iPhone J.D.

In the news

As noted by Juli Clover of MacRumors, Google's Street View app for iOS was updated this week to support the larger screen of the iPhone X.  I've had this app for a while, but this update caused me to try it out again this week, and it is amazing how powerful it is.  Enter any address, hold up your iPhone and tap the street view image and then tap the compass button at the top right, and you can move your iPhone around and "see" the area almost as if you were standing there at the address.  For an even more immersive experience, place your iPhone in an inexpensive Google Cardboard device.  Choose some interesting locations like in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris or in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC for some free virtual reality tourism.  And now, the news of note from the past week:

• Chicago attorney John Voorhees is also an app developer and an editor at MacStories, and he was recently interviewed by Filip Brož of the Czechoslovakian website iPure.
• A post on the GoodNotes blog provides tips for taking electronic notes at a conference.
• William Gallagher of AppleInsider provides an overview of all of the ways to create text on an iPad:  text editors, note-taking apps, and word processors.
• If you want an app to help you remember things which is a little more powerful than the built-in Reminders app, Federico Viticci of MacStories reviews the GoodTasks app.
• Rosemary Orchard discusses some useful apps which run within the Messages app.  To be honest, the idea of running a mini-app within Messages still seems a little strange to me, so I haven't really explored this very much.
• Chance Miller of 9to5Mac notes that Carrot Weather, my favorite weather app, was recently updated to add the ability to provide hurricane tracker notifications.  Like most folks who live in the Gulf South, I'd rather not be thinking about hurricanes, but we are definitely getting closer to the peak season.  (Hurricane Katrina made landfall` on August 29, 2005.)
• Ian Fuchs of Cult of Mac reviews Documents by Readdle, a very useful app.
• Drew Coffman of The Sweet Setup reviews the Lutron Caseta dimmer switch, a HomeKit-compatible light switch that I use throughout my house and which I really like.  (My review.)  I also see that the Lutron Smart Bridge, which I bought for over $100, is now $79.95 on Amazon.
• And finally, Apple released a new video advertisement for the iPhone X which shows off its computing prowess at running powerful games.  The ad is called Unleash.  As John Gruber of Daring Fireball noted, it seems strange for Apple to release a new ad for the iPhone X when, presumably, the successor to the iPhone X will be unveiled in two months.  Regardless, it's a neat video:

1Password secure notes, now with Markdown formatting

The main reason to use a password manager is to create, store, and automatically type usernames and passwords.  But one side benefit of the major password manager apps such as 1Password and LastPass is the ability to store secure notes.  This is a digital notepad where you can store some text, much like you would using the built-in Notes app.  The difference is that these notes are safely stored in the password manager app, which is secured with your complex password (or your fingerprint or your face if you have that enabled).  I like this feature because there are rare instances in which someone else has access to my iPhone or iPad.  I wouldn't let them use my device if I didn't trust the person, but even so, I don't want that person accessing my truly confidential information, even accidentally.  Someone else using my iPad could open the Notes app and see the numerous notes that I have stored there, things like grocery and packing lists, the members of my daughter's soccer team, etc.  But the person wouldn't be able to open my 1Password app, and thus couldn't see my truly private notes.

What type of information do I store in secure notes?  I have some medical information about me and family members in there.  I have birthday present ideas.  I have financial information such as a history of salaries for me and my staff members.  I have a list of all of my former addresses, going all the way back to high school.  And I have some confidential information related to my cases, which will sometimes include items like settlement authority.  Having all of this important, confidential information in one secure location is incredibly valuable.  If you use a password manager and don't currently take advantage of the secure notes feature, I encourage you to do so.

I've been thinking about secure notes for the past few days because 1Password, my preferred password manager, recently added the ability to use Markdown in secure notes.  This means that you can add some simple symbols to your text to format the text.  For example, if you want something in a note to be bold, you can just begin and end it with two asterisks or two underline symbols.  Thus, if you type something like this:

**The Title**

__Another Title__

It will be formatted in 1Password to look like this:

The Title

Another Title

You can also use one underline symbol before and after to do italics, three dashes to add a line, etc.  1Password lists some common Markdown commands on this page, and if you want a more comprehensive description of Markdown you can view this page created by John Gruber, who created Markdown many years ago.

For those of you who used WordPerfect way back when, you may remember how WordPerfect fans loved the reveal codes feature, making it easy to see the commands that told the computer to format your text.  Markdown is the same idea.  When you are in the edit mode, you see the symbols like ** but when you are in the normal view mode, you see the end result such as bold text.  What all of this means is that it takes virtually no time to make your notes look even nicer and easier to read in 1Password.

I'd love to show you some examples of how I am using Markdown in my secure notes, but obviously my secure notes are private so I am not going to post them on a public website.  Instead, I created two sample secure notes in 1Password.  One is the Preamble to the Constitution.  The other one is something I copied from my Notes app.  Over the last year or so, my kids and I have been working our way through the James Bond movies.  Not all of them — I selected what I think are the better ones.  (Feel free to disagree with my choices.)  I have a list to remind me of what we have already seen and what is next.  Here is what part of each note looks like when I am in the edit mode in 1Password:

 

And here is what the notes look like with the simple formatting applied (bold text, a numbered list, and a dividing line).  So this is what you would see when you normally view the note:

 

Looking at the James Bond list reminds me that the next movie up for us is Goldeneye, our first Pierce Brosnan movie.  I remember being excited when he (finally) took over the role because I used to watch the Remington Steele TV show in the 1980s.  Okay, enough about Bond, let's get back to 1Password now.

Markdown formatting looks great.  I wish that 1Password would add the ability to adjust the text size — the text is crisp and clear on my iPhone X and my iPad Pro, but I wish that the text could be larger — and perhaps that will be added in the future.  But my notes are much easier to read with formatting than they are without formatting.

If you use 1Password and you have been waiting for an excuse to create some secure notes, perhaps this can be the impetus for you to start using this feature.  And if you are not yet using a password manager, now you have yet another reason that you should be doing so. 

(Last year when 1Password was a sponsor of iPhone J.D., they created this special page for iPhone J.D. readers to signup and get a free trial, and it looks like it is still working.  Or you can just go to the main iPassword website and sign up there.)

In the news

I have been using handheld devices since the late 1980s, starting with a Sharp Wizard, then numerous Palm and BlackBerry devices, and finally a Palm Treo 650.  But 10 years ago on July 22, 2018, I started using an iPhone 3G, and it was vastly superior to anything I had used before.  (This post from three years ago shows the last important email I ever read on my Palm Treo 650.)  It was the second generation of the iPhone and the first iPhone that was truly useful for attorneys becuase we could use faster 3G data, the App Store, and Microsoft Exchange.  Stephen Hackett wrote a post for MacStories this week looking back at the iPhone 3G.  As much as I loved that iPhone 3G at the time, it is amazing to think of how far the iPhone has come in the past 10 years, and it is hard to even imagine what kind of handheld device I'll be using in another 10 years.  And now, the news of note from the past week:

• California attorney David Sparks discusses a study on how folks use the App Store.
• Kentucky attorney Stephen Embry discusses the artificial intelligence used in the new Westlaw Edge.  (Note that Westlaw is a current sponsor of iPhone J.D.)
• The iPhone X and iPhone 8 both support Bluetooth 5.0, although I don't think that many accessories support it yet.  Pater Cao of 9to5Mac explains what could be coming with Bluetooth 5.0.
• Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac describes new ways that you can use the Uber app to help your drive locate you.
• Juli Clover of MacRumors discusses the changes to Notifications in the upcoming iOS 12.
• Mark Gurman and Nico Grant of Bloomberg report that Adobe will release Photoshop for iPad in 2019.
• Cella Lao Rousseau of iMore shows off some of the winning photographs in the 2017 iPhone Photography Awards.
• Serenity Caldwell, who was at iMore when she wrote this but recently joined Apple's communications department, reviews the Brydge Keyboard for iPad Pro.  I know that a lot of people like this keyboard.
• Caldwell also provides a good preview of the new features in watchOS 5 coming to the Apple Watch in a few months.
• Michael Simon of Macworld recommends apps for the Apple Watch.
• If your summer plans include a trip to a Disney park, Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac describes a new augmented reality app from Disney that you can play based upon your surroundings while you are waiting in line.
• If you want to watch videos taking from iPhones which were accidentally dropped from a plane and from an amusement ride, and lived to tell the tale, then you will want to check out this post from Chance Miller of 9to5Mac.
• And finally, Apple released four 15-second commercials to show off how easy it is to use Apple Pay in Messages to pay someone.  I've used Apple Pay in Messages many times to contribute to joint gifts or to pay someone back, and I love how quick and easy it is to use.  The four videos are Wedding, Lost Shirt, Rent, and Hungry:

Apple previews new emoji coming in iOS 12

After all of the news from yesterday, and indeed the past week, I think we all deserve an escape from reality.  Fortunately, Apple has some nice pictures for us to look at.  To celebrate World Emoji Day today, Apple is previewing some of the new emoji characters which will be a part of iOS 12 this Fall.  The ideas for new emoji are considered and approved by the Unicode Consortium, and the new emoji in iOS 12 come from the Consortium's Emoji Version 11.0, approved earlier this year.  The Consortium has general rules on what each emoji is supposed to look like, but each company has a lot of flexibility in the specific designs, which is why emoji can look different on iPhone, Android, your computer, etc.  As always, the designers at Apple have done a really nice job with these.

First, we have a male and female superhero, the infinity symbol, and a Nazar Amulet (which Emojipedia explains is an "eye-shaped amulet believed to protect against the 'evil eye'" and which is common in Turkey:

Next we have a parrot, lobster, kangaroo, and peacock, which are some of the new animals in iOS 12 (along with a racoon, llamo, hippotamus, badger, swan, and mosquito):

iOS 12 will include many more food items.  Here are leafy green, mango, moon cake (a Chinese pastry), and cupcake.  Other new food items will include a bagel and salt.

There are new faces in iOS 12.  Here are partying face, pleading face, cold face, and smiling face with three hearts.  The other new faces are hot face and woozy face.

The new emoji also contain more hair options for both sexes:  red hair, curly hair, bald, and white hair, each of which is presented in a generic format plus five different skin tones.  For example, here are larger versions of the six different versions of the new female with red hair:

Here are all of the new hairstyles and colors:

Of course, if you have a new iPhone such as an iPhone X, you will also be able to use Apple's new Memoji feature to create an emoji that looks like yourself.  To show this off, Apple has changed the page of the Apple website that shows the faces of Apple's executives, and today instead of photographs it includes Memoji.  Look at the page for all of the new faces, but here are some of them:

There are also new objects in iOS 12.  Here are yarn, softball, and test tube.  Other new objects include compass, brick, skateboard, luggage, firecracker, red gift envelope, flying disc, lacrosse, jigsaw, teddy bear, chess pawn, abacus, receipt, toolbox, magnet, petri dish, DNA, fire extinguisher, lotion bottle, thread, safety pin, broom, basket, roll of toilet paper, soap, sponge and pirate flag.

In all, Apple says that there are over 70 new emoji characters.  However, according to Emojipedia, the actual number is closer to 150 when gender and skin tone are taken into account.

In the news

I know that I talk about password managers frequently, but that's because I think that in this day and age of new security concerns every week, having unique and complicated passwords is a critical primary defense between your confidential information and the bad guys.  There is a slight learning curve when you first start using a password manager, but trust me, you are smart enough to figure it out.  And if you use a service that offers a family plan, you can share some passwords with your spouse and other friends and family while keeping other passwords private to you.  Geoffrey Fowler of the Washington Post agrees with me and recommends that you use a password manager.  He prefers Dashlane, but also recommends 1Password (my favorite) and LastPass.  Password managers are going to be even easier to use on the iPhone and iPad when iOS 12 comes out in a few months because they will be more integrated, reducing the number of times that you need to open the password manager app to copy a password and then switch back to the previous app to paste it.  If you are not using a password manager yet, you could wait until iOS 12 comes out, but I recommend that you get one now and start to enter all of your current passwords and secure information (which takes time to do, but fortunately you only have to do it once) and that way you will be ready when iOS 12 comes out.  And now, the news of note from the past week:

• I enjoyed listening to the latest episode of Brett Burney's Apps in Law podcast.  He talks with Pennsylvania attorney Evan Kline, and they discuss the DEVONthink app.  (Evan Kline was one of the folks who did the awesome Galactic Empire v. Han Solo CLE that I discussed a few years ago.)
• Burney also posted a video in which he discusses version 4.5 of iAnnotate, a PDF annotation and file management app, which I reviewed back in 2013.  As Burney notes, one of the neatest features of iAnnotate is that you can customize the toolbar to just include the tools that make the most sense for your practice.
• Yesterday, Thomson Reuters announced the next generation of Westlaw, which will be called Westlaw Edge.  Law librarian Jean O'Grady did a good job of describing all of the new features of Westlaw Edge in a post on her Dewey B Strategic blog.  She notes that there will be a new iOS app.  (Note that Westlaw is a current sponsor of iPhone J.D.)
• If you use Quicken, the iPhone app should be getting new features soon.  Quicken CEO Eric Dunn announced yesterday that at the end of this month, Quicken will release "an all-new mobile app which works better, looks better, and does more than the existing app."
• In light of the App Store celebrating its 10th anniversary this week, Alex Guyot of MacStories looks back at the last 10 years of apps.
• Jonny Evans of Computerworld recommends some neat iCloud tips.
• Trevor Daugherty of 9to5Toys recommends portable Apple Watch chargers for travel.  My travel solution is to just bring a USB charging cable with me (the one  that comes with the watch) along with an Anker PowerPort, which I use in my hotel room every night to charge my Apple Watch, iPhone, iPad, etc.
• When I was in college, I very much wanted a device like the iPhone, but that technology was far away.  Instead I used a Sharp YO-620 electronic organizer, and I followed with much interest a company called General Magic, which was rumored to be working on something very neat in this product category.  The company itself didn't make it, but the folks who worked there went on to create lots of technology that we use every day.  Thus, I was interested to see a report by Stephen Silver of AppleInsider about a documentary about General Magic that first debuted earlier this year at the Tribeca Film Festival.  His post includes the trailer.
• And finally, Frederic van Strydonck created a really neat short film using an iPhone partially submerged underwater.  He calls it Spltch, and it is worth watching:

Review: AirFly by Twelve South -- use your AirPods with any headphone jack

Wireless headphones in general are very useful, but Apple's AirPods in particular are one of my all-time favorite gadgets.  I barely feel them in my ears, and they let me listen to music, podcasts and videos without any annoying cords hanging down my face.  To use AirPods, you need an iPhone or other device with Bluetooth.  What do you do if you want to use your AirPods to listen to audio coming from a headphone jack but Bluetooth is unavailable, such as an in-flight entertainment system on an airplane or the audio in a health club?  The clever folks at Twelve South developed the AirFly for this very situation.  Plug the AirFly into the headphone jack of the audio source, and then the AirFly uses Bluetooth to send the audio to your AirPods.  Twelve South sent me a free sample unit for review purposes, and this device is great.  The AirFly is a simple solution that works very well.

The hardware

The AirFly is smaller than the case that holds your AirPods.  It is 1.8" high, 1.3" wide, and has a depth of .4 inches.  And it weighs about a half an ounce — virtually nothing.  It comes with two small cords, a USB-to-Micro-USB cord that you use to charge the AirFly, and a small headphone cable.

It take two hours to fully charge the AirFly, and when fully charged the AirFly lasts about eight hours. 

There is a single button on the front of the AirFly, used to turn the unit on and off and for pairing.  There are two ports on the bottom:  Micro-USB for charging, and a headphone jack.

To make it easier to carry around the AirFly and the two cords, it comes with a small carrying pouch.

Connecting to the AirFly

To pair the AirFly to your AirPods for the first time, you hold down the button on the front of the AirFly for 10 seconds, then you hold down the white button on the back of the AirPods case.  But you only have to do this pairing the first time that you connect.  In the future, you can just turn on the AirFly and your AirPods will automatically connect.

To switch from using the AirFly to using your iPhone again, just hold down the button on the front of the AirFly for five seconds to turn the unit off.  Then open up the Bluetooth settings on your iPhone and tap AirPods to connect them again.  It is even easier to switch from the iPhone back to the AirFly; just turn on the AirFly by pressing that front button for five seconds, and your AirPods will automatically disconnect from your iPhone and connect to the AirFly.

Although the AirFly works great with Apple's AirPods, it can work with any Bluetooth headphones.

The AirFly uses Bluetooth version 4.1, so your AirPods can be about 30 feet away from the AirFly and still work — pretty much the same range that I get when using my AirPods with my iPhone.

Connecting to an audio source

With a name like "AirFly" you can tell that Twelve South thinks that most folks will want to use this device on an airplane.  However, I didn't have any flights during the past few weeks so I wasn't able to test them while I was in flight.

Instead, I turned back the clock to the Fall of 2005.  Think back to a time before the iPhone when the iPod was still all the rage, and larger Apple Stores even featured an iPod Bar:

The Fifth Generation iPod was the hottest new model, large enough to hold 15,000 songs and also display 25,000 photos and 150 hours of video on its huge (for its time) 2" x 1.5" color screen.

Bluetooth headphones were just starting to hit the market at the time — Stephen Regenold reported in Popular Science on September 29, 2005 that Wireless Headphones are Finally Here, but I didn't know anyone using Bluetooth headphones back them, and certainly nothing as small and innovative as the AirPods.

I pulled my old iPod out of retirement so that it could act as an audio source.  I plugged one end of the headphone cord into the AirFly and plugged the other end in into the iPod.  Within a few seconds, I was listening to songs from my old iPod using my new AirPods, and the music sounded great. 

It was so incredibly freeing to be able to walk anywhere around the room and continue to listen to my iPod.  The 2005 version of myself would have loved using the AirFly and AirPods.  I listened to songs on my old iPod for a long time, and it was actually fun to use a device with a click wheel again.

I also tried the AirFly with other devices in my house with headphone jacks, and it worked great every time.  Look around your own house or office and I'm sure that you will see audio sources that have a headphone jack but don't support Bluetooth.  An iPod, a stereo system, a record player, a TV, a radio, a portable gaming system, an older computer, a portable DVD player ... if it has a headphone jack, the AirFly will make it work with your AirPods.

Conclusion

A few hours after I took the above photo of my old iPod with the AirFly attached, I went back to play with it some more, and it looks like the screen on the iPod finally died.  I tried all of the old tricks for restarting an iPod to no avail.  While it is sad to say goodbye to an iPod that I used almost every day for so many years,  I'm glad that I had one last chance to use it.  Thanks to the AirFly, I was able to give that old iPod a taste of the future.  Perhaps one day, airplane entertainment systems and other devices will all include native Bluetooth support.  But until that day comes, the AirFly is a perfect way to use a headphone jack with AirPods.

Click here to get AirFly from Amazon ($39.99)

Apple releases iOS 11.4.1 with Exchange and security improvements

Yesterday, Apple released an update to iOS, the operating system for the iPhone and iPad.  The version number change — 11.4 to 11.4.1 — seems pretty minor, but there are two features in here that I think will be of interest to many attorneys.

First, iOS 11.4.1 improves reliability of syncing mail, contacts and notes with Microsoft Exchange accounts.  I know that a large number of law firms use Exchange (and Outlook on the PC or Mac), and thus lots of attorneys use an iPhone and iPad with Exchange.  I certainly do.  Most of the time it works great, but I have had syncing issues in the past, and indeed I encountered one just last week.  There was a contact on my iPhone who did not appear in Outlook on my PC.  I don't know what caused it, and the only solution I came up with was to create a new entry in Outlook on my PC and let that sync automatically to my iPhone, and then delete the former entry on my iPhone so that I didn't have a duplicate.  Hopefully this update will fix these sorts of problems in the future.

Second, iOS 11.4.1 increases security.  This is true of every iOS update, and I'm sure that there are lots of ways that iOS 11.4.1 is more secure, but there is one that is notable.  I mentioned on June 15 that when iOS 12 comes out this Fall, it will include support for USB Restricted Mode.  See that post for more details, but in short, this mode greatly reduces the risk that someone can take your iPhone and plug it into a hardware device that is designed to crack your password by preventing such a device from working if it has been more than an hour since your iPhone was locked.  Who has these devices?  We know that some law enforcement agencies use a device called GrayKey, but if some of the "good guys" have it, then I'm sure that there are some "bad guys" who have similar devices that are used for hacking purposes which are contrary to the public good — and perhaps contrary to the interest of you and your client, because presumably you have confidential information on your iPhone or iPad protected by the attorney-client privilege or the attorney work product doctrine.  If one of these bad actors steals your iPhone or iPad and then connects it to one of these devices quickly enough, maybe he still has a chance of cracking your iPhone, but hopefully there will not be enough time.

It turns out that not only is this feature in iOS 12, it is also in iOS 11 thanks to iOS 11.4.1.  I installed this update on my iPhone and iPad last night and the feature seems to work well.  To test it, I unlocked my iPad using my thumb print, then I waited for an hour, and then I connected it via a USB cable to my home computer running iTunes.  In the past, the iPad just showed up in iTunes.  But after installing iOS 11.4.1, when I connected my iPad to my computer more than an hour after I last unlocked it, I saw an alert on the iPad's lock screen telling me that I had to unlock my iPad before I could use an accessory:

Although USB Restricted Mode is enabled by default in iOS 11.4.1, you can turn it off if you want.  In the Settings app, tap on Face ID & Passcode if you have an iOS X, or Touch ID & Passcode if you have an earlier device, and then enter your passcode.  On the next screen — the same place where you teach your iPhone your face or your fingerprint — scroll down to the very bottom.  The second to last setting is called USB Accessories.  Just below it is an explanation of what this new setting does.  When switched to the off position, which is the default, you have greater security.  If you switch it on, then you are saying that you are allowing your iPhone to be connected to USB devices even if it has been more than an hour since the iPhone was last unlocked.  It is a little counter-intuitive to have increased security when something is turned off, so that's why I wanted to mention this.

 

Apple released more information on how this new mode works in this post.  Note that you can still plug in a power adapter to charge your iPhone or iPad without needing to enter your passcode after an hour.  However, Apple warns that there may be some other devices which might not pass a charge unless you first enter your passcode. 

In the news

On July 10, 2008, Apple opened the App Store, stocked with 500 apps.  There are now over two million apps in the App Store.  I wasn't planning on talking about the 10th anniversary of the App Store until next week, but yesterday Apple released an interesting "feature" story about the ten years of the App Store, and it is a great read.  This isn't just a boring press release; it is a detailed story featuring quotes from lots of individuals who have had something to do with the App Store's success.  And now, the other news of note from the past week:

• Malcom Owen of AppleInsider explains why the 10.5" iPad Pro is a great iPad to use when getting work done.  For most attorneys, that probably is the best iPad to get, but I really like the 12.9" size and I can't imagine ever wanting to go back to a smaller size.
• British defense secretary Gavin Williamson was speaking to the House of Commons when Siri started talking too — probably triggered when he mentioned Syria.  The resulting short video is amusing, posted by Malcolm Owen of AppleInsider.
• Apple is rebuilding the maps in its Maps app.  Matthew Panzarino of Tech Crunch talked to a number of folks at Apple and has all of the details.
• Bradley Chambers of 9to5Mac reviews some of the best password managers for iOS and macOS.
• Andrew O'Hara of AppleInsider reviews the Olloclip for iPhone X, an external lens system.
• If you access Twitter using a third party app like Twitterific or Tweetbot, you are going to start losing some features next month.  Peter Cao of 9to5Mac explains why.
• My favorite weather app, CARROT Weather, was updated this week to add new map layers.  Ryan Christoffel of MacStories explains what is new.
• Ed Hardy of Cult of Mac reports that the iPhone 8 is currently the best-selling smartphone in the world.
• In iOS 12, third party apps will be able to work with CarPlay.  Sygic plans to offer offline maps, useful if you are traveling without a data signal, as reported by CarPlay Life.
• And finally, is it worth it to get an unlimited data plan from your cellphone carrier?  I use the AT&T unlimited plan (which I described in this post), and I think that it makes sense for my family, but your situation may be different.  Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal teamed up with competitive eater Carmen Cincotti to show to talk about when the plans do and don't make sense (video link):

Review: LA Wallet -- digital version of your Louisiana driver's license on your iPhone

Has this ever happened to you — you grab your iPhone and keys and jump in your car to go somewhere, only to realize after you start driving that you forgot to pick up your wallet or purse, and thus you don't have your driver's license with you.  As a result, you spend the rest of your trip praying that you don't get pulled over for any reason.  You could just take a picture of your license and keep that on your iPhone, but that isn't going to be legally valid.  The only real solution is a digital version of your driver's license which is valid under state law.  Louisiana, where I live, was the first state to roll out a digital driver's license on July 3, 2018, and a few other states are working on similar initiatives.  The app that you use in Louisiana is called LA Wallet.

Announcing the app earlier this week, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards said:  "Most people never leave home without their smartphone and with this App, they will never be without their driver’s license.  State Police requested a 'hands-off' and 'no-touch' procedure that would not require them to hold a driver’s phone.  Rep. Ted James who authored the legislation that led to the creation of this App is to be commended for his work as well as the team of Louisianans who designed it."

The law

Before discussing the app, let's briefly address the statute that makes this app possible.  In Louisiana, and I imagine in virtually every other jurisdiction in the world, you need a driver's license with you when you are driving a car.  In Louisiana, that law can be found in La. R.S. § 32:411.  Act No. 625 of 2016 amended that statute to add language saying that you can either have a license or a digital license when you are driving.  The current law provides, with the new language in bold and underlined:  "The licensee shall have his license, or a digitized driver's license as provided in this Section, in his immediate possession at all times when driving a motor vehicle and shall display it upon demand of any officer or agent of the department or any police officer of the state, parish, or municipality..."  La. R.S. § 32:411(F)(1).

The law then goes on to provide what constitutes a valid digital driver's license.  The law specifically provides that it is not enough to just have a picture of your driver's license.  See La. R.S. § 32:411(F)(3)(b) ("A digital copy, photograph, or image of a driver's license which is not downloaded through the application on a mobile device shall not be a valid digitized driver's license as provided by this Section.")  Instead, a legal digital driver's license in Louisiana must be displayed in an app that meets certain requirements, including the ability to connect to the La. Department of Public Safety via the Internet to confirm that the digital driver's license is currently valid. 

The law also provides that, for now, a digital driver's license is only valid during a traffic stop or a checkpoint.  If you need to provide your license for some other reason, such as proving your identity to TSA to board an airplane or to prove that you are of legal drinking age at a bar, for now at least the digital driver's license is not enough.  But there are efforts underway to expand the acceptance of a Louisiana digital driver's license.

If you show your iPhone to a police officer, does that mean that you have consented for the police officer to look at other apps on your iPhone?  The statute explicitly says no:  "The display of a digitized driver's license shall not serve as consent or authorization for a law enforcement officer, or any other person, to search, view, or access any other data or application on the mobile device."  La. R.S. § 32:411(F)(3)(e).  Moreover, once the officer looks at your digital driver's license, the officer is required by law to return your iPhone to you.  "If a person presents their mobile device to a law enforcement officer for purposes of displaying their digitized driver's license, the law enforcement officer shall promptly return the mobile device to the person once he has had an opportunity to verify the identity and license status of the person."  Id.

Here are all of the statutory requirements associated with a digital driver's license in Louisiana, contained in La. R.S. § 32:411(F)(3):

(a) For the purposes of this Subsection, a digitized driver's license shall mean a data file available on any mobile device which has connectivity to the internet through an application that allows the mobile device to download the data file from the department or an authorized representative of the department, contains all of the data elements visible on the face and back of the license, and also displays the current status of the license. For the purposes of this Subparagraph, "current status" shall include but is not limited to valid, expired, cancelled, suspended, disqualified, hardship, or interlock hardship status.

(b) A digital copy, photograph, or image of a driver's license which is not downloaded through the application on a mobile device shall not be a valid digitized driver's license as provided by this Section.

(c) A person shall not be issued a citation for driving a motor vehicle without a physical driver's license in his possession if he presents a digitized driver's license to a law enforcement officer in connection with a traffic stop or checkpoint in Louisiana. However, in connection with requests for identification not associated with traffic stops or checkpoints in Louisiana, a person may be required to produce a physical driver's license to a law enforcement officer, a representative of a state or federal department or agency, or a private entity when so requested and be subject to all the applicable laws and consequences for failure to produce such license.

(d) The department shall promulgate such rules as are necessary to implement a digitized driver's license. No digitized driver's license shall be valid until the department has adopted such rules.

(e) The display of a digitized driver's license shall not serve as consent or authorization for a law enforcement officer, or any other person, to search, view, or access any other data or application on the mobile device. If a person presents their mobile device to a law enforcement officer for purposes of displaying their digitized driver's license, the law enforcement officer shall promptly return the mobile device to the person once he has had an opportunity to verify the identity and license status of the person.

(f) The fee to install the application to display a digitized driver's license as defined in Subparagraph (a) of this Paragraph shall not exceed six dollars.

As I noted above, digital driver's licenses are coming to other states too.  Just a few days ago, William Petroski reported in the Des Moines Register that Iowa is working out the details of its digital driver's license, which is expected to debut in 2019.  Iowa, Colorado, Maryland, Washington D.C., and Wyoming are working with a company called Gemalto, which received a $2 million grant from the federal NIST to design and test a digital driver's license.

The LA Wallet app

Currently, the only digital driver's license app in Louisiana is an app called LA Wallet, although I imagine that others could make similar apps as long as they meet the requirements of the statute.  When you start the app you are asked to provide an email address and create a password so that you have an account with Envoc, the Louisiana-based company that created the app. Next, you need to create a four-digit PIN, which you will have to enter every time you open the LA Wallet app.

Next, you add your driver's license to the app by supplying your full name, your driver's license number, and your audit code (a four-digit number on the front of every Louisiana driver's license).  Although the LA Wallet app is free, you need to pay $5.99 to download a digital license.  That $5.99 will cover you until you get a new driver's license.  (In Louisiana, a license is good for up to six years.)

That's it.  Now, when you open the app, you enter your PIN, and then the app shows you the main screen:

Tap on the small image of your license to bring up the full view:

A high-quality digital version of your full driver's license is displayed.  The app determines whether your license is valid and displays that clearly along the top — a large green bar if it is valid.  I'm not sure how often the app normally checks (it did it several times on its own during my testing) but you can always tap the Refresh button to force it to check.  You can tap the View button to switch between a graphical version of your license and just the key information in large, plain text.

I cannot say that I fully tested this app because I haven't yet used it when I was pulled over for a traffic stop or a random checkpoint.  And if I never get a chance to conduct that sort of "test" that would be fine with me.  But it certainly looks like this app does everything that it says.

Conclusion

Spending $6 for up to six years of never having to worry about forgetting my driver's license when I am driving seems like a pretty good deal to me.  And as noted above, the legal uses of this app may expand in the future, which might be helpful for folks younger than me who are frequently carded at a bar but may not always have a physical license.

I like the idea of moving away from physical cards.  I can already walk to many stores with nothing more than my iPhone or Apple Watch, using Apple Pay to pay for my purchases.  (I actually just did that yesterday morning to pick up a few groceries.)  Thanks to the LA Wallet app, now I can also drive to those stores, or anywhere else in Louisiana, without having to worry about having my wallet which contains my driver's license.

If you live in Louisiana, I encourage you to get the LA Wallet app.  If you live elsewhere, hopefully you will soon have a similar iPhone app that you can use.

Click here to get LA Wallet (free):