I realize that it was just two weeks ago that I mentioned the now-infamous “I’m not a cat” video and now I’m back to that topic. However, I just saw this article by Debra Cassens Weiss of ABA Journal about ways that some lawyers or their clients have made poor decisions when attending Zoom hearings, and I’m truly amazed by the examples that she compiled in that post. I mean, it is great that you can use Zoom with just an iPhone, but I don’t think that means that you should celebrate that mobility by participating in a hearing from a bed, from a hair salon, while drinking alcohol, or while wearing a bikini by a pool. And now, the news of note from the past week:
Illinois attorney John Voorhees of MacStories reviews Genius Scan 6.0 and calls it a sophisticated iPhone and iPad scanning app. He doesn’t compare and contrast the app to other scanning apps, and I’m not yet seeing a reason to switch from the Scanner Pro app that I’ve used for years, but if you are still trying to find a scanner app that works well for you, it looks like Genius Scan is also one that is worth considering.
Brett Burney of the Apps in Law website reviews TuneIn, an app that lets you listen to radio stations from around the world. I’ve used that app in the past when I was driving far from my hometown of New Orleans and I wanted to listen to the radio broadcast of a Saints NFL game. Speaking of New Orleans, Brett mentions using this app to listen to WWOZ, a fantastic listener-supported radio station in New Orleans that plays fantastic music, and you can use TuneIn to do that, but there is also a WWOZ app in the App Store that does the same thing for free.
For Apple Watch owners who like to listen to podcasts, the Overcast app was already the best way to use just an Apple Watch and Bluetooth speakers, such as AirPods, to listen to podcasts on the go. But the Apple Watch app for Overcast was rewritten this week to add many new features, as explained by Parker Ortolani of 9to5Mac.
Apple had its annual shareholder meeting this week. That is normally an opportunity for the Apple executives to have to answer a few oddball questions, but since this year’s meeting was online and Apple could pre-screen the questions, it was less unpredictable. Even so, Chance Miller’s recap of the shareholder’s meeting for 9to5Mac is interesting.
Ever since MagSafe magnetic wireless charging was introduced to the iPhone 12 line, I’ve wondered if someone would create a small battery that magnetically attaches to the back of the iPhone so that you can get the benefit of a charging case without the bulk of a charging case. There is a rumor that Apple is working on such a product that would take advantage of the full 15W charging speed. But in the meantime, Anker just announced the PowerCore Magnetic 5K, a $39.99 device that does something similar but only charges at 5W. Ian Carlos Campbell of The Verge describes the device and says that it will be available in just a few days. This type of device, whether it is made by Apple or Anker, strikes me as something that could be very useful when traveling. But of course, most of us are not doing that right now.
Killian Bell of Cult of Mac reviews the new Clear Apple Watch band from Elago, which is only $12.99 on Amazon. It definitely looks different, and I’m somewhat surprised that this is the first time that I’ve seen an Apple Watch band that is transparent.
And finally, here is a new Apple ad for the Sleep app on the Apple Watch Series 6. I keep thinking that one day I will see the value of wearing an Apple Watch to sleep, but whenever I try it for a while, I find that it doesn’t really provide me with much useful information but it does force me to find times during the day to recharge the watch, which can be inconvenient. But maybe one day this will change. And in any event, this video is rather trippy:
Although many of the most useful iPad apps for lawyers have broad appeal — I’m thinking of apps like Microsoft Word and Readdle’s PDF Expert — there are also some really great apps that are specifically designed for lawyers. The first such app for the iPad was TrialPad, an app introduced by Lit Software in December 2010, the same year that the iPad itself debuted. TrialPad made it possible to present evidence to a jury (or other groups of people) from an iPad. And because the app was both simple to use and powerful, it made it possible for a trial attorney to handle exhibit presentation without needing to hire someone else to handle the exhibits during trial and without needing to ensure that the assistant always understood exactly what the lawyer wanted to show. Lit Software followed up with other apps over the years, including one of my favorites, TranscriptPad. I talked about how valuable TranscriptPad is to my law practice in this review from January 18, 2012, and I’ve now been using the app for almost a decade. Indeed, I have been using TranscriptPad quite a bit this month as I was preparing a motion for summary judgment.
Like many other apps — again, Microsoft Office is a good example — Lit Software has now moved to a subscription payment model. The company first announced that this move was coming in a blog post back in 2017 that explained the rationale, and the company provided additional information in 2018 and 2019. The new pricing model finally debuted earlier this month when the company introduced the LIT SUITE. With a single yearly LIT SUITE subscription, you get all of the Lit Software apps and all updates to those apps. The bundle currently includes three apps, but more are coming, and the company gave me permission to discuss one of its upcoming apps in this post — an app called ExhibitsPad, which I haven’t seen mentioned in public anywhere else before. All of the prior Lit Software apps have been updated to new versions with updated interfaces in LIT SUITE.
Here is what you get with the new LIT SUITE:
TrialPad
This is the app that started it all. I say that not just because it was the first Lit Software app, but also because it was the app that first made me and many other attorneys realize that the iPad was going to be a powerful device specifically for lawyers.
As I explained in my 2016 review of TrialPad, this app gives you the ability to present evidence to a jury, judge, or other audience. Simply create a new case in the app and then load in your documents. The app is designed for your iPad to be connected to an external monitor, either using a cord such as an HDMI cord or by using AirPlay to give a wireless presentation.
What you see on your iPad is different from what the audience sees; you see all of the tools, but the audience just sees the presentation. TrialPad includes all of the familiar tools for presenting evidence. You can highlight or redact any part of the document, and you then you can callout a part of a document to emphasize it to the jury or other members of your audience as you explain the significance of this part of the document.
You can either create annotations on the go, which is nice because you can tell your audience why something is important while you are highlighting it, or you can prepare the annotations beforehand and then tag the annotated version of the document (or a page of the document) as a key document. That way, the annotations are preserved so that you can quickly bring them up again later without taking the time in front of your audience to create the annotations.
You can also assign custom exhibit stickers documents with automatic sequencing. In other words, create the exhibit for the first document, and then the app can automatically increment the numbers for subsequent documents. And you can decide whether to assign the exhibits to each page (something like 1.1, 1.2) or just to each document.
In the latest version of TrialPad, you can now import files from a USB drive or any cloud provider that integrates with the Files app, such as iCloud Drive, Box, Citrix Files, Dropbox, Google Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive.
During the pandemic, not many attorneys are giving presentations to audiences in the same room. On the other hand, attorneys are doing tons of Zoom presentations, and you can use TrialPad to make professional presentations in remote depositions, hearings, and trials.
You can use other PC software to give trial presentations, but presenting from a PC is more awkward than presenting from an iPad. You can hold the iPad in your hand and walk around with it, and the screen lies flat instead of an upright laptop screen so the screen doesn’t create a barrier between you at you audience. Add an Apple Pencil, and you have a fantastic way to create annotations.
TranscriptPad
I know that TrialPad gets much acclaim because audiences are impressed when you create amazing and persuasive presentations, whereas nobody else really knows when you are using deposition transcripts effectively. Nevertheless, TranscriptPad has always been my favorite Lit Software app because I work with depositions far more frequently than I present evidence at trial. I first reviewed TranscriptPad in 2012, and I’ve written about this app many times since then. When I work with transcripts, I work with TranscriptPad whenever I can.
To use TranscriptPad, you start with the text version of the transcript, sometimes referred to as the ASCII version. Court reporters typically provide this version along with the PDF versions of a transcript, and if not, you can always ask for it. Or, if you are given the .ptx version of the Transcript, you can easily export an ASCII text version on a PC. (I don’t know of a way to work with .ptx files on the Mac, but I use a PC in my office. If you know how to convert from .ptx to text on the Mac, let me know.) Court reporters typically email the text version to me after a deposition, and then I just use my iPad to open that mail attachment in the TranscriptPad app.
That sends the transcript to an import folder. TranscriptPad does an excellent job of recognizing the witness’s first and last name and the deposition date, but you can adjust those if necessary and then tell the app which case the transcript belongs with (or create a new case).
Once the transcript is imported, you are ready to read and annotate the transcript. If you tap the AA icon at the top of the screen, you can pick a size and font for the text (I prefer Menlo in the Large font) and decide whether you want the questions to appear in bold to make it easier to distinguish the Qs from the As.
When you come across a question-and-answer that may be important to your case, tap the line numbers at the beginning and at the end. This allows you to do many different things. What I find the most useful is to assign an Issue Code (or, if necessary, create a new one). For example, if an issue in the case is the statute of limitations (which we call “prescription” in Louisiana; we are a civil law state, not a common law state), I will create an issue code called “Prescription” and I will assign it whenever there is relevant text in the transcript. Sometimes a line of testimony is relevant to multiple issues in the case, and TranscriptPad allows you to assign multiple issue codes to the same text. You can also highlight, underline, and redact text.
The real power comes after you have finished reviewing a transcript and you have assigned all of the issue codes. You can then tap a button to have TranscriptPad create a report, a PDF document that shows all of the text that you assigned to each issue code. That way, when I am ready to draft my motion for summary judgment on the grounds of prescription, I can easily see all of the testimony that relates to prescription in one place. This is incredibly valuable and so much better than having to work with the entire transcript to locate the key testimony. And you can even run reports across all of the witnesses in the case, so you can see what everyone had to say that is relevant to the issue of prescription.
You can also use TranscriptPad to prepare line designations for trial. Simply use an issue code to mark everything that you will include, create a report for that issue code, and then export to a text file, which you can then load into Microsoft Word or any other app.
Reports are useful to share with other attorneys who don’t have TranscriptPad. If you export an issue report to PDF, they can quickly review all of the key testimony from a deposition. You can also export a report to a Microsoft Excel file, which creates different tabs in Excel for each issue code. That way, the other person can click on a tab in Excel that is of interest to them and then review all of the text. It is natural to think of Excel as a tool for working with numbers, but Excel can also be a powerful way to work with properly formatted text.
One new feature in TranscriptPad (and the other LIT SUITE apps) is the ability to save a case as a template. Normally, each case has its own issue codes, and that makes sense because every case is different. But when cases are similar, the template feature makes it faster to get up and running in the second case. Let’s say that you have a case that you previously handled called Smith v Acme and now you have a new case called Jones v Acme. You expect the issues in the two cases to be similar, so you want to take advantage of the issue codes that you spent time creating in the Smith case. Simply long-press (or, if you are using an external mouse, right-click) on the Smith case and choose Save as Template. Now, when you are ready to create the new Jones case, tap the + on the main screen to create a new case and select the Smith v Acme template and give it a new name, Jones v Acme. This will create a new Jones case that is a duplicate of the Smith case, including all of the transcripts and exhibits from the Smith case. You can then delete the transcripts and documents from Smith (unless any of them will be used again), but the issue codes will remain. That way, when you import your transcripts into the Jones case, all of the issue codes from the Smith case are there so you can immediately start assigning them.
I don’t know if I will ever use the template feature. My issues tend to be different from case to case, and creating issue codes only takes a few seconds so I don’t see myself saving much time by using a template instead of creating issue codes from scratch for each new case. But if templates make sense for one or more of your cases, now you can use them.
The only thing that I don’t like about TranscriptPad is that sometimes I cannot use it. For example, sometimes I find myself working on a case in which the depositions were taken before I got involved with the case and, for whatever reason, all that I have access to is a PDF version of the transcript. If you don’t have access to the ASCII text file, then you cannot use TranscriptPad. I wish there was a way that TranscriptPad could look at a PDF file and figure out how to turn it into a text file that can be processed by TranscriptPad. Having said that, I just came across this suggestion in the Help section of the Lit Software website that I plan to try in the future:
If you have a transcript that is only available as a PDF file we recommend importing it into DocReviewPad where you can assign Issue Codes to certain pages of the transcript, and/or add sticky notes that will refer to certain lines of a page.
TranscriptPad is easy to use but incredibly powerful, and it makes me a better litigator.
DocReviewPad
The DocReviewPad app debuted in 2015, and I reviewed the app in this post. DocReviewPad is sort of like TranscriptPad for documents.
You can use DocReviewPad to review documents that you obtained from someone else during discovery. You can assign issue codes to important documents, and you can highlight, annotate, and attach notes to documents. The app (optionally) applies Bates numbers to documents as you import them.
You can also use the app for a document production from your own client, marking documents as relevant, privileged, etc. as you review them. You can also redact portions of documents, when appropriate. When you are finished, you can export all of the relevant documents, plus create a list of documents for which you will need a privilege log.
You can also export entire documents, or individual pages, to TrialPad or share documents with other counsel.
ExhibitsPad
Lit Software has additional apps in development, and when they are ready, they will be included as a part of the LIT SUITE subscription. The company recently told me that one of the new apps is called ExhibitsPad, and then gave me permission to describe it here.
I haven’t even seen a beta version of the app yet, but the idea of the app is that each attorney and each individual juror, judge, or arbitrator has an iPad with the ExhibitsPad app installed. Admitted exhibits (documents, videos, etc.) can be shown on all of the iPads at the same time. Jurors, judges, or arbitrators can take the iPad to a deliberation room so that all of the exhibits are easy to view.
Just last week, the folks at Lit Software used a pilot version of this app in a federal bankruptcy trial in Florida. I’m told that some of the trial participants were in the courtroom (and socially distanced) while others participated in the hybrid trial via Zoom. When documents were introduced, counsel and the witness could see the document, and then once the document was admitted, it could be shown on a share screen.
ExhibitsPad sounds like an interesting app, and I look forward to seeing it when it is released. I imagine that judges and jurors would find it helpful to see a document on the iPad in their hands instead of on a distant screen that might be hard to see. It seems like you could use the app to have a completely paperless trial, one in which the attorneys can do more with the exhibits, and judges, jurors, or arbitrators can see and understand the exhibits even better. If you are in a courtroom that has not been configured for the electronic presentation of evidence, ExhibitsPad could be especially useful.
Integration
All of the LIT SUITE apps work well with each other. For example, you can easily export documents from DocReviewPad into TrialPad for presentation. You can even create slides of key deposition testimony and send them to TrialPad.
Although the LIT SUITE apps are modern apps that support many of the latest features of iPadOS, I see that they don’t currently support the multitasking features of iPadOS. Having said that, I’m not sure that is really a problem. For TrialPad and DocReviewPad, I’m not sure that I would ever want to use one of those apps on part of the screen while another app was also on the screen. Multitasking might be more useful in TranscriptPad; for example, I can imagine having TranscriptPad on the left side of the screen while I work on a Microsoft Word document on the right side of the screen. However, you can export a TranscriptPad report to a PDF file, and then you use any modern PDF management app that supports multitasking so that you can have your report on one side of the screen while you work on another part of the screen. That has been sufficient for me for the rare instances in which I have wanted to have transcript testimony on one part of the screen while I ran a different app on another part of the screen.
On the other hand, all of the new apps take full advantage of all of the file-handling features of iPadOS. That is why you can now import from and export to a large number of different online services as well as external media like a USB thumb drive. And the new interface of the LIT SUITE apps seems right at home on any modern iPad.
Along with the new versions of the apps, Lit Software also created a series of videos showing you how to use various features of the apps. The videos are helpful, well-produced, and easy to follow. They are fantastic resources if you are a new user, but even if you have been using these apps for many years, there is a good chance that you will learn something new from these videos.
Cost and upgrade
You can use any of the new apps for free for seven days. After that, purchase a subscription to continue using the apps, which gives you access to all of the apps and all upgrades to the apps. I haven’t yet seen an announcement of the full annual subscription price for LIT SUITE, but right now, for a limited time, new customers can take advantage of an early subscriber discount price of $399/year. Better yet, if you previously purchased any of the Lit Software apps and have them installed on your iPad when you download one of the new LIT SUITE apps, you will also receive a loyalty discount that results in a price of $299/year during the introductory period.
To use LIT SUITE when you previously used one or more of the apps, you need to download new and improved versions of all of the apps. The older versions of the same apps will still work and you can continue to use them, although they won’t have the new features. You can export one or more of the case files from the older apps to the new LIT SUITE versions of the apps. For example, I have dozens of cases in my old version of TranscriptPad, but I only imported into my new TranscriptPad app the few cases that are still active.
If you keep both the old and new versions of the Lit Software apps, you can tell which is which from the app icons. The old apps have colors (red for TrialPad, blue for TranscriptPad, green for DocReviewPad) that run to the edges of the icon. The new apps have color in a circle on a white background:
Although I’m currently paying hundreds of dollars a year for lots of different subscriptions that have something to do with my iPad — I detailed most of them in this recent post — LIT SUITE is one of the more expensive subscriptions that I am paying for. For example, LIT SUITE is a little more expensive than the $240/year that I pay for my AppleOne premium subscription. But $399/year (or $299 year for current customers) is a very reasonable price for legal software, and it is actually cheaper than some of the other software that I use in my law practice.
The main reason that I favor the subscription model, for this app and many other apps, is that I believe that it provides the developer with a financial incentive and more consistent revenue stream to encourage the development of new features, plus new apps that are part of the suite.
Conclusion
LIT SUITE is a powerful bundle of apps for litigators. If working with documents and transcripts and/or giving presentations to judges, juries, arbitrators, or other audiences is a part of your law practice, LIT SUITE turns your iPad into a powerful litigation tool.
Click here to get LIT SUITE:
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This article won the LitigationWorld Pick of the Week award on March 3, 2021. The editors of TechnoLawyer, who publish a number of free weekly email newsletters for lawyers and law office administrators, give this award to one article every week that they feel is a must-read for an audience that is interested in modern litigation practice.
Portable chargers with a traditional USB connector are always useful for anyone with an iPhone or iPad. They are useful when you are away from the home or office, especially when traveling. And as many in the country (including me) were reminded last week, they are also very useful when you lose power at your home as a result of bad weather.
Nowadays, however, many devices can charge faster with a newer USB-C PD connection, which provides more power and can charge more quickly. Some devices even require the extra power that you get with USB-C. Earlier this year, after doing some research on the available portable chargers, I decided to purchase a device made by Anker called the PowerCore 10000 PDF Redux. After using this product for over a month, I’m incredibly happy with it and I highly recommend it. It is great for charging an iPhone or iPad, and it has even made my HomePod mini much more enjoyable.
Design
This device is small and portable. It is just over 4” long, about 2” wide and about 1” tall. Because of the curved sides, it is easy to hold in a hand. The device weighs less than 7 ounces, so it adds a little bit of weight to a briefcase or purse, but not very much. You can definitely walk around with this device in your pocket, if necessary.
The short edge of the device has two ports. One is a traditional USB port, which can provide up to 12.3 watts of power. The other is a USB-C PD port, which can provide 18.8 watts of power.
There is a single button on the top of the device. Press the button to see how much charge the device has, and between one and four blue lights will turn on.
Charging
The Anker PowerCore 10000 PD Redux charges itself using the USB-C port. Just connect a USB-C to USB-C cable (one is included) to any USB-C power adapter (which is not included), such as the power adapter that comes with an iPad Pro or the newer iPhone models. The PowerCore can recharge itself from 0% to 100% in about 3.5 hours. Anker says that you can also charge using a traditional USB charger, but that it will take 9 hours to charge. (I didn’t test that.) When the PowerCore is charging, the blue lights around the button flash, and you can see roughly how much the PowerCore is charged based on how many of the four blue lights are illuminated.
When the PowerCore is fully charged, you can use it to charge other devices using either the USB port or the USB-C port, making it incredibly versatile. I have found the PowerCore to be particularly useful for charging the following three products:
iPhone charging
Use your own USB-C to Lightning cable (the one that comes with newer iPhones) to use the PowerCore to charge an iPhone. As the name indicates, it has a 10,000 mAh battery, which means that it will recharge a typical iPhone almost three times. And because it is USB-C PD charging, it charges my iPhone 12 Pro much faster than a traditional USB-to-Lightning charge. Nobody likes waiting for an iPhone to charge, especially when you only have a short amount of time to charge. Thus, the extra charging speed that you get with USB-C on the PowerCore is quite welcome.
Note that you can use the PowerCore to charge two devices at the same time by using both the USB-C port and the USB port, but when you do this, you lose the ability to fast charge on the USB-C port. Once you are done using both ports, unplug the USB-C cord and plug it in again to go back to the fast charging mode.
iPad Pro charging
With my 12.9″ iPad Pro down to almost 0%, this PowerCore was not enough to get back to 100%. It got me to around 60% or so. Critically, however, if I started with a full 100% at the beginning of the day and then plugged in to the PowerCore as the power started to go below 50%, that was enough additional charge for me to make it through the end of the day for those days when I was using my iPad extensively during the day without plugging it into a wall outlet. Using a traditional USB charger with an iPad Pro is sort of a joke; all it really does is slow down somewhat the speed at which your battery goes down. But with USB-C on this PowerCore, I was able to use my iPad while the battery percentage also increased back up to 100%.
For both an iPhone and an iPad, in the past, I’ve found portable chargers most useful when I am traveling. I have not traveled during the past year due to the pandemic, but I find that portable chargers are now useful for another reason: independence. When I am working at home with my wife and two teenagers in the house, I typically use my iPad with an external keyboard. That’s how I am typing this post right now. In the past, I would have to make sure that my iPad (or iPhone) had a sufficient charge before I started to get work done; otherwise, I would need to find a place to work that was close enough to a wall outlet so that I could charge. But with the Anker PowerCore 10000 PD Redux, it really doesn’t matter how much charge my iPad has when I start. I can find any corner of the house to call my own, or even someplace in the backyard, to get work done. Whenever I need more power, the PowerCore is there to give it.
HomePod mini
I’ve been using two HomePod mini speakers since my wife gave them to me as a present for Christmas. The HomePod mini has a built-in cord, which you cannot remove from the device, with a USB-C connector at the end. The HomePod mini comes with a 20W power adapter, and at first, it required 20W to power it, but in late 2020, Apple updated the firmware to support 18W charging. That means that you can now use it with the PowerCore, which provides just over 18W.
The Anker PowerCore 10000 PD Redux does a fantastic job charging the HomePod mini, so much so that it actually transforms the HomePod mini into a new device: a portable HomePod mini. I’ll discuss this more in my upcoming review of the HomePod mini, but suffice it to say that I love my HomePod mini much more now that I have the PowerCore.
Using a PowerCore to power a HomePod mini does not seem to take much power. I once played music for eight hours straight with my HomePod mini plugged into the PowerCore. When I started, the battery indicator on the PowerCore was at four out of four lights. When I finished, it was still at four out of four lights. I guess I could have kept the music playing for much, much longer.
Trickle-Charging Mode
This device shines when it provides a lot of power. But sometimes, you want to charge something that takes a very small amount of power, like a Bluetooth headphone or a Fitbit. When a portable battery like the PowerCore senses that not much power is being drawn from it, it may think that it is done charging and it will shut off for safety.
To help with this, Anker includes a Trickle-Charging Mode with this device. To activate it, press the power button twice or press and hold for two seconds. This causes the lights around the button to change color from blue to green. In this mode, this device will output much less power and will know that it is supposed to be doing so. Thus, you get all of the power that you need to charge something small that doesn’t need much power to begin with.
Conclusion
I’ve been very happy with the PowerCore 10000 PD Redux. It provides lots of power when I am on-the-go — which one day will mean when traveling, and for now mostly means just finding a place to get work done. And for my HomePod mini, this charger actually adds a new feature, turning it into a portable speaker that I can bring to the backyard. Because the this device is so powerful, I think it is perfect to keep in a briefcase or purse so that it is always there if you need it. And finally, I’ve had very good experiences with the Anker brand in the past, so this is a name that I trust.
If you are looking for a great, small portable charger for your iPad, your iPhone, or for any other device that can take advantage of USB-C, you should consider the PowerCore 10000 PD Redux. I’m very glad that I have it.
Yesterday, while I was finishing up a videoconference in my office, my son (who shares my interest in space) texted me to let me know that NASA was about to land its newest rover, named Perseverance, on Mars. Countless incredibly smart people had to make countless complicated calculations and have everything turn out right … and it did. It was an incredibly impressive landing, and I look forward to seeing all of the new science that Perseverance will bring us. But where would we be now if the United States had devoted even more resources to space, starting in the 1960s? That’s the alternative history explored in the Apple TV+ show For All Mankind. I absolutely loved the first season of that show. Season 2 starts today, and I watched the first episode last night when it became available at 11pm Central. While Season 1 focused on the 1960s and early 1970s, Season 2 jumps forward 10 years and begins in 1983. Based on the first episode, it looks like this will be a fantastic season with great character stories in the setting of a far more advanced space exploration than we have ever known. And as someone who was in high school in the 1980s, I look forward to learning about this alternative version of that decade. There are lots of ways to get Apple TV+ for free if you have new Apple products, so I encourage you to watch the show along with me. And to help you to bridge the gap between Season 1 and Season 2, you can check out Apple’s immersive augmented reality experience in the new app For All Mankind: Time Capsule, which was described by Scott Stein of CNet. It only takes about 20-30 minutes to get through it, and it does some interesting things with AR. Plus, it features some great music. And now, the news of note from the past week:
Illinois attorney John Voorhees of MacStories wrote a glowing review of the Logitech Circle View Doorbell, which works with Apple’s relatively new HomeKit Secure Video service. This means that if you already pay Apple for additional iCloud storage, you can store the last ten days of video, encrypted end-to-end for privacy, without having to pay Logitech for an online video service.
Before Apple released its Magic Keyboard for iPad, the Brydge Pro+ looked like one of the best options if you wanted a keyboard and trackpad for an iPad. Unfortunately, when that product came out, the trackpad experience was sub-par. Fortunately, as reported by Jason Snell of Six Colors, a firmware update has greatly improved the experience, making this product a good, less expensive, alternative to Apple’s Magic Keyboard for iPad.
When Apple releases iOS 14.5 — hopefully in a few weeks? — many folks, like me, will rush to install that update because it allows you to unlock an iPhone even while wearing a mask so long as you are wearing an Apple Watch. But others will be interested in iOS 14.5 because of the new emoji. Jeremy Burge of Emojipedia provides a preview of what the new emoji will look like.
Apple doesn’t release specific numbers on how many iPhones are sold, but others are happy to come up with their own estimates. According to one recent estimate, the iPhone 12 Pro Max is the most popular 5G phone in 49 U.S. states, as noted by Stephen Warwick of iMore. (In the last state, Vermont, the iPhone 12 Pro takes the lead.) If correct, this would be consistent with a statement made by Apple CFO Luca Maestri a few weeks ago during an earnings call, when he noted that there has been high interest in the iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max, and supply has been limited as a result. I’m a big fan of the Pro model of the iPhone 12 because of the third, telephoto lens, but I would have guessed that the regular iPhone 12 would have been more popular than the iPhone 12 Pro / Pro Max.
Almost a year ago, I reviewed Microsoft Office for iPhone, a new app that combined Word, Excel, and PowerPoint into a single app. I never really understood why there was an advantage of having a single app. Working with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents are very different experiences. Brent Dirks of AppAdvice notes that Microsoft Office now works on the iPad as well. But until there is a reason to change, I plan to continue using the stand-alone apps.
Nicole Nguyen of the Wall Street Journal has tips for using an iPad as a laptop replacement. And note that even if you don’t subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, you can still read the articles if you have Apple’s News+ service, as I noted in this post.
Apple released a one-minute movie on its YouTube channel in France, called Le Peintre (“The Painter”), to demonstrate that a video shot on an iPhone 12 can look just as good as a professionally-shot movie. Although the short film is in French, you can easily understand what is going on without understanding what they are saying. (Or, you can turn on English subtitles.)
And finally, The B1M, which produces a series of videos focused on construction, created an interesting six-minute video focused on how Apple builds its stores:
Today is Mardi Gras, which is typically a huge celebration here in my hometown of New Orleans and the culmination of a season that begins shortly after New Year’s Day. Mardi Gras season means parades, parties, and lots of tourists in town enjoying the food, cocktails, music, and more. It is called the greatest free show on Earth. Unfortunately, in 2020, some of the folks who visited New Orleans brought the coronavirus with them, making New Orleans one of the first, early hotspots in the United States for COVID-19. To guard against that happening again, Mardi Gras is very different this year. All of the parades were cancelled, all of the big parties were cancelled, and all of the bars in the City of New Orleans have been closed since Friday.
Saying that the bars are closed in New Orleans is sort of like saying that Disney World is open, but most of the rides are closed. It is a significant change, especially for visitors. I was in the French Quarter briefly on Saturday, and it was eerie to see the doors closed on places that virtually never close. I actually saw more tourists walking around than I would have expected — I guess some folks decided to take a vacation here anyway — but it was a very tiny fraction of what I would have seen on a typical Saturday before Mardi Gras.
If you want to learn more about Mardi Gras and New Orleans in general, I recommend that you check out a new video series that was released to help take the place of this year’s traditional Mardi Gras festivities. The local newspaper in New Orleans (which runs the Nola.com website) and Blaine Kern’s Mardi Gras World (the Blaine Kern company makes a large number of the floats in the Mardi Gras parades) teamed up to produce a 4.5 hour special called Mardi Gras For All Y’all. It includes 90 different segments on topics ranging from different parade organizations, New Orleans neighborhoods and architecture, restaurants, the history of Mardi Gras, and lots of amazing local music from bands like The Meters and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. There are even some interesting segments that have nothing to do with Mardi Gras, such as a look at the historic cemeteries, a local book festival, and movies that are filmed in New Orleans. I enjoyed watching it, and whether you watch the whole thing or just skim through it and watch the segments that jump out at you, I think you will enjoy it too. Here are the three parts on YouTube:
Even with the parades cancelled the the bars closed, the spirit of Mardi Gras was still very strong throughout the 2021 season. For example, we still have King Cakes, and indeed, many of our bakeries could not keep up with the demand this year.
Moreover, with no decorated parade floats this year, people decided to turn their houses into floats, hiring experienced Mardi Gras artists or tapping into their own talents to decorate the outside of their houses and turn them into themed showpieces. It is essentially costuming for architecture. I’ve had great fun walking and driving around town with my family to see some of the thousands of amazing house floats. At the bottom of this post, I’ve included pictures of a few examples, which I took using my iPhone 12 Pro.
It has been uplifting to see the enthusiasm of folks in New Orleans during this Mardi Gras season. It reminds me of what I saw in this city after Hurricane Katrina. Nevertheless, I hope that, in 2022, Mardi Gras can return to its former glory.
For now, I wish you a Happy Mardi Gras wherever you are. L’aissez les bon temps rouler!
I am pleased to welcome Nota as a new sponsor to iPhone J.D. Nota is a no-cost IOLTA management solution powered by M&T Bank. It was built by working directly with solo and small law firms and is designed to help simplify trust account management.
Nota’s cloud-based intuitive design uses real-time information directly from your bank accounts making it seamless for you to adhere to accounting requirements. Forget using a spreadsheet to track your individual client balances. All money in and out of your IOLTA account can be assigned to a client, and reconciled down to the penny.
Features include one-click reconciliation reporting, custom transaction alerts and virtual client sub-accounts with smart tagging.
I had a chance to see a comprehensive demo of how Nota works, and I was impressed. You access Nota by using a web browser on your PC or Mac, and the interface is clean and straightforward. The service makes it easy to create and manage virtual sub-accounts for each of your matters with no limit to the number of client matters. Nota closes the loop between your bank account, checkbook, and client ledger to help you to minimize IOLTA management headaches. After all, you went to law school to be a lawyer — not to be an accountant.
Nota is currently available to attorneys whose offices are located in and who are practicing law in New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Connecticut, Virginia, Washington, D.C., Florida, and West Virginia and to whom the rules and regulations for IOLTA accounts are applicable.
Click here to learn more about Nota. Terms and conditions may apply.
So I might as well begin with the topic that we are all thinking about this week. The elephant in the room. Or should I say, the cat in the court. On Tuesday, Rod Ponton, an attorney representing Presidio County, Texas, appeared via Zoom for a hearing in a civil forfeiture case and had to use his secretary’s computer. But to his surprise, a webcam filter was enabled that made him look like a cat. Nevertheless, he soldiered on, telling Judge Roy Ferguson of the 394th Judicial District Court that he was “prepared to go forward” while emphasizing “I’m here live. I’m not a cat.” This video showed up in my Twitter feed countless times this week in countless variations of the video. I recommend watching this short version from The Star because, after the now-famous clip, you then get to see and hear Rod Ponton and Judge Ferguson provide their insight on what happened. Technology reporter Geoffrey Fowler of the Washington Post figured out that the cat filter used is one that came with Dell computers back in 2009 and is no longer available. Although after this week, maybe Dell will bring it back. I should note that the incident also prompted a story about Ponton’s past for which I don’t know all of the details. But what I do know is that any of us could have been the talking cat in that viral video. Appearing in court via a webcam may seem easy, but there are a million things that can go wrong. All attorneys need to try hard to prevent the technology snafus that we can control to minimize the risks in the event that there are hiccups that are beyond our control. And if something happens anyway, hopefully we will see the patience and kindness exhibited by Judge Ferguson. And now, the other news of note from the past week:
I enjoyed the latest episode of the Apps in Law podcast, in which Brett Burney interviews Illinois attorney Bryan Sims to discuss the TranscriptPad and Notability apps.
Burney also posted a review this week, including a fantastic video review, of the Cardhop app that you can use to manage your contacts.
Illinois attorney John Voorhees of MacStories reviews the new version of Home+, and HomeKit app that is much more powerful than Apple’s Home app.
Zac Hall of 9to5Mac reports on new studies showing that an Apple Watch can detect changes in heart rate that can be indicative of early signs of COVID-19.
Speaking of wireless charging, Hardy also discusses the new Satechi USB-C Watch Airpods Charger, which is $39 on Amazon. Plug this small device into a USB-C port and it creates a tray where you can place an Apple Watch to charge it. Flip it over, and it creates a tray where you can charge an AirPods case. I love the design of this small device, which works on an iPad or a computer with a USB-C port. As a practical matter, though, I have some questions. It seems like it would only work with an iPad when it is flat on a table, and I usually keep mine propped up. Also, the Apple Watch and AirPods case are not items that I need to charge very often during the day, so I suspect many folks wouldn’t use this very often. Even so, there is something about the design, with different wireless charging on each side, that I find very clever.
I’ve heard of people who go to sleep wearing AirPods, and that always seemed dangerous to me because it seems like you can lose an AirPod in or behind a bed during the night. But it never occurred to me that you might wake up like Bradford Gauthier did, experiencing a sore throat and then discovering that you swallowed an AirPod while you were sleeping. As Gaby Moreno of WWLP reports, an X-Ray confirmed that the AirPod was lodged in his esophagus, resulting in an emergency endoscopy.
And finally, the Korean acappela group MAYTREE did a fantastic job reproducing iPhone sound effects in this video:
This past Sunday, a 10-year-old girl in New Iberia, Louisiana, was reported missing. The Louisiana State Police issued an initial alert, saying that they believed her to be in imminent danger, but they did not have much information to go on. After some investigation, the police learned that the girl was last seen getting into a car owned by an acquaintance of the girl’s family who was driving a gray 2012 Nissan Altima, and the police were given a license plate number. With either of those pieces of information — a license plate or a specific vehicle description, and here they had both — police can take advantage of the AMBER alert program. Early Monday morning, an alert was sent to cellphones throughout the State of Louisiana. The alert was seen by two sanitation workers on a trash route who spotted that very car in a field. They called the police and used their garbage truck to prevent the car from leaving. One of them even started a livestream on Facebook. The police arrived, the driver was arrested, and soon thereafter, the girl was recovered, and she is now safe. The story was reported on multiple news outlets in Louisiana such as WWL and KATC.
Alerts like this first came to the iPhone in 2013, and I described how the system works in this post from July 16, 2013. But that was a long time ago, and the system has changed since then, so here is an update on Wireless Emergency Alerts on the iPhone in the United States.
Title VI of PL 109-347 (Oct. 13, 2006) is titled the Warning Alert and Response Network Act, sometimes called the WARN Act. The WARN Act, in 47 U.S.C. § 1201, gives the FCC the authority to adopt standards for cellphone companies to transmit emergency alerts. Participation by cellphone companies is voluntary, and if they do participate, the law states that cell phone companies may not impose an additional charge for such alerts. 47 U.S.C. § 1201(b)(2)(C).
Pursuant to the WARN Act, the FCC worked with FEMA to create a program called Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA). The system was based on the prior Emergency Alert System (EAS), which are the warnings that you have seen and heard for a long time on television and radio when there is a weather or other emergency.
Alerts are sent to cell towers providing wireless service to a target geographical area, and then all WEA-capable phones using those cell towers receive the alert. Thus, you will receive an alert if you are in a targeted area even if you are just visiting that area.
WEA currently delivers four types of alerts:
1. Imminent Threat Alerts. These are alerts issued because of an imminent threat to public safety or life, such as evacuation orders or shelter in place orders due to severe weather, a terrorist threat or a chemical spill. For example, the National Weather Service notes on this page that it issues alerts for dust storms, extreme wind, flash floods, hurricanes, typhoons, snow squalls, storm surge, tornadoes, and tsunamis. The way it works is that a pre-authorized national, state or local government agency sends an emergency alert to FEMA, which then sends the alert to the participating cell phone companies, each of which then sends the alert to WEA capable phones in the zone of emergency.
2. Public Safety Alerts. These alerts contain information about a threat that concerns public safety but is not imminent. These alerts can also be issued as a follow-up to an imminent threat.
3. AMBER Alerts. AMBER officially stands for America’s Missing: Broadcasting Emergency Response, but that is a backronym as the system was really named for Amber Hagerman, a 9-year-old girl who was abducted in 1996 while riding her bicycle in Arlington, TX and was subsequently murdered. The killer was never identified. The incident, and others like it, led to the AMBER Alert system, a method by which police officers may quickly publicize information when a child age 17 or younger is abducted such as the name and description of the child, a description of the suspected abductor, a description and license plate of the abductor’s vehicle, etc. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, as of December 2020, 1,029 children were rescued specifically because of AMBER Alerts. The original AMBER Alert system was opt-in only, and it sent a text message based on a cellphone owner’s predefined geographical location regardless of where a cellphone was actually located when the alert was issued. That system was retired on December 31, 2012, and was replaced by WEA.
4. Presidential Alerts. I am not aware of any official standards for when the President will issue a WEA Presidential Alert. No president has ever issued a Presidential Alert under WEA or similar prior systems (and hopefully, no president will ever have a need to do so). However, there was a test of the Presidential Alert system on October 3, 2018, at 2:18 Eastern.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, some state and local governments have used the WEA system to issue alerts. For example, an alert used in Pennsylvania last November said: “In PA, COVID-19 rates are rising, and hospitals could soon be at capacity. Stay home if possible. If you must go out, maintain social distance, wear a mask, wash your hands for 20 seconds. Stay up to date on the spread of COVID in your community so you can protect your loved ones with the COVID Alert PA app.”
According to the FCC, since WEA became operational in 2012, the system has been used nearly 56,000 times. If that seems like too much for you, the WARN Act provides in 47 U.S.C. § 1201(b)(2)(E) that cellphone users may opt-out of all alerts except for Presidential Alerts. Thus, if you go to the Settings app on your iPhone, then go to Notifications, and then scroll all the way to the bottom, you will see options to opt-out of the first three alerts but not Presidential Alerts.
Although WEA alerts are based on your location, you do not need to have Location Services on the iPhone turned on to receive alerts. Your iPhone’s GPS radio is irrelevant to the WEA system. As noted above, alerts are issued based upon your location as determined by cell towers. When the service first launched, alerts would often issue to an entire county (or parish, if you are in Louisiana). Starting in November 2017, the government required carriers to transmit alerts to a geographic area appropriate for the emergency, even if that was smaller than an entire county. And starting in December 2019, alerts had to be targeted even more, with providers now required to deliver the alert to the appropriate area with no more than a tenth of a mile of overshoot.
WEA alerts look sort of like text messages, but they are not text messages, so you will receive them even if text messages are not enabled on your iPhone. WEA capable devices are designed to reject duplicate alerts, so you should receive each alert only once. However, subsequent alerts may be issued that contain information similar to a prior alert. You might not receive an alert at all if you are on the phone.
Now that you know all about the WEA system, you need to decide whether you want to opt-in or opt-out of the system. An alert can be annoying when it doesn’t seem relevant to you. I sometimes turn mine off when I will be in a courthouse or someplace else where it seems inappropriate to receive alerts. (And when I am appearing before a judge, I virtually always turn my iPhone off completely.) But I’m glad that those two sanitation workers in Louisiana had their alerts enabled Monday morning, and you never know when one of these alerts will be critical and timely for you.
Normally, I don’t talk about beta software on iPhone J.D. because you never know whether something is a real feature until software actually ships, but I’m very excited about a new feature that is currently included in the beta version of iOS 14.5 and watchOS 7.4. As reported by Juli Clover of MacRumors, this new feature lets you use Face ID to unlock your iPhone, even if you have a mask on, as long as you are also wearing an Apple Watch. Jason Snell of Six Colors reported that he installed the beta and tried out the feature, “and it worked flawlessly.” My understanding of how it works is that if your iPhone recognizes just part of your face (your eyes) it then checks to see if you have an Apple Watch that has remained on your wrist since the last time that you unlocked the Apple Watch (either by entering the passcode on the Apple Watch or by using your iPhone to authenticate your Apple Watch). If so, the iPhone will unlock your iPhone — but only if you previously enabled this function in Settings. (And your Apple Watch gives you a notification that it was just used to unlock your iPhone.) Even though you can use this to unlock your iPhone to see a grocery list, your Messages, your Mail, etc., if you want to use Apple Pay, buy an app, or access protected parts of the Settings app, you will need to show your whole face for Face ID or enter your passcode. (Of course, you can also just use Apple Pay on the Apple Watch.) I’m glad that Apple is making this an optional feature that you have to consciously turn on, but it is nice to give folks the option during the pandemic to give up a small amount of security in exchange for a big increase in convenience. Indeed, I find that throughout this pandemic, I am constantly deciding whether to accept a certain amount of risk in exchange for certain conveniences (such as shopping in a grocery store around other people versus using a delivery service, working in my office versus working from home, etc.) so I see this as just another one of those decisions to make, depending upon the circumstances. There is no way to know for sure when we will see iOS 14.5 released, but my hope is that it will come out this month. And now, the news of note from the past week:
Not that many of us are traveling internationally right now, but I’ve previously written about the tricky issues that lawyers face when they travel in and out of the United States with a smartphone because of border patrol policies on searching iPhones. Debra Cassens Weiss of ABA Journal reports on Texas immigration lawyer Adam Malik who is suing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to challenge this practice after his iPhone was confiscated at the border. This is a complicated issue, and unfortunately, I don’t have any good answers for how attorneys should deal with this risk.
In an article for USA Today that was trending this week, Kim Komando recommends five apps that you should delete right now. I agree that you no longer need a special app to scan QR codes (just use the Photos app) or to use a flashlight (that function is now built-in), and it is a personal choice as to whether you want to delete Facebook and/or some of the built-in apps. But I disagree with her suggestion to delete scanner apps and just use the Notes app instead. It is nice that you can scan a document in Notes, but you get far more features and can get better results by using a third-party app, such as Scanner Pro.
Apple Maps has a “Look Around” feature that is similar to Google’s Street View but produces better results. But unfortunately, it is only available in certain cities. Juli Clover of MacRumors reported that this week the cities of San Diego and Portland were added. That makes the feature available in 17 U.S. cities, nine cities outside of the U.S., and Southern Canada (including all of Canada’s 35 metro areas) according to Justin O’Beirne, who also notes that Apple has been adding new cities about once every four to six weeks.
Apple’s own Newsroom shared a story about a man who received an Apple Watch as an anniversary gift and it helped to save his life.
I am interested in smart home technology, so I often discuss HomeKit-compatible products on iPhone J.D. In an article for TechHive, Christopher Null wrote a good overview of Apple’s HomeKit technology.
Jason Aten of Inc. interviews David Smith, the developer of the incredibly popular Widgetsmith app.
And finally, in this video, Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal tries to predict features that might be coming to the iPhone based on some new features added to a Samsung phone:
A few days ago, I listened to episode 330 of the Connected podcast, and during that episode the hosts discussed the trend of apps moving to a subscription model and identified many that they consider worth paying for. This made me think of the iPhone/iPad apps and services for which I pay for a subscription. I’m sharing my list in today’s post. Perhaps it will give you ideas for subscriptions that you might want to try. And if you have any suggestions for other subscriptions worth considering, feel free to post a comment to this post or send me an email.
Subscription versus pay-one-price
Before I share my list, I want to discuss the subscription model. When the App Store first opened in 2008, all apps were pay-one-price. And for the most part, those prices were fairly inexpensive. There were a few exceptions, and I discussed some of them in this post from 2009 — such as an $899 app for viewing security cameras, a $449 accounting app, and a $199 home automation app back when that market was in its infancy. Not long after that, I discussed the first expensive law-related app: BarMax, a $999 California bar review app.
Pay-one-price makes sense to me for certain apps, like a game. But for many apps, I think that a subscription model makes more sense because it provides the developer with a stream of income to fund future improvements to the app. For apps that I am likely to use for years, I want the developer to have an incentive to make his or her app better. Of course, it is up to the developer to price the subscription appropriately; I’m not going to pay $500 a year for a weather app, especially when there are so many other options. But I do pay $29.99 a year for the Premium Ultra tier of the CARROT Weather app because that app is fantastic, works well on all of my devices, and gets frequent, substantial improvements. (You can also pay $6.99/year for a subscription to CARROT Weather with fewer features.)
One thing that I really like about the way that Apple handles app subscriptions is that if a subscription is no longer useful, Apple makes it easy to cancel the subscription. Just tap one button to cancel in the App Store app. It is the exact opposite of canceling many other services such cable TV or a newspaper, where you have to call a number, wait on hold for a long time, and answer questions from someone trained to get you to change your mind about canceling the service. Ugh.
Here are the services that I currently consider worth paying for.
App subscriptions
If you want to see all of your app subscriptions, open the App Store app, tap on your picture/icon at the top right, and tap on Subscriptions. You will see a list of your active and your expired subscriptions.
Here are my current subscriptions:
Apple One. This is the service that allows you to pay for multiple apps/services from Apple in one bundle. There are currently three different plans. The $14.95/month Individual plan includes Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, and 50 GB of iCloud storage for one person (a savings of $6/month versus subscribing to each service individually). The $19.95/month Family plan gives you all of that for yourself and five other people and increases the iCloud storage to 200 GB (a savings of $8/month). The iCloud storage is shared among all members of your family. This means that you don’t see each other’s files, but if your spouse uses 150GB that leaves 50GB for you and any others sharing the plan. The $29.95/month Premier plan is what I pay for. This adds to the bundle Apple News+ and Apple Fitness+ and increases the shared iCloud storage to 2 TB. The main reason I signed up for this plan was to get the additional iCloud storage, both for my own files and to have sufficient space for online backups of my kids’ devices … since you know it is just a matter of time before something happens to one of them. I originally considered News+ and Fitness+ to be bonuses that I was getting for no additional cost. But I’ve learned over the last few months that I really like both services. News+ is a nice way to get a convenient overview of the news and to read articles from news services that I don’t pay for separately, such as the Wall Street Journal. (See this post for tips on using the Wall Street Journal with News+) And as I noted in my recent review of Fitness+, I’m using that service a few times a week and I really like it.
PDF Expert. PDF Expert is my favorite app for managing and annotating PDF files, and it is a critical part of my law practice for all of the reasons that I outlined last year in this post. Although you can use that app for free, I pay $49.99/year for the PRO subscription which adds lots of useful bonus features, which I also described in that post.
CARROT Weather. I mentioned this one above, and I reviewed it in 2018. You don’t have to pay for CARROT Weather, but you get lots of additional features if you do, and there are lots of plans available depending upon the features that you want to use, ranging from $19.99/year to $59.99/year. I pay for the $29.99 Premium Ultra tier, which unlocks all of the features that I use and then some. I consider $30 a lot to pay for a weather app considering that there are so many inexpensive ones available, but this app is packed with features, works great on all of my platforms (such as an amazing Apple Watch app and an amazing iPhone widget), and is updated frequently. Just last week, it was updated to version 5, which makes the app interface almost infinitely customizable. I used to try different weather apps mainly to see the way that different clever developers came up with to display what is essentially the same information. But now, with the latest version of this app, I can try out an almost unlimited number of interfaces for a weather app, and there are even options to save and share templates so that over time I can see what others come up with.
Overcast. I love to listen to podcasts, and Overcast is my favorite app for doing so on both my iPhone and in my car using CarPlay, the two primary ways that I listen to podcasts. I especially like the way that this app can speed up a podcast, not just by playing it at 1.5 speed but also by reducing silence between words in a way that sounds very natural, allowing me to hear more content in less time. It has been a while since I reviewed this app in 2014, but it is still one of the most-used apps on my iPhone. The optional premium subscription costs $9.99 and removes ads, but the main reason I pay for this subscription is to support the developer and encourage him to continue to add additional features.
Launch Center Pro. This app does lots of different things, but at its core I use it as a way to create shortcuts, giving me a way to tap one button and have multiple things happen. But it does so much more. For example, almost two years ago, I talked about how you can use this app with NFC stickers so that you tap your iPhone on a sticker and it performs some task. Over time, as Apple’s Shortcuts app has become more powerful, I find that I need Launch Center Pro even less. Many of the things that I still do in that app I’m sure I could also do in Shortcuts. But the subscription is only $9.99/year, and my guess is that the developer will continue to find ways to push the boundaries on automating tasks on the iPhone, adding new features long before they show up in Apple’s Shortcuts app.
Tweetbot. I’ve been using Tweetbot as my Twitter client for an incredibly long time. I find the interface far more useful and less annoying than the official Twitter app. The company behind Twitter has had a strained relationship with third-party apps over the years, often limiting new features to Twitter’s own app. But the company has recently started doing more with outside developers, and because those developers need to pay Twitter for access to new features, Tweetbot recently switched to a $5.99/year subscription service.
Deliveries. Whenever you receive a shipping number for an item that you purchased — FedEx, UPS, USPS, DHL, etc. — copy that number and then open this app. The app will sense the number on the clipboard and help you to select the correct service and jot down the item name. With that information, you have a central place to keep track of all of your deliveries, with notifications from the app when an item has arrived. Since the last time that I discussed this app in 2017, it moved to a subscription model, which costs $4.99/year.
Lit Suite (TrialPad, TranscriptPad, DocReviewPad). I was almost finished writing this post when Lit Software debuted the Lit Suite, a subscription for all of the latest versions of its iPad apps designed for attorneys. These have long been some of the very best and most valuable apps that any attorney, but especially litigators, can use on an iPad. For many years, these apps have followed the pay-one-price model, but as of February 1, 2021, there are new versions of all three apps available with a subscription. The regular subscription price is $399.99/year, but for a limited time there is a special price of $299.99/year, and so I subscribed right away to take advantage of the discount. I have just started to use these new apps, but once I have had more time with them, I will have more to say about these incredibly powerful apps.
Subscriptions outside of App Store
Some services don’t use the App Store’s subscription feature. That makes it more complicated to manage all of your subscriptions because you cannot see them all in one place, and it can be more difficult to cancel subscriptions when they are not part of the App Store. Here are the ones that I currently use.
1Password. Everyone who uses an iPhone or a computer should strongly consider using a password manager. That is even more true if you are an attorney because many of your passwords can be used to unlock confidential and/or privileged information. 1Password has long been my password manager of choice, for the reasons I described last year in this post. An annual subscription is $36, or you can get the family plan like I do for $60/year which works for five people and makes it easy to designate certain passwords to share between multiple family members (such as a Netflix password or the password for a utility company).
Dropbox. As you probably know, Dropbox is a simple way to sync documents between computers and other devices such as an iPhone or iPad. I use it every day. The free plan gives you 2 GB of space, but I pay for the Plus plan ($119.18/year) which provides 2 TB of space. I wish there were other options — it would be nice to pay less for 500 GB or 1 TB of space — but I cannot imagine using an iPhone or iPad without Dropbox.
Fantastical. I use the Fantastical app on both my iPhone and iPad as a superior alternative to the built-in Calendar app. I discussed the app most recently in this post from 2020. The free version of this app is plenty powerful for most people, but you can take advantage of advanced features for $39.99/year, which is what I do. I don’t actually use very many of the advanced features, but this is such a useful app that I mostly pay just to support the developer.
LogMeIn. Although I haven’t written a post about this app since 2011, I use this app frequently to get remote access to the PC in my office using my iPad (or my Mac at home). I find this app incredibly valuable, but for individual use, it is expensive — $349/year. My law firm pays for a bulk license for this app, which makes the price cheaper and means that the cost doesn’t come directly out of my pocket (although I suppose I am still paying for it as a partner in my law firm). But whether you use LogMeIn or some other remote access software, this type of app is very valuable. When there is a task that cannot be done directly on an iPad, I can bring up my PC on my iPad screen, get the task done, and then export the resulting file to my iPad.
TripIt. TripIt makes it easy to assemble all of your travel details in a single itinerary. Simply forward to “plans@tripit.com” any travel emails (hotel, airplane, car rental, etc.) and the service takes care of the rest. You can access and edit your itinerary on the TripIt website, but there is also a great app for the iPhone, which is what I use when I travel. You can use TripIt for free, but if you pay $49/year, you get access to very useful TripIt Pro features (some of which I described in this post) such as real-time flight alerts, help finding alternative flight and better seats, check-in reminders, security wait times, and more. During the pandemic when I haven’t been traveling at all, the company hasn’t charged for renewals, which was nice. TripIt is great even without a paid subscription, but if you travel a lot, the extra features are very nice.
BackBlaze. BackBlaze is a $60/year service that constantly backs up your computer and any attached hard drives so that if you have a crash, you can obtain a backup. There have been several times over the years that it has been a lifesaver for me — either for my own computer or for a family member for whom I serve as the IT department. I mention it here because there is also an iPhone/iPad app, which exposes another useful aspect of this service. You can use the app to download any file that was backed up from your home computer. Thus, if my home computer is turned off, I can use the app to access the most recent backup, navigate to the correct folder, locate the file, and then download the document to my mobile device.
Quicken. Like BackBlaze, Quicken is something that I primarily pay for ($35.99/year) to use the software on my home computer. As I’m sure you know, Quicken is an electronic checkbook. But there is also a Quicken app for iPhone which makes it easy to add an item when I am away from home so that it syncs over to my computer. And I can also view recent activity from Quicken accounts in the iPhone app. Unfortunately, to get the new information into Quicken on my Mac after I added it on my iPhone, I need to remember to click a sync button at the top of the screen of the Mac software. I wish it would just sync automatically every time that the app is opened, the way that it does on the iPhone. (As a workaround, I use an app on my Mac called Keyboard Maestro to trigger a sync every time the Quicken software is launched on my Mac, but I wish that I didn’t need to use that hack.)
eeroSecure. As I mentioned last year, one of the most useful things that I did during the early part of the pandemic was upgrade my home Wi-Fi to an eero Pro system. I cannot say enough good things about it. Everywhere in my house, and my backyard, the Wi-Fi is very fast. There are no dead spots. The company offers an optional service called eero Secure that typically costs $29.99/year. It adds parental controls, protection against certain unsafe sites on the Internet, and more. I didn’t think that it was worth it for me, but the service went on sale last year for $14.99 so I figured that I would take advantage of the discount and check it out. (This month, you can get the same discount because of Groundhog Day; use the promo code PHIL when you sign up.) I haven’t yet decided if I will keep this service when it is time to renew after the first year, but I might. If you want to prevent kids using an iPad or iPhone on your home network from getting access to unsafe and/or adult websites, you can use this service to do so. Of course, if your kids have an iPhone or iPad with a cellular plan, they can bypass the parental controls in eero Secure by disabling Wi-Fi and using cellular data coverage.
Adobe Creative Cloud. I use Photoshop on my Mac to edit photographs and to create simple images for iPhone J.D. (like the dollar sign on the iPhone at the top of this post — I hope that you appreciate my amazing artistry), but another reason that I pay $119.88/year for Photography Plan (20 GB) is so that I can use the powerful Adobe apps on my iPad such as Lightroom and Photoshop. The iPad apps don’t (yet) have all of the features of the desktop apps, but I often find it so much easier to work with images on an iPad with an Apple Pencil than to do so on a computer.
Video services
There are so many subscription video services nowadays that it can be difficult to keep track of them all. Here are the ones that I currently use the most — often on my iPad, but also on my Apple TV.
Netflix. I seriously doubt that you need me to say anything about Netflix. I use the $17.99/month Premium plan which provides the highest quality video on up to four screens at a time.
Prime Video. This is included with an Amazon Prime subscription, and there are lots of great shows.
HBO Max. This is part of my DirecTV package, but I think it is actually free for me because I have an unlimited AT&T cellphone plan. I love the HBO content, but sometimes I am surprised by other things that I find. For example, there is a show available only on HBO Max called The Flight Attendant that my wife and I recently watched, and it was really good.
Hulu. We recently signed up for Hulu just to try it out for a few months, and I was surprised at how much really good content is available. There were some shows I already knew about and that I enjoyed, such as The Handmaid’s Tale. But my wife and I have found lots of other shows that we have enjoyed. This past Friday night, we watched a movie — more of a recording of a stage play — called In & Of Itself. It was unlike anything that I’ve ever seen before, and it was great. Basic Hulu is $5.99, but I am paying for the $11.99/month plan that removes ads. (Streaming service ads tend to be incredibly annoying and repetitive.). My plan is to cancel/pause this service after using it for a few months, and then perhaps come back to it next year, but right now there is still so much good stuff to watch.
Disney+. I don’t currently subscribe to Disney+, but I have in the past and I plan to resume my subscription in the future as there is more that I want to watch. I first subscribed for a month in mid-2020 when Hamilton came out, and of course, it was excellent. As each season of The Mandalorian has neared completion, I’ve subscribed for a month so that my son and I could catch up on all of the episodes. I’m not a big fan of the Marvel content, and I no longer have young kids so I don’t need access to the extensive family-friendly content. But I love Star Wars, and if there is a time in the future when Disney+ has new and good Star Wars content throughout the year, I might find myself subscribing more frequently. The new Pixar film called Soul is also excellent, and it was the last thing we watched on Disney+ before I most recently paused the service.
Apple TV+. I mentioned this one above because it is included in my Apple One bundle, but I’ll also mention it here for the sake of completeness. If you are looking for something good to watch on Apple TV+, I recommend these: Ted Lasso, For All Mankind, The Morning Show, Mythic Quest, Tehran, Dickinson, Home, Bruce Springsteen’s Letter to You, and the movies On the Rocks and Greyhound.
Conclusion
I suppose this is not a complete list because there are other subscriptions that I pay for that have at least some connection to the iPhone and iPad. For example, I subscribe to several podcasts (that I listen to on my iPhone or Apple Watch) that are typically free but offer a subscription option to support the hosts and get extra content (such as Mac Power Users, Upgrade, Six Colors, and Dithering). I also subscribe to the digital version of certain newspapers that I often read on my iPad (The New York Times, The Washington Post, my local newspaper in New Orleans called The Times-Picayune, and a local business publication that I read on my iPad called CityBusiness), and I also pay for some news-oriented websites that I typically read on an iPhone or iPad (such as The Athletic, Six Colors, and TidBITS).
Nevertheless, if I just look at the services that I listed above, I see that I had been paying close to $1,000/year, and now I have increased that by another $300 with the addition of the Lit Suite. That is real money, but these subscriptions allow me to do so many wonderful and powerful things on my mobile devices that, for a large number of them at least, I cannot imagine not having them. I guess that it should not come as a surprise that there is so much for the iPhone and iPad that is worth paying for.
