Here in New Orleans, we are celebrating Mardi Gras today. I suspect that most of you know a little something about Mardi Gras, even if you haven't been here for it, although your impression of it from afar may be limited to the craziness associated with the French Quarter. Yes, you can find lots of drunken debauchery if that is what you are looking for, but there is also the family side of Mardi Gras, which I described in this post from 2013.
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, plus New Orleans is a great place to visit year-round if you like food, drinks, music, history or architecture.
If you are in New Orleans today, then perhaps I'll bump into you on the parade route. My son will be the one in a Kylo Ren costume. I wonder if any other kids will be dressed up like a Star Wars character today? (Ahem.) Now that I think about it, though, if my son is Kylo Ren, perhaps as his father I should dress up like … well, I better not say, just in case you haven't seen the movie yet. Although surely the embargo on spoilers must have lifted now that the film has crossed the $2 billion mark.
Whether you are in New Orleans today in person or just in spirit, have a Happy Mardi Gras!
Lots of folks are looking forward to the Super Bowl this weekend, and at the school that my kids attend here in New Orleans there will even be a pep rally for Peyton Manning today. (Manning is an alumnus of the school.) But the bigger news right now in New Orleans is Mardi Gras, with lots of great parades tonight through Fat Tuesday. If you haven’t ever attended Mardi Gras in New Orleans, it is a lot of fun and you should put it on your bucket list. From the family-friendly parade atmosphere in Uptown New Orleans to the craziness in the French Quarter, there are lots of ways to have fun as you catch beads, eat great food, and spend time with friends and family. Thanks to numerous parade-tracker apps, you can use your iPhone to figure out when the next parade will arrive at your spot. And now, the news of note in the world of iOS from the past week:
Yesterday, I had a chance to grab lunch with North Carolina attorney Jim Dedman, who was in New Orleans for a DRI conference. (I’m sure it was just a coincidence that the conference took place during Mardi Gras week. Ahem.) If you practice products liability law like I do, I recommend that you follow the Abnormal Use blog that Jim edits. The blog covers what is going on in the world of products liability, often with a sense of humor. For example, a recent entry discusses the recall by Disney of a Darth Vader infant bodysuit because … it is a choking hazard. Sometimes, the jokes just write themselves.
In iOS M&A news, this week Microsoft purchased SwiftKey, which makes a popular third party keyboard for iOS, as reported by Tim Bradshaw and Murad Ahmed of Financial Times. Also this week, Zagg purchased Mophie, which makes popular battery cases for the iPhone, as reported by Ina Fried of re/code.
David Pogue of Yahoo Tech reviews Dragon Anywhere, an app that lets you dictate to your iPhone or iPad. Yes, you can already do that with Siri, but Dragon Anywhere lets you speak for much longer, and has better speech recognition. However, it requires a $15/month subscription.
Dennis Sellers of Apple World Today reviews Duet Display, an app that lets your iPad become a second screen for a Mac or PC. I’ve tried the app with the PC at my office, and it does work as advertised. Having said that, I don’t find it to be as useful to extend my PC screen as it is to just run helpful iOS apps while I use my PC at the same time — for example, editing a document in Word on my PC while I review cases or documents using the GoodReader app on my iPad. But if having a second screen makes sense for the type of work you are doing, you’ll want to consider this app.
And finally, an interesting new iPhone app was launched this week. It is called Notarize, and it lets someone get a document notarized using just an iPhone. It turns out that it is legal to use video chat to notarize a document in Virgina, so this app scans your driver’s license and your document and then lets you video chat with a notary in Virgina who then notarizes your document. The cost is $25, and the service is available 24/7. Like many attorneys, I am a notary public, which is often useful for my clients. But if I have a client or a witness who is somewhere else in the country and I need to get a notary stamp on a document that they sign, such as an affidavit that I will attach to a state court motion for summary judgment, this app could provide an interesting option. Moreover, the video for the app, created by Adam Lisagor of Sandwich Video, is amusing:
After purchasing an iPad Pro in November of 2015, I started looking for a messenger-style bag to use with it because the iPad Pro was too big to comfortably fit in the bag that I had been using for my iPad Air 2. My research led me to two choices: the Field Muzetto by WaterField, and the Ristretto by Tom Bihn. I went back-and-forth between both of those bags during the month of December to test them, and I posted my review of the Field Muzetto in January. I had planned to post a review of the Ristretto that same week, but Tom Bihn was out of stock at the time and it felt silly to post a review of a product that you couldn’t buy. But they are back in stock again, which led me to finish this review.
