In the news

As noted by Dan Moren of Six Colors, Apple announced this week that it is having an event March 27 in Chicago.  The event will take place at a school, and Apple is calling it a Field Trip, so I imagine that Apple will be showing off some new technology that can be used in education.  But that doesn’t mean that it might not also be useful for lawyers.  For example, my Apple Pencil is one of the most useful Apple products in my law practice, and as Serenity Caldwell of iMore notes, one rumor is that Apple could debut an Apple Pencil 2 at the event.  Other folks are predicting a new iPad will be announced, although that one seems a little more far-fetched to me.  At this point we can only speculate what will be announced, but if you were planning to buy an Apple product in the next 10 days, you might consider waiting until March 27 just in case Apple updates the product that you were thinking about buying.  And now, the news of note from the past week:

• My favorite app for listening to podcasts is Overcast because it has so many great features.  This week the app added a new feature called Smart Resume, so that when you pause the podcast and then subsequently resume, the podcast backs up a few seconds and finds dead space between words and starts there.  Chicago attorney John Voorhees of MacStories describes the new feature.  It’s so clever that you instantly wonder why podcast apps haven’t always done this.
• Massachusetts attorney Bob Amborgi reports that with Kentucky adding the requirement, there are now 30 states which have an ethical rule imposing a duty of technological competence on attorneys.
• Oklahoma City attorney Jeff Taylor of the Droid Lawyer website explains how you can manage the information that Google has about you using the MyAccount feature.
• Earlier this week, I discussed the recent ABA TECHSHOW conference, and one of the things that I mentioned was that the conference iPhone app was quite good.  New York attorney Nicole Black had the same thought, and write about how a good app can help a conference in this article for Above the Law.
• When you exercise with your Apple Watch, the watch keeps track of your heart rate during the workout.  But what if you want to keep track of your heart rate when you are not working out?  Chance Miller of 9to5Mac describes the HeartMonitor app for Apple Watch which allows you to start a non-exercise session in which the watch will track your heart rate.
• Many cities now have a bike sharing option that you can pay for.  Romain Dillet of TechCrunch notes that Apple Maps now has the ability to show you the nearest bike-sharing stations in many cities, including 24 U.S. cities and many other around the world.  In New Orleans where I live, we have a relatively new bike sharing service called Blue Bikes and I see people using the service all the time, but Apple Maps doesn’t yet work with that service.
• If you ever thought that you could redact a PDF document using the iOS built-in Markup feature, Benjamin Mayo of 9to5Mac explains why this is NOT an appropriate way to redact confidential information.
• There is something funny about buying an accessory for an accessory, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t useful.  Serenity Caldwell of iMore discusses some of the best accessories for the Apple Pencil.
• There are lots of ways that you can manage multiple iPhones and other Apple products within a family.  This week, Apple unveiled a new Families page on its website to show you everything that you can do.
• If you use iAnnotate by Branchfire to manage and annotate your PDF files, a post on the Branchfire blog describes the version 4.5 update which adds the ability to merge PDFs and other features.
• If you want to add CarPlay to a car which doesn’t have it, Zac Hall of 9to5Mac recommends the best aftermarket CarPlay receivers.
• And finally, this week Apple unveiled a fun commercial called Unlock which shows off the power of using Face ID to unlock an iPhone X.  I like this one: