The U.S. Supreme Court says in its official Guide for Counsel that "[n]o personal computers, cellular phones, cameras, PDAs, or other electronic devices are allowed in the Courtroom, and they may not be used in the Lawyers’ Lounge." Nevertheless, the iPhone very much found itself in the Courtroom on Tuesday, in spirit at least, when oral argument took place in the Samsung v. Apple case. Samsung was found liable for copying design features of the iPhone, and the question in the case is how much damages to award. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit awarded $400 million, based on the profits from the infringing Samsung phone. The issue for the Supreme Court is whether damages attributable to the infringing design is only based on some subsidiary portion of the Samsung phone (and if so, the issue is how to define that) or instead applies to all profits from the entire phone. Columbia law professor Ronald Mann wrote an analysis of the oral argument for SCOTUSblog, and it sounds like the justices are very confused on what to do. And now, the news of note from the past week:
- A big portion of my practice is appellate litigation, and the iPad is an essential tool for me as an appellate attorney. If you are in the New Orleans area and want to get some tips on using an iPad in an appellate practice, I will discuss using an iPad to draft and argue appeals in a CLE hosted by the New Orleans Bar Association on October 25 at Noon. Click here for more details and to sign up.
- Dropbox added some significant new features to its iOS app. California attorney David Sparks discusses the new Dropbox features.
- Florida attorney Katie Floyd reviews the Eero, a Wi-Fi router that uses multiple, networked stations to spread Wi-Fi to even the hard-to-reach areas of your home or office.
- South Carolina attorney Justin Kahn discusses the latest update to the Adobe Reader app.
- Jason Snell explains in an article for Macworld that he always carries his 12.9" iPad Pro when he travels, and the question for each trip is whether to also take a laptop. Thanks to the iPad, I believe that it has been five years since I traveled with a laptop. The iPad does everything that I need to do — mostly using the native apps such as Mail and Word and GoodReader, but occasionally I will use LogMeIn to connect to my office and remotely access my PC to do some task that requires a PC.
- Mandy Oaklander of Time reports on a new study in JAMA Cardiology which finds that a chest strap monitor is the most accurate way to measure heart rate, but that of the wrist wearable devices, the Apple Watch is the most accurate.
- Peter Dominiczak of The Telegraph reports that the UK cabinet previously banned smartphones in Cabinet meetings out of concerns that Russian spies could hack the smartphones and listen using the microphone inside, and now the Apple Watch (and presumably other smart watches) is also banned during Cabinet meetings for the same reason. This is the first I have heard of a hack to the Apple Watch — or at least, a theory as to how it might be hacked. I presume that it hasn't actually happened yet, but the Cabinet is taking a better-safe-than-sorry approach given the sophistication of international espionage. The whole thing reminds me of an episode of The Americans, just with better technology. Which reminds me — if you haven't yet seen that TV show, it is fantastic, especially if you grew up in the 1980s like I did. Highly recommended.
- One of the most common questions I have received about iOS 10 is how to "fix" threaded messages in the Mail app. Caitlin McGarry of Macworld explains that you can go to the Mail portion of the Settings app and turn off the threading features if they annoy you. (They annoy me; I have all three turned off.)
- Federico Viticci of MacStories wrote a comprehensive review of the iPhone 7.
- If you want to listen to music using a wired headset and also charge your iPhone at the same time, that is no longer possible on an iPhone 7 because both tasks use the Lightning port. However, you can accomplish this task with an adapter, and Phil Dzikiy of iLounge reviews one such adapter, the Belkin Lightning Audio + Charge Rockstar.
- Dan Moren of Six Colors reviews the Phillips motion sensor for Hue lights.
- In an article on Tech.pinions, Carolina Milanesi reviews CarPlay, Apple's technology for connecting an iPhone to your car.
- And finally, I'm a big fan of the Apple Music service. It is great to be able to listen to pretty much any song that I can imagine on my iPhone. This week, Apple released a video showing off the features of the new version of the Apple Music app. The video does a good job of showing off what is new:
