Jeff Richardson

GoodReader, an app that you can use to store, view, and annotate PDF files and other types of documents, was recently updated to version 5.  That sentence may not sound all that interesting, but I have been waiting a very, very long time to be able to type it because this is the first major update to this app in five years.  The app includes all of the features that folks liked about the prior version, and adds some new capabilities that make the app particularly useful for attorneys.  I’m thrilled to see that this app is back and better than ever.

A little GoodReader history

GoodReader has been around since 2009, so it predates the iPad (which was announced in January 2010).  Soon after I started using the iPad in 2010, I started to organize all of my PDF documents in this app.  It quickly became an essential part of my law practice.  I gave it a rave review in early 2011, and later that year I called it “the best $5 an attorney can spend on an iPad app.”  For many years, the app received regular updates adding more useful features.

The last major update was GoodReader 4, released in 2014.  Not long after that, the developer of the app, Yuri Selukoff (whose mother, by the way, was a patent attorney), obtained a difficult-to-receive EB-1 Visa (reserved for foreign nationals with extraordinary abilities) and moved from Moscow to San Francisco, as described in this interesting profile of Selukoff from a 2016 post on the Inside BlackBerry blog, which I’m surprised to see is still online.

In 2017, Selukoff started to tease that version 5 of GoodReader was in development.  As other iPad PDF apps started to add interesting new features, I thought about switching to a different app, but so much of my time was invested in GoodReader that I decided to stick with it and wait for that promised update.  After about a year, in early 2018, I ran a post called “The latest on GoodReader version 5” in which I mentioned that Selukoff was still saying that the update was coming soon.  I ended the post by stating:  “If the developer is ‘finishing’ version 5, hopefully that means that we will see it in weeks or months, and won’t have to wait until 2019.”

That post ended up being one of the most read posts on iPhone J.D. in 2018, and I’m sure that I know the reason why.  Lots of folks, like me, were wondering if the app would ever see an update.  And after no update came, many longtime GoodReader users decided to jump ship to a more modern PDF app.

I was one of them.  About six months ago, I got tired of waiting for the update that might never come, so I surveyed the market of PDF apps and I decided to switch to PDF Expert by Readdle.  I was planning to write a review of PDF Expert last month when I was invited to beta test GoodReader 5.  After recovering from the shock of seeing an actual update to the app after all this time, I started to try it out.  And I liked what I saw.  As of January 30, 2019, GoodReader 5 is now available for everyone.  GoodReader has a few shortcomings compared to PDF Expert, but it also has some better features, many of which are new to version 5.  I still plan to post a review of PDF Expert in the future, but I want to continue to use both that app and GoodReader to get a better perspective on the advantages of each.

Here are the most notable features of GoodReader 5, the 10th anniversary edition of the app.

Easy to get around

In an app to manage your PDF files, you will frequently want to go back and forth between documents, and between looking at a list of files and looking at an actual document.  GoodReader has always made it easy to get to a document because it has the Back to Reading button at the bottom.  Now, it is easier to go the other way too.  When you are looking at a document you can swipe in from the left edge to go back to the prior document you were working on, or if you go back far enough, the list of files.  Once you start using that feature, you will use it all the time.

Every document in GoodReader has its own tab, and you can tap the tabs at the top to switch between the eight most recent documents that you have not yet closed (by tapping the arrow on the right side of the tab).  You can also quickly jump to recent files and other files by tapping the title of a document at the top to see a list of recent files.

Similarly, it is very easy to move around within a document thanks to the bar at the bottom of the screen which you can slide your finger across to quickly scroll through the document, along with thumbnail images of pages to give you a small visual clue of what is on the pages.  I like this feature and use it often.

At the very bottom of the screen, there is a button you can tap to see thumbnail images of each page in the document.  Unlike GoodReader 4 which would often only load some of the thumbnail images, GoodReader 5 seems to quickly load all of the page images making this feature even more useful.

Split screen

Although this $5.99 app is a free upgrade for owners of prior versions, you can purchase an optional Pro Pack for an additional $5.99.  Attorneys who use GoodReader are going to probably want to pay for the Pro Pack for the additional features that it enables.  One of these features is Split Screen, where you can view two documents side by side.  You can view the same document in both panes, useful if you want to compare something in one part of a document with something in another part of a document.  Or you can have two different documents side-by-side.

GoodReader isn’t the first app to do this.  For example, the Easy Annotate app had split screen back in 2013.  But now that I have easy access to it in a primary app that I use for working with PDF files, I find myself using it more often.

Apple Pencil annotation

GoodReader adds support for the Apple Pencil.  I like the new features, but for me there is still one big omission.

I’ll start by mentioning a feature that isn’t new, but I still love it.  The first time you start to annotate a file, GoodReader asks if you want to edit this file or if you want to create an annotated copy.  This is incredibly useful for my law practice.  I will often have a folder of pleadings synced via Dropbox to GoodReader, and while I want to annotate some of those documents — such as highlighting and marking up a brief filed by opponent while I prepare a response — I also want to keep an untouched version of the document just in case I want to share it with someone else without exposing my attorney work product.  In other apps, I have to remember to make a duplicate of the file before I start to edit.  But in GoodReader, I can choose to do this at the time I start to edit.  This feature in GoodReader is an oldie but a goodie.

In GoodReader 5, as soon as you touch the screen with an Apple Pencil you start to annotate (unless, as noted above, this is the first time you have started to annotate the document).  For documents with text, you can select whether you want to jump into highlight mode when you tap on text.  Otherwise, you jump into the pen mode to write on the document.  This is a very useful feature.  You can use your finger to scroll move around in a document, then pick up your pen and just start annotating when you are ready for that, all without ever having to tap on any annotation tools.

GoodReader also now supports double-tap on an Apple Pencil 2 to switch between the tool you are using and the eraser.

I do have one complaint.  When you are in an annotation mode — highlighting, writing, eraser, etc. — touching the screen with the Apple Pencil will create the annotation, but so does tapping the screen with a finger.  In some other apps, the app is smart enough to know that once you start using an Apple Pencil, you only want to annotate with the Pencil, and when your finger touches the screen that means you want to scroll through the document.  But in Goodreader 5, I will frequently touch the screen by accident while the Apple Pencil is in my hand and create unwanted annotations.  Ugh.  I was advised by a person who handles PR for GoodReader that the developer is considering adding a feature in the future that ignores finger input when you are using the Pencil, so hopefully this will be addressed soon.

In the meantime, this sometimes annoys me so much that I turn off the “Track Apple Pencil” feature when I am working with a document (which can get to by tapping the Gear icon at the bottom of the screen to open PDF Settings) so that I have to manually enter and leave an edit mode.  With this feature turned off, GoodReader 5 works the same way as GoodReader 4.  You can first select text and then choose to highlight it, or you can manually tap the highlight tool to start highlighting.

File management improvements

GoodReader adds lots of new features to make it easier to manage your files.  You can now use drag and drop to move files around and put them into folders.  You can now view files in a list view with one, two, three, or four columns, or you can view items as either small or large icons on a grid.  In prior versions of GoodReader, there was a pallet of tools that you could use to do something to a file located on the right side of the screen:

In GoodReader 5, all of those tools are hidden, giving you more screen space to see file names and, if you turn on this option, multiple columns.  You expose the tools by tapping the Manage Files button at the bottom left, and then they appear at the bottom of the screen:

When you delete a file in GoodReader, instead of going away completely it now moves into a trash can.  This gives you the ability to pull something out of the trash if you change your mind.

Folder icons now tell you the number of items in each folder.

You can tap one button to see all of your starred documents (the ones that you marked as favorites).  You can tap one button to see all of your recent documents, making it easy to jump to a document you previously viewed without digging through a folder structure to find it.

And there are many other small improvements, all of which add up to make it easier than ever to manage your files in GoodReader.

Security

GoodReader adds a host of new features to help you protect the security of your documents.  Perhaps the most useful one for attorneys is the new Secure Photocopy feature (which requires the Pro Pack).  Here’s how it works.

I often hear people say that if you have a digital version of a document and you want to give it to someone else but ensure that there is no metadata in the document, you should print out the document and then scan that copy.  This creates a file which only has the image of the document, with none of the metadata that was in the original document.  The new Secure Photocopy feature works the same way, without you needing to use a printer.  When you select this option, GoodReader will create an image version of the file and you can decide the quality of the image (144 dpi to 400 dpi); a higher number of dots per inch looks better but results in a larger file size.  Then GoodReader turns that into a PDF document which you can share with someone else.

You can also use the Secure Photocopy feature to securely redact a document.   Use the highlighter tool and change the color from yellow to black so that you place a black box over text you want to redact.  Or you can use the pen tool with a wide brush to draw on top of anything you want to redact.  This process simply places ink on top of the document — the underlying text is still there, so the document is not yet truly redacted.  Next use the Secure Photocopy feature to create a new document based on the image.  This new document will include the redactions, and you don’t have to worry about the text or anything else being underneath the redactions.

There are other security features too, such as the ability to encrypt files using AES-256 encryption and add passwords to files.  You can also keep files in an encrypted format when they are in the GoodReader app.

Conclusion

These are only some of the new features in GoodReader 5, but these are the major new features that I think would appeal to most attorneys.  Now that version 5 is released, it is my sincere hope that the developer continues to update and refine the app without us needing to wait years between updates.  (Hopefully a sign of this:  the developer has already released version 5.0.1 and version 5.0.3 containing small bug fixes.)

I think that every attorney who regularly uses an iPad to work with PDF files would benefit from having GoodReader 5.  It works well as a primary app for working with PDF documents, but even if you are not going to make it your primary app, it is still a useful tool to have ready for when you want to utilize a feature such as split screen or Secure Photocopy.

I haven’t yet decided whether I will switch back to GoodReader as my primary app for working with PDF files.  I became a big fan of PDF Expert by Readdle over the last six months, and there are still some things that it does that I prefer over GoodReader.  Nevertheless, I’m thrilled that GoodReader is back and in top form.  GoodReader has always been a powerful and useful app for any attorney with a paperless law practice (or anyone trying to become more paperless), and with the fresh coat of paint and the new features in version 5, GoodReader is better than ever.

Click here to get GoodReader ($5.99): 

In an ideal world, you will always get exactly where you are supposed to be at the time that you are expected to be there.  In real life, delays happen.  Perhaps you got tied up at the office, in court, in a deposition that went longer than you expected, etc.  So sometimes you need to let someone know that you are running late but you are on the way there.  You can always send someone an email or a text that says exactly that, but the iPhone gives you some other options that might be even more useful for you.

I’ll be there in…

Instead of taking a wild guess of when you will arrive, let your iPhone figure it out.  If your iPhone knows where you are going — for example, if the Maps app is giving you guidance to get to a location — then the iPhone probably has a better sense of when you will get there than you do.  If you are driving, the iPhone can take into account traffic conditions.  If you are walking, the iPhone is pretty accurate at predicting how long that will take.

When you are composing an email or a text message, simply type “I’ll be there in” followed by tapping the space bar.  As soon as you tap the space bar, the middle part of the QuickType area (just above the space bar) will say “time to destination” with an indication of how long it will take you to get there.  Just tap it and it will type “17min” or however long.  This is plain text, so you can go back and change it if you want — for example, if you know that you need to add an extra five minutes to deal with parking once you get there.

I’m at…

If you want to let someone else know where you are right now, the iPhone can help you with that too, but I believe that this tip only works (1) in the Messages app, not the Mail app and (2) if the other person is using an iPhone/iPad.  Just type “I’m at” and then tap the space bar.  In the middle of the QuickType area you will see the location services icon followed by the words “Current Location.” 

As soon as you tap on “Current Location” the Messages app immediately sends a map to the other person with your current location indicated. 

I want to emphasize the word “immediately” because unlike the “I’ll be there in…” tip — where you can tap the QuickType suggestion, let it enter the text, and then go back and modify the text predicting how long it will take you to get there — as soon as you tap Current Location, the map will be sent.

If you want the other person to come to you, they can tap on that map and then tap the “Directions” button and their iPhone will give them turn-by-turn directions to get to that location that you sent.

I’ll let you figure it out…

Sometimes, the best option is to let the other person track your location so they can figure out for themselves how quickly you are getting there.  The Messages app can help you with this.  When you are in the screen to compose a message to someone, tap their name/icon at the top and three buttons will appear.  The first two let you call or FaceTime that person.  The last one says Info — tap that one.  On the next screen you will see an option to “Share My Location.”  If you tap that, you are given an option to share for one hour, until the end of the day, or indefinitely.  Tap the appropriate option, and that person will be able to track you while you are on your way. 

This one is especially useful if it is going to take a long time for you to arrive.  The other person doesn’t need to bother you frequently to get an update on your location; they can figure it out themselves.

When I learned Monday night about the flaw in FaceTime that someone could exploit to listen to you even before you accepted their call, and after I confirmed in a test with my son’s iPhone that the security flaw was real, I posted about it quickly.  But by the time that most of you saw the post, I had already edited it to note that Apple already implemented a temporary fix (for everyone) by pulling the plug on its Group FaceTime server.  Nevertheless, my primary concern when I wrote my initial post was the risk of third-party access to a confidential attorney-client communication.  Sure enough, on Tuesday, Houston attorney Larry Williams II filed a lawsuit against Apple claiming that this is exactly what happened to him, as reported by Laurel Brubaker Calkins of Bloomberg.  Of course, just because something is alleged in a lawsuit, that doesn’t mean that it actually happened, and I have some questions about the facts as set forth in the complaint that he filed in Harris County, Texas (which you can read here), and I’m sure that will all be sorted out in discovery.  The good news is that, unlike many other companies who have been in the news this week who make money off of invading your privacy, Apple takes privacy very seriously and I presume that they will devote substantial resources towards fixing this bug and coming up with ways to minimize the risk of something similar happening in the future.  And now, the other recent news of note:

• Speaking of hacks, Pittsburgh attorney David Ries, who knows a lot about security, discusses the current state of cybersecurity on mobile devices and technology in general in an article for Law Technology Today.
• Joel Schectman and Christopher Bing of Reuters wrote an interesting, and scary, story about a technology called Karma which spies — and who know else — used to hack into iPhones in 2016 and 2017.  I have a lot of questions about how this actually worked, but I haven’t yet seen a thoughtful analysis written by a security expert.
• Speaking of how dangerous it is online, Debra Cassens Weiss of ABA Journal reports that an associate at Dentons Canada was duped into transferring $1.5 million into a thief’s account.  This isn’t an iPhone story, but is a cautionary tale about cybercrime in general.
• Angela Ahrednts, the head of retail at Apple, talks to Suzy Menkes of Vogue Business about the Apple Store.
• Zac Hall of 9to5Mac reports that if you were one of the first people to buy AirPods, they are starting to show their age and don’t hold a charge for as long as they used to.  I’ve experienced this myself.  I still love my AirPods and use them every day, but I can’t go more than about 90 minutes without having to put them in their case for 60 seconds to recharge.
• In Overcast, my favorite app for listening to podcasts, it is now faster than ever to find a new podcast thanks to a new instant search feature.  The developer, Marco Arment, describes what is new in this post.
• Lief Johnson of Macworld recommends useful Siri Shortcuts.
• Andrew O’Hara of AppleInsider reviews the Satechi 75W Dual USB-C Travel Charger, the first charger I’ve seen which can charge two USB-C devices at once.
• Benjamin Mayo of 9to5Mac reviews Apple’s iPhone Smart Battery Case.
• And finally, Apple produced three cute 15-second videos showing use cases for sending someone money in Apple Pay:  Doughnuts, Gift for Dad, and Salsa.  Here is the Doughnuts video:

Yesterday, Apple released the results for its 2019 fiscal first quarter (which ran from September 30, 2018 to December 29, 2018, and did not actually include any days from calendar year 2019) and held a call with analysts to discuss the results.  This is typically Apple’s best quarter of the year because of holiday sales.  But this fiscal first quarter was unlike any prior fiscal first quarter for two reasons.  First, Apple issued a statement on January 2, 2019 warning investors that it would not meet the revenue goal it previously announced of $89 to $93 billion, which caused Apple’s stock price to decrease.  Second, Apple previously announced that it would stop announcing the specific number of iPhones, iPads, etc. sold every quarter, which means that I can no longer produce the product-sales-over-time graphs that I have including in these posts since 2013.

Even though Apple didn’t have as good of a quarter as it had previously predicted, Apple still had a very good quarter.  For example, the $84.3 billion in revenue was Apple’s second best quarter ever.  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 rough transcript of the call prepared by Seeking Alpha.  Jason Snell of Six Colors also prepared a transcript.  Apple’s official press release is here.  Here are the items which stood out to me:

• A major reason that Apple had to revise its guidance was fewer-than-expected iPhone sales in China.  On the other hand, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced that Apple’s “business grew outside of China, including new records in the Americas, Western Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, and our Rest of Asia Pacific segment.”  Of course, saying that “business grew” doesn’t indicate whether iPhone sales were up or down.
• Although Apple didn’t announce the number of iPhone’s sold last quarter, it did say that iPhone revenue was $52 billion.  That’s down from $61.6 billion one year ago and $54.4 billion two years ago.
• Apple announced that the global active installed base of iPhone is now over 900 million devices.  I reported last quarter that Apple had sold 1.468 billion iPhones since they first went on sale in 2007.  Add to that whatever Apple sold this past quarter, and my guess is that about 60% of all of the iPhones ever sold are still being used.
• Cook said that the most popular iPhone currently being sold by Apple is the XR, followed by the XS Max, and then the XS.
• Cook also noted that “our customers are holding on to their older iPhones a bit longer than in the past.”  I see that myself; I know lots of attorneys who are continuing to use an older iPhone long after I would have recommended upgrading.  The truth is, for many folks, an older iPhone does more than enough.  When you also remember that Apple offered cheap battery replacements in 2018, and Apple released iOS 12 last year which made older iPhones work faster, clearly there was less of a reason to upgrade to a new iPhone in 2018.
• Last year the App Store had its best year ever, with over $322 million in sales on New Year’s Day alone.  Gulp.
• You will soon be able to use Apple Pay at Target, Taco Bell, and Jack in the Box.
• iPad revenue was up 17%, the highest growth rate in almost six years.  This means that lots of folks are buying the 2018 version of the iPad Pro, and I’m not surprised at all.  The 2018 iPad Pro is not only the best iPad ever, but also a substantial improvement over prior models.  It is a fantastic device.
• Everyone knows that Apple is planning to come out with its own video content service, presumably a competitor to Netflix.  Cook said:  “We will participate in the original content world, we have signed a multi-year partnership with Oprah.  But today I’m not ready to extend that conversation beyond that point.  We’ve hired some great people that I have super amount of confidence in, and they’re working really hard, and we’ll have something to say on that later.”

UPDATE:  Fortunately, not long after I posted the below message, Apple came out with a temporary fix — it completely disabled Group FaceTime.  That means that you can now only FaceTime one person at a time, which removes the ability to take advantage of the flaw discussed below.  I just tried to make the bug work (which I had no problem doing on Thursday night), and sure enough, I cannot make it work anymore.  Apple says that it will have a more permanent fix later this week, which I presume will restore the Group FaceTime function.

Everything below the line was my original post on this topic.  This was a major bug, but fortunately it did not last long, and hopefully it is now just one for the history books.

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My hope is that this bug is fixed before many of you even have a chance to read this post, but if it hasn’t been fixed yet, you should know about this.  Yesterday it was revealed that there is a MAJOR bug in the latest version of FaceTime which allows someone to hear what you are saying even if you don’t answer the FaceTime call.  Benjamin Mayo of 9to5Mac has step-by-step instructions on how this bug works, but it is very easy to trigger.  My son and I were able to replicate it last night on our iPhones.

In short, the caller sends you a FaceTime request, but then before you answer, the caller adds a second person to the FaceTime call — that second person being their own iPhone.  This causes the caller to be able to hear the audio being picked up by your own iPhone even if you have not touched your iPhone or in any way accepted the FaceTime invitation.  It’s not quite as bad as allowing a third party to eavesdrop on you without any warning because your iPhone will ring first, but if you are in another room and didn’t even hear the iPhone ring to begin with, it is possible that you might not realize that your iPhone was turned into a listening device.

Even worse, there is a way that the caller could see video from the front-facing camera on your iPhone, but I believe only if you press the power button on your iPhone.

This is a major flaw for everyone who uses an iPhone — but especially for lawyers, doctors, and many others for whom confidentiality and privilege are a big deal.  And that’s why I’m writing about this today, even though I hope that this post has a very short shelf life.

Apple says that a fix will be out later this week.  In the meantime, if you want to protect yourself, you can open the Settings app, scroll down to FaceTime, and turn off FaceTime.

Also, if you leave your FaceTime turned on and you receive a FaceTime video invitation from someone, it appears that you can accept the invitation and then immediately hang up, and that prevents the caller from taking advantage of this bug.

Taking notes is an important part of my law practice.  I take notes when I’m meeting with a client or other attorneys, on a conference call, in court, preparing for an oral argument, and many other times.  For nine years, I’ve been increasingly taking digital notes using a stylus and an iPad.  I started in 2010 with an app called Note Taker HD (my review) which is still available, and in 2012 I switched to the GoodNotes app (my review).  I’ve tried lots of other apps over the years, which have their own advantages and disadvantages, but I keep coming back to GoodNotes.  For example, Notability is a great app, particularly if you want to record audio (such as a lecture) while you are taking notes.  As a lawyer, however, making an audio recording of conversations can sometimes raise legal ethics and discovery issues, so that’s not an option that I need.  My use of GoodNotes has increased dramatically since I started to use an iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil in 2015.  A new version of GoodNotes can out last month, and I’ve been putting it through its paces almost every day.

Why take digital notes?

In almost every circumstance in which I take notes, I prefer taking digital notes.  Why?  First, the note-taking process is so much better.  I can easily erase, move notes around (which I frequently do to make room to add something above whatever I just wrote), insert pictures, use different colors and pen tips, etc.  Second, my notes are so much more useful after I have taken them.  I can search for a specific word in my notes (which GoodNotes does very well, even when my penmanship is poor).  It is also useful to have all of my notes right there on my iPad.  If I need notes from a meeting 18 months ago, they are right there — no need to figure out where the folder is in the file cabinet where I think I may have shoved some paper but who knows if I did because that was so long ago. 

Why not just type my notes?  First, typing is often more obnoxious to folks around you than taking handwritten notes, not only because of the noise when you type, but also because you create the perception that you are not paying attention when you are looking at a screen that others cannot see; when you are taking notes with a pen, it is obvious to everyone that you are just taking notes.  Second, many studies show (e.g., 1, 2) that your memory improves when you take handwritten notes versus when you take notes on a keyboard.  Why?  When you take notes on a keyboard, you instinctively find yourself typing almost every word, almost as if you are a court reporter, which means that your brain spends less time understanding those words.  When you take handwritten notes, it is virtually impossible to write down every word, so your brain spends time figuring out the key part of what is being said and what you write in your notes is really a summary.  And that process of having your brain pick out the key concepts helps you to remember those concepts in the future.  Thus, there are tons of notes that I take which I never review again; the reason I took notes in the first place was so that I could remember the information later on.

There are a few times when I still take notes on paper.  First, I find that I can write using pen-and-paper a little faster than using stylus-and-iPad.  If I am in court arguing an appeal or a motion and I want to take notes as fast as possible while my opponent is speaking, pen-and-paper works better.  Second, there are times when I’m using my iPad for some other purpose, such as viewing documents, and rather than switch back and forth between apps it is sometimes easier to just take notes on an legal pad while I’m using the iPad for other tasks.  But these instances are rare; I probably use GoodNotes 95% of the time that I take notes.

GoodNotes 5 new features

The new version of GoodNotes is version 5.  Just like before, you create notebooks, each of which contains as many pages as you need.  I often have a notebook associated with each of my cases, but sometimes I will have different notebooks for different projects in the same case.  Each notebook can have a cover page, making easier to pick out a specific notebook from a grid view when you are looking at all of your notebooks.  For the pages within my notebooks, I prefer to use a light yellow background with lined notes, like a legal pad, but there are lots of different page templates within the app, and you can create your own and import them.

Version 5 includes tons of improvements.  Here are the ones that jump out at me the most.

First, there is a big change to the interface when you are taking notes.  Instead of the toolbar at the top just showing a few tools (such as a pen), and you have to tap on each tool icon to see all of the options (like color and ink thickness), there is now a larger toolbar which always shows on the right side the most common options associated with a tool.  There are still some tool options that you can only access by tapping the tool icon, but those are the options you are likely to change much less frequently.  Here is a picture of the old version, followed by the new version (tap to enlarge each image):

I find the new version to be much more useful.  I can change pen colors and the size of the tip much more quickly.  And when I am using the eraser, having the size options more easily accessible makes it faster to switch between erasing one small item or a big block of text.

Another new feature is that when you search for text, you can now search within the document you are viewing (just like before) or you can search for text across all of the documents in GoodNotes. 

Third, you can now decide whether you want to switch between pages by swiping from left to right, or whether you want to just have continuous pages where you scroll vertically to go from page to page.  I prefer the traditional horizontal page scrolling on my iPad, but on my iPhone I prefer vertical scrolling.  I never create notes on my iPhone, but because notes sync between devices using iCloud, sometimes it is useful to use my iPhone to scroll through some notes that I previously took using my Apple Pencil on my iPad, and that works better with vertical scrolling — much like scrolling through a long web page in Safari.

Like before, you can organize your notebooks into folders.  But in version 5, you can now have folders within folders, allowing you to have a more complicated organization system.

Another nice improvement is that you can now designate a notebook as one of your favorites.  Tapping a single button at the bottom right of the main screen shows you all of your favorites.

There is a new QuickNote feature for when you want to open the GoodNotes app and immediately start writing something down.  On the main page of GoodNotes, instead of tapping the plus button at the top left once to create a new notebook — where you select options like the name of the document, cover page, and the template for the notes pages — you can tap twice on the plus button.  That immediately brings you to a blank new page using your default notes template.  You can start writing immediately, and later on you can decide how you want to save the document.

Cost and upgrade notes

GoodNotes 5 costs $7.99.  If you previously purchased a prior version of the app, there is a Complete My Bundle option that lets you just pay the difference between whatever you previously paid and $7.99.  If you previously paid $7.99, then this is a free upgrade for you.  GoodNotes sent me a free version of the app to review back in 2012, at a time when it cost $3.99.  Thus, I only had to pay the difference of $4.00 to get the new version.

Note that there are still a few features of GoodNotes 4 which are not yet available in GoodNotes 5.  Most notably, the new version is missing presentation mode, a mode in which you could connect to an external monitor and the audience would only see your notes without all of toolbars.  If you used GoodNotes 4 as a digital whiteboard, you might want to wait to upgrade.  Having said that, you can run both versions on your iPad at the same time.  Just import your old notes into GoodNotes 5, and then only use GoodNotes 4 when you need that whiteboard feature.  The developer plans to restore these missing features in the future.

Stability

This is a new version of the app, rewritten from scratch to allow for performance enhancements and to make it easier for the developer to add new features in the future.  That sounds good, but this also means that there are — for now — some bugs in this brand-new app.  This new version of GoodNotes has crashed on me several times, although I haven’t lost any data.  And I had one time just this past weekend when the app crashed every time I started the app, making the app unusable.  Ugh.  I had to delete the app and then reinstall it from the App Store, and now it appears to be working again.  Because all of my notebooks are backed up to iCloud, it only took a few minutes for all of my notebooks to be restored, so I didn’t lose anything when I deleted the app and downloaded a fresh copy, but that was still annoying.  There have already been five updates in the past two weeks to fix bugs, so clearly the developer is working hard to fix all of this.  Hopefully the remaining bugs will be addressed very soon.

Conclusion

If you own an iPad and an Apple Pencil and you don’t currently use them to take digital notes, I encourage you to give it a shot.  And whether you are new to digital notes or an old pro, I strongly recommend that you try GoodNotes.  This is a fantastic app — one of the most useful apps on my iPad, and a key part of my paperless law practice.

Click here to get GoodNotes 5 ($7.99): 

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This article won the LitigationWorld Pick of the Week award on February 7, 2019. The editors of LitigationWorld, a free weekly email newsletter for litigators and others who work in litigation, give this award to one article every week that they feel is a must-read for this audience.

This week, Apple and privacy were in the news.  First, Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote an article in Time magazine arguing that individuals have a right to privacy online and promoting legislation to protect privacy.  Although not mentioning them by name, the article seems directed toward companies like Facebook and Google.  (For example, Tony Romm and Elizabeth Dwoskin of the Washington Post reported this week that the Federal Trade Commission is considering a record-setting fine against Facebook for privacy violations.)  Second, the online search engine Duck Duck Go, which has long presented itself as a place that you could go to search for websites while knowing that your privacy is being protected, announced this week that it will use Apple Maps for local searches on the web, as reported by Dieter Bohn of The Verge.  Google Maps has long been the king of online maps, and it is interesting to see Apple Maps being used as an alternative — not to mention seeing Apple Maps being used outside of an iPhone / iPad / Mac.  And now, the rest of the news of note from the past week:

• My favorite app for taking handwritten notes is GoodNotes.  This week, the app was updated to version 5.  I plan to write a review after I have used the new version for a while; it’s been a while since I last reviewed the app in 2012.  Two attorneys wrote about the new version of GoodNotes this week, although neither of them talked about the app from the standpoint of using it as an attorney.  California attorney David Sparks of MacSparky wrote this report on the new version of GoodNotes, and Illinois attorney John Voorhies of MacStories wrote this review of GoodNotes version 5.
• A federal magistrate judge in the Northern District of California ruled this week that cops cannot force people to unlock an iPhone with a face or finger.  Thomas Brewster of Forbes has the details.
• If you are thinking about going to ABA TECHSHOW this year, the early bird discounted prices were extended to January 21.
• Jason Snell of Six Colors reviews the Yale Assure SL, a smart lock that can unlock your front door automatically when you come home by using HomeKit to sense when your iPhone is near.  In the past, I’ve had some reservations about using a smart lock, but Jason addresses all of my concerns in this article, so now I understand the appeal of a product like this.
• Adam Angst of TidBITS explains how he figure out why his mother’s iPhone was calling phone numbers in the Netherlands instead of the United States.
• Alex Allegro of 9to5Mac reports that Microsoft is telling users of a Windows 10 Mobile smartphone that Microsoft is ending support at the end of this year and they should switch to an iPhone or Android.
• If you want to add lots of battery life to your new iPhone, this week Apple released a Smart Battery Case for the latest iPhones.  Rene Ritchie of iMore reviews the new cases-with-a-battery, which let you use an iPhone for over 24 hours straight.  (I’ve been very busy at work this week — hence this post not going up until Friday night — and I feel like I myself have had some days this week when I have gone 24 hours straight.)
• Jason Cross of Macworld recommends some of his favorite apps for the Apple Watch.
• Mark Sullivan has an interesting article in Fast Company speculating on the future of the Apple Watch in the healthcare arena.
• Here is an interesting iPhone accessory noted by Matthew Panzarino of TechCrunch (and I suppose previously noted by Michael J. Fox) :  Nike’s new self-lacing shoe. 
• And finally, Apple released a series of videos showing how the iPad Pro can be used for creativity and productivity. The short videos show off how you can go paperless, create presentations, take handwritten notes (using Notability), create a podcast, and act as an interior designer.  Here is the video on taking notes:

Near-field communication, commonly called NFC, is a communications protocol that allows two devices to communicate when they are very close to each other, within about an inch or so.  You might already use NFC every day in an access card for your office, parking garage, etc.  The iPhone has had NFC support since the iPhone 7, but to use NFC on an iPhone 7, iPhone 8, or iPhone X, you first need to launch an app which is made to work with NFC.  That’s not convenient.  The newest iPhones — the iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR — can support NFC without first launching any special app.  Your iPhone just needs to have the screen turned on and be unlocked.  The idea is that you can tap your iPhone to an NFC tag (or hold it really close) and you can trigger some action.  You still need to have an app to handle the action, but with the newest iPhones that app does not need to be open.  One such app is Launch Center Pro.

Launch Center Pro is an app that you can use to launch shortcuts.  It has been around for a very long time (I reviewed the app back in 2012) and it has improved over the years.  You might, for example, configure the app so that every time you press a button in the app, the app sends a text to one or more people with a specific message. Launch Center Pro is no longer the best automation app on the iPhone now that we also have the Shortcuts app, but the two apps are not identical, and each can do some things that the other cannot do, or cannot do as well.  One example is that Launch Center Pro can support NFC stickers, but Shortcuts cannot.

Here’s how it works.  You buy some NFC stickers in the app.   Then you place the sticker someplace, such as on an item on your desk.  Then you tell Launch Center Pro what to do whenever you tap that NFC sticker.  It’s not unlike using the “Hey, Siri” function along with Shortcuts, HomeKit, etc. so that something happens (like turn on the dining room lights) when you tell Siri to do that task.  But with NFC, you don’t have to say anything out loud, which can be more appropriate in a location like your office, where you might not want other people to hear you talking to Siri.

You buy the Launch Center Pro NFC stickers in the app.  I bought a set of five clear ones for $5, or you can buy a set of five with the app’s logo for $8.  Note that for the clear ones, the sticker portion is clear, but you can still see the silver NFC components.  Each sticker is round and about an inch in diameter.

Currently, the stickers sold in the app don’t work if affixed to metal objects, such as the back of a MacBook Pro or an iPad.  The developer suggests that this could change in the future if there are enough requests for it.

Place the sticker in the desired location, and then use the Launch Center Pro app to add the sticker to its list of recognized NFC tags.  Now you can create any shortcut in the Launch Center Pro app — which can include, for example, a command to launch a shortcut that you created in the Shortcuts app — and then tell Launch Center Pro to associate a specific NFC tag with that action.

Now, when you tap your iPhone to the NFC tag, you will see an alert at the top of the screen.  Tap that alert and the Launch Center Pro app will launch and the action will occur.

You can have more than one action associated with a single NFC sticker.  When you do this, tapping the NFC sticker with your iPhone will cause the app to ask you to pick one of the actions from a list.

Part of me wishes that I could skip the step of tapping that alert.  It would be faster if I could just tap the NFC sticker and have the automation action run right away.  But as the Help documentation in Launch Center Pro explains, “for security and usability reasons, iOS requires user interaction in order to complete an action. … If any app could take actions without user intervention, it would allow shady apps to do things like send your phone to malicious websites, pre-fill messages to paid text messaging accounts, or even use malicious NFC stickers to directly compromise your device and steal your persona data.”

It’s fun to trigger actions that I configure just using a tap on an NFC sticker.  But is it useful?  The answer to that question depends upon your own creativity, and I’ll admit that for now, I haven’t yet settled upon anything groundbreaking.  I’ve got one that sends a text to my wife to let her know that I’m about to leave work so I’ll be home soon.  I’ve got one that sends a silly text to my son, just because he and I were playing with the NFC function and configured it that way.  But I know that I’ll come up with more useful NFC actions in the future, and I like the idea of having an additional way to trigger actions.  For some folks, it might be useful to tap an NFC sticker to start a timer, making it easier to track time for your timesheets.  Others might find it useful to have a certain song or playlist start playing when you tap the NFC sticker.  Some folks might put a sticker in a kitchen to launch a grocery app.

Note that while the Launch Center Pro app is very powerful, it is also a little complicated to use, especially at first.  There are great help guides to walk you through it, but you are going to have to put a little time into this app the first time that you use it.  And while the app itself is free, you need to pay $4.95 to unlock the NFC feature, or you can choose one of several other payment options.  (I pay a $9.99 yearly subscription which unlocks all of the features, mainly because I love that this developer has long been figuring out ways to push the envelope on iPhone automation so I want to subscribe to encourage future efforts.) 

If you think that triggering actions using an NFC sticker instead of Siri sounds like it could be useful for you, or even if it just sounds like something you would have playing with, then you should check out Launch Center Pro.

Click here to get Launch Center Pro (free): 

This week, the huge CES conference took place in Las Vegas.  Many electronics companies showed off technology that may be coming out later this year.  Although Apple was not an exhibitor, one of the big themes was the number of TV manufacturers who will release new TVs with greatly improved compatibility with iOS, such as adding support for AirPlay and HomeKit.  Samsung TVs will even have an iTunes app, and attorney Nilay Patel of The Verge discusses some of the questions that this raises.  MacStories provided a good overview of many of the CES announcements, with an initial article by attorney John Voorhees and a second article by Ryan Christoffel.  Also, Kentucky attorney Stephen Embry offers some thoughts on how some of the new technology announced at CES may affect lawyers by providing more evidence.  And now, the news of note from the past week:

• Joseph Cox of Motherboard wrote a series of articles explaining how cellphone companies are selling the location of mobile phones to unsavory third parties.  The carriers have responded by saying that they are ending this practice.  Hopefully that is true.
• Drew Coffman of The Sweet Setup believes that the best two apps for taking notes on an iPad are Notability and GoodNotes.  Coffman prefers Notability, which is an excellent app, but I enjoy using GoodNotes.
• Chance Miller of 9to5Mac reviews HomePass, an app that lets you keep all of your HomeKit setup codes in one place.
• If you use the Shortcuts app on your iPhone and you use Apple Music, you might be interested in this sophisticated and impressive shortcut by Federico Viticci of MacStories which allows you to see the songs added to your library each year which you listened to the most.
• Jon Fingas of Engadget reviews the upcoming Mophie Juice Pack access, an iPhone case with a battery for your iPhone which also lets you access the Lightning port.
• Nick Guy of Wirecutter recommends the best iPad Pro cases.
• Joe Rossignol of MacRumors interviews Reddit user Cedric M. who used sandpaper, dyes, and paint to make his Apple Pencil look like a real pencil.  Fascinating, but don’t try this at home.
• And finally, this fun video shows off some truly amazing and impressive iPad magic performed by Shinya Uchida:

Starting a new year often means getting more serious about exercise, so its time to remove the hangers and dust from your treadmill and returning to a regular walking or running routine.  Some people like to listen to music on a treadmill.  I usually listen to podcasts.  But another nice way to pass the time on a treadmill is to watch video on a screen.  The iPad is perfect for watching videos, and some treadmills have a built-in ledge for holding an iPad, but many models don’t.  Since last month, I’ve been testing out a simple device that I purchased on Amazon for $22, the ADIRSports Acrylic Universal Treadmill Bookholder.  As you can tell from the title, this device can be used to hold books while you are on a treadmill, but it is also advertised as a way to hold an iPad, and that’s how I have been using it.

This product comes in multiple sizes, and I purchased the largest one for my 12.9" iPad Pro — the model advertised as 11" x 11" x 2.5".  In retrospect, I see that I could have also purchased the smaller version with a 9" height because the 2018 version of the 12.9" iPad Pro is 8.5" high when it is in landscape orientation, and I never plan to use my iPad in portrait orientation on my treadmill.  Having said that, I’m perfectly happy with the way that the iPad sits a little bit lower on my treadmill with this larger size, and perhaps the extra surface area adds to stability.  There is also a 3.5" version, but you don’t need that for a thin iPad; that version would only make sense if you want to fit a thick book underneath the lip.

The back lip of the device is about 1.75" which turns out to be perfect for fitting over the back of my treadmill.  (I own a PaceMaster ProSelect treadmill, but the PaceMaster company went out of business in 2012.)  If the top surface of your treadmill is thicker, you could certainly flip the device and put your iPad in the 1.75" side and put the 2.5" side over your treadmill.

My main concern about a product like this was sturdiness. First, I don’t want the Bookholder to slide off of my treadmill while I am walking or running.  I was especially concerned because the top of my treadmill is actually curved.  However, the plastic of my treadmill and the acrylic of this product do a fine job of staying stable when they make contact with one another, and I haven’t seen the Bookholder slide left or right at all.

Second, I don’t want my iPad to slip off of the device.  Fortunately, that has not been a problem.  Even when my iPad Pro is not in a case, it stays in place while I walk or run on the treadmill.  There are no lips on the sides, so if I physically push my iPad I can make it slide, but even with the vibrations of my treadmill it does not slide on its own.  Better yet, I have been keeping my iPad in the Apple Smart Folio case for the third generation 12.9" iPad Pro, and the silicone provides incredible friction between the back of my iPad Pro and the acrylic of the Bookholder, making everything very stable.

Because of the size of this product (and the iPad it holds), when you use this product you are covering up much of the front panel of your treadmill.  I don’t have trouble temporarily moving my iPad to the side to start and stop a workout, but I don’t recommend using this product if you need to press lots of buttons on your treadmill during your workout, especially if your hands get sweaty.  But if you start a program on your treadmill that changes pace automatically, or if you decide to just go a long distance at the same pace, so that there is no need to fiddle with buttons during a workout, then this works great.

And that is how I have been using this product.  Much of the time that I use my treadmill, I like to walk at a fast pace for a long distance.  Thus, I choose my settings on the treadmill, then I start a workout on my Apple Watch, and then I press start on the treadmill and put the Bookholder with my iPad in place and press play on my iPad.  Binge watching TV shows from a service like Netflix or Amazon Prime Video, using my AirPods connected wirelessly to my iPad Pro, is a fantastic way to make the time go by on a treadmill.  Indeed, I often go longer than I might have otherwise just because I want to get to the end of an episode before I stop.

This is a very simple product, but it works well, and it gives me a new way to make the time seem to go by more quickly while I am using my treadmill.  If you like the idea of watching video while you are on your treadmill, I can recommend this product.

Click here to get the ADIRSports Acrylic Universal Treadmill Bookholder from Amazon ($21.95)