Month: July 2014

When you are away from the office for an extended time, it is often useful to have a portable battery with you.  And nowadays, when many of us have both an iPhone and an iPad, it is even more useful to have a battery that is designed to work with either one.  Because the iPad has such a large battery, when you carry an external backup battery that works with the iPad, you always need to balance capacity versus the size and weight and cost of that battery.  The Lumsing 10400 mAh Harmonica Style Portable Power Bank strikes the right balance — large and heavy enough to get the job done, but small and sleek enough that you won’t mind carrying it with you.  Lumsing sent me a free unit to review, and I have been testing it for the last week.  I like it a lot.  This looks like a great battery to toss in your briefcase or purse when you are on the go, and it only costs $23.

Design and Features

My main concern with an external battery is simply that it work well, but since you are going to carry this thing around a lot, it is nice to have something that has a pleasing design.  I was very impressed with this device.  As the “Harmonica” in the name implies, this device is shaped like a long rectangular box which is curved on one long end and is tapered on the other. 

The Lumsing Power Bank is about 5.5 inches long, almost 2.5 inches deep, and is about .8 inches high.

The curve on one of the long sides of this device makes it feel good when you hold it in your hand.  A minor feature perhaps, but one that I liked.

The device weighs 8.35 oz.  (An iPhone 5S weighs 4 oz; an iPhone 4S weighs 4.9 oz.)  You probably won’t notice 8.35 oz. in a purse or briefcase, but you’ll definitely notice it if you slip it into the pocket of your pants.

The tapered end contains most of the inputs and controls.  First, there are two ports, one which provides 1 Amp and one that provides 2.1 Amps.  You can use either port with an iPhone, and as noted below, you will get a slightly faster charge with the 2.1 Amp output.  For an iPad Air, you’ll want to use the 2.1 Amp port.

Next there are a series of four blue lights, and then a long silver button.  If you press the button when you are not using the device, it will display 1, 2, 3 or 4 lights depending upon how much charge you have left.  When the device is almost out of power, only one light comes on and it flashes.  When you are charging the Lumsing Power Bank, you will see the lights come on in a sequence.  At first you see the first light, then two lights, then three lights, then four lights.  After 25% of charge the first light stays on and you just see the other three come on and off.  By the end, when all four lights stay on, the device is fully charged.  Finally, when you are charging an iPhone or iPad, the lights stay on to show you how much power is left in the battery.

As noted above, pressing the button when nothing is plugged in shows you the remaining power.  The button also serves to turn to device on, so to charge an iPhone or iPad you plug in a USB cord (such as the one that came with your iPhone or iPad) into one or both of the ports, plug in to your iPhone/iPad, and then press the button to start charging.

On the short side of the device, there is a Micro-USB connector.  The device comes with a Micro-USB to USB cord. 

Connect the cord to either your computer or any USB power supply.  I used the Apple 10W charger that comes with an iPad, and it took almost seven hours to charge the Lumsing Power Bank — longer than I had expected.  This is a device that you will most likely want to charge overnight.

The unit that Lumsing sent me is white, but I see that you can also get it in black or gold.

The unit comes with a carrying pouch.  I didn’t see any reason to use it.

Capacity and Charging

The Lumsing Power Bank has a battery capacity of 10400 mAh.  The iPhone 5S uses a 1560 mAh battery and the iPad Air uses a 8,827 mAh battery.  In theory, then, the Lumsing Power Bank could charge the iPhone 5S over six times and the iPad Air once with some to spare, but in reality you lose some of the charge to heat and other factors. 

In my tests this week, when I used with completely charged Lumsing Power Bank with an iPad Air that had gone down to 3%, I was able to charge it back to 80% before the Lumsing Power Bank ran out of power about four hours later.  It roughly added another 20% to the iPad every hour.

When I tested with an iPhone 5S that was at 3% or less power, the iPhone would be back to around 60% in an hour, and in just over two hours the iPhone was back to 100%.  It takes a little longer to charge at the end, so you see almost 1% of power added every minute, and then going from 98% to 99% to 100% takes longer.  Charging an iPhone with the 2.1 Amp port was slightly faster than using the 1 Amp port; a full charge took two hours with the 2.1 Amp port and about two hours and 10 minutes with the 1 Amp port.  So you get slightly better performance charging an iPhone with the 2.1 Amp port, but it doesn’t make a huge difference.  With a fully charged Lumsing Power Bank, I could charge an iPhone 5S from 3% or less to 100% four times, and then had just a small amount of charge left over.

As noted above, you can also use the Lumsing Power Bank to charge both an iPhone and an iPad at the same time.  When I did so, each device charged slower.  The iPad Air received on average an additional 13% to 15% per hour, in contrast to around 20% when it was plugged in by itself.  The iPhone 5S received anywhere from 20% to 38% of additional charge each hour, as opposed to around 57% when it was plugged in by itself.  And while I could completely charge in iPhone 5S from almost 0% to 100% in just over two hours when it was plugged in by itself, when both the iPhone and iPad were charging at the same time, two hours just brought me up to around 60% on the iPhone.

