What products will Apple announce this Fall? I presume that there will be a new iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch, but it is difficult to know for sure what features will be included. However, Michael Simon of Macworld has some predictions based on a pretty reliable source — Apple itself. Now that the beta version of iOS 12 is out, Simon makes some informed guesses about upcoming hardware based upon what is contained in that beta software. For example, ever since the iPad came out in 2010, the time has been displayed at the top center of the screen. The same used to be true of the iPhone too, but Apple moved the time to the side when the iPhone X was released with its new camera — and thus a notch — at the top center. In the beta version of iOS 12, the iPad similarly moves the time away from the center, and Simon predicts that this is to make way for a camera and a notch, just like the iPhone. This would allow folks to use Animoji and Memoji on the iPad, so this strikes me as a reasonable guess. For the rest of Simon’s predictions based on what is in the beta version of iOS 12, click here. And now, the news of note from the past week:
Massachusetts attorney Robert Ambrogi discusses the 25th anniversary of the PDF file format. I started practicing law 24 years ago, so PDFs have always been a part of my law practice, although they were only a minor part at first. Ever since I started using an iPad in 2010, PDFs have been an essential part of my law practice.
Jack Nicas of the New York Times reports that Apple and Samsung have settled their seven-year legal fight over smartphone patents.
Over the past two weeks, I’ve reviewed two products (Eve Motion, Eve Degree) made by Elgato as a part of its Eve line of smarthome products. The company announced Wednesday that it has decided to go all-in on HomeKit-compatible smarthome products. It is selling all of its non-Eve products (including its gaming business) to Corsair, and the company is changing its name to Eve Systems. I look forward to this increased focus on HomeKit technology and I hope that it results in even more great products for iPhone owners.
If AT&T is your cellphone carrier, you are now paying an additional $1.33 every month. Nick Statt of The Verge explains why.
And finally, this week Apple CEO Tim Cook was interviewed at Fortune’s CEO Initiative by Fortune executive editor Adam Lashinsky. Chance Miller of 9to5Mac has a good summary of the interview, or you can watch the full video on YouTube. The interview includes lots of interesting information about Apple, and the positions that Apple has taken on issues ranging from education to privacy to social issues to the environment:
Thank you to Bellefield Systems, the creator of iTimeKeep, for sponsoring iPhone J.D. again this month. I cannot think of a better time of year to use a product like iTimeKeep. It is the start of Summer, and whether you are headed to the beach for a vacation, traveling with your family for a roadtrip, or just spending more time enjoy the sunshine, you are more likely to be out of your office for the next few months. But being out of the office doesn’t always mean being away from work. Opposing counsel may email you a new motion, requiring you to send a note to your client with an update. Or maybe you need to handle a quick phone call on one of your matters. With iTimeKeep on your iPhone, time entry is fast, simple, and accessible. When it is easy to enter your time immediately after you finish a task, you are far less likely to forget to record your time entries.
Forgetting to record a few 0.1 or 0.2 time entries may not seem like a big deal, but over three months of Summer 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.
Contemporaneous time entry is good for another reason. It is much easier to keep track of what you are doing while you are doing it than it is to try to reconstruct your time entries at the end of the day (or on a subsequent day). We’ve all been there before — you are doing your time entries at the end of the day, and you find yourself staring blankly as you try to remember what it was that you worked on in the morning. Eventually it may come to you, but you are wasting your own (non-billable) time as you attempt to remember what you did. If you instead enter your time as you are doing tasks, you save yourself the agony of reconstructing your day. And because iTimeKeep makes it so easy to keep track of your time contemporaneously, over time you will find that you do it more and more.
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 to use every day for recording all of your time. The iTimeKeep interface is so incredibly well-designed and fast to use that I often prefer using iTimeKeep over the interface for my law firm’s 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.
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. When I am in my office on my PC and at home on my Mac, the fastest way for me to enter time is using iTimeKeep in a web browser. With the web interface and the iPhone and iPad apps, it is very rare for a day to go by when I haven’t used iTimeKeep at least once.
Speaking of the interface, iTimeKeep just rolled out several new changes to iTimeKeep desktop to further enhance the experience for attorneys. iTimeKeep offers something called “One Experience Timekeeping,” which means that the way you enter time is the same whether you are on a mobile device or at your desk, entering time from your desktop. This seamless approach to timekeeping is designed to allow you to conduct timekeeping on your terms, the way that you work. I’ve been using the new desktop interface almost every day since it debuted, and I’m a big fan; it makes it even faster and easier to enter time.
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. again this month, and thank you for creating this perfect example of an iPhone app that greatly improves the practice of law for attorneys.
I’m a big fan of what Apple has done with HomeKit, allowing you to purchase lots of different products from different manufacturers which can all work together to make your home smarter. Using an app on your iPhone or Apple Watch, or just by using your voice with Siri, you can easily turn lights and other devices on or off. One of the most powerful uses of HomeKit is automation so that events can occur without you having to do anything. For example, the lights on my front porch will automatically go on at sunset, so even if I come home after dark the front of my house isn’t dark. And those same lights automatically go off at sunrise. Elgato recently sent me a free review unit of the Eve Motion, a HomeKit-compatible motion detector. It is a powerful addition to any HomeKit environment, although depending upon the size and layout of your house, it does suffer from one shortcoming which I mentioned last week when I reviewed the Eve Degree; it relies on Bluetooth, not Wi-Fi.
Motion detection
The Eve Motion is a small white device. It is not as small and sleek as the Eve Degree, so it is something that you and others will notice when it sits on a table. It is 3.15″ x 3.15″ and and about 1.25″ deep. It is powered by a pair of (included) AA batteries. It can work indoors or outdoors.
The front of the device has a small window which can detect motion. Elgato suggests that you place the unit about 1-2 meters above the ground (about 3 to 6.5 feet). At 6.5 feet, the Eve Motion can detect motion for up to 30 feet across a 120º field of view. The back of the device has a hole that you can use to hang it on a nail on the wall.
You can adjust the sensitivity to low, medium or high, depending upon how much motion you want for the Eve Motion to be triggered.
The front of the device has a small red LED light behind the white plastic. You normally don’t see it at all, but you can configure the Eve Motion so that the LED blinks every time motion is detected. I just found that to be annoying and quickly turned it off, but it might be useful in some situations to confirm that motion is indeed being detected.
Automation when motion is detected
The most common way that you are likely to use an Eve Motion is to cause a certain action to occur when motion is detected. For now, HomeKit automation is limited to other HomeKit devices; for example, I do not believe it is possible to send a text message to someone when motion is detected, which would allow the Eve Motion to work as a sort of a burglar detector when you are away from home. A perfect use of the Eve Motion is to turn on a light when you enter a room.
For example, I placed the Eve Motion in my TV Room and created a rule that turns on the lights to 100% brightness when motion is detected. That way, the lights come on automatically when anyone enters the room. Fortunately, HomeKit is sophisticated enough that you can customize this rule based upon conditions. For example, in a TV Room you wouldn’t want the light to go up to 100% every time motion is detected, because you might have the lights turned down low as you are watching a movie and you wouldn’t not want the lights to turn up just because you stretched your arms.
The solution is to add a condition to a rule. Conditions can either be time-based (it must be after or before or between a certain time of day) or value based (other HomeKit devices must be in a certain state). In this first example, I set the trigger to be any motion detected by the Eve Motion, and I set the condition to be that the lights in the TV room are set to off. That way, if the lights are already on and dimmed, then this rule won’t do anything.
By adjusting factors such as duration and conditions, you can create pretty sophisticated rules for automation. For example, if motion is detected in a room, you can make the lights turn on, but then go off after no motion is detected for a specific period of time. Or you can create a rule that says that when motion is detected, turn on a fan, but only during certain hours of the day, and only if the temperature is above a certain value. Or you can turn off the lights in a room if no motion has been detected after a certain period of time.
Log of values
In addition to using the results from an Eve Motion to trigger other HomeKit devices, such as turning on lights, another feature of the Eve Motion is that it creates a log of whenever motion is detected. You can view this on a graph, with bars indicating when motion was detected, or you can view a log of all values.
For example, in the second picture below, I can see that motion was detected at 10:58 p.m., and then no additional motion was detected until the next day at 8:47 a.m. Thus, if it useful to you to know when motion occurs place in an area — did a child leave a bedroom to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night; did a person make a late-night visit to the kitchen for a snack; is there any motion in your living room while you and your family are out of town — the Eve Motion can help to provide an answer.
The only real critique that I have of the Eve Motion is the same critique that I had last week when I reviewed the Eve Degree. Because the Eve Motion uses Bluetooth 4.0 to communicate, the Eve Motion needs to be reasonably close to a HomeKit hub to work. That hub has Wi-Fi and can communicate with other devices. In my house, the only HomeKit hub that I have is an Apple TV. When I originally tested the Eve Motion as a motion detector in my living room, I found that the room was too far away from my Apple TV and thus wouldn’t cause lights to turn on and off. On the other hand, when I put the Eve Motion in the same room as my Apple TV, it worked perfectly all of the time.
An Apple HomePod or an extra iPad that you are not using can also act as a HomeKit hub, so if you want to put an Eve Motion in the same room as a HomePod, that should work fine. (I don’t own a HomePod so I couldn’t test this.) Another solution that I noted last week was to use a Bluetooth range extender, such as the Eve Extend first announced by Elgato back in January 2017, but apparently Apple hasn’t yet approved of the use of these extenders in HomeKit and thus the Eve Extend is not yet for sale.
In the interim, I see a post on the Elgato website saying that you can use a second Apple TV to extend range, as long as it is an Apple TV 4th generation or newer. But those devices cost $149 new, and even a refurbished model is $129.
Depending upon the size and layout of your home, this might not be a problem at all for you. But for me, the limitations of the range of Bluetooth 4.0 — about 200 feet with no interference, and less than that depending upon walls and other interference — prevented me from using the Eve Motion in many of the places in my house where I might want to use it.
Conclusion
If you want to use motion to trigger HomeKit events such as turning lights or other devices on or off, the Eve Motion works great and I can recommend it — but only if you will be using it someplace that is within the range of a HomeKit hub.
It has been all over the news that as a part of the investigation of Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen, the FBI has obtained messages that were sent and received in apps such as WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram — apps normally thought to be fairly secure. How is that? Seth Hallem is the founder and CEO of Mobile Helix, a company that makes the LINK encrypted app for lawyers, and he explains in an interesting article on CSO the most likely scenarios for how the FBI has accessed those messages — and also explains how you can protect your own secure data. And now, the news of note from the past week:
Attorney John Voorhees of MacStories explains how the Documents app by Readdle can transfer files using WiFi between a Mac and an iPhone or iPad.
Ed Baig of USA Today explains that when iOS comes out this fall, your iPhone will automatically share your location with first responders when you call 911.
AppleInsider shows off the new Walkie-Talkie feature that will be added to the Apple Watch this Fall. I don’t see using this feature very much when I’m in the office, but I can see this being very useful for quickly communicating with friends and family after hours and during the weekend.
If you have kids, then I presume that you know what Fortnite is. Luke Dormehl of Cult of Mac reports that after three months on iOS, the company made $100 million on the Apple platform alone. What makes this particularly amazing is that the app itself is free to play; my understanding (from my kids) is that the in-app purchases are mostly cosmetic, just ways to make your character look cooler and do things like dance around. But unlike some other games, you can win without spending any money. My daughter has certainly won a ton of games without paying anything, although she has to use my iPad because the hand-me-down iPhone 6s that she uses can’t run the game.
If you are a fan of Westworld on HBO like I am, you might want to check out the free episode of Apple’s Carpool Karaoke which will come out today. According to Christian Zibreg of iDownloadBlog, it will feature Evan Rachel Wood and James Marsden — the actors who play Dolores and Teddy. You can watch the episode in the TV app or the Apple Music app on your iPhone or iPad.
And finally, if you have had a long and busy week like I have, then you deserve something silly and fun to end the week. And what could be better than combining an iPad with magic and cute monkeys? Take it away, Simon Pierro (video link):
There are lots of iPhone apps which will tell you the weather in your general area, but if you want to know the precise weather at a specific location — such as at your house — you need a thermometer. According to the fine contributors to Wikipedia, the thermometer can be traced back to Hero of Alexandria, a mathematician and engineer who lived from 10 AD to 70 AD. But Apple’s HomeKit technology wasn’t around back then, so the folks in Alexandria couldn’t use an iPhone to check the weather at their house. Back in 2015, I reviewed a device made by Elgato called the Eve Weather. The Eve Degree is the second generation of that device; you can still find the Eve Weather on Amazon, but Elgato no longer has it listed as a product on its website. Elgato sent me a free review unit of the Eve Degree, and I’ve been trying it out for the last few weeks.
The hardware
The Eve Degree is a small 2.1″ x 2.1″ square which is 0.6″ deep, a much smaller size than the Eve Weather, which was 3.1″ x 3.1″ and 1.3″ deep. The body is made of anodized aluminum, and the front is acrylic glass. It looks very nice.
Unlike the Eve Weather which just had a white plastic front, the front of the Eve Degree has an LCD display which displays the current weather. This is a great addition, making it simple to see the current temperature without even having to use your iPhone. The default setting of the Eve Degree is Celsius, but using the Eve app on an iPhone you can easily change that to Fahrenheit.
The back of the device has a hole, so you can hang the Eve Degree on a nail to mount it on a wall. There is also a reset button on the back, and a cover for a replaceable CR2450 battery. Elgato says that the battery should last about a year, and replacement batteries cost around $1 to $3 on Amazon, depending upon the brand and the quantity that you buy. (The Eve Weather used AA batteries which only lasted about three months.)
Etched into the bottom of the Eve Degree is a unique HomeKit code that you use when you first set up the device with your iPhone. It’s nice that it is down there so that if you ever need to perform a setup again and you no longer have the box or instructions, you will still have that code. And having it etched looks much nicer than just putting a sticker down there.
The measurements
The Eve Degree measures three things: First, it monitors the weather, accurate to within 0.54° Fahrenheit. Second, it monitors the humidity, accurate to within 3%. Finally, it monitors the air pressure, accurate to within 1 mbar / 0.03 inHg. In the following picture, you can see the data after I moved my Eve Degree from my back porch to my study so that I could take a picture of it for this review. You can see that the humidity and temperature decreased noticeably after I brought the device inside.
The Eve Degree logs each of these measurements every 10 minutes, and can store up to two weeks of measurements on the device. The main page on the Eve app shows you about the last 12 hours, but you can get more information for the past hour/day/week/month, and can even see each specific measurement in the log.
Every time you use the Eve app to check the current measurements, that log is downloaded to your iPhone. Thus, as long as you use the Eve app to check in with the Eve Degree at least once every two weeks — or, to be safe, once a week — your iPhone will have an unlimited historical log of all of the measurements. Using the Eve app, you can even export this data to a spreadsheet.
Where to place the Eve Degree
The Eve Degree can work either indoors or outdoors. If you keep it outdoors, it is rated IPX3, so it is OK if it gets wet from rain, although it shouldn’t go underwater or be sprayed with a jet of water.
Having said that, to get the most accurate readings, you should put it in a place that is always in the shade — which means that it probably won’t be exposed to much rain either. Official outdoor temperature measurements are always in the shade because when a thermometer is in direct sunlight, the sun rays can heat up the fluid that is used to measure the temperature, so you end up getting a reading of that fluid and not the air. At my house, I put the Eve Degree on my back porch in a spot that was mostly shaded, but every morning there would be a short period of time when it was exposed to sunlight. Thus, when I looked at my temperature logs on sunny days, I saw artificial peaks that lasted about 30 minutes. For example, in the following picture, I got a recording of almost 110º the other day. It certainly can feel pretty darn hot in New Orleans in the Summer, but not that hot.
If you don’t want those false readings, move the Eve Degree to a place that will not get direct sunlight.
One other issue to think about for placement is keeping it near a HomeKit hub. The Eve Degree uses Bluetooth 4.0 to send data. So if your iPhone is reasonably close by, you can get data measurements. But if your iPhone is far enough away from the Eve Degree — either on the same house or when you are away from home — the only way that you can see the current temperature is if your Eve Degree is in relatively close proximity to a HomeKit hub device. You also need to use a hub if you want to use the Eve Degree to do automated tasks (more on that below). If you have an Apple TV, that will work, so I place my Eve Degree on my back porch in a location that is just on the other side of the wall from where my Apple TV is located. An iPad can also serve as a HomeKit hub, if you keep it at your house all of the time, and a HomePod can also serve as a hub. See this page on the Apple’s website for more details.
Unfortunately, if the place at your home that you have decided to keep Eve Degree to take measurements is not sufficiently close to a HomeKit hub, then you lose some of these more advanced functions. As a workaround, you could use a Bluetooth range extender to act as a bridge between the Eve Degree and your HomeKit hub. Except that these products don’t exist yet. Elgato announced one called the Eve Extend back in January 2017, but it still isn’t available. When someone recently asked Elgato about this on Twitter, the company said that it has “nothing to announce at this point” and Elgato seemed to point the finger at Apple:
We have nothing to announce at this point. What’s more, please note that the range extender category currently isn’t listed on the Apple Support page with upcoming and available Home accessories: https://t.co/PfOlZ7JNy3
Because the Eve Degree is a HomeKit device, you can use Siri with it. Thus, instead of opening up the Eve app, you can just ask Siri the current temperature at your house or your backyard.
You can also set up HomeKit automations, such as turning a fan on or off depending upon the temperature, or turning on a lamp when it gets really hot outside. With the new Shortcuts feature in iOS 12 coming this Fall, I suspect that you will be able to do even more sophisticated things with HomeKit automation.
Durability
Everything about the Eve Degree seems like a much better design than the Eve Weather. However, one thing that I don’t know about is long-term durability. I used an Eve Weather on my back porch for about two years, and then it stopped working completely. I haven’t seen other people complaining on the Internet about similar problems with the Eve Weather, so maybe there was just a problem with my unit. Perhaps it was exposed to too much water in a very strong rainstorm.
Whatever it was that caused my Eve Weather to bite the dust after two years, hopefully this Eve Degree will work for even longer.
Conclusion
Only you can decide if you have an interest in measuring the precise weather at your house. Perhaps you want the specific temperature right now. Perhaps you want to see a historical log. Or perhaps you want to trigger some HomeKit automation based upon the weather. For the two years that I used an Eve Weather, it was interesting to have access to that data, and while I cannot say that it was life-changing, I liked the product.
If you do think that this sort of product is for you, the Eve Degree works very well. I love that you can see the temperature right on the device itself, and I like the smaller size and the aluminum body. And I like that you don’t have to change the battery every few months. It is also nice that HomeKit has improved over the years — triggers were not even possible when I first started using an Eve Weather — and with the increased automation coming in iOS 12 with Shortcuts, I expect that this will only improve.
It is a shame that you need to keep an Eve Degree reasonably close to a HomeKit hub to get the full value out of the product, but depending upon the layout of your house, this might not be a problem at all. And perhaps even that will improve the in future if and when Elgato releases the Eve Extend.
This week, Apple announced that as a part of its ongoing efforts to make iPhones (and iPads) safer, the upcoming iOS 12 will include something called USB Restricted Mode. This means that if you plug your iPhone in to a computer or other hardware using a USB to Lightning cable, you will not be able to transfer data to and from the iPhone unless your iPhone has been unlocked within the past hour. This way, if a criminal steals your iPhone, even if he has a hardware hacking device that can try to crack your iPhone’s password, he won’t be able to do so unless he gets your iPhone to that hacking device within 60 minutes. Many outlets reported this as Apple battling law enforcement because many law enforcement agencies use a device called the GrayKey sold by Grayshift to try to hack the password on an iPhone taken from someone accused of a crime. For example, the New York Times headline is “Apple to Close iPhone Security Hole That Law Enforcement Uses to Crack Devices.” But the idea that only the good guys have access to these hacking devices seems incredibly optimistic, if not downright ridiculous. As an attorney who keeps confidential attorney-client and work product information on my iPhone and iPad, I’m glad that Apple is always working to close any security loopholes, regardless of who is known to be using them today. In the cat-and-mouse game of security, hackers will always be looking for new exploits, so Apple and others should always be working to improve security. (Indeed, just yesterday, Joseph Cox and Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai of Motherboard reported that Grayshift already has found a way to defeat Apple’s latest security improvements, although the reporters note that “it is unclear … how much of this may be marketing bluff.”) And now, the news of note from the past week:
On a recent episode of the Lawyerist podcast, Minnesota attorney Sam Glover interviews California attorney David Sparks to discuss ten ways that lawyers can get more out of their iPhones. That interview starts just after the 10-minute mark if you want to jump directly there in the podcast.
David Rubenstein of Bloomberg interviewed Apple CEO Tim Cook. The video is 24 minutes long, but it is sharply edited so that the pace of the interview is very fast, and this is one of the best interviews of Cook that I’ve seen in a while.
Stewart Rogers of VentureBeat discusses the ABBYY TextGrabber app, which you can use to capture text using the camera and then translate it into another language, even when you are offline.
If you don’t have CarPlay in your car, you can instead mount an iPhone so that it can provide you with driving directions. There are many ways to do so, and CarPlay Life discusses good options for mounting to the air vent in your car.
I posted a review of Anker’s USB-to-Lightning cables earlier this year, and I still really like them. They are very durable, and they are much less expensive than the cables sold by Apple. As pointed out by Alexandria Haslam of PCWorld, you can now get a two-pack of red three-foot cables for only $15.99 on Amazon, which is a $4 discount and a very good deal. As you can see from my review, the red color is very striking and makes your cables really stand out. It is always nice to have some extra Lightning cables, so consider grabbing these before the sale ends.
The iPhone 3GS, which I reviewed in 2009 and which Apple stopped selling in 2012, is on sale again. Sort of. Roger Fingas of AppleInsider reports that a South Korean company obtained a whole bunch of them from a warehouse, still shrink wrapped, and will soon be selling them for ₩44,000 — about $40.
If you are interested in meditation, Alex Arpaia of Wirecutter discusses the best meditation apps.
Do you hate losing your glasses? Janet Cloninger of The Gadgeteer reviews the Orbit, a tiny tracker that attaches to the arms of your glasses, so that you can use an iPhone app to locate your glasses.
In its continuing series on essential iOS apps, Ian Fuchs of Cult of Mac discusses GoodNotes, a great app for taking handwritten notes. I myself use that app almost every day at work.
And finally, if you have ever had the urge to throw your iPhone X off of a 1,000-foot high bridge, I implore you not to do so. But if you cannot resist seeing what this would look like, I encourage you to watch this video instead. If you want to skip to the “good” stuff, the iPhone is dropped at around the 45-second mark, and the video taken from the iPhone X while it is falling is shown at around the 2:35 mark.
Thank you to Thomson Reuters Westlaw for sponsoring iPhone J.D. this month. Westlaw is incredibly useful on a computer, but it also works really well on an iPhone or iPad with the fantastic Westlaw app. With the Westlaw app, you can extend the power and collaboration capabilities of Westlaw so that research begun in one place can be continued on your mobile device and vice versa.
There have been countless times when I was in court and I suddenly needed to pull up a case or statute. With the Westlaw app on my iPhone or iPad, I was able to do so quickly and easily. And using KeyCite, I could quickly see if there were cases distinguishing the jurisprudence cited by opposing counsel.
Even when I have been in my office with my computer on my desk, and thus I didn’t technically need to use Westlaw on a mobile device, I have often used Westlaw on my iPad so that my computer screen can be devoted to a brief that I am writing. Also, it is nice to be able to lean back in my chair and review cases on my iPad, and then pull back up to my desk when I’m ready to type again on my computer. The Westlaw app lets you run searches and filter the results, review prior research in folders, and add notes and highlighting.
I’m not the only one who has had good experiences with the Westlaw app. Earlier this year, the Westlaw app was named the Best Legal App in the seventh annual Best of The National Law Journal Readers Rankings.
If you haven’t yet checked out the Westlaw app for iOS, or if it has been a while since you did so, use it the next time that you perform legal research. It’s a great tool for any attorney with an iPhone or iPad.
Last week I discussed the numerous reasons that I think that lawyers will love iOS 12, due out for the iPhone and iPad this Fall. Apple will also update the operating system for the Apple Watch this Fall, and it looks like there will be some nice additions. Here are the features that I am most looking forward to.
Notifications
When it comes to using my Apple Watch in my law practice, one of the things that I like best is using my Apple Watch to handle my notifications. There are many ways to control which notifications are important enough to deserve a tap on your wrist, and it is quick and easy to glance at my wrist and see the notification without significantly disrupting whatever I am working on.
In iOS 12, notifications on the iPhone can be grouped, making them easier to manage. The same is true for watchOS 5, which should make it faster and easier to deal with multiple notifications at the same time.
watchOS 5 will also add more advanced Do Not Disturb functions. For example, you can tell your Apple Watch not to disturb you for a specific period of time, or until you leave the current location.
Additionally, apps will be able to create watch notifications that are interactive. For example, Yelp can send you a notification that your table is ready, and right on the watch you can tap to extend the reservation for 20 minutes because you are running late.
Siri Shortcuts
Another feature that I mentioned when discussing iOS 12 is the new Shortcuts app. It is an expanded version of the Workflow app already available for the iPhone, but the new version will allow you to create shortcuts that can be triggered by Siri using a voice command that you choose. watchOS 5 will support this as well, which is convenient for those times when your iPhone is not in your pocket and you want to just talk to your watch. And even when your iPhone is close by, just saying a command to your watch might be faster and easier.
For example, I can imagine creating a command triggered by me saying a phrase like “on my way” which will send a message to my wife which says something like “I’m leaving now, and I should be home in X minutes.” All I would need to do is tell my Apple Watch “on my way,” and it will figure out where I am located, how many minutes it will take me to drive home, and then it will send the appropriate text message to my wife.
The ability to automate tasks, combined with the power to trigger those tasks using a phrase that you select, will be an incredibly powerful function on both the iPhone and the Apple Watch.
And by the way, speaking of Siri, there will be a new feature whereby you don’t have to first say “Hey Siri” before giving a command and instead can just raise your wrist and speak. I’m curious how this will work in practice, and a little concerned about false positives when you lift your arm for some other reason, but if this works well it could be very useful.
Walkie-Talkie
The new Walkie-Talkie app will allow you to press a button on your Apple Watch and say a short message, and then the message will automatically play on an Apple Watch of a friend or family member. And they can do the same thing to quickly respond. Press to talk, let go to listen. It’s a very simple way to communicate.
Fitness Improvements
The Apple Watch does a great job of encouraging you to be more active and monitoring your workouts. This will get even better in watchOS 5. A new “Competition” feature will allow you to compete with another person in closing your rings every week. The watch will be able to track new types of workouts, including yoga and hiking, and if you forget to press the buttons to start or stop a workout, the watch will detect when you have done so. And if you have a target pace when you run or walk, the Workouts app will help you keep track with your desired pace.
Podcasts
You can currently use an Apple Watch to listen to music even without an iPhone nearby. This Fall, you will also be able to listen to podcasts using only the Apple Watch. Apple’s own Podcasts app will work, and it looks like it might be possible for third party apps — such as my favorite podcast app, Overcast — to do the same.
Safari on the Apple Watch?
Using a web browser on a watch seems silly, and no, Apple isn’t adding a Safari app. However, in watchOS 5, when you get an email or text message with a website link, you will be able to tap the link on the watch to see a version of the web page optimized for the watch screen. If you don’t have your iPhone with you and are just using an Apple Watch with cellular, and if you are just trying to get a quick piece of information from a website such as an address or phone number, this could be very useful.
In the latest episode of the Mac Power Users podcast, California attorney David Sparks and Florida attorney Katie Floyd discuss Apple’s announcements earlier this week at WWDC. I recommend this episode if you want to hear some insight on the announcements while you are driving in your car, doing some chores this weekend, or otherwise looking for something interesting to listen to. Like me, they were impressed with many of the new features coming to iOS. However, Katie was less impressed with the new improvements to Animoji in the Messages app, including Memoji, saying: “I was stunned when we went to the ABA TECHSHOW this past year, and the lawyers, the professionals that we entrust to secure our liberty and to save us from tyranny, were going crazy over the [Animoji]. I shudder for what is going to happen with the Memoji.” I had not previously considered Memoji a threat to the foundation of this country, but I guess we’ll find out in a few months. And now, the news of note from the past week:
Virginia attorney Sharon Nelson discusses Formal Opinion 2017-5 from the New York City Bar, which was updated on May 9, 2018, and which discusses an attorney’s duty to keep client information on a mobile phone confidential when crossing the U.S. border.
Dan Thorp-Lancaster of iMore notes that Microsoft’s To-Do list sharing app now works on iOS, Windows. and Android, if you have a need to share lists with folks on other platforms. Of course, if you just need to share with folks using an iPhone, you can easily share a note with a checklist or other list in Apple’s Notes app.
One of the iOS 12 improvements that I am really looking forward to is the ability for password manager apps to integrate more directly with Safari, so that you can use them without having to leave Safari. 1Password (the password manager that I use) posted a short demo of how this could work, and it looks great.
Another interesting iOS 12 feature is called Live Listen. Steven Aquino describes the feature for TechCrunch. In short, if you are in a situation in which you will have trouble hearing, you can put your iPhone near the audio source and then step away while you are wearing your AirPods, and your AirPods will play the audio that your iPhone is hearing. There are some hearing aids that work the same way.
Graham Bower of Cult of Mac discusses an Apple Watch stat that I had never heard of before called Heart Rate Variability, which you can use to determine how hard you should work out and when you should slow down.
John Sculley has been talking about the 10 years that he was CEO of Apple ever since he left in 1993. Even so, in this article by Catherine Clifford of CNBC, Sculley reveals some interesting details that I had not heard before.
Although this has nothing to do with the iPhone, if you find yourself getting hungry, I thought you’d want to know that TripAdvisor named New Orleans the best food city in the United States (and #5 in the world) and the best place in the United States for a foodie vacation. Rankings were done using a “proprietary TripAdvisor algorithm which considers booking volume, traveler reviews, and traveler ratings based on all food tours and food-related experiences on our site.” You can’t argue with science. (And if you find yourself headed this way, feel free to ask me for restaurant recommendations.)
And finally, the upcoming iOS 12 will include features which let you limit the amount of time that you spend using your iPhone. But what if you need to REALLY limit the time that you use your iPhone? Conan O’Brien came up with a solution — the new addiction-proof iPhone, shown in this video:
Last week, FX aired the final episode of The Americans, one of my all-time favorite television shows. (There are no spoilers in this post, so read on without worry.) The concept of the show is intriguing (especially considering that it is based in part on a true story), the spy adventures are exciting, the dynamics between the main characters are interesting and sometimes heartbreaking, the acting and writing are first-rate, and I enjoyed watching a show set in the 1980s. On top of all of that, the music in The Americans is amazing, with great songs from the 1980s and others that fit in perfectly with each scene in the show.
I put together an Apple Music playlist of some great songs from The Americans, and everyone can enjoy these songs, regardless of whether you ever watched the show. This isn’t every song that was ever used in the series; I just included my favorites, and I even left out a few which I like but which seemed out of character with the rest of the playlist. At the end, I added a song by Sting that I was surprised to never hear on The Americans. All of these are fantastic songs, and if you grew up in the 1980s like I did, you probably have specific memories of your own life associated with many of these songs.
If you want to listen to these songs on your iPhone, you can click here to get the Apple Music playlist. In fact, even if you don’t subscribe to Apple Music, I believe that you can click that link and hear previews of every song, and you can also sign up for a free Apple Music trial.
The songs on the playlist are as follows, and I included an indication of the season and episode in which each song was used. Total running time is 2 hours and 51 minutes.
Main Title from “The Americans” by Nathan Barr
Tusk by Fleetwood Mac (S1, E1)
Harden My Heart by Quarterflash (S1, E1)
In the Air Tonight by Phil Collins (S1, E1)
Roller by April Wine (S1, E1)
Queen of Hearts by Juice Newton (S1, E1)
Love Will Find a Way by Pablo Cruise (S1, E8)
Slap and Tickle by Squeeze (S1, E11)
Rough Boys by Pete Townshend (S1, E11)
Mississippi Queen by Mountain (S1, E12)
Games Without Frontiers by Peter Gabriel (S1, E13)
Passion by Rod Stewart (S2, E1)
Beer Bar Blues by Lloyd Conger (S2, E1)
Here Comes the Flood by Peter Gabriel (S2, E3)
I Melt With You by Modern English (S2, E4)
The Gambler by Kenny Rogers (S2, E5)
Rock This Town by Stray Cats (S2, E8)
It Must Be Done (from “the Americans”) by Pete Townshend & Nathan Barr (S2, E10)
Twilight Zone by Golden Earring (S2, E13)
Every Breath You Take by The Police (trailer for Season 3)
All Out of Love by Air Supply (S3, E3)
Don’t Go by Yaz (S3, E4)
Only You by Yaz (S3, E4)
Goody Two Shoes by Adam Ant (S3, E4)
I Ran (So Far Away) by A Flock of Seagulls (S3, E5)
The Chain by Fleetwood Mac (S3, E7)
Stand and Deliver by Adam & The Ants (S3, E10)
Tainted Love by Soft Cell (S4, E2)
Under Pressure by Queen & David Bowie (S4, E5)
Winter Kills by Yaz (S4, E9)
Major Tom by Peter Schilling (S4, E9)
Out of the Blue by Roxy Music (S4, E13)
That’s Good by Devo (S5, E1)
Old Flame by Alabama (S5, E3)
Slave by The Rolling Stones (S5, E5)
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road by Elton John (S5, E13)
So. Central Rain by R.E.M. (S5, E13)
Don’t Dream It’s Over by Crowded House (S6, E1)
Louisiana Saturday Night by Mel McDaniel (S6, E1)
Gold Dust Woman by Fleetwood Mac (S6, E1)
Drivin’ My Life Away by Eddie Rabbitt (S6, E4)
With or Without You by U2 (S6, E10)
Russians by Sting
Enjoy the playlist. And if you created your own playlist which is worth sharing with iPhone J.D. readers, feel free to post a link in a comment to this post!
