Month: April 2018

Yesterday, T-Mobile and Sprint announced that they will merge.  If the government approves, then we will have only three major wireless companies in the United States.  In the communications that I have seen from the two companies, including a joint website that went live yesterday, one of the main themes was that this merger would promote 5G, the next generation of wireless technology.  This makes me wonder, what will 5G bring us, and when can we start to use it on the iPhone?

100x faster

It won’t surprise you that the primary advantage of 5G is faster Internet for mobile devices.  Indeed, wireless speed has increased dramatically since the iPhone was originally introduced in 2007, so we all expect this to continue in the future.

The original iPhone only supported 2G Edge wireless, and the addition of 3G support a year later was such an improvement that the second generation of iPhone mentions it in its name:  it was called the iPhone 3G.  Edge on the original iPhone provided download speeds of around 100 Kbps — about twice as fast as a 56K modem.  With 3G, the iPhone 3G in 2008 increased download speeds to around 500 Kbps.  Carriers improved 3G technology over time, and manufacturers improved devices to take advantage of that.  For example, in early 2009, I reported that AT&T was planning to double 3G speed, and by 2011, I was using an iPhone 4 with better 3G technology and I saw average download speeds of around 3 Mbps.

The iPhone 5 was introduced in the Fall of 2012, and one of the marquee features was support for 4G LTE.  It provided a major increase in wireless speed.  Here in New Orleans, in 2012-2013, I would typically see 4G LTE download speeds in the 30-40 Mbps range.  Those speeds increased over time as technology improved.  With my iPhone X in 2018, I typically see 4G LTE speeds of 75-100 Mbps, and I often see speeds well in excess 0f 100 Mbps.

 

While 4G has gotten faster over the years, just like 3G did, as I look back over the past decade, the major speed advantages have been when there was a new generation.  5G is being advertised as being the next major speed bump.  The CTIA, a trade organization for the wireless industry, says that 5G can be 100 times faster than 4G, and a chart on its website predicts a transition from 100 Mbps download speeds to 10 Gbps.  5G will also feature low latency that can make the internet five times more responsive when you initiate each request.

With this dramatic increase in speed, I imagine that we will see an increase in high quality video on demand, a vast increase in augmented reality, and even more services living in the cloud.  And of course, I’m sure that the faster speeds will prompt new innovations that many of us have not thought about yet.  The CTIA website says that with 5G, “[s]ensors will monitor the health and safety of critical infrastructure like buildings, roads, and bridges, while connected trash cans, bus stops, light poles and more will help cities operate more efficiently” and says that 5G will help self-driving cars.

A different kind of infrastructure

To date, wireless cell technology has been based on huge towers with antennas 125 feet in the air which would provide service for several miles.  But it turns out that 5G will be different.  5G is much faster, but the signal doesn’t go nearly as far.  So instead of a smaller number of tall towers, 5G will work with a large number of microcells placed around 500 feet apart, often on streetlights or utility poles.

But it won’t just be that microcell on a utility pole.  As reported by Allan Homes earlier this year in the New York Times, “[m]uch of the equipment will be on streetlights or utility poles,” but it will often be “accompanied by containers the size of refrigerators on the ground.”  That New York Times article includes pictures showing how these containers can be made to look like mailboxes so that they don’t seem too out-of-place.  Because this equipment on the ground is a potential eyesore, some local governments are looking to regulate 5G implementation, which has led the wireless companies to lobby at the state and federal level to try to block local regulators from slowing down the transition to 5G.  Katherine Shaver of the Washington Post reports:  “Industry-backed legislative proposals introduced this year in 18 states, including Maryland and Virginia, would preempt most local zoning laws for small cell poles up to 50 feet tall.  They would limit residents’ input on applications for small cell facilities and restrict local governments’ ability to reject them.”

In an editorial, the USA Today suggests this compromise:  “A smarter approach would bar localities from turning the permitting process into a cash cow, but would give them input on where 5G boxes go and what they should look like.  This kind of buy-in might seem burdensome.  But it is necessary to prevent a grass-roots rebellion of property owners and community activists.”

The future is close

It will be interesting to see how these implementation details get worked out, but I presume that somehow, they will.  5G (and someday 6G, 7G, etc.) seems inevitable.  As noted above, T-Mobile and Sprint are seeking government approval of their merger so that they can be a leader in 5G technology.  AT&T announced a few months ago that “2018 will be the year you can experience mobile 5G from AT&T” with preliminary service “in a dozen cities, including parts of Dallas, Atlanta and Waco, Texas, by the end of this year.”  Verizon announced a few days ago that it would launch 5G “in 3-5 markets later this year and take the same aggressive approach to the deployment of 5G mobility when devices become available.”

As that quote from Verizon indicates, the initial rollout of 5G won’t mean that you can start using it on your current iPhone.  When 5G first comes out, you’ll need to have a dedicated hardware device to receive the 5G signal, which I presume you can then connect to a mobile phone via Wi-Fi.  3G was available in 2007 when the original iPhone was introduced, but Apple didn’t take advantage of it for the first year of the iPhone because some of the initial 3G chips for mobile devices consumed too much power.  Apple waited for the technology to mature a little before adding 3G a year later in 2008 — and even then, just for AT&T.  (The first Verizon iPhone didn’t come out until 2011.)

Complicating things further, I understand that there isn’t yet any agreement in the industry on how 5G is going to work.  Thus, the technology that lets an iPhone talk to AT&T 5G may not also allow for communication with T-Mobile/Sprint 5G.

Nevertheless, I expect that it won’t be long before 5G will start to have enough availability that you will want to have the opportunity to take advantage of it.  I don’t expect a 5G iPhone or iPad in 2018, and I suspect that the technology will still be too new in 2019, but it wouldn’t surprise me to see 5G in Apple mobile devices in the year 2020.

As someone who started trying out iPhone apps in 2008, I eventually got to the point where I had hundreds of apps on my iPhone.  Last summer, as I was troubleshooting a problem, I ended up starting with a fresh install of iOS.  Since then, I’ve been more conservative about adding new apps … but even so, I still have four screens full of apps on my iPhone, and many of those screens have lots of folders.  California attorney David Sparks apparently has more self-control than I do, because as he shows off in a post on his MacSparky website, he has only a single screen of apps and only four folders on that screen, with a system so that every app goes in a special place.  I’m not sure that I can ever see myself with just a single screen of apps, but I can see the logic to his approach.  And now, the news of note from the past week:

• On the latest edition of the Apps in Law podcast, Brett Burney interviews Massachusetts attorney Howard Lenow, who discusses the Timeline 3D app.  Lenow does a good job of describing how this app is simple to use but very effective.
• California attorney Jeffrey Allen and Texas attorney Ashley Hallene recommend some of their favorite apps in an article for the ABA’s GPSolo eReport.
• New York attorney Nicole Black discusses time-tracking software for lawyers, including apps that you can use on an iPhone.  One of the apps that she discusses is iTimeKeep, a new sponsor of iPhone J.D. and the app that I use in my law practice almost every day.
• In early 2015, I noted that upgraded the Wi-Fi in my house by purchasing two AirPort Extreme wireless base stations, putting them at opposite ends of my house, and connecting them with a Cat 6 cable.  I’ve always liked Apple’s AirPort base stations because they were so much easier to use and manage than routers made by other companies.  But Apple stopped updating their devices about five years ago, and never embraced the mesh networking technology that you see in many modern routers.  As reported by Rene Richie of iMore, yesterday Apple announced that it was officially out of the Wi-Fi router business that it entered in 1999 when Wi-Fi was in its infancy. 
• If you are looking to upgrade the Wi-Fi in your home or office, Apple has some advice for selecting a Wi-Fi router that works well with Apple devices.
• When I think of smart home and air conditioning, I think of smart thermostats.  But Mike Wuerthele of AppleInsider notes that GE is now shipping the first HomeKit-compatible window air conditioning unit.  And Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac notes that GE has some other units that work with HomeKit.
• Jason Cross of Macworld recommends the best calculators for the iPhone and iPad.  His overall favorite is PCalc, and that’s the one that I use too.
• J.D. Biersdorfer of the New York Times explains how to add fonts to an iPad.
• If you use Windows 10, Jim Tamous of The Mac Observer notes that iTunes is now available in the Microsoft Store.
• Bradley Chambers of The Sweet Setup explains how you can change the title of memories in the Photos app.
• And finally, in this 15 second video, Apple shows visually why the App Store on the iPhone is safer than other app stores on other smartphones:

Apple’s built-in Notes app on the iPhone and iPad is a powerful and well-designed app.  It works great as a quick place to jot down a note that you may only refer to once in the future, but it also works well as a place to store important information that you need to refer to from time to time.  For example, I have a note with the file numbers for all of the cases that I’m working on, a note of the items that I frequently pack when I take a trip (so that I can review the list and make sure I’m not forgetting anything whenever I prepare to travel), a note listing the team members on my daughter’s soccer team, a note to keep track of the James Bond movies I’m watching with my kids (next on our list is Goldeneye from 1995), and many more.  Here are two tips which make it faster and easier to bring up specific notes that you want to access the most often.

Pinned Notes

In the Settings app, you can choose to sort notes by the date edited, date created, or title.  I have mine set to the date edited, which usually makes the most sense for me.  Chose whatever method you think will make it easiest for you to find your notes.

 

Sorting by date is often helpful for me, but there are some notes that I don’t edit very often (so they are not near the top) but which I am most likely to want to view.  Apple has a solution for this called Pinned Notes.  When you are looking at your list of notes, if you swipe from left to right on a note, you will see a pin icon.  Keep dragging to the right to turn on the pin.  That will move the note to the very top of your list of Notes.

 

The same left-to-right swipe can be used to remove a pin.  Pinning notes is a useful way to keep your most important notes at the top of your list, regardless of the sort order that you selected in Settings.

Jump directly to a note

If you want to get a little more sophisticated, you can use one of the iPhone apps that have an automation feature to create a shortcut to jump to a specific note, no matter where it is in your list.  I briefly mentioned this tip on April 13, 2018 when I linked to an article by Federico Viticci of MacStories, and today I’m providing more details on how it works.  In this example, I’m using the Launch Center Pro app, a $4.99 app which I last reviewed back in 2012.  (The app has improved a lot since then, but that old post will still give you a general idea of what the app does.)

First, you need to get an iCloud URL for your specific note.  To get that, look at a note and tap the share button at the top right of the screen — the icon with a circle around a generic person with a plus sign.

The next screen says Add People.  Tap on the icon near the bottom that says Copy Link.  Then on the next screen, tap Copy Link at the top right, and then you can tap Cancel because you are not going to actually email that link to anyone.

 

Open the Launch Center Pro app, tap the pencil at the top right to enter Edit mode, and then tap the plus sign in any empty location and create a new Action.  In the next screen, type whatever title you want in the Name field, and then paste into the URL field the contents of your clipboard, which will be the iCloud.com URL for your specific note.  The default icon is the Safari icon, but feel free to change it to something more meaningful to you if you want.

That’s it.  Now, whenever you want to access your specific note, you can open the Launch Center Pro app and tap the icon for your note.  That will cause the Notes app to open, and then your specific note will come up, no matter where it is located in your list of notes.

If you want an even faster way to launch your specific note, use Quick Actions.  In the Launch Center Pro app, tap the gear at the top left to open up the app settings.  Then tap Quick Actions and add the shortcut you just created to the QUICK ACTION WIDGET setting.  As long as it is in the first row of icons, in the future, you can 3D Touch on the Launch Center Pro icon on your home screen, and then select the icon for your note.  This will jump you directly to your note without even having to fully open the Launch Center Pro app.

The Notes app is a useful place to store tons of different notes.  With these two tips, you can directly access your most important notes quickly and easily.

Earlier this week, I discussed the new GrayKey device which can supposedly unlock an iPhone even without the password, given enough time.  In an article for Motherboard, Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai and Joseph Cox note that Apple has a feature in beta which frustrates GrayKey because a police officer must plug in an iPhone to the GrayKey device within one week of the iPhone last being unlocked.  Of course, it would be easier for law enforcement if they could just compel a suspect to unlock his iPhone.  In an article for The Volokh Conspiracy, USC Law Professor Orin Kerr discusses two recent opinions on this topic from federal magistrate judges.  Additionally, Former FBI Director James Comey has a new book out this week, in case you have been living under a rock and haven’t heard yet.  Obviously, the parts concerning President Trump are getting the most attention, but Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac notes that the book also offers Comey’s perspective on the FBI’s efforts to force Apple to unlock iPhones.  iPhone security and privacy is a big issue that is going to remain in the news for a long time.  And now, the other news of note from the past week:

• The Drafts app was updated to version 5 this week.  California attorney David Sparks is a big fan, and he explains why in this article and even includes some videos showing how to use the app.  Tim Nahumck of MacStories also wrote a comprehensive review of Drafts 5.  Given the enthusiasm that many have for this app, I downloaded it and I’m starting to try it out.  So far, I’m not really seeing how this app fits into my life, but I’ll keep trying it and I haven’t given up on it yet.
• Cult of Mac has started a series of articles to recommend 50 essential iOS apps.  The first two apps recommended — Deliveries (my reviews:  1, 2) and Dark Sky Weather are excellent, so I look forward to the future installments in this series.
• Andrew Orr of the Mac Observer offers some good advice for what to do if your iPhone is stolen.  Read the article now while you are calm and collected, and hopefully you will remember these steps should misfortune shine upon you.
• In an article in Macworld, security expert Glenn Fleishman offers advice for how to recover your iCloud account if you have two-factor authentication turned on (which I recommend) and one of your authentication methods goes missing.  Read this article now while you are calm and collected … you know the rest.
• Andrew O’Hara of AppleInsider reviews the CordDock iPhone dock by ElevationLab, and he notes that it is different from most other docks.
• Ed Hardy of Cult of Mac notes that the Dropbox app has been updated to work better on the iPad.
• If you find yourself at a McDonald’s today (or next Friday), you can pay with Apple Pay and get a free medium order of fries.  Mitchel Broussard of MacRumors has the details; for example, you have to order using the McDonald’s app.
• To make up for eating at McDonald’s today, on Sunday you can do a 30 minute workout with your Apple Watch and earn the Earth Day Challenge badge.  Once again, Mitchel Broussard of MacRumors has the details.  And then, after all of that working out, you can relax on Sunday night by doing what I will be doing:  watching the new season of Westworld on HBO, which Lee Hutchinson of Ars Technica writes about in this spoiler-free review of Season 2.
• And finally, Serenity Caldwell of iMore prepared a review of the 2018 version of the 9.7″ iPad.  But instead of preparing a written review like I would do, or preparing a traditional video review, she decided to show off what this iPad can do by filming the screen while she walked through various tasks.  She even created the soundtrack in Garage Band on the iPad, and managed to incorporate a few seconds of video of her as a young girl using a Mac.  Combine all of this work with the fact that she is a talented artist, and the final product is impressive.  Here is her video:

When Apple released iOS 9 in 2015, it changed the default length of the passcode needed to unlock the device from 4 to 6 digits for all devices with a Touch ID sensor.  This increased the odds of guessing a passcode from 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 1,000,000.  And while some folks groaned at having to remember two additional numbers, hopefully most attorneys using iPhones realized that if you are going to keep confidential and privileged information on an iPhone, you need to take reasonable steps to keep that device secure.

This week I saw a link by John Gruber of Daring Fireball to an article posted last month by Thomas Reed of the security firm Malwarebytes Labs.  The article describes a device called GrayKey, a small box with two lightning cables coming out of the front of it which can supposedly crack the passcode of an iOS device.  Apparently, the box is only sold to law enforcement.  If someone tries to hack your passcode on an iPhone itself, there is a delay after the wrong passcode is entered.  You have probably encountered this delay yourself at some point.  But it seems that GrayKey has a way around this and can quickly try multiple passcodes.  And according to an article by Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai of Motherboard, the only thing slowing down the hack is the length of your passcode.  He quotes statistics from Matthew Green, an assistant professor and cryptographer at the Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute.  Green says that a 4 digit passcode can be cracked in 13 minutes or less, a 6 digit passcode can be cracked in 22.2 hours or less, an 8 digit passcode can be cracked in 92.5 days or less, and a 10 digit passcode can be cracked in 9,259 days or less.

Obviously, then, you can improve the security of your passcode by using more digits.  You can also improve the security of your passcode by making the characters more complicated by using letters and/or symbols in addition to numbers.  Open the Settings app, go to Touch ID & Passcode or Face ID & Passcode (depending upon what device you are using), tap Change Passcode, and then on the next screen tap Passcode Options.  Here, you have the option to change to a custom numeric passcode (more than 6 digits) or a custom alphanumeric code (letters, symbols, and/or digits).

Second, it is harder to remember a longer passcode, especially because the strongest passcodes are long and don’t use words that are in a dictionary.  There are some tricks you can use to help you remember more secure passcodes.  For example, you can remove the vowels from words to create something that you can remember but which would be hard to guess.  “Drew Brees #9 Saints” becomes DrwBrs#9Snts, a 12-character passcode lacking words found in a dictionary, and which would take a ridiculously long time to crack using current technology.  Or you can use the first letters from the words of a memorable line from a song or poem or other saying.  “The hills are alive with the Sound of Music” becomes ThaawtSoM, a nine-character passcode lacking dictionary words.

Hopefully, it won’t be a problem for you that some police officers now have the ability to use a device like the GrayKey.  But what worries me is that if the police have it, perhaps certain bad actors have access to similar devices — criminals who might have a reason to try to access the confidential information that you have on your device about your clients.

Apple is constantly improving the security of its devices, and that’s why I encourage all attorneys to update their iPhones and iPads when Apple comes out.  A GrayKey-type device that works today may not work after the next iOS update.  But Apple has been improving iPhone security ever since the first iPhone was released in 2007, and for over a decade now, clever folks have found new ways to circumvent security measures.

Do you need to change your six digit passcode to something stronger?  Well, that’s up to you.  Hopefully, the chance that your device will ever be connected to something like GrayKey is extremely remote.  But for what it’s worth, I’m currently using 12-character passcodes on my iPhone and iPad.  After about a week, I got used to the longer passcodes.  And while I am entering the passcode, I think to myself “take that you evil hackers!” which, if nothing else, helps to fill up some of that extra time that it takes to type 12 characters instead of 6 numbers.

It’s always nice when you have an opportunity to talk to someone who has great suggestions on a topic that you are interested in.  You are about to travel to Paris?  Here’s someone who lived there for the past year and who has fabulous recommendations on all of the things that you should do and see.  You are looking for some great new TV shows to watch?  Here is someone who has excellent recommendations for binge-worthy shows on HBO, Showtime, Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc.  I have an interest in the iPhone (I know — big surprise to you, right?) so I always love talking to other folks about how they are using their iPhones.  With millions of apps in the App Store, and countless hardware accessories sold by Apple and third parties, I enjoy learning about the things that I haven’t heard of before, or learning about how others are using apps or accessories in different ways. 

I first met California attorney David Sparks a number of years ago at an ABA TECHSHOW conference, but I have been following him for much longer than that through his MacSparky website and the Mac Power Users podcast he does with Florida attorney Katie Floyd.  David has deep knowledge of the iPhone and the iPad, and I always love talking to him about all things iOS for his perspective on how to get more out of these devices.  And because he often writes posts about these topics on his website, I find myself linking to an article on MacSparky almost every Friday when I write my In the news roundup.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could ask that friend who knows about Paris, or TV shows, or the iPhone, to just write down everything that they know and share it with you?  That is the idea behind the latest electronic book by David Sparks called the iPhone Field Guide.  David has taken just about everything in his brain concerning how you can get more out of an iPhone and poured it into this book, which you can read on the iPad and the iPhone.  And because the iBooks system makes it possible to embed video into a page, this book also includes over two hours of videos in which David shows off how he uses his iPhone.  It’s almost like David was sitting next to you and showing you his iPhone, saying “let me show you what this cool app can do.”

David sent me a promotional code so that I could download a free copy to review it for iPhone J.D., and I enjoyed reading all 452 pages of it this past weekend.  This is a great book, and I highly recommend it to anyone who owns an iPhone and is interested in doing more with it — which should cover just about every person who reads iPhone J.D., except perhaps for the occasional Android owner who ends up here by accident.

The book contains 45 chapters and covers just about all of the topics that relate to using an iPhone.  (One notable exception — although David is an attorney, this book doesn’t include recommendations of apps that are specific to lawyers or other types of professionals.)  Chapters include, just to pick a few examples, Photography, Calendar Apps, Security, Habit Trackers, Travel, Document Scanners, Mind Mapping, Outlining, Creating Video, and there is even a chapter on the Apple Watch because it is such a perfect iPhone companion.

For each topic, David gives you his recommendations.  This is not an in-depth guide on how to use every little part of every app, and thus there is no chapter that exhaustively goes through every sub-menu of the Settings app.  Instead, he picks a topic and tells you his top recommendations on that topic. 

As an example, here is a page from the chapter on Mind Mapping in which David recommends MindNode for folks just getting started.  As you can see, the page includes a description of the app, a two minute video in which David explains why he recommends this app and shows off how the app works, and a link to download the app in the App Store.  This is page 308, but if you flip to page 309 where David finishes his discussion of the app, he includes a link to a series of videos he did for the developer of MindNode in which he spends about an hour explaining in detail how to use the app.

For another example, in the Creating Video chapter, David starts with a few pages giving you some general tips on shooting video with an iPhone.  Next, he discusses apps, limiting himself to his best recommendations.  He explains why the built-in Camera app is great for taking video because most features are automatic, but then explains why you should consider the FiLMic Pro app if you want manual controls for everything.  Then he discusses editing video, starting with an overview of Apple’s free iMovie app, and then he recommends a single third-party app for more powerful editing called LumaFusion.  When describing that app, he states:  “I tried just about every video editing app available while doing research for this book, and LumaFusion stands about them all.  If you want more than the basic iPhone video editing tools, buy LumaFusion.”

Those two sentences really sum up what this book is all about.  There are lots of websites that have posts with titles like “the best time management apps” but then when you read the article, it is just a list of ten apps in the category with virtually no explanation on why one is better than the other.  This book is the opposite of that.  If you were to bump into David and say that you were interested in topic X and what would he recommend for that, he would say something like what I quoted above — this first app is the one most folks would want to use for that task, and here is a second app which is the best one to get if you want something more powerful.

There is something in this book for everyone who uses an iPhone.  Even though I consider myself a power user and I know about a lot of different apps, I learned a bunch reading this book and I downloaded quite a few apps this past weekend while reading the book.  I also learned some new things.  For example, there is a chapter on Siri commands that is more comprehensive than anything that I have ever seen on the subject.  Many times as I was reading through that chapter, I stopped myself to say “can Siri really do that?” and then I tried the command and saw that it worked.

I think that the best way to read this book is on an iPad.  That’s how the book is laid out.  But David also takes advantage of the way that iBooks works so that you can also enter a scrolling view on the iPhone, a view in which you can scroll through the text, pictures, and videos (much like you might scroll through a web page in Safari) and you can change the font size to whatever you prefer.  So if you want to start reading this book on the iPad, but then a read a chapter or two on your iPhone while you find yourself with a little down time, you can definitely do that.  Here is an example of how a page looks on my iPad Pro, and then how the same page looks on the iPhone both before and after I turn on scrolling view.

 

For a limited time during the introductory period of this new book, David is offering this book for $20.  At some point in the future, the price will go up.  The book is packed with useful information and recommendations, and perhaps thanks to his long career as a lawyer, David is a very good writer and this book is enjoyable to read.  I enthusiastically recommend the iPhone Field Guide to all iPhone J.D. readers.

Click here to get the iPhone Field Guide by David Sparks ($19.99): 

Federico Viticci of MacStories has a good list of tips for getting work done on an iPad.  The first tip, creating a launcher for a specific note, works on the iPhone too, and it is very useful if you use the Notes app because this tip gives you a way to open a specific note, which I prefer to opening up the Notes app and then finding the note and then opening that note.  For example, I have a note containing the file numbers for my most frequent matters, and it is nice to have a quick way to launch that specific note when I need a file number.  To accomplish this tip, you need to use a launcher app such as Launch Center Pro.  I see that I haven’t reviewed that app since 2012, but it has been updated many times since then and it remains on my first iPhone home screen because I use it every day.  And indeed, after a recent update to Launch Center Pro, you can now hold down the app icon and the pop-up menu can give you six Quick Actions instead of four, a neat trick that I haven’t seen any other app do yet.  Click here to get Launch Center Pro ($4.99):    I’ll admit that apps like Launch Center Pro and Workflows which can be configured to accomplish complicated tasks are not for everyone.  The apps let you be more productive, but they come with a learning curve.  However, if you consider yourself a power user of the iPhone and iPad, these types of apps are great.  And now, the news of note from the past week:

• California attorney David Sparks discusses the new 2018 version of the 9.7″ iPad.  He says that for most users, it is a fine choice
• In the latest episode of the Apps in Law podcast, Brett Burney interviews South Carolina attorney Michael Polk to discuss Focus Keeper and HabitBull apps which he uses to stay n task throughout the day using the Pomodoro Technique.
• Jason Snell of Six Colors reviews the new iPad.
• Ryan Christoffel of MacStories explains that after a recent update to the Microsoft Word app, it now works better with the built-in Files app.
• Mark Sullivan of Fast Company wrote an interesting story explaining how Apple now runs on 100% green energy, such as solar. 
• Jonny Evans of Computerworld has a good list of useful iPhone tips.  Here’s one that I didn’t know that you could do:  “Hey Siri, call [contact] on speakerphone.”
• Leif Johnson of Macworld wrote a good article on his favorite note-taking apps for the iPad and Apple Pencil.  I really like GoodNotes 4, which is one of his picks.  Johnson points out that one advantage of Notability is that it can record audio as you take notes.  For my law practice I don’t consider that an avantage; I virtually never take notes in an environment in which it would be wise to create an audio recording (and for the times that I take note in court, I’m quite sure that an audio recording would be prohibited).  But it is nice to have quite a few strong apps in this field.
• Glenn Fleishmann of Macworld reviews Apple’s latest version of the Numbers app for iOS.  It has a few new features, including a much improved interface for importing data.
• Michael Potuck explains how to clean AirPods and the AirPods charging case in an article for 9to5Mac.
• If you use an iPhone X, because of its OLED screen, it uses less battery life to display black instead of other colors.  AppleInsider did a test and found that YouTube’s new dark theme can save you battery life on an iPhone X.  I think that this mode would look even better on the OLED screen if it were a pure black theme instead of a dark grey.
• And finally, this week Apple came out with a (PRODUCT)RED version of the iPhone 8.  It is otherwise identical to the iPhone 7 released last year, but the new color does look nice, and a portion of the proceeds go to support HIV/AIDS programs.  You can see some nice pictures of the new red iPhone on Apple’s website, where Apple notes that it has raised over $160 million for (RED) over the past 11 years.  If you want to see a short video of what the new red iPhone 8 looks like, Rene Ritchie of iMore prepared this video for his Vector podcast:

Thank you to Bellefield Systems, the creator of iTimeKeep, for sponsoring iPhone J.D. this month.  iTimeKeep has been around for seven years, and I remember first seeing a demo of the app at ABA TECHSHOW many years ago.  The premise of the app is brilliant:  make time entry so simple and accessible that you can easily enter your time no matter when you are working, and thus you don’t forget to record your time entries.  You may talk to a client over the weekend, spend time working on a brief at night after you put the kids to bed, or handle something in a courthouse because you happen to be there on another matter.  Forgetting to record a few 0.1 or 0.2 time entries may not seem like a big deal, but over weeks and months it can really add up.  This time that would have otherwise been lost is what Bellefield refers to as invisible time. With the iTimeKeep app on your iPhone — which is likely with you all the time — you can enter your time contemporaneously and before you forget about it.  As soon as you enter time, the app quickly talks to your firm’s time management system so that the activity is officially recorded.  By using your iPhone to record your time entries at the time that you do the work, you don’t have to worry about losing time that you forgot about as you try to reconstruct your activities at a later time.

iTimeKeep works with law firms of any size, integrating with several time and billing systems:  Aderant, Elite, Omega, PC Law, TimeMatters, and many, many more which are listed here.

I started using this app in my own law practice last year, and I posted a comprehensive review in August.  I have used this app on more occasions that I can remember to record my time when I am out of the office, time that I might have otherwise forgotten about.  Thus, the app has helped me to get paid for the work that I am actually doing, plus it ensures that my timesheets accurately reflect all of the work that I am doing for my clients.

 

iTimeKeep validates your time against client billing guidelines, so you don’t have to worry about forgetting to add a needed issue or task code for a file, or entering time in 0.1 increments when the client requires 0.25 entries.  And you can use built-in timers to keep track of precisely how long you spend working on a task.

What surprised me about iTimeKeep is that it isn’t just a tool for avoiding missed time entries.  It is also a fantastic tool for recording all of your time.  The time entry software that we use at my law firm has a web-based interface, and after using it for many years, I consider myself fairly efficient in entering my time.  But the iTimeKeep interface is so incredibly well-designed and fast to use that I often prefer using iTimeKeep over my time entry software.  And fortunately, it doesn’t matter which one I use — time that I enter in iTimeKeep shows up on my firm system, and time that I enter in my firm’s system shows up in iTimeKeep if I have to go back and edit an entry.

I cannot type on an iPhone as fast as I can type on a computer keyboard.  However, I can often enter time just as quickly using iTimeKeep on my iPhone.  Sometimes I use Siri dictation to speak a time entry, which is fast and easy.  Other times I use the iPhone’s keyboard shortcut feature to speed up time entry.  (In the Settings app, go to General -> Keyboard -> Text Replacement.)  For example, if I type “tcw” on my iPhone, it automatically changes that to “Telephone conference with ” so I just need to type the name and the “re” information.

But iTimeKeep is not just a product for your iPhone (and iPad and Apple Watch, and even Android).  You can also use iTimeKeep on your computer via a secure website interface.  Whether I am entering time in the office on my PC or at home on my Mac, I frequently use the desktop version of iTimeKeep to type my time entries in the clean and efficient interface.

No attorney enjoys time entry, but it is a necessary part of the practice of law for most of us.  With iTimeKeep, you significantly reduce the friction associated with entering your time, especially when you record it contemporaneous with performing the work for your client.  Thank you to Bellefield for sponsoring iPhone J.D. this month, and thank you for creating this perfect example of an iPhone app that greatly improves the practice of law for attorneys.

Don’t waste anymore time.  Try iTimeKeep today.

There are a large number of weather apps available for the iPhone, so it takes a lot for a weather app to distinguish itself.  One way to do so is to provide detailed forecasts.  Another way to do so is to have a great interface for the same information that other apps provide (and for a long time, Weather Line was my favorite weather app because of the interface).  CARROT Weather does both, and adds a new way to distinguish itself:  a personality.  In fact, I started using the app because it sounded interesting to use an app with a snarky disposition, although I figured that would be a gimmick which would get old quickly.  I stayed with the app for because it is a fantastic weather app, more useful than any other I have ever used on the iPhone.  After using the app for six months, this is my favorite weather app, and the one that I recommend.

Personality

Let’s start by discussing what got me to try to this app in the first place:  the personality.  In addition to telling you the weather, the app provides a line of dialogue relating to what the weather is.  For example, if the weather is cloudy, the app may say things like:  “The sun is playing hooky today” or “Worst.  Clouds.  Ever.”  Sometimes the dialogue is an attempt by the app to insult you, such as:  “You’ve wasted your life.  Also, it’s cloudy right now” or “Your weather is bad and you should feel bad.”  Sometimes the app tries to be funny, such as:  “It’s fifty shades of grey out” or “Every cloud has a silver lining.  Except for mushroom-shaped ones.  They have a lining of Iridium and Strontium 90.”  Often the app says something bizarre, such as “That cloud looks like a toddler drowning a rubber ducky” or “What’s the point of being able to control the weather if I can’t make everyone miserable with cloudy weather from time to time?”  Sometimes the dialogue reflects current events, including occasionally a reference to something that happened that same day (often involving President Trump).  And sometimes the app lies to you, such as insisting that it is sunny when it is actually raining.

 

You can adjust the personality in settings, selecting from Professional, Friendly, Snarky, Homicidal and Overkill.  You can also adjust the political leaning:  Centrist, Liberal, Conservative or No Politics.  You can also tap the dialogue on the main page to swap between a generic, professional description of the weather and the more humorous message.

Why does a weather app need to have a personality?  It doesn’t, but it sure does make the app more fun to use.  Sometimes the dialogue falls flat, but it has often made me chuckle.  And there must be lots of phrases in there because I don’t remember ever seeing it repeat.  This app reminds me of other technology with an attitude:  Siri, HAL 9000 from the movie 2001, GLaDOS from the Portal video game, etc.  When you add personality to an item of technology, it can become more interesting.

Weather data

As I noted, the personality made me want to check out CARROT Weather in the first place, but this is my favorite weather app because of the quality and presentation of the data.

By default you get weather data for your current location.  In the settings you can make the default the last place for which you checked the weather.  And you can always tap the current location at the top of the screen to change to another city.  The app remembers cities that you selected previously and presents them in a list so that you can select them again more easily.  (Or swipe to the left or right with two fingers to switch between cites.)  You can even adjust the pinpoint location for a city — down to a street address — and you can change the name.  So instead of getting the general weather for Chicago, you can opt to see the specific weather at your grandma’s house.

The main screen of CARROT Weather shows you the weather.  The top of the screen has a large number telling you the current temperature.  Next to that number, you see the “feels like” temperature, the precipitation, and the wind.  But those are just defaults; you can put whatever you want next to the temperature such as UV Index, Celsius (if your normal weather is in Fahrenheit), cloud cover, visibility, pressure, humidity, sunrise / sunset, moon phase, etc.)  And while three items are displayed next to the number, you can also set a 4th, 5th and 6th item that displays when you tap the number.

In the middle of the screen there is a pixelated person on a landscape, for no real reason other than to show something interesting.  But when there is a chance of rain or snow in the next hour (using the excellent Dark Sky data that many other iPhone apps use), you instead get a graph showing you precisely when the precipitation will start and stop in your location.  These forecasts are incredibly accurate.  If the app says that it will start raining in two minutes, I would start opening up your umbrella in about 90 seconds. 

Most of the bottom portion of the screen contains columns showing the weather each hour.  Much like the Weather Line app, your eye can quickly see — based upon the relative height of the forecast icon in each column — whether it is getting hotter or colder over time.  The icon for each hour also gives you a sense of what the weather will be that hour — sunny, rainy, overcast, etc.  The bottom of each column shows you the percentage chance of precipitation during that hour, but I often find it accurate enough to just look at the icon associated with each hour; if there is a raindrop in the icon it will rain, otherwise it will not.  Tap any column and the top of the app will show you more detailed weather information for that particular hour.

You can scroll to the right to see hourly forecasts for the next 48 hours.  When you reach the end, you can also tap to see extended (although often less accurate) hourly data for a full seven days.

Radar

Tap the radar icon at the top of the main screen of this app to see a map with the radar.  At the bottom right of the screen you can change the overlay from the radar to something else, like temperature or wind.  You can tap a Play button at the bottom left to animate the radar over the past two hours.

Time Travel

The app includes a Time Travel feature to show you the weather for a specific day in the past 70 years. Was it raining on the night of the car accident that is the subject of your litigation?  This app can tell you.

Apple Watch

There are not many third party Apple Watch apps which are just as useful as Apple’s built-in apps, but CARROT Weather is one of them.  You can add a complication to your watch screen, and you can customize it to present exactly what you want.  What I have been using is a line of text at the bottom of my Activity watch face with an icon to show current conditions, followed by the current temperature, followed by the high and low for the day.  That tells me most of what I need to know. 

Tap the complication to open the CARROT Weather app on the Apple Watch.  On the iPhone, you customize many different aspects of the Apple Watch interface, so you just see what you want to see.

 

Notifications

You can configure the app to send you notifications.  For example, the app can send you an alert when rain or snow is expected in the next hour (in the U.S. or U.K.).  You can get government-issued severe weather alerts.  You can get a morning report and an evening report. 

And more…

The app is a universal app so it also works on the iPad.  You can also get the app for the Mac or for the Apple TV. 

The app has a Secret Locations feature, which gives you an in-app map game in which you need to find places on a map, but I haven’t spent much time with that. There are also achievement badges, much like what you can get with the Apple Watch, but they are much more silly, such as the “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow” badge for experiencing your first snowfall.

In the settings for the app located in the iPhone’s main Settings app, you can flip a switch to change whether CARROT Weather uses a voice to speak out loud to you when you start the app.

If you want to really annoy the CARROT Weather app, swipe down from the top of the screen to bring up the in-app settings, and poke the “eye” of the app on the left side of the screen.  (Or go into AR Mode and poke the app’s eye.)  The more you do it, the more annoyed the app will get.

Price

The app itself costs $4.99.  To access some of the more advanced features, such as customizing the iPhone and Apple Watch interface and receiving notifications, you need to pay for a subscription, either $0.49 a month or $3.99 a year.

If you have a custom weather station that you want to use as the source of your weather information (such as weather monitoring hardware in your own backyard), CARROT Weather can work with that as well, but you need a more expensive subscription of $9.99 a year.

Conclusion

It is fun using an app with some attitude, and I like that you can adjust how much personality the app exhibits.  But what really makes this app shine is that it provides you with all of the weather data that you want, in an easy-to-read interface for the iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch that you can customize to your heart’s content.  Even if you don’t want an app with attitude, just set the app to Professional mode; you’ll still love the app for all of the information that it contains.  Additionally, this is probably my favorite third party app on the Apple Watch. 

I see that I am not the only one who considers CARROT Weather to be the best weather app.  Bradley Chambers of The Sweet Setup picked CARROT Weather as the best weather app, as did Josh Centers in an article for TidBITS.  It takes a lot to shine above all of the other weather apps on the App Store, but CARROT Weather manages to do it.  This is a great app.

Click here to get CARROT Weather ($4.99): 

If you wear an Apple Watch, you have probably noticed that if you walk at a brisk pace with your arms moving for at least two to three minutes, the Apple Watch will start to give you credit towards the green activity circle.  That kind of walking isn’t a strenuous workout, so does it really help?  Gretchen Reynolds of the New York Times reports that, based on a new study of physical activity, short walks reduce your risk of dying prematurely just as well as longer walks do, so it doesn’t matter if you reach 30 minutes of walking by taking a bunch of short walks or just a few long walks.  Of course, you’ll need to do more than that to lose weight, but the Apple Watch is correct to give you credit because even those short walks are still doing your body some good.  And now, the recent news of note:

• Lit Software (a sponsor of iPhone J.D. this month) profiled on its blog Atlanta attorney Lloyd Bell, who used TrialPad on his iPad to present medical records and other evidence to a jury in a medical malpractice case, resulting in a $26 million verdict.
• In an article for Slaw, Virginia attorney Sharon Nelson and her husband, security expert John Simek, write a good overview of the risks of cloud computing for attorneys.  While they think that attorneys should be cautious, they also believe that “the cloud will generally protect a law firm’s data better than the law firm would itself.”
• In an article for Venture Beat, attorney Jeremy Horwitz reviews the new sixth generation iPad, finding that it is a great alternative for many iPad users.
• Rene Ritchie of iMore wrote a comprehensive review of the new sixth generation iPad.  The title sums it up well:  “Half the [iPad] Pro for half the price.”
• In an article for Macworld, Michael Simon compares the 9.7″ sixth generation iPad to the 10.5″ iPad Pro.  Serenity Caldwell of iMore also compared the two.  Keep in mind that this is the iPad Pro that was released a year ago; I expect Apple to release a 2018 version of the 10.5″ iPad Pro this Summer or Fall.
• I am a huge proponent of attorneys (and others) using password managers, and my personal favorite is 1Password.  This week the company unveiled 1Password Business, designed for larger teams.  It includes features like Active Directory integration so that companies can automate provisioning.
• Scanner Pro by Readdle (my review) is my favorite app for turning paper documents into PDFs, and I use it frequently.  But Scanbot is also an excellent scanner app, and I see that this week it was updated to version 7, adding lots of new features.
• AirPods are one of my all-time favorite Apple products.  Vlad Sarov, who reviews high-end audio equipment for The Verge, posted a review and finds them to be the best in class.  But what is just as interesting is that Sarov originally panned the AirPods before he had a chance to really try them, and Jonathan Kim provides an interesting perspective on this 180° change.
• Michael Steeber of 9to5Mac interviewed Rob Janoff, the man who designed the Apple logo back in 1977, a version of which is still being used today.
• iOS 11.3 came out last week.  Rene Ritchie of iMore explains what is new.
• I’ve seen very favorable reviews of the Nest Hello, its version of a video doorbell, including this one by Martyn Williams of TechHive and this one by Phil Nickinson of iMore.  It may well be the best choice if you use a Google Home device.  I would be interested to see a reviewer select the best video doorbell for folks who use an iPhone and Apple’s HomeKit technology.
• Zac Hall of 9to5Mac explains how to use HomeKit to automatically turn on outdoor lights based on sunset and sunrise.  I have two different sets of lights in the front of my house — a downstairs front porch and an upstairs front porch — being controlled by HomeKit to do just this.
• This item is for my 10 year old daughter, and any of you out there who have kids who are similarly engrossed by Harry Potter.  Bryan Chaffin of the Mac Observer reports that on April 25th, there will be a new iOS game based on the Harry Potter franchise.  This one takes place before Harry Potter was born, and it is set at Hogwarts and reunites many of the voice actors from the movie such as Maggie Smith and Warwick Davis.  I have no doubt that my daughter is going to spend many hours on this one.
• And finally, Apple released a one minute video this week showing how easy it is to take a picture of whatever is on your iPad screen and annotate it using an Apple Pencil: