This has been a huge week for the iPhone. iOS 8 came out on Wednesday, and it has so many amazing new features that I feel like it is going to take forever to make my way through all of them. And the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus go on sale today, although to get one today you had to be one of the very first people to place an order a week ago, or you will have to be in line at a store early this morning before the initial stock runs out. (Here is what all of those iPhones looked like being loaded on a plane from China to the U.S.) Apple's pre-order sales set a new record. (iPhone 4 preorders were 600,000; iPhone 4S preorders were 1 million; iPhone 5 preorders were 2 million; there were no iPhone 5s preorders; iPhones 6 preorders were 4 million.) Thus, there was an overwhelming amount of news this week of interest to attorneys who use iPhones and iPads. Here is some of the best:
- Rocket Matter, which provides web-based practice management for law firms, came out with a native iPad app this week, and it looks great. (They also updated their logo.) Sean Doherty of Law Technology News explains how the new app works.
- Tim Cook wrote a letter to Apple users about privacy and posted it on their website, along with additional information on privacy in Apple products. This is partially an attack on Google — pointing out that Apple doesn't try to make money by selling information about its users to third parties — but is also has some interesting details about privacy. Attorneys should definitely read the "Manage Your Privacy" section for important information about keeping information on your iPhone and iPad secure.
- Speaking of privacy, one of my favorite iPhone and iPad apps is 1Password, which allows me to create and store complex passwords. On my Mac and PC, 1Password has always made it easy to enter those passwords in a web browser. With the new features in iOS 8, you can now do the same thing. This blog post from 1Password explains how to enable everything. For example, I was able to access the American Express website on my iPhone, and instead of typing my long and complex password or going to the 1Password app, typing that password, searching for and copying my AmEx password, and then going back to Safari, I can now simply press two buttons in Safari, use Touch ID to read my fingerprint and authenticate that I really am me, and then 1Password gives me my username and password to automatically enter in Safari.
- Apple CEO Tim Cook also made the media rounds. His two-part interview with Charlie Rose is excellent and worth watching if you have the time, and is now on the Charlie Rose website.
- Brad Stone and Adam Satariano interviewed Tim Cook for the cover story on BloombergBusinessweek. The article is great. On the other hand, the font used on the picture on the cover of Businessweek is horrible. Just horrible.
- Zac Hall of 9to5Mac mentions some of the apps already updated to take advantage of iOS 8, including 1Password.
- Photographer Austin Mann does a great job in this post of showing off how much better the cameras are in the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.
- David Pogue of Yahoo Tech has a great post on 13 cool new features in iOS 8 that you might not know about yet.
- Benjamin Mayo of 9to5Mac recommends some cool new keyboards you can try out with iOS 8.
- Zac Hall of 9to5Mac notes that you can now download Apple's official (and free) user guides for iOS 8.
- For all of the Android users that read iPhone J.D. — hello? anyone there? is this thing on? — Apple also posted a guide for moving from an Android phone to an iPhone.
- For an extensive review of virtually everything that is new in iOS 8, you can read this 21,000 word review from Rene Ritchie of iMore.
- John Gruber of Daring Fireball wrote an excellent article analyzing Apple's upcoming Apple Watch.
- Lex Friedman wrote an article for Macworld about why the Apple Watch makes more sense than the other options on the market.
- Andy Ihnatko of the Chicago Sun Times is a little more apprehensive about the Apple Watch. He explains why.
- Rich Mogull wrote a great article for Macworld explaining Apple's new Apple Pay system, where you can just tap an iPhone 6 to pay.
- The tech being used here is a Microsoft Surface Pro, not an iPad, but I still enjoyed reading this article written by Bill Gates about his meeting with former Saints player Steve Gleason, who is suffering from ALS. With such limited motor control, it is amazing what Gleason and others can do with modern technology.
- And finally, it has been over five years since I interviewed Mike Schneider, a Seattle attorney who left the practice of law to write iPhone apps. Schneider recently wrote a custom keyboard for iOS 8 that lets you create a library of text snippets that you might want to use over and over again so that you can access and automatically type them from any keyboard. It is called SnipsKey. It is still being reviewed by Apple as I type this, but here is a video that shows what it can do. I present this not only because SnipsKey looks cool, but also because it is an example of what great new things you can do with iOS 8:
Preview of SnipsKey - Snippet Keyboard for iOS from Michael Schneider on Vimeo.