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: