One of my favorite iPad apps is GoodReader, which I use to manage PDF versions of all of the documents in all of my case files. I knew that for many years, the developer, Yuri Selukoff, lived in Moscow, which raised security concerns for some. But I recently came across this February, 2016 article about Selukoff by Eric Lai of the official BlackBerry blog. Apparently Selukoff was no fan of the Russian government, especially after the invasion of Crimea, and applied for an EB-1 U.S. visa, reserved for an alien of extraordinary ability — typically folks like Nobel prize winners. He got it in July of 2015 based on his development of the GoodReader app. (I’m curious if any others have obtained an EB-1 visa simply based on the development of an app.) I discuss all of this today because, in a newsletter sent this week (which I don’t yet see posted online), Selukoff announced that he is now living in San Francisco and is working on a major update to GoodReader. Version 5 will have a new user interface and will be a free upgrade. The release date has not yet been announced, but I’d love to see a new, clean interface on this essential app for my litigation practice. (For example, I used that app all day long yesterday in a deposition of a plaintiff; all of the documents produced in discovery were quickly available to me in GoodReader.) And now, the recent news of note:
California attorney David Sparks discusses Scrivener, a beloved writing tool for the Mac that is now available on the iPad.
Brett Burney reviews Westlaw Case Notebook Portable E-Transcript, an app that can open a .ptx file from a court reporter.
Geoffrey Fowler of the Wall Street Journal reviews Eero (his favorite) and other Wi-Fi routers that you can use to spread Wi-Fi throughout your house and eliminate dead spots. I addressed this problem in my own house in early 2015 by paying someone to run Cat 6 cable from one end of my house to another. My own solution has worked very well, except that there is still one spot at the end of my living room (between my two AirPort Extreme routers) that sometimes gives me trouble. If I had to do it again today, I would seriously consider Eero and similar products.
GoodNotes, my favorite app for using my Apple Pencil to take handwritten notes on my iPad, was updated this week to add support for tabs. The update also supports one-finger panning when using an Apple Pencil, a feature that I wish existed in every app that supports the Apple Pencil. Read more on the GoodNotes blog.
Sascha Segan of PC Magazine released the 2016 version of its report on best mobile networks in the U.S. It is an extensive report that looks at differences in numerous cities across the country. Here in New Orleans where I live, AT&T comes out on top, which I was glad to hear because I use AT&T. But in other cities there are other carriers with the best networks.
Serenity Caldwell of iMore explains an update to Apple Music that lets you store your music library without digital rights management (DRM) — which essentially means that it incorporates the iTunes Match service.
Apple’s Lisa Jackson (VP of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives) explains why Apple is buying and protecting forests, not only in the U.S. but also in China.
Apple’s Eddy Cue (VP of Internet Software and Services) talked to Natalie Jarvey of The Hollywood Reporter about Apple’s plans for TV.
Peter Kafka of Recode offers a “translation” of what Eddy Cue told the Hollywood Reporter.
Karen Freeman of WatchAware reports that a man’s Apple Watch mostly survived being submerged at the bottom of a lake for over a month.
J.D. Power announced that Apple ranks highest among manufacturers of smartwatches. The Apple Watch “ranks highest in customer satisfaction with smartwatches and performs particularly well in comfort, styling/appearance and ease of use.”
I am always surprised when I meet an attorney who is an avid reader but who never listens to audiobooks on an iPhone. They are really missing out. A great voice actor can make a book come alive. And while that is enough of a justification, the biggest advantage for me is that one can “read” while driving, doing chores around the house, cutting the grass, exercising … it is a great way to multitask. If you haven’t tried an iPhone audiobook yet, check out a store like Audible (owned by Amazon).
And if you are looking for a good audiobook, I have a recommendation for you. Last week, Connecticut divorce attorney Wendy Walker released a novel called All is Not Forgotten, and I listened to it last week and over the weekend at the beach. It was fantastic.
Wendy and I went to law school together at Georgetown, and we were even in a study group together during our first year. Thus, I’ve known for a long time how smart and clever she is. You’ll definitely see that yourself when you read this book. Indeed, I’m not the only one to love her book; as reported by Variety, Reese Witherspoon’s production company (known for “Wild,” “Gone Girl” and “Hot Pursuit”) bought the film rights last year, and I understand that a screenplay is in the works. Of course, you should read the book before you see the movie — movies are great, but always leave out so many interesting details.
The book is a psychological thriller crime novel. It is full of surprises, including one that begins at the beginning — the story is told from the perspective of a narrator, but you don’t learn who the narrator is for several chapters. I don’t want to spoil anything, so I won’t say much more other than the story is about a rape and the implications of erasing a (traumatic) memory. It is full of twists and turns that keep you guessing whodunit until the end. You can see and hear Wendy discuss the structure of this novel (without any spoilers) in this YouTube video:
The audiobook version was especially good because it has a celebrity reader who is perfect for the role: Dylan Baker (IMDB link). If the name is not familiar to you, click the IMDB link and I suspect that you will recognize his face, perhaps from the Spiderman movies or the TV show The Good Wife. I most identify him with one of my favorite TV series, The Americans, in which Baker played a key role during the most recent season. The narrator of All is Not Forgotten is smart and somewhat elitist and arrogant, and Dylan Baker is perfect. He doesn’t just read the book, he essentially plays that role, almost like a radio drama. I don’t know who Reese Witherspoon will cast in the movie, but Dylan Baker would be great. (Reese Witherspoon told Wendy that she wants to play the mother character in the movie version of the book; I can definitely see Witherspoon playing that role very well.)
Wendy told me that authors typically are not involved in the creation of the audiobook, but her publisher did consult Wendy about using Dylan Baker, and she knew that he would be perfect. Wendy told me: “He has done many audio books and has a voice that most people recognize immediately. He is a character actor as well, so I had no doubt that he would be able to get into the head of my narrator and become him. This is very important with a first person narrative.” She told me that his reading of the book was “brilliant” and “his vision really brought the characters to life.” I agree.
I asked Wendy how her training and experience as a lawyer impacted her writing this book. She told me that her legal training helped her to map out the story meticulously, with colored index cards and a master sheet which kept track of what was happening when. “Because the plot involves multiple characters and an intricate plot that depends as much on the psychological elements that are revealed as it does on the events that occur, the careful layering was essential to making it work. I credit the years of [legal] training to analyze, break down issues, and build an argument with my ability to execute this vision for the structure of the novel. Also, my work as a family law attorney and a trained guardian ad litem gave me a deeper knowledge of psychology, which I utilize in the novel.”
If you listen to the audio version of this book, the last chapter is a short interview with Wendy. I love it when a book does this because when I finish reading a good book (or watching a good movie or a good TV show), I find myself craving more. Thus, I’ll often go to my computer and search for reviews or anything else to get just a little more insight into the creative work. It was great fun to go from the last few words of the book directly into listening to Wendy talk about it, all without having to do anything on my iPhone other than keep listening.
Whether you read the paper version of this book or enjoy the fantastic audio version like I did, I encourage you to put All is Not Forgotten on your summer reading list. It’s an engaging story, told in an interesting way, with lots of great characters.
Yesterday, Apple released updates for the iPhone and iPad (iOS 9.3.3) and Apple Watch (watchOS 2.2.2). They were minor updates that fixed a few bugs and don’t add any new features that I have seen. What I’m really waiting for is iOS 10 and watchOS 3. Both are due in a few months, and developers are working with beta versions of them now so there are lots of folks kicking the tires. This past weekend, I had a chance to spend some time with the beta version of watchOS 3, running on the Apple Watch of a developer. I normally don’t talk about beta software on iPhone J.D., but I know that lots of attorneys and others are really looking forward to watchOS 3 for the reasons set forth in my preview last month, especially the improvements that make the Apple Watch faster to use. After using the beta of watchOS 3, I can confirm that watchOS 3 is a significant upgrade and will vastly improve the experience of using an Apple Watch.
Faster app launching and access
One of the best features of watchOS 3 is that apps launch faster. This feature works really well. If you put an app in the new Apple Watch Dock, accessed by using the side button, then the app launches much, much faster than on watchOS 2. Often it is instantaneous, which is amazing. Other times there is maybe a second delay in launching, which is still much better than watchOS 2. (And remember, I was using beta software, so everything may be even faster and more optimized when the final software is released in a few months.)
The Dock also makes it much easier and faster to find the apps that you use the most. It is much better than having to find an app on the honeycomb shaped home screen.
When you launch an app that isn’t in the Dock or a complication, it takes a long time to launch — perhaps just as long as on watchOS 2. But I don’t see that as a real issue. Seeing the most frequently used apps launch faster is a very big improvement.
Watch faces
Changing watch faces is much faster in watchOS 3. Instead of a force touch followed by a swipe left or right, you can now use an edge-to-edge (left or right) swipe on the watch face to change to a different face. Put two watch faces that you like side-by-side, and you can swap them pretty quickly.
This feature works so well that changing faces in watchOS 3 becomes not just a fashion statement but also a utility. You can create a few watch faces that make the most sense depending upon the task that you are doing, and then quickly switch between them as necessary.
I still wish that Apple would allow third party watch faces, and perhaps this will come in watchOS 4. But this one change will make watch faces, and the complications that can be added to watch faces, much more useful.
Scribbling text
With the new scribble feature in watchOS 3, you can easily send more complicated replies to emails or text messages, without having to talk and use the dictation function and without being limited to the pre-set replies. Scribbling letter by letter is somewhat slow, but I found it incredibly useful to have the freedom to write any word. Better yet, I didn’t realize before using the beta software that you usually don’t have to scribble every letter in a word. Just scribble one or two letters and a faint icon will appear on the right with an up and down arrow:
That icon indicates that you can scroll the digital crown to see words and phrases that begin with your letter(s). It is similar to the autocomplete feature on the iPhone, and it often means that you can enter a word by only scribbling one or two letters.
As a former Palm user, I did find myself wishing that Apple used something similar to Palm’s old Graffiti alphabet. For example, instead of using two strokes to make the letter T, I found myself wishing that I could just use a single stroke to make an upside-down L (the Graffiti shortcut for a T). And there were a few times when I tried to make a capital B but the Apple Watch thought I was making a 13. I’m sure that with more use, one gets better at using the scribble feature on an Apple Watch.
Of course, for really long and complicated replies you will want to just reach for your iPhone and use the keyboard. But after just a few minutes of trying out this feature, I was really impressed by how useful it is. I’ve learned over the past 15 months of using an Apple Watch that there are times when it is far more convenient to send a message from the watch instead of pulling an iPhone out of my pocket, and the scribble feature of watchOS 3 assists with this convenience.
Now playing
There was one part of watchOS 2 that I missed on watchOS 3. The only Glance that I regularly use in watchOS 2 is the Now Playing Glance. I swipe up on my watch face and instantly see the play/pause button, which is useful for controlling music, a podcast, or an audio book that is playing on my iPhone — sometimes using the built-in speaker, but more often using a Bluetooth speaker. My iPhone and/or speaker might be located across the room, but I can currently control the audio, and even skip back or forward, using a simple swipe up on the watch on my wrist:
In watchOS 3, Glances are gone. Swiping up on the clock face just brings up the Control Center. You can still control audio using the Music app, which you can put in your Dock, but in my tests over the weekend that is somewhat less convenient. First, you need to press the side button. Then, you need to swipe to locate and then select the Music app. You can move any app so that it is at the beginning of the Dock, but it still takes more steps to get to a screen with a play/pause button in watchOS 3 than on watchOS 2.
I thought that a workaround would be to put a Music complication on my watch face. That way, I could just tap the complication on the face of my watch and launch the app with the play/pause button. My gut tells me that there must be a way to make this work, but I couldn’t figure out how to do that during my tests over the past weekend. If any of you are already using the beta of watchOS 3 and have found a simple way to get to that play/pause/FF/RW screen, I’d love to hear about it. Otherwise, this is one of the first things that I will be trying to figure out when watchOS 3 is released and on my own watch.
Conclusion
I also tried out iOS 10 on an iPhone this past weekend, and it also has some nice features as I noted in my preview. But once you are ten versions into an operating system, I suppose it is natural that the improvements are more incremental. In contrast, the Apple Watch is still young with lots of room to grow and improve. Perhaps for this reason, watchOS 3 is a major step forward.
Overall, I was incredibly impressed with the beta version of watchOS 3. Except for the Now Playing feature noted above, I was disappointed to return to using watchOS 2 on my own Apple Watch. Indeed, considering that this was beta software, I was surprised how well it worked, only crashing once during all of my tests. Maybe it will be even faster and more polished when the final version is released in a few months, but even if the final experience is exactly the same as what I tried this past weekend (other than that one crash), I think that most Apple Watch users will be incredibly satisfied.
Back in 2014, explicit photographs of about 100 celebrities started showing up on the Internet, and it was discovered that many came from Apple’s iCloud server. At first, folks thought that Apple was hacked, but investigation revealed that the celebrities had been tricked into revealing their iCloud passwords to hackers, a process called social engineering, and then the bad guys just logged in using the username and password to access the photos. A few months ago, one of the men responsible pled guilty, and Engadget reports this week that now a second man has pled guilty. I mention this because this week, Dan Moren of Six Colors published two articles (1, 2) that explain how to turn on Apple’s relatively new two-factor authentication system. I had previously been using a prior Apple system called two-step verification. The point of these systems is that someone cannot access your account with just the password, so even if they trick you into giving it to them, or if they find a piece of paper where you wrote it down, etc., that isn’t sufficient. Logging in also requires physical access to one of your trusted Apple devices, such as your iPhone. For example, if you try to use an iPad to connect to your iCloud account for the first time, not only do you have to enter your password on the iPad, but also you need to enter a number that appears on your iPhone screen. A bad guy might have your password, but hopefully he won’t also have your unlocked iPhone — and if he does, you have bigger problems on your hand. Better yet, when that special number appears on your iPhone, a map shows you the location of the person trying to log in. Thus, if the number appears when you are not intending to authorize a new device, and if the map shows that the request is coming from a different state or a different country, you know that someone else is trying to improperly access your account. I recommend that you turn on the new two-step authentication system, which is what I did this week after reading Dan Moren’s article. It’s quick and easy to turn on, and it gives you some extra security. And now, the other news of note from the past week:
Florida attorney Rick Georges discusses the Palm Pilot (state of the art in 1998) and links to a PCMag.com history of all of the Palm devices, including the Treo 650 that I used for many years, and really loved when it was in its prime.
Florida attorney Katie Floyd discusses IFTTT, a useful service for controlling devices and automating actions.
Brett Burney reviews Grafio, an app that you can use to create visual diagrams and flowcharts.
If you want to get cable stations without cable TV (or satellite TV), one option is to subscribe to Sling TV, which you can do via an Apple TV. I haven’t tried the service, but when I’ve looked at the offerings in the past I’ve been confused by the packages. Jared Newman wrote a good article for TechHive that explains the pricing. It looks like you need to pay about $40 a month for full basic channel selection, then you pay extra for additional channel packages. By the time you are done, it looks like you might be paying about the same that you pay for cable, but still I like that this option is out there.
Julie Strietelmeier of The Gadgeteer reviews Automatic, a device that lets your iPhone collect information from your car.
Have you ever found that the Messages app on your iPhone has two separate message threads even though they are with the same person? This has happened to me in the past. Dan Moren of Six Colors explains what you can do if this happens — but unfortunately there often isn’t much you can do.
Michael Simon of Macworld discusses third party keyboards for the iPhone. I have Gboard, the keyboard he recommends, and it is sometimes useful.
There is an interesting post on the Molly Watt Trust website about a woman who uses her Apple Watch to cope with Usher Syndrome (she was born deaf and has lost most of her sight). It works very well for her to have the Apple Watch tap on her wrist to get her attention.
Ben Brooks offers advice for choosing between the 9.7" and the 12.9" iPad Pro.
And finally, Dennis Sellers of Apple World Today reports that Apple’s Cookie Monster commercial for Siri was named a Top 10 Breakthrough Ad by Ace Metrix. That’s as good an excuse as any to watch the twovideos again:
The best stylus on the market is the Apple Pencil, but it costs $99 and requires an iPad Pro. If you don’t use an iPad Pro, there are other good choices on the market because stylus technology has improved considerably over the last year. Lynctec recently sent me a free review sample of their latest stylus, the Apex Fusion. I’ve been trying it out over the last few weeks, and it is an excellent stylus that is worth your consideration if you cannot use an Apple Pencil.
In addition to the black model that Lynctec sent me, the company also sells silver, gold and rose gold versions of the Apex Fusion.
To speed things up in this review, I will start by referring you to my review of the Adonit Jot Dash that I wrote last October. As fully explained in that review, Jot Dash was the first active stylus (a powered stylus that uses a fine tip) available in a thin stylus, with a barrel diameter similar to a pencil or pen. (Earlier active styluses were thicker, more like a Sharpie or other marker; and before active stylus, we only had non-powered styluses that could be thinner but had thick tips so it felt more like you were using a crayon then a pen or pencil.)
In the following picture, the Apex Fusion is at the top, the Jot Dash is in the middle, and the Apple Pencil is at the bottom:
The Apex Fusion has a lot in common with the Jot Dash. The barrel of the stylus is thin, so it looks like a normal pen. It has a fine tip (2 mm) so that when the end touches your iPad screen it works like a pen, not a crayon. It is powered, so you have to charge it. And unlike more sophisticated styluses that have extra buttons that can communicate with certain apps using Bluetooth (for example, telling the app to switch to an eraser mode), there are no extra buttons on the Apex Fusion (or the Jot Dash).
But the Apex Fusion has a few tricks up its sleeve that I think make it a better option than the Jot Dash for many people. First, the tip has a fiber polymer tip, so it is soft against your iPad screen. The Jot Dash has a hard tip, so it makes a little noise against the screen. The soft tip on the Apex Fusion is much more quiet, which I prefer when I am taking notes in a room with others. I also like the way that the soft fiber glides against the screen. I’ll admit that there is a personal preference at play here, and others might disagree, but my preference is to use a tip like the one on the Apex Fusion and I suspect that many others would agree.
Second, the front of the barrel is not smooth like the Jot Dash but instead has a patterned grip area that makes the stylus easier to hold in your hand.
Third, the Apex Fusion doesn’t require a special adapter to charge. There is a small micro USB port on the side near the back of the stylus. It doesn’t get in your way, and I barely even notice it unless I am looking to charge the stylus. Compare this to the Jot Dash, which comes with a device that fits into a (normal sized) USB port and holds the stylus. It works well if you have it with you, but if you need a charge and that small device isn’t with you, you are out of luck. Micro USB cords come with a ton of different devices, so there is a good chance that you will have one or can find one wherever you are.
In terms of performance, the Apex Fusion and Jot Dash work about the same. That means that they work pretty well, but are not nearly as good as the Apple Pencil. Of course, nothing for the iPad is as good as the Apple Pencil. There is a noticeable lag between the time that you start to write and when you see the digital ink appear, and sometimes the digital ink is less smooth than what you actually drew. It’s the reason that, before the Apple Pencil, many folks concluded that the trade-offs of an active stylus were not worth it and they preferred a traditional, non-powered stylus. I myself often fell in that camp.
But if you want an active stylus because you like the idea of a tiny tip, and the Apple Pencil isn’t an option for you, there is a lot to like about the Apex Fusion. If the Apple Pencil is not an option for you — because, for example, you use an iPad Air or Air 2 or older iPad — the Apex Fusion by Lynctec is one of my favorite styluses on the market today. On the other hand, if you use an iPad Pro, I recommend that you spent the extra money and get an Apple Pencil, which is the gold standard. And finally, if using a stylus is important to you and you don’t currently use an iPad Pro, you should consider upgrading to a new iPad so that you can use the Apple Pencil.
One of my favorite features of the Apple Watch is that it is so easy to swap out watchbands. I typically wear the Milanese Loop when I’m at work or otherwise wearing nicer clothes, and I typically wear the black XL Sports Band at night, when working out, and when wearing more casual clothes on the weekend. I wouldn’t want to wear the Sports Band at the office or the Milanese Loop when I am working out, so it is great to have just the right band for the right occasion. Mitchel Broussard at MacRumors has an interesting post this week about the large number of bands that are currently listed as “sold out.” In early May, my wife ordered a Classic Buckle for her 38mm Apple Watch in the Marine Blue color — a really nice looking band that looks great on her — and it took over a month to arrive after we ordered it. And now I see on the Apple website that it is listed as Sold Out. The MacRumors article points out that Apple plans to follow a seasonal cycle, so certain styles will sell out and then be gone forever. I suppose the moral is that if you see an Apple Watch band that you really like, consider buying it before it is gone forever. And now, the news of note from the past week:
I’ve never been an Evernote user, but I know many lawyers who love the service. The company increased its prices this week, which as you can imagine was unpopular with many users. Both Florida attorney Katie Floyd and California attorney David Sparks discuss the new prices.
Long after the rest of the world moved on to iPhones and Android, many in government in D.C. continued to use Blackberry devices. Jim Swift of Bomble.com reports that Senate staffers received notice this week that they will no longer be issued Blackberry smartphones.
I’ve seen some very favorable reviews of the new Bose QC35 noise-cancelling wireless headphones. For example, Serenity Caldwell of iMore says in her review that it is on the short list of her favorite tech purchases of 2016.
J.R. Bookwalter of Macworld reviews Streets, an app that integrates Google Street View with Apple Maps — and even brings Street View to the Apple Watch.
Zac Hall of 9to5Mac reports that the Walgreens app now has better integration of coupons. This reminds me that I should use the app more. There is a Walgreens close to my house, and I love that it is so easy at that store to use Apple Pay and to even enter my Walgreens reward card using my iPhone and Apple Watch.
As reported by Jared Nelson of TouchArcade, the iPad game Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens was released this week. My son and daughter give it two big thumbs up, and after watching them play the game a little, I may have install it on my iPad too to give it a spin.
And finally, I enjoyed this short story by Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac about a French TV talk show that suddenly had a power outage, which caused the TV cameras to stop functioning. But the show must go on, so the folks on stage took out their iPhones and filmed the rest of the show that way. Here is a video that shows what happened. Even if you don’t speak French, you can see how the folks involved are being pretty creative to switch to iPhones. Lovejoy says that this is the first time that a broadcast TV show in France has ever been shot on an iPhone. Here is the video:
Thank you to Drobo for sponsoring iPhone J.D. this month. Drobo appears to your computer to be a single external hard drive, but it actually has multiple hard drives inside of it and your data is always stored on multiple drives. Thus, when one of the hard drives fail — and remember, all hard drives will fail at some point — your data is still safely stored on the remaining drives. Just eject the dead drive and replace it with another drive, and you are back in business. You can also swap out the hard drives to larger versions, making it easy to expand your storage. To read more about why I love using my own Drobo, check out what I wrote in December of 2015.
The Drobo that I purchased last year is the standard model, simply called the Drobo. It holds four drives and attaches directly to my computer using USB 3.0. Mine has four 1 TB drives, which only cost about $50 to $60 each. My computer sees that as a single drive with a capacity of 2.67 TB. (You don’t get the full 4 TB because some space is being used to backup data on other drives.) But you can use larger drives if you want more space.
When I took these pictures, there were only four (of ten) blue lights lit up on the front of my Drobo. But just this past weekend, as I was saving some video files (home movies of my kids), a fifth light went on because I’m now using about half of my total capacity (1.23 TB used, 1.43 TB free).
Drobo has other models too, including the 5N which holds five drives and attaches to your network using Gigabit Ethernet.
Finally, Drobo has a special discount for iPhone J.D. readers. For a limited time, if you buy a Drobo 4-bay, Drobo 5D, or Drobo 5N on the online Drobo Store, and use coupon code Jeff100, you’ll get $100 off. So it will only cost you $449 to get the same configuration that I have, or only $199 to get that same Drobo with no hard drives included — handy if you already have some hard drives to use, or if you want to buy the drives separately from another store like Amazon.
I love my Drobo because it gives me lots of space to safely store my files. If you are looking for external storage for your PC or Mac, check out Drobo and save some money with the coupon code.
I often link to stories about how people used Find my iPhone to recover a lost or stolen iPhone or iPad. Unfortunately, however, if your device is stolen, there is a good chance that you’ll never recover it again. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t anything that you can do. Mikah Sargent of iMore recently had his iPad stolen, and he did not recover it. Nevertheless, he does offer good advice for what to do if your device it stolen. Read this now so that you will be prepared in case you are a victim in the future. And now, the news of note from the past week:
California attorney David Sparks threw caution to the wind and installed the first beta of iOS 10 on his iPhone, primarily so that he could try out the first beta of watchOS 3 on his space gray 42mm aluminum Apple Watch. This has resulted in some crashes — after all, we are talking about early beta software — but he confirms that the improvements in watchOS 3 are real. I especially like his idea of setting up three watch faces: one for work, one for fitness, one form home. That way, he can swipe between them quickly to get exactly the information and complications that he needs at different times in the day. I plan to do this too. But I’m especially happy to hear that current third party apps, without any specific improvement for watchOS 3, are running so much better on the current Apple Watch software. This is great news.
Zac Hall of 9to5Mac reviews the August Doorbell Cam, a smart doorbell. You can use your iPhone to see who is at the door when they ring the doorbell, or when motion is detected.
I normally don’t link to posts on Mac software, but I’ll make an exception for Jason Snell’s Hands on with macOS Sierra, the update to macOS that will be released this Fall. Obviously, his thoughts are worth reading if you use a Mac. But even if you don’t, the article is an interesting read to see how many features are coming to, or being improved on, the Mac that also have so much importance on the iPhone and iPad: Siri, iCloud, an update to Photos, Continuity, Picture-in-Picture, Messages, Notes — almost every single feature that Snell mentions has some sort of iPhone connection.
If you are interested in space and you have an Apple TV, you’ll want to check out the new NASA app for Apple TV. Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac discusses the NASA app.
The new Photos app in iOS 10 can look at your pictures and recognize over 4,000 difference scenes and objects, so that you can search for things like “beach” or “football” or “wine” and the app will find pictures containing those items. Kay Yin came up with a list of all of the items that Photos can understand. There are tons of common items, and quite a few obscure ones too, such as baklava, kilt, and ukulele.
There is a rumor that in an upcoming iPhone — perhaps the model to be released this Fall — Apple will not include a headphone jack, instead having folks use Bluetooth or the Lightning port for headphones. John Gruber of Daring Fireball explains why Apple would do this even though the move may seem unpopular at first.
Apple has not shown off many iPad-only features in iOS 10, but Federico Viticci discusses the features that we know of so far. Note, however, that Apple will likely release a new iPad later this year, and when it does so, we may learn of additional iOS 10 features for the iPad that require the latest hardware.
Do you ever see a small icon at the top of your Apple Watch and wonder what it means? Apple has a nice support page that explains every one of those status icons.
Dennis Sellers of Apple World Today reviews The Stylus Sling, a strap for your iPad that holds an Apple Pencil.
And finally, according to Ramona Shelburn of ESPN, when the Cleveland Cavaliers had lost the first two games of the NBA finals and LeBron James was looking for a way to inspire his team, he played a portion of the commencement address that Steve Jobs gave to Stanford University 11 years ago on June 12, 2005. I linked to this video in October 2011 when Jobs died, but it is so powerful that it is worth linking to again in case you haven’t had a chance to watch it yet. I watched it again last night, and it is still great. Stay hungry, stay foolish.
Anyone who purchases a first generation technology product knows — or ought to realize — that it won’t be perfect. The first generation iPhone was released in 2007, and it lacked third party apps, lacked 3G (using the slow Edge network), and could not even cut and paste. I knew when I purchased a first generation Apple Watch in early 2015 that I would be using a product with a lot of rough edges. Sure enough, third party apps are often painfully slow, and there are interface quirks that beg to be revised.
And yet I still love my Apple Watch, and I use it and rely upon it every single day. It helps me manage notifications from clients and co-counsel. It keeps me on track with my appointments. It put me on an exercise regime which, for the first time in my life, I have stuck with for more than a few months. I recognize that part of my fascination with this product is a result of me being a tech nerd who often lusts after the latest technology, even if it has flaws, just because it is neat. Having said that, I know many others who definitely don’t fall into that category and who also love wearing an Apple Watch — such as my wife, an intelligent attorney who is smart enough to use any technology, but who is definitely not a techie and doesn’t waste her time on any technology unless it is usable and clearly helpful.
When you have a product that you love to use but which has obvious flaws, one cannot help but look forward to the next version of the product. For many months now, I’ve been looking forward to buying a second generation Apple Watch whenever it is released, hoping that it would keep what I love while fixing the shortcomings. To my complete surprise, Apple showed off a new Apple Watch operating system last week — watchOS 3 — which seems to fix the key shortcomings of the Apple Watch with a simple, free software update coming this Fall.
I’ve been reading quite a bit about watchOS 3 for the last week, and the new features look incredible. For lawyers who want a personal assistant on their wrist to help them get things done, watchOS 3 looks like it is going to be an amazing upgrade. Here is why.
Launch apps faster
The core features of the current Apple Watch usually work quite well, but third party apps (and even some of the built-in apps) have had limited usefulness because they are slow to use. When watchOS 2 was released in September of 2015, its support for native apps led me to hope that apps with work faster. But that really hasn’t happened.
In watchOS 3, Apple is addressing this by keeping up to 10 apps (which you select) in memory all of the time. Thus, they are always ready to launch in an instant, and are already updated when you launch an app.
Apple is not known for lying in its product demonstrations, but when I saw Apple show how much faster watchOS 3 will be during the WWDC Keynote yesterday, I found myself doubting that it could be true. Sure, I can see how a new Apple Watch with new hardware could be faster, but would keeping apps in memory make such a big difference on the first generation Apple Watch? Apparently, yes. Apple released a beta version of watchOS to developers last week, and while nobody expects the first beta of software to perform as well as a final, shipping product, the early reviews from folks trying it out confirm that it really does work the way that Apple demoed it on stage.
Faster apps will mean that I will start using more apps on my Apple Watch. And since the Apple Watch is designed to let you get things done quickly — you get in, see information, then get out — that means that I will have much more information available to me without the distraction associated with using my iPhone, iPad, or a computer. Thus, whether I am using a third party calendar app like Fantastical, using a travel app during a business trip, or communicating with a colleague, the Apple Watch should be substantially more useful.
Even if this was the only new feature of watchOS 3, I would be thrilled.
Access apps faster, using the side button
Since the Apple Watch first debuted, pressing the side button has always brought up a wheel from which you can select a contact. I virtually never use that button, making it a complete waste. 95% of the time that I interact with another person using my watch, I am responding to an email or a text message, so I don’t need to use the wheel to initiate the communication. I will sometimes initiate a text message on my watch, but to do so I just use the Messages app or, better yet, tell Siri to send a message. There are only two hardware buttons on the Apple Watch, so to have one of them — 50% of the buttons — useless was a real shame.
In watchOS 3, pressing the side button will instead launch the new Dock, a useful area that contains the up to 10 apps that you decide to keep in memory all the time. Scroll between the apps by swiping on the screen or by spinning the Digital Crown. This means that you can access your most frequently used apps much faster, without having to hunt for their tiny icons on the app Home Screen. Tap the dots at the bottom to make the screens smaller and swipe more quickly, or just swipe across the apps.
Better yet, because these apps are already running in memory and automatically update in the background, when you see an app in the Dock, the app is actually running. If you see a timer app which is counting off seconds, you will see those seconds count down in the dock. If you see a weather app, it will show you the current weather. In other words, you can glance at the app without even launching the app.
And for this very reason, Apple is abandoning the Glance with a capital “G” feature of watchOS 1 and watchOS 2. In theory, you have been able to swipe up on the watch face to glance at your favorite apps. In practice, this has never worked well because in the Glances view the app could only show static information, and it was virtually never updated fast enough. And you could only access “Glances” from the watch screen. With the new Dock, on the other hand, you can press the side button and access it from any screen.
Glances are dead. Long live glances in the Dock.
Control Center
So what happens if you do swipe up from the watch screen? Instead of Glances, you will see the Control Center. The new Control Center is similar to the current Control Center, and retains buttons that let you turn on airplane mode, turn on do not disturb mode, turn sounds on or off (silence the watch), find your iPhone, and pair with a Bluetooth device. The new Control Center also adds showing the battery percentage (which can be tapped to turn on the Power Reserve mode to save battery) and a button to lock the watch.
Complications have always been one of the most powerful features on the watch face of the Apple Watch, but only a few of them fit on a watch screen so you have to make difficult triage decisions. Throughout my history of using an Apple Watch, one of my complications has been a battery indicator. Now that battery percentage is always just a swipe away from my watch home screen in the Control Center, I plan to remove that complication from my watch face, which will give me space for something else useful.
Fitness
If you use an Apple Watch to encourage you to be more active, there are lots of fitness improvements in iOS 3. First, you can share your Activity data with others, which will hopefully serve to inspire you. (Mary made her 10,000 steps today, so now I need to do so too!) If you use a personal trainer, you could even share your data with him or her so that your trainer can offer you even more individualized advice.
You will also be able to see more data when you are working out. On a single screen in watchOS 3, you can see up to five workout metrics at once (distance, pace, active calories, heart rate, elapsed time).
There is also a new watch face that includes big activity circles — or a digital version with big numbers — so that you can more easily monitor your progress throughout the day.
The workout app is also smart enough to pause if you stop running (such as at a stoplight) and then resume when you start running again.
There is also a new fitness app called Breathe, that guides you through a breathing exercise to aid in relaxation and stress relief. And for wheelchair users, watchOS 3 offers wheelchair-specific measurements and encouragement, such as a “roll” ring instead of a “stand” ring.
Replies
I noted above that by far the most common type of messaging that I do on the Apple Watch is replies — reply to a text message, or reply to an email. Replies are better in watchOS 3.
First, Apple removed one of the steps for replying. Instead of tapping Reply and then tapping how you want to reply (such as dictating a reply or selecting a recommended reply), you can now just directly tap the method for replying. Skip over the step of tapping Reply first.
Second, if none of the suggested replies is appropriate but you don’t want to speak to your watch (because, for example, you are in a meeting), you can now write your response using the new Scribble feature. Use your finger to spell one letter at a time to draft a reply on the watch. You are not going to want to scribble, letter by letter, an entire paragraph to add to a brief. But if someone asks what conference room you are in, you can quickly scribble something like 46A.
It works for both English and Chinese.
Speaking of sending messages, watchOS 3 takes advantage of the same glitz added to Messages in iOS 3. Thus, you can send and receive stickers (small pictures), animations such as confetti across the screen, etc.
Watch faces
I had hoped that Apple would allow third party watch faces in watchOS 3. They didn’t. I guess that will now be at the top of my feature request for watchOS 4.
But Apple is adding a few new built-in watch face options in watchOS 3. I already mentioned the watch face with activity rings. There some others too, including a Minnie Mouse. Perhaps we will see Donald Duck in watchOS 4. By the way, Apple didn’t announce this, but I’ve heard others say that if you tap the Mickey or Minnie watch face, you can hear the cartoon character’s voice say the time out loud.
Changing watch faces is now faster. Instead of a force touch followed by a swipe left or right, you can now use an edge-to-edge (left or right) swipe on the watch face to change to a different face. Put two watch faces that you like side-by-side, and you can swap them pretty quickly.
watchOS 3 also adds many new complications for built-in apps that you can use on watch faces, and increases the number of complications that you can use on some of the watch faces.
SOS
Hopefully you won’t need to use this feature, but it is nice knowing that it is there. If you press and hold the side button, the Apple Watch will start a countdown timer to call for help. Unless you cancel within a few seconds, your watch will automatically call 911 (or the appropriate emergency services number for the country that you are in). You can then talk to the 911 operator on your watch. After you hang up with 911, the watch can automatically send a message to your emergency contacts along with a map of where you are located so that they can also help you.
Your watch can also show your medical ID with whatever information that you put in it, such as your name, birthday, allergies, etc.
Reminders
You can already use Siri to create a reminder, and your watch will already notify you if it is time to remind you about something. WatchOS 3 adds a Reminders app so you can see and manage your reminders. This means that you can see all of your lists on your watch, such as your grocery list, and you can check off items right on the watch.
Find My Friends
Similarly, while you can currently use Siri to work with some Find My Friends features, watchOS 3 adds a new Find My Friends app. So you can just glance at your watch to see if your kids got to their activities on time, or see where your spouse is when you made it to the restaurant first.
Home
The new Home app will let you manage all of your HomeKit-enabled devices from the watch. Adjust the lighting, check the thermostat, etc.
Unlock your Mac
If you use a Mac, your computer can sense that you are nearby and wearing your Apple Watch to automatically log you in to your computer as you sit down in front of your computer.
Summary
The Apple Watch is going to be considerably better when watchOS 3 comes out this Fall. The speed improvements alone are going to be fantastic, but I also really like all of the interface improvements such as the use of the button for the Dock. And with the new apps and fitness improvements, pretty much everything that I do now on my Apple Watch will be better with watchOS 3.
Sure, at some point, maybe even later this year, Apple will release a second generation of the Apple Watch. And I’m sure that it will add some new feature that will make me want to upgrade. But I love that the current generation Apple Watch will get a huge boost just with the new software in watchOS 3.
And for those of us who do upgrade in the future, thanks to the new SOS feature in watchOS 3, I suspect that a lot of first generation Apple Watches will be going to parents and grandparents.
Most of the news of note this week relates to Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). Some if it relates to the announcements in the Keynote address, but other tidbits have been coming out during the week as folks have started to get a close look at the early beta of the new operating systems for the iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. So without further ado, the news of note from the past week:
Sarah Perez of TechCrunch reports on the interesting tale of Fixed, an iPhone app that helped you with traffic citations. The idea is that you would scan the ticket and then the app would check for common errors and craft a customized letter on your behalf to challenge the ticket. But local governments hated the app and came up with ways to block it, which led to some changes in the app. The latest in the story is that a law firm recently acquired the app and hopes to make the technology work again. It’s an interesting story about the intersection of law and mobile technology.
California attorney David Sparks discusses the issue of service versus privacy in the context of the WWDC keynote announcements.
One more nice bit of news from Sparks. The big news about watchOS 3 is that it is supposed to be so much faster, even on current Apple Watch models. I’ve wondered if the reality would match the hype, but Sparks has been hanging out with folks running the beta of watchOS 3 on their Apple Watches, and he says: “I’m relieved to report that the watch improvements are for real. Apps do launch fast and the watch is significantly snappier.” The only remaining question is, why did Sparks, who is an even bigger Star Wars fan than I am, not title this post: “Crazy thing is, it’s true. … All of it. It’s all true.”
Slide to Unlock has been one of the iPhone’s trademark features since the very first iPhone, but it is going away in iOS 10. Susie Ochs of Macworld explains.
Billboard magazine interviewed four Apple executives to discuss Apple Music: Eddy Cue, Jimmy Iovine, Trent Reznor and Robert Kondrk, as reported by Shirley Halperin. It’s an interesting interview that addresses the intersection of music and technology.
Last month I explained that, if you have an iPhone 6s, you can create a PDF of an email (or anything else that you can print) using 3D Touch. According to Jordan Kahn of 9to5Mac, iOS 10 will bring to all devices the ability to create a PDF file from the Print screen. Great news.
If you use HomeKit devices in your home, the new Home app in iOS 10 will be very useful. Zac Hall of 9to5Mac shows off the new Home app.
And finally, during the Keynote address earlier this week, there was actually an amusing lawyer-related joke that was easy to miss if you were not paying attention. Apple’s vice president of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi, showed off a new feature in iOS 10 where you can 3D Touch on the Mail app icon to see who your unread messages are from, before the app itself even opens. In Federighi’s example, there were hundreds of unread messages. When he 3D Touched the mail icon, there were images of the top mail senders: Apple CEO Tim Cook, Apple vice presidents Angela Ahrendts and Lisa Jackson, and Bruce Sewell, who has been Apple’s General Counsel since 2009. If you look close enough, you can see that every single one of the unread messages to Federighi were from Bruce Sewell. You can watch the video on Apple’s website, or I have embedded it below. Jump to the 54 minute mark to see the joke. Hopefully your own clients are a little more responsive to your own emails.
