I noted yesterday that I'm curious to find out if the weight of the larger iPad Pro will be a problem. Jason Snell, the former head of Macworld who now writes at Six Colors, wrote about the weight based on his hands-on time with the iPad Pro, saying: "The thing that struck me the most about the iPad Pro was how light it feels. It weighs the same as the original iPad, but that pound-and-a-half is spread across its 12-by-8.7-inch body. During the stage presentation, they showed photos of someone casually holding the iPad Pro with one hand. It looked wrong—like a bit of marketing hype, trying to make you think that this iPad that’s so large it’s illustrated with a picture of Jupiter isn’t so huge—but it turned out to be right." And Jim Dalrymple of The Loop wrote: "After using iPad Pro yesterday, I can tell you it’s gorgeous. The screen is outstanding, it’s fast, the battery will last 10 hours, and it’s lightweight." That's good news to me, because if the weight is not a problem, I see the larger size of the iPad Pro as a great feature for lawyers who need to work with documents all day long. And now, a few other news items of note from the past week:
- Attorney Jeremy Horwitz of 9to5Mac points out 10 lesser-known items about Apple's new products announced this week.
- Writing over at Macworld, Jason Snell describes his experience with the new Smart Keyboard for the iPad Pro.
- Daniel Eran Dilger of AppleInsider describes his experience with the iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil.
- Andrew Cunningham of Ars Technica shows off all of the new Apple Watch bands.
- One set of the new Apple Watch bands were created by luxury-goods maker Hermès with assistance from Apple. Christina Passariello of the Wall Street Journal reports on how these bands came about.
- Microsoft announced, on its Office Blog, that its iOS apps such as Word are being updated for iOS 9. For example, you will be able to use the Inking function to write handwritten edits on a document. I do that now, but I have to first convert a Word document to a PDF and open it in a PDF editor to do so. It will be handy to do it directly within Word.
- Matt Apuzzo, David Sanger and Michael Schmidt of the New York Times report that when the Department of Justice asked Apple to turn over text messages of iPhone owners, Apple's response was no — because the encryption that Apple uses makes it impossible to do so. DOJ wants Apple to figure out some way to give the government access, but the article quotes Apple's CEO's Tim Cook to describe the problems with this approach: "If you put a key under the mat for the cops, a burglar can find it, too. [And if criminals or countries] know there’s a key hidden somewhere, they won’t stop until they find it."
- Jennifer Reingold of Fortune writes about Angela Ahrendts, the head of Apple retail.
- Dieter Bohn of The Verge reports that BlackBerry is acquiring Good Technology. That story was like a walk down memory lane for me; before the iPhone existed I used a Palm Treo running Good Technology software for email, and before that, I used a BlackBerry device for email.
- Do you want to watch a movie or a TV show but don't know the best way to stream it? In an article for Macworld, J.R. Bookwalter reviews JustWatch, a free website that shows you everywhere that you can stream or download specific titles.
- Rory Appleton of The Fresno Bee reports that a college student in California was shot by a robber — but fortunately he was protected when the bullet hit his iPhone in his pocket. Who needs Wonder Woman's bracelets when you have an iPhone.
- One of the Apple employees to show off the new Apple TV at the keynote event this week was Jen Folse, a member of the Apple TV team. It was her first appearance on stage at an Apple event, and while I noticed in the video stream that her fingernails were painted blue, I didn't notice until I saw an up-close photograph after the event that she actually had them painted with the graphic that Siri makes when you talk to it in iOS 9, as you can see here and here. Awesome and funny.
- And finally, if you want to sell your current iPhone to help pay for the new iPhone 6s, Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal offers some excellent tips in this video:
