I love using my AirPods with my iPhone. They weigh nothing, you don’t have any cords to worry about, and it is nice to wear just one of them if you are half-listening to music or a podcast while you also want to hear what is going on in the outside world. But some people prefer a soft rubber tip versus the hard tip of each AirPod, and even I will admit that I miss having buttons on a cord to play/pause, FF, RW, etc. If those issues are more important to you than the advantages of AirPods, I’ve heard great things about Apple’s BeatsX headphones. Just this week, a friend was raving about them to me. If you are in the market for Bluetooth headphones and you are looking at the AirPods, you should also consider whether BeatsX is a better choice for you. To help you make that decision, this week Susie Ochs of Macworld reviews Apple’s BeatsX headphones, and she really likes them compared to the AirPods. And now, the news of note from the past week:
FlightTrack Pro used to be one of my favorite travel apps. It would tell me when my airport gate had changed before anyone else knew about it, and was a great source of information on flights. Alas, the app is no more, but David Pogue of Yahoo discusses other apps that do something similar, and found some good options.
Bryan Wolfe of AppAdvice reviews the Griffin iTrip Clip, a device that turns any traditional headphones into Bluetooth headphones.
Jason Snell describes 25 cool things that you can do with Workflow, an automation app that Apple recently acquired. There are some neat tips in here, many of which I use frequently.
Snell also discusses the new iPad, and what it might tell us about other future Apple products, in an article for Macworld.
Chance Miller of 9to5Mac reports on what at first sounds like good news — President Trump is no longer tweeting from his Android phone. But that’s only because he switched to an iPhone.
And finally, Apple released three new iPad Pro ads this week, more in its line of finding real tweets on Twitter and turning them into an ad (using an actor instead of the original tweeter). The new ones are Light and Powerful, the almost-but-not-quite-racy All Your School Stuff, and All Day Battery. Here is the All Day Battery one:
As a litigator, I frequently need to calculate dates. I often just ask Siri to do the calculation — “Hey Siri, what is 65 days after April 4?” — but it is nice to see all of this worked out on a calendar, especially if you need to adjust dates. Time Jump is a date calculator app that has a slight learning curve when you first start using it, but the app lets you do some pretty sophisticated date calculations. The developer of the app sent me a free code to try out this $2.99 app. I’m impressed, and I recommend the app for attorneys.
Basic features
You use Time Jump in landscape mode because the app mostly consists of a single screen with a calendar on each side of the screen. When you start the app, both calendars are set to today. If you tap a date in the future on the right side, the app calculates the difference between the days. If you tap a date in the past on the left side, the app does the same thing. (The calendar on the left always has to have a date on or before the calendar on the right.) Change a month either by swiping up/down or left/right.
The main calculation done is the difference between the two dates. If I tap March 30, 2017 on the left and April 25, 2017 on the right, Time Jump tells me that those two dates are 26 days apart.
Time Jump also tells me that those two days are 17 business days apart. Business days are calculated by excluding weekends and, if you have any holiday calendars selected, by excluding holidays. You can adjust all of this in the app settings, accessed by tapping the gear at the bottom of the screen. For example, if your business week runs Tuesday to Saturday, you can tell the app to exclude Sundays and Mondays when calculating business days.
Date Calc
For me, the most useful function of any date calculator is the ability to count days in the future, which this app calls “Date Calc.” For example, let’s assume that today I received a favorable decision from a state appellate court, and I want to know when the 30 days will run for my opponent to file a writ with the Louisiana Supreme Court. Yes, I can manually count 30 days in my head (after reciting the “30 days has September” rhyme), but it is better to see it clearly shown and calculated on an iPhone screen.
On the left side, I select March 30, 2017. That’s easy to do by just tapping on that date on the calendar, but you can also double-tap on the large number above the left calendar to bring up a date wheel to quickly jump to a specific date.
To select the number of days forward that you want to count, tap the top middle of the app, and a screen comes up to select 30 days. (The default is to count by Days, but you can also count by Business Days, Weeks, Months, or Years.).
Even before you tap done, you can already see the 30th day in the top right. To see this day on a full calendar, tap done. Here, I see on the calendar on the right that the 30th day is April 29, which is on a Saturday. Thus, I know that the real filing deadline would be Monday, May 1.
Holidays on a calendar are marked with a blue dot under the day, so if for example I were to see that the 30th day was on a day with a blue dot, I would know that the actual deadline is the following day.
If you tap on a day in either calendar, the date is shown in a large number above that calendar. Tap on that large number to see more information on that day, including an explanation of why it is a holiday (if applicable), the day of the year, the week of and the month of the year.
Holidays
Holidays can be complicated to account for in any date calculator, but they are handled very well in this app. First, there are lots of built-in lists of holidays to choose from. The Federal (standard) list includes all of the major holidays. Tap the words “Federal (standard) to see the specific dates on that list, and you can manually turn on or off any of those holidays if they do not apply to you.
The Federal (optional) list includes holidays they are typically not work holidays, such as Flag Day and Halloween.
There is also a full set of U.S. State holidays that you can optionally enable. Here in New Orleans, for example, Mardi Gras is a work holiday for virtually everyone, and the Louisiana list includes Mardi Gras and Good Friday. If you need to select a day as a holiday which is not on any of the app’s lists, you can designate any other day using the Personal Day Off feature, which is fully described on the Time Jump website.
As a test, I decided to configure Time Jump to correspond to the court holidays of the Civil District Court for the Parish of Orleans (New Orleans, LA). There is a complicated Louisiana statute which governs holidays, La. R.S. § 1:55(E), but it is easier to just look at the page of the CDC website that lists the holidays. To accomplish this, I turned on the Federal (standard) list which gave me most of the holidays (except that I needed to turn off Columbus Day which is not a holiday here). Then I turned on the Louisiana list, which added Mardi Gras day and Good Friday as holidays. Finally, I needed to manually add holidays for All Saints Day, the day after Thanksgiving, and the day after Christmas.
Your own calendar
In the Settings portion of this app, you can choose to show events from your own Calendar. Doing so is a two-step process. First, turn on the switch next to Show Events From iPhone Calendars. Next, tap the words “Show Events Form iPhone Calendars” to select which of your calendars to show in Time Jump.
You will now see green dots on days on which you have events on your own calendar. If you are like me, you’ll have a green dot on just about every day. But this is still useful because, for example, if you do a date calculation and determine a filing date, you can look at your calendar and see that you are already scheduled to be in a deposition all day long, and thus you can plan accordingly.
Conclusion
The interface of this app seems a little clunky at times. For example, it took me a while to figure out that, in the app settings, you often need to tap on the words in the title of a setting to get more options. That wasn’t intuitive to me. But I’m willing to live with the problems with the form of this app because the function is quite useful. This app lets you perform pretty sophisticated date calculations, and the dual-calendar layout and indications of holidays makes it easy to figure out what is going on. Time Jump is now my go-to app for date calculations on the iPhone.
Yesterday, Apple released an update to the iPhone and iPad operating system, iOS 10.3, and also updated the Apple Watch software to watchOS 3.2. (Operating systems for the Mac and Apple TV were also updated.) This is a minor update, but I encourage everyone to update their iPhones and iPads whenever Apple releases a new version of iOS because virtually every iOS update includes security enhancements. It is always good to give your iPhone and iPad the best protection possible against hackers. There are also a few new minor features, and here are the ones that I think that you may find useful.
Find My AirPods
If you own a set of Apple AirPods, you know that they are amazing, but also very tiny (when not in their case), and thus it is possible to lose them. You might take one out of your ear and put it on a kitchen table, only to have it knocked to the floor, and then you will have to search for it.
Yesterday, Apple updated the Find My iPhone app to add support for finding AirPods. There are two functions available. First, if your AirPods are in their case, the app can tell you the last location where the AirPods were connected to the iPhone. Thus, you might be looking all over your home for your AirPods, and this app can tell you that they are probably at your office.
Second, if one or both AirPods are out of the case and connected to your iPhone via Bluetooth, the app can play a chirping sound — it’s not terribly loud, but loud enough that if you are quiet, you should be able to find them. Because the AirPod has to be close enough to the iPhone to have a Bluetooth connection, this only works if you are in the same room as an AirPod (or maybe just outside of the room). But in my above example where the AirPod rolls off of the table and on to the floor, that chirping noise might be enough to make help direct you to the corner of the room where the AirPod landed — or to between the seat cushions on the couch, or in the pocket of your jacket, etc.
This feature won’t prevent you from losing your AirPods, but I can imagine many circumstances in which it might be just enough to save the day.
CarPlay Improvements
If you are fortunate enough to have a relatively new car that supports Apple CarPlay, there are now three icons on the left side of the screen that you can tap to quickly jump to the most recent media app (such as Music), the most recent communication app (such as the Messages app) and the most recent travel app (such as Maps). This saves you the trouble of first tapping the on-screen Home button to go to the Home Screen and then launching the app.
New File System
iOS 10.3 features a new file system called APFS. APFS has the potential to do all sorts of neat things such as making iOS more efficient and fullproof. Here is an article from Rene Ritchie of iMore on APFS if you want to learn about all of the geeky details. But you don’t need to know any of that, and for now, you won’t really notice any difference with the upgrade to APFS – other than the fact that this update takes longer to install because it is doing major brain surgery on your iPhone.
Settings — Apple ID
When you launch the Settings app, you’ll see a new area at the top with your name and picture. Tap that to get into many of your personal settings such as your Apple ID, and a list of all devices associated with your Apple ID. There is some new information, but mostly it is nice to just have a central spot for all of this information.
If you tap in iCloud in this section, you’ll get more detailed information on how your iCloud storage is being used.
Siri — Third Party Apps
In iOS 10.3, Siri can now has the ability to do more with third party apps. Payment apps can now let you use Siri to pay or to check the status of a payment. Ride-booking apps can let you use Siri to schedule a car. Automobile apps can let you use Siri to check the fuel level, ask if the car is locked, turn on lights, and activate the horn. I’m not sure if any third party apps are taking advantage of these new Siri features yet, but I’m sure that support will come soon.
App Updates
There are lots of minor updates to Apple’s apps including Mail, Safari, Podcasts, Calendar, Music, iTunes, Maps, Keynote, Pages and Numbers. Most of the changes look fairly minor or cosmetic to me, but there are some nice new features. For example, in the Music app, on the Now Playing screen, you can scroll to the bottom and see what is coming up next. In the Mail app, there are numerous slight interface changes. In the Maps app, you can now search for parked car to see the last place that you parked your car.
Also, third party apps now have the ability to change the icon for their app. You first need to give the app permission to change, but once you do so, the developer can let the app provide you with limited information just based upon the appearance of the app.
Apple Watch Theater Mode
Besides updating Siri on the Apple Watch to correlate to the Siri changes in iOS, there is only one big change to the Apple Watch, a new Theater Mode. Swipe up from the bottom of the clock screen and tap the icon with the two masks to turn on this mode. When it is on, your Apple Watch screen will not light up if you lift you wrist, thus preventing you from creating a distraction to others when you move your wrist during a movie or a play. You can still use the watch by tapping the screen or touching a button, but you are far less likely to accidentally turn the watch on. Also, this will silence your Apple Watch if it otherwise makes noise. (I always keep my Apple Watch on silent mode anyway.) Theater Mode is a simple improvement, but it is a great idea.
There were two iPhone-related stories out of the UK this week, one tragic, and one with a happy ending. Starting with the bad news, Amie Gordon of the Daily Mail reports that a man in London was electrocuted when he tried to use and charge an iPhone in the bathtub. It sounds like the deadly part was not the iPhone itself or the charging cord, but the fact that he had an extension cord that ran to his tub. In happier UK iPhone news, Steven Sande of Apple World Today shares the story — and the recorded audio — of a four year old boy whose mother lost consciousness. The boy asked Siri on his mother’s phone for help and was connected to emergency services (999 in the UK). The boy told them that he thought his mother was dead because her eyes were closed and she wouldn’t wake up. The paramedics arrived a few minutes later, and the mother was saved. Good job, Siri! And now, the news of note from the past week:
There was a news story earlier this week that hackers were going to remotely wipe iCloud accounts unless Apple paid the hackers $150,000. Apple responded that it was not hacked, and that the account information came not from Apple but from third party sites. Florida attorney Katie Floyd discusses this story and correctly concludes that, even if this was just a hoax, it is a good reminder that you should use unique, complex passwords for each website, and that a password manager can help you do that. I use, and recommend, 1Password.
California attorney Jacob Flesher shares tips for using TrialPad in a post on the Lit Software blog.
Workflow is a cool app that can automate many tasks on your iPhone or iPad. I discussed the app when I reviewed a video field guild on using the Workflow app created by California attorney David Sparks. Matthew Panzarino of TechCrunch reports that Apple recently purchased Workflow and the team that makes it. Going forward, the app will be free. Sparks shares his thoughts on this acquisition. My hope is that Apple isn’t just hiring the developers, but also plans to keep the app going. Indeed, if Apple builds support for Workflow deeper into iOS, the app can become so much better than it already is.
Speaking of Apple apps, I mentioned earlier this week that Apple will release its new Clips app next month. Lauren Goode of The Verge got a chance to see a beta of the app. The ability to transcribe what you are saying and add that text on top of the video is a neat trick; Apple calls that Live Titles.
Dan Moren of Six Colors notes that Apple updated iTunes to version 12.6 this week. The new version lets you rent a movie on a computer and then watch the movie on an iPhone, iPad or Apple TV.
And finally, you may not need this app for yourself, but there is a good chance that someone in your family does — an app to help a person remember to take medications. David Pogue of Yahoo notes that 125,000 Americans die every year because they don’t take the right medicine at the right time. After looking at dozens of apps in this category, Pogue concludes that Medisafe is the best one. The app can even alert you if your loved on misses a dose so that you can reach out and remind the person to take the medicine. Here is Pogue’s full story, but you can get most of what you need to know from his video at the top of that story, and also embedded right here:
Apple introduced a number of new products yesterday, including (1) a low-end iPad, (2) a red version of the iPhone, (3) new Apple Watch bands and (4) an app called Clips that can be used to create fun videos. Here are the details, and what I think the announcements mean for lawyers.
The new iPad
Before yesterday, Apple sold three lines of iPads: the inexpensive iPad Air 2, the iPad Pro, and the iPad mini. Yesterday, Apple replaced the iPad Air 2 with a new device called simply “iPad,” but announced nothing new in the iPad Pro or iPad mini lines.
The new iPad is cheaper and faster than the iPad Air 2. While the iPad Air 2 started at $399, the new iPad starts at $329 for a 32GB model. And while the iPad Air 2 had an A8X chip, the new iPad has an A9 chip — the chip used in the iPhone 6s released in September of 2015 as well as the iPhone SE released a year ago. Ars Technica has some benchmark tests comparing the A8X to the A9, and the difference varies depending upon the test being run; in one test, the A9 is about 38% faster than the A8X. Suffice it to say that the new iPad should see a noticeable speed increase versus the iPad Air 2, but it still won’t be as fast as an iPad Pro which has an A9X chip.
On the other hand, the new iPad is slightly thicker and heavier than the iPad Air 2 it replaces. In fact, the new iPad is about the same size and weight as the original iPad Air introduced in 2013. Thus, the new iPad is 7.5 mm (versus 6.1 mm for the iPad Air 2) and weighs 1.03 pounds (versus 0.96 pounds for the iPad Air 2). So you can think of the new 2017 version of the iPad as the same as the 2013 version of the iPad Air, but with a faster processor.
How does the new iPad compare to the iPad Pro 12.9″ (released in late 2015) and the iPad Pro 9.7″ (released in early 2016)? I think that the big difference for attorneys is that the new iPad does not support the Apple Pencil. I love my Apple Pencil, and I use it almost every day to annotate documents, take notes, etc. Any attorney getting a new iPad which lacks support for the Apple Pencil is really missing out. The new iPad also doesn’t support the Smart Connector, which can be used to connect to an external keyboard, so if you want to use a keyboard with the new iPad, you won’t be able to take advantage of the new Smart Connector keyboards. Fortunately, there are plenty of good Bluetooth keyboards on the market so I don’t think you’ll miss the Smart Connector that much.
There are other differences too. The new iPad is thicker and heavier than the iPad Pro of the same screen size (the 9.7″ model, which is similar in thickness and weight to the iPad Air 2). The speakers and screen are much better on the iPad Pro. The iPad Pro also has a better camera, better LTE (if you get the model with cellular), and there are some other differences.
I know many attorneys who are still using an iPad 2 or an iPad 3. For them, this new iPad would be a major upgrade, even if it is not as nice as the iPad Pro. And the price is certainly attractive; if you get the 128GB model (the minimum I recommend for an attorney), you are paying $699 for the iPad Pro 9.7″ versus $429 for the new iPad (9.7″). When you add the $99 cost of an Apple Pencil, that’s $800 versus $430. You get quite a bit for the $370 price difference: an Apple Pencil, a thinner and lighter iPad, a faster iPad, an iPad with better sound and a better screen, etc. And considering that you are likely to use an iPad that you buy now for several years, you’ll appreciate the advantages of an iPad Pro for a long time. I recommend that attorneys opt for an iPad Pro over the new iPad. But if price is a big issue for you, and if you are fairly certain that you wouldn’t want to use an Apple Pencil, then the new iPad is a reasonable choice.
Speaking of the iPad Pro, there have been rumors for a while now that Apple is preparing a new iPad Pro which fits a larger screen into a smaller size by reducing the bezel. The idea is that the screen would be similar to the 12.9″ iPad Pro, but the device size would be similar to the 9.7″ iPad Pro. John Gruber of Daring Fireball predicts that we won’t see this new version of the iPad Pro until 2018, or maybe 2017. Anything is possible, and maybe Apple will introduce a new iPad Pro this June at its WWDC conference, but my guess after yesterday’s announcement is that we won’t see any update to the iPad Pro before the Fall of 2017.
iPhone changes
Apple also made some changes to the iPhone line yesterday, but they are far less significant. First, Apple announced a new (Product)RED version of the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. The difference is that the back and sides are red (the front is white) and a portion of the sales are donated to fund HIV/AIDS prevention programs. If you don’t use a case for your iPhone and you like the idea and color of a (Product)RED version, this might be the iPhone for you. But I see it as having a more limited appeal.
If you prefer the smaller size of the iPhone SE introduced last year, Apple made one change yesterday. Instead of the iPhone SE selling in a 16GB or 64GB version, the choices are now 32GB or 128GB.
If you want an Apple case for your iPhone, either the silicone version or the leather version, Apple also released some new case colors yesterday.
Apple Watch band changes
Apple didn’t change the hardware of the Apple Watch yesterday, but it did change how it is sold. In the past, you could select from a small number of watch bands, such as a leather band or a stainless steel band, when you purchased an Apple Watch. But now, you can only get a Sport Band or a Milanese Loop band when you buy an Apple Watch. My guess is that those are the two most popular bands. Indeed, those are the bands that I currently wear every day; I wear the Milanese Loop at work during the day, and I switch the Sport Band when I get home and on the weekends because it is more durable and better for working out.
You can still buy the specialty lines of the Apple Watch and they come with other bands. The Apple Watch Nike+ comes with a Nike Sport Band (which features holes, which is supposed to be lighter and breathes more when you sweat, but I haven’t used it myself to try it out). The Apple Watch Hermės comes with a variety of premium leather bands. But if you get just the regular Apple Watch, you now need to choose between a Sport Band or a Milanese Loop.
When it comes to buying additional bands, Apple announced some improvements and changes yesterday. First, you can now buy the Nike Sport Bands even if you didn’t buy an Apple Watch Nike+. They cost $49 (the same price as Apple’s Sport Band). I’m very happy with the Apple Sport Band, especially because it comes in an XL size which works better on my larger wrist. But if the M or L size works for you, you might prefer the Nike Sport Band over the Apple Sport Band for working out.
If you want to buy a Sport Band, Apple is now selling it in 13 different colors, including the new Pebble (off-white), Azure (pale blue), and Camellia (reddish pink) colors. There are also 13 different versions of the Nylon Woven Band, including six new color combinations.
Apple also revised the Classic Buckle leather band. Instead of a curved rectangular buckle, like the one I reviewed in 2015, the buckle on the new model is square. I’m not sure if this is just a cosmetic change or if the larger buckle actually works better. There are also some new colors. And if you want the fancier and more expensive Hermès leather bands, there are some additional options.
Whenever Apple introduces new bands, it also retires some of the older models, including some really nice ones. For example, my wife usually uses a Sport band with her 38mm Apple Watch, but when she wants a more dressy look, she uses a Classic Buckle in a marine blue color. That marine blue color is no longer available, and that is a real shame because I think it was one of Apple’s best watch band colors ever, especially for a woman with blue eyes. But I know that in the world of fashion, new seasons mean that old designs and colors go away and new designs and colors come in. If you are looking for a new watch band to get some additional variety with your Apple Watch, you now have lots of new choices. And at some point in the future, many of these new choices will go away.
Clips
Apple hasn’t give us much information on this yet, but next month, Apple will release a new free app called Clips. This app makes it quick and easy to create short and fun videos on an iPhone or iPad with text, effects, graphics, filters, etc. If you already use Snapchat to create short and fun videos, this looks somewhat similar. But Clips does have a cool feature where you can add text to a video just by speaking the text.
I seriously doubt that lawyers will find any professional use for the Clips app, but it is likely to be the hot new video app that your kids will be using next month, and it looks like it could be quite fun to use. I look forward to checking it out in April.
For many years, my iPhone had been on an AT&T data plan where I got 4GB of data a month, and my wife had 2GB/month. Most of the time, that was sufficient for us. But for the last few months, there have been times when we have gone over, especially when traveling and away from Wi-Fi. Every additional 1GB cost another $10, and I got tired of paying that. Thus, I recently switched to one of AT&T’s brand new unlimited data plans. The price of the new plan was not much more than my old plan, and was actually cheaper overall by letting me avoid those $10/month overage charges. If you are an AT&T customer and you are also thinking about taking advantage of one of these new unlimited plans, here are my thoughts.
The history of unlimited data
When the iPhone first went on sale in 2007, AT&T was the only carrier choice, and there was unlimited data. At the time, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said in a June 27, 2007 press release: “We want to make choosing a service plan simple and easy, so every plan includes unlimited data with direct Internet access, along with Visual Voicemail and a host of other goodies.” AT&T stopped offering an unlimited data plan in 2010. Folks who had it could be grandfathered in to the old unlimited data plan, but there were limitations. For example, I eventually gave up my unlimited data plan because I wanted the ability to tether my iPad to my iPhone, which was not an option with an unlimited data plan. In 2016, AT&T brought back an unlimited plan, but it was only available to DirecTV and U-Verse subscribers.
After other major carriers offered unlimited data plans in 2017, AT&T brought back unlimited data as an option for everyone. Initially, AT&T was not allowing tethering under the unlimited plan, so you couldn’t use your iPhone to connect an iPad or computer to the Internet. AT&T changed that on March 2, 2017 when it introduced a second unlimited data plan with new features. I signed up for the expanded plan and I’ve been using it for about two weeks now.
The current plans
There are currently two ways to get unlimited data on AT&T: the Unlimited Choice plan, and the Unlimited Plus plan. Both plans offer unlimited voice calls and text messaging, and both plans offer unlimited data — subject to some restrictions, noted below.
The Unlimited Choice plan costs $60 for the first phone, $115 for two phones, and then $20 a month for additional lines. But that plan has some important limitations: (1) no tethering, (2) video streaming is limited to standard definition 1.5Mbps (about 480p, similar to DVD quality), and (3) the speed is capped at 3Mbps. To get rid of those limitations, you have to select the Unlimited Plus plan, which costs $90/month for the first phone, $145/month for two phones, and $20/month for each additional phones.
Notwithstanding the “unlimited” in the name, there are still some limitations with the Unlimited Plus plan, but I consider them reasonable limits. First, after you use 22GB a month, AT&T reserves the right to throttle your speeds. That’s a lot of data for an iPhone to use unless you plan to stream a large amount of video. I suspect that it will be a very long time before I ever get close to that much data every month.
Second, although you can get HD video with the Unlimited Plus plan, you need to manually turn it on by disabling the “Stream Saver” feature. AT&T touts this as a convenience to customers, the idea being that standard definition DVD-like quality is probably just fine for a smaller iPhone screen, and this smaller stream size means that you use less data (taking you longer to hit that 22GB) and the video starts playing faster. I actually do think that AT&T has a point here, but I’d prefer to get the best video quality possible, so I turned off Stream Saver. You can do so on the AT&T website, but it is even easier to do so via the myAT&T app on the iPhone:
Third, tethering on the iPhone works great until you hit 10GB in a month. After that, your tethering speed is limited to 128Kbps, which is quite slow. If you plan to tether your laptop computer to your iPhone every day, I’m sure that you would hit that limit. If you are like me and you see tethering as a more occasional thing to do — using it for a few days while you are out of town — then I suspect that 10GB will be more than sufficient.
The other advantage of the Unlimited Plus plan over the Unlimited Choice plan is that your iPhone data speed is not capped at 3Mbps. The actual speed will vary tremendously during the day and night just depending upon network traffic, how close you are to a cell tower and any interference, where you are in the country, and many other factors. Even with the Unlimited Plus plan, there have been times when my speed has been slightly less than 3Mbps. But there have also been times when I have gotten over 100Mbps here in New Orleans, and most of the times that I have checked my speed, it has been over 50Mbps. Suffice it to say that I’ve been satisfied with the speeds that I have been seeing with AT&T — the same speeds that I was seeing before I upgraded to the Unlimited Plus data plan.
Please note that I’ve heard that AT&T service is faster in New Orleans than many other cities. If you are already an AT&T customer, then you can test yourself to see what the data speeds are in your area. According to the latest report (February, 2017) from OpenSignal, the average AT&T 4G (LTE) speed is the United States 13.86Mbps, which is just slightly slower than the T-Mobile and Verizon average in the United States (around 16.7Mbps).
What I think
Even though I’m only a few weeks into this new Unlimited Plus plan, I can already tell that I like it. I get the same AT&T speed that I had seen before, which as noted above can be very impressive and is often faster than Wi-Fi. For example, at my house, I have a Cox internet plan which gives me 300Mbps, so the AT&T service isn’t as fast at my home Wi-Fi if I am close to a router. But there are some locations in my house where the Wi-Fi doesn’t reach as well, and in those spots, AT&T is faster.
As for the limits to the “unlimited” plan, I don’t think that they will be a problem for me. I just don’t see myself using 10GB/month for tethering, nor do I see myself hitting 22GB/month overall. As noted above, I have been living with a 4GB/month plan for years now, and I think I only went over 5GB/month once.
More importantly, I love the freedom of no longer having to be worried about using data when I’m not on Wi-Fi. I can stream songs from Apple Music as much as I want. I can watch all the videos that I want. And if I am in a part of my house where the Wi-Fi isn’t reaching very well and is thus slow, I can just turn off Wi-Fi on my iPhone and use the fast AT&T data without worrying about going over my previous 4GB/month limit.
Looking to the future, AT&T says that you can add a wearable device to this plan for an additional $10/month. Apple doesn’t currently sell a wearable device that has a chip to use cell data, but if Apple adds this to the Apple Watch in the future — which I can see happening — AT&T already has a price for this.
If you are an AT&T customer and the idea of virtually unlimited data is appealing to you, I recommend that you check out these new plans. The new plans may not cost much more than you are paying now (and may even be cheaper if you are currently paying for overages), and it is a real advantage to no longer have to worry about using too much data.
One of the things that the iPhone excels at, but which few of us ever use, is accessibility. For example, over the years, I have heard many times about blind people who make extensive use of the iPhone. They do not need to see the screen because of impressive Voice Over technology that reads everything to them. I’ve always wanted to sit down with someone who is blind so that they can show me how it works, and David Pogue of Yahoo recently had the opportunity to do just that. In the video at the top of this article, Pogue sits down with Joseph Danowsky, a Harvard Law graduate who is blind and who uses an iPhone. It is a fascinating video that I encourage you to watch. I can’t imagine that Apple makes much profit on its Voice Over efforts, but I love that the company invests in the technology anyway. In this video, the speaker is used so anyone around the blind person could also hear what is on the screen, but I suspect that if a blind person used AirPods in one or both ears, it would be a perfect combination. It’s all very cool. And now, the news of note from the past week:
Massachusetts attorney Robert Ambrogi reviews LiquidText, an iPad app with a different approach for viewing and annotating PDF documents. I haven’t tried it out yet, but it is worth viewing the one minute video at the top of Ambrogi’s post. It looks like a really interesting app.
Ambrogi also keeps a running list of states that have added the requirement to their rules of professional conduct that lawyers have a duty to be competent in technology. He recently added Tennessee to the list, so it is now up to 27 states that have adopted the duty of technology competence.
In an article for Above the Law, San Diego attorney Jeff Bennion argues that unless an attorney is often away from the office, “it really doesn’t make sense anymore to invest in a tablet” when you can instead use a Surface Pro 4 to serve as both a computer and a tablet. I’m glad that solution works for him, but I believe that the iPad is a perfect complement to a computer in your office. I know that I can do so much more with the two devices on my desk than just using a single device.
Underscoring Apple’s commitment to privacy, this week Apple hired Jonathan Zdziarski, an iOS security expert who I have mentioned before on iPhone J.D. Jason Snell discusses the hire on his Six Colors website.
Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac reviews some of the most popular apps for controlling HomeKit devices with your iPhone. One that he missed is the Lutron app, which I use. But as Lovejoy notes, you can now do most of what you need with Apple’s own Home app.
In an article for Macworld, Jason Snell discusses possible additional features for Apple’s AirPods. As Snell correctly notes, as tempting as it may be to add more features, they would undoubtedly take away from the simplicity of the AirPods, which is a big selling point.
Neil Hughes of AppleInsider reports that the Amazon app for the iPhone is being updated to incorporate Alexa, Amazon’s version of Siri, so you can talk to the app just like you might talk to an Amazon Echo. It hasn’t yet appeared in my version of the app.
Overcast is my favorite podcast player app on the iPhone. I use it every day when in the car, when working out, when doing tasks around the house, etc. The app was recently updated to version 3, and Glenn Fleishman of Macworld posted this review.
Karen Freeman of WatchAware reviews minube, an Apple Watch app that displays points of interest that are near your current location.
And finally, Apple created a cute ad to show off sticker packs in the Messages app. Here is the video:
Five of the six characters in the word “iPhone” refer to the phone feature, but the phone is easily the least important part of my iPhone. Thanks to email and text messages, I make and receive cell phone calls far less today than I did years ago. Phone calls can be important, and thus even though I have my iPhone configured so that almost no apps are allowed to play a sound during a notification, I still allow my iPhone to ring when a call comes in. If it is a call from my wife, a colleague, or someone else important, I want to hear the ring. But because my iPhone makes noise so infrequently, when I receive a nuisance call from a telemarketer or a robo-call, I am far more annoyed than when I receive a spam email. Fortunately, Apple recently made it possible for apps to automatically block phone calls. Since early January, I’ve been using a free app that AT&T provides to its customers called AT&T Call Protect. (If you are not an AT&T customer, there are similar apps available such as Hiya.) After using this app for over two months, I can enthusiastically recommend it because it does a fine job of blocking, or at least warning of, nuisance calls.
Blocking Calls
The best part of this app is that it automatically blocks calls from entities that it believes to be a nuisance or likely fraudsters. The Call Protect app uses Hiya’s list of known phone numbers to block. When a call is automatically blocked, you never even know that the call occurred. Your phone doesn’t ring; the call just doesn’t come through. However, you can go back and look at the call log in the app to see when calls were blocked.
I see that in late February, there was a week when I received seven calls. Two of the were from real people who I wanted to talk to. Five of them were automatically blocked and never bothered me.
You can tap on an entry in the call log to get more information on the blocked call. If it turns out that it was someone who you wanted to talk to, you can unblock the number so that it won’t be blocked in the future. But over the last two months, this app has never blocked a call from a number that I would consider to be legitimate.
Call Warnings
If all that the app did was block known fraudulent calls, that would be enough for me to recommend the app. But even better, if there is a call that the app thinks that you probably don’t want but isn’t as sure, the call is allowed to ring, but you are given a warning. Instead of just seeing the phone number that is calling you, this app gives you some information on why you probably don’t want to answer the call, such as labeling the caller as a telemarketer or suspected spam.
As annoying as it is to get a call on my iPhone from a telemarketer, at least with this app I can know to decline the call immediately.
Temporary Call Block
I haven’t used this feature, but I see that the app also offers a Temporary Call Block feature. AT&T says: “Temporary Call Block lets you manually block unwanted calls for 30 days. Use the AT&T Call Protect app to select the callers you want to block. These numbers can be renewed for continued blocking.”
Fortunately, I don’t have a need for this feature in my life. If you do, that is another reason to use this app.
[UPDATE: PRIVACY
A reader wrote in to note that this app uploads numbers in your iPhone’s Contacts to Hiya. This is so that the numbers can be added to a white list of phone numbers that are known legitimate numbers. You can get more information on the privacy implications of Hiya in this post by Glenn Fleishman of Macworld. This seems reasonable to me, but consider this before you use this app.]
Conclusion
AT&T Call Protect works great. It blocks calls from entities that you never want to talk to, warns when you probably don’t want to answer the phone, and gives you a log so that you can see exactly what it is doing. I recommend that you use the app.
A Drobo is a smart external hard drive. Instead of a case containing just a single hard drive, a Drobo contains multiple hard drives, with every bit of data stored on at least two drives. Your computer (PC or Mac) treats it like a single big hard drive, but because all data lives on two different drives (or three if you enable that setting, resulting in less overall usable space), any one drive can fail and you will not lose any data. It is the perfect way to get the advantage of an external hard drive (lots of storage at an affordable price) while also avoiding the #1 problem of all hard drives — the fact that, at some point, every hard drive will fail. It is just a matter of time. I’ve had a few external hard drives fail on me over the years, and after one died on me in 2015, I decided that enough was enough. I bought my first Drobo in 2015, and I’ve been a very happy Drobo user ever since.
A few weeks ago, Drobo sent me a free review unit of the latest generation of the basic model of the Drobo, called the Drobo 5C. (Note also that Drobo is a past sponsor of iPhone J.D.) I’ve been using this Drobo 5C for the last few weeks, and it works great. And as explained below, as a result of me making a stupid mistake, I even got a chance to see what happens to a Drobo 5C when a drive fails.
Hardware – the traditional Drobo features
I’ll start by talking about the features of the Drobo 5C that are unchanged from prior models. Like other Drobo models, the Drobo is a black box which holds multiple hard drives. Each drive has a light next to it, and so long as the light is green, you know that the drive is performing the way that it should. If you ever see a blinking red light, that means that a drive has died or otherwise failed. Your data is still protected on the other drives, but it is time to order a new drive from Amazon or your hard drive seller of choice.
I know from first-hand experience that drive failure is not just a theoretical concern. I have had multiple external hard drives fail on me over the last 15 years, and every time it happened, it caused a lot of stress for me as I look to see if I have a reasonably current backup. But with a Drobo, the backup occurs constantly and automatically, so you don’t have to worry about it.
Protection has always been one of the core advantages of a Drobo. The other longstanding advantage is the ability to grow the size of your Drobo as your needs increase. For me, my iPhone is one of the big reasons that I have needed more storage. Ever since the iPhone 6s came out, I have turned on the option to record video in 4K. 4K is a little overkill for now — I don’t even currently use a TV that can show 4K — but I know that I’ll be looking at home movies of my kids that I shoot today for many decades in the future. I remember being excited on my 27th birthday to get a huge 27″ TV, which I cannot even imagine using today when I have a widescreen 65″ screen. Who knows what technology I’ll be using 10-20 years from now, so I figure I might as well create and save the highest quality video files today.
Of course, 4K video requires more disk space to store the video files. And even if you don’t need to store 4K video, we all have larger files to save than we did years ago. Although I use my Drobo connected to my home computer, if you want to use a Drobo for your law practice, you know how the number of files associated with your matters proliferate every year. As attorneys become more and more paperless, we are all getting more PDF files, more JPEG files, and even videos associated with our cases, all of which take up more space. You can be sure that whatever is enough space for you today won’t be enough space in another year or two.
Fortunately, Drobo can easily grow as your needs grow. Blue lights along the bottom of the Drobo show you how much capacity you are currently using up, with one light for each 10%. When you get to 85% capacity, the green light next to a drive will turn yellow, a sign from Drobo that it is time to replace that drive with a larger hard drive. If you get to 95% capacity, the light turns red. It doesn’t matter if the different drive bays have different size hard drives; Drobo will just use whatever you give it. So just get a larger drive and add it, and it is OK if some of the other drives are smaller. Best of all, you don’t need to worry about manually moving files from an old drive to a new drive; Drobo takes care of all of that.
Thus, with a Drobo, you don’t need to worry about planning for the future. The capacity of a Drobo grows as you need it to grow. Drobo even has a handy Capacity Calculator on its website so you can see how much usable space you get when you add different sized hard drives to the different bays in a Drobo.
I use Backblaze for online backup of all of the files on my home iMac. Because Backblaze also backs up (at no extra charge) all files on any devices connected via USB, one nice thing about my prior Drobo and this new Drobo 5C is that there is a copy of all of files in the cloud. If any one hard drive fails, the Drobo 5C will protect me. If the entire Drobo is destroyed — a disaster such as a house fire, an asteroid landing on my block, etc. — I still have an online back up of the multiple terabytes of data being stored on the Drobo 5C.
Hardware – what is new in the Drobo 5C
The basic model of the Drobo used to hold four drives, and that was the model that I previously used to hold all of the files that were too big to store on the iMac at my home, such as home movies and other large video files. The Drobo 5C holds five drives. The extra drive bay means that you have the ability to hold more data. Additionally, having an odd number of drive bays means that you can sometimes increase the total available space on your Drobo just by adding one additional drive; with a 4-bay Drobo, you often need to add two larger drives to take advantage of an increase in total usable capacity.
