I usually don’t post In the news on the Friday after Thanksgiving, but I ran across a number of interesting articles this week that I thought were worth sharing while they are still fresh. I saw many reviews of the iPad Pro this week, and I was surprised to see so many of them judge it by asking whether the iPad Pro is a laptop computer replacement. Especially for attorneys, that just isn’t the right question. I see that California attorney David Sparks feels the same way, given his post this week called The Right Question About iPad. As he writes: “I think it’s a mistake to get hung up on whether or not an iPad can replace a traditional computer. It’s like asking if buying toaster means you can get rid of your oven.” Exactly. And now, the news of note from this past week:
Ohio attorney Chad Burton wrote about the iPad Pro this week, and he also criticizes reviewers who just focus on whether an iPad Pro can replace a computer.
ABA Journal posted its 9th Annual Blawg 100, a list of some of the best blogs by and for lawyers. As always, the list is a great place to learn about new websites that might be of interest to you, so I encourage you to check it out. (iPhone J.D. was named to the Hall of Fame last year and thus is no longer eligible for the annual list.)
A few years ago, I reviewed an iPhone app called Stick Texting that lets you add funny animations to your text messages. The app was written by Mitch Robiner, a partner in the Tampa, Florida office of Gunster, Yoakley & Stewart. If you have your own idea for an iOS app and are trying to determine how to get started, you’ll be interested to learn that Mitch just published a $24.95 ebook called App Income: The Perfect Side Business. Mitch gave me a free copy to read, and it is a detailed 72-page book with lots of information in it on how to get started, how to hire programmers, how to use advertising to increase sales, etc. Definitely worth reading if you are interested in getting into the business.
D.C. immigration attorney Reid Trautz posted his 11th annual Holiday Gift Guide for Lawyers. I see that the Apple Watch made the list.
Geoffrey Fowler and Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal wrote a Tech Holiday Gift Guide, and the Apple TV, Apple Watch, and many iOS accessories made the list.
In a review for Macworld, Susie Ochs sees a lot of advantages of the iPad Pro, but concludes that she prefers the iPad Air 2.
Jason Snell gives advice on choosing between an iPad Pro, iPad Air and iPad mini in this article for Macworld.
Several folks posted specific reviews of the Apple Pencil this week, which makes sense because it is one of the best features of the iPad Pro. Jackie Dove of Macworld says that if you have an iPad Pro, it is a no-brainer to get an Apple Pencil.
Neil Hughes of AppleInsider wrote a good article on what you can and cannot do with an Apple Pencil. Apple was smart in deciding that there are some functions that require a finger, so you cannot accidentally trigger them with the Pencil.
Teddy Svoronos is a PhD candidate and a teacher. He wrote an interesting article on how he uses GoodNotes, the primary app that I use to take notes on my iPad.
Josh Ginter wrote an article for The Sweet Setup concluding that the best cases for the iPhone 6s are Apple’s Silicone Case and, if you want a more premium option, Apple’s Leather Case. I’ve been using the Apple Leather Case ever since I got an iPhone 6 and I really like it.
If you use an Apple Watch, you might be interested in the new Apple Watch Magnetic Charging Dock that Apple just started selling. Rene Ritchie wrote a Hands On for iMore. It looks OK, but I’m very happy with the more compact and much cheaper Spigen Apple Watch Night Stand that I reviewed three months ago.
More merchants will be able to offer Apple Pay now that Square debuted this week the new Square Reader designed to work with contactless payment services, as noted by Graham Spencer of MacStories.
Randall Munroe, who writes the great XKCD comic, has a new book out called Thing Explainer which explains lots of complicated concepts using only the 1,000 most common words to make them easier to understand. There is an excerpt from the book in The New Yorker in which Munroe explains Einstein’s theory of relativity, which Einstein first presented 100 years ago this week. I wish I could have read this when I first tried to understand the concept when I was in school, and no matter how old you are, it is worth reading today. And yes, there is a (slight) iPhone connection because that article mentions how Einstein’s theory is important for making the GPS in an iPhone work.
And finally, I’m usually a big fan of the commercials that Apple releases for the Holiday Season each year. I wrote about some of the best ones last year on Christmas Eve. I don’t know if this will be the only Christmas-themed commercial that Apple runs in 2015, but they came out with a great one this week. Apple technology plays only a small part in the ad; instead, it is more of a gift to Apple’s customers, a 90 second music video with Stevie Wonder and Andra Day. I think that Stevie Wonder sounds even better singing this song today than he did when he first released the song in 1967, and Andra Day’s voice is amazing. Definitely worth watching:
Typically when I purchase a new Apple product, it takes me a few days to get a good sense of what I do and don’t like about it, and then I post a review. Thus, when I purchased an iPad Pro on Wednesday, November 11th, I fully expected to have a review posted by Monday, November 16th. For the iPad Pro, however, that simply wasn’t possible. In part, that was because I wanted to see how it works with Apple Pencil before writing this review, and I didn’t get my hands on one until Nov. 19th when just two units showed up at my local Apple Store. (Supply of the Apple Pencil is still very limited, but we are finally starting to see more of them available for sale.) But mainly, I needed more time because it has taken me much longer than normal to understand the pros and cons of the iPad Pro.
I cannot emphasize enough that this is not just another iPad. Because of its size and other new features, this feels like a fundamentally different iPad. It has unique pros and cons, and that is why I suspect that this is the longest review that I’ve ever posted on iPhone J.D. Also, during my more than 10 days of heavy use of the iPad Pro, my viewpoint on it has changed, mostly because it takes a while to get used to the larger size. As you will see below, the unique advantages that it has over every other iPad are, for me, enough to outweigh the drawbacks associated with its larger size, especially because of the Apple Pencil. But this will not be the iPad for everyone, much like many people (myself included) consider the iPhone 6 Plus / iPhone 6s Plus to be just too darn big for an iPhone. If you are trying to decide whether the iPad Pro makes sense for you, my hope is that after reading about how I use it in my law practice and at home, you’ll have some additional insight into whether this is the right iPad for you.
The model that I purchased is the 128GB Space Gray Wi-Fi only. My opinion is that 32GB is too small for an iPad for anyone who plans to put photos and videos on it in addition to documents, so it was easy for me to choose the 128GB model over the 32GB model. On the other hand, I don’t need to spend the extra $130 for cellular because most of the time that I use my iPad I have Wi-Fi, and for those few times that I don’t I can tether to my iPhone and use its cellular connection. I also purchased an Apple Pencil and an iPad Pro Smart Cover, both of which I discuss in this review.
The size
Let’s start with the most obvious feature that makes this a fundamentally different iPad. When I purchased my iPad Pro, I noticed immediately that the box was larger than a typical iPad box. And then when I opened the box, my first thought was: “What have I gotten myself into; I cannot believe that this thing fills the entire huge box.” I had seen the iPad Pro in the Apple Store, and yet I was still taken aback by how large it was.
It is hard for me to even take the traditional iPhone J.D. picture of the product on an legal pad, because the iPad Pro covers most of a legal-size legal pad, and is just a tiny bit larger on all sides as a letter-size legal pad.
For pretty much the entire first day that I used the iPad Pro, I found myself having trouble accepting just how big the iPad Pro really is, and several times that first day I said to myself that it was just too darn big and that buying it was a mistake. As I started to use the iPad Pro more, I found that many iPad uses are significantly improved with a larger screen, and I also discovered some circumstances in which the size got in the way.
I mention this because I’ve seen other iPad Pro reviewers recommend that you go to an Apple Store to see one in person and decide whether the size is right for you. Unfortunately, I don’t think that this is a realistic recommendation, especially if you are used to using another iPad. The iPad Pro is so much larger that your first impression is likely to be that it is simply too big. The harder part is figuring out whether you will grow to appreciate that larger size, or whether you will continue to find it too large, too heavy, too awkward to hold, etc.
After 10 days of heavy usage every day, here are the main pros and cons that I see to the larger size.
• The Pros
Over the last 10 days, I’ve grown to really appreciate a number of advantages to the large size.
Full size documents. The biggest advantage has been working with documents. The iPad is the #1 reason that I have a paperless law practice today. Everything that comes in to me on all of my cases is either already in a digital form, or my secretary scans it for me. I can work with those (mostly PDF) files on my computer, and of course I do that every day, but what makes a paperless practice really work well for me is the ability to read and annotate documents on my iPad. Reading a document on an iPad is much better than reading it on a computer screen. Using various apps on my iPad — GoodReader, Dropbox, Microsoft Word, Transporter, Mail, TranscriptPad, etc. — I find it far more comfortable to lean back in a chair and read a document on an iPad, or even put the iPad at an angle on my desk and read the document as if I was sitting at my desk reading a paper document.
When I work with documents using an iPad Air — pleadings, contracts, transcripts, exhibits, etc. — the documents are always smaller than they would be in paper form, so I often need to pinch to zoom and scroll around to see everything. But with the iPad Pro, documents are actually larger than normal when my iPad Pro is in landscape mode (although you don’t see all of the document at once). And when my iPad Pro is turned to portrait mode, I can see the full document, and it is essentially full size. For this reason, I use portrait mode on my iPad Pro much, much more often than I ever used it on my iPad Air. In portrait mode, I can see all of a page, and all of the page is large enough to read because it is virtually the same size as if I had printed out the paper.
The larger screen is also very nice when you are working with a Word document on the iPad pro, especially if you are using an external keyboard, a topic I discuss below.
The large size of the iPad Pro is great for attorneys because we work with so many documents related to litigation or other areas of the law. I’m sure that it will also be attractive to other professionals who work with their own kinds of documents. For example, one of my hobbies is to play the piano, and I will sometimes use an iPad to display sheet music, or just lyrics and chords, for a song that I am playing. The large, bright screen of the iPad Pro works amazingly well on a piano, far better than any other iPad models. I’m sure that there are many similar examples in other fields.
Let me emphasize this one more time before I move on: reading a PDF file on an iPad Pro in either landscape or portrait mode is the best experience that you can currently get as a paperless attorney. Documents look great.
The big picture. I don’t just use an iPad for work; I also use it as a consumption device for entertainment. Photographs look incredible on the iPad Pro; essentially every picture that you view looks like an 8×10. Watching a movie or a TV show on the iPad Pro is far better than using a smaller device. It’s essentially like watching a large HDTV because the image fills just about the same field of vision, given that the iPad Pro will be closer to your eyes than a TV.
If you read books on an iPad, such as in the iBooks app, I don’t see a big advantage to the iPad Pro because these apps already have good tools for adjusting type size. Even on an iPad mini, you can make the text large enough to read. I wouldn’t get an iPad Pro just to read iBooks.
But if you happen to enjoy reading comic books, which are now having somewhat of a renaissance thanks to Comixology and other comic book apps, you will love the iPad Pro’s large screen. I myself am not much of a comic book reader, except that there is one series that I have been enjoying for the last year or so called Saga, which is sort of like a cross between Star Wars and Game of Thrones. (And which is, by the way, not appropriate for kids.) Comics look amazing on the large, bright screen of the iPad Pro, far better than on the iPad Air 2.
If there is some other video or photographic media that you currently enjoy on an iPad, I suspect that you will enjoy it even more on an iPad Pro.
Sound’s good. It’s not just the image that is better; it’s also the sound. While I often watch videos using headphones so as to not bother my wife or someone else around me, when I use the built-in speakers on the iPad Pro they are far, far better than ever before. The iPad Pro actually has four speakers, one near each corner. Having speakers on each side gives you stereo sound, and the iPad Pro is large enough that the speakers can be far apart to get good stereo separation. And the iPad Pro also sends the treble to the top speakers and the bass to the bottom speakers (adjusting for any orientation that you are holding the iPad). The end result is a much louder, richer sound experience, far better than any other iPad. Does it beat the 5.1 surround speakers that you might have in a dedicated TV room? Of course not, but it is still incredible satisfying for a mobile device.
More space to split. Another advantage of the larger screen on the iPad Pro is the iOS 9 split screen feature. Although you can use this feature on some other iPads such as the iPad Air 2, the larger screen on the iPad Pro makes the feature truly useful. After all, the size of an iPad Pro in landscape orientation is essentially the same as two iPad Airs in portrait orientation right next to each other. As a result, although I never really found split screen mode useful on my iPad Air 2, I find myself using it frequently on the iPad Pro. I sometimes have Mail or Tweetbot (a Twitter client) on the left while Safari is open on the right so that I can click on links in messages and see the website on the same screen. I also sometimes have a Word document open on the left and a PDF file open on the right, so that I can type while I am also viewing an exhibit or a case.
Screenshot
Even though I use split screen on the iPad Pro more than I ever used it before, I still don’t use it enough for this to be a reason to justify getting an iPad Pro. Nevertheless, this feature works so much better on the larger screen (and faster processor) of an iPad Pro that it is almost as if the feature doesn’t exist on other iPads, even though I know that you can technically use it on other models.
Bigger = Taller. This is minor, but I noticed that the large size is nice when the iPad Pro is on a desk just because it is taller. When propped up on a desk (for example, when using the Apple Smart Cover in a triangle formation to hold up the iPad), the top of the screen is higher than any other iPad which I find makes the whole screen easier to see. With my iPad Air 2, I had been using the Stabile PRO by Thought Out to give it more height. Although that product also works fine with the iPad Pro, I’ve found it far less necessary to use.
• The Cons
The larger screen of the iPad Pro is not all good, and that’s what makes this review difficult.
Heavier and more awkward to hold. The biggest disadvantage of the larger sized screen is that the iPad Pro is more awkward to hold. You can feel the weight difference from the iPad Air. It is about the same weight as the original 2010 version of the iPad. Because that weight is distributed across a larger area than the 2010 iPad, the iPad Pro actually seems lighter than you would think it would be from just looking at it. But when I am holding an iPad Pro in my hand, I feel fatigue faster than I do with an iPad Air.
The size also contributes somewhat to the awkwardness, although I have gotten more used to that over the last week. With the larger size you need to hold the iPad Pro differently. Unlike my iPad Air 2 which I often just hold in a hand, with my iPad Pro I find myself propping it partially on my arm, which at times made me feel almost like Bob Ross holding a painting palette, if you’ll forgive the slight exaggeration.
Note that when Bob Ross held his palette, there was a hole in the palette so that he could hold it more easily. There have been many third party products for prior models of the iPad that make it easier to hold an iPad. For example, I enjoyed using the FreeOneHand with the iPad 2 and iPad 3, and I recently reviewed the 360 Tablet Kickstand by Lynktec. That Lynktec product uses microsuction to attach to the iPad Air, so I thought that it would also work well with the iPad Pro. But whenever I tried it, it would come off at some point during the day; I think that the iPad Pro is just too heavy for it. A good third party product that gives you the option to use a handle with the iPad Pro seems like it would be a perfect way to address the larger size and weight of the iPad Pro.
But for now, the fact that the 12.9″, 1.57 pound iPad Pro is a little more awkward to hold than the 9.7″, 0.96 pound iPad Air 2 is a significant difference. I have no doubt that some people would never get used to the larger size and weight, and no matter how much better documents look on the larger iPad Pro, the iPad Air would always be the better option for them.
New iPad accessories. Whenever Apple changes the design of a device, many old accessories no longer work. That is especially true for the iPad Pro because it is so much larger.
For example, for a few years now I’ve been using the Tom Bihn Ristretto for iPad, a messenger bag-style carrying case. I have continued to use it with the iPad Pro, but the iPad Pro just barely fits in there and doesn’t fit well. The Ristretto only barely closes with the iPad Pro in it. As a result, I’m now in the market for something new. [UPDATE 11/30/15: The Ristretto model that I have now is the 11″ model, which I see that Tom Bihn no longer sells. Tom Bihn tells me that the current Ristretto that they are selling is 13″ and does fit the iPad Pro. I have one on order and I’ll see how it works.]
Optimized apps. Another disadvantage of the iPad Pro’s larger screen, for now at least, is that few apps take advantage of the larger screen. For apps that are not designed for the iPad Pro, they run the same way that they do on an iPad Air but everything is zoomed to be larger. This makes some apps feel almost comically large, but for most apps, it’s fine for now. For example, I use LogMeIn as a remote client so that I can see the screen of my computer when I am away from my office, and having everything zoomed in a little bit more makes everything easier to see. I’m sure that the remote screen will look even better and more crisp if and when the LogMeIn app is updated, but I’m already appreciating the app even more on the iPad Pro. The same is true when reading transcripts in TranscriptPad, another app that works well on the iPad Pro even though it is not yet optimized for it. And while the interface of GoodReader is not yet optimized for the iPad Pro, any documents that I view in the app look large and crisp, and do take full advantage of the larger screen.
You can easily tell if an app is optimized for the iPad Pro by invoking the keyboard. The iPad Pro features a new on-screen keyboard that takes advantage of the larger screen by offering additional keys and a new layout, such as number keys always on the screen. The more I use it, the more I like it. But on apps not yet optimized for the iPad Pro, you get the old keyboard, just zoomed to be larger. Ugh. Here is what the new keyboard looks like:
Screenshot
Even for apps that are made to take advantage of the larger screen, some don’t do it that well. A surprising example is Apple’s own Mail app, one of the most used apps on my iPhone and iPad. Mail on an iPad Pro does get the new keyboard, as shown above. But when you are looking at messages, the right part of the screen that displays message content adds a big white space around the three sides of your message. This is a complete waste of space, and I’m puzzled why Apple didn’t do more with Mail before shipping the iPad Pro. Sure, you can pinch two fingers on the screen to enlarge a message and take advantage of the larger screen, but that is a pain to do every single time.
I realize that we’ve been though this before. When the iPhone 5 came out, many apps were not prepared for the taller screen, resulting in black bands at the top and bottom. Then when the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus came out, we again had to wait for many apps to be optimized for the larger screen. This will surely get better over time for the iPad Pro, although it may take longer because I’m sure that the iPad Pro is much more of a niche product than the iPhone 5 and iPhone 6 were. For now, the iPad Pro simply doesn’t yet feel quite right with many apps.
iPad Pro = iPhone 6s Plus? And speaking of those earlier iPhones, I was a very happy user of the iPhone 3 and iPhone 4 models, loving that I could easily touch anything on the screen with my thumb even when holding the iPhone in one hand. When the iPhone 5 came out with its larger screen, I was skeptical at first because it was harder to reach the top of the screen, but over time I found that I preferred that taller iPhone. And then the iPhone 6 came out with its larger screen, and once again I wondered if it was too big. But now, the iPhone 6 / iPhone 6s size seems natural to me, and if I pick up an iPhone 4 it seems like a tiny little toy. After adjusting to the larger screens of the iPhone 5 and iPhone 6, I found that the advantages of seeing more on the screen far outweighed the increase in size and awkwardness in holding the device.
But that doesn’t mean that bigger is always better. While I realize that some people love their iPhone 6 Plus / iPhone 6s Plus, I always find those to be too large for me. I find them very difficult to use with one hand. Also, I cannot talk on an iPhone 6 Plus without feeling like I am Maxwell Smart holding up a shoe phone to my head.
After 10 days of using the iPad Pro, I haven’t yet decided if I think that the size is more like the iPhone 6, which I find to be better because it is larger, or the iPhone 6 Plus, which I find to be just too darn big for my uses. There are times that I love the larger size and find myself so happy to be using an iPad Pro. There are other times that it still feels too big. I will say, though, that every time I go back to my iPad Air 2, it now feels too small in my hand and the screen seems small and compromised, not unlike the way that I now feel about the iPhone 4 and even the iPhone 5 when I use them again. I see that as a sign that the iPad Pro size may be the better size for me.
Performance
The iPad Pro uses a processor that Apple calls the A9X. It makes the iPad Pro significantly faster than any prior iPad. I can’t think of a single time during my over 10 days of heavy testing when I have considered this iPad to be slow. It is incredibly responsive to my touch, apps launch quickly, and complicated tasks are performed almost immediately. When John Gruber reviewed the iPad Pro, he noted that “The iPad Pro is without question faster than the new one-port MacBook or the latest MacBook Airs.” Apple VP Phil Schiller said when the iPad Pro was introduced that the iPad Pro is faster than 80% of PC laptops sold in the last 12 months.
Suffice it to say that the iPad Pro is incredibly responsive, which adds to the overall delight that you get when you use this device.
One performance enhancement that the iPad Pro does not include is 3D Touch, a feature introduced with the iPhone 6s — the ability to push harder on the screen to get a pop-up menu or other options. That feature is especially useful on the smaller screen of an iPhone because it gives you an additional input method that compensates for the small screen size, but I could still see myself using it on the iPad Pro. I suppose Apple is saving 3d Touch for the iPad Pro 2.
Apple Pencil
For many years now, I have used a stylus to take notes on my iPad. Why not just use a laptop computer? While it is true that I can type faster than I can write, studies have shown that you actually retain more information when you write notes by hand instead of typing them. Why? Because when you type, your instinct is to create a transcript, writing down every word. But when you write, you cannot capture every word, so your brain focuses on determining the most important concepts and that is what you write on your paper. Thus, instead of a long pseudo-transcript, you end up with a shorter record of the key concepts. Perhaps more importantly, even if you never look at your notes again, you remember those key concepts more than you would if you had typed them.
Why not just use a pen and paper? Digital notes are more powerful. You can easily use different colors, erase, move things around on the page, etc. Also, you can keep all of your notes with you on your iPad (and keep them forever), so they are always a few taps away, and you never have to worry about where you filed away those notes from 10 months ago when you need to see them again. It is also easy to share digital notes; just email the PDF file. I still often use a pen and paper when I’m in court because some judges don’t want you to have an iPad in court, and I can still write with pen and paper a little faster than I can use a stylus. But for meetings and many other contexts, the iPad is the best choice for me.
To take digital notes, you need a stylus, and that brings us to the new Apple Pencil. The iPad Pro is currently the only iPad to support the Apple Pencil.
The Apple Pencil feels very nice in my hand. The barrel is as thin as a traditional #2 pencil, a good size. Unlike a traditional pencil, the barrel of the Apple Pencil is smooth and round, which made me worried that it would be slippery, but I haven’t had a problem with it slipping out of my hand. It is almost 7 inches long, which is a very nice length and helps make the Pencil feel like a pencil.
The tip is small and feels very nice against the iPad Pro screen. You can remove the tip by twisting it off, and Apple includes a replacement tip with the Pencil — presumably an acknowledgment that it will wear out over time, which is common for styluses that don’t use a hard tip.
The cap on the back of the Pencil is attached by magnets and removes to reveal a Lightning port, used for charging and for initially pairing with your iPad.
I am a little concerned about the cap getting lost. The magnets that connect it are reasonably strong, but I can definitely imagine accidentally hitting the back of the stylus and having the cap come off. If you are on a plane and the cap rolls down the floor, it might be difficult to find. I wonder if Apple will sell replacement caps and how much they will cost. (The Apple website says that you will be able to buy replacement tips in the future, but doesn’t yet say anything about replacement caps.)
You can use an Apple Pencil for about 12 hours straight before it needs to be recharged. There is no on/off switch on the Pencil; it just always seems ready when you pick it up, and presumably it sleeps when it senses that you are not using it. If you pull up the Notification Center on your iPad (swipe down from the top), the Batteries widget will show you how much power is left. But you really don’t need to pay much attention to it because the iPad will alert you when the Pencil gets down to 5% power.
Screenshot
Even if you do run out of power while using it, you can simply plug it in to the Lightning port on your iPad Pro for 15 seconds to get another 30 minutes of charge. It took me about three minutes of being connected to the iPad Pro to go from a 5% charge to a 20% charge, less than ten minutes to get to 50% charge, fifteen minutes to get to 75% charge, and I hit 100% charge after just over nineteen minutes.
So essentially, you never need to worry about the Pencil having an adequate charge; a full charge lasts a long time, and it is quick and easy to recharge directly from the iPad Pro without the need for any external charger. This alone makes the Apple Pencil better than any other active stylus. (You can also charge from a Lightning cord connected to a power source if you want to do so; the Apple Pencil comes with a female-to-female converter to make that connection.)
The performance of the Apple Pencil is amazing. I have tested and reviewed a large number of iPad styluses over the years, and nothing even comes close to the Pencil. The latency (the delay between when you touch the screen and when digital ink appears) is incredibly small on the built-in Apple apps like the Notes app, and it is currently almost as good in many third party apps. (It wouldn’t surprise me if third party apps get even better as they learn to fine tune for the Pencil.) And the Pencil is incredibly precise, with digital ink appearing exactly where you want it, which I have never seen with any other active styluses.
Also, palm rejection is essentially perfect with the Pencil, which is important because the iPad Pro screen is so big that you will want to rest your hand as you write, just like you would do when writing on a legal pad. In fact, the ability to comfortably rest your hand on the large screen is one of the things that makes the Pencil such a great stylus. When you are using the Apple Pencil, you don’t have to worry about stray dots or marks appearing elsewhere because your hand touched it by accident.
I have read several reviews of the Apple Pencil that talk about how great it is for artists. (For example, Serenity Caldwell of iMore gushes that is it the best stylus that she has ever used for sketching, the one that she has been waiting 16 years for.) I may be the son of an architect, but I’m far from an artist, so I can’t give an honest review on how well the Apple Pencil works you want to draw something, other than to say that I played with some drawing apps and the Pencil worked great.
On the other hand, I am qualified to talk about using a stylus to take notes on an iPad and to annotate documents because I’ve been doing that for years with an iPad in my own law practice, and I’ve also reviewed over two dozen iPad styluses over the years. For handwriting notes, the Pencil is truly amazing.
My favorite app for taking handwritten notes during a meeting or sometimes even in court is GoodNotes. GoodNotes works great with the Apple Pencil. For example, as you can see in the below picture, I used GoodNotes to write the words of an Emily Dickinson poem that I had to memorize in Sixth Grade and which is still somehow stuck in my head. First, I used the $50 Adonit Jot Dash which I recently reviewed, one of the newest and best active styluses on the market from one of the leading companies making iPad styluses. The Jot Dash is a fantastic stylus, and it works even better on the iPad Pro than on an iPad Air 2, because on the Pro the stylus has no problem making diagonal lines. But as good as the Jot Dash is, it still makes my handwriting a little worse than it really is, and I still have trouble with digital ink appearing exactly where I place the tip. This is a problem that I have had with all other active styluses so I had sort of become used to it. But switching to the Apple Pencil is a dramatic improvement. Writing is so much easier, everything is more precise with less lag, and even the overall result is better. The following picture shows my handwriting, first written with the Dash, and then written with the Pencil, both times just trying to be as natural as possible when writing with that stylus, and you can see the difference.
Screenshot
The Apple Pencil is also fantastic when you are annotating a document. It feels so natural to use the Pencil to select text that you want to highlight in yellow in an app like GoodReader, and writing notes in the margins of a document works incredibly well.
Another reason that I love using the Apple Pencil with the iPad Pro has almost nothing to do with the Pencil itself: the larger screen makes a great stylus like the Pencil even better. When you are using an iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil to take a full page of notes in an app like GoodNotes, you can take notes without using zoom. On smaller iPads, GoodNotes and many other drawing apps give you a window at the bottom of the screen where you can write notes in a zoom mode that are shrunk to appear on the page at the top of the screen. The zoom mode is essential because (1) normal iPads have screens smaller than a normal legal pad or sheet of paper and (2) styluses are typically not precise, so you get better results when you write larger. But you don’t need a zoom mode on the iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil. The screen is so large that you can just write directly in your notebook at full size. And the Apple Pencil is so precise that it is easy to write even in small print.
The Apple Pencil is also a nice alternative way to interact with the screen. Whether you are swiping through emails or moving candies in Candy Crush, a finger works just fine, but sometimes it is a nice change of pace to use a stylus to interact with the screen. The tip of the Apple Pencil feels great when you move it across the iPad Pro screen, and this means that the Apple Pencil is also enjoyable to use for just general interaction with the iPad. There are a couple of things that the Pencil doesn’t do so you’ll need a finger, such as invoking the split screen mode or pulling down the Notification window, but for most of the taps and swipes that you do when using an iPad, the Pencil works too and is a sometimes a nice alternative to a finger.
I do have one minor complaint with the Apple Pencil. I often store a pen or a stylus in my shirt pocket, so it is nice to have a clip on the side to secure the stylus in my pocket. There is no clip on the Apple Pencil. My hope is that a third party will make a good, simple clip that you can attach.
A clip is often useful on a round stylus for an additional reason: it prevents the stylus from rolling off of your desk. (For example, I noted this earlier this year in my review of the Adonit Jot Script 2.) Fortunately, Apple weighted the Pencil just a little more on one side so that if it rolls, it quickly comes to rest. Imagine your childhood Weeble which would wobble but would not fall down; the Pencil doesn’t resist movement that much, but it does so enough to stop the Pencil from rolling off of the table and onto the floor unless you really push it with the intent for that to happen.
Dave Mark of The Loop recently remarked: “Apple Pencil is the iPad Pro’s killer app.” And Time Magazine just named the iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil one of the 25 best inventions of 2015. I agree. The large screen of the iPad Pro gives you lots of space to write, and when you add to that the amazingly precise and natural to use Apple Pencil, the iPad Pro + Pencil combination is simply the best way that you can take digital notes. For anyone with the desire to write on an iPad, the Pencil is a must-have accessory, and this accessory will be responsible for selling many iPad Pros.
External Keyboards
Apple made a new $169 combination case-and-keyboard to go with the iPad Pro called the Smart Keyboard. I played around with one in an Apple Store but didn’t order one for myself because it didn’t appeal to me.
First, it is too heavy if you are only using the keyboard occasionally. While I have long been a fan of using an external keyboard with an iPad, I only use it occasionally, such as when I am traveling and I’m in my hotel room at night catching up on email from the day. I wouldn’t want the Smart Keyboard to be the case that I used with my iPad Pro every day because it would add too much weight and bulk.
Second, in my tests I wasn’t a fan of the very thin keys covered with fabric. I’d much rather use my old Apple Wireless Keyboard. (Or, I was in the market for something new, I’d get the similar Magic Keyboard that Apple recently introduced, which is just a normal Bluetooth keyboard, instead of the Smart Keyboard.) Those are the same keyboards that Apple includes with the iMac, so they are normal, no-compromise keyboards.
By the way, my old Apple Wireless Keyboard works great with the iPad Pro. iOS 9 (on any iPad, not just the iPad Pro) works better than ever with external keyboards. For example, it is so useful to be able to hit Command-Tab to switch between apps. Also, the Incase Origami Workstation for iPad that I have been using since 2012 also works with the iPad Pro. (You can still buy that on Amazon, but I no longer see it on the Incase website and I believe that the product is now discontinued. Which is unfortunate, because that was a great product.)
There are some things I liked about the Smart Keyboard, especially the Smart Connector which provides power to the keyboard so you don’t have to worry about batteries or charging, and which pairs the keyboard so you don’t have to worry about Bluetooth. If you see yourself spending a significant amount of time using a keyboard with your iPad Pro, then you’ll definitely want to consider the Smart Keyboard and compare it with the other third-party keyboards made for the iPad Pro. But unless you are going to use an external keyboard all the time, I don’t recommend the Smart Keyboard over other Bluetooth keyboards with keys that feel more natural.
Whatever keyboard you use, I can say that using an external keyboard with an iPad Pro is a great experience, better than any other iPad. When the iPad Pro is sitting on a desk in front of a keyboard, it doesn’t matter that the iPad Pro weighs a little more than other iPads, and instead you just appreciate the bigger screen. Using an external keyboard with an iPad Pro is a writing experience very similar to typing with a laptop computer, especially when using Microsoft Word (which works great on the iPad Pro). If you are out of the office and you need to type or revise a document, the large screen of the iPad Pro combined with an external keyboard provides a very nice experience, and for many (like me) is a reason to leave the PC in the office.
Apple Smart Cover
I’ve been a fan of Apple’s Smart Covers for earlier models of the iPad, so I purchased the $59 iPad Pro Smart Cover. It adds almost nothing to the size and weight of the iPad Pro, but it provides some protection to the screen so that you don’t have to worry about something scratching the glass by accident.
You can also fold it in a triangle to prop up the iPad, either at a slight angle for typing or at a bigger angle for looking at the screen on a desk.
I was pleased to see that the Smart Cover has no trouble holding up the larger and heavier iPad Pro. And although it is easy to remove the Smart Cover (it uses magnets to attach to the side), I often keep it on even when I am holding the iPad Pro in my hand. I can fold it up behind the iPad, and it sometimes makes it easier to get a grip on the iPad Pro to hold it.
I like the Smart Cover, and I can recommend that you use it with the iPad Pro.
Apple also sells the $79 iPad Pro Silicone Case, which protects the back of the iPad Pro and is made to work well with the Smart Cover. But I’ve never seen any need to protect the back of my iPad. My iPads have only rarely been scratched on the back, and even if they were to get a scratch, that just adds character. Thus, I didn’t buy and haven’t tried the Silicone Case.
Conclusion
Is the iPad Pro the right iPad for you? It’s a tough question.
I’ve never hesitated to recommend that lawyers use a 9.7″ iPad, such as the iPad Air 2, over the 7.9″ iPad mini. It is nice that the iPad mini is so light and portable, and it can even fit in a small purse, but I find that screen too small to read documents and do the other work that most attorneys want to do with an iPad. I’ve met attorneys who tell me that the iPad mini is right for them, but for most attorneys I believe that the iPad Air size is better.
But now that the iPad Pro is available, it is much more difficult to choose between the iPad Air and the iPad Pro. Using an iPad Pro really emphasizes the limitations of using a smaller 9.7″ display on an iPad Air. Indeed, if someone told you that the desktop or laptop computer that you were going to use could only have a 9.7″ display, I’m sure that you would object strongly that a screen that size is too small to get real work done. For years, we have gotten used to using a 9.7″ display on an iPad, and we’ve gotten pretty good with it. In part that is because you virtually always use just one app at a time on an iPad so you don’t need the extra screen real estate that you use on a PC or Mac to display different windows and folders at the same time. But whenever you work with documents on a 9.7″ iPad, you are making compromises because of the display size.
With the iPad Pro, being larger often means being full-size, especially for documents. That is a huge advantage. But it also means that you are working with a device that is heavier and more awkward to hold than a 9.7″ iPad — much like all but the tiniest of laptop computers are heavier and more awkward to hold than a 9.7″ iPad.
For me, if the only points of comparison between the iPad Pro and the iPad Air 2 were larger screen versus more heavy and more awkward to hold, it would be a draw. Just about all of my appreciation for everything being easier to see on the larger screen would be equally counterbalanced by it being somewhat harder to hold an iPad Pro in my hand.
The Apple Pencil is the tiebreaker for me. The Pencil is truly a joy to use, far better than any other stylus. And while I realize that I am still in my honeymoon period with the Apple Pencil, for now it is one of those rare accessories that makes me want to use a device even more. I look forward to using the Pencil with the iPad Pro, and the fact that I can only use the Pencil with the iPad Pro is one of the reasons that I prefer using an iPad Pro over an iPad Air 2. I’m sure that next year we will see a 9.7″ iPad (the iPad Air 3?) that works with the Apple Pencil, and if/when that happens, then the 9.7″ iPad will be more attractive as compared to the iPad Air, but even that might not be enough for me. As noted above, part of the appeal of the Apple Pencil to me is having that large, no-compromise screen to write on, which wouldn’t exist with an iPad Air even if it were updated to use the Apple Pencil.
[UPDATE: In the Comments to this post, Dallas attorney Tom Mighell asks whether the iPad Pro can replace a computer for an attorney. As I note in my response to his comment, I don’t think that is the right question. Every attorney needs a computer in his or her office. But tablets can do many tasks better than a computer, so I see a tablet as an additional device that attorneys can use to get work done, much like a smartphone is an additional device that an attorney should use but which does not replace the PC/Mac. However, Tom is not alone in asking this question of whether an iPad Pro should be judged based on whether it is an alternative to a laptop computer, so I thought I should address it.]
If you are interested in using an Apple Pencil, then there is a good chance that you will find, as I did, that the iPad Pro is the best iPad for you. If you have no desire to ever take handwritten notes or annotate documents using a stylus, then you have a tougher decision. You need to determine what appeals to you more: a larger screen which makes everything easier to see, or a lighter iPad that is easier to carry. That’s a very close call, and one that I know a lot of folks will be struggling with as they consider the iPad Pro.
This article won the BlawgWorld Pick of the Week award. The editors of BlawgWorld, a free weekly email newsletter for lawyers and law firm administrators, give this award to one article every week that they feel is a must-read for this audience.
If you own an iPad Pro and you want an Apple Pencil, they are still very hard to get. South Carolina attorney Justin Kahn notes on his iPad Notebook website that if you order one online, shipping times are still 4-5 weeks, and Apple won’t let you order more than two. I placed an online order for the Apple Pencil just a few minutes after you could start ordering them back on November 11 but my shipping date range is still Dec. 7 to Dec. 14. But if you call your local Apple Store before they open, you might find that they have a few in stock as of the last day or two. Yesterday, the Apple Store near New Orleans finally had two in stock, so I bought one of them when the store opened at 10am. I’ll talk more about the Apple Pencil when I post my full review of the iPad Pro, but in short: it is excellent, by far the best stylus that I have ever used with an iPad. And now, the other news of note from the past week:
Speaking of Squillante, in the TechnoLawyer Serendipity newsletter, he wrote about a big update to Adobe’s Acrobat app for the iPad: it now integrates with Dropbox. I think that Squillante is correct to conclude that this makes the app considerably more useful for lawyers. It also makes Dropbox more useful for lawyers who use an iPad.
In a think piece on his MacSparky website, California attorney David Sparks writes about the different approach that Microsoft and Apple take to mobile devices such as the iPad; Microsoft wants the same operating system everywhere, whereas Apple sees a value in keeping the systems distinct so that they can each play to their strengths.
In an article for Macworld, Jason Snell writes about some of the problems with the keyboard (external and on-screen) on the iPad Pro.
Zac Hall of 9to5 Mac wrote about some of the new features in iOS 9 that are particularly useful on the iPad Pro such as split screen, picture in picture, and keyboard shortcuts.
To protect yourself from unauthorized use of your online accounts, I always recommend that you use two-factor authentication when it is offered. That way, even if someone gets your username and password, they still cannot login from a computer or other device without also having access to the second form of authentication, such as a number texted to your cell phone. Dan Moren of Six Colors writes that Amazon recently turned on two-factor authentication. I have turned it on for my account, and I recommend that you do too.
Justine “iJustine” Ezarik posted on Twitter a fun series of pictures that show some of Apple’s biggest to smallest screens stacked on top of one another to show the relative size of the iPad Pro.
I often feel like I am one of the few attorneys that doesn’t play golf. If you play golf and you own an Apple Watch, you might be interested to learn that PING has a new Apple Watch app that can help you improve your swing, as reported by Andy Faust of WatchAware,
And finally, this week Apple released six 15 second commercials for the new Apple TV. Each starts with a screen that looks like the traditional TV color bars, except with the traditional six colors of Apple, and then those bars dissolve into an Apple TV app. So far, Apple has released Crossy Road, Asphalt 8, Disney Infinity 3.0 (Star Wars), HBO Now (Game of Thrones), Netflix (Orange is the New Black) and ABC (The Muppets). They may have more in the works; I’m wondering if we will soon see one for the National Geographic Channel because of the placement of its app icon at the end of each commercial. Here are the first two I listed:
I enjoy listening to podcasts when I am driving back and forth to work, doing chores around the house or working out. Yesterday, I was guest on Episode 113 of the Clockwise podcast, one of my very favorite podcasts. If you haven’t heard Clockwise before, it’s a great show. The focus is technology, especially Apple technology, and it is hosted by Jason Snell (former Editor in Chief at Macworld) and Dan Moren (who wrote for Macworld from 2006 to 2014). Every episode has two guests, each of which brings a single topic for discussion, and the show is strictly limited to 30 minutes, so it is fast-paced and doesn’t waste your time.
On yesterday’s show, we discussed the iPad Pro, using iPads to get work done, the Mac App Store, and the recent demise of the Rdio music streaming service. The other guest was tech journalist Shelly Brisbin.
You can download the show in your podcast player of choice, or you can click here to listen in your browser or download the show. I encourage you to check it out.
On November 17, 2008, I started iPhone J.D. and published my first post, explaining why I found the iPhone a valuable tool in my law practice. That makes iPhone J.D. seven years old today. It’s hard to believe that I’ve now been publishing this website for as long as I was in both college and law school, and yet that comparison works well because I have learned so much over that time. To be sure, the world of iOS has changed a lot over those years. The iPhone itself has improved dramatically — the device is much faster and more powerful, and has gone from just a few third party apps to an incredibly deep catalog. The iPad was first introduced during those seven years, and now comes in three varieties from the iPad mini to the iPad Pro. And we now have a large number of fantastic iPhone and iPad accessories, from Apple’s own Apple Watch and Apple TV to countless products made by third parties. As a result of all of this new hardware and software over the past seven years, iPhones and iPads are even more useful for attorneys. It’s no wonder that, according to the ABA, almost half of all attorneys own an iPad, and over half of all attorneys own an iPhone.
Over the past seven years, I’ve written over 1,300 posts on iPhone J.D., including reviews of over 300 apps, reviews of every major iOS device released by Apple (from the iPhone 3GS to the new iPhone 6s and all models of the iPad) and reviews of over 100 accessories. I’ve also tried to provide lots of tips and tricks for getting the most out of your iPhone and iPad, and discussed all of the tech news that I think that you might want to know about if you use an iPhone or iPad. If you haven’t checked out the iPhone J.D. Index recently — now new and improved with a hyperlinked Table of Contents — click the “Index to Prior Posts” link at the top of any page to get there. The index will direct you to lots of posts that are as useful today as they were when they were written, although there are others with only historical significance.
Through the years, I’ve received tons of great feedback from iPhone J.D. readers — via email, when I see readers at conferences or even in court, or in the form of the over 3,000 comments on the site. I’ve learned so much from talking with you, and many of those conversations result in posts. Please keep the feedback coming! I’ve also been honored to share guests posts by attorneys from around the world who use iPhones and iPads in their law practice. (Please get in touch with me if you are interested in writing a guest post on how you use these devices in your own practice.)
As more and more attorneys use iPhones and iPads, site traffic has grown every year. As a result, iPhone J.D. has now had well over 6 million page views in seven years.
Popular posts this year. Every year on the birthday of iPhone J.D. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6), I find it interesting to look back and see which posts over the prior 12 months were the most popular. The fact that these posts were so popular might reveal something about the topics that iPhone and iPad owners have been thinking about lately. Here, in order, are the top ten most viewed posts published in the last 12 months:
Apple Watch tip: solve disconnect from iPhone by resetting Bluetooth. The Apple Watch is a brand new product, so unsurprisingly it was far from perfect at launch. The first problem that I encountered with my own Apple Watch was when it mysteriously disconnected from my iPhone. On April 30, 2015 I provided some tips for solving this problem, and considering that around 50,000 people have viewed that post, it’s clear that I was not the only to encounter that problem.
Review: Microsoft Word for iPhone and iPad — view and edit Word documents on any iOS device. Technically this post was published on November 7, 2014, so just before iPhone J.D. had its sixth birthday. Nevertheless, I’m including it on this year’s list because it was published close to November 17, 2014 and the post was just as popular during this last year. And that should come as no surprise. For years, Microsoft Word was the #1 requested iOS app for attorneys, so it was big news that Microsoft finally updated its Word app to run on the iPad. It is definitely one of the most useful apps on my own iPad; I use at work virtually every single day. And now that we have the iPad Pro, giving attorneys the ability to run Word on a device with a screen just as large as a laptop screen, it is easier than ever to get work done on an iPad when you are out of the office, and it makes the iPad even more useful as an accessory to your computer when you are in your office. If you are an attorney and you are not running Microsoft Word on your iPad and iPhone, then you are missing out on something really useful.
iPad tip — turn off Messages if you share your iPad. This was one of those posts that I wrote after hearing from an iPhone J.D. reader. And it covers an important issue for anyone to consider, but especially if you are an attorney and your text messages sometimes contains confidential information. If you have multiple Apple devices, and one of them is out of your possession and used by others — such as an iPad at home used by your kids — you need to manage your Messages app so that your kids or others don’t see your private messages.
Review: Bamboo Stylus fineline — active stylus with Bluetooth features. This is another post that was technically published just before last year’s sixth anniversary post, but it was far more popular during the last twelve months. Wacom’s Bamboo Stylus fineline is an excellent active stylus for the iPad, but I suspect that the popularity of this post had less to do with this specific model and more to do with the fact that so many of us have been on the lookout for the best iPad stylus. That’s why I myself cannot wait to start using the Apple Pencil with my iPad Pro. Unfortunately, it is still essentially impossible to get, but I did get a chance to try one in an Apple Store and it works very well.
Review: Microsoft Outlook — email client for iPhone and iPad. I suspect that for many attorneys, the only program that they use on their computer more than Microsoft Word is Microsoft Outlook. Thus, I was not surprised to see so many folks read my review of the new Outlook for iOS. Having said that, I’m not using this app myself because I don’t like the way that Microsoft takes messages from my law firm’s mail server and stores a copy on Microsoft’s own server before sending the message to me. If you already use a cloud email service in your law practice such as Gmail, then you have already decided that you are comfortable with your emails containing confidential and attorney-client information being in the possession of a third party that hasn’t signed a confidentiality agreement with you. I don’t mean to judge; that’s a decision that each attorney must make for himself or herself. But for me, I prefer to keep my messages only on the mail server that my law firm controls, and that’s why I don’t use the Outlook app. It’s a shame, too, because the app has lots of great features that don’t exist in the built-in Mail app, such great tools for working with attachments.
Review: Adonit Jot Pro — fine point stylus for iPad. Once again, a lot of folks were interested in reading about another new stylus. Having said that, the 2015 model of the Adonit Jot Pro is currently my all-time favorite stylus. (I suspect that designation will change when I start using the Apple Pencil.) If you don’t have an iPad Pro and you want a great stylus, I strongly encourage you to consider this one.
60 Apps in 60 Minutes 2015. ABA TECHSHOW, held in Chicago very Spring, is always my favorite conference for meeting up with iPhone J.D. readers. Most years, there is a 60 Apps in 60 Minutes session on the last day, a fast-paced session in which three or four presenters quickly discuss apps that attorneys should be aware of. After the 2015 session, I posted the list of the 60 apps discussed. It’s a shame that, looking at the 2016 schedule which was just posted, I don’t see a 60 Apps in 60 Minutes session at the next Techshow, and instead they have a session called Android and iOS Apps: Common Grounds. I’m sure that will be an interesting session too, but I’d rather have both.
Ghost emails and missing emails. I posted this after I found a solution to a strange problem on my iPhone — three emails on my iPhone that I could not delete, with the ghosts of those emails living on. I guess I wan’t the only one with this problem.
Review: Adonit Jot Script 2 — major update for the original active stylus. Yep, there were three stylus reviews in the top 10 this past year. I was particularly interested in checking out the Jot Script 2 by Adonit because the original Jot Script was a groundbreaking device, the first active stylus for the iPad.
Visitors to iPhone J.D. Ever year, I use this post to share some information on iPhone J.D. visitors, to the extent that I can figure it out using the tools at my disposal. I’ll start by saying that all of you are interesting and intelligent, but I didn’t even need to look at the statistics to know that.
During the past 12 months, a record 59% of readers visited iPhone J.D from an iOS device, which includes about 19% from an iPad and about 40% from an iPhone. About 22% used Windows, which is what I use in my own office. About 13% used a Mac, which is what I use at home. Almost all of the other visitors (about 4%) used Android, which is higher than you might have expected given the nature of this website, but remember that (1) every year lots of folks switch from Android to iOS, and (2) some of the third party accessories that I have reviewed can also be used with an Android device, and even some iOS apps have a version available for Android.
Almost 60% of iPhone J.D. visitors are in the U.S., but the site also gets a huge number of visitors from the U.K., Canada and Australia. In every prior year that I have done a post like this, the #1 city for visitors has been New York. That changed this year, but just barely: there were a few hundred more visitors from London over the last 12 months than from New York. This is also the first time since 2012 that Washington, D.C. has made the list; last year’s #10 city Singapore dropped down to #15, and Dallas just missed the top 10 by a few hundred visitors.
London
New York
Los Angeles
Chicago
Sydney
Houston
San Francisco
Melbourne
Toronto
Washington, D.C.
New Orleans, where I live and practice law, hasn’t been in the top ten since this website’s second birthday, but proudly sits at the #26 spot, right above Dublin and right below Vancouver.
Most importantly as I start the eighth year of iPhone J.D., thanks to all of you for reading and offering comments and encouragement along the way. I look forward to another year of writing about the world of iOS hardware and software that is of interest to attorneys.
When you are using an iPhone or iPad and you do not have convenient access to a power outlet — perhaps you are out of the home or office, or perhaps you are just in a room where you need to use your device and you are not seated near an outlet — it is incredibly useful to have an external battery for when you need to recharge your device. Lots of companies make external batteries, but I’ve been very impressed with the Lumsing Harmonica Style Power Bank that I reviewed back in 2014. That one is a 10,400 mAh battery in a nicely styled case that can charge two devices at once. Lumsing recently sent me a free review unit of a similar device with even more capacity called, and yes this is a mouthful, the Lumsing Most Compact Grand A1 Plus 13400mAh Portable Charger External Battery Power. The device currently costs only $27 on Amazon. I’ve been testing it for about six weeks and I can definitely recommend it.
Design
I like the way that Lumsing designs its chargers. Like the Harmonia Style device that I reviewed last year, this one has curved sides so it feels good in your hand and doesn’t have any rough edges to scratch anything else in your briefcase or purse.
There are two USB outlets on one end, and unlike the battery I reviewed last year, you can use either USB outlet to give an iPad the full 2.4 amps of power that will charge it most quickly. The device can sense what you are charging, so it sends the right amount of power — more for an iPad, less for an iPhone. The device can output a total of 3 amps of power at a time, so you can charge two iPhones at the maximum speed. If you charge both an iPad and an iPhone at the same time you get a little less than maximum charging speed, but it is still more than enough to get the job done, albeit a little more slowly than just charging one at a time.
The input for the device is a Micro USB cable (included). It takes about eight hours to fully charge the device, so when it is empty you’ll want to charge it overnight.
You can press a button on the side to see one to four blue lights depending upon whether you have 25%, 50%, 75% or 100% charge. Or if you hold down that button for a few seconds, a small flashlight turns on. It’s not very bright so I doubt I’ll ever use the flashlight, but I suppose there is no harm in it being there.
The device weighs 9.3 ounces. That’s slightly more than the Harmonica Style battery from Lumsing that I reviewed last year (which was 8.35 oz). I found that the weight of this device is heavy enough that I can tell that it was in my briefcase, but light enough that it hasn’t bothered me to keep it in there all the time. On the other hand, I wouldn’t want to carry it in a pocket.
The size is almost 4 inches long (98mm), about 3 1/4 inches wide (79mm), and just over 3/4 of an inch tall (21mm).
The unit sent to me is silver with blue highlights. There is also a black model with orange highlights and a gold model with white highlights.
Capacity
As the name tells you, the battery has a 13,400 mAh capacity. Lumsing says that is enough to charge an iPhone 6 five times or an iPad Air more than once. From my tests, that seems about right. I haven’t yet tried to charge my iPad Pro from zero to 100% using this charger, but I believe that the iPad Pro has a 10,307 battery so this charger should be able to give you at least one full charge.
Utility
Putting aside the numbers, in my real life experience, this battery has given me all of the extra power that I need. I’ve never had to recharge my iPhone more than a few times before I had access to a power outlet, nor have I ever had to recharge my iPad more than once in a day. I’ve used this charger on trips that I have taken where I put heavy use on my devices but didn’t have easy access to a wall charger. I’ve used the charger in depositions where my iPad was getting heavy use but no outlet was near me and I also needed to charge my iPhone because its cellular connection was being shared with my iPad. I’ve shared this charger when I was charging my iPhone and someone next to me needed to charge his iPhone too. This charger has always been up to the task. So whenever this charger was with me, suffice it to say that I always had all of the power I needed.
It is really useful that there are two USB ports on this device. Often I need to just charge one device at a time, but sometimes near the end of a long day I’ll want to recharge both my iPhone and my iPad at the same time, such as when I am waiting for a plane to head home, and I want a charged iPad to use on the plane and a charged iPhone to use when I land. This device can do that, without my needing to locate one of the rare seats in the waiting area that has an outlet nearby.
Conclusion
I usually carry two batteries in my briefcase: a small battery that can recharge an iPhone and that is small and light enough that I can carry it in a pocket, plus a large battery. For that small battery, I continue to like the Powerocks Super Magicstick that I reviewed in early 2014 and which I see is now selling for only $13 on Amazon. But for a larger battery that can charge an iPad, or even an iPad and an iPhone at the same time, I’ve been very satisfied with this Lumsing device. The retail price is $56.99, but you can get it on Amazon for only $26.99.
The big news this week was the introduction of the iPad Pro. I’ve been using one since Wednesday, but I’m still not ready to write a review because I’m still trying to decide what I think of it. For some tasks, the larger size is amazing. Pictures and videos are stunning, and it is so much easier to read documents on the large screen. But for other tasks, it seems too big for me, although I know that I am still getting used to it. And I’d really like to try the Apple Pencil, but they don’t seem to be in stock yet in the Apple retail stores, and the one that I ordered online isn’t expected to ship until December 7 or later. If you have already purchased an iPad Pro and have some initial thoughts on using it in your law practice, I’d love to hear from you. And now, the news of note from the past week:
If you use any of the great Lit Software apps — TrialPad, TranscriptPad and DocReviewPad — and you own or might soon own an iPad Pro, be sure to check out the post on the Lit Software blog with everything that you need to know about using Lit Software apps on the iPad Pro. I was using TranscriptPad on my iPad Pro yesterday, and it was nice to have a larger screen to read and annotate transcripts.
Massachusetts lawyer Bob Ambrogi writes that two more states (New Hampshire and New York) have adopted the duty of technology competence for attorneys.
I’m not a fan of posts on sites like Macworld that are broken into a slideshow so that you need to click to read through the article. Nevertheless, I enjoyed this one by Christopher Phin of Macworld: 16 weird, crazy apps for the new Apple TV, a good list of apps that you might not have known about.
This has nothing to do with the iPhone or iPad, but because I am such a Star Wars fan, I loved reading this interview with J.J. Abrams by Scott Dadich in Wired. It’s a great read. Actually, it does mention Apple’s Jony Ive in the article, so I suppose you could say that it has some lose connection to Apple products.
And finally, we all know that it is more secure to use long, complex passwords, but this video of a password used by a Japanese Twitter user is probably more than you really need. Someone please show this guy Touch ID: (via Cult of Mac)
Just over a week ago, Apple provided select journalists an iPad Pro, with the restriction that they could not post reviews until yesterday morning. Normally, Apple lifts the embargo on reviews a day or two before new products go on sale, but this year, the iPad Pro started to show up in Apple Stores the same day that reviews were posted. Thus, I was reading the brand new reviews of the iPad Pro on my iPhone just moments before my local Apple Store opened and I bought one for myself. I’ll need to spend more time with my own iPad Pro before I’m ready to post my own review, and I hope to soon get access to an Apple Pencil (which I don’t believe are yet in any stores). But I can say this about my first day with the iPad Pro: the screen is huge!
If you are wondering whether the iPad Pro is right for you, here are the reviews that I found most informative from folks who have had a week to kick the tires on the new iPad Pro, the new Apple Pencil and the new Smart Keyboard for iPad Pro — plus some of the interesting things that they said in their reviews:
John Gruber of Daring Fireball: “The iPad Pro is ‘pro’ in the way MacBook Pros are. Genuine professionals with a professional need — visual artists in particular — are going to line up for them. But it’s also a perfectly reasonable choice for casual iPad users who just want a bigger display, louder (and now stereo) speakers, and faster performance. Anyone tying themselves in knots looking for a specific target audience for the iPad Pro is going about it the wrong way. There is no single target audience. Is the iPad Pro meant for office workers in the enterprise? Professional artists creating content? Casual users playing games, watching movies, and reading? The answer is simply ‘Yes’.”
Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal: “The Pro may seem wedged between iPads and MacBooks, but it will be your main computer in the future. As our phablets push smaller tablets into retirement, the big tablet and its accessories will do the same for our traditional computers. For now, however, it may be easiest to step back and see the Pro as a… really good, really big iPad.”
Matthew Panzarino of TechCrunch: “This new iPad is powerful — and for various reasons, this is the first time I feel that it’s actually possible to tell. Between this and the Apple TV, we’re seeing Apple’s A-series chips get pushed really, really hard for the first time, and what this thing can do is pretty damn impressive. It’s pushing over 5.5 million pixels at all times, but never stutters or lags.”
Scott Stein of CNET: “You’d think a super-large iPad might feel absurd. But over time, it grew on all of us. It’s beautifully made, and its extra space can be surprisingly useful at times. But it still wasn’t a complete stand-in for an everyday computer for any of us…although it’s priced like one.”
David Pierce of Wired: “The iPad Pro is plenty powerful, and it’s plenty big. But to call it ‘just a bigger iPad’ is like calling the Millennium Falcon ‘just a bigger falcon.’ In making it bigger, Apple made the iPad Pro different. This is Cupertino’s attempt to prove a tablet can replace and outgun your laptop. Perhaps more importantly, it is Apple’s best idea about how to give you a tablet that is more than a slightly bigger version of your big smartphone. This tablet does things your phone and your laptop can’t do.”
Federico Viticci of MacStories: “The device is noticeably heavier than the iPad Air 2, but not too heavy: upon picking it up for the first time, I noted how I was expecting it to be much heavier – again, looking at the Pro’s body tricked my brain into thinking I was about to pick up an object as heavy as my 13-inch MacBook Air. Instead, the iPad Pro is surprisingly well-balanced: its weight distribution doesn’t make the device annoyingly bottom or top-heavy – in portrait and landscape orientations, both sides of the Pro feel equally balanced and sturdy.”
Walt Mossberg of The Verge: “Apple has managed to design something thin and beautiful, yet capable. [However,] I found it just too big and bulky to hold and use comfortably for long periods. And that was when held horizontally. Held vertically, it was worse, because it felt unbalanced to me.”
Ben Bajarin of Techpinions: “Your first reaction when you see it will be ‘it’s so big!’ Then you will pick it up and you’ll say ‘It’s so light!’ I had the same reaction, as did most people around me, when we first saw and got to touch and hold the iPad Pro at the launch event. It really is big and surprisingly light. That makes it easier to hold in a number of different contexts, from sitting on the couch and watching TV or reading the news, even holding while walking around. This is important for not just consumers but the many commercial uses for iPad I’ve studied over the past year. Doctors using them in the field, or on construction sites being used to replace 1000’s of pages of manuals and blueprints, or in colleges to replace a backpack full of textbooks. All these applications will benefit from the added screen size while not sacrificing the portability they need out in the field.”
Sam Grobart of Bloomberg Business: “It’s a very nicely weighted implement that feels great in your hand. Working in concert with an amped-up, hyper-precise touchscreen, the Pencil can mimic pens, pencils, markers—you name it. Adjust the angle of the Pencil, and the width of your stroke changes. Press harder, and a darker line is drawn. Use a watercolor, and you can watch the color bleed into the ‘paper’ after you’ve taken your brush off the page. And, unlike with a lot of other stylus/tablet combos, the screen reacts instantly, with no lag or any interference to ruin the illusion you’re putting pen to paper. It’s uncanny.”
David Pogue of Yahoo Tech: “It’s safe to say that you’ve never used a stylus that’s more responsive than this one: the ink never lags behind your movement. If you’re scoring at home, the screen checks for the pen tip’s position 240 times a second. You can rest your wrist on the screen as you draw, no problem. You can also draw with your finger. And you can press harder for thicker lines. You can even draw with the side of the Pencil, for very fat strokes… Very, very cool.”
Harry McCracken of Fast Company: “I’ve been living with the iPad Pro and its accessories, provided by Apple for review, for more than a week. They have their limitations, quirks, and at least a few outright bugs, and will be dependent on third-party developers updating their apps to take full advantage of what’s new. But if the idea of using an iPad for serious work strikes you, like me, as an appealing proposition—rather than a waste of time or an impossibility—they add up to a breakthrough package.”
Daniel Bader of MobileSyrup: “The iPad Pro gives an awkward first impression. The human brain can quickly adapt to scale, but when you’re used to something being a certain size and weight, there can be an adjustment period. Upon first picking up Apple’s 12.9-inch slate, I had a disorienting Brobdingnagian feeling of being suddenly shrunken, the object before me a precise recreation of an object I know and use nearly every day. But whereas the iPad Air 2 mainly resides on my bedside table, for reading and catching up on Twitter, I could tell right away that the iPad Pro would likely live in the office.”
UPDATE: A few other reviews I found interesting after this post originally went up:
Jim Dalrymple of The Loop: “iPad Pro represents the start of something completely new for Apple and its developers. The power, versatility, and promise of iPad Pro has not been seen since the original iPad.”
Andrew Cunningham of Ars Technica: “The iPad Pro’s sheer size makes it a less-than-ideal fit for certain use cases, though. Holding the tablet with one hand for any length of time gets uncomfortable quickly, not because the tablet is especially heavy (at 1.57 pounds, it’s not drastically heavier than the 1.5-pound original iPad, something Apple pointed out onstage in September), but because it’s large enough that holding it that way feels unbalanced. That means there’s a class of apps that works well on the iPhone and smaller iPads but doesn’t work as well on the iPad Pro, particularly games that expect you to use the tablet with one hand while controlling action on the screen with the other hand. Admittedly, most people aren’t going to drop hundreds of dollars on an iPad Pro just so they can play Shooty Skies or Ridiculous Fishing on it, but it’s worth noting.”
Lance Ulanoff of Mashable: “The responsiveness is exquisite and the Pencil tip material offers just the right balance between friction and smoothness on the iPad Pro’s touch screen. Pressure sensitivity is about as close as you’re going to get to actually drawing on real paper. It even supports shading, letting me hold the Pencil at an extreme angle to access a the virtual long-edge of a graphite pencil or wide magic marker. What’s more, there is almost no perceptible visual space between the Pencil tip and the digital line that appears on screen. All that combined with the iPad Pro’s impressively large canvas (I have room for a full drawing and reference material) make this a fantastic drawing experience.”
Lauren Goode of The Verge: “So fundamentally, I know that the iPad Pro can’t do all of the things my MacBook Pro can do. And, as of right now, the iPad is still not quite the computing savior that Steve Jobs predicted it would be five years ago. But I would still consider this a worthy runner-up to a laptop, or the one (non-smartphone) device I would take with me next time I travel — something I’ve never felt confident about before when it came to the iPad. This new iPad is powerful, it’s fast, it has a large display, and it never lagged when I was multitasking or switching between apps. It’s not better than my laptop, but makes far fewer sacrifices than I expected.”
Apple announced yesterday that the new iPad Pro can be ordered online starting tomorrow, November 11, and will be available in Apple Stores “later this week.” Because Apple is not calling the online order a “pre-order,” that makes me think that Apple will start shipping at least initial online orders right away, which should mean delivery by Friday or possibly even Thursday. As for the sales in brick-and-mortar Apple Stores “later this week,” Apple traditionally start to sell new products on Friday mornings, so I presume that is when you will start to see iPad Pro models in your local Apple Store. And you may even be able to order on Wednesday with in-store pickup on Friday so that you can be sure that an iPad Pro will be waiting for you in the store when you get there. Thus, if you want to be one of the first to get an iPad Pro, my guess is that whether you order online or shop in a physical store, you can likely get one starting on Friday.
[UPDATE 11/11/15: Apple started to take online orders at 4 am Eastern time on Nov. 11. If you opted to pick up an iPad Pro in an Apple Store, they were available to pick up the same day, and that is what I did. You could also just walk into an Apple Store on Nov. 11 and buy an iPad Pro, but quantities were very limited; for example, the model I wanted was not available for walk-in customers, even those first in line when the store opened. In many parts of the country (including for me in New Orleans), iPad Pro accessories were not available for in-store pickup, with shipping dates of 2-3 weeks.]
At the same time, you’ll also be able to order the Apple Pencil, the new stylus designed to work with the iPad Pro, and the new Smart Keyboard.
If you are trying to decide if the iPad Pro is right for you, I posted my initial thoughts after the introduction in September. I plan to get one, and I’m looking forward to learning how much more useful it is to have a larger 12.9″ screen screen, although I’m also curious whether the larger size will make the device too heavy. For comparison, an iPad Air 2 has a 9.7″ screen, and iPad mini has a 7.9″ screen.
When the Sunday New York Times showed up on my front porch yesterday morning, I was surprised to discover that there was a package with it — a free Google Cardboard device. I had heard of Google Cardboard before, but it wasn’t until I tried it myself that I saw how neat it really is. Google Cardboard is an inexpensive box made of cardboard with two lenses in it. If you don’t subscribe to the New York Times, Google has a website where you can buy one for around $20, or Google even gives you instructions to make your own.
Once you have the Google Cardboard hardware (if “hardware” is the right term to use for something made mostly of cardboard), you place your iPhone (or Android phone) in the Google Cardboard and run an app designed to work with Google Cardboard. The app displays two images on your screen which line up in front of the two lenses, and when viewed through Google Cardboard, everything looks like it is in 3D.
It’s similar to the View-Master that you probably used as a kid, but with some big differences. First, you are looking at video, not still images. Second, as you move your head around, the iPhone senses your movement and adjusts the image accordingly. So you can look up to see what is above, look down to see what is below, or move around to see what is around you. The virtual reality videos are created using special 360° cameras.
Last week, in anticipation of giving out the free viewers to the over 1.1 million subscriber to the Times, the paper launched an app called NYT VR to provide you with content to view. The app is free and you can even use it without Google Cardboard; the app also lets you play the video in a non-Google Cardboard mode in which you move your iPhone to look around you. Try that out to get a sense of it, but keep in mind that the video is far more compelling when you are using Google Cardboard.
The initial content includes a compelling video called Displaced which lets you see and hear from three children who had to leave their homes because of conflict — 11 year old Oleg from the Ukraine, 9 year old Chuol from Sudan, and 12 year old Hana from Syria. As you would expect from The New York Times, the videos are compelling without the virtual reality, but when you watch the video in Google Cardboard, you truly feel like you are there. You can look around and see the destruction from war, and even look up to watch a plane from a relief organization drop food. The virtual reality is not just a gimmick; the video comes alive. I was much more moved than I would have been just watching a YouTube video with the same content.
Another video called Walking New York shows the making of a cover of the New York Times Magazine from earlier this year. The whole video is fascinating, but it is also worth it for a single scene in which the 360° camera is next to a helicopter and you get an amazing aerial view of Manhattan. Wow.
Screenshot
There a few other videos included with great content. You can also download the free Vrse app to see other VR content. (Vrse created the app for the Times.) I particularly enjoyed watching the Celebrity Jeopardy sketch from Saturday Night Live’s recent 40th anniversary show. The sketch itself was funny (even though I had seen it before), but it was fascinating to turn my head away from the actors and see the cameramen, folks holding cue cards, audience, etc. Watching all of the activity that wasn’t the focus of the main TV camera was even more interesting than the comedy sketch itself.
Some videos even feature 3D audio. There is a U2 video in the Vrse app where you are in the middle of the band and can hear what is to your left and right. It’s a great way to experience a music video.
According to an article by Adi Robertson of The Verge, the Times will release more video next month and throughout 2016. Kudos to the Times for embracing this emerging technology and using it to tell more compelling stories. If you don’t have Google Cardboard yourself, consider getting one so that you can follow along with me to experience the VR videos released by The New York Times in the coming months.