You can also charge the Power Bank while you are charging an iPhone and/or iPad.  Thus, you could plug in the Power Bank to a wall charger or computer and plug in an iPhone and iPad into the Power Bank to charge them all.  When doing so, the iPhone and iPad seemed to charge at the same rate as when the Power Bank was not plugged in to AC power.  Note, however, that at the outset when the Power Bank was close to empty, it would sometimes stop charging the iPhone and iPad for a short while so that it could charge itself, and then it would start charging the iPhone and iPad again (and I would hear them beep as if they were just plugged in).

Conclusion

There is something to be said for a smaller battery that is light and can be tossed in your pocket, like the Powerocks Super Magicstick that I reviewed a few months ago and which I see is now selling for only $19.50, $10 less than when I reviewed it.  Small external batteries are great for bringing extra life to an iPhone. 

But if you want to be able to charge an iPad, or if you want to be able to charge an iPhone over and over again, you need a larger battery.  I know that there are lots of large external batteries for sale, but after using this one extensively for the last week, I really like the Lumsing Harmonica Style Power Bank.  It is big, but not too big and heavy, and it feels nice in your hand when you carry it.  It has a large enough battery to charge your iPad or your iPhone — or both at the same time.  And best of all, it is a steal for only $23. 

Click here to get the Lumsing Harmonica Style Power Bank from Amazon ($22.99).

Most lawyers that I know give presentations from time to time, whether they be formal opening statements or closing arguments to a jury, teaching a CLE, client presentations or even just running a small meeting.  Considering this, you would think that most lawyers should be pretty good at it.  But I am amazed at the number of presentations I see in which lawyers use PowerPoint slides with almost every word of the presentation typed, typically in a small font to fit all of those words on the slide (so the audience can barely read them anyway), and then the presentation consists of little more than reading those slides.  Last week, California attorney David Sparks released his fifth book in the MacSparky Field Guide series, an ebook called Presentations.  It is a $10 book in the iBookStore that you read on an iPad.  I bought it when it was released last week so that I could write a review for iPhone J.D., and I assumed that the main value of the book would be to teach those PowerPoint-reading speakers how to do a better job with their presentations.  It certainly does that, but to my pleasant surprise, the book is packed with tips that even the most seasoned public speaker would find useful.  I learned so much reading this book, and I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I’m not sure if I would have purchased this book but for my intention of writing this review.  Thank goodness I did; I’ll be using the skills I learned in this book in all of my future presentations.  If you own an iPad or a Mac and you are an attorney or other professional who gives presentations, this book is easily worth $10 and I encourage you to get it.

The book is divided into five chapters but it has two main parts.  First, this is an excellent manual for using Keynote, Apple’s software for creating and presenting slides on either an iPad or a Mac.  (It works on an iPhone too, but that screen is too small for me to recommend using it to create presentations, although I have used my iPhone to make quick edits to a presentation when my iPad wasn’t close by.)  Second, this book gives advice on being a better public speaker.  Both parts of this book are excellent.

Keynote

For me, the best part of the book was the extensive and well-presented guide for using Keynote.  Sparks prefers to create slides on his Mac and that is the focus of this book.  I more often create slides on my iPad, in part because I use a PC in my office and thus can only use the Mac version of Keynote when I am at my house, and in part because I always use my iPad to run my presentations and it just seems more natural to me to create slides using the same hardware that I will use to present the slides to an audience.  But fortunately, almost everything that you can do in Keynote on a Mac you can also do in Keynote on the iPad, and Sparks also includes lots of iPad-specific advice in this book.  Thus, whether you use Keynote on a Mac, an iPad, or both, this book is for you.  And by the way, if you do own both an iPad and a Mac, Keynote makes it easy to go back and forth between the two when you are working on your slides.

Like all of the ebooks that Sparks has created for the iPad, this book is far more than just a book with words that you read.  Almost every time that Sparks tells you how (and why) to do something, he then includes a video that you can tap to watch a screencast.  This lets you listen to Sparks tell you what you need to do while you watch him do the task in Keynote.  It is a great way to learn the features of Keynote.

The Keynote portion of the book starts with the very basics — how to create a file, pick a template, etc. — so that even if you have never before used Keynote, this book will get you up and running.  But before long, the book shows how to do sophisticated things in Keynote such as complex animations, and includes lots of tips that were new to me.  For example, Sparks explains, in words and video, how to quickly make two objects the same size using Keynote on the iPad — a tip that I’ll now be using all of the time.

Of course Keynote lets you insert simple objects like squares, circles, etc. on a slide.  Sparks shows you how to create those, but then goes on to show you how to manipulate those objects to change and skew their characteristics, combine objects, and group them to create sophisticated graphics that not that long ago would require you to hire a graphics professional.  At one point in the book he groups together a bunch of shapes to make a lightsaber that would make Obi-Wan Kenobi proud.  It had never before occurred to me how much you can do with shapes in Keynote.

The book also includes great advice for creating a graphical representation of an object, a scene, etc.  Start with a picture or a PDF file, then place your shapes on top of that to reproduce the image using simple shapes, then remove the image so that you are left with a simple, clean graphic with perfect proportions to represent an item that is important to your presentation, whether it be the product at issue in a products liability trial or the accident scene.  What a great idea.

Here’s another simple tip I learned (on page 175).  When you are editing text in a text field using Keynote on an iPad, you can move the cursor/insertion point by swiping left or right.  That is such a simple and effective replacement for arrow keys on the iPad.  I hope that Microsoft copies this shortcut and adds it to Microsoft Word for iPad.  There are countless tips like this in the book, and even if you are like me and you already know most of them, you will appreciate learning the rest of them.  And if you are a novice Keynote user, you’ll be a pro after you learn everything in this book.

Although this book isn’t written specifically for lawyers, the fact that Sparks is a lawyer and has used Keynote in the courtroom results in his book being full of great advice for lawyers who use Keynote.  For example, he has sections that provide tips for presenting and annotating documents in a presentation, creating timelines, and zooming in on a location on a map — all of which I will be using in the future.

Public Speaking Tips

No matter how good your slides are, to be an effective public speaker you need to do a good job using those slides with your audience.  That is the other main focus of this book. 

Some of what he teaches is strictly utilitarian, such as a useful section on everything that you might want to bring to your a presentation in a toolbox.  As Sparks says, you may never need some of these items, and most of them you can just leave in the trunk of your car, but having them available eliminates any possible hiccups.  When Tampa attorney Katie Floyd, Sparks’s co-host on the Mac Power Users podcast, interviewed Sparks about this book, she suggested that he actually sell a tookbox that contains all of these items; she may have been joking but it actually isn’t a bad idea.  I already own and use most of these items that Sparks recommends, but there are a few more that I plan to pick up after reading this book.  Here is a fun graphic from two pages of the book that shows some of the items mentioned by Sparks; you can tap any plus sign for specific info on what the item is and how it can be used.

But Sparks goes further and offers specific tips on how to give your presentation, everything from what to do before your presentation, what to do with your hands during the presentation, how to handle questions from the audience, the importance of ending on time, etc.  While I happen to agree with Sparks on most of the advice that he offers in this part of the book, some of them are subject to debate.  Even so, reading this part of the book will definitely make you think about your own presentation style and what you can do to be an even better speaker.

Conclusion

While I focused above on the content, one of the best parts of this book is that the content is a joy to read because it is well-written, clear and quite often funny.  (For example, in a section providing lots of useful tips on using graphics in a presentation, I couldn’t help but smile when I read on page 206:  “Using pixelated, sad clip art in your presentation makes perfect sense so long as you live in 1993.”)  It’s also nice that the layout of this book is beautiful.  The book is over 400 pages, but I read it in just a few nights because I enjoyed reading it so much — including one night that I stayed up way too late thanks to Sparks and his interesting videos.

I frequently link to posts by David Sparks in my Friday In the news roundup, I listen to Mac Power Users, I’ve watched presentations given by Sparks at the ABA TECHSHOW conference held in Chicago every Spring, and I’ve read just about every book that he has ever written (and reviewed many of them on iPhone J.D.:  iPad at Work, Paperless, Email).  Suffice it to say that I am no stranger to his body of work.  But even considering all of it, I suspect that most iPad-using lawyers would agree with me that this is the best, most helpful publication that Sparks has ever produced.  If you ever have, or ever will, give a presentation, I strongly encourage you to get this book.  You will appreciate the videos just as much as the words, and you will learn a ton.

Click here to get Presentations ($9.99): 

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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.

Apple recently announced a new partnership with IBM.  IBM, which knows a lot more about the enterprise them Apple, will develop over 100 industry-specific applications for the iPhone and iPad, and IBM’s more than 100,000 consultants and software developers will work with their corporate customers — companies such as Nestle, FedEx, Deutsche Bank, Johnson Controls, Luxottica, American Airlines, Barclay’s, Cisco Systems and GE — to encourage iPhone and iPad use.  IBM will even sell iPhones and iPads directly to IBM’s corporate customers.  As Apple CEO Tim Cook said, today’s Apple and IBM are a good match because “We do not compete on anything. And when you do that you end up with something better than either of you could produce yourself.”  You can get more details in this article by Arik Hasseldahl of re/code.  I remember the days when lawyers wondered whether an iPhone had a place in a law firm environment, back when BlackBerry dominated the market.  If this works as planned, I suspect that Apple will sell a ton more iPhones and iPads to companies.  And more selfishly, I hope that this increased focus on business leads to developments in iOS security, collaboration, etc. that can be used by lawyers in addition to the companies that we represent.  And now, the recent news of note:

• As I think about what kind of wearable device Apple might be working on for introduction later this year and how attorneys might make use of it, I’m interested to find out what attorneys are doing with the Android-based products that are currently on the market.  Alabama attorney Steven Sciple wrote a review for The Droid Lawyer of the LG G Watch and how he uses it in his law practice. 
• Similarly, Florida attorney Rick Georges talks about how he uses his Samsung Gear 2 smartwatch in an interview with Nicole Black for Above the Law.
• John Edwards of Law Technology News explains how to make the most of Wi-Fi on an iPhone or iPad.
• Federico Viticci of MacStories reviews Hours, a good looking app that attorneys and others can use to track billable hours.  Click here to get Hours ($4.99): 

  

• I listen to a lot of podcasts, and I’ve tried just about every podcast app, but until recently had never found one that I really liked and thus just stuck with Apple’s own app.  But Marco Arment recently released Overcast, and it quickly became my favorite app for playing podcasts.  If you listen to podcasts like I do, check out Jason Snell’s review of Overcast for Macworld; I agree with just about every word in his article.  Click here to get Overcast (free): 

  

• I sometimes hear people say that they wish that the iPad had a USB port to make it easier to transfer files from a computer.  Walt Mossberg of re/code reviews an upcoming device called iStick that looks to be the next best thing; a thumb drive that has both a USB and a Lightning connector that you can use to transfer files between a computer and an iPad without having to put the files on the cloud.  Considering the price ($80 to $250) you should look into other options too, like Transporter (a past sponsor of iPhone J.D.), but the iStick is an interesting idea.
• Marco Tabini of Macworld wrote a good article about Touch ID, the fingerprint scanner on the iPhone 5s that I suspect will also be on the iPad later this year.  His article discusses not only what Touch ID is today but also how it will be expanded in iOS 8 in a few months.
• Are you ready for some football?  In the past if you wanted to subscribe to NFL Sunday Ticket, you had to also subscribe to DirecTV.  But this year, you’ll be able to subscribe from any iOS device for $200.  Sam Oliver of AppleInsider has the details.
• Are you ready for some hiking?  Stephanie Mlot of PC Magazine reviews the GoTenna, an upcoming device that allows you to stay connected to other iPhone and Android users up to 50 miles away even when there is no cellular or Wi-Fi service.  You can also use it when traveling abroad to stay in touch with another GoTenna users without paying international cellular roaming fees.
• Do you have a suggestion for Apple?  You could also just send an email to Apple CEO Tim Cook.  As AppleInsider reports, that is what one man did when he had a complaint about the quality of the music played when on hold with Apple, and Tim Cook read the email and fixed it.
• The Joy of Tech has a funny cartoon on an iPhone game that many of us have played before.  There is also a funny take on the recent Apple-IBM collaboration.
• And finally, Jimmy Kimmel created a funny video this week on the new products that Apple might come out with this Fall:

Yesterday, Apple released the results for its 2014 fiscal third quarter (which ran from March 30, 2014 to June 28, 2014) and held a call with analysts to discuss the results.  This is typically not a big fiscal quarter for Apple; the important quarter for Apple every year is the first fiscal quarter containing the holiday sales season, and during the fiscal third quarter, most potential Apple customers wait to see what new products Apple will introduce in the Fall.  Even so, Apple reported record results for a third fiscal quarter:  revenue of $37.4 billion and net profits of $7.7 billion.  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 (Apple’s CEO Tim Cook and Apple’s new CFO Luca Maestri) that are of interest to iPhone and iPad users.  Here are the items that stood out to me as of interest to iPhone and iPad owners:

iPhone

• Apple sold 35.2 million iPhones.  That’s up from the 2013 fiscal third quarter, when Apple sold 31.2 million iPhones.  By my count, as of June 28, 2014, Apple had sold over 551 million iPhones. 
• Now that the iPhone is on China Mobile (the largest mobile phone company in the world), iPhone sales in China jumped 48% in the past quarter.  Cook stated:  “China, honestly, was surprising to us that it was — we thought it would be strong, but it well went past what we thought.”
• Maestri noted that at NASA, there are 26,000 iPhones in use, which raises an obvious question:  why isn’t there a website dedicated to astronauts who use iPhones?

iPad

• Apple sold 13.3 million iPads.  That’s down from the 2013 fiscal third quarter, when Apple sold 14.6 million iPads.  By my count, as of June 28, 2014, Apple had sold over 224 million iPads. 
• Cook noted that according to a survey by ChangeWave, there is a 98% satisfaction rate for the iPad Air, and an astonishing 100% satisfaction rate for the iPad mini. 
• Cook said that he expects to sell lots of additional iPads in the future; stating that in “a little over four years, we have now sold 225 million iPads, which is, I think, probably a larger number than anyone would have predicted at the time, including ourselves, quite frankly.  We still feel that category as a whole is in its early days, and that there is also significant innovation that can be brought to the iPad, and we plan on doing that.  When I look at the top level numbers, I get really excited when I see that more than 50% of the iPads that we’re selling are going to someone who is a first time tablet buyer.  I get excited when I see that our retail share according to the NPD in the month of June was 59% of units and over 70% in terms of dollars.  And of course, Luca has mentioned in his preamble that our education share is 85%.”
• Cook noted that while 60% of business employees use a laptop, only 20% use a tablet, so Apple sees room for growth in the enterprise market.  This is why Apple announced a new partnership with IBM last week, pursuant to which IBM will develop 100 mobile apps for businesses to use and IBM will sell iPads to companies.  Cook said:  “We’re very bullish about the future of the tablet market, and we’re confident that we can continue to bring significant innovation to this category through hardware, software and services.  We think our partnership with IBM, providing a new generation of mobile enterprise applications, designed with iPad’s legendary ease of use and backed by IBM’s cloud services and data analytics, will be one such catalyst for future iPad growth.”  As Cook reiterated later in the call, “mobile and enterprise is just an enormous opportunity. … We win if we can drive that penetration number I spoke about from 20[%] to 60[%].  That would be incredibly exciting here.  The walls would shake.  And so that’s what I hope for.”

iTunes Store / App Store

• I remember that back in the iPod days, the iTunes Store would break-even, which was okay with Apple because Apple used the iTunes Store as a way to promote iPod sales.  But the iTunes Store has started to make Apple lots of money, and Cook announced that for the first nine months of Apple’s fiscal year 2014, iTunes software and services were the fastest growing part of Apple’s business.  In the 2014 fiscal third quarter, iTunes saw $4.5 billion in revenue, a 12% increase from the 2013 fiscal third quarter.
• Apple also announced that there have been a total of 75 billion App Store downloads to date, and Apple has to date paid $20 billion to app developers.  In the January 27, 2014 call with analysts to discuss the 2014 fiscal first quarter, Peter Oppenheimer (who was then Apple’s CFO) said that there had been over 65 billion downloads and $15 billion paid to developers, so in the last six months there have been an additional 10 billion apps downloaded and another $5 billion paid to developers.  Apple keeps 30% of app revenues, so if developers got $5 billion in the last six months, that means that Apple received over $2 billion from App Store sales in the last six months.

iWatch?

• The big question on everyone’s minds seems to be what new product will be announced by Apple in the next three months.  The leading rumor seems to be some sort of wearable technology, perhaps called an “iWatch”.  Of couse, Apple isn’t spilling the beans yet, but Maestri did note, when discussing Apple’s next fiscal quarter, that “obviously in Q4, we got some transition costs because we’re expecting a very busy Fall.”  I look forward to it!

If part of your job as an attorney is to review depositions, TranscriptPad is one of the best apps you can have on your iPad.  It makes it easy to read depositions and, while you do so, identify the important parts of the deposition testimony that relate to all of the key issues in your case.  The app also makes it easy to create reports of the key portions of a specific deposition or all depositions in the case organized by topic.  For example, with just a few taps, TranscriptPad can give you a report of all of the testimony from all of the witnesses in a case that you indicated as being important to a defendant’s affirmative defense, useful when you want to draft a motion for summary judgment on that affirmative defense.  The app also makes it easy to carry around all of the transcripts from all of your cases on your iPad so you can access the testimony anytime that you want.  I reviewed the 1.0 version of the app back in January of 2012, and I also reviewed a significant update to the app in July of 2013. 

TranscriptPad currently costs $89.99, and is easily worth it because it allows you to be so much more productive with your deposition transcripts.  But I know that $90 is more expensive than most of the other apps that attorneys use, so on the rare instances when TranscriptPad goes on sale, I try to spread the word.  Ian O’Flaherty, the developer of TranscriptPad, tells me that today and tomorrow (July 16-17, 2014), the app is on sale for only $49.99.  That’s how much the app cost when it was first introduced at version 1.0 in January of 2012, back when it lacked many of the powerful features that have been added since then.

O’Flaherty also tells me that TranscriptPad will soon be updated to version 1.8, which will add a bunch of new features and will be a free update to all users.  Some of those new features include:

• Brand new look and feel, updated to match the aesthetic of iOS 7.
• When the left column displays issues codes with page/line numbers, the page/line numbers currently being displayed on the right will be shaded on the left to make it easier to tell what you are looking at and understand where you are among all of the testimony that you coded.
• You can tap the Page X/Y indicator at the top right to bring up a new “Jump to Page” option.
• Improvements to the way that the app uses flags and blue dots to indicate when you have notes associated with testimony.

Here is a screen shot that O’Flaherty allowed me to share with iPhone J.D. readers to show off some of these new features:

If you are a litigator who reads and annotates deposition transcripts and you don’t yet use TranscriptPad, I encourage you to take advantage of the sale and download this useful app.  I use the app all the time, and it is one of the most helpful apps on my iPad.

Click here to get TranscriptPad (normally $89.99, but currently $49.99): 

There is a KickStarter campaign seeking to raise $100,000 to produce a documentary called App: The Human Story that will discuss the impact of the availability of apps for mobile devices.  It’s an interesting idea, and caused me to think about the impact that Apple’s App Store — which turned six years old yesterday — has had on installing software.  Software for computers has, of course, been around for years, but most folks rarely saw the need to buy much additional software; they would buy Microsoft Office and the other basics, and then were pretty much done.  But now with the iPhone/iPad and the App Store, I see people downloading new apps all of the time, making their devices so much more powerful as they add functionality (and so much more fun as they add games).  I suspect that most iPhone J.D. readers have rarely purchased computer software but download iPhone and iPad apps all of the time.  And now, the recent news of note:

• St. Louis attorney Todd Hendrickson describes his successful use of the TrialPad iPad app during a two-week trial in a post on Lawyerist.
• You can download a free TrialPad 4 Quick Start Guide through the iBookstore by clicking here.
• Ben Stevens of The Mac Lawyer notes that the Scanner Pro app, normally $6.99, is on sale for $2.99.  Ben names it his “go to” scanner app.  I reviewed in in 2012, and it is still my favorite scanner app.
• Boston attorney Martha Sperry describes the options for reviewing transcripts on an iPad on the Solo Practice University blog.  I use, and really like, the TranscriptPad app.
• John Edwards of Law Technology News provides tips for handling notifications on the iPhone.
• Raw Ward, an appellate lawyer in the New Orleans office of my law firm (Adams and Reese), notes that the U.S. Fifth Circuit has a new website that uses dynamic design to work well on mobile devices.
• Every year in December, the ABA Journal publishes its list of the top 100 law blogs (blawgs).  The ABA is starting to decide which 100 blawgs to include in this year’s list and is asking for your help in the form of “Amici” submissions.  Click on this link if you want to tell the ABA Journal editors about one or more websites aimed at legal professionals that you enjoy, whether it be iPhone J.D. or any other blog.  The deadline for submissions is August 8, 2014.
• Looking for an external Bluetooth speaker for your iPhone?  David Pierce of The Verge looked at the market and concluded that the Logitech Ultimate Ears BOOM was the best.  You can get it on Amazon for $179.99.
• Dave Johnson of Macworld looks surveys the hardware options for adding an external lens to your iPhone.
• Transporter is a past sponsor of iPhone J.D., and I talked about the product in this post.  I use the product virtually every single day as a way to share secure files between my computers, iPhone and iPad without having to worry about the security implications of cloud services like Dropbox.  I mention it now because I see that if you buy a Transporter today from the manufacturer and use the code 500FREE when you checkout, you can get a 1TB Transporter for the 500GB price, a $50 savings.
• I’ve never before noticed that the Trapper Keepers and the Apple II computers that I used when I was younger used the same font, but look at that.
• For those keeping track at home, this is the 250th edition of In the news.  Time flies.
• And finally, Apple loves to put together nice videos, and they recently posted a good two minute video showing the thousands of Apple employees and their families who marched in the San Francisco Pride Parade on June 29, 2014.  The cards you see folks handing out were $1 iTunes cards.  The video is below, or you can click here.  The song is A Sky Full Of Stars by Coldplay (click here to buy on iTunes).

Last week, Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson announced in a press release that he was directing TSA to “implement enhanced security measures in the coming days at certain overseas airports with direct flights to the United States.”  This past Sunday, the TSA announced that one of the ways that it will do so is that TSA officers at overseas airports will require owners of mobile devices, including cellphones, to show the TSA officer that the device is powered up before being cleared through security on a flight to the U.S.  According to the TSA’s press release:  “Powerless devices will not be permitted onboard the aircraft.”

When you are traveling, there is a good chance that you will be using your iPhone and iPad extensively.  I know from my own experience and from what I have seen of others at airports that there is nothing unusual about using an iPhone or iPad all day long and then by the time you get to the airport, you are out of power.  This often results in folks scrambling to find an outlet where they can try to recharge at the airport.  But most folks wait to do that until after they pass through TSA security, when they are at the gate waiting for a flight to leave.  That approach is not going to work with this new TSA requirement.

The TSA has not announced the specific airports where it will implement this new requirement.  Ben Lovejoy at 9to5Mac says that the requirement has been implemented at London’s Heathrow airport.  NBC News reports that smartphones will be subject to “extra security checks on U.S.-bound direct flights from Europe, the Middle East and Africa.”

I’m curious whether this new requirement will actually result in better security.  As John Gruber of Daring Fireball points out, couldn’t a terrorist simply pack explosives into a laptop or other device that can still turn on the display?

Regardless, if you are traveling internationally, make sure that you save at least some charge on your iPhone and iPad (and laptop) for when you get to the airport.  This is yet another argument for carrying an external battery when you travel so that you can charge your devices.  I like the small and portable Powerocks Super Magicstick but there are tons of similar batteries on the market.  Also, a travel-sized device like the Monster Outlets to Go Power Strip might also be useful if you need to share an outlet with someone else.

I hope that the TSA doesn’t implement this requirement on domestic flights in the U.S.; I seriously doubt that it would stop a terrorist, but it would surely cause chaos for a lot of travelers.

This month is going to be a relatively quiet time when it comes to iPhone and iPad news of interest to attorneys.  Apple previewed iOS 8 last month, but it won’t be out until the Fall.  Developers are using beta versions of iOS 8 to prepare new versions of their apps, but that means that those busy developers are not currently releasing many new apps or interesting updates to existing apps.  I expect that it will also be September or October before we see new versions of the iPhone and iPad.  Perhaps at that time we will also see an “iWatch” or whatever new wearable device Apple has been working on in its labs.  And of course, it is the Summer, so lots of folks are taking vacations, which also results in less news.  Later this year, there is going to be a lot to talk about, but right now, not so much.

Since we are not currently seeing much that is new, I find myself thinking about the past.  I bought my first iPhone in July of 2008.  That is also the month in which Apple first launched the App Store; it opened on July 10, 2008 with 552 apps.  By the end of 2008, the App Store had almost 15,000 apps.  (Today, there are over 1.2 million apps on the App Store.) 

Over the years, both the quality and quantity of apps have increased substantially.  Even so, there are a few apps that I first downloaded in 2008 that I still use today.  These are the apps that have stood the test of time, apps that I still recommend to attorneys who use an iPhone:

The New York Times.  The leading newspaper in the country was also one of the first on the iPhone.  The app itself is free and lets you view 10 articles a month; you need to pay for a subscription to the Times to read more than that.  I have the Sunday Times delivered to my house because my wife likes to browse the paper edition.  I rarely touch the paper edition of the Times (except sometimes to get the crossword), but I still enjoy using my iPad, and sometimes my iPhone, to browse and read stories using the New York Times app. 

• Click here to get the New York Times (free): 

  

Shazam.  What the app does is simple:  start the app while a song is playing, tap a button, and in a few seconds Shazam tells you the artist and the name of the song.  It is incredibly useful, and I still use it today as much as I did in 2008.  But what I really remember about using Shazam in 2008 is that it was an early example of an app that made me think that my iPhone was truly magical.  For decades, I had heard songs on the radio or on TV or someplace else and wondered what was playing — sometimes when I was discovering new music, and other times when I was trying to remember an artist that was on the tip of my tongue.  With the Shazam app on my iPhone, I suddenly had the ability to know virtually every song that was playing at any time.  Even today, after using this app for eight years, I’m still amazed that it works.  There are reports that Shazam will be integrated into iOS 8 and therefore will be even easier to use this Fall, but for now, the free Shazam app still works quite well:

• Click here to get Shazam (free): 

  

The Weather Channel / WeatherBug / AccuWeather.  It is always useful to know the current weather and forecast, either in my current city or someplace else, such as a city that I am about to visit to take a deposition.  The iPhone has always had a built-in weather app, but you could always get a lot more information with third party apps.  The Weather Channel, WeatherBug and AccuWeather apps were the first three weather apps that I downloaded in 2008.  While there are now others that I also love to use, these three continue to maintain a spot in the first page of my iPhone’s folder of weather apps.

• Click here to get The Weather Channel (free): 

  

• Click here to get WeatherBug (free): 

  

• Click here to get AccuWeather (free): 

  

Amazon.  You can buy just about anything on Amazon, and with the Amazon app on an iPhone, you can carry around in your pocket access to that store that sells just about anything.  I don’t remember when Amazon added this feature, but what I like most about the app today is the ability to scan a barcode on an item and instantly see the item on Amazon, making it easy to reorder items or compare prices.

• Click here to get Amazon (free): 

  

Wurdle.  There are tons of games available for the iPhone.  I’m not a huge gamer, but there has always been that one game on my iPhone that I would play when I had some downtime, such as while waiting for an airplane or while looking for something to do before I go to bed.  The current iPhone game that fills that need is Candy Crush Saga; I came to that game much later than most others, but I quickly learned how addictive the game can be, and I’m currently at around level 200.  But the first iPhone app that I purchased that really stuck to me was Wurdle.  It’s an updated version of the Boggle game that I played as a kid (which I see now looks like this, different from the version I remember), and Wurdle a great word game.  I may not play it today as much as I did in 2008, but I still turn to it from time to time and it is still fun to play.  In fact, now that I’m thinking about it again, I know what I’m going to do when this post is finished.

• Click here to get Wurdle ($1.99): 

  

Twitterific.  I joined Twitter in October of 2007, but it wasn’t until I got my first iPhone, an iPhone 3G, on July 22, 2008 that I really started to use Twitter.

Hello world. This is Jeff’s new iPhone tweeting.

— Jeff Richardson (@jeffrichardson) July 23, 2008

You can use Twitter on a computer, and sometimes I do that, but Twitter has always been a service that I use primarily on my iPhone and iPad.  The first Twitter client that I used and really liked was Twitterific.  A few years back, I switched over to Tweetbot, and I don’t use Twitterific very often today, but Twitterific was the app that really started it all for me.  The app itself is free, and for a few bucks you can pay to turn off ads, turn on push notifications, etc.

• Click here to get Twitterific (free): 

  

DataCase.  As I look back at my favorite iPhone apps from 2008, there are two that stand out in the category of gone-but-not-forgotten, the first of which is DataCase.  DataCase was the first app that I used extensively to store documents on my iPhone, such as pleadings from my cases, PDF files related to travel, etc.  DataCase was also one of the first apps that I ever reviewed on iPhone J.D. (back on November 20, 2008).  The app is long-gone from the App Store, and today I use other apps such as Dropbox, Transporter, GoodReader, and others to accomplish the same task, and those apps have far more features than DataCase ever did.  Nevertheless, it has always been useful to carry around documents on my iPhone, and that started, for me, with the DataCase app.

Law apps from Cliff Maier.  Carrying around pleadings on an iPhone is great, but having quick access to the law on an iPhone is always useful and can sometimes even help you to win a case.  Some of the first law-related apps that I used on my iPhone were apps that contained the text of rules and statutes, such as the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Federal Rules of Evidence, etc., created by Cliff Maier, an IP attorney in the Palo Alto, CA office of Mayer Brown.  I even posted an interview with Maier in December of 2008.  Maier doesn’t sell apps anymore, but I touched base with him again this past weekend and he tells me that he still creates apps just for his own personal use.  He also tells me that he considers the Microsoft Office app for iPad the “best thing to happen to lawyers” on iOS.  Hard to argue with that.

While all eyes are on this Fall when Apple will release iOS 8, Apple hasn’t completely forgotten about iOS 7.  Apple released iOS 7.1 this past March, released iOS 7.1.1 this past April, and yesterday releases iOS 7.1.2.  The update fixes a few bugs, but perhaps more importantly, patches a security flaw that was discovered soon after iOS 7.1.1 was released.  Apparently with iOS 7.1.1 installed, while emails on an iPhone (and iPad) were protected with encryption, attachments to emails were not encrypted.  It was difficult for any hacker to exploit the bug because — unless you were using a jailbroken iPhone 4 — the hacker would have to have physical access to your iPhone and would have to figure out your passcode or otherwise find a way to jailbreak the iPhone, as noted by AppleInsider in early May.  My sincere hope is that all attorneys using iPhones have a passcode and are not using a jailbroken device.  But even though this hack was difficult to execute in practice, and I haven’t seen any published reports of it being exploited, it was still a security flaw that should have been fixed.  I’m glad that Apple fixed it in iOS 7 rather than wait until iOS 8 to get it fixed.

While that was the most prominent security flaw addressed in iOS 7.1.2, Bryan Chaffin of The Mac Observer reports that, according to Apple’s security release notes, 35 security bugs were fixed, such as a security flaw by which a hacker could use Siri to access contacts on an iPhone without a password.

iOS 7.1.2 addresses a few other minor bugs too, such as improving support for iBeacon, a service rarely used today but which may be used more in the future that uses low-power Bluetooth 4.0 to provide your iPhone with alerts and other information based on its location.  But the real reason to update is to fix the security issues just in case a bad guy ever gets access to your iPhone, which hopefully will never happen.  As Justice Roberts reminded us last week in Riley v. California, an iPhone can contain a lot of private information.

I suspect that all iPhone J.D. readers have installed a software update on their iPhone (and iPad) by now because it is easy to do.  You can wait for your iPhone to alert you that an update is available, or you can update now by opening up the Settings app, selecting General, and then selecting Software Update.  Then simply follow the instructions to download the update and install it.  It takes several minutes to install the update, then your iPhone will reset, and then you are done.

Please be aware that before performing any update on an iPhone or iPad, I strongly recommend that you backup your device.  The easy way to do it is to connect to a computer running iTunes, but I know that many people instead backup to iCloud.  Either way, you want to make sure that you have a way to restore the data to your device if something goes wrong during the update.

For iOS 7.1.2, this advice is especially warranted.  While the update has apparently gone smoothly for most people, be warned that I’ve seen some reports of people having trouble with the update, and I can confirm the problem.  While the update worked fine on my iPhone 5s and my iPad Air, when I tried to install the update on my (first generation) iPad mini, my device froze in the middle of the update and I had to do a hard reset on the device (hold down the power button at the top and the home button for about 10 seconds).  Depending upon when the problem occurred, you may not have to do anything more, but with my iPad mini I was forced to connect to a computer running iTunes and do a factory restart.  It was then easy enough to restore all of the data from a backup, but again, you have to have that backup in the first place.  So make sure that you have a backup before you install iOS 7.1.2, and you might even consider waiting a few days to see if Apple does something to address this rare problem with applying the update to some devices.

iOS 7.1.2 was not Apple’s only security update yesterday.  Apple has also started to add two-factor authentication to iCloud.com, as reported by Chuong Nhuyen of iMore.  I recommend that everyone have two-factor authentication enabled on your Apple ID.  (Click here to learn how.)  That way, even if someone learns your password and tries to download apps, music, etc. — or more importantly, access your Pages, Numbers and Keynote documents — using your password on a device that is not yours, they will not be able to do so.  Once two-factor authentication is turned on for your account, activating a new device requires having access to your iPhone so that you can see the security code sent to it.  In other words, a hacker would need both your password and physical access to your iPhone to use your account on a device that you do not own.  This makes good sense.