Jeff Richardson

In the news

by

For the past six years, Apple has introduced a new iPhone in the first or second week of September:  September 12, 2017; September 7, 2016; September 9, 2015; September 9, 2014; September 10, 2013; and September 11, 2012.  There is, of course, no guarantee that Apple will do the same thing again in 2018, but if I had to bet money, I’d say that we are just a few weeks from seeing the 2018 versions of the iPhone.  If you are in the market for a new iPhone, I recommend that you wait if you can.  New iPads are released at lots of different times of the year, but I think that there is also a very good chance that we will also see a new iPad Pro in September or maybe October.  And now, the news of note from the past week:

  • As a reminder, I am presenting a one hour CLE in New Orleans one week from today with tips for using an iPad in your law practice.  The CLE is free if you are a member of the New Orleans Bar Association.  Click here for more information.
  • California attorney David Sparks discusses giving up his laptop to use just his iPad when he is away from his desktop computer.
  • Speaking of David Sparks, on August 9, 2017, he gave a presentation at the CMD-D conference about using the Workflow app on iOS to automate tasks on your iPhone or iPad.  Apple purchased the Workflow app and it will be a part of iOS 12 this year, renamed to Shortcuts.  A video of that presentation was recently released, and even though it is a year old, virtually everything in there is just as relevant and useful today.  Plus, David has a great presentation style.  This is worth watching.
  • Chicago attorney John Voorhees of MacStories explains how third-party Twitter apps had to change this week because Twitter took away some of their features.
  • Speaking of Twitter, Virginia attorney Sharon Nelson discusses a rare example of using Twitter to serve a defendant with a lawsuit.  In this case, the defendant is WikiLeaks.
  • New York attorney Nicole Black recommends podcasts for lawyers.
  • iOS 12, which I expect to be released soon, was going to add a group videochat feature to FaceTime.  However, Apple announced this week that it this feature will be delayed.  Jason Snell discusses this in an article for Macworld.
  • John Gruber of Daring Fireball discusses a report by Kif Leswing for Business Insider that Apple is encouraging app developers to move from a pay-up-front model to a subscription model.
  • Matthew Cassinelli of The Sweet Setup discusses using 1Password on an Apple Watch.
  • And finally, Throwboy has a Kickstarter campaign to produce throw pillows shaped like iconic Apple hardware:  the Apple II, the Mac, the iMac, the iPod, and of course, the iPhone.  The goal was to raise $10,000, and they are already at $30,000.  Although the iPhone is my favorite Apple device of all time, I’m not sure which of these pillows I like the most.  They are all great:

Move ring on Apple Watch barely moving? Check your weight.

by

Here’s a quick tip for all of you Apple Watch owners who keep track of your circles, just in case you make the same mistake that I did.  I noticed a few days ago that the red circle (the Move ring) on my Apple Watch was increasing far slower than normal.  Even after 30 minutes on a treadmill, it was logging less than half of the calories that I normally see, and my overall red circle activity at the end of the day was substantially lower than normal.  It took a long time for me to find the solution, but ultimately I discovered that I needed to check my weight in the Health app on my iPhone, which was far lower than it should have been.  Once I adjusted my weight up to the correct number, my Move ring started to count calories at the same rate that it usually does.

How did this happen in the first place?  The Health app on the iPhone has a place to store your weight.  if your weight doesn’t change often, just manually enter the number once and then forget about it.  However, if you are manually tracking your weight as it changes over time, it can be a pain to manually enter it in the Health app every day.  For a long time now, my faster solution has been to use the Workflow app — which will soon be renamed the Shortcuts app in iOS 12.  I have a very short workflow that simply asks me to enter my weight and then puts that data into the Health app:

Because it is one of the first four workflows in my Workflow app, I can just 3D Touch on the Workflow app icon on my iPhone’s home screen, select Log My Weight, type the number, and then I’m done.  The whole process takes maybe three seconds.  In iOS 12, I’ll be able to assign a voice command to start this workflow, making it even faster to trigger.

Last week, however, I suppose I should have spent more than three seconds to avoid being careless.  It turns out that I had somehow tapped the wrong buttons and entered the wrong weight, and apparently my iPhone had no trouble accepting that I suddenly weighed half as much.  (Um, thanks?)  My Apple Watch also noticed, and as a result it decided that I must be burning far less calories for the same amount of activity.

Fortunately, this is an easy problem to fix.  When you are looking at any health data source in the Health app, you can always tap Show All Data to see a list of every single entry.  If you see an entry that is wrong, you can delete that entry.  So to fix my problem, I just removed the incorrect weight, and the problem was solved.

Lawyer iPad stories: Paul Kiesel

by

I love to hear how other attorneys are using an iPhone or iPad in their law practice, so I always appreciate it when one of you is willing to share what you are using with the rest of the readers of iPhone J.D.  Today I am happy to share a submission from Paul Kiesel of Kiesel Law LLP, a plaintiff trial attorney in Beverly Hills, California.  Paul is a co-author of two legal treatises:  California Pretrial Civil Procedure and California Civil Discovery.

Paul loves to use technology in his law practice, and the ABA Journal even named him one of the Techiest Lawyers.  Paul has had a number of paperless jury trials over the last few years thanks to his iPad.  In just a few days on August 16, 2018, Paul will be teaching a CLE Webinar hosted by the Federal Bar Association called How the iPad Can Be a Litigator’s Best Friend.  It is a two-hour CLE and starts at 2:00 Eastern. 

Here is what Paul told me about some of the ways that he uses his iPad Pro in his law practice::

– – – – –

Ten years ago, as files began to overwhelm our firm’s working space and as our offsite archive service costs exceeded thousands of dollars each month, I thought there has to be a better way.  Necessity being the mother of invention, our firm began its journey to being paperless.  We started to scan each and every correspondence, pleading, medical record and other piece of paper entering our front door.

Five years ago, as our building office space became limited, a decision was made to eliminate our file “room” and actually remove the paper files.  I was able to recapture 20% of our building’s usable space by removing file cabinets.  At the same time, each attorney at the firm was provided an iPad in lieu of case files.

Now, five years later, the iPad is the single vehicle, with the exception of one partner who is partial to his Surface Pro, we use to review and annotate all materials.  For years I traveled with both a laptop and an iPad but with the advent of the iPad Pro 12.0" and the Apple Pencil, this is the single device I use and travel with.  Whether it be at my home reading the morning NY Times, LA Times, Wall Street Journal, or reviewing pleadings, the iPad is the single device.

In order to use the iPad for this purpose, I originally used PDF Expert to review and annotate documents.  Today, my go-to annotation program is Liquid Text.  Prior to using the iPad Pro 12.9", my go-to tablet was the original 9.7" version of the iPad, but for using Liquid Text the 12.9" size is a must.  Why?  Liquid Text splits the screen in two sections, one for the document and the other for notes.  Using the split screen really requires the additional real estate (screen size) the 12.9" iPad Pro provides.  I tested the 10.5" iPad Pro but still found it wasn’t a big enough screen to do the job.  So, my first recommendation is Liquid Text.

My second recommendation is to purchase a virtual private network (VPN) application.  A VPN provides a secure “pipe” for you to access the internet when on a public WiFi without fear that bad guys or gals are hacking into your communications.  The VPN app that I use is called Encrypt.Me, and it works magically.  [Jeff notes:  I reviewed this app back when it was called Cloak, and I agree that it is a fantastic app.]  The cost is minimal and the benefits, potentially massive.  The only caveat is that several public WiFi networks will not allow you to use a VPN when accessing.  An example is the GoGo WiFi network on commercial flights.  The GoGo network will not allow you to access their system if you have the VPN active.  It took me hours to figure out why I couldn’t log on to the network until I tried disabling the VPN and then I was able to get on.  So, you need to make a trade, at times, between access and security.

The next app I would recommend is TripIt.  This is a fantastic program that allows you to aggregate all of your travel plans in one spot.  [Jeff adds:  I reviewed the free version of TripIt in 2013 and I reviewed TripIt Pro in 2017.  I continue to pay for TripIt Pro because I find it so valuable when I travel.]

My final use of the iPad, although a bit unconventional and a wee bit pricey, is to send each of my settlement demand packages by way of an iPad.  My firm creates, for about 90 percent of my cases, a settlement “brochure” including a video depicting our liability analysis, the client’s injuries and damages, along with attached medical records and other documentary evidence.  I typically send between one and six iPads depending on the number of counsel, adjusters, and decision makers involved.  I have been doing that since the iPad was first introduced. 

There are dozens of other applications and uses that I don’t have time to share here, but feel free to view my webinar on “using your iPad” in trial.  Here’s the link.  Enjoy.

– – – – –

Thanks again, Paul, for taking the time to share with us some of the ways that you use your iPad.  Sending an iPad as a digital settlement brochure is a very interesting approach!

If any of you are willing to share your own experiences using an iPhone or iPad in your law practice with other iPhone J.D. readers, I’d love to hear from you.  In case you missed any of them, here are stories that I previously shared from other attorneys:

—–

This article won the BlawgWorld Pick of the Week award on August 20, 2018. The editors of BlawgWorld, a free weekly email newsletter for lawyers and law firm administrators, give this award to one article every week that they feel is a must-read for this audience.

In the news

by

If you will be in the New Orleans area two weeks from today, I will be presenting a one hour CLE at Noon on Friday, August 24 with tips for using an iPad in your law practice.  The CLE is free if you are a member of the New Orleans Bar Association.  Click here for more information.  We still have about a month to go before mid-September, when I expect Apple to announce the 2018 versions of the iPhone and iPad Pro, and considering that it is also the end of Summer, things are pretty slow in the land of iOS right now.  But there have been a few interesting developments, and here is the news of note from the past week:

Lawyer iPhone stories: Jay Brinker

by

I love to hear how other attorneys are using an iPhone or iPad in their law practice, so I always appreciate it when one of you is willing to share what you are using with the rest of the readers of iPhone J.D.  Today I am happy to share a submission from Jay Brinker, an estate planning attorney in Cincinnati, OH.  Jay also has a blog, which he uses to share interesting estate planning-related stories.  When I first started talking to Jay about the apps that he uses, he told me that he didn’t use anything special, and said that because he is not a litigator, he doesn’t use many of the well-known legal apps.  But I find that I always learn something no matter what kind of law practice someone has, and I am sure that most of you would agree.  So with no further ado, take it away, Jay:

– – – – –

When Jeff asked me if I could share my iPhone experiences with his readers, I was hesitant to do so because my use of iOS apps is limited compared to the litigators who use apps in trial and for trial prep.  Jeff persuaded me that my more non-power user approach could be useful nonetheless.  So here goes.

Background

I am a solo estate planning attorney who just passed the five year anniversary of my first iPhone purchase.  I was slow to adopt because my prior cell phone provider offered a stupidly low rate ($100 or so for three lines) but did not sell iPhones nor support them, so I suffered through with a BlackBerry until the limitations became untenable.  Expectedly, that carrier is now out of business.

I view my iPhone as a life convenience device rather than a work tool, although it does assist with the large part of my life that is my law practice.

Some Apps for Work

SugarSync is my preferred file syncing and file sharing service because it plays well with my file organization.  It has a nice app for iOS which allows me to easily access any document on my office PC from my phone.  Twice in a six month period, I was out of the office (Marco Island and Prague) when I received an email requesting a client’s living will.  I was able to send the document to the requesting person almost immediately from my phone.

Square is my credit card processing app.  I appreciate its simplicity and relatively low cost.  The customer satisfaction of a client paying with a credit card and getting airline miles is worth the 2.75% or haircut I take.  A quote from a client:  “You take credit cards?  This gets better all of the time.”  That is worth $50 in reduced fees.

Office Lens from Microsoft is a free scanning app that I have been using recently to scan documents on the go.  I can scan and send the document to a myriad of cloud based services.

OneDrive by Microsoft is my cloud storage provider of choice for miscellaneous documents like travel itineraries, tickets, reservations, and other personal documents I want to access quickly.  The iOS app is easy to use.

Apple Pay Cash.  I love Apple Pay.  If Kroger accepted Apple Pay, my grocery shopping experience would be sublime.  Apple Pay Cash allows you to transfer funds to friends and others via text without the privacy concerns of Venmo nor transaction costs of other methods.  A younger out of town client wished to pay an invoice expeditiously last year, so I gave her my cell phone number and she paid via Apple Pay Cash.  I then transferred the funds to my office checking account.

Other Apps I Like

Overcast is my preferred podcast app thanks to Jeff.  I can build playlists and skip ahead or rewind in time allotments of my choice.  You can use the app for free.

Spotify is my music streaming app of choice.  The $240 annual family plan allows my children and me to access nearly any album ever released, build playlists of favorites, and listen to new CDs the day they are released.  I can download playlists onto my phone for offline playback in my car while also controlling music on my PC from the phone.  I am not sure how sustainable this business model is long term, but I love it.  There is also a free version if you do not mind commercials every fourth song.

Key Ring allows me to keep my loyalty cards on my phone and avoid having to carry a “Costanza wallet.”  This app is free.

Banking app.  I love the convenience of mobile banking.  I have greatly reduced the number of bank trips for personal check deposits due to the app for my bank.  If my business bank had a larger monthly mobile deposit limit, life would be really sweet.

I also use the Zelle app to send money directly to a family member’s bank account which easily beats writing a check. 

Most Indispensable App

Starbucks Mobile App with its order ahead feature saves me between five and ten minutes every time I visit Starbucks.  I also accumulate rewards points for free drinks.  The app is free.

Deleted Apps

To save space, I recently deleted all of the free Microsoft Office apps.  I never use my phone to edit documents so there was no point in having them.

Apps Never On My Phone (or iPad)

Any social media app.  Pox on all of their houses.

iPads

I have a home iPad and an office iPad.  The home iPad is primarily for newspaper and blog reading.  I take the office iPad into meetings so I can quickly answer a question such as how a house is titled or the status of an estate.  I also use it to schedule the follow up meeting for clients to sign their estate planning documents.  I find it less intrusive than having a laptop for the same purposes.

Thanks for reading and thanks to Jeff for asking me to write.  I hope there was something helpful here.

– – – – –

Thanks again, Jay, for taking the time to share some of your favorite apps!  I had never heard of the Key Ring app, so I’ll have to check that one out.

If any of you are willing to share your own experiences using an iPhone or iPad in your law practice with other iPhone J.D. readers, I’d love to hear from you.  And no, you don’t have to be a litigator!  In case you missed any of them, here are stories that I previously shared from other attorneys:

—–

BlawgWorld_POTW_Logo_600This article won the BlawgWorld Pick of the Week award on August 13, 2018. The editors of BlawgWorld, a free weekly email newsletter for lawyers and law firm administrators, give this award to one article every week that they feel is a must-read for this audience.

In the news

by

The market capitalization or “market cap” of a company is simply the share price multiplied by the number of shares outstanding, and is one method of indicating the public’s opinion of the net worth of the company.  Yesterday, Apple became the first company in the U.S. to ever have a market cap of over a trillion dollars.  When the market closed, Apple’s market cap was $1.002 trillion.  I thought that this comment from John Gruber of Daring Fireball was interesting:  “That ‘.002’ looks insignificant but represents $2 billion — about what the entire company was worth in 1996.”  It was obvious for a while now that this day was coming, so a number of news sites had articles ready to run when the milestone was crossed.  I’ll recommend two of them that were particularly good:  an article by Jack Nicas in the New York Times, and an article by Brad Stone of Bloomberg.  There are lots of reasons that Apple achieved this success, but there is no question that the number one reason was the iPhone.  And now, the news of note from this past week:

  • Illinois attorney Warren Freiberg wrote an article for TechnoLawyer recommending apps that are useful for attorneys.  I myself use recommend almost all of the apps identified in that article.  Click here to download the article in PDF format.
  • I went back and forth about whether to link to this article because the premise is so shaky.  In an article for the ABA’s GP Solo, legal consultant Seth Rowland asked his son Samuel Rowland, a college student, to try to figure out what mobile apps lawyers might want to use.  The older Rowland explained that he did this because he hasn’t practiced law in two decades and his primary focus is PC software, not mobile apps.  Um, okay, but asking a journalism major to pick the best apps for lawyers seems about as valuable as asking me to pick out the best apps for dentists.  The only qualification offered for the younger Rowland was that he is “an avid cell phone user.”  Of course, that also accurately describes most of the kids at my son’s middle school.  As you might guess, the article fails to mention a ton of useful (and obvious) apps.  But I’m linking to it anyway because it also names some truly good apps, and any time you look at a list of apps there is always the chance that you will come across an app that speaks to you.  So if you dare, click here to read Legal Apps for the Lawyer on the Go.  (And while I disagree with the premise of this article, kudos to Sam for giving it the old college try and finding some of the good apps.)
  • Earlier this week, I reported on Apple’s 2018 fiscal third quarter.  In an article for Macworld, Jason Snell offered four interesting takeaways from the results.  And in an article for Six Colors, Snell digs a little deeper into the results.
  • Bradley Chambers of 9to5Mac recommends some of the best iPhone weather apps.
  • Vanity Fair has an interesting excerpt from an upcoming memoir by Lisa Brennan-Jobs, daughter of Steve Jobs, called Small Fry.  They had an awkward relationship, to say the least, and I enjoyed this excerpt.
  • And finally, this short 15-second video advertising the iPad does a good job of showing why I love my almost-completely paperless law practice, which wouldn’t be possible without my iPad.  It is called Paperless Paperwork:

MacTrack / iTrack — go to Disney World to learn more about using your iPhone and iPad in your law practice

by

One of the best ways to learn more about getting more out of an iPhone or iPad in your law practice is to hear directly from other attorneys with expertise in this area.  This is one of the reasons that I enjoy going to ABA TECHSHOW in Chicago every Spring.  Having said that, the last few TECHSHOW conferences have not focused on mobile technology as much as I would have liked.  For years, I have heard great things about the MacTrack Legal conference.  The conference has traditionally been focused on helping solo and small firm lawyers who use Macs, but this year — the 10th year of the conference — it will be called MacTrack / iTrack Legal, and most of the conference will focus on using iPhones and iPads.  If you are looking to attend a conference to learn more about using your iOS device, I cannot think of a better place to go.

The conference is September 27 to 29, 2018, at Disney’s Yacht & Beach Club at Walt Disney World in Orlando, FL.  It is easy to get flights to Orlando from most anywhere, and it may be easier to justify the trip if your family can join you and attend the parks while you are at the conference.  The conference occurs during the Epcot Food & Wine Festival.  Attendees can take advantage of a discounted hotel rate not only during the conference, but also for three days before and after the conference.

While the venue alone makes this conference attractive, the real reasons for you to go are the speakers and the attendees.  In past years, the speaker list has been fantastic, and the folks who are already identified on the conference website this year are fantastic.  Not only do they know a ton about using an iOS device (and a Mac), but they are also friendly folks and great teachers.  Just to mention a few, I’m big fans of Florida attorney Katie Floyd (of MacPowerUsers), legal tech consultant Brett Burney, New Jersey estate planning attorney Victor Medina (who is planning the conference), Canadian attorney Bjorn “Barney” Christianson, and Pennsylvania attorney Evan Kline.  I’ve seen all of them teach sessions on using iOS devices, and in some cases I’ve even co-presented with them.  In addition to the speakers, numerous attorneys have told me that they attend this conference again and again because of the great folks who were attending, which makes sense because this is a smaller and more intimate conference — the opposite of a mega-conference like TECHSHOW.

I had hoped to be able to speak at this conference this year given the focus on iOS, but unfortunately my schedule doesn’t permit it.  But if your schedule does, I encourage you to give this one a look.  I know that it will be an enjoyable and incredibly informative conference.

Here is a video in which Victor explains what makes this conference so special:

Here is a link to a PDF file with more information on the individual sessions.

Click here for more information on MacTrack / iTrack Legal.

Apple 2018 fiscal third quarter — the iPhone and iPad angle

by

Apple logo 48Yesterday, Apple released the results for its 2018 fiscal third quarter (which ran from April 1, 2018 to June 30, 2018) and held a call with analysts to discuss the results.  This is typically not a big fiscal quarter for Apple; the important quarter for Apple every year is the first fiscal quarter (containing the holiday sales season).  During the fiscal third quarter, most potential Apple customers — which for the most part means iPhone customers — are waiting to see what new products Apple will introduce in the Fall.  Even so, Apple had their best fiscal third quarter ever, with quarterly revenue of $53.3 billion.  Apple CEO Tim Cook attributed the impressive revenues to three factors:  iPhone sales, service revenue such as the App Store and Apple Music, and wearable product sales such as the Apple Watch and AirPods.  If you want to get all of the nitty gritty details, you can download the audio from the announcement conference call from iTunes, or you can read a transcript of the call prepared by Seeking Alpha, or a transcript prepared by Jason Snell of Six Colors.  Apple’s official press release is here.  As always, I’m not as interested in the financial details as I am the statements of Apple executives during the call that are of interest to iPhone and iPad users.  Here are the items that stood out to me.

iPhone

  • During the past quarter, Apple sold 41.3 million iPhones, just slightly more than the 41 million iPhones sold in 2017’s third fiscal quarter. The all-time record for iPhone sales in a fiscal Q3 was in 2015, when Apple sold 47.5 million iPhones.
  • While the increase in the number of iPhones sold versus 2017 Q3 was modest, the increase in revenue from iPhone sales was more impressive thanks to sales of the more expensive iPhone X.  iPhone revenue was $24.8 billion in 2017 Q3, but it rose to $29.9 billion in 2018 Q3, a 20% increase.
  • By my count, Apple has sold 1.421 billion iPhones since they first went on sale in 2007.
  • What kinds of iPhones are people buying?  For the second quarter in a row, the top-of-the-line iPhone X was the best-seller.  The critics who predicted that few folks would want to pay more for a more powerful iPhone were clearly wrong.

iPad

  • Apple sold just over 11.5 million iPads in the fiscal third quarter, around 100,000 more iPads than Apple sold a year ago. 
  • I don’t know if Apple will ever return to the larger iPad sales numbers that the company saw many years ago, including a high of 19.5 million iPads in 2013 Q2.  Nevertheless this is now the fifth quarter in a row that the average number of iPads sold has increased, if you look at a four quarter average.
  • By my count, Apple has sold over 415 million iPads since they first went on sale in 2010.
  • Apple CFO Luca Maestri said that almost half of iPad purchases in the past quarter were by customers new to iPad.

Other

  • A relatively new area of revenue for Apple is app subscriptions, such as apps that are free to download but for which you pay a monthly or yearly subscription fee to access more advanced features.  Cook said that the App Store now includes almost 30,000 apps which offer subscriptions.
  • Because the App Store turned 10 years old last month, Cook spent some time noting its impressive numbers, and the App Store saw its largest ever quarterly revenue in 2018 Q3.  He did not disclose how much of that was spent on the game Fortnite.
  • Cook noted that this past quarter saw all-time highs for both the number of monthly active users of the Messages app and for the number of FaceTime calls made.  If my son is an accurate guidepost, then a lot of those text messages and FaceTime calls are the result of kids being on summer vacation.
  • In the first three quarters of fiscal 2018, there were over 100 billion Siri requests.
  • Here in New Orleans, the two major pharmacies are Walgreen’s and CVS.  One of the reasons that I typically choose Walgreen’s is that it works great with Apple Pay.  But Cook announced that this Fall, Apple Pay will start to be accepted at CVS (and 7-Eleven too).
  • Cook said that when iOS 12 comes out, the iPhone will be noticeably faster.  The camera on the iPhone will launch up to 70% faster, the keyboard will appear up to 50% faster, and apps will be able to launch up to twice as fast.
  • Cook discussed the impact of President Trump’s recent trade war.  He said that tariffs are “a tax on the consumer and wind up resulting in lower economic growth.”  Having said that, Cook said that none of Apple’s products were directly affected by three recent tariffs, and that Apple was still evaluating another one.  Cook concluded by saying that he was “optimistic that the countries will get through this, and we are hoping that calm heads prevail.”
  • Everyone knows that Apple is now developing TV shows and movies and that it will at some point have some service to announce.  Cook said that he wasn’t yet ready to share the details, but that he “couldn’t be more excited about what’s going on there, and we’ve got great talent in the area that we’ve sourced from different places, and [we] feel really good about what we will eventually offer.”
  • Over 50 million people are now using Apple Music, although an (undisclosed) number of those are in a free trial period.

In the news

by

As noted by Juli Clover of MacRumors, Google’s Street View app for iOS was updated this week to support the larger screen of the iPhone X.  I’ve had this app for a while, but this update caused me to try it out again this week, and it is amazing how powerful it is.  Enter any address, hold up your iPhone and tap the street view image and then tap the compass button at the top right, and you can move your iPhone around and “see” the area almost as if you were standing there at the address.  For an even more immersive experience, place your iPhone in an inexpensive Google Cardboard device.  Choose some interesting locations like in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris or in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC for some free virtual reality tourism.  And now, the news of note from the past week:

  • Chicago attorney John Voorhees is also an app developer and an editor at MacStories, and he was recently interviewed by Filip Brož of the Czechoslovakian website iPure.
  • A post on the GoodNotes blog provides tips for taking electronic notes at a conference.
  • William Gallagher of AppleInsider provides an overview of all of the ways to create text on an iPad:  text editors, note-taking apps, and word processors.
  • If you want an app to help you remember things which is a little more powerful than the built-in Reminders app, Federico Viticci of MacStories reviews the GoodTasks app.
  • Rosemary Orchard discusses some useful apps which run within the Messages app.  To be honest, the idea of running a mini-app within Messages still seems a little strange to me, so I haven’t really explored this very much.
  • Chance Miller of 9to5Mac notes that Carrot Weather, my favorite weather app, was recently updated to add the ability to provide hurricane tracker notifications.  Like most folks who live in the Gulf South, I’d rather not be thinking about hurricanes, but we are definitely getting closer to the peak season.  (Hurricane Katrina made landfall` on August 29, 2005.)
  • Ian Fuchs of Cult of Mac reviews Documents by Readdle, a very useful app.
  • Drew Coffman of The Sweet Setup reviews the Lutron Caseta dimmer switch, a HomeKit-compatible light switch that I use throughout my house and which I really like.  (My review.)  I also see that the Lutron Smart Bridge, which I bought for over $100, is now $79.95 on Amazon.
  • And finally, Apple released a new video advertisement for the iPhone X which shows off its computing prowess at running powerful games.  The ad is called Unleash.  As John Gruber of Daring Fireball noted, it seems strange for Apple to release a new ad for the iPhone X when, presumably, the successor to the iPhone X will be unveiled in two months.  Regardless, it’s a neat video:

1Password secure notes, now with Markdown formatting

by

The main reason to use a password manager is to create, store, and automatically type usernames and passwords.  But one side benefit of the major password manager apps such as 1Password and LastPass is the ability to store secure notes.  This is a digital notepad where you can store some text, much like you would using the built-in Notes app.  The difference is that these notes are safely stored in the password manager app, which is secured with your complex password (or your fingerprint or your face if you have that enabled).  I like this feature because there are rare instances in which someone else has access to my iPhone or iPad.  I wouldn’t let them use my device if I didn’t trust the person, but even so, I don’t want that person accessing my truly confidential information, even accidentally.  Someone else using my iPad could open the Notes app and see the numerous notes that I have stored there, things like grocery and packing lists, the members of my daughter’s soccer team, etc.  But the person wouldn’t be able to open my 1Password app, and thus couldn’t see my truly private notes.

What type of information do I store in secure notes?  I have some medical information about me and family members in there.  I have birthday present ideas.  I have financial information such as a history of salaries for me and my staff members.  I have a list of all of my former addresses, going all the way back to high school.  And I have some confidential information related to my cases, which will sometimes include items like settlement authority.  Having all of this important, confidential information in one secure location is incredibly valuable.  If you use a password manager and don’t currently take advantage of the secure notes feature, I encourage you to do so.

I’ve been thinking about secure notes for the past few days because 1Password, my preferred password manager, recently added the ability to use Markdown in secure notes.  This means that you can add some simple symbols to your text to format the text.  For example, if you want something in a note to be bold, you can just begin and end it with two asterisks or two underline symbols.  Thus, if you type something like this:

**The Title**

__Another Title__

It will be formatted in 1Password to look like this:

The Title

Another Title

You can also use one underline symbol before and after to do italics, three dashes to add a line, etc.  1Password lists some common Markdown commands on this page, and if you want a more comprehensive description of Markdown you can view this page created by John Gruber, who created Markdown many years ago.

For those of you who used WordPerfect way back when, you may remember how WordPerfect fans loved the reveal codes feature, making it easy to see the commands that told the computer to format your text.  Markdown is the same idea.  When you are in the edit mode, you see the symbols like ** but when you are in the normal view mode, you see the end result such as bold text.  What all of this means is that it takes virtually no time to make your notes look even nicer and easier to read in 1Password.

I’d love to show you some examples of how I am using Markdown in my secure notes, but obviously my secure notes are private so I am not going to post them on a public website.  Instead, I created two sample secure notes in 1Password.  One is the Preamble to the Constitution.  The other one is something I copied from my Notes app.  Over the last year or so, my kids and I have been working our way through the James Bond movies.  Not all of them — I selected what I think are the better ones.  (Feel free to disagree with my choices.)  I have a list to remind me of what we have already seen and what is next.  Here is what part of each note looks like when I am in the edit mode in 1Password:

 

And here is what the notes look like with the simple formatting applied (bold text, a numbered list, and a dividing line).  So this is what you would see when you normally view the note:

 

Looking at the James Bond list reminds me that the next movie up for us is Goldeneye, our first Pierce Brosnan movie.  I remember being excited when he (finally) took over the role because I used to watch the Remington Steele TV show in the 1980s.  Okay, enough about Bond, let’s get back to 1Password now.

Markdown formatting looks great.  I wish that 1Password would add the ability to adjust the text size — the text is crisp and clear on my iPhone X and my iPad Pro, but I wish that the text could be larger — and perhaps that will be added in the future.  But my notes are much easier to read with formatting than they are without formatting.

If you use 1Password and you have been waiting for an excuse to create some secure notes, perhaps this can be the impetus for you to start using this feature.  And if you are not yet using a password manager, now you have yet another reason that you should be doing so. 

(Last year when 1Password was a sponsor of iPhone J.D., they created this special page for iPhone J.D. readers to signup and get a free trial, and it looks like it is still working.  Or you can just go to the main iPassword website and sign up there.)

© 2008-2026 Jeffrey Richardson