iPhone J.D.

In the news

I hope that all of you had a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, etc.  My kids were thrilled to play in some snow in upstate New York, and as a life-long New Orleanian, it also made me smile to experience a White Christmas with our very own Frosty the Snowman smiling at us from the front lawn at the house where we were staying.  Speaking of New York, the New York Times published an fascinating article by David Barboza on how and why the iPhone is made in China.  I think that any iPhone user would find the article interesting, but as a lawyer I was especially interested on the behind-the-scenes look at how Foxconn worked with the Chinese government to obtain incentives to create a massive factory and associated infrastructure to produce 500,000 iPhones a day in Zhengzhou, which locals call "iPhone City."  It's a long article and a great read, so set aside some time to do so.  And now, the recent news of note:

• Attorney and long-time legal reporter Victor Li of the ABA Journal discusses the changes at ABA TECHSHOW in Chicago, which will take place March 15 to 18, 2017.  I know that many iPhone J.D. readers use Macs, and unfortunately one of the changes was that the Mac Track was eliminated for 2017.  Obviously, Macs — and iPads and iPhones — will still be discussed, but they will be discussed in the context of larger topics which will also cover PCs etc.  There will also be some speaker changes.  Li notes:  "The speaker roster has been refreshed, as the board decided to rotate out some of the familiar names from previous Techshows in favor of newer faces."  I was one of those rotated out for 2017, which I understand considering that I was lucky enough to be asked to speak for seven years in a row (and eight out of the last nine years).  I haven't yet seen a public announcement on who the speakers will be for 2017, but I've seen some amazing presenters talk about legal technology in prior TECHSHOW conferences, and I'm sure that will still be true in 2017.
• Boston attorneys Dawn Solowey and Lynn Kappelman give tips for using iPads and other technology during trial in an article for New England In House.
• Florida attorney Katie Floyd discusses the Emergency Bypass part of the Do Not Disturb feature on an iPhone.
• South Carolina attorney (and one of my law partners) Jack Pringle gives tips for using your iPhone as a tool without letting it take over your life.
• California attorney David Sparks discusses recent improvements to the password manager 1Password, including an improved Apple Watch app.
• Jordan Kahn of 9to5Mac reviews the Griffin Cove, a $199 unit with shelves and five USB ports that you can use to charge all of your devices.
• Rene Ritchie has advice for "cheating" the Activity Rings on an Apple Watch to give yourself a rest day.  I used his "Other workout" tip a few days ago when I was having a snowball fight with my kids — being active, but not in a way that would normally give me many green exercise points (even though it was an epic battle, at least in my opinion).  In light of the cold weather and holiday activities with my family, I knew that was the only exercise I was going to get that day, so using the Other workout feature I was able to complete my green ring on a day when I otherwise might not have done so.
• Caitlin McGarry of Macworld shares her favorite tips for using an Apple TV.
• Andrew Hawward of Macworld shares his list of the 20 best iOS games of 2016.
• And finally, I often talk to lawyers about whether a laptop or an iPad is the best tool for certain tasks.  Just a few days ago, one of my law partners told me that he was going out of town for the long New Year's weekend but had work to do, and wasn't sure whether he needed a laptop or could get by with his iPad.  It will be a long time before lawyers don't need to use computers, but over time there are even more things that can be done with just an iPad or iPhone, so it is easy to understand why the Mac is no longer the focus for Apple.  Longtime Apple reporter Jason Snell of Six Colors published a video in which he takes an updated look at the famous Steve Jobs quote from 2010 about computers being like trucks and the iPad being like a car.  It's an interesting video and worth watching:

"No videos" bug in TV app in iOS 10.2 -- the problem, and a work-around

When you update to iOS 10.2, the old Videos app is deleted and replaced by the TV app.  If you try to sync videos from a computer using iTunes — such as a movie or TV show — they are supposed to show up in the TV app in the Library tab at the bottom.  But as I was transferring some videos from my computer to my old iPhone (which my son now uses without a SIM card), whenever I tapped the Library tab in the TV app the screen said "No Videos."  That made no sense because I knew that I had indeed transferred the videos.  For example, if I went to Settings -> General -> Storage & iCloud Usage -> Manage Storage (under "Storage") -> TV, each of the movies that I had downloaded to the iPhone were listed.  They were on the iPhone, and were taking up space on the iPhone, but did not show up in the TV app and thus could not be played.

I found the solution after digging around for a while on Apple's online support discussions.  It turns out that in iOS 10.2, you need to install something that you bought from iTunes before you can watch something that you transferred from a computer.  This is obviously a bug, but there is a work-around that you can use until Apple fixes this.  If you go to the bottom of the TV app and tap on the Store icon, you can scroll to the bottom to see buttons to press that will let you buy content from iTunes.  I recommend that you tap Free Episodes.  That opens up the iTunes app, and if you download anything — including something that is free — the TV app works.  For example, I downloaded a very short trailer under the "Free Featurettes" section.  After you buy or get something, go back to the TV app and now you should be able to tap the Library button at the bottom of the screen and you will see all of your transferred content.

Finally, I noticed that after I added more movie content to the iPhone, I would sometimes have to force quit the TV app and launch it again to see the additional downloaded content.

Hopefully this fix works for others too.  And if anyone finds a better work-around, please post about it in the comments.  I assume this bug will be fixed in the next iOS update, but who knows how long that will take to come out.

In the news

Have you had trouble with your iPad crashing when using a larger PDF file in apps like TrialPad or GoodReader?  This week, Apple updated iOS to version 10.2.  Along with the new emoji, it appears that one of the improvements is better stability with PDF files, as explained at the folks at Lit Software (maker of TrialPad, TranscriptPad, and DocReviewPad).  I had been experiencing occasional crashes over the last few weeks, and they haven't happened at all since I updated.  It's only been a few days, and maybe I've just been lucky, but my hope is that iOS 10.2 did fix something.  And now, the news of note from the past week:

• California attorney David Sparks shows how to make fun Star Wars-themed custom Apple Watch faces.  His tip works for any theme, but with the new Star Wars movie, the time is right for a Star Wars watch face, and I downloaded the R2D2 one that he provides on that page.
• David Sparks and Florida attorney Katie Floyd co-host the great Mac Power Users podcast.  This week they released Episode 355 discussing the iPad as Mac replacement.  I use an iPad as a replacement for a computer whenever I travel, but otherwise use an iPad along with my computer.  Regardless of how you use your iPad in your law practice, there are a ton of great tips in this episode.  Worth a listen.
• In late October, I discussed the parts of the 2016 ABA Tech Survey relevant to attorney use of iPhones and iPads.  Aaron Street of Lawyerist.com offers his take on the mobile technology parts of the 2016 survey.
• Along with hopefully fixing PDF bugs, iOS 10.2 adds the new TV app.  Ryan Christoffel of MacStories reviews the new TV app.
• The Apple AirPods — Apple's new take on wireless earphones — are finally here.  Supplies are extremely limited, and you had to order one in the first few minutes of availability to get them before Christmas, but over the coming weeks it will become easier and easier to find them.  It reminds me of when the Apple Pencil first shipped and was incredibly hard to find.  Susie Ochs of Macworld has a good overview of what you need to know when you first start using AirPods.
• Jason Snell of Six Colors answers most of the questions that you might have about the AirPods.
• How often should you change your password?  Traditionally, security experts have said to do so regularly, but I have always been suspicious of that advice.  If you change your password often, it is harder to remember, so you are more likely to (1) pick easier-to-remember — and easier-to-guess — password and (2) write it down or store it somewhere that it might be accessed.  But the argument on the other side is that if someone else does get access to your password and then, down the road, tries to use it without your permission, it is better if you had changed it in the interim.  I recently ran across an article from March of 2016 from Lorrie Cranor, Chief Technologist for the Federal Trade Commission, that explores whether it is better or worse to have a mandatory password change policy.  It's a good read.
• If you want your iPhone 7 to look like a book, Michael Potuck of 9to5Mac reports that Twelve South is now producing a BookBook case for the newest iPhones.  These cases look interesting, especially if you love books.
• Neil Cybart of Above Avalon wrote an interesting perspective on the state of the smartwatch market and the dominance of the Apple Watch.
• Rene Ritchie of iMore reviews the Hermès edition of the Apple Watch Series 2.
• Rene Ritchie also reviewed Apple's new book "Designed by Apple in California."
• And finally, Apple produced a video to go along with its new book.  Regardless of whether you have any interest in this coffee table book, the video is worth watching because it offers a rare peak behind the scenes in the Apple design studio:

iOS 10.2 adds new emoji and more -- here comes the judge!

Yesterday, Apple released iOS 10.2 for the iPhone and iPad.  The most obvious feature in this update is the vast improvement to the emoji, but that's not all.  The update also replaces the built-in Videos app with the new TV app, which is a central place to watch TV shows from many other apps, a place to view the videos in your libraries, and a place to learn about new videos to watch.

There are also many improvements to Settings.  For example, have you ever used the camera app to take a video, then exited the app to do something else, and then came back only to find that the camera app switched back to the photo mode?  You can now go to Settings -> Photos & Camera -> Preserve Settings -> Camera Mode.  This way, the Camera app will resume in the mode that you last used.

Live Photos are also improved, with better stabilization and faster frame rates.  We're inching closer towards Harry Potter-style photos.  There are two new screen effects in Messages which add some animation around your text messages:  celebration and love.  And there are numerous other small fixes and improvements and security enhancements.

But again, the change that most people will notice is the new and improved emoji.  First, there are 88 new emoji in iOS 10.2. This includes 16 new professions, including for the first time a judge.  There is also a new technology worker emoji — a person using a computer — which to me looks like an appellate brief writer.  There are also lots of food and drink emoji, including a glass tumbler.  Every time I look at that glass tumbler, I see a Sazerac — the official cocktail of New Orleans.

Here is a list of the 88 new ones, followed by pictures so that you can see them too:

Row 1: Rolling on the floor laughing face, clown face, cowboy face, lying face, drooling face, nauseated face, sneezing face, doctor, farmer, chef

Row 2: student, rock star, teacher, factor worker, computer user, office worker, mechanic, scientist, artist, pilot

Row 3: astronaut, fireman, judge, prince, Mrs. Claus, man in tuxedo. shrug, face palm, pregnant woman, man dancing,

Row 4: arm taking a selfie picture, hand with index and middle fingers crossed, hand in a call me position, left-facing fist, right-facing fist, back of hand, handshake, black heart, gorilla, fox,

Row 5: deer, rhinoceros, bat, eagle, duck, owl. lizard, shark, shrimp, squid

Row 6: butterfly, wilted flower, kiwi, potato, carrot, cucumber, peanuts, croissant, baguette

Row 7: pancakes, bacon, stuffed flatbread, egg, shallow pan of food, salad, glass of milk, clinking glasses, tumbler glass, spoon

Row 8: stop sign, scooter, motor scooter, canoe, first place medal, second place medal, third place medal, boxing glove, martial arts uniform, wrestlers

Row 9: water polo player, handball player, fencer, goal net, person doing cartwheel, juggler, drum, shopping cart

For all of the professions, there are now both male and female versions, which are listed separately in the emoji picker.  (I only included the male versions above to avoid repetition.)  Santa was in the prior emoji set, but Mrs. Claus is new.

Second, it seems like almost every one of the prior emoji is updated. Almost every emoji now features much more detail.  For example, here are three of the Christmas emoji.  At the top you can see what the Christmas tree, present and Santa look like in iOS 10.2, and at the bottom you can see what they looked like in the prior version.  The new versions of the tree and present look great to me.  But I actually prefer the old version of Santa.

Third, just about all of the emoji featuring faces now have alternative skin tones and hair colors.  So it is now easier to find an emoji that looks more like you.  For example, here are all of the male and female judge variations (click for larger versions):

Update your iPhone and iPad to iOS 10.2 to see all of the new emoji and to take advantage of the other new features.

In the news

It seems like I am seeing more and more people wearing an Apple Watch lately.  Just a few days ago, a Louisiana judge mentioned to me that he is getting an Apple Watch for his wife for Christmas.  (I won't mention what court he is on, just in case his wife is already an iPhone J.D. reader.  Wouldn't want to ruin the surprise.)  Nevertheless, a technology research firm named IDC recently reported their prediction that Apple Watch sales were down.  Presumably in response to that, Apple CEO Tim Cook reached out to Reuters this week to say that Apple Watch sales actually reached a new high, and that they should be one of the most popular holiday gifts this year, although Cook didn't provide specific numbers.  (Apple has traditionally reported the number of iPhones sold, but doesn't report specific numbers on the Apple Watch.)  If you don't already have an Apple Watch, maybe Santa will leave one under the tree for you this year.  And now, the news of note from the past week:

• California attorney David Sparks warns about using knock-off power adapters that you can buy on Amazon.  I hear a number of folks say that, to be safe, they only buy iPhone/iPad cords and power adapters directly from Apple.
• Washington, D.C. attorney Reid Trautz has posted the 2016 version of his annual Holiday Gift Guide for Lawyers.  There are a few iPhone-related items in there, including a Star Trek Communicator that connects via Bluetooth to your iPhone.
• Apple executive Phil Schiller tweeted that November, 2016 was the highest monthly sales ever in App Store history.  Wouldn't surprise me if this month sets the new record.
• Jason Snell has a good wishlist of improvements to the iPad Pro in an article for Macworld.  It's a good list, and I hope to see some of these features added soon.
• iLounge shows off the Griffin Pencil Sleeve, an accessory for your Apple Pencil.
• Dan Moren of Six Colors explains how to view your Apple Music songs that are already downloaded to your iPhone, and thus can be played even without an Internet connection.  Good advice as many of us prepare for travel over the holidays.
• If you are traveling to New York City over the holidays, you can check out the fun windows on many of the major New York stores, such as Macy's.  But if you can't be there in person, now your iPhone can take you there virtually, thanks to Google's new Window Wonderland project.  It's really cool.  Harry McCracken explains it all in an article for Fast Company.
• I really enjoyed watching the first season of Westworld on HBO.  Evan Rachel Wood, who plays Dolores in the show, noticed that Siri appears to be a fan too because there are lots of Westworld-related questions that you can ask, as reported by Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac.
• I was never a really big player of Nintendo's Mario games, but I know how popular they are.  Nintendo will be releasing Super Mario Run for the iPhone next week, and they put together a fun commercial that even got me excited to check out the game next week.
• Douglas Quenqua of Campaign US put together an oral history of the I'm a Mac/I'm a PC ads, some of my favorite Apple commercials of all time.
• And finally, Apple released a commercial for the iPhone 7 this week called Romeo and Juliet, and it is a pretty good one.  As a parent who has recently been watching my own kids on stage at various events, I'm probably guilty of seeing my kids perform through the same prism as the father in this video:

Review: Olala iDisk ID300 -- flash drive with both USB and Lightning

There are times when you want to get a file on or off of your iPhone or iPad without using the Internet to do so — either because your connection is too slow (or nonexistent) or because the file is too large.  The Olala iDisk ID300 is a flash drive with both a USB and Lightning connector so that you can get data on or off of your iPhone, and on or off of another device that has a standard USB connection.  The company sent me a free review sample of this product, which you can get for only $34.99 on Amazon, and I'm impressed.  The hardware works well.  The software is more disappointing, but it is sufficient for most purposes.  This is a very useful device that is nice to keep with you in a purse or briefcase for whenever you need it, and it would make a great stocking stuffer for an iPhone or iPad user.

Hardware

The ID300 looks like a normal USB thumb drive.  It is less than two inches long, just over a half an inch wide, and about a quarter of an inch high.  So it is very small and light

The ID300 is the third generation of the Olala iDisk, and I think it is the best design yet.  The first generation version, the ID100, is much larger.  I have another Olala iDisk device, the ID102, which Olala previously sent me, and while the ID102 is smaller than the ID100, it is cumbersome because it requires a separate proprietary cord to connect to USB.  Here is a picture of the new ID300 next to the ID102.  I far prefer the ID300's small design which has everything you need built-in.

Olala also sells the ID200N version of the iDisk.  It looks like a wide cord that folds in two and which can also be used to charge an iPhone.  It is also much larger than the ID300.

Looking at all of the different Olala iDisk designs, I think that the small size makes the ID300 the best version.

The ID300 model that Olala sent me has a 32GB flash drive, but for an extra $14 you can buy a 64GB version.  Just plug the USB end into a computer, and you can transfer files on and off of the device just like any other flash drive.  The USB connector uses USB 3.0 with read speed up to 100MB/second and write speed up to 30MB/second, so it is fast enough.

What makes the ID300 special is that you can rotate the main part of the unit to hide the USB connector and reveal a Lightning connector. 

It is a sturdy, long Lightning connector, so it may even work with some iPhones that are in cases (although I didn't test that).  The Lightning connector has a read speed of up to 15-25MB/second and a write speed of up to 8MB/second.

Software

You download a free app called "iDisk me" to your iPhone or iPad to communicate with the ID300.  When you plug in the ID300, your iOS device asks for permission to communicate with the ID300.  Tap allow and the iDisk me app launches

 

The button at the bottom right of the app will open up your ID300 and show you the files and folders.  This is similar to what you would see if you plug the ID300 into a computer and you view the contents.  I created a folder called Video and used my computer to transfer a bunch of large home movie files that are too large for me to normally want to keep on my iPhone or iPad.  I could then use the iDisk me app to view the folders and files, including a list of all of those home movie files inside of the Video folder.

Tap on a movie file to play the movie.  I tested using an iPhone 7 and an iPad Pro, and the ID300 was fast enough to send the data so that I could watch the movie with no stuttering at all.  It wasn't perfect; almost no movie loaded the first time that I tapped the Play button, but after a few seconds I could press play and it worked.  I did notice that if you exit a movie before the movie ends, the sound of the movie would sometimes keep playing unless you force quit the app.  Suffice it to say that the video playing function needs more attention, but it does essentially work, and it was nice to watch very large video files on my iPhone or iPad without having to take up space on my iPhone or iPad to do so.

Note that iDisk me cannot play videos that you purchase from iTunes.

This next feature doesn't work for videos, but for many other file types such as pictures, PDF, Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint files, you can tap to view a file in the iDisk me app and then use the share button at the top right (the box with an arrow) to open the document in another app on your iPhone — thus transferring the file from the external iD300 device to your iPhone.  Here is an example of me using the iDisk me app to access from the ID300 the PowerPoint slides from a presentation that gave back in 1998 on how to use email.  I was then able to use the share button open the PowerPoint slides in the PowerPoint app on my iPhone.

 

If any of you are interested in learning about this fascinating technology called email, let me know and I'll email you my old slides.

The iDisk me app also has its own storage area.  You can copy or move a file from the ID300 into the iDisk me app so that you can access the file even after you remove the ID300.  For example, you could copy a large video file, then remove the ID300 and watch the video file from within the ID300, and then delete the video file after you watch it so that it no longer takes up space on your iPhone or iPad.  This is also a way to get around the (minor) annoyance with having the ID300 sticking out of the end of your iPhone or iPad getting in your way.  You can transfer the file, and then remove the ID300 to get it out of the way.

Using the buttons in the circle pattern on the main part of the app, you can directly access pictures, videos and other types of files, from either the ID300 or the internal storage area.  Frankly, this seems a little unnecessary considering that you can also tap the icons at the bottom left or right to view all of your files.

In short, you can use the ID300 as a go-between for getting files from a computer to an iPhone or iPad, and with the 32GB of storage (or 64GB if you get the larger model), you can also use the ID300 as external storage for your iPhone or iPad so that you have access to large files when you need them, but they won't otherwise take up space on your iPhone or iPad. 

The iDisk me app also has a feature that allows you to take pictures or videos using your iPhone (or iPad) and save them directly to the ID300.  If your device is low on space and you want to continue to use the camera on your iPhone or iPad, this feature would help you out.

Unfortunately, the iDisk me app is quite disappointing when it comes to getting information from the iPhone to the ID300.  It works fine for photos and videos stored in your Photos app because there is a function to access your Photo Library.  Thus, if you take a big video on your iPhone and you want to move it from the iPhone to the ID300 to save space on your iPhone, you can do that.  And you can move photos too, so you can take photos with your iPhone and then use the ID300 to put the photos on a flash drive that you can hand to someone using a computer.

But that's it.  The iDisk me app doesn't appear in the iOS "Open in..." share sheet screen on the iPhone, so you cannot move any other sort of file to the ID300.  This is a huge oversight and I hope that the developer of this app adds this feature.  It would be so nice to be able to take a large file, such as presentation slides or a huge PDF document, and then transfer the file to the ID300 so that you could hand it to someone else to plug into their computer.  I know that this is technically possible because many other apps do something similar.  For now, this is a glaring omission in this app which prevents the ID300 from living up to its full potential.

Another problem is that the app only works in portrait orientation (except when you are viewing a video).  I didn't mind that much on my iPhone, but on the iPad it felt awkward to hold it that way.

As you can tell, I am not a fan of the current version of the iDisk me app.  Having said that, most of the time it did what I wanted, and thus made the ID300 very useful.

Conclusion

The hardware of the ID300 is a great.  It is inexpensive, it gives you access to files that otherwise would not fit on your iPhone or iPad, and it makes it easy to transfer files from a computer to an iPhone or iPad without having to worry about an Internet connection.  Unfortunately, due to the (current) limitations in the software, you cannot use the ID300 to get files off or your iPhone, other than photos and videos in the Photo Library.  Bit of you can get past that limitation, the Olala iDisk iD300 is a very nice and useful device, and it is cheap enough to justify buying it just so that you have it for whenever you might need it.

Click here to get Olala ID300 from Amazon:  ($34.99)

[Sponsor] Drobo -- safe, expandable storage

Thank you to Drobo for sponsoring iPhone J.D. this month, especially because the company is offering a great discount right now for iPhone J.D. readers (more on that below).  A Drobo device appears to your computer to be a single external hard drive, but it actually has multiple hard drives inside of it and each part of your data always exists on multiple drives.  By default, data exists on two drives at one time, but you can set that to three if you want.  Thus, when one of the hard drives fail — and remember, all hard drives will fail at some point — your data is still safely stored on the remaining drives.  Just eject the dead drive and replace it with another drive, and you are back in business.  You can also swap out the hard drives to larger versions, making it easy to expand your storage whenever you need more space. 

The Drobo magic works because some of your total drive space is allocated to backups.  For example, I have a Drobo 5N that contains five 2 TB drives, a total of 10 TB.  I can use 7 TB of that space to store files; the other 3 TB is used for redundancy to protect my data in case one of the drives fails.  Drobo handles all of this behind the scenes so you don't have to worry about it.

The company sells two types of devices that would appeal to iPhone J.D. readers.  First, there is the type of Drobo device that connects directly to your computer, using USB or USB-C.  I own an older version of one of those devices which I purchased a while back called the Drobo 4 Bay.  The company now instead sells the Drobo 5C, Drobo 5D, and Drobo 5Dt, more powerful versions of what I use.

Second, there is the type of Drobo device which sits on your network and can be accessed by any computer on your home or office network, or even from the Internet using a Drobo app.  A few months ago, I described the Drobo 5N, which has five drive bays and attaches to your network, and which also supports Drobo apps to support lots of different functions. 

I currently use my Drobo 4 Bay to store large video files and other documents that don't need to keep on my computer's hard drive.  I use my Drobo 5N that the company sent me for review purposes for backups and a few other purposes.  Both of these devices work very well for me, and I can't imagine going back to traditional external storage on a hard drive that might fail.

A Drobo device is a great option for anyone looking to add external storage to a Mac or PC.  Just decide whether it makes more sense for you to use a Drobo that directly connects to one computer or a network Drobo.  And this is a great time to buy a Drobo device because the company is offering the best discount it has ever offered to iPhone J.D. readers:  20% off of a Drobo 5N, Drobo 5D, or Drobo 5DT when purchased at www.drobostore.com between now and December 31, 2016 using the discount code IJD20.

Thank you to Drobo for sponsoring iPhone J.D. this month, especially because the company is offering a great discount right now for iPhone J.D. readers (more on that below).  A Drobo device appears to your computer to be a single external hard drive, but it actually has multiple hard drives inside of it and each part of your data always exists on multiple drives.  By default, data exists on two drives at one time, but you can set that to three if you want.  Thus, when one of the hard drives fail — and remember, all hard drives will fail at some point — your data is still safely stored on the remaining drives.  Just eject the dead drive and replace it with another drive, and you are back in business.  You can also swap out the hard drives to larger versions, making it easy to expand your storage whenever you need more space. 

The Drobo magic works because some of your total drive space is allocated to backups.  For example, I have a Drobo 5N that contains five 2 TB drives, a total of 10 TB.  I can use 7 TB of that space to store files; the other 3 TB is used for redundancy to protect my data in case one of the drives fails.  Drobo handles all of this behind the scenes so you don't have to worry about it.

The company sells two types of devices that would appeal to iPhone J.D. readers.  First, there is the type of Drobo device that connects directly to your computer, using USB or USB-C.  I own an older version of one of those devices which I purchased a while back called the Drobo 4 Bay.  The company now instead sells the Drobo 5C, Drobo 5D, and Drobo 5Dt, more powerful versions of what I use.

Second, there is the type of Drobo device which sits on your network and can be accessed by any computer on your home or office network, or even from the Internet using a Drobo app.  A few months ago, I described the Drobo 5N, which has five drive bays and attaches to your network, and which also supports Drobo apps to support lots of different functions. 

I currently use my Drobo 4 Bay to store large video files and other documents that don't need to keep on my computer's hard drive.  I use my Drobo 5N that the company sent me for review purposes for backups and a few other purposes.  Both of these devices work very well for me, and I can't imagine going back to traditional external storage on a hard drive that might fail.

A Drobo device is a great option for anyone looking to add external storage to a Mac or PC.  Just decide whether it makes more sense for you to use a Drobo that directly connects to one computer or a network Drobo.  And this is a great time to buy a Drobo device because the company is offering the best discount it has ever offered to iPhone J.D. readers:  20% off of a Drobo 5N, Drobo 5D, or Drobo 5DT when purchased at www.drobostore.com between now and December 31, 2016 using the discount code IJD20.

In the news

Just in time for your holiday travel over the next few weeks, Netflix now lets you download content to your iPhone or iPad so that you can watch a video even when you have no Internet connection (such as on a plane) or just a poor Internet connection (such as in an airport, or at a relative's house).  I just downloaded the entire Season 2 of the Netflix series Narcos (10 episodes, each one almost an hour) and it and that took up about 2.4 GB on my iPhone.  Similarly, ten hour-long episodes of Black Mirror took about the same amount of space.  Even when I have an Internet connection, I sort of like the idea of fully downloading in advance so there is no risk of stuttering.  Raymond Wong of Mashable has additional details on downloading from Netflix.  I suspect that this will be a popular new feature.  And now, the news of note from the past two weeks:

• Legal tech consultant Brett Burney reviews Typic, an app that you can use to add text to a photo on your iPhone.
• California attorney David Sparks has some holiday gift recommendations, most of which relate to the iPhone or iPad in some way.
• Sparks also talks to New York lawyer Joshua Holt about the apps on his iPhone home screen.
• San Diego attorney Jeff Bennion recommends that lawyers use a password manager in an article for Aobf the Law.  I use 1Password and cannot imagine not using it.
• AT&T DirecTV Now is a new streaming service that lets you stream live TV to your iPhone, iPad or Apple TV.  It is cheaper than a cable subscription, but has certain limitations, such as no DVR and no ability to pause live TV.  Geoffrey Fowler of the Wall Street Journal talks about the new service and similar streaming options.
• Ryan Christoffel of MacStories discusses some of the uses of an Apple Pencil.
• If you use an Apple Magic Keyboard as an external keyboard for an iPad, the new Studio Neat Canopy looks like a nice way to protect your keyboard and prop up your iPad when you want to use it.
• When the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus were released and Apple noted that they are water resistant, many folks decided to push the envelope and actually take them underwater, such as using them for underwater photography.  But they really are not designed for that, and Serenity Caldwell of iMore learned that the hard way when she destroyed her finacé's iPhone by using it in a pool. 
• Zac Hall of 9to5Mac reviews the Kanex GoPower Watch, a portable charger for the Apple Watch that is similar to the Archeer Apple Watch Portable Charger I recently reviewed.
• Looking for a new Wi-Fi router for your home or office?  Mesh systems are currently all the rage, and Dave Hamilton of The Mac Observer takes a look at the best options on the market. 
• Jim Slater similalry looks at the best Wi-Fi router options in an article for The Wirecutter.
• Apple's own Wi-Fi router, the AirPort Extreme, has long been one of the best-loved routers.  Just this week, J.D. Power named it the most-loved router.  But does it have a future?  Mark Gurman of Bloomberg reports on rumors that Apple is getting out of the Wi-Fi router business.  Of course, these are just rumors; maybe Gurman is wrong, or maybe Gurman is only half-right — for example, Apple could be giving up on the AirPort Extreme only to replace it with a better product, such as perhaps a competitor to the Amazon Echo.  I love my Apple AirPort Extreme Base Stations for the reasons noted in this review, but if I were buying something new today, I'd probably get an Eero.
• And finally, if you want to see more of Apple's new coffee table book, Stephen Hackett of the Relay FM podcast network shows off many of the pictures in the book next to many of the actual products (thanks to his extensive collection of old Apple items) in this video: