I've been traveling this week, and one of my trusty companions is my set of AirPods. I love being able to listen to music and podcasts, often using both AirPods, but when I want to listen to audio while also being able to hear the outside world, I just wear one of them. I just got the audiobook version of Daniel Suarez's latest book Change Agent, and I look forward to using my AirPods to listen to that this weekend. Even though AirPods have now been out for many months, they are still very hard to buy, as noted by John Gruber of Daring Fireball. But if you think that they might appeal to you, I encourage you to buy a pair. Jason Snell of Six Colors explains his thoughts after using AirPods for four months, and I agree with most of what he says, except that in my experience, my ability to use AirPods on a plane depends upon what I am doing. For music and many podcasts, AirPods are loud enough even with the background noise of a plane. But for some movies and TV shows, I agree with Jason that the volume isn't quite loud enough to overcome the background noise, so I instead use a wired set of headphones that fit more snugly in my ears and thus block out some external noise. And now, the news of note from the past two weeks:
- Legal technology expert Brett Burney recently gave a presentation called Top 10 Apps for Lawyers for MyCase. You can watch the presentation and learn about all of the apps that he recommends in this post on the MyCase Blog.
- Also on the MyCase blog, New York attorney Nicole Black writes about a presentation at ABA TECHSHOW regarding iPad Tips for Lawyers.
- California attorney David Sparks discusses whether it is necessary to take a laptop when traveling, or whether the iPad is enough. Except for the times that I have gone to trial, I have not travelled with a laptop since 2010, instead relying upon my iPad. I'm out of town as I type this post, using my iPad Pro in split screen mode.
- San Diego attorney Jeff Bennion discusses the dangers of using public Wi-Fi at a place like Starbucks.
- In an article for Macworld, Jason Snell says that using ApplePay still feels like living in the future, even though it has been out for two years now. I agree; every time I have the opportunity to pay for something with my watch, it still makes me smile.
- In an article for Lifehacker, Thorin Klowsowski explains the basics of using 1Password, the password manager that I use every day.
- I recently wrote about using Apple's CarPlay technology in a car. If you have an older car and you want to upgrade it to add CarPlay, Luke Flipowicz of iMore recommends the best CarPlay-enabled receivers.
- Tech journalist Steven Aquino reviews Apple's new Clips app.
- David Pogue of Yahoo explains how to forward a text message.
- And finally, Apple's new Apple Park campus is nearing completion. Here is a cool drone video showing the state of the construction, both during the day and at night. It looks very neat:
