I recently tried to sync my iPhone 11 Pro to my Mac (using iTunes on macOS Mojave) and I was told that there was not enough space on my iPhone to fit everything that iTunes wanted to sync. That seemed wrong to me; there should have been plenty of space on my iPhone. The specific error message that iTunes gave me was: The iPhone ‘Jeff iPhone Pro’ cannot be synced because there is not enough free space to hold all of the items in the iTunes library (additional 85.03 required).
The strange thing was that iTunes was also telling me that my iPhone had about 70 GB in free space more than my iPhone itself was telling me that it had. Why would iTunes think that my iPhone had more free space than my iPhone itself did? And which one was correct?
It turns out that my Mac was correct and my iPhone was wrong. To try to see what was taking up all of the space, and to try to account for the huge discrepancy between what iTunes and my iPhone thought was available for free space, on my iPhone I opened the Settings app, went to General, and then tapped on iPhone Storage. From there, I could see that my TV app was taking up over 140 GB in space, but when I reviewed the files in my TV app there were only about 70 GB in files. In other words, my iPhone somehow thought that my videos downloaded to my TV app were about twice as large as they really were.
The solution was to do a hard reset on my iPhone. How you do this depends upon the model of iPhone that you are using, and Apple has a webpage with all of the instructions. For modern iPhones (from the iPhone X and iPhone 8 and forward), you quickly press and release the volume up button, quickly press and release the volume down button, and then hold down the side button for about 10 seconds or so until you see the screen turn black and then the Apple logo appears, showing that your phone is restarting.
After I did this, my iPhone reported that there was only about 70 GB of videos in the TV app on my iPhone. Also, iTunes on my Mac was happy to sync with my iPhone, now that both my Mac and my iPhone were in agreement on how much space was available.
Whether you encounter this particular bug or something else that you cannot figure out how to fix, the moral of this story is: if all else fails, restart … and if even that fails, then do a hard restart.
iPadOS 13 and iOS 13 included many changes that gave developers the opportunity to make their apps much better. Some developers have done a great job taking advantage of the new operating system, which has been great to see. GoodNotes is a sponsor of iPhone J.D. this month, which gives me a good excuse to discuss the extensive improvement that were made to this app to take advantage of iPadOS 13.
But before I do so, let me note that GoodNotes has been my favorite app for taking handwritten notes on the iPad for many years, long before it first became a sponsor last month. I use this app almost every day in my law practice, whether I am taking notes while on the phone or in a meeting, talking to a client, in a CLE, or in court. GoodNotes comes with lots of different paper styles, or you can take any PDF document and turn it into a template for the virtual paper in a notebook. GoodNotes comes with a legal pad template, but I prefer to use one that I created myself because I like having the dotted red lines on the left and right side. If you want to download my legal paper template and use it yourself with your own notebooks in GoodNotes, click here to download my legal paper template file. Also, while GoodNotes is primarily an app to use on an iPad, there is also an iPhone app which syncs all of your notebooks. Thus, if you need to look at something from your notes and you only have your iPhone with you, you still have access to your notes.
Here are the features that are new to GoodNotes on an iPad running iPadOS 13:
Multiple windows of GoodNotes at the same time
You can now have two instances of GoodNotes running side-by-side. This opens up lots of possibilities. Sometimes I use this because I want to review one set of notes while I am writing another set of notes.
Sometimes I use this to open two instances of the same set of notes so that I can use different pages. For example, I often attend a meeting where there is an agenda sent around by email before the meeting. I will often make the first page of notes the agenda. If it is a PDF file, I just insert that file before the first page of notes. Then I take my notes. A few pages in, I may find that it is helpful to see the agenda at the same time that I am taking notes, and with GoodNotes 5.3, this is now easy. I can put my agenda on the left (page 1 of the notes) while I continue to handwrite on the right side on a different page of the notes.
There are lots of ways that you can start the dual-screen mode. First, when you are looking at one document in GoodNotes, you can swipe up from the bottom of the screen to reveal the dock and then drag GoodNotes app from your dock to the right side of the screen, where it will open up a new instance of GoodNotes. Second, if you already have multiple tabs in use in GoodNotes, you can hold down on one of the tabs and drag it over to the right side. Third, when you are looking at all of your folders or documents in the library view, just select a folder or document and drag it over to the right side of the screen. Or you can use the action menu on any one document to select Open in New Window. Fourth, when you are looking at all of the pages of a single document in the thumbnail view, just drag any page to the right to create a new window. Fifth, if you have at least two tabs open, you will an icon at the top right of each notebook; tap that icon to see an option to open that notebook in a new window.
It is great to have all of these options to start the two-window mode. Suffice it to say however it feels natural to you to open a second window in GoodNotes, that approach is likely to be supported.
Although I mostly use the two-window approach so that I can look at something on the left while I write on the right, you can also copy something from one notebook to the other one. Use the lasso tool to draw a circle around something in one notebook. Then tap down on your selection and hold for just a second, until the object seems to lift off of the screen a little bit. Now you can drag to the other window, and when you do so whatever you copied will be pasted.
If you have the thumbnail view open on one of the sides, you can drag a page of that document into the other document. This approach creates an image of the document and inserts that image in the second document. Because you can scale this image larger or stronger, you can use this feature if you want to annotate a document but there isn’t enough room in the margins. With this method, you can move an image of a document into a page, then scale the image to whatever size you want, and then the margins around the image give you lots of space to write in the margins about the document.
Presentation Mode
When you use GoodNotes and your iPad is connected to an external monitor, you can decide what kind of Presenter Mode works best for you. One option is to just mirror the entire screen; the audience sees everything that you see. Another option is to mirror the presenter page. That way, the audience sees everything on the screen except that the audience doesn’t see the tools and other interface elements. Thus, the audience won’t see as you select a new pencil or pen or highlighter; they will just see what you write as you are writing it. Third, there is a similar view called mirror full page. This is similar to the second mode except that when you zoom in on your iPad, the audience will continue to see the full page. Thus, you can zoom in to write or draw something in a more precise fashion but the audience will just see the end result.
Note that there is also a laser pointer function in GoodNotes, so you can show your audience notes and then use the laser pointer to emphasize certain things while you are speaking.
If you are using the new side-by-side window function, the audience will only see one of the windows. Thus, you can have your presentation notes open in a window that only you can see as you write something in the window that your audience can see.
Dark Mode
If you enjoy using Dark Mode on your iPad, GoodNotes works with that too. Of course, your paper will probably be white or yellow or some other color, so to fully take advantage of Dark Mode, choose one of the new dark paper templates so that you are writing on dark paper. So far I’ve only played around with this mode, but if you are taking handwritten notes in a very dark environment, I can see it being much less obnoxious to use Dark Mode with a dark paper background.
OCR scanning
I mentioned above that I often take the meeting agenda and make that the first page of my notes. This is easy to do if someone previously sent you the agenda in a PDF file. What if they just hand you a piece of paper with the agenda? That isn’t a problem thanks to the new OCR scanning feature.
Tap the + button at the top right to add a new page, and then select Scan Documents. You can then use your iPad to take a picture of the document. Edge detection is automatic, but you can adjust the corners yourself or switch to manual mode. GoodNotes will take a picture of the document and will also use OCR to look for all of the words in the document, and then the picture of the document becomes the next page of your notes in your notebook. Because of the OCR function, you can` search for all pages in a notebook that contain in a specific word — even if the word was on the document that you scanned. And of course, once the document is in GoodNotes, you can write on top of it to annotate it.
For any attorney who, like me, works with paper documents but wants to make them digital, GoodNotes is now even more useful.
New iPadOS gestures
iPadOS 13 and iOS 13 brought new editing gestures that can be triggered when you put three fingers on the screen. Three-finger swipe left is undo, three-finger swipe right is redo, and hold down three fingers on the screen for a second to bring up the menu. (The new three-finger pinch gestures to cut, copy, and paste do not appear to be supported in GoodNotes.)
GoodNotes also supports the new multiple item gesture of iPadOS 13. When you are in the thumbnail view, touch the screen with two fingers on top of one page of a document and then start to swipe to the left or right to select other pages. This switches you into the selection mode (without having to even tap “Select” first) and allows you to select multiple page as you slide your two fingers over to them. This is a much more efficient way to select multiple contiguous pages in a document.
Conclusion
If you own an iPad and a stylus and you are not yet taking digital notes on your iPad, I strongly encourage you to try doing so with the GoodNotes app. This is a fantastic app — one of the most useful apps on my iPad, and a key part of my paperless law practice. Thanks again to GoodNotes for sponsoring iPhone J.D. this month.
Since I posted my review of the Apple Watch Series 5 and the iPhone 11 Pro, I’ve seen lots of articles on the Internet talking about the battery life of both devices. Folks have been happy with battery life on the iPhone 11 Pro, and I have been too. I’ve had some long days out of the office this week with no good opportunity to recharge my iPhone 11 Pro during the day, but the better battery life on the iPhone 11 Pro has made this a non-issue. There was even a time this week when I could have plugged in my iPhone for a short while during the late afternoon but I didn’t bother doing so because it just wasn’t anywhere close to being necessary. On the other hand, I’ve seen some folks, such as Zac Hall of 9to5Mac, reporting that some folks are finding that it is difficult for their Apple Watch Series 5 devices to last all day. I’m certainly noticing less battery life than with my Series 4, but my Series 5 with cellular still lasts all day. I have seen it tell me that I was down to 10% battery life, but that was after midnight while I was about to go to bed anyway. I’ve also seen some speculation on the Internet that folks seeing limited battery life on a Series 5 are suffering from a software bug not a hardware problem, so maybe Apple will release a patch. And now, the news of note from the past week:
To take full advantage of iOS 13 and iPadOS 13, Apple improved its three iWork apps: Pages, Keynote, and Numbers. Illinois attorney John Voorhees of Mactories explains what is new in the iWork apps. Because I use Microsoft Office in my law practice, the Pages and Numbers apps are not very important to me, but Keynote is a fantastic app that I use frequently to give presentations from my iPad. In fact, I’m giving one such presentation today.
One of the new features of iOS 13 and iPadOS 13 is the addition of a Download Manager in Safari, similar to a web browser on a computer. Sandy Writtenhouse of the iDownloadBlog explains the new Download Manager.
Another new feature of iOS 13 and iPadOS 13 is that the Files app is much improved. Jason Snell of Six Colors discusses the new Files app.
This year, Apple introduced clear cases for all of the new iPhones. I haven’t had a chance to try one out yet, but Jeff Benjamin of 9to5Mac reviews the new Apple clear cases and is impressed, especially considering that the Apple clear case he bought last year for the iPhone XR has held up well.
In August, I noted that the improved version of Apple Maps was available in Texas, Louisiana, and parts of Mississippi. Given the direction on a U.S. map that Apple seemed to be moving, I predicted that places like Atlanta and Mobile might be next. I was wrong; Apple instead added parts of the Northeast this week. Justin O’Breirne wrote a comprehensive post explaining what is new in the Maps app.
Apple has released a large number of updates to iOS 13 since it first released iOS 13.0. Josh Centers of TidBITS explains that we are now up to iOS 13.1.2, and more updates are expected this year.
And finally, Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal created a humorous video to show off Apple’s new Sign in With Apple feature, which allows you to use your Apple ID to authenticate yourself on another website or in an app. As she explains, Apple respects your privacy much more than similar options from Facebook and Google.
It has been possible to use an external keyboard with an iPad since the very first iPad was released in 2010. But whenever you needed to switch from typing to selecting something on the screen, you have always had to reach up your hands from the keyboard and touch your screen with your finger. Although the touch interface is fantastic when I’m using my iPad as a tablet, when my iPad is propped up to be a screen behind my keyboard, it is more awkward to have to touch the screen. Thus, I’ve long wanted to have optional mouse support on an iPad, for those times when I’m using my iPad the same way that I would typically use a computer. With iPadOS 13, we finally have that capability. It is limited, but it works well, and it helps me to be more productive with my iPad. Here are details on how it works, including the (numerous) steps necessary to get started.
Pairing a mouse
This is Apple’s first implementation of mouse support on an iPad, and Apple has prioritized mouse support for folks with special accessibility needs. Thus, to pair a mouse and configure your settings, you need to open the Settings app and go to Accessibility -> Touch -> AssistiveTouch. On the AssistiveTouch screen you can turn on AssistiveTouch (so that it recognizes a mouse) and then you configure your mouse by using the Pointer Devices section.
Tap Devices to pair your mouse. You can use three types of mouse. First, you can use most Bluetooth mice. (Surprisingly, Apple’s own Magic Mouse 2 and Magic Trackpad don’t seem to work; I’ve read that the Magic Trackpad 2 works but only with a Lightning cord, not over Bluetooth.)
Second, you can connect a wired mouse. Since wired mice use USB, you will need a connector. If you have a third generation iPad Pro with USB-C, the HyperDrive 6-in-1 that I reviewed in August works great for this. I plugged in an old Apple wired mouse and it just worked immediately. You can also use Apple’s $29 Lightning to USB Camera Adapter (for an iPad that uses Lightning) or its $19 USB-C to USB Adapter (for the third generation iPad Pro). Leif Johnson of Macworld reports that if you use a wired mouse that requires anything more than minimal power, you might find that older iPads which use a Lightning connector cannot provide enough power. However, if you have a third generation iPad Pro — the one with USB-C — it provides more than enough power for a mouse.
Third, you can connect a wireless mouse that uses a USB dongle. For many years now, I’ve had a Logitech wireless mouse with a dongle for use with my PC laptop. The model that I have (C-UAY59) is no longer for sale, but it is similar to the Logitech M525 that you can get for $19.99 on Amazon.
One you have paired a device, tap or click on it on this screen and you can assign the buttons on your mouse. By default your left-click button will be assigned to Single-Tap. There is no right-click on the iPad, but in iPadOS 13, a Long Press is similar, so I assigned my right-click button to Long Press. And on my mouse, pressing down on the scroll wheel is a third button, so I assigned that to Home so that when I press it, it is similar to swiping up from the bottom of the screen, showing the app icons on my Home screen.
There are a huge number of shortcuts that you can assign to buttons, so if you are using a mouse with a lot of buttons, you can get pretty creative on what you assign. For example, you can assign shortcuts that you create in the Shortcuts app to a mouse button, which allows for lots of sophistication.
On the AssistiveTouch screen, you can also change the tracking speed. I also recommend that you select Pointer Style and make the pointer size as small as possible. That still makes it a circle much larger than a typical computer cursor — remember that you are using the mouse to replace the tip of a finger — but it is small enough that it doesn’t get much in the way. On that same screen, under Visual, I recommend that you also turn on Auto-Hide so that the circle mouse circle disappears if you are not moving the mouse. I have mine set to Auto-Hide in five seconds, and that seems to work very well.
Here is one final tip for your initial configuration. I recommend that, in the Settings app, you go to Control Center -> Customize Controls and then add Accessibility Shortcuts to the “Include” section of the Control Center. And then, in the Accessibility section of the Settings app, under General, tap Accessibility Shortcut -> AssistiveTouch. That way, in the future, you can just swipe down from the top right of your screen to bring up the Control Center and then tap the icon for Accessibility Shortcuts to easily turn on or off the mouse function without having to dig into the Settings menus to do so.
Using a mouse
When you move the pointer around the screen with the mouse, it is like you are hovering the tip of your finger over the screen but not yet touching the screen. And then whenever you press the left mouse button, it is as if the tip of your finger is touching the screen. Thus, to scroll up or down, you hold down the left mouse button and move the mouse while you are still holding down. If your mouse has a scroll wheel, it is supported in some apps on some functions, but not all. For example, the scroll wheel works fairly well in Apple’s built-in apps like Safari and Mail. The scroll wheel mostly works in third-party apps, but I’ve seen inconsistent results in apps like Microsoft Word and Things.
But what works very well is moving the cursor around the screen and selecting text, which is the main thing that I want when I am typing a long email or editing a Microsoft Word document with an external keyboard. For example, in Word, I can use the mouse to select a paragraph, which makes it easy to cut it and paste it somewhere else in the document.
There are still times when I prefer to use my fingers on the iPad screen, such as to invoke multi-finger gestures like pinching two fingers in or out to zoom in or out. Having said that, thanks to keyboard and mouse shortcuts, you no longer need to use your fingers for many tasks. For example, switching apps by using Command-Tab is much better than putting all five fingers on the screen and swipe right or left to change apps.
Although using a mouse with an iPad is not exactly the same as using a mouse with a computer, it still works very well when you are using your iPad and an external keyboard to work with text, whether you are drafting or modifying a document or just writing a long email.
Citrix
Sometimes I need to work in a PC environment on my iPad to get something done for work. I currently have two ways of doing that. First, I use the LogMeIn app on my iPad to connect to the PC in my office. Using an external mouse works reasonably well for that, but the scroll wheel doesn’t work, and a right-click on the mouse doesn’t equal a mouse-click in the PC environment. But it still works well enough that I find a mouse useful in LogMeIn.
Sometimes I use the Citrix Workspace app to connect to a Citrix virtual environment at my law firm. With iPadOS 13, a normal mouse will generally work, but just like in the LogMeIn app there are some things that it cannot do like right click, use a scroll wheel, and perform certain hover events. However, Citrix sells a $60 mouse called the Citrix X1 Mouse. As explained on this page of the Citrix website, if you use the X1 Mouse with the Citrix Workspace app, it works just like a normal mouse on a PC (so you can right-click and scroll), and as a bonus you can also use the X1 Mouse with other apps to perform normal mouse functions that are enabled in iPadOS 13. I haven’t tried the X1 Mouse myself, but if you plan to purchase a Bluetooth mouse to use with your iPad and if your law firm uses Citrix and you plan to use it regularly, I can see some real advantages to buying that Citrix mouse instead of a standard Bluetooth mouse.
Conclusion
The mouse support in iPadOS 13 is limited, but it does work, and in my tests over the last week or so I have found it very helpful. I suspect that almost every time that I use an external keyboard with my iPad Pro, I’ll also take out my mouse so that I can use it too. Hopefully this is just a first step and Apple will improve mouse support in the future. Nevertheless, it works well enough now that if you have ever missed having access to a mouse while you use an external keyboard with an iPad, you should definitely try it and see what you think.
