Apple technology, especially iPhones and laptops, shows up in TV shows all the time. I often hear folks speculate about how much Apple must have paid for product placement. In an article for Variety, Brian Steinberg reports that there are some rare instances in which Apple does so, but most of the time that Apple's products appear in a show, it is just because the folks creating the show feel that it makes sense for an Apple product to appear in the scene. But that doesn't mean that Apple has nothing to do with it. Steinberg reports that Apple has a team that works with TV shows to provide Apple products to be used by the actors. There is, of course, some cost to Apple to provide all of those products for free, but as Steinberg reports, that cost pales compared to the cost of a 30-second commercial, even though the exposure can be just as valuable. And now, the news of note from the past week:
- On his Apps in Law website, legal technology consultant Brett Burney discusses in two articles (part one, part two) and two associated videos how the TranscriptPad app works. This is a great resource if you have TranscriptPad but you are not quite sure how to use all of the features, and is also useful if you don't have the app and you want to see exactly how you could use it.
- California attorney David Sparks writes about an update to the Trello iOS app, an app that can be used by teams to manage a project. I haven't used this myself, but I do hear about other attorneys incorporating project management software into their law practice.
- The LitSoftware blog explains how Texas attorney Ron Clark used TrialPad to win three defense verdicts in criminal cases.
- Next week, Apple will hold an education event in Chicago. In an article for Macworld, Jason Snell predicts what Apple is most likely to announce, including a new low-cost iPad.
- Jared Newman of Fast Company describes 25 top productivity apps. There are some good ones in this list, along with quite a few that I've never heard of.
- About a year ago, I tried out and reviewed Sleep++, and Apple Watch app that can measure and track your sleep. The app didn't seem useful for my life, but I continue to hear from others who see value in using an app like this. Federico Viticci of MacStories reports that the Sleep++ app was updated this week to add automatic sleep tracking, which I imagine would reduce the awkwardness of using the app. Viticci's article also compares Sleep++ to AutoSleep, a similar app which Viticci prefers.
- If you do sleep with your Apple Watch on, Christian Aibreg of iDownloadBlog recommends disabling Auto Call in your Emergency SOS settings so that you don't accidentally call 911 at night if you sleep on your watch the wrong way. This reminds me of an incident back when I was a teenager using a Commodore 64 computer and a modem to dial a local BBS. The phone number of the BBS was 391-19xx. I could tell as the modem was dialing that it made a mistake and didn't dial the "3" and thus instead it dialed "911." Through my modem speaker, I could hear emergency services pick up, while my end was making the sounds of a modem in the 1980s. I immediately hung up in panic, but then a few minutes later the police showed up at my house to check that everything was OK — meaning I had to explain to my parents how my computer had called 911 by mistake, something that they didn't really understand. We may no longer use modems to dial a BBS, but I guess that accidentally calling 911 is still a thing.
- Apple updated its Apple Watch band collection for Spring 2018. Rene Ritchie of iMore discusses the new bands.
- Michael Steeber of 9to5Mac discusses some "obscure" Apple accessories of the past which you might have forgotten about. I enjoyed the article, but some of these "obscure" accessories are items that I used quite a bit, so I'm not sure that they are obscure. Indeed, I posted reviews of the Apple Universal Dock and the iPad Camera Connection Kit.
- And finally, two weeks ago, I ended the In the news post with an Apple video for the HomePod called "Welcome Home" created by Spike Jonze. It's a great video, and the choreography and effects are really impressive. This week, Tim Nudd of AdWeek posted a fascinating behind-the-scenes article and video on how the Apple commercial was made. You need to go to the AdWeek article to watch the video, and I recommend that you do so because it does a great job of showing you how complicated this was to create. It reminds me of Apple technology itself, which is often so easy and fun to use that you can forget how much effort went into making the product. After you watch that article, you'll want to watch the Apple video again, so here it is:
