Jeff Richardson

For many years, my iPhone had been on an AT&T data plan where I got 4GB of data a month, and my wife had 2GB/month.  Most of the time, that was sufficient for us.  But for the last few months, there have been times when we have gone over, especially when traveling and away from Wi-Fi.  Every additional 1GB cost another $10, and I got tired of paying that.  Thus, I recently switched to one of AT&T’s brand new unlimited data plans.  The price of the new plan was not much more than my old plan, and was actually cheaper overall by letting me avoid those $10/month overage charges.  If you are an AT&T customer and you are also thinking about taking advantage of one of these new unlimited plans, here are my thoughts.

The history of unlimited data

When the iPhone first went on sale in 2007, AT&T was the only carrier choice, and there was unlimited data.  At the time, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said in a June 27, 2007 press release:  “We want to make choosing a service plan simple and easy, so every plan includes unlimited data with direct Internet access, along with Visual Voicemail and a host of other goodies.”  AT&T stopped offering an unlimited data plan in 2010.  Folks who had it could be grandfathered in to the old unlimited data plan, but there were limitations.  For example, I eventually gave up my unlimited data plan because I wanted the ability to tether my iPad to my iPhone, which was not an option with an unlimited data plan.  In 2016, AT&T brought back an unlimited plan, but it was only available to DirecTV and U-Verse subscribers. 

After other major carriers offered unlimited data plans in 2017, AT&T brought back unlimited data as an option for everyone.  Initially, AT&T was not allowing tethering under the unlimited plan, so you couldn’t use your iPhone to connect an iPad or computer to the Internet.  AT&T changed that on March 2, 2017 when it introduced a second unlimited data plan with new features.  I signed up for the expanded plan and I’ve been using it for about two weeks now.

The current plans

There are currently two ways to get unlimited data on AT&T:  the Unlimited Choice plan, and the Unlimited Plus plan.  Both plans offer unlimited voice calls and text messaging, and both plans offer unlimited data — subject to some restrictions, noted below.

The Unlimited Choice plan costs $60 for the first phone, $115 for two phones, and then $20 a month for additional lines.  But that plan has some important limitations:  (1) no tethering, (2) video streaming is limited to standard definition 1.5Mbps (about 480p, similar to DVD quality), and (3) the speed is capped at 3Mbps.  To get rid of those limitations, you have to select the Unlimited Plus plan, which costs $90/month for the first phone, $145/month for two phones, and $20/month for each additional phones. 

Notwithstanding the “unlimited” in the name, there are still some limitations with the Unlimited Plus plan, but I consider them reasonable limits.  First, after you use 22GB a month, AT&T reserves the right to throttle your speeds.  That’s a lot of data for an iPhone to use unless you plan to stream a large amount of video.  I suspect that it will be a very long time before I ever get close to that much data every month.

Second, although you can get HD video with the Unlimited Plus plan, you need to manually turn it on by disabling the “Stream Saver” feature.  AT&T touts this as a convenience to customers, the idea being that standard definition DVD-like quality is probably just fine for a smaller iPhone screen, and this smaller stream size means that you use less data (taking you longer to hit that 22GB) and the video starts playing faster.  I actually do think that AT&T has a point here, but I’d prefer to get the best video quality possible, so I turned off Stream Saver.  You can do so on the AT&T website, but it is even easier to do so via the myAT&T app on the iPhone:

Third, tethering on the iPhone works great until you hit 10GB in a month.  After that, your tethering speed is limited to 128Kbps, which is quite slow.  If you plan to tether your laptop computer to your iPhone every day, I’m sure that you would hit that limit.  If you are like me and you see tethering as a more occasional thing to do — using it for a few days while you are out of town — then I suspect that 10GB will be more than sufficient.

The other advantage of the Unlimited Plus plan over the Unlimited Choice plan is that your iPhone data speed is not capped at 3Mbps.  The actual speed will vary tremendously during the day and night just depending upon network traffic, how close you are to a cell tower and any interference, where you are in the country, and many other factors.  Even with the Unlimited Plus plan, there have been times when my speed has been slightly less than 3Mbps.  But there have also been times when I have gotten over 100Mbps here in New Orleans, and most of the times that I have checked my speed, it has been over 50Mbps.  Suffice it to say that I’ve been satisfied with the speeds that I have been seeing with AT&T — the same speeds that I was seeing before I upgraded to the Unlimited Plus data plan.

 

Please note that I’ve heard that AT&T service is faster in New Orleans than many other cities.  If you are already an AT&T customer, then you can test yourself to see what the data speeds are in your area.  According to the latest report (February, 2017) from OpenSignal, the average AT&T 4G (LTE) speed is the United States 13.86Mbps, which is just slightly slower than the T-Mobile and Verizon average in the United States (around 16.7Mbps).

What I think

Even though I’m only a few weeks into this new Unlimited Plus plan, I can already tell that I like it.  I get the same AT&T speed that I had seen before, which as noted above can be very impressive and is often faster than Wi-Fi.  For example, at my house, I have a Cox internet plan which gives me 300Mbps, so the AT&T service isn’t as fast at my home Wi-Fi if I am close to a router.  But there are some locations in my house where the Wi-Fi doesn’t reach as well, and in those spots, AT&T is faster. 

As for the limits to the “unlimited” plan, I don’t think that they will be a problem for me.  I just don’t see myself using 10GB/month for tethering, nor do I see myself hitting 22GB/month overall.  As noted above, I have been living with a 4GB/month plan for years now, and I think I only went over 5GB/month once.

More importantly, I love the freedom of no longer having to be worried about using data when I’m not on Wi-Fi.  I can stream songs from Apple Music as much as I want.  I can watch all the videos that I want.  And if I am in a part of my house where the Wi-Fi isn’t reaching very well and is thus slow, I can just turn off Wi-Fi on my iPhone and use the fast AT&T data without worrying about going over my previous 4GB/month limit.

Looking to the future, AT&T says that you can add a wearable device to this plan for an additional $10/month.  Apple doesn’t currently sell a wearable device that has a chip to use cell data, but if Apple adds this to the Apple Watch in the future — which I can see happening — AT&T already has a price for this.

If you are an AT&T customer and the idea of virtually unlimited data is appealing to you, I recommend that you check out these new plans.  The new plans may not cost much more than you are paying now (and may even be cheaper if you are currently paying for overages), and it is a real advantage to no longer have to worry about using too much data.

One of the things that the iPhone excels at, but which few of us ever use, is accessibility.  For example, over the years, I have heard many times about blind people who make extensive use of the iPhone.  They do not need to see the screen because of impressive Voice Over technology that reads everything to them.  I’ve always wanted to sit down with someone who is blind so that they can show me how it works, and David Pogue of Yahoo recently had the opportunity to do just that.  In the video at the top of this article, Pogue sits down with Joseph Danowsky, a Harvard Law graduate who is blind and who uses an iPhone.  It is a fascinating video that I encourage you to watch.  I can’t imagine that Apple makes much profit on its Voice Over efforts, but I love that the company invests in the technology anyway.  In this video, the speaker is used so anyone around the blind person could also hear what is on the screen, but I suspect that if a blind person used AirPods in one or both ears, it would be a perfect combination.  It’s all very cool.  And now, the news of note from the past week:

• Massachusetts attorney Robert Ambrogi reviews LiquidText, an iPad app with a different approach for viewing and annotating PDF documents.  I haven’t tried it out yet, but it is worth viewing the one minute video at the top of Ambrogi’s post.  It looks like a really interesting app.
• Ambrogi also keeps a running list of states that have added the requirement to their rules of professional conduct that lawyers have a duty to be competent in technology.  He recently added Tennessee to the list, so it is now up to 27 states that have adopted the duty of technology competence.
• In an article for Above the Law, San Diego attorney Jeff Bennion argues that unless an attorney is often away from the office, “it really doesn’t make sense anymore to invest in a tablet” when you can instead use a Surface Pro 4 to serve as both a computer and a tablet.  I’m glad that solution works for him, but I believe that the iPad is a perfect complement to a computer in your office.  I know that I can do so much more with the two devices on my desk than just using a single device.
• Underscoring Apple’s commitment to privacy, this week Apple hired Jonathan Zdziarski, an iOS security expert who I have mentioned before on iPhone J.D.  Jason Snell discusses the hire on his Six Colors website.
• Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac reviews some of the most popular apps for controlling HomeKit devices with your iPhone.  One that he missed is the Lutron app, which I use.  But as Lovejoy notes, you can now do most of what you need with Apple’s own Home app.
• In an article for Macworld, Jason Snell discusses possible additional features for Apple’s AirPods.  As Snell correctly notes, as tempting as it may be to add more features, they would undoubtedly take away from the simplicity of the AirPods, which is a big selling point.
• Neil Hughes of AppleInsider reports that the Amazon app for the iPhone is being updated to incorporate Alexa, Amazon’s version of Siri, so you can talk to the app just like you might talk to an Amazon Echo.  It hasn’t yet appeared in my version of the app.
• Overcast is my favorite podcast player app on the iPhone.  I use it every day when in the car, when working out, when doing tasks around the house, etc.  The app was recently updated to version 3, and Glenn Fleishman of Macworld posted this review.
• Karen Freeman of WatchAware reviews minube, an Apple Watch app that displays points of interest that are near your current location.
• And finally, Apple created a cute ad to show off sticker packs in the Messages app.  Here is the video:

Five of the six characters in the word “iPhone” refer to the phone feature, but the phone is easily the least important part of my iPhone.  Thanks to email and text messages, I make and receive cell phone calls far less today than I did years ago.  Phone calls can be important, and thus even though I have my iPhone configured so that almost no apps are allowed to play a sound during a notification, I still allow my iPhone to ring when a call comes in.  If it is a call from my wife, a colleague, or someone else important, I want to hear the ring.  But because my iPhone makes noise so infrequently, when I receive a nuisance call from a telemarketer or a robo-call, I am far more annoyed than when I receive a spam email.  Fortunately, Apple recently made it possible for apps to automatically block phone calls.  Since early January, I’ve been using a free app that AT&T provides to its customers called AT&T Call Protect.  (If you are not an AT&T customer, there are similar apps available such as Hiya.)  After using this app for over two months, I can enthusiastically recommend it because it does a fine job of blocking, or at least warning of, nuisance calls.

Blocking Calls

The best part of this app is that it automatically blocks calls from entities that it believes to be a nuisance or likely fraudsters.  The Call Protect app uses Hiya’s list of known phone numbers to block.  When a call is automatically blocked, you never even know that the call occurred.  Your phone doesn’t ring; the call just doesn’t come through.  However, you can go back and look at the call log in the app to see when calls were blocked. 

I see that in late February, there was a week when I received seven calls.  Two of the were from real people who I wanted to talk to.  Five of them were automatically blocked and never bothered me. 

You can tap on an entry in the call log to get more information on the blocked call.  If it turns out that it was someone who you wanted to talk to, you can unblock the number so that it won’t be blocked in the future.  But over the last two months, this app has never blocked a call from a number that I would consider to be legitimate.

 

Call Warnings

If all that the app did was block known fraudulent calls, that would be enough for me to recommend the app.  But even better, if there is a call that the app thinks that you probably don’t want but isn’t as sure, the call is allowed to ring, but you are given a warning.  Instead of just seeing the phone number that is calling you, this app gives you some information on why you probably don’t want to answer the call, such as labeling the caller as a telemarketer or suspected spam.

 

As annoying as it is to get a call on my iPhone from a telemarketer, at least with this app I can know to decline the call immediately.

Temporary Call Block

I haven’t used this feature, but I see that the app also offers a Temporary Call Block feature.  AT&T says:  “Temporary Call Block lets you manually block unwanted calls for 30 days.  Use the AT&T Call Protect app to select the callers you want to block.  These numbers can be renewed for continued blocking.”

Fortunately, I don’t have a need for this feature in my life.  If you do, that is another reason to use this app.

[UPDATE:  PRIVACY

A reader wrote in to note that this app uploads numbers in your iPhone’s Contacts to Hiya.  This is so that the numbers can be added to a white list of phone numbers that are known legitimate numbers.  You can get more information on the privacy implications of Hiya in this post by Glenn Fleishman of Macworld.  This seems reasonable to me, but consider this before you use this app.]

Conclusion

AT&T Call Protect works great.  It blocks calls from entities that you never want to talk to, warns when you probably don’t want to answer the phone, and gives you a log so that you can see exactly what it is doing.  I recommend that you use the app.

Click here to get AT&T Call Protect (free): 

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).