I have used a version of the Ristretto bag for many years now. I first reviewed the Ristretto for iPad in 2011, and then when the bag was updated in 2012 I reviewed the new version. The version that I used from 2012 to 2015 was the 11″ inch version, which at the time Tom Bihn called the “Ristretto for iPad,” and which Tom Bihn no longer sells — which is a shame because it is a great bag for a traditional-size iPad such as the iPad Air 2. Instead, the only Ristretto that Tom Bihn currently sells is a 13″ size. Because I was a fan of the 11″ version and I needed something larger for the iPad Pro anyway, I decided to buy the current model of the Ristretto when I started to compare bags for the iPad Pro last December, so I have now been using this bag for almost two months.
The size
I’ll start with the feature most important for iPad Pro owners: the size. The Ristretto features a padded compartment for holding a device. The 11″ version of the Ristretto that I reviewed years ago was perfect for a traditional iPad with a 9.7″ (diagonal) screen. Even better, the 11″ bag was a great size for a messenger bag. It was compact enough to be noticeably smaller than a typical briefcase, but large enough inside that it could store tons of items. But when you put an iPad Pro in the padded compartment of the 11″ Ristretto, it stuck out and made the flap difficult to close.
The current model of the Ristretto, the 13″ model, is … you guessed it … larger. Its padded compartment is 12.8″ x 9″ x 1″. At first blush, that might seem to be the perfect size for the iPad Pro, which is about 12″ high and about 9″ wide (12.04″ x 8.69″ to be precise). But the padded compartment is only 9″ wide when there is an object 1″ thick inside of it. The iPad Pro is only about a quarter of an inch thick, so unless you are carrying four iPad Pros at once, the padded compartment expands somewhat. As a result, it felt like the bag was about an inch too wide for an iPad Pro. Similarly, the 12.8″ height seems almost an inch too high.
We’re only talking about an extra inch on each dimension. That’s not a lot. However, it does make the Ristretto seem just a little too big for the iPad Pro. It’s like the difference between wearing a perfectly-sized shirt and an oversize T-shirt. You can make an argument that it is nice to have extra space, much like the larger T-shirt is perfect for lounging in front of the TV while you binge on Netflix shows. But I really liked that the size of that 11″ Ristretto, and while I am slowly getting used to the 13″ Ristretto after two months of use, I wish that Tom Bihn would come out with a 12″ model that was just a little smaller overall. (Tom Bihn didn’t design the 13″ Ristretto for the iPad Pro; it was designed for a laptop computer such as a MacBook Pro.) My hypothetical 12″ Ristretto would be as small as possible while still being big enough for an iPad Pro.
But because my hypothetical 12″ Ristretto doesn’t exist, this 13″ size is the one to get for an iPad Pro.
Design
The website says that the Ristretto is made with “U.S. made, 1050 denier high tenacity ballistic nylon.” To me, the material seems similar to the knapsack that I used in college and law school. It is very durable and very comfortable. I used the 11″ Ristretto for many years, taking it on many trips. It has been tossed under a seat in front of me on an airplane and kicked by my feet more times than I can count. It has been opened and closed thousands of times. And it still looks great and hasn’t been damaged at all.
There are currently three colors available: black, steel and verde (green). But Tom Bihn changes the color of its products from time to time, so perhaps there will be even more choices in the future.
Compartments
I already mentioned the padded compartment where you place an iPad (or laptop computer). My former 11″ model provided great protection for many years, and so far it looks like the same can be said about the current model. You place your iPad Pro into the compartment and then fold over and tuck into the back a padded flap. This system provides protection, while also making it easier to put in or take out an iPad Pro.
The main compartment is approximately 2″ thick and can store lots of items. For example, I store an Apple Wireless Keyboard which is inside of a case (an Origami Workstation), plus external batteries and lots of other items in this compartment.
The front of the Ristretto has a zippered pouch. Inside of the pouch there are organizational pockets — two small pen-sized ones on the left (a perfect size to store an Apple Pencil) and two larger ones. I use the larger once to hold pens and styluses, but you could also put something like a passport, a wallet or an iPhone in those pockets. And then in front of the pockets is a large storage area that can store whatever you want. I love this zippered pouch because the zipper is in a semi-circle, so when it is completely unzipped you can see the entire top half of the pouch. This makes it incredibly easy to find items, even if the pouch is stuffed with lots of, um, stuff. One of my complaints about other messenger bags (such as the Field Muzetto by WaterField) is that you can only access items in the compartments from the top, which makes it harder to find something small that is at the bottom.
Finally, the very back of the Ristretto has a slanted, open-top pocket that you can use to store papers, a magazine, or a newspaper. It is big enough to hold letter-sized documents, although the top of the document will be somewhat visible because of the slant. (In the following picture, I put a standard 8 1/2 x 11″ piece of paper in it so that you can see how much sticks out.) It is a convenient place to store documents or a magazine that you want to be able to access quickly without opening up the Ristretto.
The o-rings
One of the very best features of the Ristretto (and other Tom Bihn products) is the inclusion of o-rings: small plastic rings attached to the inside of the Ristretto by a tiny strap. There is one o-ring in the front zippered compartment of the bag. The main compartment has three o-rings: one on the far left, one on the far right, and one on the left side of the front of that compartment.
Tom Bihn sells organizer pouches in lots of different sizes, colors and varieties that you can attach to the o-rings. Some are clear or netted on one side making it easy to see what is in the pouch. Some are padded to give extra protection to the items in the pouch. There is an RFID-blocking passport pouch. There is also a clear-sided organizer cube that meets the TSA 3-1-1 liquids requirements, and a light-on-a-strap that you can use it you want to have a light inside of your bag to make it easier to find items. The Ristretto also comes with a keystrap that you can attach to an o-ring, although I don’t use that so I just removed it. Click here to see all of the different accessories sold by Tom Bihn, many of which are for the o-ring system. If you are the sort of person who likes organization, looking at the large variety of o-ring accessories will make you downright giddy. I’m currently using these five pouches in my Ristretto:
I love using pouches in the Ristretto because it makes it easy to find items, even small items that usually get lost in a bag or briefcase. I know which items are in each of my pouches, so I know which pouch to reach for. And because the pouches are attached to specific o-rings, I always know where to find a pouch, such as on the left or the right side of the main compartment. And you can even attach more than one pouch to a single o-ring if you need to do so. You can also quickly disconnect a pouch to remove it from the Ristretto, and then quickly snap it back on the o-ring when you are done.
The Ristretto would be a nice messenger bag without the o-ring system, but with this system the bag becomes really amazing.
The strap
The Ristretto comes with a Standard Strap, but for an additional $20 you can upgrade to the Absolute Shoulder Strap. I encourage you to do so. This is the best strap that I have ever used for any bag. First, the part of the strap that sits on your shoulder has a rubbery feel which provides amazing friction. Unlike most other shoulder straps that slip off of you shoulder, this one really stays in place.
Second, there is something about the engineering of this strap that distributes the weight to make the bag seem much lighter than it really is. Tom Bihn says that it “combines a nonslip, ergonomically curved pad — made of soft, durable neoprene — with comfortable stretch backing to make bags feel 50% lighter and 100% more comfortable.” It works really well.
By the way, the Ristretto also comes with a waist strap on the back that you can use if you are riding a bike or otherwise need to keep it very close to your body. I didn’t need this, and it is easily removed.
There is also a small, padded strap on the top of the Ristretto, great for when you just want to grab the bag quickly without dealing with the longer strap.
Conclusion
If you like the idea of a messenger-style bag, the Ristretto is really wonderful. It has tons of compartments and can hold lots of items, and the o-ring system makes it easy to store and locate those items. I wish that it were just a little bit smaller so that it held an iPad Pro without any additional space while keeping the bag as small as possible. Nevertheless, based on my research I think that this is one of the very best messenger-style bags on the market for the iPad Pro, and I’m happy to have it as the bag that I use every day.
Last year, I reviewed an app called Deliveries that makes it easy to keep track of packages that you sent or that you should be receiving. Like most Amazon Prime members, I buy lots of items on Amazon, and I’ve been using the Deliveries app almost every week since I reviewed it last year, not only for Amazon but also with other online retailers. This week, the app was updated to version 7, which adds lots of new features. For example, you can now select a tracking number in an email and add it directly to the Deliveries app from within the Mail app, making it faster and easier to add items to the app. And if you have an iPhone 6s or iPhone 6s Plus, you can use 3D Touch actions to press lightly on an item to get more details. It’s a nice update to an already great app, and since I suspect that lots of iPhone J.D. readers buy items online, I encourage you to check it out if you don’t have the app yet. Click here to get Deliveries ($4.99): And now, the news of note from the past week.
Ed Silverstein of Legaltech News talked to me and a few other attorneys about iPhone sales in 2016.
Farhad Manjoo of the New York Times explains that, even though some analysts had hoped for more from Apple’s earnings call this week, Apple is doing just fine.
And finally, there is a new solitaire game on the App Store from an unlikely app developer, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The app is called Churchill Solitaire, and it is based on the version of solitaire that Winston Churchill used to play. In an article on Medium, Rumsfeld explains why he decided to develop an app at age 83. After Obama leaves office, I wonder if he or any of his cabinet members will create iOS apps? Here is a video showing off the game:
Yesterday, Apple released the results for its 2016 fiscal first quarter (which ran from September 27, 2015 to December 26, 2015, and did not actually include any days from calendar year 2016) and held a call with analysts to discuss the results. This is typically Apple's best quarter of the year because of holiday sales. It was actually Apple's best quarter ever, with revenue of $75.9 billion (compared to $74.6 billion one year ago and $57.6 billion two years ago) and record quarterly net profit of $18.4 billion (compared to $18 billion this time last year and $31.1 billion two years ago). Apple also set a new record for iPhone sales.
If you want to get all of the nitty gritty details, you can download the audio from the announcement conference call from iTunes, or you can read a rough transcript of the call prepared by Seeking Alpha, or Serenity Caldwell and Jason Snell prepared an almost verbatim transcript of the call that is posted on iMore. Apple's official press release is here. As always, however, I'm not as concerned about the financial details as I am the statements of Apple executives during the call that are of interest to iPhone and iPad users. Here are the items that stood out to me:
iPhone
During the past quarter, Apple sold 74.779 million iPhones, the most that Apple has ever sold in a fiscal quarter. It just barely beat the previous record, which was set this time last year when Apple sold 74.5 million iPhones. Remember that it wasn't that long ago (fiscal 2011) that Apple sold 72.21 million iPhones in a full year, and now the company is selling more than that in a single quarter, for two years in a row.
By my count, as of December 26, 2015, Apple had sold over 896 million iPhones since they first went on sale in 2007. It looks like at some point in 2016, Apple will sell its 1 billionth iPhone. Apple said yesterday that it now has an active user base of 1 billion devices, which is the total number of iPhone, iPad, Mac, iPod touch, Apple TV, and Apple Watch devices that have been engaged with Apple's services within the past 90 days.
Regarding the record number of iPhones sold last quarter, Apple CEO Tim Cook said yesterday: "To put that volume into perspective, it's an average of over 34,000 iPhones an hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week for 13 straight weeks. It's almost 50 percent more than our Q1 volume just two years ago, and more than four times our volume five years ago."
Cook talked about the number of iPhone buyers who were switching from Android, and said that he was "blown away by the level of Android switchers that we had last quarter. It was the highest ever by far, and so we see that as a huge opportunity."
According to a recent customer survey survey by a third party (451 Research), there is a 99% customer satisfaction rate for the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus.
Apple CFO Luca Maestri said that there is a strong demand for iPhone among business users. "Among corporate buyers planning to purchase smartphones in the March quarter, 451 Research found that 79% planned to purchase iPhones. That is the highest iPhone purchase intent in the eight year history of the survey."
iPad
iPad sales have not been increasing like the iPhone. In the past quarter. Apple sold just over 16 million iPads, compared to just over 21 million this time last year. I thought that demand for the new iPad Pro might result in more iPad sales this quarter, although I know that they were in limited supply.
By my count, as of December 26, 2015, Apple had sold 308 million iPads since they first went on sale in 2010.
Masestri said yesterday: "Recent data from NPD indicates that iPad has 85% share of the U.S. market of tablets priced above $200. And the latest data published by IDC indicates that iPad accounts for 67% of the U.S. commercial tablet market, comprising enterprise, government, and education."
Here is a chart showing iPhone and iPad sales to date, by fiscal quarter. The two highest columns in the chart illustrate that Apple sold approximately the same number of iPhones in this past quarter and in the year-ago quarter, but saw fewer iPad sales in this past quarter.
Etc.
Although it was a record quarter for Apple, Cook said that it would have been better but for the challenging economic conditions in many major markets including Brazil, Russia, Canada, Southeast Asia, Australia, Turkey and Europe. Two-thirds of Apple's revenue comes from outside of the United States, so Apple feels a hit when times are tight around the world.
Apple predicted that this upcoming quarter (the one that we are in now) will see less revenue than normal. In part, this is because of the economic conditions in other countries.
Cook said that there are now over 3,600 apps for the Apple TV.
The Apple Watch is now being sold at almost 12,000 locations in 48 countries. Apple didn't release specific numbers, but did say that it sold a record number of Apple Watches last quarter.
Of course, Apple wasn't going to announce any new products yesterday, but Cook did say that Apple is "continuing to invest without pause" in R&D and that Apple has "some great things in the pipeline."
Jason Snell of Six Colors notes that the Mac Plus had its 30th birthday this week. Although the Mac Plus debuted on January 16, 1986, it remained in production until October of 1990, making it the longest produced Mac ever. The Mac Plus was the first Apple product that I bought with my own money; I spent a few weeks after my Freshman year of college teaching at a workshop for high school debate students, and then in August of 1988 I used my earnings to buy a Mac Plus and 20MB external hard drive. (No, “20MB” is not a typo.) I was a little jealous of my roommate, who had a faster Mac SE/30, but I loved that Mac Plus and I used it until I was in law school. I’ve been a Mac user at my house ever since. And now, the news of note from the past week:
Massachusetts attorney Robert Ambrogi reviews Citrix ShareFile, a service that you can use to securely share documents. I use this service too in my law practice, and it has an app for iOS.
Zac Hall of 9to5Mac describes the latest update to Microsoft Office for iOS, which adds 3D touch actions for those who have the newest iPhones and adds an Apple Pencil ink function for those who have the iPad Pro.
Apple has been in the news latest for defending encryption of data on its devices, and it sometimes seems strange that Apple is the only tech company being vocal on this issue. Security expert Rich Mogull explains why Apple is in a unique position in an interesting article for TidBITS.
Apple has also been in the news for assembling its iPhone in China, especially when people like Donald Trump make idotic statements this week about getting Apple to instead assemble in the United States. John Gruber of Daring Fireball wrote a good article on why Apple assembles in China.
Joe White of WatchAware reviews an app called Complicate It that you can use to add text to the watch face of an Apple Watch. Sounds like a good way to save a reminder — the modern equivalent of a string around your finger — or have easy quick access to a number.
Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal reports that New York is replacing telephone booths with fast, free Wi-Fi. Her article gives you great tips for using public Wi-Fi, including using encryption and a VPN service such as Cloak (which I reviewed here). Her article is worth reading whether you are using free Wi-Fi in New York, an airport, or your local coffee shop.
Speaking of security, Daniel Taroy of Fast Company reports on the 25 most popular passwords of 2015. If you are using any password on that list, CHANGE IT CHANGE IT NOW NOW NOW.
And finally, if you play music — especially piano or guitar, although it works with other instruments too – Apple released a really cool, free app this week called Music Memos. The app gives you a place to quickly record a snippet of music, so that when you come up with a cool idea for a song you can record it, and then later can go back and hear it again. Of course, you could always just use the built-in Voice Memos app to record something, but Music Memos makes it even better by analyzing your music, determining the key and tempo, and then letting you tap a button to add a bass guitar and drums to give your musical idea a little more depth. I play piano, and I think this app is incredibly cool. Here is a great review of the app by David Pogue of Yahoo Tech — a tech reporter who used to be a Broadway conductor — and I’ve embedded below one of his videos showing how the app works. I love that Apple would release such a cool app for free, even though it probably don’t have a very large audience. But I know lots of attorneys who are also amateur musicians, so if you put yourself in that category, you’ll want to get this app right now. Click here to get Music Memos (free):
I’ve used and reviewed a larger number of styluses over the years, but this is the first time that I have reviewed a stylus since I started using the Apple Pencil with an iPad Pro. As I noted in my review, the Apple Pencil is far superior to any other stylus that I have tried, and while you could use another brand of stylus with the iPad Pro, I don’t recommend doing so. The iPad Pro and the Pencil are made to work together, and they work together incredibly well. But if you don’t have an iPad Pro and you want to use a stylus, then you still have lots of options. A few weeks ago, the developer of the Stilo stylus sent me a free review unit for me to check out, and I have been testing it for the last few weeks. It’s a very good stylus.
If you don’t use an iPad Pro and you are looking for a stylus, you’ll have to decide if you want a traditional stylus that doesn’t require power, or if you want an active stylus which uses power to send radio waves around its small tip to trick the iPad into thinking that something larger, the size of a fingertip, is touching the screen. I usually prefer a traditional stylus because it works 100% of the time; active styluses (other than the Apple Pencil) can have hiccups, and many models have trouble drawing diagonal lines. There are lots of great non-active styluses, but some of my favorites include the Adonit Jot Pro and the Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo. But active styluses have a lot going for them too, including incredibly small tips. If you are looking for an active stylus, then there is a lot to like about the Stilo. It has a fantastic tip, and it works pretty well — not perfect, but good enough, and it has fewer problems with diagonal lines than other active styluses do.
The Stilo has an interesting design. The barrel of the stylus is somewhat thick. It has to be to accommodate the single AAA battery inside. A button on the side turns the stylus on or off.
It comes in two colors: white and black. The developer first sent me a free review unit of the white model, but it didn’t work correctly. The developer than quickly sent me a black model, and it has been working great.
What makes this stylus stand out is its tip, which is long and thin. I’ve never used another stylus with this long, thin design, and I really like it. It makes it very easy to see the tip of the stylus as you are using it.
Maybe it was just an illusion, but that long tip made me feel like the Stilo was much more precise than other active styluses. It’s a nice feature.
The Stilo comes with a cap, to give additional protection to the tip of the stylus when you are not using it.
The tip of the stylus is 1.9 mm, which is very small enough to seem similar to a pen tip. I tested it with an iPad 3, iPad Air and iPad Air 2 and the performance was good, certainly as good as any other active stylus that I have tested. In other words, most of the time it worked great, but sometimes I would make a stroke and the iPad would miss it, so I’d have to make it again. It is also worth mentioning that many active styluses have problems drawing diagonal lines on an iPad Air or iPad Air 2. The Stilo wasn’t perfect, but it did better with diagonal lines than many of active styluses — especially on the iPad Air, where it worked particularly well. There was a little more waviness in diagonal lines on the iPad Air 2, but it wasn’t that bad.
One feature that I had not seen before on another stylus is that you can twist the tip to make it longer or shorter, the idea being that you can find the optimal distance from the stylus to the screen to get the best radio wave connection. In my tests, twisting the tip didn’t change the performance very much, but I suppose it is nice that you have the ability to fine tune the performance if you need to do so.
The developer encourages using the Stilo with another product that it sells called PrecisionFilm (sold separately). The developer says that using this film on the screen of your iPad with the Stilo makes it feel more like writing on paper. The developer sent me a free review sample of this clear film so I tried it. It does add a little more friction, which I suppose makes it feel more like paper, but frankly I thought that the Stilo worked just fine without the film. If yo don’t normally use a screen protector film, I wouldn’t get one just because you have a Stilo.
One feature lacking on the Stilo that exists on some other styluses is a physical button that you can press and which uses Bluetooth to communicate commands to specially-designed apps, such as a command to switch between a pencil and an eraser. I don’t consider this a major omission, but look elsewhere if that feature is important to you. [UPDATE 1/25/16: For what it is worth, here is what the developer told me about the lack of Bluetooth: “Stilo wanted to make as accurate a fine-tip, active stylus as possible without requiring the hassle of Bluetooth pairing, as it’s sometimes inconsistent and a pain to connect/keep connected. Many styli use Bluetooth to offset imprecision as well as to add button functionality, but Stilo was designed to be as precise as a Bluetooth-connected stylus without requiring the connection.”]
I still have mixed feelings about active styluses because they don’t work 100% of the time; sometimes the iPad just doesn’t register a stroke. (A notable exception is the Apple Pencil, which does work 100% of the time with the iPad Pro.) It is nice that active styluses have such small tips, but it is frustrating whenever they don’t work well. That’s why my top stylus recommendation for the iPad Air and iPad Air 2 remains the 2015 model of the Adonit Jot Pro. But if you do want to use an active stylus, the Stilo is a very good one. It’s long, thin tip makes the stylus especially nice to use, and sets it apart from other active styluses.
Contact management is important for attorneys (and anyone else who works with lots of people), so I’m always on the lookout for apps with tools for working with contacts. Interact is a new app released this month that provides some advanced tools for working with contacts. It is currently $4.99, but the developer says that is an introductory price; I don’t know when the price will increase or how much it will go up.
There seems to be two main features to this app. First, the app has advanced tools for managing groups of contacts. For example, you can create groups specific to a project or a topic, and then it becomes easy to select members of the group (or the entire group) and send an email or a text message. Unfortunately, this feature does not work if you use Microsoft Exchange for your email. Like so many other law firms, my law firm uses Exchange, so I cannot try out this feature of the app. However, you can learn more about the group features in Interact by reading this recent post by California attorney David Sparks.
Today, I’m focusing on a second feature of the app, the ability to create contacts from email signature blocks. This feature works just fine for Exchange users, and this single feature is useful enough to me that I think it was worth spending $5 on the app.
Creating contact information from an email signature block is not a new feature. When iOS 8 came out in the Fall of 2014, it added many improvements to the iOS Mail app, as I discussed in this post. One improvement was the ability to detect contact data in an email message, so that if an email contains a signature block and iOS senses that you don’t already have the contact (or that your contact information is incomplete), iOS offers to add the information from that signature block in the email. It is a great idea that reduces the need to manually enter contact information on an iPhone or iPad. Unfortunately, I find that it doesn’t always work. Sometimes I will look at an email and see the indication at the top of the screen that I can create or update a contact, but more often I’ll look at email with a perfectly good signature block and the Mail app on my iPhone just ignores it. Fortunately Interact seems to work well with all emails, so it can pick up the slack when the built-in Mail app falls short.
To show how this feature works, I’ll use a real life example. Last week, I received an email from an attorney I know who just recently moved his law office to the same building where I work. He sent me an email so that I would have his contact information. I opened the email, and unfortunately Mail’s built-in data detector didn’t notice the signature block. But now that I have Interact, I can create a contact entry myself. Here’s how. First, select the signature block.
In the menu that appears above your selection, tap the Share… button. That will bring you a number of options, one of which is Create Contact. Note that Create Contact will show up only if you first do a one-time step: tap on More… and then add the option Create Contact. Once the option is added, you can hold down on the icon to drag it to be the first option, like you see it on the following screen. Again, you should only need to do this setup step once, and then in the future you can just tap Share… and then Create Contact.
Tap Create Contact and Interact’s Contact Scratchpad will launch. On this screen, you will see that Interact has placed in bold all of the information that it recognized and knows how to handle. In this example, Intereact was able to understand everything except the company name. But it is easy to add the few items, if any, missed by Interact. Just tap the field at the bottom of the screen (or tap more… for additional fields). So in my example, I tapped “company” and then I typed “Pandit Law.”
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[UPDATE: In a comment to this post, Ciaran Connelly points out that if you move your cursor right before the company name and then tap the company name button, it should automatically add the name without you having to type the company name again. That tip didn’t work for me on the contact depicted in the images above, but it did work for another email that I received. So try that first to potentially save yourself a few key taps.]
Tap the Next button at the top right of the screen when you are done. This brings you to a screen where everything is entered for you. Tap Create New Contact at the bottom to create a new contact, or you can choose to update an existing contact with this additional information.
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Tap the selection to either create or update a contact, and then your contact is created.
In my example, I still needed to manually type two words — the company name, which was missed by Interact. I also had to manually change the second number, which Interact thought was a phone number, to a fax number. I guess Interact didn’t understand that (f) next to that number meant fax. But otherwise, Interact did all of the work for me. First name, last name, email address, phone numbers, and physical address were all entered by the app. Not only did that save me a bunch of time, but it also increased accuracy. If I have to manually enter a number or an email address on my iPhone, there is a decent chance that I’ll have a typo along the way. And of course, a phone number or email address with a single incorrect character is useless.
If you ever find yourself creating contact entries from emails on your iPhone or iPad, then Interact is a useful app. It saves you time, but more important than that, it improves the accuracy of your entries. If you don’t have an Exchange account, then the app may be even more useful for you because of the group features. But even without that feature, I’m happy to have the Interact app on my iPhone and iPad as another useful tool for managing contacts.
This week, Apple posted a page to their website describing new features in the next incremental update to iOS called iOS 9.3. One of the new features is Night Shift, which changes the color on your iPhone when it is close to bedtime to reduce the blue light from the screen. If you use your iPhone late at night, studies have shown that the blue light can make it harder for your body to go to sleep. Apple also added the ability to add a lock to a Note, which you can unlock using your fingerprint, handy if you use a note to store confidential information and someone else is using your iPhone. Apple is also letting schools put multiple user accounts on an iPad, so that a student can pick up any iPad and see only that student’s files. Apple hasn’t announced when iOS 9.3 will be available, but my guess is March. And now, the news of note from this week:
ABA TECHSHOW is March 17-19 this year. Unfortunately, there is no track dedicated to iPhone/iPad users this year, but there is one iOS-related session on the morning of March 19th, and I’ll be one of the panelists for that session. If you want to learn about legal technology and get CLE credit, I hope to see you in Chicago.
Jeff Benjamin of iDownloadBlog looks at signs that Apple might come out with a more powerful power charger for the iPad Pro, a 29W charger instead of the 12W one that it ships with. This would let the iPad Pro charge even faster, although you might need an upgraded Lightning cord for it to work. I hope that this rumor is true. One of the few features of the iPad Pro that I don’t like is that it takes so long to charge.
Phil Dzikiy of iLounge reviews the Apple Smart Keyboard for iPad Pro, and he isn’t a big fan of how it feels when you type on it. I only tried it for a few minutes in the store, but that was my impression too. Still, I’ve heard from others who like it.
If you use your iPhone in rugged outdoor conditions, you might be interested that Scosche this week announced the goBAT 12000, a $99 external battery in a rugged, waterproof and dustproof case that can recharge an iPhone about six times. You can currently get it on Amazon for about $64.
Elizabeth Cohen of CNN explains how a doctor used an iPhone with Google Cardboard to save a baby’s life.
I love using HomeKit devices to control lights and other appliances in my house. They work great … except when they don’t. Nick Bilton of the New York Times explained what happened when his Nest Thermostat stopped working due to a software bug.
As noted by Zac Hall of 9to5Mac, 1Password was updated this week. If you use an iPhone 6s or iPhone 6s Plus, the app now supports 3D Touch for quick actions. A password manager is a must-have app, and I love that the fantastic 1Password app is frequently updated with great new features.
And finally, with the Steve Jobs movie getting some Oscar nominations this week, don’t we need a Broadway musical about Steve Jobs? Well, need it or not, we are getting one. Jon Blisten of Rolling Stone reports that a musical comedy about Steve Jobs and Bill Gates will open on Broadway at the Longacre Theatre on April 21st. The show is called Nerds, and it was first presented in Philadelphia back in 2005. Here is a video from when the show played in Philly:
Using a pay parking spot on a street is traditionally a bit of a pain. You need to have coins to put in the meter, or for newer systems you need to locate the central meter machine location on the block, walk there from your car, pay for a paper receipt, then walk back to your car and put the receipt on your dashboard. And of course, if your time expires then you risk having to pay a fine. But fortunately, a number of cities now have parking that works with an iPhone app so that you can pay for parking directly from your iPhone. Not only does this make it easier to pay for parking in the first place, it also means that if you go longer than you had expected in a meeting (or restaurant, etc.), you can press a few buttons in the app — from right there in your meeting, or in the restaurant — to extend your time on the meter without having to actually go back to your car. It makes parking much more convenient.
I live in New Orleans, and my city used to have a system run by PayByPhone, which currently works in about 40 U.S. cities and in some others around the world. For just over a year, we’ve been using a system run by Parkmobile, which works in hundreds of cities. (Here is a map showing where Parkmobile works.)
The Parkmobile app is free, but to use the app you first need to create an account and provide a payment method, such as a credit card or a PayPal account, and also provide the license plate number for your car. Next, when you go to park, look for the number of the parking zone where you are parking. You can find this number either on a sign, or on the front or side of the parking meter machine. You will sometimes see a QR code next to the number, and the app also lets you scan that to save you the trouble of entering a few numbers.
You don’t have to actually do anything at the parking meter machine — you just need that number. If you cannot find the number on the street, the Parkmobile app even lets you find the number associated with each block. For example, here are the streets around the Louisiana Supreme Court / Fourth Circuit building, located in the French Quarter in New Orleans. Tap on any zone to see the associated number.
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Once you have the number, tap the Parking tab at the bottom left of the app and enter the number.
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If you park in an area frequently, you can designate a zone as a favorite, and even assign your own name to the entry. That way, in the future, you don’t even have to look for the number. In this next example, I designated a zone as the place where the taco truck parks near Lee Circle in New Orleans:
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Next, decide how long you want to park. The app even lets you select the maximum park time for that spot. Next, the app asks you to confirm how much it will cost to park. If that looks good to you, press the button to start parking.
There is a transaction fee for using the app which varies from city to city. In New Orleans, it is $0.35 per transaction, although if you pay Parkmobile $1 a month for a preferred membership, the transaction fee drops to $0.30 per transaction.
Once you have paid for a parking spot, you can look at the app at any time to see how much time you have remaining on the meter.
The app sends you a notification (if you have notifications for the app turned on) and an email to let you know when your parking session is about to end. For Apple Watch owners, it is handy to get the notification right there on your watch.
Extending the meter is simple; just press the Extend Session button in the app. And as I mentioned above, this is one of the best parts of the app. You never need to worry about being far from your car when it is time to feed the meter. As long as you are someplace with an Internet connection, you can extend your session quickly and easily. (Note that in some areas, there are limits on much you can extend your parking.)
Because the app knows where you paid to park, the app can help you find your car if you forget where you parked. Just tap the Find My Car button at the bottom of the app.
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Note that when you use this app, you don’t have to put any receipt on your dashboard. The parking attendant knows that you have paid based on the license plate number that you have entered in the app; the parking attendant equipment won’t issue a ticket during the time period that you have paid to park. You can add multiple license plates to the app so that you can use the app with other vehicles.
If you are in a city that works with Parkmobile or a similar system, you should definitely take the time now to download the app so that you have it when you need it. For only a small transaction fee, it is faster and easier to start the meter running, plus you can see exactly how much time you have left on the meter and add more if necessary. Perhaps most importantly, this app can help you avoid a parking ticket, which I guarantee you will be much, much more expensive than the transaction fee.
