Month: February 2015

In late January, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced that the Apple Watch would start shipping in April.  This week, Apple announced that it will have a special event on Monday, March 9 called “Spring Forward.”  Apple isn’t saying what the event will be about, only that it will be at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco (a venue that Apple has frequently used to announce new iPhones and iPads) at 10am Pacific, but I have no doubt that the focus will be on the Apple Watch.  You’ll be able to watch a live stream, and I’m sure that I’ll have a few words to say about the event in my March 10 post.  And now, the news of note from the past week:

• Jason Cipriani of Macworld offers a few tips for using Microsoft Word on the iPad.
• Derek Walter of PC World offers a few tips for using Microsoft OneNote on the iPad.
• Jason Snell of SuperSite for Windows also discusses using OneNote for iPad.
• Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal offers advice for using an unlocked phone without a carrier contract.
• John Martellaro of The Mac Observer reviews — and really likes — the BrydgeAir Keyboard for the iPad Air and iPad Air 2.
• Craig Grannell of Wearable shows off some of the upcoming third party apps for the Apple Watch.
• If you have been using WordPerfect on an iPad as a part of the WordPerfect X7 iPad Companion app, that app was just a beta app, you should have received an email from Corel announcing that the app will stop working today.  The app is no longer available on the App Store, and its future is uncertain.  If you still need to view a WordPerfect file on an iPad, I recommend that you use WordPerfect Viewer for iPad by LawBox.
• There continues to be talk about Apple working on an electric car, and I very much enjoyed this analysis by Jason Snell of Six Colors on the Apple Car.  Snell raises a point near the end that I have been thinking about too — when Apple first started to research what would become iOS devices, the first goal was not to create an iPhone, but instead to create an iPad.  After the initial work, Apple discovered that the technology wasn’t there yet for a large touchscreen tablet, but realized that some of that same R&D could be applied to creating a phone, and thus the iPhone debuted in 2007.  (The iPad was not introduced until 2010.)  If Apple is researching a car, it could result in lots of different things:  maybe a car, maybe just new ways of working with cars manufactured by others, or maybe something else altogether.  It will be interesting to see where this research leads.
• After I discussed the fantastic 1Password app earlier this month, some folks asked me how 1Password compares to LastPass.  Glenn Fleishman reviewed the Mac version of LastPass (and the service in general) for Macworld and concluded that it isn’t as good as 1Password.
• Jason Cipriani of Macworld discusses apps that you can use to replace a fax machine.
• And finally, Apple ran a good ad during the Oscars this past Sunday, showcasing some students using iPads to create movies.  If you missed it, here it is again.  And according to Lance Ulanoff of Mashable, even this commercial was filmed using an iPad, which is pretty amazing considering the quality.

Thank you to Connected Data, maker of the Transporter, for sponsoring iPhone J.D.  The Transporter is a hard drive that stores your files and securely shares them with all of your computers and iOS devices so that you can access your files from anywhere.  But unlike Dropbox or other cloud-based services, your data is stored on a hard drive that you own, and which you keep at your office or home, so you maintain full custody of your data.  Thus, you don’t need to worry about your documents being on the cloud and in the possession of a third party that hasn’t signed a confidentiality agreement with you.  Also, there are no subscription fees.  Just buy the hardware once.

I wrote extensively about how I use my Transporter in August of 2014, and I menioned that I use it virtually every day.  That’s been true ever since I first started to use a Transporter in early 2013, when the company sent me a free unit to try out in connection with its first sponsorship of iPhone J.D., and it remains true today.  But that same Transporter is even more valuable today than it was in 2013 because Connected Data frequently updates the Transporter to add new features.

For example, a new feature added just this month is a second option for sharing files.  Before the update, you could right-click on a file on your computer to create a link to a file, and then you could email that link to someone else so that they can download the file.  When they do so, they are downloading the file directly from your Transporter, and they need to first install a browser plug-in on their computer to communicate with your Transporter.  This file transfer method is great for privacy because your file remains on your Transporter, but it does require some extra work by the file recipient to install the plug-in.  The new feature is that you can now choose whether you want to create a Direct Link or a new Standard Link.  When a recipient of a Standard link clicks the link, your file is sent from your Transporter to the Connected Data website, and then the recipient downloads the file from the Connected Data website without having to install any plug-ins.  You lose the inherent privacy of a Transporter for that one specific file because a copy of your file exists on the Connected Data server, but it is faster and easier for the recipient, and is a perfect option if you are transferring one or more files that are stored on your Transporter and are not confidential, such as a large file that you are sharing with opposing counsel.  Learn more about this new option here.

To get more information on Transporter, click here to access the Legal Solutions page of the Transporter website.

Apple is always trying to make its different products work well together.  Indeed, one of the marquee features of iOS 8 is continuity, which lets you, for example, answer a call placed to your iPhone from your computer or iPad, and lets you handoff an email or a website from one device to another.  But some folks might not want their Apple products cooperating quite so much.  While I bring my iPad back and forth to work every day, so it is always with me, I know many attorneys who often leave their iPads at home.  And even if your iPad is always with you, you may not be the sole user — for example, you may let your kids use it on the weekends to play a game.

While talking to another lawyer last week, who will remain anonymous, I was reminded that the cooperation between your Apple devices might be a bad thing if you are not the only one using your devices.  This lawyer often leaves his iPad at home, and his kids sometimes use it after school.  But his iPad is also signed in to his Messages account, which means that if someone sends him a text message while he is at work, that message appears on not only his iPhone, but also his iPad.  (And it can be responded to from either device.)  As a result, he learned that text messages sent to him that were intended only for his eyes were also showing up on his iPad at home, while it was being used by his son.  Whoops.

If you want to limit your text messages to your iPhone because others have access to your iPad, there are a few ways to do so.

In the Settings app on your iPad, if you select Messages on the left, you will see several options on the right.  The first one is an on/off switch.  If you turn that off, new texts will not appear on your iPad.  When you want to start seeing texts again, just turn the switch on.

That’s a quick solution, but it requires you to remember to turn the switch on and off again.  Also, if anyone using your iPad happened to flip the switch, they could start seeing your texts too.

Another solution is to sign out of your iMessages account.  To do so, once again open the Settings app and go to Messages, but this time tap the Send & Receive option.  On the next screen, your Apple ID is shown at the top — tap it.  This brings up a window that gives you four options, the last option of which is Sign Out.  Once you select this, your iPad will stop receiving messages, and the only way that anyone can get them to start showing up again is to log back in using your Apple ID username and password — and when they do so, you will get alerts on your other devices, such as your iPhone, that your iPad is now using your account to get messages.

Note, however, that anyone with access to your iPad can still open your Messages app and read your old texts, even if you have stopped new texts from coming in.  If you don’t want that to happen, go to the Messages app, tap Edit at the top left, and then select each of your prior conversations and then tap delete at the bottom.  In my tests, this only deleted conversations on the iPad and did not also delete the conversations on my iPhone.

Of course, if you are going to this extreme to protect the confidentiality of your texts, remember that anyone using your iPad can also access other sensitive information.  If you are logged in to email on your iPad, they can read your emails.  If you have privileged and confidential documents in your GoodReader or your Word apps, they can read that.

For years, I have heard people say that they want a way to have multiple users on an iPad, much as you can do on a Mac or PC, so that multiple people can log in and log out on the same iPad without seeing the documents and information that belongs to someone else.  Apple has never implemented this feature, and I’m not sure that they ever will.

Perhaps the only true solution is to use my approach:  don’t let anyone else have access to your iPad.  Over the years, I have upgraded to newer iPad models, which means that we have an older iPad 2 and iPad 3 in my house that we now let our kids use, during appropriate times during the week.  Those iPads don’t have access to my text messages, my emails, my documents, etc. and instead both are loaded up with educational and game apps that my kids like to use. 

When my kids get older, I know that they are other issues that I will have to think about such as their ability to access the dark corners of the Internet in the Safari app.  For now, I have turned off access to Safari and certain other apps by opening the Settings app and going to General -> Restrictions -> Enable Restrictions, where you can selectively turn on or off apps like Safari, FaceTime, and Siri.  Having said that, I know that there will come a time in the future when they have a legitimate need to do research on the Internet using the Safari app, and then I’ll have to open up that can of worms.

Whatever approach you take, just make sure that it is a conscious one that you thought about beforehand.  Otherwise, you might think that you are texting in private with your spouse or someone else, only to learn afterwards that you were not so private after all.

Thank you to GoodCase Apps, publisher of the CaseManager apps for the iPad and iPhone, for sponsoring iPhone J.D.  CaseManager was created by New York civil rights attorney John Upton as a fast and inexpensive solution for sole practitioners and attorneys with small firms who want to use mobile devices to manage their law practice.  The app has a great interface, which I showed off in my September, 2014 post, and you can use the app to keep track of the key information in your cases:  events, tasks, contacts, time and expenses, plus the facts, notes and documents unique to each case.  I’ve showed off the iPhone and iPad apps, but there is also a version for Windows so that you can work with your data on your work computer, and there is even an Android version.  You can find out all about the apps on the CaseManager website.  The iPhone and iPad apps are only $20, so it is inexpensive to try CaseManager and see how it works with your law practice. 

Click here to get CaseManager for iPhone ($19.99): 

Click here to get CaseManager for iPad ($19.99): 

Almost every day there is a new rumor about what Apple is up to, so I very rarely discuss rumors on iPhone J.D.  But lately there have been a huge number of reports that Apple is working on something brand new:  an electric car.  The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple has hundreds of people on the Apple car team, 9to5Mac has pictures and bios of many of the senior employees, and as John Gruber of Daring Fireball notes, one of the new Apple employees is the former lead recruiter at Tesla, and “Why poach Tesla’s lead recruiter unless you were building an electric car?”  Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports that Apple plans to ship its first electric car in 2020.  I’m sure that an Apple car would be a neat — and expensive — accessory for an iPhone.  And now, the news of note from the past week:

• David Sparks is a California attorney who also publishes the MacSparky website and co-hosts the great Mac Power Users podcast with Florida attorney Katie Floyd.  He always has great insights on technology, so I link to his posts almost every week.  This week, Sparks announced that he is leaving his law firm to start a solo practice and focus more on his tech passions.  I wish him the best of luck on this new chapter of his life, and I have no doubt that he will do great.  But no, I don’t have anything similar planned.  I really enjoy the work that I do at a large law firm — I have great clients, I’ve had the opportunity to work on interesting and challenging cases, and I’m privileged to work with lots of bright and friendly folks at my firm who I’d miss too much if I went solo.
• We are only two months away from the release of the Apple Watch.  If you want to know all about the Apple Watch, Jason Snell of Six Colors prepared a great overview of all of the key information that we now know about the Apple Watch.
• Jeremy Scahill and Josh Begley of The Intercept report that, based on documents leaked by Edward Snowden, American and British spies hacked the largest manufacturer of SIM cards in the world, giving them the ability to tap phones without getting a court order.
• Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac reports that Microsoft updated its OneNote for iPad app this week, adding OCR scanning of text within images and the ability to add handwritten notes.
• Jordan Kahn of 9to5Mac reports that Microsoft updated the Word, Excel and PowerPoint iOS apps to add support for additional cloud services including iCloud.
• Ian Parker of The New Yorker wrote an extensive profile of Jony Ive, the head of design at Apple and the second most important person at the company.  Parker had extensive access to Ive himself and lots of folks who know Ive, and the resulting article is full of interesting information.  Jacob Kastrenakes of The Verge notes some of the 15 most interesting tidbits in the article.
• Ben Patterson of Macworld shares advice for using the Messages app in iOS 8.
• Joseph Keller of iMore reports that you can now upload documents on your iPhone and iPad directly to Dropbox without having to first send the Dropbox app.
• And finally, you may remember that in the classic 1989 movie Back to the Future II, when Marty McFly goes to the “future” he goes to 2015 — October 21, 2015.  If you want to feel like you are living the future, then you’ll want to check out the Delorean iPhone 6 case, which is being produced in Japan but can be preordered on the Bandai site for $50.  Check it out in this video.  (via AppAdvice)

If you are not in New Orleans today celebrating Mardi Gras, then I hope that you have a chance to come here at some point in the future.  This city throws a great party for Fat Tuesday, plus New Orleans is a great place to visit year-round if you like food, drinks, music, history, architecture and/or a city where people are comfortable just being themselves, no matter how unique that might be.

Whether you are in New Orleans today in person or just in spirit, have a Happy Mardi Gras!

Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke at a Goldman Sachs conference this week.  It was a fascinating talk, given after the best financial quarter in Apple’s history — not to mention the best financial quarter of any company’s history.  Serenity Caldwell of iMore prepared a transcript of Cook’s remarks.  Cook talked about existing Apple products such as the iPhone and iPad, Apple Pay, the upcoming Apple Watch, environmental initiatives, and the future.  It’s a worth reading if you are interested in Apple.  If you would rather listen than read, Apple has posted an audio recording.  And now, the news of note from the past week:

• Sharon Bernstein of Reuters reports that the number of stolen iPhones has dropped dramatically as a result of the Find my iPhone feature that lets you kill a stolen iPhone and related technology.
• Tieman Ray of Barron’s reports that last quarter Apple obtained 93% of the profit in the smartphone industry, Samsung got the other 7%, and everyone else lost money.
• Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal discusses styluses and smart pens.
• Geoffrey Fowler of the Wall Street Journal discusses external lenses that can improve the pictures you take with your iPhone.
• Fowler also reports that you can now designate what happens to your Facebook account after you die by appointing a legacy contact.
• It’s not easy being green.  Not only is that the memorable line sung by Kermit the Frog, as well as the title of an excellent article written by a law student back in 1993 for the American Criminal Law Review (ahem), but it is also the theme of this article by Paul Ford about how once you start using the iPhone Messages app to communicate with other iPhone users with blue bubbles, you start to dislike communicating with non-iPhone users with green bubbles.
• Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac reviews the ClamCase Pro, an iPad 2 case that makes your iPad look much like a MacBook Air.
• Caitlin McGarry of Macworld reports that JetBlue will start to let you use Apple Pay to pay for purchases on a flight.  That’s a great idea because your iPhone is likely to be in your hand during a flight and thus be easier to reach than a wallet or purse.
• And finally, speaking of Apple Pay, American Express is running a fun commercial that shows the history of the AmEx card and ends up with support for Apple Pay.

We all have so many passwords for online retailers, banks, courts, etc. that you need to have some way to track them all.  That’s why I recommend that everyone consider getting a password manager app.  There are quite a few good ones out there, but I really love the one that I use:  1Password.  The app gives me a central location to store all of my passwords in a super secure fashion on my iPhone, plus the app syncs the passwords so that they are also available on my iPad, my PC and my Mac.  The idea is that you just have to remember your one master password, and then type in that password to get access in the app to all of your other ones — which you no longer need to remember, so they can be long and complicated, and thus more secure.  Better yet, with a new iPhone or iPad, you don’t even have to type your master password and can instead just use your fingerprint to start the app. 

The most recent update to 1Password was late last month and it added a great new feature called Login Creator.  It used to be that when you went to enter a new website password into the 1Password app, you were always presented with the same blank form so you had to fill out the fields from scratch.  But with the new Login Creator, the app already knows about hundreds of popular websites. 

For example, as you start to enter your Amazon password, as you type the first few letters of “Amazon” the app recognizes the service.  Just tap the service as it comes up, and now you don’t have to spend as much time creating the entry.  You need to provide your username and password (or let the app create a secure, random password for you), but the app already knows other details such as the website address.

 

If you have been using 1Password for a while, you have already entered your most frequently used passwords like your Amazon password.  But if you haven’t yet started using 1Password, with the new Login Creator, it is even faster to get up and running.

And 1Password is not just for passwords.  Last year, I wrote about how you can use 1Password to create a digital wallet with copies of your license, credit cards, etc. just in case you ever lose your wallet.  I also love the Secure Notes feature of 1Password, which gives me a place to type private information that I don’t want anyone else to see — such as if I let one of my kids use my iPhone to play a game.  I use it to store both secure personal data and some private client-related information that I want to keep privileged and confidential.

If you have been thinking of getting a password manager, I encourage you to try 1Password on your iPhone.  If you like it, then you’ll also want to get a copy for your computer, but you can start with just the iPhone/iPad app to see if it is right for you. The app itself is free so that you can easily take a test drive, and then with a $9.99 in-app purchase you can take advantage of all of the advanced features such as automatic sync, the ability to use folders, additional categories for items like a driver’s license and passport, etc.

Click here to get 1Password (free; $9.99 in-app for pro features):  

I recently received an email from Baton Rouge, Louisiana litigator Ross Dooley of Roedel, Parsons, Koch, Blache, Balhoff & McCollister.  He is looking for a quiet external keyboard that he can use with his iPad to take notes in court.  He told me that he was recently using his iPad with the Apple Wireless Keyboard during a hearing when the judge’s minute clerk alerted him that his typing was too loud.  This was a courtroom in which the court reporter was wearing headphones and speaking into a stenomask, and apparently the sound of the typing was somehow amplified in the court reporter’s headphones.

I don’t often encounter a court reporter using a stenomask, but even so, I rarely type using a keyboard with my iPad in court because I do think that the noise can be distracting.  If I am going to use my iPad to take notes, I instead use a quiet stylus like the Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo and an app like GoodNotes.  But I cannot write using a stylus as fast as I can with a pen, so for those times in court when speed matters, I just use pen and paper.

On the other hand, in depositions, I use a keyboard with my iPad all the time.  In that setting, I have never found the Apple Wireless Keyboard to be too loud, nor have I found the sound of other keyboards to be too distracting.

Dooley tells me that he has been looking at Logitech Keys-to-Go keyboard, which Dooley said didn’t seem to be quite as ergonomic as the Apple Wireless Keyboard or the Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover, but it does appear to be very quiet thanks to the rubber keys.  It is $69.99 on the Logitech website.  [UPDATE:  Here is a review of that keyboard by David Chartier on his Finer Things in Tech website.]

If you have a recommendation for a Bluetooth keyboard that is so quiet that it can be used in a courtroom without distracting anyone, I’d love to hear from you via email or in the comments.  Perhaps there are some good solutions out there that I’m not thinking of.

If you use a Mac as your home computer (as I do) and if you take photographs (as I certainly do), you’ll be interested in Apple’s successor to iPhoto on the Mac, which will be called Photos.  It won’t be out for a few months, but Apple released a developer preview yesterday, so now we can start to see how it will work.  While I’m a little nervous about losing the Events feature, there does seem to be a lot to like about it.  One neat feature is that all photos are synced between your Mac, iPhone and iPad via iCloud — although if you have a lot of photos you will likely have to pay for extra iCloud storage space.  Edit a photo on your Mac, and the edited version show up on all of your devices in a few seconds; delete a bad picture from your iPhone, and it goes away everyone else too.  David Pogue of Yahoo Tech wrote a good article on the new app, as has Chris Breen of Macworld.  Other good first impressions of the software come from Andrew Cunningham of Ars Technica and Josh Lowensohn and Nathan Ingraham of The Verge.  And now, the news of note from the past week:

• I posted a formal review of GoodNotes back in 2012, but the app has changed a lot since then.  In 2014, the app was updated to version 4, which was a brand new app.  But I’m still a huge fan of the app, and it is what I use every time I use my iPad and stylus to take handwritten notes.  A few months ago, the app added automatic handwritten recognition, so that you can later go back and search your notes for a specific word.  I don’t have the neatest handwriting, but it has worked great for me — although note that I write in print, not script, which may make it easier.  A few days ago, the app was updated to version 4.5 which takes the searchable text feature and embeds it upon export.  Thus, you can now take handwritten notes, then send the notes to your computer as a PDF file, and you can do a full text search on the notes.  This makes it easy to take notes on your iPad but then find the right part of notes on your computer.  And if you use a document management system, you should be able to find notes using full text searching.  It’s a nice improvement to an app that is already really good.  Click here for GoodNotes ($6.99): 

  

• A good alternative to GoodNotes is Notes Plus.  As noted be South Carolina attorney Justin Kahn, Notes Plus was also recently updated to add handwriting recognition.
• Tim Baran of Rocket Matter recently asked me and a bunch of other attorneys how we use Dropbox.
• If you want an external keyboard for your iPad that fits in an iPad case, the Logitech Ultrathin has long been a favorite pick.  Antonio Villas-Boas of PCMag reviews the latest version of that keyboard for the iPad Air 2.
• Rene Ritchie of iMore shares some tips for using the Mail app on the iPhone.
• Rob LeFebvre of Cult of Mac explains how to delete a large number of pictures at one time using the Photos app on the iPhone or iPad.
• And finally, I didn’t run across anything too silly in the world of iPhone this week, so I dug back into the iPhone J.D. archives to find something to end today’s post.  Way back in October of 2011, Jonathan Mann recorded this music video of him and Siri singing a duet, and it is still fun to watch: