It was a busy week for me at work so I didn’t have much time to keep up with all of the news in the world of iPhone and iPad, but here are a few articles that did catch my eye during the past week:
New York attorney Neil Squillante of TechnoLawyer reviews Moleskine’s Smart Writing Set, which lets you use a smart pen and a special notebook to create digital notes.
California attorney David Sparks created video screencasts on using the Drafts app for iPhone and iPad.
John Gruber of Daring Fireball wrote a excellent perspective on Apple’s decrease in revenue and profit this quarter.
Jesse Hollington of iLounge reviews the August Doorbell Cam, a doorbell with a video camera that you can view remotely on your iPhone.
Julio Ojeda-Zapata reviews Apple’s 29W USB-C Power Adapter and USB-C to Lightning Cable in an article for TidBITS. I reviewed those devices last month and I still really, really like using them with my iPad Pro. I find it incredibly useful to be able to charge that largest iPad Pro so much faster than you can with the standard charger.
And finally, as someone who loves the iPad, playing the piano, and cool technology, this video had my name written all over it. Piano Tiles 2 is a fun game you play by tapping black keys as they scroll down your screen. Matt Finn, the CEO of app developer Bitcount (which makes the great Cleartune app that you can use to tune a musical instrument) created a robot to play the game on his iPad, using an iPhone as the eyes of the robot. Suffice it to say that the robot does quite well, as you can see in this video:
Yesterday, Apple released the results for its 2016 fiscal second quarter (which ran from December 27, 2015 to March 26, 2016) and held a call with analysts to discuss the results. Apple always sees a big decrease in revenue from its first to its second fiscal quarter because Q2 comes right after the holiday quarter. But this year, Apple’s fiscal second quarter was noteworthy for an unfortunate reason. For the first time since Apple’s 2003 third quarter, Apple has brought in less money in a fiscal quarter than Apple saw in the year-ago quarter. Apple’s revenue was $50.6 billion in 2016 Q2, down from $58 billion in 2015 Q2. If you want to get all of the nitty gritty details, you can download the audio from the announcement conference call from iTunes, or you can read a rough transcript of the call prepared by Seeking Alpha, or a transcript prepared by Rene Ritchie and Jason Snell over at iMore. Apple’s official press release is here.
For many news outlets, the drop in revenue is the big story, and I’m sure that Apple’s stock price will take a hit. But as always, I’m not as interested in the financial details as I am the statements of Apple executives during the call that are of interest to iPhone and iPad users. Here are the items that stood out to me:
iPhone
During the past quarter, Apple sold 51.2 million iPhones. That’s down from the 61.2 million iPhones that Apple sold a year ago. (Apple’s all-time record was three months ago in the 2016 fiscal first quarter, when Apple sold 74.779 million iPhones.) Apple CEO Tim Cook said that the 51.2 million was consistent with Apple’s own expectations, but lower than the “exceptional” 2015 Q2 when Apple saw an acceleration in iPhone upgrades and 40% iPhone sales growth from 2014 Q2.
The new iPhone SE went on sale March 31, just after 2016 Q2 ended, so the 51.2 million number doesn’t include any iPhone SE sales.
Cook noted that looking at both 2016 Q1 and Q2, Apple has seen more people switching from Android to iPhone than any other six month period in history.
Cook noted that only 42% of the global handset market is currently using smartphones, which he sees as an opportunity for future iPhone sales growth. For example, in India, iPhone sales were up 56% from a year ago. Thus, although Cook noted that the overall smartphone market is currently not growing, he sees opportunities for growth in the future.
By my count, as of March 26, 2016, Apple has sold over 947 million iPhones since they first went on sale in 2007.
Looking to the future, it occurs to me that it is possible that Apple will sell its one billionth iPhone in the current 2016 Q3 quarter, which will end in late June of this year. In 2015 Q3, Apple sold 47.5 million iPhones, so Apple would need to do better than that this year to cross over that threshold before the end of June, but it is possible considering that the new iPhone SE is now on sale and seem to be doing well.
iPad
Apple sold 10.3 million iPads, compared to 12.6 million in the year-ago quarter.
Cook noted that the new 9.7″ iPad Pro just went on sale, and predicted that next quarter Apple will see the best iPad revenue that it has seen in over two years — although Apple CFO Luca Maestri said that Apple expects to see seasonal declines in number of iPads sold.
Cook noted that the tablet market is very different from the smartphone market because people tend to hold on to tablets for a long time before upgrading.
By my count, as of March 26, 2016, Apple has sold over 318 million iPads since they first went on sale in 2010.
Other
The App Store saw record revenue in 2016 Q2.
Apple Music now has 13 million paying customers. (Spotify has about 30 million paying subscribers.)
Unlike the iPhone and iPad, Apple doesn’t report Apple Watch unit sales. But Cook did note that there were more Apple Watch sales in the first year than iPhone sales in the first year. We know that Apple sold 5.4 million iPhones during the first year that the iPhone was on sale. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that, according to analysts (who, of course, may be wrong), Apple sold 12 million Apple Watches in the first year.
I’ve been using an Apple Watch since April 24, 2015, the day that they first went on sale. I love the device, and I wear it every single day. But it also drives me crazy, especially when I try to use third party apps. I first reviewed the Apple Watch after only using it for a weekend. Here are my thoughts after using it for a year.
What I love
I love getting notifications with a tap on my wrist. I don’t let many apps send me notifications, but when I get a text message, an email from folks on my VIP list, or a notification from Reminders that it is time to do something, the Apple Watch works great. First, the notification is silent, just a tap on my wrist, so folks around me don’t hear a beep or even hear the buzz of my iPhone vibrating. Second, it is super fast and convenient to just lift my wrist to see what the notification is about. And for less important notifications, such as emails from anyone who is not a VIP, I love that I can just glance at the top of the screen and see a red dot if there is something new — or no red dot if there is nothing new for me to worry about.
Almost as useful as receiving notifications is responding to them. I love that my wife can send me a text or a colleague can send me an email, I can glance at it on my watch, and then I can quickly tap on an appropriate response and send it. Sure, I sometimes take out my iPhone when I want to compose a longer response, but the standard responses combined with the ones that I added manually are sufficient most of the time.
Swiping down from the top of the screen works reasonably well, although I wish that there was a quick way to delete an email from that view without having to first tap on the notification and scroll all the way to the bottom of the email message — which can be a long way for much junk mail — to delete. But for the most part it is very fast and convenient to use the digital crown to scroll through new messages.
I love complications on the watch face, which is why I use the Modular face to see the time, upcoming appointments, the temperature, the date and my activity circles.
And speaking of those activity circles, they have resulted in the first exercise regimen that I have stuck with for more than a few months. Being conscious of the Move and Exercise circles has prompted me to walk during the day more than I ever did before and use a treadmill almost every night. As for the Stand circle, while I don’t know if there are actual health benefits to standing once an hour for 12 hours a day, I love that it prompts me take a tiny break when I am sitting at my desk doing research and writing for 50 minutes straight without realizing how much time has passed. If I take just 30 seconds to stand up and move around a little bit, not only do I get another notch on the Stand circle, but more importantly I give myself a little jolt of energy to get back to work for the next hour.
I don’t use Apple Pay very often, but when I do it is both convenient and fun to pay with my watch.
I don’t walk around in other cities very often, but when I do, I love getting turn-by-turn walking directions. Instead of having to stare at my iPhone (and look like a target), I can just walk and feel the different taps on my wrist to tell me if I have to turn left or right at the next intersection.
I like using Siri on my Apple Watch, especially to give myself reminders. I have my Apple Watch set so that Siri activates only when I push in the digital crown. I find it very convenient to hold it down for a second and tell my watch to remind me to do something at a specific time, or when I get to some specific place like home or the office. I’ve long used Siri on my iPhone for the same thing, but it is even more convenient to do so on a watch.
I love using my Apple Watch as a remote control for podcasts and music. I listen to podcasts and Apple Music quite a bit, sometimes just using my iPhone’s built-in speaker, often when connected to a Bluetooth speaker. I love being able to swipe up on my watch to see the Now Playing Glance, where I can play or pause, jump back 15 seconds if I missed something, or jump forward 30 seconds to skip through a commercials that I’ve heard many times before.
Finally, I love what Apple is doing with watch bands. There is an incredible selection to choose from. After trying out many of them, I’ve settled on two that I really like: the Milanese Loop, which I wear at work, and the black XL sport band, which I wear when working out and on weekends when I want something more casual, durable and waterproof. I love how easy it is to swap watch bands, and it is fun to see that Apple is constantly releasing new options, all of which are very high quality.
What I don’t like
There are also many things that annoy me about the Apple Watch, and I will definitely upgrade to a second generation Apple Watch if it addresses all or many of these concerns.
First, third party apps are just too darn slow. It takes forever for them to launch. And it often takes a ridiculous amount of time for them to get updated information. For example, for over a week I’ve been testing an Apple Watch app called Events Widget. The app has a complication for the center of the Modular face that can show you a little bit of information on your next three calendar entries, which I find more useful than a lot of information on just the next entry.
But I’ve decided to hold off on posting a formal review of Events Widget because about 20% of the time, the information displayed in the complication is not accurate; it is missing an appointment. If I tap on the complication to launch the app on the Apple Watch and force it to retrieve updated information, and then return to the watch face, the events will show correctly. Normally I would be tempted to blame the developer for a bug like this, but I know from using many other third party apps on the Apple Watch that data is often slow to update, no matter what the developer does to try to avoid it. I don’t know if this is because the Apple Watch hardware is too slow, or because the Apple Watch software is trying to preserve battery life at the expense of third party apps working in the background. But whatever the reason, I really wish that this could be fixed so that third party apps can be truly useful on the Apple Watch.
Speaking of third party apps, Apple needs to let developers do even more with complications on the watch face — and why not let third parties design their own watch faces. Looking at the watch face on the Apple Watch is something that I do all of the time, and I find myself wishing that this aspect of the Apple Watch could be made even more useful by third parties.
I also wish that Apple would do something different with the button on the side of the watch. Pressing it once brings up the favorite contacts screen, which is a feature that I virtually never use — and from what I hear from others who use the Apple Watch, neither do they. I’m not sure what else that button should do, but for now it is just a waste of space. (I do like pressing the button twice to activate Apple Pay.)
I also wish that Apple would let third party Glances be more powerful. Apple’s own Glances, like Settings and Now Playing, have useful buttons. But third party apps can just display a static screen — often with information that is out of date until you wait for it to reload.
Although Siri is one of the things that I really like about my Apple Watch, it is annoying that Siri sometimes doesn’t work. It is more reliable than third party apps, but at least a few times a week my watch has trouble accepting voice commands, which virtually never happens on my iPhone.
And finally, it bugs me that the Apple Watch itself is sometimes painfully slow. Most of the time, the built-in functions work well, and much better than third party apps. But sometimes the Apple Watch will have a brain freeze and even the basic functions will slow to a halt, and there is nothing I can do but just wait it out.
The future
Although the negatives really bug me, the things that I love about the Apple Watch are more than enough for me to be a big fan. Having said that, when people now ask me whether they should get an Apple Watch, I usually say no. If you have waited this long without getting one, I recommend that you continue to wait until Apple releases the second generation of the watch, which I presume will happen later this year. Virtually every complaint that I have about the watch is something that I’ve seen others write about online, so surely Apple knows about the drawbacks from those articles, if not from the experiences of the Apple employees themselves. I have to think that Apple has been working to address these issues, and will do so soon.
The Apple Watch is already incredibly useful and a lot of fun to own. It might take a second, or even third or fourth generation, to address all of the problems that annoy me and others, but I’m sure that they will be addressed eventually. Just look at how far the iPhone and iPad have come over the years. If Apple preserves what is great about the Apple Watch while addressing the drawbacks, then I will be recommending the Apple Watch to everyone.
One of the reason that I encourage folks to consider taking handwritten notes with an Apple Pencil and an iPad Pro instead of typing notes on a computer is that studies show that it is better to take handwritten notes because you understand and remember more. James Doubek of NPR reports on one of the latest such studies involving college students. If this study convinces you and you are ready to take the plunge, which app should you use? Serenity Caldwell of iMore considered that question and selected the best apps for handwriting with the Apple Pencil. She describes my favorite, GoodNotes, as the “high-powered sports car” of handwriting apps. And now, the rest of the news of note from the past week:
California attorney David Sparks discusses typing on the 12.9″ iPad Pro’s glass screen. His conclusion is similar to mine — typing on glass is not ideal, but it works much better on that device because of the large screen with a full-size keyboard.
Tison Rhine of the State Bar of Wisconsin discusses iPhone mail apps.
Apple’s General Counsel, Bruce Sewell, testified before Congress this week. Chance Miller of 9to5Mac describes the testimony and links to a video of it.
I previously reviewed Cloak, a VPN service that works really well and that I still use myself. Russell Brandom of The Verge reports that the company is currently facing a ransom demand and a potential DDoS attack. iPhone J.D. and other sites that use TypePad went through a similar attack two years ago, and it isn’t fun. But I think Cloak is taking the right approach to this criminal attack, being open and honest about it with customers.
Serenity Caldwell of iMore lost her iPad Pro in the middle of the night at a rest stop (oh no!) but she recovered it (yea!) and lived to tell the tale.
Apple has struck gold! Well, almost. Kif Leswing of Business Insider UK reports that as a result of Apple’s iPhone recycling efforts, the company recovered 2,204 pounds of gold — over a ton, about $40 million work.
And finally, Tesla has been in the news this week because of its newly announced Model 3 sedan, which already has almost 400,000 pre-orders. That reminded me of this video, in which someone uses an Apple Watch to to instruct their Tesla Model S to get out of the garage automatically:
The Microsoft Word app is one of the most useful apps for attorneys looking to get work done on their iOS devices. Since Word was first introduced two years ago, the app has received frequent updates making it even more useful. Today I want to focus on two great features added this year — the Draw tab for the iPad, and contextual commands for the iPhone. I’m focusing on Microsoft Word because that is the Microsoft app that I use almost every day, but these new features also work in the Excel and PowerPoint iOS apps.
Word on the iPad — the Draw tab and the Apple Pencil
In late January of 2016, Microsoft added drawing tools to the iPad version of Microsoft Word. One way to access the drawing tools is to tap the Draw tab.
There is an even better way to start drawing if you are using an iPad Pro (either a 12.9″ or the new 9.7″ version) and if you have an Office 365 account: just start drawing. Thanks to the new instant ink feature, you can just start drawing on a document using an Apple Pencil and the Word app instantly starts applying digital ink to your document and switches to the Draw tab. So if you are reading a document and you want to make a note in the margin, just make the note with the Pencil. The app will be ready for you.
Using the Draw tab, you can switch between a pen, a highlighter and an eraser. You can tap a plus or minus sign to make the pen or highlighter thicker or thinner.
You can change the color of the pen ink or the highlighter, either by picking one of the four default colors, or by tapping the fifth color circle which brings up a color wheel. Spin the outer wheel to choose the basic color, then spin the inner wheel to select how light or dark the color should be. The result is shown in the middle.
The eraser tool doesn’t work like a traditional eraser. Instead, when the tool is enabled, any drawing that you tap just disappears. Thus, it is fast and easy to remove drawings.
If you are not using an Apple Pencil, then you need to flip on the switch labeled Draw with Touch. This lets you use a finger or other stylus to draw. Then you flip off the Draw with Touch switch to use your finger to scroll up and down the page or select a specific drawing to move it around, or use the pop-up menu to cut, copy, or paste whatever you selected. This all works best if you use an Apple Pencil because then you can just keep Draw with Touch always turned off; you draw whenever the Pencil touches the screen, and you scroll or select a drawing by using your finger.
One tool that ought to be better is the highlighter tool. When you use it, it adds a yellow color (or whatever color you select) on top of text, making the text itself harder to read. A proper highlight tool keeps the underlying text the same dark black and adds yellow around it — which is exactly the result that you get using Word’s normal highlight tool. In the following example, compare the difference between the highlighting that I did with the Draw tool and the Apple Pencil at the start of the paragraph with the highlighting I did with Home tab and the highlighting tool at the end of the paragraph.
What makes highlighting even more curious to me is that if I view this same Word document on my PC, the highlighting that I drew with the Pencil looks correct, with the text staying dark. It is just on the iPad and iPhone (and Mac) that the Apple Pencil highlighting doesn’t look correct. This indicates to me that it is a problem that Microsoft could fix, and hopefully they will in a future update.
Before this update to the iPad app, if I wanted to use handwriting to annotate a Word document, I would first have to convert the file to PDF and then use a PDF editor to add the annotations. Now, I can just add the annotations directly in Word. If I am in a meeting and someone emails me the agenda in Word format, I can take notes during the meeting just by writing in the margins of the agenda. If someone sends me a file to review and I don’t want to make more formal and precise edits using the Track Changes feature, I can just add my thoughts using handwriting, circling words or sections and writing handwritten notes.
If you send someone a Word file with your handwritten notes, they will be able to see all of the notes on a Mac or PC (or iOS device). The notes themselves are like pictures on top of the document. As a result, when that other person goes to edit the document to implement your suggested changes, they will usually not want to use the Word file that you sent them — because they will have to take the time to manually remove each drawn annotation — but instead they would likely want to go back to a clean version of the document. Thus, handwritten edits can be less useful than edits that you make using the Track Changes feature, where the other person can just review the edits and accept or reject each redline. But sometimes I don’t want to take the time to actually make the full edit, and instead I just want to convey an idea, and for that, handwritten edits, circling words and paragraphs, adding arrows, etc. are better than redline edits.
The Draw tab is a nice feature for lawyers or anyone else who has the need to markup a document. The basic feature works on all iPads, but it really shines when you are using an Apple Pencil on an iPad Pro.
Word on the iPhone — contextual commands
You cannot use the Draw tab on an iPhone, nor do I think that you would want to do so on that small screen, but that doesn’t mean that Microsoft has forgotten about the iPhone. Just this month, Microsoft added a new feature to the iPhone version of Word: contextual commands.
When you edit a document in Word, just above the keyboard area, there is now a new bar that gives you quick access to the commands that you are most likely to want to use. You can see about four options on the main portion of the bar, followed by three dots that you can tap to bring up the different tabs, followed by a keyboard icon that you can tap to make the keyboard disappear.
Although you can only see about four icons in the main part of the contextual commands bar, there are more; you just need to swipe to the left to bring them up. So in addition to bold, italics, underline and highlight, you can also quickly access other commands such as bullets, comments, insert table, and undo.
What you see in the contextual commands bar changes based on what you are doing. For example, if your cursor is in a table you will also see icons to add or delete rows and columns.
Conclusion
I find both of these new features to be very useful when I am working with Word documents on my iPad or iPhone. If you have your device configured to update apps automatically, you might not have even noticed that these new features were added. I encourage you to try them out.
Moreover, if you are still on the fence about whether it is time to update from an older iPad to the 9.7″ or 12.9″ iPad Pro, now you have one more reason to do so. The Word app on the iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil are a powerful combination for getting work done.
Yesterday, while waiting for a flight in the Atlanta airport, I tried out a free app called Tunity. It’s a neat service that plays on your iPhone the sound from a television that is tuned to certain channels — the idea being that even if the TV is muted or too low for you to hear, you can still watch the TV and listen to the audio using headphones on your iPhone. I used it in an airport, but the website for the app suggests that you can also use it in other places such as a bar, gym, waiting area, etc.
Using the app is simple. Just point your iPhone at the screen and tap a button for Tunity to scan the TV. It works best if you are pretty close to the screen, but as you can see from the below photos, I got the app to work even when I was pretty far away from the TV (although sometimes I had to scan more than once from this distance for it to work).
If Tunity is unable to figure out what you are watching, you will get an error message. I found that the app sometimes wouldn’t work when a commercial was playing, but worked well during the regular broadcast.
Once Tunity detects what is on the TV, you wait a few seconds, and then the audio starts to stream. Often you will find that the audio is not in perfect sync with the TV, but you can press the fast forward and rewind buttons to skip the streamed audio ahead or behind so that it matches the video.
When I was in the airport yesterday, the TV audio was being played on a speaker in the airport. It was sometimes hard to hear over the background noise in the airport, but I was able to take out one of my earphones to listen to the sound in the airport in one ear and the sound from my iPhone in the other ear to quickly figure out how to sync the audio. (The stream from Tunity was usually a little ahead of what I was hearing at the airport.) But if you are in an environment where the TV is muted, it might be a little more difficult to guess whether you need to skip the audio slightly ahead or slightly behind to match the lips of the person speaking. Having said that, even if the audio is slightly out of sync, I suspect that for many programs, it will be OK if the audio is slightly out of sync with the video.
I found that after listening to the audio for a few minutes, the audio would sometimes get slightly out of sync again, even if I started by getting them perfectly in sync. I’m not sure why the Tunity stream played just slightly faster than the actual TV, but any time that I noticed it, it was easy enough to tap the rewind button once to get it back in sync.
Tunity works with lots of national stations, but not every station. You can tap a button in the app to see all of the compatible stations, which include the New York feeds of the major network stations including ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX (and in Atlanta I was also able to see the Atlanta major networks, so perhaps there are other major city networks that work), plus lots of popular cable stations including AMC, CNN, CNBC, Comedy Central, Discovery Channel, Food Network, TBS, TNT, USA, etc. And lots of sports networks work too, such as Big Ten Network, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNews, ESPNU, Fox Sports 1, Golf Channel, MLB Network, NBA TV, NFL Network, NHL Network, SEC Network, etc.
The app only works with live content from supported channels. Thus, if you are watching a TV that is showing a movie from a DVD, or a local station that isn’t included in the app, it won’t work.
I’ve been in sports bars that had lots of different TVs tuned to different channels showing different games. I can imagine using Tunity to listen to the audio of the game that interests me on one TV, even if audio from another TV is being played at the bar.
The app is free to download and you can try it out without an account for a while, but then it eventually asks you to create a (free) account to continue using the app.
Tunity is a neat idea that works well. I’m not sure when I will next use this app, but this is exactly the sort of app that I like to have on my iPhone so that it is there whenever I need it.
In light of the ongoing litigation in multiple cases between Apple and the FBI regarding iPhone security, many folks are wondering about the most secure way to communicate with clients and others, via text or a telephone, on the iPhone. Currently, two good options are the iPhone’s built-in Facetime and Messages technology and the third party WhatsApp app. Glenn Fleishman of Macworld explains why you might get slightly more security with WhatsApp right now because of a few features that Apple might soon adopt but which are currently limited to WhatsApp. Having said that, using either technology, you will get much more security than normal SMS text messaging and traditional telephone conversations. And now, the news of note from the past week:
Back when I used a PalmPilot in the early 2000s, I used a stylus to enter text in my mobile device. California attorney David Sparks shows off MyScript Stylus, a keyboard replacement for the iPad that lets you convert handwriting to text instead of typing on a keyboard.
Jesse Hollington of iLounge reviews Lutron’s Caséta wireless devices, including the in-wall dimmer and plug-in lamp dimmer units, and concludes that it is “the system to go with at this point.” I use a number of Lutron devices in my home, including three dimmers and a plug-in unit, and they work really well for me. (My review is here.) If you are thinking of taking advantage of Apple’s HomeKit technology to turn your home into a smart home, you’ll want to take a look at the Lutron units.
Christian Zibreg of iDownloadBlog reports that Siri is getting excited for the new season of Game of Thrones. You can ask Siri questions such as “Is Jon Snow dead?” and “Is Winter coming?”
I enjoy using my Apple Watch and iPhone for fitness purposes, but for those who really want to take it to the next level, Dennis Sellers of Apple World Today discusses the upcoming Naked 3D Scanning Mirror, a scale from Naked Labs that spins you around in front of a full-length mirror and uses an app to take a 3D scan of your naked body, used to compute body measurements, fat percentage and weight, and to monitor changes in your body over time.
And finally, if you watched TV this week, you may have seen some of Apple’s new 15 second Apple Watch commercials. I think that they are all pretty good. Abdel Ibrahim of WatchAware has a post where you can watch all of them, but my favorite is the one featuring Jon Batiste of the Late Show with Stephen Colbert — and I’m not just saying that because Batiste is from New Orleans and I’ve enjoyed seeing him live many times. (He is incredibly talented on the piano.) Here is the Jon Batiste video in the new Apple campaign:
Thank you to Westlaw for sponsoring iPhone J.D. this month. There is some good news for iPhone J.D. readers who use Westlaw: the app now works on iPhone. Westlaw has long worked well with the iPad. The iPad was first introduced in the Spring of 2010, and just a few months later, WestlawNext for iPad was introduced. That app was useful when it was introduced, and has improved substantially over the years, adding new features and improving the interface. Last month, just before ABA TECHSHOW, Thomson Reuters updated the Westlaw app so that it now runs on both the iPad and iPhone.
Even though this is a universal app, when run on the iPhone you see something fairly different than what you see on an iPad. On an iPad, the Westlaw app is a full featured research tool, one that you can use to do virtually all of the same type of research that you might to on a computer. Indeed, when I am at my desk, I will often have Word open on my computer as I am drafting a Memorandum but I will use Westlaw on my iPad to do legal research. I like the clean look of the iPad app, and it is nice to be able to lean back in my chair and do research on my iPad.
The iPhone screen is pretty small to do full legal research (although of course you could do it in a pinch). So instead, the iPhone version of the app focuses on just a few things.
Of course, there is a search feature. You can enter a case citation, or search terms, and quickly see results. So if you are talking to another attorney about a reported decision and you want to look at the language of the opinion, you can just take your iPhone from your pocket and quickly pull up the case and then scroll down to the relevant language. Even better, if you want to re-run a search that you previously did on your computer or on the iPad, your most recent searches are listed so that you can just tap to run them again.
Looking at an opinion on the iPhone is different from the iPad. For one thing, the headnotes are not displayed at first, which makes it faster to scroll down to the text of the opinion. But if you want to see the headnotes, you can just tap the “Related Content” link to see them.
If you tap the three dots at the top right corner, you can email an opinion (in MS Word, PDF, Word Perfect or RTF format), or you can print. (A tip for iPhone 6s owners: tap Prepare to Print, then use 3D touch to push down on the preview of the opinion, and you will see a PDF version of the opinion that you can easily email or open in another app.)
If you use the folders feature of Westlaw, you can see all of your folders on the iPhone app, including all of the items you saved there on your computer or iPad, and you can add a case to a folder.
Searching for opinions and statutes is the most useful part of this app for me, but the app also lets you stay up-to-date with Westlaw alerts, docket updates, and gives you the ability to track companies and follow practice area developments.
One feature I would love to see on the iPhone app is a History button so you can quickly pull up the most recent documents that you viewed on an iPad or computer. A West representative told me that the company is considering adding some limited History functionality such as easier access to recent documents in a future update.
Note that if you want more features, you can still just access Westlaw using the Safari browser on an iPhone, which gives you access to most of the full Westlaw features — including history. The interface of Westlaw in Safari is actually pretty good, but for the functions that are available in the iPhone app, you get an even better experience in the native app.
The iPhone version of Westlaw is a well-designed and useful app for lawyers, providing access to sophisticated legal research tools on the device that is always available whenever you reach into your pocket.
One of the things that I love most about my 12.9″ iPad Pro isn’t the iPad itself, but instead the fact that it works so well with the Apple Pencil – one of my all-time favorite accessories for an iOS device. I love using the Apple Pencil to take handwritten notes and to annotate documents. And now that the 9.7″ iPad Pro is available, even more people will be using an Apple Pencil. One of the few drawbacks of the Apple Pencil is that, unlike many other pens and styluses, the Apple Pencil lacks a clip. Thus, there isn’t an easy way to carry it around. A few months ago I reviewed the Fisher Chrome Clip which you can add to the Pencil (even though it wasn’t designed for that); it looks good, and it works well. I still enjoy using that clip and I continue to recommend it to others.
RadTech recently sent me a free review unit of a product that it invented called the PencilClipz, a plastic device that gives you two types of clips for an Apple Pencil. First, it has a clip that you can use to attach a Pencil to a shirt pocket (or a pocket in a briefcase or purse). Second, it has a protrusion on the side that easily snaps in to the Lightning port on an iPad so that you can attach an Apple Pencil to the side of an iPad.
RadTech says that the device itself is “made from tough and unbreakable Polycarbonate.” It certainly seems sturdy to me. It is easy to slip it on or off of the Apple Pencil, but it is tight enough that it won’t budge up or down unless you really force it. The product only weighs 3 grams, so it doesn’t add any noticeable weight to the Apple Pencil. And because it is made of plastic, you don’t have to worry about it scratching the Apple Pencil or anything else that it might come in contact with.
The pencil clip part of the PencilClipz works well, securely clipping to a pocket.
The side part of the PencilClipz also does it job, snapping into a Lightning port. It is very secure. Even if I rigorously shake my 12.9″ iPad Pro, the PencilClipz stays attached until I pull it off. Unless you somehow hit the side of your iPad Pro as you are carrying it, I cannot imagine the Apple Pencil coming off.
Like any clip that you might attach to an Apple Pencil, another advantage is that it prevents the Apple Pencil from rolling around on a table.
While I consider the PencilClipz to be very clever, there are three reasons that it is not for me. The first is simply that I find it unnecessary to attach my Pencil to my iPad. Whether I am wearing a dress shirt with a suit or something less formal on a Casual Friday, I virtually always wear a shirt with a pocket. Thus, I only need a way to clip my Pencil in my shirt pocket, and the Fisher Chrome Clip works great for that purpose. Depending upon your preferences and your wardrobe, you may see much more of an advantage to attaching a Pencil to the side of an iPad Pro, in which case you’ll be much more interested in this product.
Second, I’m not a big fan of how it looks. They gray color doesn’t match the Pencil at all. And even if this device were as white as snow, I still think it looks somewhat awkward, especially because of the appendage that is necessary to fit into a Lightning port. Perhaps the appearance would not bother me if it were more useful to me, but as noted above, the ability to attach to a Lightning port is interesting but not necessary for me. I far prefer the look of the Fisher Chrome Clip, which matches the chrome band at the top of the Apple Pencil and doesn’t look out of place on a stylus.
[UPDATE: John Grzeskowiak of RadTech followed up to tell me the reason for the color of this product. Many of the company’s customers are photographers and videographers, for whom it is often handy to have an object that is 15%-18% gray. That way, they don’t have to also carry a gray card to do white balancing. For that historical reason, the company continues to make many items that are 15% to 18% gray, including this one. It is interesting to know that historical justification, although I must admit that I’m not really thinking about white balance and photography when I am using an Apple Pencil. Nevertheless, if you are curious, that is the reason for the color on this and other products by RadTech.]
Third, sometimes I find that the PencilClipz gets in the way when I am using my Apple Pencil. RadTech considers it an advantage that (depending upon how you grip your Pencil) you can usually feel the PencilClipz. RadTech says on its website: “PencilClipz also provides additional stability in your hand to enhance finely detailed drawing.” I think that is a valid claim, but I myself have never seen the need to make the Pencil even more stable in my hand. Moreover, for me, that advantage is outweighed by the way that it feels against my hand. For example, the Lightning port connector often pokes my index finger or my thumb.
Even though the PencilClipz is not right for me, I really do appreciate what RadTech has done. I hope that RadTech and other companies continue to think of creative ways to improve the Apple Pencil. If attaching a Pencil to an iPad Pro would be useful for you, than you should check out this device. And if you don’t mind the appearance and you like the idea of keeping the Apple Pencil more secure in your hand, this product may be perfect for you. Fortunately, this device is only $8, so if you think that this product might be right for you, it won’t cost you much at all to try it out.
Last month in In the news, I posted a link to a funny Apple commercial starring Cookie Monster. (Worth watching if you missed it!) Yesterday, Apple posted a “behind the scenes” (ahem) look at the making of that video. I think it is even funnier than the commercial itself. I don’t know who came up with the idea of pairing Cookie Monster with Siri, but I hope that they have ideas for additional amusing Apple commercials. And now, the news of note from the past week:
California attorney David Sparks recommends writing emails backwards — starting with attachments and the body and ending with the subject line and recipients. I often write emails this way for the reasons that David notes, although it never occurred to me that I was writing the email backwards.
New York attorney David Lat, founder of AboveTheLaw.com, provides cybersecurity tips for lawyers based upon some of the presentations at ABA TECHSHOW.
Michael Shear of the New York Times reports that tech upgrades at the White House have finally resulted in staffers being able to use iPhones. President Obama is still required to use a specialized modified BlackBerry, but he does use an iPad.
If you are communicating with someone else who uses an iPhone, you can do so using secure end-to-end encryption by texting in iMessage or calling using FaceTime Audio or FaceTime Video. This week, and as reported by Cade Metz in an article for Wired, WhatsApp added end-to-end encryption, so now you can use that free app to make secure calls or texts with almost anyone.
If you have an Apple Watch and try to meet your Activity Circles every day, you need to check out Activity++, a new $3 app by David Smith that provides an alternative interface to the circles, plus a nice iPhone app to monitor your progress. Click here for more information.
I reviewed the Sphero BB-8 last December, a fun droid that works with your iPhone or iPad. Jason Ward of Making Star Wars reports that the device was updated so that BB-8 can watch the new Star Wars movie with you, reacting to what happens on the screen (by listening to the audio). It’s a fun idea, and I look forward to trying it out when my family and I watch the Blu-Ray tonight of Episode VII. (We’ll start out by watching the preview for the upcoming Rogue One Star Wars movie.)
We’ve come a long way from Taylor Swift boycotting Apple Music. She now stars in a funny video for Apple Music.
And finally, for Autism Acceptance Month, Apple produced two videos about a boy named Dillan who uses an iPad to (finally!) communicate with the outside world. Truly inspiring, and both videos are worth watching: (1) Dillan’s Voice and (2) Dillan’s Path:
