Jason Snell of Six Colors notes that the Mac Plus had its 30th birthday this week. Although the Mac Plus debuted on January 16, 1986, it remained in production until October of 1990, making it the longest produced Mac ever. The Mac Plus was the first Apple product that I bought with my own money; I spent a few weeks after my Freshman year of college teaching at a workshop for high school debate students, and then in August of 1988 I used my earnings to buy a Mac Plus and 20MB external hard drive. (No, “20MB” is not a typo.) I was a little jealous of my roommate, who had a faster Mac SE/30, but I loved that Mac Plus and I used it until I was in law school. I’ve been a Mac user at my house ever since. And now, the news of note from the past week:
- New York attorney Nicole Black reviews the Impecca Bluetooth Wireless Bamboo Keyboard — a wooden keyboard — in an article for the ABA’s GPSolo eReport.
- Massachusetts attorney Robert Ambrogi reviews Citrix ShareFile, a service that you can use to securely share documents. I use this service too in my law practice, and it has an app for iOS.
- Zac Hall of 9to5Mac describes the latest update to Microsoft Office for iOS, which adds 3D touch actions for those who have the newest iPhones and adds an Apple Pencil ink function for those who have the iPad Pro.
- Apple has been in the news latest for defending encryption of data on its devices, and it sometimes seems strange that Apple is the only tech company being vocal on this issue. Security expert Rich Mogull explains why Apple is in a unique position in an interesting article for TidBITS.
- Apple has also been in the news for assembling its iPhone in China, especially when people like Donald Trump make idotic statements this week about getting Apple to instead assemble in the United States. John Gruber of Daring Fireball wrote a good article on why Apple assembles in China.
- Joe White of WatchAware reviews an app called Complicate It that you can use to add text to the watch face of an Apple Watch. Sounds like a good way to save a reminder — the modern equivalent of a string around your finger — or have easy quick access to a number.
- Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal reports that New York is replacing telephone booths with fast, free Wi-Fi. Her article gives you great tips for using public Wi-Fi, including using encryption and a VPN service such as Cloak (which I reviewed here). Her article is worth reading whether you are using free Wi-Fi in New York, an airport, or your local coffee shop.
- Speaking of security, Daniel Taroy of Fast Company reports on the 25 most popular passwords of 2015. If you are using any password on that list, CHANGE IT CHANGE IT NOW NOW NOW.
- Michael Simon wrote an interesting article for Macworld about Apple’s handwriting recognition technology over the years.
- Rene Ritchie of iMore has some great tips for using Safari on an iPhone or iPad.
- And finally, if you play music — especially piano or guitar, although it works with other instruments too – Apple released a really cool, free app this week called Music Memos. The app gives you a place to quickly record a snippet of music, so that when you come up with a cool idea for a song you can record it, and then later can go back and hear it again. Of course, you could always just use the built-in Voice Memos app to record something, but Music Memos makes it even better by analyzing your music, determining the key and tempo, and then letting you tap a button to add a bass guitar and drums to give your musical idea a little more depth. I play piano, and I think this app is incredibly cool. Here is a great review of the app by David Pogue of Yahoo Tech — a tech reporter who used to be a Broadway conductor — and I’ve embedded below one of his videos showing how the app works. I love that Apple would release such a cool app for free, even though it probably don’t have a very large audience. But I know lots of attorneys who are also amateur musicians, so if you put yourself in that category, you’ll want to get this app right now. Click here to get Music Memos (free):
