This past weekend, my family and I saw one of the touring productions of Hamilton while it was playing at the Saenger Theater in New Orleans. It was amazing; the best show I've ever seen at the Saenger, and I have seen so many over the years. We all loved it. After the show, I watched some clips of Hamilton on Broadway, and as much as I enjoyed the show that we saw, I am jealous of those who saw Lin-Manuel Miranda in the original production as he really brings something special to that role that was missing in the touring production. I was thinking about this as I read articles this week about the new iPad Air and iPad mini. If you are already using a new iPad Pro, those devices are a step down as they don't support the Apple Pencil 2, don't have the gorgeous edge-to-edge screen, don't have the larger 12.9" size, etc. On the other hand, these new iPads are a fraction of the price of an iPad Pro, and they are still really, really good. Much like it might make sense for you to see the touring version of Hamilton instead of paying for the trip to New York and the high cost of Broadway tickets with the original cast, opting for an iPad Air (or if you want something really small, an iPad mini) is still a great option for attorneys using an older iPad, even if it isn't as good as a brand new, expensive, iPad Pro. "Da da da dat da, dat da da da da ya da." Sorry, but I can't get that King George song out of my head. And now, the news of note from the past week:
- Apple also announced some new bands for the Apple Watch and some new iPhone cases this week. Attorney John Voorhees of MacStories shows off what is new.
- California attorney David Sparks may no longer doing the Mac Power Users podcast with Florida attorney Katie Floyd, but he is still producing MPU episodes with great content for lawyers. In Episode #474 and co-host Stephen Hackett discuss using an iPad instead of a laptop, and Sparks gives lots of examples from his own law practice.
- President Trump's former attorney Michael Cohen used an iPhone, and Special Counsel Robert Mueller appears to have gotten access to it. Lauren Feiner of CNBC reports that a year before the FBI raided Cohen's home and office, the DOJ requested a search warrant and court permission to use Cohen's face or fingerprints to unlock his iPhone. The article implies that the court granted the motion, but that part of the article isn't 100% clear.
- Many journalists were given early access and posted reviews of the iPad mini yesterday. If you think that a smaller iPad might be right for you, the most helpful reviews that I saw were the review by Jason Snell of Six Colors (who says "Say hello to my little friend, again") and the review by John Gruber of Daring Fireball (who says "[t]he iPad Mini puts the 'pad' in iPad.").
- Rene Ritchie of iMore posted a comprehensive review of the iPad mini.
- Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac rounds up some of the other initial reviews of the iPad mini.
- In an article for Macworld, Jason Snell explains why today's iPad lineup is the strongest in years. I fully agree. There is something for every price point, and there lots of size and feature options.
- Ganda Suthivarakom of Wirecutter has advice for charging your iPhone more quickly.
- Luke Dormehl of Cult of Mac reports that according to a large study by Stanford scientists, an Apple Watch can safely identify atrial fibrillation with very few false positives.
- Sarah Brown of 1Password recommends that you change your Facebook password now the Facebook admitted that hundreds of millions of passwords were stored in a plain text file. Ugh. And whether you use 1Password or some other password manager, this is yet another reminder that you should really be using a password manager, right now.
- Apple's GarageBand app is 15 years old this year. Amy Wang of Rolling Stone writes about the origins of GarageBand. I re-watched the video the other the day in which Steve Jobs debuted GarageBand, along with John Mayer, and it is a classic and fantastic Steve Jobs demo.
- Charlie Sorrel of Cult of Mac discusses whether it is worth upgrading from the original AirPods to the AirPods 2.
- And finally, for the last few weeks, Apple has posted tons of 15-second videos to Apple's YouTube page with all sorts of short tips on doing things on your iPhone, such as using two phone numbers with a single phone, sending money through iMessage, search for photos by subject, etc. Here is the video on using FaceID to securely log in to an app, such as the Chase app. I just did this a few hours ago to deposit a check on my iPhone, something that I am still amazed one can do, and is so much better than having to go to the bank.
