Jeff Richardson

A Drobo is a smart external hard drive.  Instead of a case containing just a single hard drive, a Drobo contains multiple hard drives, with every bit of data stored on at least two drives.  Your computer (PC or Mac) treats it like a single big hard drive, but because all data lives on two different drives (or three if you enable that setting, resulting in less overall usable space), any one drive can fail and you will not lose any data.  It is the perfect way to get the advantage of an external hard drive (lots of storage at an affordable price) while also avoiding the #1 problem of all hard drives — the fact that, at some point, every hard drive will fail.  It is just a matter of time.  I’ve had a few external hard drives fail on me over the years, and after one died on me in 2015, I decided that enough was enough.  I bought my first Drobo in 2015, and I’ve been a very happy Drobo user ever since. 

A few weeks ago, Drobo sent me a free review unit of the latest generation of the basic model of the Drobo, called the Drobo 5C.  (Note also that Drobo is a past sponsor of iPhone J.D.)  I’ve been using this Drobo 5C for the last few weeks, and it works great.  And as explained below, as a result of me making a stupid mistake, I even got a chance to see what happens to a Drobo 5C when a drive fails.

Hardware – the traditional Drobo features

I’ll start by talking about the features of the Drobo 5C that are unchanged from prior models.  Like other Drobo models, the Drobo is a black box which holds multiple hard drives. Each drive has a light next to it, and so long as the light is green, you know that the drive is performing the way that it should.  If you ever see a blinking red light, that means that a drive has died or otherwise failed.  Your data is still protected on the other drives, but it is time to order a new drive from Amazon or your hard drive seller of choice.

I know from first-hand experience that drive failure is not just a theoretical concern.  I have had multiple external hard drives fail on me over the last 15 years, and every time it happened, it caused a lot of stress for me as I look to see if I have a reasonably current backup.  But with a Drobo, the backup occurs constantly and automatically, so you don’t have to worry about it.

Protection has always been one of the core advantages of a Drobo.  The other longstanding advantage is the ability to grow the size of your Drobo as your needs increase.  For me, my iPhone is one of the big reasons that I have needed more storage.  Ever since the iPhone 6s came out, I have turned on the option to record video in 4K.  4K is a little overkill for now — I don’t even currently use a TV that can show 4K — but I know that I’ll be looking at home movies of my kids that I shoot today for many decades in the future.  I remember being excited on my 27th birthday to get a huge 27″ TV, which I cannot even imagine using today when I have a widescreen 65″ screen.  Who knows what technology I’ll be using 10-20 years from now, so I figure I might as well create and save the highest quality video files today.

Of course, 4K video requires more disk space to store the video files.  And even if you don’t need to store 4K video, we all have larger files to save than we did years ago.  Although I use my Drobo connected to my home computer, if you want to use a Drobo for your law practice, you know how the number of files associated with your matters proliferate every year.  As attorneys become more and more paperless, we are all getting more PDF files, more JPEG files, and even videos associated with our cases, all of which take up more space.  You can be sure that whatever is enough space for you today won’t be enough space in another year or two.

Fortunately, Drobo can easily grow as your needs grow.  Blue lights along the bottom of the Drobo show you how much capacity you are currently using up, with one light for each 10%.  When you get to 85% capacity, the green light next to a drive will turn yellow, a sign from Drobo that it is time to replace that drive with a larger hard drive.  If you get to 95% capacity, the light turns red.  It doesn’t matter if the different drive bays have different size hard drives; Drobo will just use whatever you give it.  So just get a larger drive and add it, and it is OK if some of the other drives are smaller.  Best of all, you don’t need to worry about manually moving files from an old drive to a new drive; Drobo takes care of all of that.

Thus, with a Drobo, you don’t need to worry about planning for the future.  The capacity of a Drobo grows as you need it to grow.  Drobo even has a handy Capacity Calculator on its website so you can see how much usable space you get when you add different sized hard drives to the different bays in a Drobo.

I use Backblaze for online backup of all of the files on my home iMac.  Because Backblaze also backs up (at no extra charge) all files on any devices connected via USB, one nice thing about my prior Drobo and this new Drobo 5C is that there is a copy of all of files in the cloud.  If any one hard drive fails, the Drobo 5C will protect me.  If the entire Drobo is destroyed — a disaster such as a house fire, an asteroid landing on my block, etc. — I still have an online back up of the multiple terabytes of data being stored on the Drobo 5C.

Hardware – what is new in the Drobo 5C

The basic model of the Drobo used to hold four drives, and that was the model that I previously used to hold all of the files that were too big to store on the iMac at my home, such as home movies and other large video files.  The Drobo 5C holds five drives.  The extra drive bay means that you have the ability to hold more data.  Additionally, having an odd number of drive bays means that you can sometimes increase the total available space on your Drobo just by adding one additional drive; with a 4-bay Drobo, you often need to add two larger drives to take advantage of an increase in total usable capacity.

New to the Drobo 5C is a USB Type-C connector on the Drobo itself.  The Drobo 5C comes with a standard USB to USB-C cable.  Chances are, your current computer just has a regular USB connector, so that cable will work great for you.  But in the future, more and more computers will moving away from USB towards USB-C.  (If you currently use a very new computer, you may already have USB-C.)  So this Drobo works with current computers, while being ready for the future.

In theory, USB-C can be twice as fast as USB 3.0.  Because I don’t have a USB-C port on my computer and thus I used my computer’s USB connection, I didn’t notice any speed increase with the 5C versus my older Drobo.  But if you have a newer computer with USB-C, I would think that this connection would be faster.  As noted above, the main advantage that I see to using USB-C is future-proofing.

Software

Drobo comes with Drobo Dashboard software that you can use to work with your Drobo.  In the Dashboard, you can see specific details on drive capacity and health, dim the lights if you find them to be too bright, format drives, etc.  I rarely have the need to use this software because the great thing about Drobo is that it just works, and all that you really need to do is glance at the lights on the front of a Drobo to check that all is well.  Nevertheless, it is nice to be able to check in the Dashboard just to see how everything is working.  And the Drobo Dashboard software lets you update the software on the Drobo itself when updates are released.

Upgrading from a prior Drobo — and the silver lining to my own incompetence

If you haven’t used a Drobo before, the Drobo 5C is a great place to start.  But if you have an older model of the Drobo, it is easy to upgrade.  As noted above, I bought a 4-bay Drobo back in 2015.  Moving to a new Drobo is just about as easy as shutting down the former Drobo, taking out those drives and putting them in the new Drobo, and then turning on the new Drobo.

At least, it should be that easy for most folks.  I made a mistake when I did my upgrade.  I successfully installed three of the hard drives, but for my fourth hard drive I wasn’t paying close enough attention and I didn’t push the hard drive all the way in.  Thus, when I started up the Drobo 5C, it thought that one of my hard drives had failed, and it warned me to replace that hard drive with a new one.

At first, I was upset at myself for own incompetence.  It’s not like pushing a hard drive all the way in is all that complicated.  Sigh.  But then I realized that there was a nice silver lining; I got my own live demo of what happens when a hard drive fails and I see a flashing red light on the front of the Drobo.  I’ll be honest, my first reaction was a small amount of panic.  I don’t want to lose any of my files, especially home movies of my kids when they were younger!  But then I realized that the Drobo 5C was purring along, working the way that it was supposed to work.  Once the Drobo 5C finished configuring itself with the three drives that it recognized, I ejected that fourth drive and then put it into a drive bay — correctly this time.  The Drobo erased and formatted that fourth drive (just as if it were a brand new drive), and then moved data from the three drives back over to that fourth drive.  Once again, I had a Drobo with four working drives all with green lights.  Whew!  Whenever I do have a real hard drive failure, it will be nice that I already had what amounted to a fire drill so that I can remain calm and know that there is nothing to worry about; the Drobo was made to deal with these sorts of problems.

To take advantage of the new fifth bay that didn’t exist in my older Drobo, I purchased a 2 TB hard drive from Amazon to add to the four 1 TB hard drives that I had been using.  The drive I purchased cost only $89, and it increased my total usable space from 2.72 TB to 3.63 TB.

Conclusion

There is something very freeing about knowing that you have a ton of storage connected to your computer.  Take all the photos and HD video that you want with your iPhone; you’ll always have enough space because it is easy to expand if you need to do so.  And it is even better to know that these precious files are saved not on just a single hard drive, which can fail, but on multiple drives that all work together thanks to the magic of Drobo.

Click here to get a Drobo 5C on Amazon ($349).

According to recent reports from third parties (not from Apple itself), Apple’s share of the education market is decreasing, but its share of the enterprise market — which includes law firms — is increasing.  John Gruber of Daring Fireball discussed these reports, including one from Jamf, and then made this amusing remark:  “So today in 2017, Apple is struggling in the education and creative pro markets, and thriving in the enterprise.  Try telling that to a time-traveler from 20 years ago.”  Very true.  And now, the news of note from the past week:

• New York attorney Nicole Black discusses social media use by lawyers in an article for The Daily Record.
• Karen Freeman of WatchAware discusses the latest version of the Starbucks app, which has new features for the Apple Watch.
• The iPhone’s built-in Camera app has an HDR mode, but Caitlin McGarry of Macworld discusses the latest version of the Adoble Lightroom iOS app which also has an HDR feature — perfect if you are taking a picture outside and have some bright areas (like the sky) and dark areas (like shadows) within the same picture.  I’ve tried them both side by side for a few tests, and I was getting better HDR pictures with the Lightroom app. 
• Rene Ritchie of iMore reviews the ceramic version of the Apple Watch.  I saw a New York attorney wearing this version of the Apple Watch a few months ago, and it looked very stylish on her.
• Federico Viticci of MacStories reviews the Notability app when used with an Apple Pencil on an iPad Pro to take handwritten notes.
• Mike Wuerthele of AppleInsider discusses the latest update to the fantastic Fantastical app, my favorite calendar app.  The update adds a new Apple Watch complication, plus other features.
• Ron Johnson, who created and used to be in charge of the Apple Store, discussed how Steve Jobs initially hated the idea of a Genius Bar in an interview with Kara Swisher of Recode.  Eric Johnson of Recode shares the highlights.
• Ken Segall, who used to do ads for Apple, shares a short and amusing story about Steve Jobs leaving an angry voice mail.
• Walt Handelsman, a New Orleans-based political cartoonist for The Advocate, created a clever cartoon on a President Trump travel ban that everyone can agree on.
• And finally, Apple created a new page of its website devoted to HomeKit technologies.  That page features a video of a woman with an extremely HomeKit-enabled home.  This is far more HomeKit technology than a normal person will ever have, but the video is fun to watch.  Here is a version on YouTube, or you can view the version on that page of the Apple website:

Thank you to Lit Software for sponsoring iPhone J.D. this month.  This company produces three of the very best iPad apps designed for attorneys:  TrialPad, TranscriptPad and DocReviewPad.  I always enjoy seeing Lit Software’s founder, Ian O’Flaherty, and the rest of the Lit Software crew at ABA TECHSHOW in Chicago every Spring, but unfortunately I won’t be able to make the conference this year.  Hopefully, many of you will be there.  It starts next week on March 15, runs through St. Patrick’s Day, and finishes up on March 18.

If you are at TECHSHOW, you will definitely want to check out the Lit Software booth (Booth 415/417), which will be centrally located near the Thomson Reuters booths.  It is a great opportunity to ask the developers of TrialPad, TranscriptPad and DocReviewPad any questions that you have about using their products, and watch some cool demonstrations of features that you might not have even known about.  You are sure to learn about ways to maximize your use of these apps in your law practice.

Additionally, Lit Software has some announcements planned for TECHSHOW next week.  You’ll have to wait until next week to get additional details, but I can give you a few hints:

• Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could use your iPad to edit video depositions?
• Wouldn’t it be great to have a hardware accessory that makes the amazing TrialPad app even more useful in a courtroom?
• If you don’t currently have one (or more) of the Lit Software apps, wouldn’t it be nice to save some money on St. Patrick’s Day?

Next week will be an exciting week for users of the Lit Software apps!  In the meantime, if you want more information about these apps, check out my review of TranscriptPad (an app which I was just using yesterday in my own law practice), my review of TrialPad, and my review of DocReviewPad.  You can click here to access the Ultimate Litigation Bundle on the App Store (all three apps), or here are links for individual apps:

Click here to get TrialPad ($129.99): 

Click here to get TranscriptPad ($89.99): 

One year ago, the FBI asked Apple to create a backdoor into the iPhone and give the key to the FBI so that the FBI could use it — most immediately, to access an iPhone used by one of the shooters in terrorist attacks in San Bernardino, California, but other law enforcement officials soon announced that they also could use such a key to help them to investigate other crimes.  Apple refused.  Even if the FBI had the best of intentions, there was simply too much of a risk that any such tools created by Apple and given to the FBI would eventually end up in the hands of bad guys.  As Tim Cook stated in an open letter posted on the Apple website, “Once created, the technique could be used over and over again, on any number of devices.  In the physical world, it would be the equivalent of a master key, capable of opening hundreds of millions of locks — from restaurants and banks to stores and homes.”  After full briefing, the FBI ultimately backed down in the San Bernardino case, saying that it found another way to access the iPhone in question, but I always thought that Apple had the better argument.

I thought about this yesterday when WikiLeaks released documents that it claims are from the CIA detailing techniques created by the CIA to hack into the iPhone and other devices.  As the New York Times reports:  “In what appears to be the largest leak of C.I.A documents in history, WikiLeaks released on Tuesday thousands of pages describing sophisticated software tools and techniques used by the agency to break into smartphones, computers and even Internet-connected televisions.”  If even the CIA could not manage to prevent disclosure of the secret tools that it created for breaking into devices, how could the FBI be expected to safeguard any tool that everyone would know that it forced Apple to create?

As for the specific iPhone vulnerabilities made available by WikiLeaks, Apple said in a statement released to many news organizations, such as TechCrunch, that many of the exploits had already been fixed:

Apple is deeply committed to safeguarding our customers’ privacy and security. The technology built into today’s iPhone represents the best data security available to consumers, and we’re constantly working to keep it that way. Our products and software are designed to quickly get security updates into the hands of our customers, with nearly 80 percent of users running the latest version of our operating system. While our initial analysis indicates that many of the issues leaked today were already patched in the latest iOS, we will continue work to rapidly address any identified vulnerabilities. We always urge customers to download the latest iOS to make sure they have the most recent security updates.

Notably, Apple did not state that all of the vulnerabilities had already been fixed.  This makes me think that there may now be one or more techniques described in the WikiLeaks document that could currently be used, under the right circumstances, to gain access to an iPhone.

Every iPhone user should be concerned about security because we all keep private information on our smartphone, but lawyers should of course pay particular attention to iPhone security because so many of us keep confidential attorney-client communications on our iPhones.  I am not aware of any reported incident in which a bad guy was able to access, remotely or otherwise, confidential information on a lawyer’s iPhone.  And given Apple’s focus on maintaining and enhancing iPhone security, I hope that no such incident ever occurs.  But there is always a risk, and that is why I encourage all attorneys to install iOS updates when Apple releases them.  Almost every iOS update addresses security in some way, and I suspect that Apple’s next iOS update — and perhaps the new few updates — will address issues relating to the CIA documents.

If there is a silver lining to this latest news, hopefully it will help courts to realize that Apple should not be ordered to create an iPhone skeleton key for the FBI or anyone else.  Once any such tool is created, you have to assume that, eventually, it will find its way into the wrong hands.

Today is Mardi Gras day in New Orleans, the culmination of many weeks of parades and parties.  My own family had a great Mardi Gras season this year, with lots of friends and family getting together to enjoy the festivities.

If you are not in New Orleans today, then I hope that you have a chance to come here at some point in the future.  This city throws a great party during Mardi Gras season.  And of course, New Orleans is a great place to visit year-round if you like food, drinks, music, history or architecture.  Jazz Fest is just around the corner (starting April 28), and the music, food and art at Jazz Fest provides another great reason to visit New Orleans.

Whether you are in New Orleans today in person or just in spirit, have a Happy Mardi Gras!

We are in peak Mardi Gras season down here in New Orleans, and the weather for the parades has been fantastic this year.  Many of the floats feature clever satire, and it goes without saying that the last 12 months have provided ample material to work with.  But you came here for iPhones and iPads, not beads and doubloons, so here is the news of note from the past week:

• Florida lawyer Rick Georges discusses the new unlimited data plans offered by U.S. carriers in a post for his FutureLawyer website.
• Legal tech consultant Brett Burney reviews the Documents 5 app by Readdle.
• Some folks are suggesting that Apple should buy Netflix.  It has enough money to do so, but does that strategy make sense?  Neil Cybart of Above Avalon wrote an interesting analysis of why Apple doesn’t need to buy Netflix.
• Jason Snell has some good and interesting suggestions for improving the iPad Pro in an article for Macworld.
• Joseph Cox of Motherboard explains how with $170 and just a few seconds of access to an Android phone, anyone can install malware to listen to the speaker remotely and track the phone’s location.  The article suggests that something similar could theoretically happen to an iPhone too, but the iPhone has to be jailbroken first.  For this reason, I discourage every lawyer from jailbreaking an iPhone.  Many years ago there were some legitimate arguments for doing so, but improvements in the iOS have made this largely unnecessary and the main reason that people do it nowadays is to run pirated software, which you of course shouldn’t be doing.
• Valentina Palladino of Ars Technica compares Apple’s AirPods to other wireless earbuds.
• Aaron Carroll writes in an article for the New York Times that wearable fitness devices (like the Apple Watch) do not help you to lose weight.
• Overcast, my favorite app for listening to podcasts on my iPhone, was updated to version 3 this week.  The author of the app, Marco Arment, explains what is new in this post.  And Federico Viticci of MacStories wrote a good review of the updated app.
• How often do you buy apps for your iPhone?  Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac reports that, according to research by Sensor Tower, the average U.S. iPhone user spent $40 on apps and in-app purchases in 2016.
• Speaking of buying apps, GoodNotes 4, my favorite iPad app for taking handwritten notes, normally costs $7.99 (and is worth it), but for the next few days the app is discounted to $0.99.  If you have any interest in trying out the app, get it now by clicking here.
• And finally, Apple announced this week that its new campus, called Apple Park, will open in April, although it will take six months to move in the 12,000 employees who will work there.  Here is a short video from Apple showing off the new building:

Soon after Apple first announced its new AirPods, I saw a discussion of other companies potentially making a dock for the charging case.  And sure enough, I see that there are now some products like this for sale.  Spigen makes the Spigen Compact Airpods Stand Charging Case Dock for Airpods, available on Amazon for only $12.99.  The idea of a dock for the AirPods seemed a little silly to me because the charging case doesn’t have to be charged very often.  I use my AirPods every single day (my review), and I probably only need to charge twice a week.  If you use your AirPods more often than I do, you may need to charge more frequently, but the battery life is still pretty good.  The AirPods themselves last around 4-5 hours, and the charging case provides another 20 hours of battery life.

But even though an AirPods dock seemed unnecessary to me, the truth is that I have been using one almost every day for the last few weeks.  On my desk, right next to my computer’s keyboard, I have an Apple iPhone Lightning Dock.  I reviewed that Apple dock back in 2015, and I continue to love having a specific spot to place my iPhone which makes the screen easy to see and which recharges the iPhone.  I noticed that the Lightning connector sticking up from that dock works perfectly with the AirPods — so well that it is almost as if Apple designed this dock with the AirPods in mind.

It is super easy to place the AirPods on the dock or remove them from the dock.  But the Lightning connector also has just enough friction that it is also easy to just pop open the lid on the top of the charging case, making it easy to remove or replace the AirPods, and also making it easy to trigger the iPhone’s on-screen indication of how much power is left in the AirPods.

The Apple dock is $39.  That’s not super-expensive, but it does seem like a lot to pay for a dock for a pair of headphones that don’t even need to be charged very often, especially considering that the Spigen product, and perhaps others, are available for much less money.  So I feel foolish recommending that any user of Apple’s AirPods spend $39 just for an AirPods dock.

Having said that, I still really like this product as an iPhone dock.  I also love that I can unplug the cord from the back of the dock and then use that Lightning cord to charge my iPad at my desk.  (I use the Apple USB-C to Lightning cord with the dock so that the cord provides the fastest possible charge for my 12.9″ iPad Air, but the same cord also charges my iPhone or AirPods.)  And now that the dock also functions as a convenient stand for the charging case of the AirPods whenever I feel like topping of the charge, I find this dock more useful than ever.

Apple used to release iPhone charging docks that were molded to the shape of the bottom of the iPhone.  That meant that you needed a new dock whenever Apple released an iPhone with a new design.  Thus, there was an iPhone 3G Dock, an iPhone 4 dock, and an iPhone 5 dock.  But now that the Apple Lightning Dock has a flat design and relies on the strength of the Lightning connector to hold an iPhone in place, the current model of the dock has worked with the iPhone 6, iPhone 6s and iPhone 7.  We don’t yet know what shape the 2017 version of the iPhone will be, not to mention what its name will be, but I suspect that there is a good chance that this dock will continue to work with many generations to come.  Thus, I suspect that if you buy this dock now, you will continue to be able to use it with upcoming iPhones for many years.

If you like the idea of a dock for your iPhone and AirPods, Apple’s Lightning Dock works really well.  And even if you just want an AirPods dock, if you don’t mind splurging a little, this product handles AirPods like a champ.

Click here to get the iPhone Lightning Dock from Apple ($39.00).

If you spend a lot of time using your iPhone in an area with no Wi-Fi, then you can go through a lot of data.  Unlimited data used to be an option with some carriers, but then it went away.  Now, it is back again.  This week, Verizon announced a new unlimited data plan, and AT&T’s new unlimited data plan starts today.  The plans are not cheap, but may be worth it if you and/or your family use lots of data.  Jerry Hildenbrand of iMore compares the unlimited data plans offered by AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon, and concludes that T-Mobile and Verizon offer the best deals.  But of course if a certain carrier provides better coverage in the areas that matter the most to you, coverage may be more important than the cheapest plan.  And now, the news of note from the past week:

• In an article for Lawyerist.com, Minnesota attorney Eric Cooperstein discusses using an iPad and Apple Pencil to go paperless in your law practice.  He uses his Apple Pencil in many of the same ways that I use mine.
• Anna Massoglia wrote an interesting article for Lawyerist.com about the Ninth Circuit’s recent decision to live stream the hearing on President Trump’s Muslum Ban order.  An amazing 136,000 people listened live, which was up slightly from the previous live stream which had 50 listeners.  On several occasions, I’ve watched a live video feed of arguments before the Louisiana Supreme Court, and it is nice to be able to monitor what is going on without having to be there — and my office is just a few blocks away from the French Quarter where the Louisiana Supreme Court is located.  Live streaming makes it possible to watch or listen from anywhere.  I hope that at some point soon the U.S. Supreme Court switches gears and allows live streaming.
• TechnoLawyer got feedback from a number of legal tech folks about Legaltech 2017, which recently took place in New York.  Participants include Ian O’Flaherty (developer of TrialPad) and Brett Burney (publisher of Apps In Law).
• Sebastian Anthony of Ars Technica reports that, according to estimates by Gartner, 99.6% of all new smartphones run either iOS or Android.
• Greg Barbosa of 9to5Mac reviews the ExoLens PRO, a high-quality $199.95 wide-angle lens for the iPhone.
• Cyrus Farivar of Ars Technica explores what could happen if you refuse to unlock your phone at the U.S. border.
• Christopher Mele of the New York Times reports that airlines are phasing out screens because everyone uses a smartphone or tablet anyway.
• David Pogue of Yahoo reviews six mesh Wi-Fi systems that help to ensure that you have no Wi-Fi dead spots in your home.
• David Phelan of The Independent interviewed Apple CEO Tim Cook during his recent visit to the UK.
• And finally, Apple will soon launch its first two “TV shows” (if that is even the right phrase to use) which will be available exclusively on Apple Music.  One is a reality show called Planet of the Apps — which doesn’t appeal to me because reality shows don’t appeal to me.  But the other one is Carpool Karaoke:  The Series, and it looks like a lot of fun.  Here is the trailer for that one:

Thank you to iManage for sponsoring iPhone J.D. this month.  iManage is the industry’s leading email and document management application, allowing lawyers to create, manage and collaborate on work product.  Over 2,000 law firms use iManage.  I have been using iManage at my law firm since 2003, and over that time I’ve seen the product evolve and improve greatly.  (The name has changed too — from iManage, to Interwoven, and now back to iManage.)  As iManage has improved over the years, the iPhone and iPad integration has improved greatly over time. 

iManage is sponsoring iPhone J.D. to promote iManage Work version 10, which is a major upgrade, offering tools for lawyers to work on documents from anywhere on any device.  Indeed, iManage 10 advertises that it uses a “mobile-first user experience” so that you can learn the software once and then have a consistent experience across phone, tablet and desktop, enabling you to work from anywhere and stay productive on-the-go.  iManage Work 10 includes smart features such as personalized search, document timelines, and intelligent worklists.  Companies around the world in the legal, accounting and financial sector use iManage to handle their documents and emails.

iManage manages not only documents, but emails too.  On the PC in my office, I use the iManage software which is incorporated into Outlook so that I can take any email from my Inbox and drag it in to the appropriate folder in iManage.  That way, case-related emails are stored with the appropriate case, and can later be found by browsing or searching.  I see that iManage Work 10 also works with Lotus Notes and Gmail.

Since you are reading this post, I’m sure that you are especially interested in the iOS app for iManage. I use the iManage app on my iPad or iPhone to access documents and emails that are stored in iManage.  Here are some things that iManage says about the iOS app in iManage Work version 10:

Manage Work Mobility for iOS is a native iOS app for iPhone and iPad that enables professionals to view filed documents and emails, file newly received emails, respond to emails and even edit documents in MS Word, enabling a completely functional and secure user experience with the native iOS functionality, look and feel.

The iManage Work Mobility for iOS app automatically keeps recently accessed content in a local briefcase, which allow users to review work product when disconnected on a flight or in a remote location. Work product in the briefcase is refreshed with a single tap when back online, ensuring all information is up to date with the latest versions of all engagement files.

 

If you want to get a better sense of how the iOS app works, here is a video which shows off the iManage Work Mobility app on an iPad.  It also shows how iManage can be configured so that you can access your documents directly from the Microsoft Word for iOS app.  It looks similar to the way that you can access Dropbox apps from within the Word app:

If you are looking at adding or improving document management at your law firm, you should definitely check out iManage.  And thanks again to iManage for supporting iPhone J.D.

Sleep trackers have been around for a while now, and I know that many people find real value in them.  For just over a month, I tried using Sleep++, a free app by developer David Smith who has created lots of useful apps (including Activity++, an app that I enjoy using to keep track of my progress over time with the Apple Watch activity rings).  I feared that wearing my Apple Watch overnight (and thus not charging it during the night) would mean that my Apple Watch would run out of power during the day, but I thought that the value of monitoring my sleep might be worth it.  It turns out that I was wrong on both counts.  Power wasn’t a problem at all; it doesn’t take very long to give an Apple Watch enough power to last all day.  On the other hand, and to my surprise, I didn’t really see any value to monitoring my sleep activity.

Finding time to charge

I’ll start with the good news.  It turns out that it isn’t necessary to charge an Apple Watch all night to keep it powered during the day.  My tests were with a 42mm Apple Watch (which has a larger battery than the 38mm version), and I have the newest Series 2 Apple Watch (which has better battery life than the original Apple Watch).  If you are using a different model, you might not have the same experience that I did.  But I found that if I took off my Apple Watch after I woke up and charged it while I was showering and getting ready for work, that small amount of time gave me enough power to go all day long.  Sometimes at night I would also charge it for a little bit while getting ready to go to bed just to ensure that I really did get enough charge.  But with those one or two charging periods during the day, I was able to wear my Apple Watch all night long, so that Sleep++ could monitor my sleep, and I never had a problem with the Apple Watch running out of power during the day.

Using the Sleep++ app

Before using the Sleep++ app, I recommend that you put on a comfortable Apple Watch band.  I love my Milanese Loop band during the day, but at night I found a Sport Band much more comfortable.  (The Woven Nylon Band is also pretty comfortable at night.)

Next, when you are ready to go to sleep, start the Sleep++ app.  The bottom of the screen will show data from your lats measured sleep.  At the top of the screen, press the “Start Sleeping” button.  Now you can go to sleep.

When you wake up in the morning, press the Stop Sleeping button at the top of the screen.  The app will then take a few seconds to analyze your sleep from the night before, and will then send the sleep data to the Sleep++ iPhone app.  In that app, you can see data on your sleep, including what time you went to sleep and what time you woke up.  Darker blue bars indicate times that you were likely in a deeper sleep — or more specifically, the times that you didn’t move your arm very much.  Lighter blue bars indicate times that you were more restless.  And if you get up out of bed at night, such as when nature calls, there is a skinny light blue bar to show you that.

Of course, you might not go to sleep exactly when you press the start button, and you might wake up before you remember to press the stop button.  Thus, the app gives you the option to trim the start and stop times so that the data is more accurate.

 

The app stores your sleep data in the Sleep++ app so that you can go back and look at the sleep records for prior nights.  And the app can also share that sleep data with the Health app, which could be useful not only because it keeps the sleep data in the same place where other health-related data is stored, but also because it makes it possible for other apps to access and use that sleep data.

A setting change every night and every morning

One thing that I did not like about using Sleep++ is that I found that for the app to be most useful, I needed to make an important change in the Apple Watch’s Settings app every night.  I needed to go into Settings -> General -> Wake Screen and then turn off “Wake Screen on Wrist Raise.”  When that setting is turned on, it was easy for the Apple Watch screen to turn on during the night.  And if the screen turned on, it was possible to touch the screen to interact it with — even if I was sleeping and doing so without realizing it.  I had two different nights when the Sleep++ app stopped recording my sleep in the middle of the night, apparently because I moved my wrist and the screen turned on, and then I must have touched the screen on the “Stop Sleep” button even though it was all unintentional because I was still sleeping.

Another reason to turn this setting off before using the app at night is it prevents the screen from coming on and creating light while you are moving your arm.  I found that light distracting as I was trying to go to sleep.  And of course having the light come on while you are sleeping is a waste of battery power, so turning this off every night gave me the best battery results too.  But unfortunately, that meant that I had to go back into Settings to turn the function back on every morning because, during the day, I like being able to just raise my wrist to have the Apple Watch screen turn on.

It’s not the fault of Sleep++ that I had to go into the Settings app every night and every morning to make this change.  I’m sure that if there was a way for the Sleep++ app to do it automatically, it would do so.  Even so, I found it annoying to have to make this change.

So what’s the point?

My primary complaint about this app is that I don’t really see the point.  What good is it to see that I slept more one night versus another night?  And seeing that I was more restless one night and less restless another night was somewhat interesting, but again, I don’t quite get what to do with this information.

I see people suggesting online that if you monitor when you have a good night’s sleep and correlate that with other activity in your life, including diet, you can learn to make changes in your lifestyle to get a better night’s sleep every night.  I suppose that makes some sense, but there are enough differences between my activity and diet every day that I wasn’t able to discern any patterns after using this app for a month.  And I see that at least some doctors have also questioned the value of this information.

For me, it was vaguely interesting to use this app for a month, but ultimately I didn’t see any real value in it.

What would Apple do?

There is speculation that Apple will release its own Apple Watch sleep app in the future, perhaps in connection with a software or hardware update to the Apple Watch which improves battery life even more.  Unlike Sleep++, an app from Apple could do things like turn off the Wake Screen on Wrist Rise automatically.  And maybe Apple could even find more interesting ways to measure sleep data. David Smith himself recently wrote about the possibility that Apple could release its own app, making it necessary for Smith to find some other way to make Sleep++ provide value, such as better tools for analyzing data.

Conclusion

I’m glad that I tried Sleep++ for a month.  It was interesting to see how an app like this works.  And if Apple ever releases its own sleep tracking app, I may try this experiment again to see what I think.  But for now, I just don’t see much value in collecting sleep data with Sleep++.  Having said that, if you own an Apple Watch and you do see a value in monitoring and recording your own sleep patterns, Sleep++ is worth checking out.  It is free, it works, and you can use it without having your Apple Watch run out of power by just finding a small slice of time once or twice a day to charge the Apple Watch.

Click here to get Sleep++ (free):