Today at 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern, Apple will give a keynote presentation at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco. Apple hasn’t disclosed what will be announced; the invitation merely says “Hey Siri, give us a hint.” If you actually ask Siri, you’ll get some humorous responses. But there is no doubt that today is the day that Apple will announce the 2015 version of the iPhone. If Apple follows tradition, it will add an “s” to the name, announcing the iPhone 6s and the iPhone 6s Plus today, but of course they might change that.
Apple is also expected to announced a new version of the Apple TV. The first Apple TV was introduced in 2007. It was updated in 2010, 2012 and 2013.
I’m sure that we will also hear something about iOS 9 and the Apple Watch. Some folks also believe we will see a new iPad introduced today, but I don’t expect that. In recent years, Apple has hosted a second event in October to focus on the iPad, and a new iPhone + new Apple TV + Apple Watch seems like more than enough for one presentation. Thus, I’d be surprised to see new iPads today. [UPDATE: OK, I was indeed surprised!]
If you want to watch a live video stream of today’s keynote, you can do so on an iPhone, iPad, Mac or Apple TV. You can also watch it on a PC if you are running the new Windows 10.
The International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) is a peer networking organization for people who work in the legal technology field, such as the people who work in law firm IT departments. ILTA just concluded its annual conference in Las Vegas, and at the conference, ILTA and InsideLegal released the results of their tenth annual technology purchasing survey. The survey was sent to almost 1,300 ILTA member law firms with responses from 184 law firms, about 83% of which were U.S. firms. You can download this year’s report in PDF format here. Here is what I saw in the survey results that struck me as interesting for attorneys who use iPhones and iPads.
iPhones, iPads and the Apple Watch are exciting to IT departments
Every year, ILTA asks respondents to identify the most exciting technology or trend — an open ended question. Two of the top seven answers in 2015 relate to iOS: mobility (use of tablets as desktop replacements; mobile device management; virtual mobile computing; ability for attorneys to connect remotely and perform work without issues) and the Apple Watch. The other five exciting tech or trends were cloud computing, security, virtualization, artificial intelligence, and big data.
For law firms that buy smartphones, 91% buy iPhones
This is a “technology purchasing survey” which means it asks about technology purchased by law firms. There are many categories of legal technology that are virtually always purchased by law firms and not individual lawyers, but the category of mobile technology is one that is moving away from IT purchasing departments. Many attorneys now buy their own device, a practice so prevalent in all companies that there is a common acronym for it: BYOD (bring your own device).
The ILTA survey asks about BYOD, and there has been a move towards BYOD since 2012 although it decreased somewhat this year. In 2012, 10% of firms were BYOD. That increased in 21% in 2013, then to 36% in 2014. This year the number dropped to 32%. This was somewhat surprising to me as I would have expected to see even more BYOD in 2015 among ILTA firms.
The ILTA survey also reveals that 62% of law firms have BYOD policies. I think that it is helpful for a firm to have such a policy, especially for larger law firms. (Of the 28% of law firms that reported not having BYOD policies, 53% were from smaller firms of 1-49 attorneys.)
The ILTA survey does not ask any questions about smartphones that attorneys purchase themselves (the BYOD smartphones), only the smartphones that law firms are buying. If 32% of law firms are BYOD in 2015, that means that around 68% are buying smartphones for at least some of their attorneys. What are they buying? Almost all are buying iPhones (62%), most are buying Android (43%), almost half are still buying BlackBerries (26%), and some are buying Windows smartphones (15%). Or stated differently, for those law firms that purchase smartphones for their attorneys in 2015, 91% are buying iPhones, 63% are buying Android, 38% are buying BlackBerry and 22% are buying Windows.
Here is what the last four years of survey data looks like:
What this chart doesn’t tell you is how many of each smartphone the firms are buying, just that the firm is buying at least one of that brand. On the other hand, the chart does tell us something about which smartphones are acceptable to IT departments at law firms. Back in 2012, half of the law firms were not buying iPhones, and now almost all of them buy iPhones. In 2012, very few law firms would buy any Android smartphones, and now almost two-thirds of them will do so. And while other surveys, such as the latest ABA Technology Survey that I analyzed last month, indicate that attorney BlackBerry use has plummeted over the last few years (only 5% in 2015), over a third of law firms still buy a BlackBerry for at least some of their attorneys. Sure, that is a downward trend, but it shows that BlackBerry still has a role for attorneys when it is the law firm buying the device instead of the attorney.
For law firms that buy tablets, the iPad remains popular
In the 2012 ILTA purchasing survey, only 13% of law firms purchased tablets for at least some of their attorneys. That increased substantially in the 2013 survey, when 58% of law firms purchased tablets for at least some of their attorneys. In 2014, the number dropped to 48%, but this year it is back up to 58%.
For those law firms that do purchase tablets for their attorneys, the iPad remains incredibly popular. In 2015, 81% of law firms that purchase tablets say that they purchase iPads. That’s down somewhat from prior years; it was 92% in 2014 and almost 100% in 2013. For those law firms that do purchase tablets for their attorneys, Android and Microsoft Surface tablets are also popular; about 50% purchase Microsoft tablets in 2015, and about 24% purchase Android tablets.
For the last three years, ILTA has asked “What percentage of your firm’s attorneys use tablets in their day-to-day work?” This year, the answer was 89%, compared to 91% in 2014 and 86% in 2013. I’ve always wondered about this question; does my IT department really know how many of us at my law firm are using iPads day-to-day? Having said that, it is good to know that IT departments understand that the tablet is an important tool for attorneys, and hopefully this knowledge encourages them to help their attorneys get even more value from their iPads.
If you don’t have an Apple Watch and you are wondering what folks use it for, or if you do own one and you want to see how your own usage compares to others, then you should check out the results of iMore’s first survey of Apple Watch users. Over 8,000 folks responded (including me), making this the largest survey of its kind so far. Respondents said that the best features of the Apple Watch are notifications, timekeeping, health and communications — which are also the four functions that are most useful to me. The most popular faces are the Utility and the Modular. (I myself use the Modular face because it has space for lots of complications, such as an indication of my next appointment, the date, and my activity circles.) And the most used apps are Dark Sky, Overcast, 1Password, Fantastical and Twitter. (I use the first four quite a bit; I use Twitterific instead of Twitter.) When watchOS 2.0 comes out — and it will be out soon, probably this month — the Apple Watch will be even more useful, with native apps and third-party complication support. I hope that iMore does a similar survey next year because it will be interesting to see what changes over time. There are not many apps that I’m still using today that I used with my first iPhone, although there are a few as I noted in this post last year, so I’m sure that Apple Watch usage will also change in future years. And now, the news of note from the past week:
Florida attorney Katie Floyd reviews the Ring doorbell, an Internet-connected doorbell that lets you use your iPhone to see who is at the front door.
Katie Floyd also checked out the Spigen Apple Watch Night Stand that I reviewed a few weeks ago. She likes it too, and she was able to test the pad that makes the stand work with the 38mm version of the Apple Watch, which works well for her.
New York attorney Neil Squillante of TechnoLawyer reviews Adobe Acrobat DC, a service that stores your PDFs in the cloud so that you can access them on both your computer and iPad.
Bellefield makes iTimeKeep, an app that you can use to track your billable hours. This week, Bellefield announced that you will soon be able to enter your time using an Apple Watch, which could be useful when you are on-the-go and want to quickly dictate time to your Apple Watch before you forget it. Here is a YouTube video showing how it will work.
The Expert Institute nominated iPhone J.D. for its list of best legal blogs, and is now running a contest to see which blogs get the most votes. If you want to vote for iPhone J.D., click here and then click the Vote button. It only takes about a second to do so; there is no registration required.
Mike Murphy reports, in an article for Quartz, on the most-downloaded apps of all time, according to App Annie. The top app is Facebook; the top game is Candy Crush Saga.
As noted above, one of the products that Apple is expected to update next week is the Apple TV. Luke Dormehl of Cult of Mac takes a walk down memory land to look at Apple’s prior TV-related devices. He actually left out one that I would have put on that list: the Apple Pippin, sold in the mid-1990s.
Apple is also expected to introduce a new iPhone next week. Should you change your carrier when you get a new phone? Brian Chen of the New York Times has advice on choosing the best smartphone plan.
Jason Snell of Six Colors reports that you can now use the Amazon Instant Video app to download certain movies and TV shows, which means that you can watching streaming video even when you cannot stream — such as when you are on a plane. I wish that Netflix would offer this feature.
Geoffery Fowler of the Wall Street Journal reviews the DxO, an external camera for the iPhone that has amazing quality, but is expensive.
If you want a link bracelet for the Apple Watch but don’t want to spend $449 to get the Apple version, you might be interested in third party link bracelets. Abdel Ibrahim of WatchAware reviews the HappyCell link bracelet which you can buy on Amazon for only $80. At this point, however, I encourage you to wait on buying third-party bands. Apple will soon be certifying third-party bands, giving the manufacturers Apple-made parts to connect those bands to the watch, so I would wait a little longer to see what the Apple-approved third party market looks like before spending money on another band.
This is not related to the iPhone or iPad, but it is tech-related and something fun to do with your kids this Labor day weekend. Next year, the InSight lander will be sent to Mars, and if you sign up by September 8, your name can be etched on a silicon chip that will be affixed to the lander. Click here to sign up.
And finally, starting today, you can pre-order from Sphero (the manufacturer) and places like Amazon a $150 iPhone/iPad accessory that just may be the hottest toy this holiday season: the BB-8 Droid. It is a miniature version of the droid that will star in the next Star Wars movie this December, and it looks really fun. It’s like a remote control car with personality. Select members of the press were given review units, and the embargo lifted on their reviews yesterday, so there are lots of great videos showing the BB-8 in action, including this one from Geoffrey Fowler of the Wall Street Journal, this one from Daniel Howley of Yahoo Tech, and even this one from Tina Nguyen who put the cute BB-8 in a room full of even cuter puppies. But my favorite video is the one from Sphero itself:
Thank you to Lit Software for sponsoring iPhone J.D. this month. Many of you have been using Lit Software apps on your iPad for a long time because of the excellent TrialPad and TranscriptPad apps. This month, Lit Software wants to let iPhone J.D. readers know about its newest app, DocReviewPad, an app that you can use to review and annotate documents on your iPad.
For my overview of the features of DocReviewPad, check out the review that I posted in July. I haven’t yet had an opportunity to use DocReviewPad extensively in my own cases just because of the current stages of the litigation that I am currently handling. I actually started to use it with all of the documents in one case recently, and then the case settled. (Note: using DocReviewPad does not guarantee that your case will settle.) But I’ve been paying close attention to the features of the app and I’m very impressed.
And I continue to be more impressed because Lit Software has been updating the app since it was first released to address user requests. I’ve updated my original review to note many of the biggest new features, such as the ability to import documents from other apps, more sophisticated handling of Bates numbers, etc.
If you want to read and annotate documents in a case that you are handling, whether you are reviewing your own client’s documents or you are working with documents produced by your opponent in discovery, DocReviewPad makes it easy to do so on your iPad.
