This week in an article about early-birds versus night-owls, the Wall Street Journal reported that Apple CEO Tim Cook starts his day at 3:45 a.m. each day. My guess is that you are not reading this at 3:45 a.m., but if you are, then good morning to you … and please keep the noise down, because I’m still asleep. If you want more information about Cook’s morning routine, I remember reading an interview with Time magazine in late 2012 when he was a runner-up for Man of the Year. As that Time article states that Cook is “a workaholic, and not of the recovering kind. He wakes up at 3:45 every morning (‘Yes, every morning’), does e-mail for an hour, stealing a march on those lazy East Coasters three time zones ahead of him, then goes to the gym, then Starbucks (for more e-mail), then work. ‘The thing about it is, when you love what you do, you don’t really think of it as work. It’s what you do. And that’s the good fortune of where I find myself.'” When it comes to daily routines, I am the opposite, a night-owl. After putting my kids to bed and then exercising, I often get some of my most productive work done late at night. That’s also when I usually post new items on iPhone J.D., typically between midnight and 1:30 a.m. Central. And now, the news of note from the past week:
- If you are in the New Orleans area and want to hear me share some tips for using an iPad in a law practice, I’m teaching a one hour CLE at Noon today for the New Orleans Bar Association. The CLE is free for NOBA members. You can get more information and sign up here.
- There is an interesting and informative post on the Lit Software blog (creator of TrialPad) about using TrialPad to create exhibit stickers on an iPad.
- California attorney David Sparks writes about the demise of Vesper because the developer wasn’t making enough money. I love the Vesper app on my iPhone and use it every day as a simple to do list for projects I’m working on and a place to keep track of other information. I’m very upset to see the app going away. I suppose I could continue to use it even after support ends, but I’ll probably move most of my Vesper info into Apple’s Notes app — which is so much better today than it was a year ago. But I’ll miss the ability to drag items up and down to move them up or down in my list of items.
- Massachusetts attorney Robert Ambrogi discuss Duet Display, an app that turns your iPad into a second monitor for your computer.
- Apple released iOS 9.3.5 yesterday, and like many updates it contains security fixes. But the security fixed here was really something … apparently a hack created by an Israeli security company and used against a reporter. Had the reporter clicked on a link in a text message, bad guys would have gotten complete access to his iPhone. And if you haven’t yet updated to iOS 9.3.5, then your device is at risk too. For more information, read this fascinating report by Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai of Motherboard or this New York Times article by Nicole Perlroth.
- Diane Cardwell of the New York Times reports on Apple’s efforts to create clean renewable energy to offset its own energy use. What Apple is doing is really impressive, is good for the environment, and in the long run will even save Apple money.
- I agree 100% with this article about Apple Music by Jason Snell for Macworld. The service is wonderful because you have access to so much music and discover so much music that you otherwise would not have known about it; at the same time, you get locked into a system where you need to keep paying to access all of that new music. I still listen to music ripped from CDs that I bought when I was in high school in the 1980s, and I haven’t had to pay anything more to keep listening to that music for 30 years. But the new music I love to listen to on Apple Music won’t be available to me 30 years from now unless I continue to pay Apple the monthly fee every single month for 30 years (assuming the service remains in business).
- Jan Dawson of Beyond Devices wrote a great article with really interesting charts showing how Apple has fared during the last five years that Tim Cook has been CEO. Spoiler alert: Apple is doing well.
- Steven Levy of Backchannel has a great article about artificial intelligence efforts at Apple including Siri, based on his interviews with numerous Apple executives.
- Zac Hall of 9to5Mac reviews August Smart Lock, a lock for the front door of your house that you can control with Siri.
- Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac explains that while Apple Pay is great to use because it is convenient, the real value is that the merchant never knows your credit card number but instead gets a one-time code.
- And finally, here is a video from PhoneBuff showing that the year-old iPhone 6s is much faster than the brand new Galaxy Note 7 on numerous tasks: