We are now very close to September 9, 2014, when Apple will introduce new products. For sure, we will see the 2014 model of the iPhone, which I presume will be called the iPhone 6. We might also see the wearable device that Apple has been working on for so long (the iWatch?), and possibly even a new iPad, although in past years Apple has waited until October for iPad announcements. Brian Chen of the New York Times wrote a good article explaining what his sources told him will be announced next week. But whatever it is that is being announced, all signs are that this will be a BIG announcement for Apple. First, Apple sent out invitations to the press a week earlier than normal. Second, as I noted last week, Apple booked a venue for the event that holds over three times as many people as the venue that Apple traditionally uses for iPhone announcements, and as if that is not enough, Apple is constructing a huge building next to the theater, presumably for product demonstrations. (AppleInsider sent a drone over it to get aerial footage.) Third, Apple is providing a live stream to the event, and unlike past years when the live stream was confirmed shortly before the event, this year they confirmed the live stream the week before the event. There is even a page on Apple’s website with a countdown timer to the event. So tell Siri to clear your calendar at 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern on Tuesday, September 9. I am very excited. And now, the news of note from the past week:
- New York attorney Nicole Black has posted on Above the Law the second part of her article based on her interview of U.S. Second Circuit Judge Richard Wesley on how he uses an iPad.
- New York attorney Lisa Solomon provides her thoughts on the first part of Nicole Black’s article on judges using iPads.
- The Lawyerist has posted a Dropbox for Lawyers and Law Firms user guide. It is a useful article, but there is one part of it that gives me pause. The article opines that “Dropbox is perfectly safe for most lawyers to use for client files.” I know many smart lawyers who I respect who agree with that statement, but as the article itself notes, other lawyers disagree because Dropbox is a third party and has not signed a confidentiality agreement with its attorney users. Don’t get me wrong, I love Dropbox and I use it extensively, but for me it stores public items such as pleadings. For confidential documents that I want to share between my computers and my iPhone and iPad, I use a Transporter (a past sponsor of iPhone J.D.).
- Speaking of the security of online files, one of the big items in the news this past week was celebrities who use an iPhone that was backed up to iCloud who had some of their pictures stolen by criminals who seem to have somehow gotten access to their passwords, and then got access to their iCloud backups. It is still unclear how the criminals did so, although Andy Greenberg offers some theories in an article for Wired, as does security expert Rich Mogull in an article for TidBITS, and I also liked this article by Ben Lovejoy for 9to5Mac.
- One knee-jerk reaction is to say that people should not backup to iCloud, but as John Gruber notes, the alternative is (for most people) even worse — losing irreplaceable photographs if an iPhone dies or is lost and there is no backup. Of course, you can also backup to iTunes on a computer, but it seems that most folks don’t do that, and for them, an online backup is better than no backup at all if a device can no longer be used.
- Hopefully the publicity surrounding this incident will result in better security options for all of us. Whether a thief breaks into your home or accesses your online data, it is still a criminal invasion of privacy that makes us all feel vulnerable. Daisuke Wakabayashi of the Wall Street Journal interviewed Apple CEO Tim Cook on the subject. Cook told the Journal that “celebrities’ iCloud accounts were compromised when hackers correctly answered security questions to obtain their passwords or when they were victimized by a phishing scam to obtain user IDs and passwords.” Cook noted that “none of the Apple IDs and passwords leaked from the company’s servers” but said that Apple is taking steps to make it harder for this to happen in the future, such as sending email and push notifications when someone tries to restore iCloud data to a new device.
- Cook is also encouraging everyone to use two-factor authentication, which I also strongly recommend. This eliminates the possibility of someone getting your password by answering security questions, and also can make it harder for a criminal to access your account even if the criminal does know your password. I explained two-factor (or two-step) authentication and how to use it in this post from early 2013.
- After all of that serious talk about security, I think we can all use something on the light side. Thanks to a tweet by Ohio attorney Chad Burton, I saw a funny-yet-true article for Gizmodo called 11 Reasons Email is the Worst by Tim Urban. The pictures are great.
- Just in time for the announcement on September 9, the funny Apple fake news site Scoopertino “reports” that Apple CEO Tim Cook has had Steve Jobs’ shadow surgically removed.
- And finally, Jimmy Kimmel had a funny sketch last week showing off the (ahem) new iPad: