complaint. It is available on Amazon for only $44.99. The video has more info:
This has nothing to do with the iPhone, but FYI, today is Friday the 13th and we have a full moon, which 
