Today is Mardi Gras day in New Orleans. Technically, it has been Mardi Gras season since January 6 (King’s Day), but most of the festivities began on Friday, February 14, when we started the first of the two big weekends of parades. My family and I had a great Mardi Gras season. Hopefully some of you had the opportunity to enjoy it as well, but if not, I encourage you to plan a trip to New Orleans in the future. Happy Mardi Gras!
The Look Around feature in Apple Maps is similar to the Street View feature in Google Maps, but I find that it works much better with higher quality pictures and smoother transitions when you move around. However, it is only available in a small number of cities including New York and San Francisco. Michael Potuck of 9to5Mac reports that the feature is now available in Washington, D.C., Boston, and Philadelphia. So now, you can easily see the United States Supreme Court and other important and historical locations from the Maps app. (When Look Around is available, you will see an icon with a pair of binoculars near the top right of the screen. Just tap that ot enter the Look Around mode.) And now, the news of note from the past week:
Just about every lawyer I know uses some system to keep track of tasks that need to be done, and often they do so using an iPhone. There are tons of great apps to use for this, from the built-in Reminders and Notes apps to numerous third-party apps. (I use the app Things.) But there are some tasks that we all do with some regularity that don’t need to be done at a specific time or date; nevertheless, it is often nice to know when you did it last. For example, you might not have a strict schedule for tasks like getting a haircut or washing your bed sheets, but it would be nice to have a quick way to see when you last did it, not to mention a way to see how often you usually do that task. When Did I…? is an app designed for this need. It works very well and I think that most anyone would find a good way to use this app on their iPhone.
The main screen of the app lists whatever actions you want to track. Tap the plus sign at the top left to add a new action, give the action a name, and then select an Emoji that you want to associate with the action. Once the action is in your list, all you need to do is tap the action and your iPhone will record that you just did that task. When you come back in the future, you can then easily see at a glance when you last did the actions that you are tracking.
Tap the arrow to the right of each action to see a lot of whenever you did those actions.
If you forgot to log something, or if you are using the app for the first time so there is no history, you can go back and add past events. Just tap the three dots at the top right to do so.
If you recorded an action by mistake, just swipe right to left to delete the action. Or you can tap the three dots at the top right, tap Delete Events, and then you can easily delete multiple events at once.
Those three dots also give you a way to add a specific action to Shortcuts. Tap that button and give Siri a specific phrase — such as “when did I last wash my car” — and then whenever you ask Siri that question, Siri will determine the answer from the When Did I…? app and then will tell you the answer. You can also configure a Shortcut so that when you say a certain phrase to Siri, the When Did I…? app will log that you just conducted one of your activities.
I really like this app because there are so many ways that it can be helpful. When did I last change the batteries in my smoke detector? When I did last replace a light bulb? When did I last have lunch with my college roommate? When did I last get flowers for my wife? When did I last charge the battery of the jump starter that I keep in my trunk? The ways that you can use this app are limited only by your imagination.
I do wish that this app would add one feature. Once you have logged a number of entries for an activity, the app could easily determine the average interval between each time you do the task. It would be nice if the app had a way alert you to this interval on the main page, perhaps by telling you that you normally do this task once every X months/days, or perhaps by suggesting that you are X days away (or past due) from when you would normally do this activity again. Perhaps this will be added in the future.
I like this app, and the more that I use it, the more useful that it becomes. I think this app is well worth the $2.99 price.
Click here to get When Did I…? ($2.99): 
Today’s In the news post comes on Saturday instead of Friday thanks to my busy schedule at work plus lots of activities in my life as we started the prime portion of the Mardi Gras season here in New Orleans. Last night, I used my iPhone 11 Pro to take lots of pictures of friends and family at a nighttime parade, and Night Mode did an amazing job using the limited light available to produce pictures that I would have never been able to take before. Not every picture came out great — the ones with lots of motion got blurred — but I knew that would happen so I just took lots of pictures. After deleting the ones that didn’t work, I’m left with a great set. Night Mode is really a fantastic feature. I wish my iPhone pictures from previous years were so good. And now, the news of note from the past week:
I love to hear how other attorneys are using an iPhone or iPad in their law practice, so I always appreciate it when one of you is willing to share what you are using with the rest of the readers of iPhone J.D. Today I am sharing a submission from Russell Knight, a family law and divorce lawyer with offices in Chicago, Illinois and Naples, Florida. Russell considers his iPhone an essential part of his law practice. Here is what Russell told me about some of the ways that he uses his iPhone:
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Living and working in two cities would have been impossible years ago before the almost instantaneous communication that the internet allows. The portability of digitally communicating through a handheld phone has been the true ultimate key in the essentially freeing me professionally from the restraints of any particular location.
My law offices use all Apple products. All of the staff have Macs. This is probably because I use a Mac at home and I am just more comfortable with the interface, but if I had to state an official reason, it’s because there are no computer viruses associated with Apple products. Also, my staff is usually a decade or more younger than me and it seems that all millennials are Apple devotees.
I use my iPhone on an almost constant basis whether I am working or not (and I’m almost always working). My iPhone is most useful for email and I access my email in two different ways. First, I use the Gmail app for my personal email account. Second, I have two family law firms, one in Chicago and one in Naples, Florida. Both law firms have their own email account. To access these accounts, I just log onto Google Chrome and access Gmail through the internet browser. Gmail via the internet browser lets me toggle between the two accounts.
I use the Google calendar app constantly as well because it governs my schedule. As a family law litigator with daily status calls judges are constantly requesting dates for the next court. With just a quick glance down at my iPhone, I can confirm or deny my availability. Meanwhile, my staff is able to see any changes I put in my schedule and they can make changes to my schedule themselves.
I use practice management software called MyCase largely as a way to input billable hours and send out invoices. When I’m out of the office, I will access the MyCase app to input my billable time as it is occurring. There is even a timer on the app if a longer term project comes up away from my desk.
In family law, there are frequently hearings where we take testimony from people (usually family members). If someone is not available on the hearing date, a motion to appear electronically is filed. This effectively means, “a motion to appear via FaceTime.” FaceTime in court is becoming more and more common and it’s getting harder and harder to object to these FaceTime witnesses by saying “my client has a 5th amendment right to confront their accusers.” I’m not sure how you can’t confront someone effectively via FaceTime but invoking the Constitution usually works.
Speaking of FaceTime, FaceTime Audio is amazing. For whatever reason, cellular reception will go in an out in my Chicago office but we always have WiFi. FaceTime Audio calls are crystal clear.
The Dropbox app lets me access any file I need at any moment on my phone. Of course, a phone can’t hold all those files so I’m just accessing them online. I do always carry my MacBook Air in case I need a file and the internet is not working well.
Finally, I use Notes for all of my offline work. When I’m back online, I just forward the note to my email account. I’m writing this article using Notes on my iPhone while I am on a plane with no WiFi. (Spirit Airlines promises WiFi by the end of 2019 … but alas, it hasn’t happened.)
I wish I was one of those lawyers that synced Evernote with Clio and had a million Zapier functionalities on their iPhones, but I’m not. The half dozen apps I listed above are all I need and have needed for years. I believe in keeping it simple … which is part of the appeal of the iPhone’s design and functionality.
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Thanks, Russell, for sharing how you use your iPhone in your law practice. This is the first time I have heard of using FaceTime to bring a witness to court, and that is a fascinating idea.
If any of you are willing to share your own experiences using an iPhone or iPad in your law practice with other iPhone J.D. readers, I’d love to hear from you. In case you missed any of them, here are stories that I previously shared from other attorneys:
Apple doesn’t reveal that actual number of Apple Watch devices that have been sold, but according to a new report by Strategy Analytics (as reported by Chance Miller of 9to5Mac) Apple shipped 31 million in 2019. To put that number in context, Miller reports that the entire Swiss watch industry sold 21 million watches in 2019. Anecdotally, I still remember the days when it was very rare to see someone else wearing an Apple Watch, but now I see that all the time. And now, the news of note from the past week:
If you wear an Apple Watch, it is possible to have your watch speak the time out loud. I offer this tip partially for those of you who want to use this feature. But I also consider this as much of a warning as anything else — if you are in court or some other situation in which it is a bad idea for your Apple Watch to make a noise, you should understand how this feature works so that you don’t trigger it accidentally.
You can use this feature when your Apple Watch is displaying the clock (i.e. you don’t have another app running). Hold down two fingers on the screen of the watch for about a second. Your watch will then speak the time out loud. This is a nice feature when you trigger it intentionally. But I can easily imagine someone placing one hand on the wrist of another hand and triggering the feature by mistake and then not realizing what caused their watch to start talking.
There are two ways to turn the feature on or off. First, you can open the Apple Watch app on your iPhone, tap the “My Watch” button at the bottom left (if it is not already selected), and then scroll down to “Clock” and tap it. There, you will see a Speak Time option that you can turn on or off.
Note that even with the option turned on, you can decide whether you want the two-finger gesture to always make the clock speak the time or have it only speak the time if Silent Mode on the Apple Watch is turned off.
A second way to turn this feature on or off is on your Apple Watch. Open the Settings app, and then select Clock. From there, you will see the same options that are shown in the iPhone app.
I rarely find a talking clock to be all that useful — I can always just look at the clock to see what time it is — but I’m glad that I know how it works. Having said that, if you are going to use this feature, I recommend doing so with the Mickey Mouse watch face. When that clock is displayed and the Speak Time option is turned on, a tap with either one or two fingers will cause your Apple Watch to speak the time in a Mickey Mouse voice, often with a laugh or other comment from Mickey. Having Mickey speak the time is far more entertaining than the generic voice you get with other watch faces. And you can customize that watch face to display Minnie instead of Mickey, and you will hear her voice instead.
Since 2009, I have been reporting on Apple’s quarterly earning calls, not because I have any interest in Apple’s stock price, but instead because it is one of the few times a year when Apple makes public statements about the iPhone and iPad and answers some questions. Thus, every quarter I pay attention to the parts that concern the iPhone and iPad and related products. Click here to see my prior reports.
Last week, Apple released the results for its 2020 fiscal first quarter (which ran from September 29, 2019 to December 28, 2019, and did not actually include any days from calendar year 2020) and held a call with analysts to discuss the results. This is typically Apple’s best quarter of the year because it includes holiday sales, and this year it was Apple’s best quarter ever with revenue of $91.8 billion, an increase of 9% from this time last year. 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. Here are the items that stood out to me:
iPhone
iPad
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