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.