Month: August 2014

Last year, Apple announced the iPhone 5S on September 10, during the second week in September.  The year before, Apple announced the iPhone 5 on September 12, again during the second week of September.  John Paczkowski of re/code reports that sources tell him that this year, the iPhone 6 will be announced on September 9.  Paczkowski’s sources are usually pretty good on things like this, but frankly, he could have asked me and even I would have predicted a new iPhone announcement this year during the second week in September.  The big rumor this year is that the iPhone 6 will be larger than all of the prior iPhones.  That wouldn’t surprise me, and we’ll find out for sure around this time next month.  And now, the news of note from the last week:

• Tampa attorney Katie Floyd describes how she went from paying Verizon $10 a month for cellular data on her iPad to free 200MB of data a month using T-Mobile.
• California attorney David Sparks posted a really interesting interview with an airline pilot about the apps he uses on his iPad.
• If there is a desk or other location at your home or office that has an outlet nearby and you want to have lots of USB ports to charge your devices, one solution is to buy a USB charging station.  Oklahoma City attorney Jeffrey Taylor, who publishes The Droid Lawyer, recently reviewed the Inatech 5 Port USB Charging Station, a device that costs only $20 on Amazon which provides two 2.1 Amp ports for iPads and three 1 Amp ports for iPhones and other lower-power devices.
• Today is the last day to tell the ABA Journal which law blogs you think should be included in the 2014 Blawg 100.   Click on this link if you want to tell the ABA Journal editors about your favorite blog, whether it be iPhone J.D. or any other blog.
• If you are in the New Orleans area and you want to earn an hour of CLE over lunch while you learn more about using an iPad, I’m teaching iPad for Lawyers on Friday, August 22 from Noon to 1:00 at a CLE sponsored by the New Orleans Bar Association.  It is free for NOBA members.  Click here for more information and to sign up.  I hope to see you there.
• Documents to Go has long been an excellent app for viewing Word and other Microsoft Office documents on an iPhone or iPad.  Until recently, there were two versions:  a $9.99 standard version and a $16.99 premium version.  Yesterday, DataViz changed the name of its entry app to Documents to Go Free, and as the name implies, the app is now free.  If you just want to view and edit files, the Free version might give you all that you need.  There are three in-app purchases in the new free version to add additional features:  (1) cloud service support, (2) desktop file sync and (3) password protected file support.  Each of those features costs $6.99 to unlock, or you can unlock all three for $16.99 — which essentially turns the free app into the premium app.  On my iPad, I prefer to use the Microsoft Word and other Office apps to work with Office files, but on my iPhone, I still usually read Word documents using Documents to Go.  If you don’t already have a copy of Documents to Go on your iPhone, it is a great app, I recommend that you get it now that it is free.  Click here to get Documents to Go Free (free): 

  

• I noted last week that the Microsoft Word for iPad app now lets you export a Word document as a PDF file when you email the file to someone else.  The app doesn’t give you the option to export to Google Drive, but Alex Campbell of Macworld figured out a workaround; it’s a little complicated, but might be of interest to some of you.
• Alyssa Bereznak of Yahoo Tech provides tips for using Pages, Numbers and Keynote on a Mac, iPad and iPhone.  (Warning: video starts playing when the page loads.)
• GoodReader 4 is my favorite app for managing PDF documents on my iPad, and I also like to use it on my iPhone.  I reviewed GoodReader 4 a few months ago, and this week, Jeff Merron reviews the app for Macworld.
• Apple CEO Tim Cook tweeted this week that last month, Apple had its highest App Store sales ever.
• 9to5Mac notes that Apple is advertising a sale on productivity apps, and you can get great apps like Scanner Pro, Fantasical, Launch Center Pro and PDF Expert for a fraction of their normal prices right now.  Also, the amazing 1Password app is on sale right now.
• There is a guy named Sam Sung who used to work in an Apple Store in Canada.  “Sam Sung” in an Apple Store is sort of funny, and so the guy decided to auction off his badge and other items on eBay to raise money for charity.  As of last night, the bids were over $80,000.  Way to go, Sam!
• And finally, here is an interesting video to advertise Navdy, a $299 device shipping early next year that will provide a heads up display in your car that you control with your voice or hand gestures.  It looks sort of neat, and the video does a good job of showing it off:

The practice of law is certainly a profession that requires one to juggle lots of different tasks, which means that you need a way to keep track of those tasks.  Those are countless ways to do this with an iPhone or an iPad.  You can use the built-in Reminders app.  You can use a complicated and sophisticated app such as OmniFocus, which California attorney David Sparks shows off in these videos.  My wife is a long-timer user of Things, a very powerful app for the iPhone, iPad and Mac.  But for me, I’ve always preferred simple solutions for managing tasks.  I’ve been practicing law for 20 years this month, and for a good number of those years, my task management tools were simply a small legal pad and a pen; I would jot down a to-do item, and then scratch it out when it was done.  But for about a year now, I’ve been using the Ita app to manage my tasks and keep track of other lists, and the system has worked well for me.  (The developers say “Ita is pronounced like ‘Item'” so I presume that the name “Ita” is a play on the idea that your lists have multiple items. [UPDATE 8/8/14: one of the two developers of Ita tweeted that ita is a Latin word that means “thus” and is a possible origin of the word item; UPDATE 8/11/14:  the other developer of Ita then tweeted: “I know Ben said otherwise, but yeah I think of Ita as being the plural of items. —Bob”.])  A few days ago, Ita was updated to version 2.0, which has a new, clean interface that matches the look of iOS 7, so I figured that it is now a good time to talk about this app.

The main screen of Ita shows you all of your lists.  You can quickly create a new list by tapping the plus sign.

As you can see, in addition to creating a list of “Work To Do” items, I also have a list of file numbers for my most common matters.  That way, if I need a file number and can’t remember it, I can easily look it up in Ita.

If you want to change the order of your lists, simply hold your finger down on a list for about a second and then you can drag it up or down.  Tap a list to see the items on the list.  In one of my lists, I jot down the tasks that I need to do in my cases.  Obviously I can’t show you my real list of the tasks I need to do for my clients, so here is a fake one to give you a sense of the types of items that I typically put on a list:

To add a new item, just tap the plus sign at the bottom right.  Then type your items and hit DONE when you are finished.

 

New items appear at the top of the list, but you can easily reorder items just by holding your finger down on an item for a second and then dragging it up or down.  An item turns red while you are dragging it.

To edit an item, just slide it to the left to expose two icons:  edit and delete.  Or, you can tap the edit icon at the bottom, middle of the screen and then tap any item to start editing it.

When an item no longer needs to appear in the list, such as a task that you are finished, you have two choices.  As shown above, you can swipe to the left and then tap the trash can icon, which will delete it completely from the list.  Or, you can tap an item and that moves it the bottom and makes it gray, useful if you want to continue to see items even after you have marked them as done.

If you are using Ita to manage your work tasks, you probably won’t see a need to keep items on a list after you are done with them.  I simply delete a task item after I do it.  But for other kinds of lists, it is useful for the item to still remain visible even after you are done with it.  For example, you can make a list of the 15 items you need to remember to pack whenever you go out of town.  As you pack your suitcase you can tap each item to mark it as done.  Once you are finished, if you tap the icon at the bottom left (the box with an arrow) one of options is “Restore Completed Items” which will reset all of the items so that you are ready to mark them as completed again when you have your next trip.  (Note that to use this particular feature, you need to go into Ita’s settings. accessible by tapping the atom icon at the top left of the main screen, and then turn on “Show Restore Action”.)

I virtually always use this app on my iPhone, but it is a universal app, so it works on your iPad too.  You can use iCloud to sync items between your devices.

The developers of Ita mentioned on the Debug podcast in May of 2013 that they were working on a version of Ita for the Mac, but I don’t believe that has been released yet.

You can use Ita with Launch Center Pro to do some sophisticated automated tasks, such as appending the contents of the clipboard to a list.  You can also email a list, and if you send the list to someone else who uses Ita, they can import the list into their Ita app.  But I suspect that most Ita users don’t do anything fancy like that.  I certainly don’t.  The beauty of Ita is that it is such a simple app.  It lacks the bells and whistles of others task manager apps, such as assigning due dates, providing push notifications, etc., but that’s because Ita isn’t really a task manager app, even though I use it that way.  It’s just a list making app. 

If keeping simple lists is the way that you like to organize your life, then I think you will like Ita as much as I do.  It is simple to use, it has a clean interface, and I can use Ita very quickly to see the items on my lists and easily add or delete items.  If a simple list manager seems like the right fit for your lifestyle, Ita is a great app.

Click here to get Ita ($2.99): 

I’ve reviewed lots of iPad stands that are useful on a desk.  For example, I really like the Stabile PRO that I reviewed a year ago, and I use it on my desk in my office every single day.  And of course, many iPad covers have the ability to also work as a stand, such as Apple’s Smart Cover.  But if you are in bed, or if you are sitting in a big comfy chair or on a couch in your living room, those stands are uneven, unsteady and will fall over.  The tablift from nbryte is new kind of iPad stand that uses four strong but flexible legs so that you can adjust your iPad in just about any position.  The company sent me a free unit to test out, and I’ve been using it at home for the last few weeks.  It has worked really well for me.

The center of the tablift has three grooves, which lets you choose among three different angles for your iPad.  In this picture taken from the side, my iPad is in the middle groove:

The center also has an elastic strap with a clip at the end.  Place the clip around your iPad, and the strap will hold the iPad steady in place — even if you choose an angle that has the iPad leaning forward, the best angle if you are lying down in bed with your head on your pillow.  The elastic band stretches enough that you can use your iPad in landscape or portrait mode.  The groves are generous enough, and the band is flexible enough, that the manufacturer says that you can use the tablift with any model of iPad, full-size or mini, or just about any other tablet from another manufacturer.  Having said that, the tablift is unlikely to work when the iPad is in just about any case.

Coming off of the center of the tablift are four flexible legs, each of which has a soft rubber foot.  Because you can bend the legs into any position, the stand works well on lots of different surfaces.  Each leg extends about 14 inches from the base.

For many folks, the main value of the tablift will be that it gives you a way to lie on your back in bed and look at the iPad screen without having to hold up the iPad with your hand — something that makes your arm hurt after just a few minutes.  For this function, the tablift worked really, really well.  I have to admit that I felt a little silly when I first set up the tablift, positioning the four legs around my body in bed.  It sort of felt like I was positioning a big metal spider around me.  But I got used to it after a few minutes, and then once I started to watch a video on my iPad, I quickly found myself ignoring the legs and just paying attention to the screen.  I recently started watching the AMC show The Walking Dead, and I watched several episodes of Season 2 on my iPad in bed using the tablift.  The experience was great.  (As for the wisdom of watching a show about scary zombies immediately before going to bed, I’ll let you decide if that is right for you.)  Rather than make you look at a picture of myself in bed, here is a picture from the tablift website of a woman enjoying the product:

Note that this model is somewhat propped up in her bed with the iPad in the middle position, but you can put also the iPad in the front position so that it leans down, which works best when your head is on your pillow.

If you are sitting on a sofa, the tablift also provides a nice stand for the iPad.  And the four legs keep your iPad steady even on an uneven, cushy surface like a sofa.  It does make the iPad sit close to your lap, which can be useful depending upon your position on the sofa, and works well for typing. 

I found that I preferred to use the tablift in my living room when sitting in a big, comfy chair with arms.  I could spread out the four legs so that they were supported by the chair’s arms, and that placed the iPad height closer to my face.  It was nice to be able to read email, annotate a deposition, review and highlight documents, etc. from the comfort of that chair without having to worry about my arm getting tired holding up my iPad for a long time.

Although the tablift itself can seem somewhat large — and indeed, being able to stretch out the 14″ legs so far makes the iPad stable and is one of the best parts of the product — fortunately you can fold up the legs to make the tablift only about 6″ tall by 11″ wide by 4″ deep, which makes it small enough to easily slide under or next to your bed or tuck it away in some corner.  You could probably even fit it in a suitcase if you wanted to travel with it; perhaps stuff some socks in the center of the tablift to make the most efficient use of space.

Finally, note that you could use the tablift on a table if you want to do so, although it is large enough that you need a decent amount of space.  I wouldn’t use it regularly on my desk at work, but I found that I was able to place my iPad at the perfect height on a table at home for a FaceTime videochat when the iPad was in the tablift.

If you want to use your iPad while lying down in bed or while sitting in your living room, I don’t know of any stand that works as well as the tablift.  It does a fantastic job holding your iPad in position, it folds up for storage, and it is versatile enough that it can work with many different size iPads (and thus, is also likely to continue to work with future generations of iPads).  You’ll have to decide whether that convenience is worth $60 to you, but the tablift works as advertised, and does so quite well.

Click here to get the tablift from Amazon ($59.95).

UPDATE 8/6/2014:  Apparently, a lot of you bought a tablift from Amazon because Amazon is now out of stock.  But you can always order one directly from the manufacturer by clicking here.

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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.

Microsoft updated its Word, Excel and PowerPoint iPad apps yesterday.  My favorite new feature is that you can now export to PDF directly from the apps; when you email a document, the app asks whether you want to do so in the native file format (such as .docx) or as a PDF file.  The apps also have enhanced features for working with photographs in documents and better support for third party fonts.  If you use Excel for iPad, there are also lots of improvements for working with your spreadhseets.  Click here to read all about the new features in a blog post from the Office team on the Microsoft website.  And if you use Microsoft’s OneNote iPad app, it was also updated this week, as noted in this post on the Microsoft blog.  All of this reminds me of how happy I am that we now have such great Microsoft software for the iPad.  And now, the other news of note from this week:

• New York attorney Neil Squillante, publisher of TechnoLawyer, provides useful iPad tips in this post and associated video:  (1) a cool way to share web articles using the Reader button in Safari, (2) tips on creating contact entries and (3) tips on using an iPad instead of paper.
• South Carolina attorney Jenny Stevens reviews the InkFusion iPhone case on the MacLawyer website, a case that lets you use whatever picture you want on the back of an iPhone.  You can do something similar with the CaseMaker Pro, which I reviewed this past June.
• Attorneys Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell discuss the role that iPads play for lawyers in this episode of the Kennedy-Mighell Report podcast.
• AgileBits, developer of the amazing 1Password app, previewed in this post and video on the company blog how the iOS 8 version of 1Password will (1) work on other iOS apps, so you no longer have to leave an app, go to the 1Password app, copy your password, then go back to the app and (2) use Touch ID so that you can use your fingerprint as your password.  This all looks incredibly useful, and I cannot wait to try it when iOS 8 is released in the upcoming months.
• While Apple is renovating one of its stores in Switzerland, Apple moved the store into the middle of of the mall — the area where a person would typically walk from store to store.  John-Michael Bond of TUAW has some pictures of the interesting temporary store.  It reminds me somewhat of the open air feel of the Apple Store in Grand Central Terminal in New York City.
• Speaking of the Apple Store, Patty Ryan of the Tampa Bay Times explains how a criminal found a way to scam Apple Stores out of over $300,000.  This sounds like a silly scam that you might see in a B-movie, but apparently it worked … for a while at least.
• And finally, Matt Walsh (who you may know from HBO’s Veep) shows how easy it is to make your own iPad in this Conan O’Brien video: