Yesterday, Apple released the results for its 2019 fiscal third quarter (which ran from March 31, 2019 to June 29, 2019) and held a call with analysts to discuss the results. This is typically not a big fiscal quarter for Apple; the important quarter for Apple every year is the first fiscal quarter (containing the holiday sales season). During the fiscal third quarter, most potential Apple customers — which for the most part means iPhone customers — are waiting to see what new products Apple will introduce in the Fall. Even so, Apple had their best fiscal third quarter ever, with quarterly revenue of $53.8 billion, just slightly more than one year ago when Apple reported a record $53.3 billion. If you want to get all of the nitty gritty details, you can download the audio from the announcement conference call from iTunes, or you can read a transcript of the call prepared by Seeking Alpha, or a transcript prepared by Jason Snell of Six Colors. Apple’s official press release is here. As always, I’m not as interested in the financial details as I am the statements of Apple executives during the call that are of interest to iPhone and iPad users. Here are the items that stood out to me.
iPhone
Apple is no longer reporting each quarter the number of iPhones sold. Apple is reporting iPhone revenue, and while iPhone revenue this past quarter was $26 billion, which is down 12% from this time last year, that is better than three months ago when that revenue was down 17% from the previous year. And Cook said that in the last month of this past quarter (June) iPhone sales were increasing year-over-year in Apple’s retail and online stores.
Cook noted that just last week, Apple purchased the majority of Intel’s smartphone modem business. This was Apple’s largest ever acquisition in terms of staff, and second largest in terms of dollars. The modem is obviously a central part of every iPhone, and Cook said that this acquisition is consistent with Apple’s “long-term strategy of owning and controlling the primary technologies behind the products that we make.”
When asked about a 5G iPhone, Cook responded that he wouldn’t comment on future products, but he would say that “I think most people would tell you we’re in sort of the extremely early innings of it.”
iPad
iPad revenue for the past quarter was just over $5 billion, up from $4.9 billion last quarter and up from $4.6 billion in the 2018 fiscal third quarter. This was the third consecutive quarter of iPad revenue growth.
Cook pointed out that Apple has a strong iPad lineup, with the iPad, iPad Mini, iPad Air, and iPad Pro. I agree; Apple has a great range of iPad devices right now.
Other
Cook said that Apple had “an absolutely blowout quarter for Wearables, where we had accelerating growth of well over 50%.” So folks are buying Apple Watches and AirPods.
Apple Watch sales were at a record level this past fiscal quarter, and over 75% of customers buying an Apple Watch were buying their first Apple Watch.
Apple Pay is now completing nearly 1 billion transactions every month. I myself am using it more and more, but given that number, I’m not the only one. Apple Pay now works in 47 countries/markets.
Apple will start rolling out its new credit card, Apple Card, in August.
Finally, if you want to see some interesting charts that provide a graphical overview of this past fiscal quarter, check out this post by Jason Snell of Six Colors.
Twenty years ago, Apple released its first product with Wi-Fi, the iBook. Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac takes a look back at the iBook product announcement. Around the same time, two associates at Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C., named Ed Walters and Phil Rosenthal quit their jobs to start the legal research platform Fastcase. In Episode 45 of the LawNext podcast, Massachusetts attorney Bob Abrogi interviews the two of them to discuss the growth of Fastcase over the past 20 years. They discuss the origins of the company, significant milestones, and what is coming in the future. They also discuss the launch of the Fastcase app for the iPhone and iPad, which I raved about when it launched in 2010. I really enjoyed listening to this podcast. And now, the news of note from the past week:
Illinois attorney John Voorhees of MacStories reviews Flighty, a flight tracking app for frequent travelers.
Earlier this week, I mentioned that iOS was updated to version 12.4. One of the new features is a new iPhone migration tool, which lets you upgrade directly from an old iPhone to a new iPhone. Ryan Christoffel of MacStories provides some details on the new iPhone migration tool.
I don’t recommend rolling the dice when making legal decisions, but if you want to do so for some other reason, Josh Centers reviews a new app called Dice by PCalc, an app with beautiful graphics that lets you roll D&D-style dice. I used to play Dungeons & Dragons when I was in middle school in the 1980s, so I have to admit that seeing this app in action made me feel somewhat nostalgic for my old set of dice. I understand that D&D is still going strong, and my son recently played for the first time when he was at sleep-away camp.
Shep McAllister of The Inventory reviews the RAVPower 60W 6-Port USB Charger, a device that can both fast-charge your iPhone or iPad using USB-C but can lets you transfer files from an iPhone/iPad to a USB storage device such as a flash drive.
I never thought that the solid gold Apple Watch made sense considering it was obvious that you would want to upgrade the device over time, and it cost at least $10,000. But Nick Heer of Pixel Envy points out that Apple brought in over $100 million selling the gold first-generation Apple Watch Edition.
And finally, Apple produced an interesting and psychedelic video, created on an iPhone, called Elements III Cascade. The video itself is neat, but the behind-the-scenes film showing how they created the video is even more interesting, and you can view it here:
Although iOS 13 is just around the corner, Apple continues to update iOS 12, and yesterday released iOS 12.4.
I suspect that a primary reason for the update was to restore a feature to the Apple Watch. When watchOS 5 was released in 2018, Apple added a Walkie-Talkie feature so that two people could easily talk to each other using their watches. But Apple disabled the feature earlier this month because Apple discovered a flaw that could be exploited to listen to another person’s watch without their permission. At the time, Apple told Matthew Panzarino of TechCrunch that it was not aware of the flaw ever being exploited, but obviously any such risk is unacceptable. Yesterday, Apple released watchOS 5.3 to restore the Walkie-Talkie feature, and Apple says that the feature only works if both watches are paired to an iPhone running iOS 12.4 and configured to use FaceTime.
iOS 12.4 also adds a few other features. It adds the ability to wirelessly transfer data and migrate directly from an old iPhone to a new iPhone during setup, something that I suspect many folks will do after Apple releases new iPhones later this year. It also adds some improvements to Apple News.
Even if those new features do not matter to you, it is always a good idea to update your iPhone and iPad to the latest version of the operating system to ensure that you are taking advantage of all of the latest security updates.
Fifty year ago tomorrow — July 20, 1969 — Neil Armstrong announced “The Eagle has landed” and then took one small step as mankind took its first step on the Moon. David Perini of Cult of Mac explains that the iPhone in your pocket is millions of times more powerful than the Apollo 11 computer that put a man on the moon. Meanwhile, Apple celebrated the the 50-year anniversary by releasing a cute preview of the Snoopy in Space movie coming to the Apple TV+ service later this year. I’m fairly certain that this is the first time that I’ve mentioned the iPhone, astronauts, and a Peanuts character in the same paragraph of iPhone J.D. And now, the news of note from the past week:
California attorney David Sparks discusses and shows off in a video the new dictation feature of Voice Control, coming to iOS later this year. It is vastly more sophisticated than Siri dictation. If you have ever used Dragon Dictation or a similar product, you’ll feel right at home.
5G is just starting to become available in a few locations, but you don’t need to worry about it not being supported on the iPhone yet; the technology is far too early to use. Nevertheless, Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal wrote an interesting article testing the 5G technology that is available, noting all of its limitations. As is usual for her, the video accompanying her article is the best part.
You can use an Apple Watch to track your sleep, and I have tried some of the apps that do so, but I’ve never stuck with it because I never found anything interesting that I could do with that data. Brian X. Chen writes about these apps in an article for the New York Times, reaching the same conclusion. There are rumors that Apple is looking to make sleep-tracking a feature in an upcoming version of the Apple Watch — two years ago, Apple purchased a company called Beddit that sells a sleep tracker — and I hope that if Apple ever does release this as a built-in feature, Apple also comes up with a good explanation of how sleep-tracking technology is useful.
John Gruber of Daring Fireball wrote an interesting analysis of some recent statements by Bill Gates about Microsoft, Apple, and the early days of smartphones.
And finally, let’s talk about Easter Eggs, hidden features in software. They have been around for decades, and one of the coolest can be found in PCalc, a calculator for the iPhone, iPad, and iPhone. (On the iPhone, tap the Info button, then tap Help, then tap About PCalc, and then just explore.) The developer of PCalc, James Thomson, used to work at Apple. Earlier this month, he gave a half-hour presentation called An Illustrated History of Easter Eggs at a conference, and it is delightful. I sat down last night to watch the first minute or so, and before I knew it I had watched the whole thing. It takes you on a journey that starts with the Atari 2600 (when the term “Easter Eggs” was created) and ends with the Apple Watch. Here is the video:
Happy World Emoji Day! To celebrate, Apple is giving us a preview of some of the new emoji that you will be able to use later this year. The ideas for new emoji are considered and approved by the Unicode Consortium, and the new emoji in iOS 13 come from the Consortium’s Emoji Version 12.0, approved earlier this year with 230 new additions, if you count all of the variations. 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. Here are some of the new emoji that you will be able to use on your iPhone later this year.
Holding hands has always been a good way to represent couples and relationships. This Fall, you will be able to select any combination of skin tone or gender, more than 75 possible combinations — including two people with a gender inclusive appearance (not yet previewed by Apple).
There are also many new disability-themed emoji, and Apple gets the credit for proposing these to the Unicode Consortium last year and helping to get them adopted. Here is an ear with a hearing aid, a deaf person, two kinds of wheelchairs, a prosthetic leg, a guide dog, a person with a cane, and a prosthetic arm:
There are five new animals coming in iOS 13, plus two guide dogs (one of which is shown above). Here is a sloth, a flamingo, an orangutan and a skunk. (Not pictured: the new otter.)
New food items being added include a waffle, felafel, butter, and garlic:
Other new items include a banjo, a person parachuting, a kite, a yo-yo, a yawning face, a one-piece swimsuit, a sari, and a safety vest:
Although iOS 13 will likely come out around September, you may have to wait a little longer to use these new emoji. Apple released new emoji in iOS 11.1 (October 31, 2017) and iOS 12.1 (October 30, 2018), so if the past is any indication, perhaps this year they will come out around Halloween in iOS 13.1.
Amazon started its Prime Day Sale yesterday and it runs through 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time on Tuesday, July 16. If you have been thinking about getting a new iPad Pro, you can save some money if you do so before the sale ends.
The iPad Pro is the best iPad for attorneys. I use the Wi-Fi model of the 12.9″ iPad Pro with 256 GB and I love this device. I bought it for $1,149 and that is still the price if you buy from Apple, but you can save almost $200 if you buy it through Amazon during the Prime Day sale. That savings covers all of the cost of the $129 Apple Pencil (2nd Generation) and then some, a fantastic deal. Here are all of the iPad Pro savings that you can get on Prime Day:
There are rumors that Apple might come out with a new iPad Pro this Fall. I’m not sure that I believe those rumors because (1) the current version of the iPad Pro, the third generation, was announced in October 2018 and there was a 19 month gap between the announcement of the first and second generation iPad Pro and a 16 month gap between the announcement of the second and third generation iPad Pro, and (2) the third generation iPad Pro is truly incredible device so Apple doesn’t really need to update the hardware in 2019. Of course, Apple may do so anyway, but that doesn’t take away from the third generation iPad Pro being a really great device.
If you consider yourself a more casual iPad user and you don’t want all of the extra features of the iPad Pro but still want a good iPad, then the iPad Air may be for you. You won’t get the larger screen and thin bezel that makes the iPad Pro appear to have an almost edge-to-edge screen, you won’t be able to use the second generation of the Apple Pencil which is much better than the original one, the screen isn’t as nice, you have to use Touch ID instead of Face ID, it isn’t as fast, and you have to use Lightning instead of USB-C. But these are all “pro” features that nay not be worth it to you to spend the extra $300 or so. I don’t believe that the iPad Air has a Prime Day sale associated with it, but I do see that you can save $30 on two of the models on Amazon:
There is also one model of the iPad mini — the Wi-Fi 256 GB model — with $30 savings.
There are discounts on some related products that might interest you. For example, you can save $14.01 on a pair of AirPods with a normal charging case or $20 on AirPods with a wireless charging case.
Here in New Orleans, we are preparing for our first hurricane of the season, Hurricane Barry. Hopefully it will not cause much damage, but with risks of flooding and the loss of electricity, folks in this area are preparing for the worst, just in case. (As I’m typing this, I can hear the wind outside of my house starting to make a lot of noise. Ugh.) No matter where you live, there is always a risk of a power outage, so it is a good idea to be prepared by having items like backup batteries charged and ready to go. One option that I can recommend is the Weego Jump Starter 22, which I reviewed last year when it was about $95 on Amazon, but now I see that it is down to $60 on Amazon. You can keep it in your car to jump-start your car or a friend’s car if you ever have the need to do so, plus it has enough charge to keep your iPhone going for a long time if there is a power outage. The Weego is like an insurance policy; it’s an item that hopefully you will never need to use, but if you do need it, you are going to be so happy that you have it. I also recommend keeping one or more small, portable batteries charged and in your briefcase or purse. And now, as we continue to batten down the hatches in the Big Easy, here is the recent news of note:
California attorney David Sparks explains two reasons that an iPad will be much more useful with iPadOS: better file management and a better version of Safari, which can load many websites that have never before been able to work correctly on an iPad or iPhone.
Indeed, are so many upcoming changes to Shortcuts that California attorney David Sparks explained this week that he is going to need to start from scratch to create a new version of his Shortcuts Field Guide.
Karen Freeman of iMore reviews the Adonit Note stylus, a $50 alternative to the Apple Pencil that I reviewed earlier this week. She likes the stylus for the same reasons that I did, but when she discussed the drawbacks, she didn’t say anything about accidentally hitting the power button while using the stylus and having the stylus turn off, which was a problem that I had. So maybe that is less of an issue for others than it is for me.
And finally, here is a video from Apple showing a situation — a somewhat bizarre situation — in which it makes more sense to use FaceID to unlock an iPhone than TouchID:
A stylus is an incredibly useful iPad accessory for attorneys, making it easy to take handwritten notes and to annotate exhibits, drafts of your own briefs, briefs filed by your opponents, contracts, and other documents. Starting in 2010 when the iPad was introduced, I wrote dozens of reviews of styluses to help folks pick the stylus that was best for them. All of that changed in November 2015 when Apple starting selling the Apple Pencil, along with the first iPad with built-in support for that fine-tip device, the original version of the iPad Pro. The Apple Pencil was so much better than any third-party stylus that I didn’t really see the point in reviewing them anymore. Third-party styluses either had a large tip to simulate the size of a fingertip or they used tricks like Bluetooth or radio waves to simulate the touch of a finger on the screen, with varying degrees of success. While these solutions were creative, all of them were vastly inferior to the results you could get with an Apple Pencil.
In the Spring of 2018, Apple introduced a new iPad aimed at education and announced that it would support the Logitech Crayon, the first third-party stylus featuring a tip just as precise as the Apple Pencil. The Logitech Crayon achieved this by using Pencil technology licensed by Apple. The Crayon was aimed at the education market, and for a long time could only be purchased by schools in bulk, although today anyone can purchase one on Amazon or elsewhere for $60 to $70. Although the Crayon itself has an appearance that is more appropriate in a classroom than in a courtroom, at the time it was introduced I wrote that my hope was that it was setting the stage for a new generation of third-party styluses that would be just as precise as the Apple Pencil.
It has taken over a year, but Adnoit has finally done it, creating a stylus that is as precise as the Apple Pencil: the Adonit Note. I’ve long been a fan of Adonit’s products, and the Adonit Jot Pro was one of my all-time favorite styluses before the Apple Pencil (and it remains a great option for older iPads). Adonit sent me a free review unit of the Note almost two weeks ago. With a few minor exceptions, it has been the only stylus I’ve used since I received it, and I’m very impressed. There are two specific things I don’t like which I explain below, but for anyone who doesn’t want to spend $100 for an Apple Pencil or $130 for a second-generation Apple Pencil, the $50 Adonit Note is great alternative.
Precise, fine-point tip
The most important feature of the Apple Pencil is that it has a precise, fine-point tip, which instantly draws on the screen as you write, much like a pen on paper. The Adonit Note has this as well. The quality seems on par with the original Apple Pencil and the Logitech Crayon. The second-generation Apple Pencil seems to be just slightly more responsive, but it is not a big difference. The Adonit Note does a great job drawing on the iPad screen, and I’m incredibly impressed.
Year ago when I was last reviewing third-party styluses, I would sometimes find that my handwriting did not look quite as good with some of the lesser-quality styluses. (For an example of what I’m talking about, look at the “diagonal lines” section of of my review of the Adonit Jot Script 2 back in 2015.) That is certainly not a problem with the Adonit Note. When I am looking at something that I wrote using the Adonit Note, I cannot tell any difference from something that I wrote using an Apple Pencil.
The Logitech Crayon works this well because it uses technology provided by Apple to Logitech. How does the Adonit Note work this well? I’m not sure, and the company didn’t tell me when I asked. My guess is that Adonit found some way to reverse-engineer the Pencil technology so that it works the same way that the Crayon does. Indeed, the Adonit Note only works with the newest iPad models, and the iPads that it works with are the exact same iPads that work with the Logitech Crayon: the third-generation iPad Pro (both the 11″ model and the 12.9″ model), the third generation iPad Air, the sixth-generation iPad, and the fifth-generation iPad mini. In other words, both the Note and the Crayon work with every iPad that Apple first introduced in 2018 or later, but not with any of the iPads first introduced in 2017 or earlier.
No pairing necessary
An Apple Pencil needs to be paired to a specific iPad. Apple made this process essentially invisible with the second-generation Apple Pencil because all that you need to do is allow the Pencil to attach to the top of the iPad using the magnets, something you are going to do anyway to charge the Pencil. But with the Adonit Note, the process is even easier because no pairing is required at all. You start using the Note and it just works.
Having said that, the Adonit Note only works when it is turned on. Much like the Logitech Crayon, there is a power button on the Adonit Note. The Apple Pencil doesn’t have a power button, so after the initial pairing (which you only need to do once) it is slightly faster to pick up and start using a Pencil than it is to pick up and start using a Note.
Design
While the Crayon looks like it was designed for students with its bright orange colors, the Adonit Note looks much more like a typical pen that you would use in your office. You have a choice of black or gold for the barrel, and on both models the power button and the clip are gold/copper. If you have a Note sitting next to your iPad, I think that most folks would just assume that it is a regular pen, except that if it is powered on they most notice the small blue light next to the power button.
I like that, similar to most pens, the Note has a clip. This makes it easy to attach to a shirt pocket, and it also stops the otherwise round stylus from rolling around on a desk. Because the original Apple Pencil lacked a clip, I always used mine with an inexpensive Fisher Chrome Clip. With the second-generation Apple Pencil, I no longer keep the stylus in my pocket because it attaches with magnets to the iPad itself. The Note doesn’t have magnets to create a secure connection to an iPad, so it is very useful to have that clip on the side, and I’ve been using the clip every day.
However, there is another design feature of the Note which I dislike, and it is one of my two major complaints about the Note: the placement of the power button and the fact that it is so easy to press. Because of where it is located, I often hit the button with the side of my thumb or index finger while I am writing. I won’t even notice that I have touched the button; I’ll just notice that the Note has suddenly stopped working, and it is annoying to have to pause my writing to turn the Note on again. If the power button was located near the end of the Note (like it is on the Crayon), or if the power button was harder to press, than this wouldn’t happen. I had hoped that after a few days of using the Note I would find a different way to hold it to stop this from happening, but that hasn’t happened. Maybe this is less of an issue for folks with smaller hands or something like that, but I’m not sure how this didn’t bug the folks at Adonit while trying out the Note.
Power
There is a Micro USB opening on the back of the Note which you use to charge the internal battery. Adonit says that you with a full charge you can write with the Note for 12 hours (which is similar to the Apple Pencil), and says that you can plug in the Note for only four minutes to quickly get a charge that will last for one hour. If the Note is turned on and you haven’t used it for 20 minutes, it turns off automatically to save battery power.
My second major complaint about the Note is that, unlike the Apple Pencil, there is no way to tell how much charge you have left in the Note. Every time you attach a second-generation Apple Pencil to an iPad, your screen briefly shows you a percentage of how much charge you have. And with the original Apple Pencil, you can look at the Batteries widget to see how much power it has. The LED light on the side of the Adonit Note will display a red flickering light when the battery is low, but Adonit doesn’t reveal what this means — how much longer do you have when the light comes on?
Last week, I was using the Note in a settlement conference with opposing counsel and I noted that the light started to blink red. It was very annoying to not know how much power I had left, and at that point I had no idea how many hours I had been using the Note since I last charged it. And because a Micro USB cord isn’t something I normally have in my pocket, I did not have an easy way to charge the Note while I was in the conference. The Apple Pencil is far superior: you can see exactly how much power is left, and if the battery runs low you can attach it to the iPad itself to charge it. (When I was in that settlement conference, the next time that we had a break, I just grabbed my Apple Pencil out of my briefcase and started to use that instead. It was the only time that I made extensive use of my Pencil instead of the Note during the time that I was testing the Note, and I did so just because I didn’t want to be distracted by a concern about my stylus running out of power while I was trying to take important notes.)
No advanced writing features
The Adonit Note lacks some of the advanced features of the Apple Pencil. Some of these don’t matter to me, such as the ability to press harder to get a thicker ink. The Logitech Crayon also lacks pressure sensitivity, but it does something similar by adjusting the line weight based upon how much you tilt the Crayon. I’m sure that artists find these features useful, but when I’m taking notes, I don’t need for my ink size to vary depending upon how hard I press — indeed, that would be somewhat annoying. Thus, the absence of these features is irrelevant to me and I suspect won’t matter to attorneys and others who are writing, not drawing or sketching.
However, I do miss the double-tap feature of the second-generation Apple Pencil. You can double-tap near the front of the Pencil to switch between tools, a quick way to switch between a pen and an eraser. Because I have grown so used to that gesture, I double-tapped the front of the Note dozens of times, only to realize each time that this feature doesn’t exist and thus I would have to manually tap an eraser tool. Of course, I used a first-generation Apple Pencil for years without this feature, so you can certainly be productive with a Note without it. But it is one of the extra features that you get when you pay more for an Apple Pencil.
Conclusion
As someone who uses a stylus with my iPad almost every day, it is definitely worth it for me to use the more expensive second-generation Apple Pencil. The extra features like seeing how much battery power is left, easy charging by using the iPad itself, the magnetic connection to the iPad, and double-tap to switch pens are fantastic. But I have no doubt that there are many other folks with different priorities: folks who want to use a stylus occasionally but not every day and therefore $130 seems like too much to spend whereas $50 is easier to justify. If that describes you, the Adonit Note is a great alternative because of its fantastic tip which seems just about as precise as an Apple Pencil. If you are not going to use a stylus for extensive writing, battery power is going to be less of an issue for you so perhaps you won’t mind that you cannot tell precisely how much power the Note has remaining. And while I find the placement of the power button quite annoying, perhaps it won’t annoy you as much as it annoyed me.
Most importantly, I love that — at least for the most recent versions of the iPad — you have choices. You can spend more and get more with the Apple Pencil, you can spend less and use the Logitech Crayon if that design doesn’t seem too juvenile for you, or you can spend only $50 to get the Adonit Note. Any of those alternatives give you a precise, fine tip. The Adonit Note will be a great selection for many folks, and hopefully in the future Adonit and others will release even more great styluses choices for the iPad.