New to the Drobo 5C is a USB Type-C connector on the Drobo itself. The Drobo 5C comes with a standard USB to USB-C cable. Chances are, your current computer just has a regular USB connector, so that cable will work great for you. But in the future, more and more computers will moving away from USB towards USB-C. (If you currently use a very new computer, you may already have USB-C.) So this Drobo works with current computers, while being ready for the future.
In theory, USB-C can be twice as fast as USB 3.0. Because I don’t have a USB-C port on my computer and thus I used my computer’s USB connection, I didn’t notice any speed increase with the 5C versus my older Drobo. But if you have a newer computer with USB-C, I would think that this connection would be faster. As noted above, the main advantage that I see to using USB-C is future-proofing.
Software
Drobo comes with Drobo Dashboard software that you can use to work with your Drobo. In the Dashboard, you can see specific details on drive capacity and health, dim the lights if you find them to be too bright, format drives, etc. I rarely have the need to use this software because the great thing about Drobo is that it just works, and all that you really need to do is glance at the lights on the front of a Drobo to check that all is well. Nevertheless, it is nice to be able to check in the Dashboard just to see how everything is working. And the Drobo Dashboard software lets you update the software on the Drobo itself when updates are released.
Upgrading from a prior Drobo — and the silver lining to my own incompetence
If you haven’t used a Drobo before, the Drobo 5C is a great place to start. But if you have an older model of the Drobo, it is easy to upgrade. As noted above, I bought a 4-bay Drobo back in 2015. Moving to a new Drobo is just about as easy as shutting down the former Drobo, taking out those drives and putting them in the new Drobo, and then turning on the new Drobo.
At least, it should be that easy for most folks. I made a mistake when I did my upgrade. I successfully installed three of the hard drives, but for my fourth hard drive I wasn’t paying close enough attention and I didn’t push the hard drive all the way in. Thus, when I started up the Drobo 5C, it thought that one of my hard drives had failed, and it warned me to replace that hard drive with a new one.
At first, I was upset at myself for own incompetence. It’s not like pushing a hard drive all the way in is all that complicated. Sigh. But then I realized that there was a nice silver lining; I got my own live demo of what happens when a hard drive fails and I see a flashing red light on the front of the Drobo. I’ll be honest, my first reaction was a small amount of panic. I don’t want to lose any of my files, especially home movies of my kids when they were younger! But then I realized that the Drobo 5C was purring along, working the way that it was supposed to work. Once the Drobo 5C finished configuring itself with the three drives that it recognized, I ejected that fourth drive and then put it into a drive bay — correctly this time. The Drobo erased and formatted that fourth drive (just as if it were a brand new drive), and then moved data from the three drives back over to that fourth drive. Once again, I had a Drobo with four working drives all with green lights. Whew! Whenever I do have a real hard drive failure, it will be nice that I already had what amounted to a fire drill so that I can remain calm and know that there is nothing to worry about; the Drobo was made to deal with these sorts of problems.
To take advantage of the new fifth bay that didn’t exist in my older Drobo, I purchased a 2 TB hard drive from Amazon to add to the four 1 TB hard drives that I had been using. The drive I purchased cost only $89, and it increased my total usable space from 2.72 TB to 3.63 TB.
Conclusion
There is something very freeing about knowing that you have a ton of storage connected to your computer. Take all the photos and HD video that you want with your iPhone; you’ll always have enough space because it is easy to expand if you need to do so. And it is even better to know that these precious files are saved not on just a single hard drive, which can fail, but on multiple drives that all work together thanks to the magic of Drobo.
According to recent reports from third parties (not from Apple itself), Apple’s share of the education market is decreasing, but its share of the enterprise market — which includes law firms — is increasing. John Gruber of Daring Fireball discussed these reports, including one from Jamf, and then made this amusing remark: “So today in 2017, Apple is struggling in the education and creative pro markets, and thriving in the enterprise. Try telling that to a time-traveler from 20 years ago.” Very true. And now, the news of note from the past week:
The iPhone’s built-in Camera app has an HDR mode, but Caitlin McGarry of Macworld discusses the latest version of the Adoble Lightroom iOS app which also has an HDR feature — perfect if you are taking a picture outside and have some bright areas (like the sky) and dark areas (like shadows) within the same picture. I’ve tried them both side by side for a few tests, and I was getting better HDR pictures with the Lightroom app.
Rene Ritchie of iMore reviews the ceramic version of the Apple Watch. I saw a New York attorney wearing this version of the Apple Watch a few months ago, and it looked very stylish on her.
Federico Viticci of MacStories reviews the Notability app when used with an Apple Pencil on an iPad Pro to take handwritten notes.
Mike Wuerthele of AppleInsider discusses the latest update to the fantastic Fantastical app, my favorite calendar app. The update adds a new Apple Watch complication, plus other features.
Ron Johnson, who created and used to be in charge of the Apple Store, discussed how Steve Jobs initially hated the idea of a Genius Bar in an interview with Kara Swisher of Recode. Eric Johnson of Recode shares the highlights.
Walt Handelsman, a New Orleans-based political cartoonist for The Advocate, created a clever cartoon on a President Trump travel ban that everyone can agree on.
And finally, Apple created a new page of its website devoted to HomeKit technologies. That page features a video of a woman with an extremely HomeKit-enabled home. This is far more HomeKit technology than a normal person will ever have, but the video is fun to watch. Here is a version on YouTube, or you can view the version on that page of the Apple website:
