Apparently, a lot of folks were excited about the new iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus. As reported by Katie Benner of the New York Times this week, during the first weekend that the new iPhones were available, Apple sold 13 million of them. A year ago, Apple sold 10 million during the opening weekend of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. I’ve really enjoyed using my new iPhone 6s this week, especially the 3D Touch and the improved speed. And now, the news of note from the past week:
The folks at First Site Guide put together a list a law blogs worth reading. It’s actually a very good list, although perhaps I am biased since iPhone J.D is on the list.
If you are thinking about getting an iPhone 6s, I posted my own review earlier this week, but one of the best reviews that I have seen is the one that Jason Snell wrote for Macworld.
Apple released iOS 9.0.2 this week to fix a few bugs.
Dan Moren of Six Colors provides some great tips for using Siri in iOS 9. For example, if you have Hey Siri turned on but you want to stop Siri from listening to you for a little while, just put your iPhone face down on a desk, and Siri will cover her virtual ears.
And finally, Zach Straley claims that the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus are both somewhat waterproof. Here is his video proof. I have not tested this with my own iPhone 6s, nor should you do so, but it appears that something about the new iPhones is doing a better job standing up to water. Interesting:
There are countless companies that make styluses for the iPad, but only a few companies have been the most innovative and have come out with some of the best styluses over the years. Adonit is definitely at or near the top of that list. (Wacom has also come out with some excellent iPad styluses.) Today, I’m reviewing the latest iPad stylus from Adonit, a product called the Jot Dash. It is the first active stylus that has a body that is as thin as a pen, so it feels great in your hand. Adonit sent me a free sample to review, and I’ve been trying it out for the last few weeks. Adonit sent me the Silver model, but you can also get it in Charcoal.
Background on styluses
The best way to understand the advantages of the Adonit Jot Dash is to start with a little background on iPad styluses in general. A stylus is an incredibly useful iPad accessory if you want to take handwritten notes or draw, but there currently trade-offs associated with using them because no current iPad is designed to work with a stylus. This will change later this year, when Apple starts selling the iPad Pro which is made to work with a stylus made by Apple called the Apple Pencil. But for any other iPad, you need a stylus made by a third party, and that stylus needs a way to work with an iPad that was not designed to work with a stylus.
There are two types of styluses on the market. Traditional styluses have a tip about the same size as your finger tip, which is necessary because the iPad was designed to recognize something the size of a finger tip. Those styluses work well, but you do sometimes feel like you are drawing with a crayon or a thick marker instead of a pen. My favorite traditional stylus is the 2015 version of the Adonit Jot Pro, which I reviewed this past March. It uses a fine tip attached to a clear disc, which gives you the illusion of using a fine point pen while your iPad feels something closer to the size of a finger. I love that stylus and use it almost every day in my law practice when I am taking handwritten notes or annotating a document on my iPad.
The second type of stylus is called an active stylus. It has a fine tip which makes it look and feel much more like a pen when you are using it, a huge advantage over traditional styluses. It works by sending out radio waves that trick the iPad into thinking that something larger, about the size of a fingertip, is touching the screen. Adonit invented this category when it debuted the Adonit Jot Script in late 2013 (my review), but now many companies make active styluses. Some active styluses also have a button that can communicate, via Bluetooth, with many apps. For example, you can program the button to trigger the “undo” feature, or switch from a pen to an eraser, every time you click it. Active styluses with these buttons are much more useful than active styluses and traditional styluses that lack a button.
While the fine tip of an active stylus is amazing, active styluses have typically had three disadvantages versus a traditional stylus. First, they require power. Some models use AAA or AAAA batteries, and other models are rechargeable. Active styluses typically charge quickly, but you do need to remember to charge them. Otherwise, you might be taking notes in a meeting when your active stylus dies, and unless it is a model that uses replaceable batteries and you have those extra batteries in your pocket, you are out of luck. (Apple’s upcoming Pencil stylus has a neat way to deal with this; if it runs out of power, you can connect it to the Lightning port on the iPad, and in just 15 seconds it gets enough charge for 30 minutes of use.)
Second, active styluses are typically less precise than traditional styluses. You sometimes see a little waviness in a line as you draw — especially when you draw a diagonal line. This problem got significantly worse when Apple released the iPad Air in 2013 and it remained a problem in the iPad Air 2 introduced in 2014. Adonit figured out how to update its technology to work with the iPad Air and iPad Air 2, and released the Adonit Jot Script 2 a few months ago (my review), but the large majority of active styluses still don’t work great with the iPad Air and iPad Air 2.
Third, because of the need to include a battery and electronics, the bodies of active styluses have always needed to be a little larger than the size of a traditional pen. For example, the Adonit Jot Script 2 and the Bamboo Stylus fineline (my review) both have a diameter of about 10.5 mm. To be fair, there are certainly larger pens being used every day. My personal favorite pen right now, the Zebra Sarasa Push Clip (my review), has an 11.11 mm diameter, but it still feels smaller than both the Adonit Jot Script 2 and the Bamboo Stylus, perhaps because of the weight. Suffice it to say that with every active stylus that I have used in the past, I had no doubt that I was holding a stylus containing electronics in my hand and not a pen.
The size and shape
With that background behind us, let’s jump to the best new feature of the Adonit Jot Dash: size. The Jot Dash is the thinnest active stylus that I have ever used. The diameter is only 8.5 mm. This is the first time in my life that I have held a stylus in my hand and I felt like I was holding a pen. This makes a huge difference, substantially improving the feel of the stylus in your hand when you use it.
In the following picture, the Jot Dash is on the top, followed by two other active styluses (the Adonit Script 2 (review) and the Wacom Bamboo Stylus fineline (review)), followed by a normal pen (the Zebra Sarasa Push Clip (review)) and at the bottom is the Adonit Jot Pro (review).
Another nice feature of this stylus is that it has a clip on the side, making it easy to clip it in a pocket on your shirt or a pocket in a purse or briefcase.
The tip
Because it is an active stylus, one expects the Adonit Jot Dash to have a small tip, and it certainly does. The tip on the Adonit Jot Dash is only 1.9 mm, the same size as the tip on the Adonit Jot Script 2 and the Bamboo Stylus fineline (my review). This is a nice size for a stylus tip.
In addition to being small, the tip feels great against an iPad screen — about the same as the tip on the Adonit Script 2, which is also an excellent stylus tip. In fact, the combination of a great tip plus a thin stylus that feels good in the hand means that the Adonit Jot Dash feels better than any other active stylus that I have ever used.
Because the Jot Dash tip is hard, it makes some noise when you tap it against the iPad screen. Having said that, the noise is a little less with the Jot Pro than with the Jot Script 2. I sometimes find the Adonit Script 2 tip just a little too noisy for me to feel comfortable using it in a quiet room when others are around. With the Jot Dash, that is slightly less of an issue for me, although there is still some noise.
Power
The Jot Dash is rechargeable, and you charge it by sitting it in a small dongle that fits into a USB slot. The Jot Dash attaches by magnets, so it can hang on its side or upside down and it wont fall off of the charger. This is the same design that Adonit used on the Jot Script 2. It works great on the Jot Script 2, and I also like it on the Jot Dash. It takes about 45 minutes to fully recharge.
One thing that I don’t like about the Jot Script 2 is the way that the power button is on the side is sometimes hard to find. The Jot Dash doesn’t have this problem because the power button is on the top. Not only does this make the power button easy to find, it is also a natural location for a button — the same place that you would push down on a pen with a retractable tip. Press it once and the Jot Dash turns on and a small light on the body of the stylus glows green for about two seconds. Press it again and the light glows red for two seconds and then the stylus goes off. The Jot Dash will also turn off automatically after a period of time if you are not using it.
Other than the power button, there is no other button on the Jot Dash. Thus, it does not have a second button that can communicate with some apps using Bluetooth — a useful feature of some other styluses, such as the Bamboo Stylus fineline. (It is very handy to push a button to immediately undo whatever you last drew with the Bamboo Stylus fineline; no such feature exists on the Jot Dash.)
Diagonal lines
[UPDATE 11/17/15: In the following section, I describe troubles that I had with diagonal lines on the iPad Air and iPad Air 2. Note that on the iPad Pro, the Adonit Dash draws diagonal lines perfectly.]
My main complaint about the Adonit Jot Dash is that it has the same problem that most other active styluses have: it isn’t as precise as a traditional stylus, especially when you are drawing a diagonal line, and especially on the iPad Air and iPad Air 2. I was surprised to see this problem because Adonit solved it in the Script 2 that it released earlier this year. For whatever reason — maybe the technology wouldn’t fit in the thin Jot Dash? — the Jot Dash works the same as the original Adonit Script. This means that it is virtually impossible to draw a straight diagonal line on an iPad Air or iPad Air 2; the line always has waves in it. It also means that the digital ink is more wavy when you are writing anything other than a horizontal or vertical line. The end result is that, on the iPad Air and the iPad Air 2, your penmanship is a little worse than it is when you use a traditional stylus. Here is an example in which I use the excellent GoodNotes app on an iPad Air 2 to draw lines using the Adonit Jot Pro and the Adonit Jot Dash:
Screenshot
As you can see, the Jot Dash has obvious problems with those diagonal lines. But many letters also look less neat with the Jot Dash. For example, compare the “J” in the word Jot — it looks fine when drawn with the Jot Pro, but the Jot Dash made the letter look worse even though I believe I drew it the same way both times.
Here is the tip of the Adonit Jot Pro on the left, and the Adonit Jot Dash on the right. As you can see, if you ignore the clear disc on the end of the Jot Pro, the tip seems to be about the same size on both styluses.
Conclusion
There is a lot to like about the Adonit Jot Dash. The thin size feels great in my hand, the power button on the top works well, the clip on the side is useful, and the tip is small and feels nice against an iPad screen. If only Adonit had included the same technology that it put in the Script 2 to solve the problem with diagonal lines, this stylus would easily be my all-time favorite active stylus, and I might even pick it as my all-time favorite stylus overall.
Instead, almost every time I tried out the Jot Dash over the past few weeks, I found myself wanting to return to the Adonit Jot Pro, which I gave a rave review earlier this year. The Jot Pro is almost as thin as the Jot Dash and is certainly thin enough to feel great in your hand. And even though the Jot Pro is a traditional stylus, the creative use of the fine tip connected to a see-through disc gives you the illusion that you are using a true fine tip (just like an active stylus) without wavy diagonal lines or a decline in penmanship.
Thus, I myself would pick the Jot Pro over the Jot Dash; I think it works better, and it is also $20 cheaper. Having said that, if you are in the market for an active stylus, you’ll want to seriously consider the Jot Dash because it does have a lot going for it.
[UPDATE 11/17/15: As noted above, the Jot Dash works much better on the iPad Pro. The Apple Pencil works better as it has less lag time and excellent palm rejection when you rest your hand on the screen, plus it has the handy Lightning charger built-in so you don’t need to worry about losing the Adonit Jot Dash charger. But the Jot Dash works almost as well as the Apple Pencil on the iPad Pro at half the price.]
Ever since the iPhone 3G was released in 2008, Apple has followed a pattern in which the external design of the iPhone changes in one year, and then the following year Apple releases an “s” model with the same design but major new features under the hood. Thus, we saw the iPhone 3G in 2008 followed by the faster iPhone 3GS in 2009. The iPhone 4 was released in 2010, and in 2011 the iPhone 4S added Siri. The iPhone 5 came out in 2012, and then in 2013 the iPhone 5s added Touch ID. Last year we saw the iPhone 6, and this past Friday Apple started selling the iPhone 6s. Once again, it is the same design as the prior model plus a major new feature, and this year that new feature is 3D Touch. It’s a great feature, and for many lawyers could prove to be more useful than Siri or Touch ID. And of course there are other new features as well. Here are my thoughts on the new iPhone 6s
3D Touch
Back when the iPhone was introduced in 2007, the major new feature was the touchscreen. Instead of BlackBerry and Palm Treo smartphones that had a small square screen with half of the front devoted to a tiny keyboard, the iPhone innovation was to have a much larger screen that could be touched, and we all learned motions like tap, swipe to scroll, pinch to zoom, etc. Those features were innovative for a smartphone back in 2007, and were subsequently copied by all other smartphone manufacturers.
3D Touch is the biggest improvement to interacting with a screen since the iPhone was first introduced in 2007. And it works great. Yes, you can still tap just like you could before, such as tap an app icon to open the app. But now you can also press a little harder on the icon to perform a different function. It is very easy to know how hard to press because Apple uses haptic feedback, much like the Apple Watch, so that you feel a minor vibration which feels almost like a click. The name 3D Touch is perfect because it really is like Apple has added a third dimension, giving you the ability to press into a screen in addition to the old tap or swipe left, right, up, or down.
Right now, for the most part, two types of things can happen when you use 3D Touch. If you press on an app icon, you see a pop-up Quick Action menu with a few common actions. Instead of tapping on the Messages app icon and then tapping at the top left to see all of your sets of messages and then tapping on Bob’s name so that you can get into your message conversation with Bob, now just press on the app icon and select Bob from the Quick Action menu. Or press on the Mail icon and select New Message or Search from the Quick Action menu. Or press on the Camera icon and jump right to recording video. It’s a little thing that saves you time, and once you get used to it, you’ll really miss not having it on your iPad. It reminds me of the right click function using a mouse on a computer.
Second, in apps that have a list of items (e.g. Mail, Messages, Notes, etc.), you can now press harder on any item in the list to peek at what is in that item. This function is incredibly useful in the Mail app. I often find myself trying to find a specific message in my Inbox from a specific person. I’ll see one email that could be it, tap on that message in the list, then see that particular message take up the entire screen, realize that it isn’t the message I want, so I need to tap the back button at the top left of the screen, go to the next message, and repeat. I suspect that many of you have done these same steps. But with 3D Touch, I can instead just press on a message in the list and a floating window appears giving me a peek into the content of the message. Best of all, when I stop pressing down the preview goes away and I am still looking at the list of messages. I can then peek at the next one, the next one, etc. until I find the specific message that I want. When I can see in the preview that I have found the message, I just push down on the preview and the message pops to fill up the screen.
Another good use — if I receive an email and I want to see what it is about, but I’m not quite ready to act upon the email, I can just press on it in the list to peek. That shows me a preview of the message, but when I pick up my finger to make the preview disappear, the email status remains unread. Thus, I know to go back to it later and act upon it. Or alternatively, if the preview shows me all that I need to know about the email to act upon it, I can swipe up to see common options to apply to the message (Reply, Forward, Mark, Move, etc.).
It takes about 60 seconds to get used to using 3D Touch on a list of emails, and then you’ll want to use the function every time. It works great.
Although the major two functions of 3D Touch are the Quick Action menu on app icons and the Peek and Pop functions with a preview, that is just the beginning. 3D Touch can also be used in many other ways. For example, if you are typing on your iPhone screen and you want to go back and change something in a prior sentence, press on the keyboard to have it change into a trackpad on which you can control the cursor and place it in an exact spot in a message. Nifty and useful.
If you press on the left edge of the screen in any app, the app switch shows up (the same thing that you would see if you double-press the Home button). If you press on the left edge of the screen and then swipe all the way to the right, you switch to the prior app. It’s the iPhone’s version of Control-Tab on a PC or Command-Tab on a Mac.
Moreover, app developers can use 3D Touch in all sorts of useful ways within their apps. In Apple’s Notes app, for example, iOS 9 introduced the ability to write in a Notes message, useful if you want to quickly draw something with your finger. On the iPhone 6s, the app becomes pressure sensitive to your fingertip, so if you press lightly you get a smaller line and if you press harder you get a darker line.
3D Touch is brand new, so for now you can only use it in Apple’s own apps. But give it a little bit of time, and I’m sure that clever app developers will find all sorts of useful ways to integrate 3D Touch into the unique functions of their apps. I suspect that six months from now, I’ll be using 3D Touch in all of the main apps that I use, and as a result I will be much faster and more productive on my iPhone. (And I’m sure that game developers will have a lot of fun finding ways to take advantage of 3D Touch in games.)
3D Touch is a big deal, one of those great features, like Touch ID, that is simple to use while also providing a lot of power. And unlike Touch ID, which is just about security and verification, 3D Touch will be useful for numerous apps in countless different ways. This is the big new feature of the iPhone 6s, and like multi-touch on the original iPhone in 2007, I predict that it will become an integral part of the iPhone experience for many years to come.
Speed
3D Touch may be the biggest new feature in the iPhone 6s, but one of the most noticeable new features in the speed. The iPhone 6s uses Apple’s new A9 processor, and is the first iPhone with 2 GB of RAM. (It has been 1 GB of RAM since the iPhone 5 was released in 2012.) Those two upgrades make everything on the iPhone a lot faster. Thus, it is more responsive and it is easier to get your work done without waiting for the iPhone to catch up with you. Every new iPhone is faster than the generation before it, but the jump in speed this year is especially noticeable, and really nice.
Apple also introduced the second generation of Touch ID, which means that the iPhone reads your fingerprint even faster. Touch ID wasn’t slow on prior models, but now it is virtually instantaneous. For a silly game, see if you can wake up an iPhone that is asleep by pressing the home button but pull your finger off quickly before the iPhone has read your fingerprint and unlocks the screen. Can you even do it? It is possible, but you need to be really, really fast. And if you are unlocking your iPhone just to look at something on the lock screen, such as the time or date or a notification on the lock screen, you are better of pressing the sleep/wake button on the side of the iPhone where there is no risk of the iPhone recognizing your fingerprint.
Apple also improved Wi-Fi and LTE on the iPhone 6s. For example, my cable modem typically provides download speeds of around 100 Mbps to my computer, connected to my router via an Ethernet cord. If I’m in the same room as my Airport Base Station, my iPhone 6 will typically get top download speeds of around 70-75 Mbps. My iPhone 6s can get over 100 Mbps — wireless Internet that is just as fast as wired. As I walk farther away in my house the speed decreases, but it remains noticeably faster on the iPhone 6s.
Hey Siri
The iPhone previously had the ability to use the Hey Siri function when it was plugged in to power. Thus, if you were charging your iPhone, even when the screen was black because it was asleep, you could say “Hey Siri” followed by a command and the iPhone would respond. Say “Hey Siri what time is it” and the iPhone will speak the current time. With the iPhone 6s, Apple has moved the Hey Siri function onto the integrated M9 coprocessor, which means that Hey Siri can be turned on all the time — even when your iPhone is not charging — without draining the battery.
When I first heard of the improvement to Hey Siri, my thought was that it was interesting but that I would turn it off immediately. After all, I don’t want my iPhone performing commands just because someone next to me says “Hey Siri.” But on the iPhone 6s, the iPhone lets Siri learn your voice before Hey Siri is activated, which means the risk of someone else activating Siri is much lower.
As a test one night, I put my iPhone 6s in the middle of the table, when the screen was dark and it was asleep, and I said “Hey Siri what time is it.” Siri instantly recognized my voice and told me the time. Then I asked my wife, my son, and my daughter (who were sitting around the same table) to say the same thing. Sure enough, Siri ignored them. My son and daughter then attempted to imitate my voice, again with no success. Mind you we are talking about a 7 year old girl and a 9 year old boy, so their attempts to imitate my deeper voice were fairly unconvincing, even though they did provide me and my wife with lots of comedy. Nevertheless, this initial test — unscientific as it may be — led me to decide to keep the Hey Siri function on for a while and see how it works in real life. It is pretty useful to be able to ask Siri a question without having to first hold down on the home button — especially if my hands are on my computer keyboard because I am writing a brief or typing an email.
Camera
There are four new features when it comes to taking pictures with an iPhone 6s. First, the front-facing camera is a much better 5-megapixel camera (up from 1.2-megapixel) and the screen of the iPhone can flash to simulate a flash. I don’t take many selfie pictures, so this doesn’t mean much to me, but I won’t judge if high-quality selfie pictures are important to you.
Second, the new Live Photos feature automatically captures the 1.5 seconds of video before and after you take a picture and saves that as a movie along with the picture itself. The result is a picture that takes up twice as much space, but you have the ability to 3D Touch in a picture to see what happened just before and just after the picture. If you have kids or pets, this could be a fun feature — and the feature is especially amusing to my kids since we just finished reading all of the Harry Potter books.
Third, the back camera features a 12-megapixel camera (up from the 8-megapixel iPhone 6). This can result in slightly better pictures, although in my limited tests so far it hasn’t proven to be a major improvement over the iPhone 6. Even so, it is nice for the camera to get better every year with every new iPhone.
Fourth, you can now choose to capture video in 4K. I haven’t decided if I will use this feature. On the one hand, TVs are so much better today than they were 20 years ago that I’m sure they will be even better 20 years from now, so part of me wants to preserve the highest quality video of my kids so that the quality looks good even in the future when the technology is much improved. On the other hand, 4K video takes up a lot of space, although I do have the largest iPhone model (128 GB) so I suppose I have room for it.
I’m glad to have these four new features, especially since I take a lot more pictures and video with my iPhone than with my Nikon DSLR camera, which takes beautiful pictures but is big and heavy and a pain to carry around. The camera on the iPhone 6 was already pretty darn good, but it is nice to be better.
Other changes
Those are the big changes, but there are some other improvements. The iPhone body is stronger as a result is the use of a new aluminum casing. The glass on the face of the iPhone is stronger. There is a new Rose Gold color, which is like a metallic pink. (I got the Space Gray model.)
The iPhone 6s is also sightly heavier than the iPhone 6 (143 g/5.0 oz versus 129 g/4.6 oz). It’s not something I notice unless I put one phone in each hand and actually try to feel the difference; in every day use the weight feels about the same. Note, however, that I have heard that the weight difference is more noticeable on the iPhone 6s Plus, which is 192 g/6.8 oz versus 172 g/6.1 oz for the iPhone 6 Plus.
The iPhone 6 was the first iPhone that I ever used every day with a case, because the curved sides made it somewhat slippery and I was afraid that I would drop it without a case. The iPhone 6s feels just as slippery to me, so I guess I’ll be using that case again for another year.
Upgrade experience
This is the seventh year that I have upgraded to a new iPhone. Some upgrades have been better than others, but this upgrade did not go smoothly for me.
My typical advice for an iPhone upgrade is to connect your old iPhone to a computer running iTunes and do an encrypted backup. That way, even your passwords and settings are stored in the backup file. Then connect the new iPhone to the computer and restore from that same backup file. This system has worked very well for me in the past.
I knew that this year would be different because I use an Apple Watch, which is designed to work with only a specific iPhone. I would also have to move it to the new iPhone.
Based on what did and did not work for me, here is what I recommend that you do if you own an Apple Watch and you are upgrading:
Launch the Apple Watch app on your old iPhone, tap the first option “Apple Watch,” and select Unpair Apple Watch. That will backup the contents of your Apple Watch to your old iPhone, and then remove the connection.
Connect the old iPhone to a computer and do an encrypted backup.
In iTunes on that computer, click on the App section, then click the Updates tab, and click Upgrade All Apps in the bottom right corner.
Connect the new iPhone to the computer and follow the instructions to restore from that backup that you just made.
Launch the Apple Watch app on your new iPhone, pair it to your Apple Watch, and select to restore the Apple Watch from the backup that you made in Step #1.
Unfortunately, I didn’t do Step #3, and it caused me a lot of problems because some apps were not correctly updated on my new iPhone. Instead, I saw many apps on the iPhone 6s with dark icons and the word “Waiting…” under each app, as shown here:
I never could figure out how to force those apps to finish updating. After trying lots of other steps (re-syncing to the computer, signing out of the App Store and signing back in again, tapping on the icon, screaming at the icons, etc.) I ultimately had to delete each affected app from my iPhone and download a fresh new copy from the App Store. For some apps, that was actually no big deal because the app contained no unique data for me. For other apps that had some data associated with them, I lost that data when I deleted the app and downloaded a new copy. (For example, I lost my workflows in the Workflow app and my actions in the Launch Center Pro app, and I had to recreate them. Fortunately I could consult my old iPhone 6 to to do so.)
Hopefully you won’t have any of these problems when you upgrade. Perhaps my advice will help.
Conclusion
Apple is now on its ninth iPhone model, and it is still managing to come up with great new features. The iPhone 6s is a true joy to use. 3D Touch is fantastic, making it faster to get things done on an iPhone, and this feature will become even more useful when third parties embrace it. Also, the increased speed and the other new features all contribute to the overall experience. The iPhone 6s is a nice upgrade from last year’s iPhone 6, but if you are using an older model of the iPhone then this will be a huge upgrade for you.
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This article won the BlawgWorld Pick of the Week award. The editors of BlawgWorld, a free weekly email newsletter for lawyers and law firm administrators, give this award to one article every week that they feel is a must-read for this audience.
Apple announced on September 21 that iOS 9 had the fastest adoption rate ever of any version of iOS, with more than 50 percent of devices updated only five days after iOS 9 became available for download. When you think about how many iPhones and iPads are in use, that is a very impressive number. On September 23, Apple released a minor update to iOS 9, version 9.0.1, to fix a few minor bugs. Earlier this week, the iPad mini 4 went on sale, and today, the new iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus go on sale. Suffice it to say that there is a lot going on right now in the world of iOS. And now, the other news of note from the past week:
Do you enjoy reading this In the news post every week, and wish that you could have more of something similar? Florida attorney Katie Floyd has started posting a Week in Review post on Sundays (9/20, 9/13, 9/6). The format is similar, although her focus is on iOS and Mac, as opposed to the focus here on iOS and attorneys. The first three installments have been excellent, and I think that most iPhone J.D. readers would enjoy reading them as much as I do. Check out her KatieFloyd.com website to read them every week.
Do you want to vote for iPhone J.D. in a contest? The Expert Institute nominated iPhone J.D. for its list of best legal blogs, and is running a contest to see which blogs get the most votes. You can click here and then click the Vote button to vote for iPhone J.D. But for an opposing viewpoint, the 3 Geeks and a Law Blog makes its best — and funniest — argument that you should vote against iPhone J.D. and vote for that blog instead. Whoever you decide to vote for, no registration is required, so this will take you like two seconds to do.
North Carolina attorney Brian Focht of The Cyber Advocate interviewed New York attorney Nicole Black to discuss the role that wearable technology, such as the Apple Watch, will have for attorneys.
Attorney Jeremy Horwitz of 9to5 Mac notes that, based on the early reviews, the new iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus cameras give high-end DSLR cameras a run for the money.
For a contrary view, Geoffrey Fowler of the Wall Street Journal opines that while the iPhone 6s Plus camera is the best all-around smartphone camera on the market today, it is not as big an improvement over last year’s iPhone 6 Plus as he would have liked.
Speaking of that camera, one of the reasons to get the larger iPhone 6s Plus over the iPhone 6s is that the Plus model has optical image stabilization, which can make a big difference when shooting video. John Gruber of Daring Fireball linked to this video by Giga Tech which shows side-by-side video taken by both new iPhones, and it is easy to see what a difference optical image stabilization makes. I hope that Apple eventually brings this technology to the small model of the iPhone.
Microsoft announced on its Office Blog that it introduced a new app called Invite that makes it easier to determine the best time for a meeting that work for all of the attendees.
Aly Keves of The Daily Dot reports that you can now use the Starbucks app to place an order before you even get to the store, and then skip the line when you get there.
Rene Ritchie of iMore explains 3D Touch, the new technology in the iPhone 6s that has been getting rave reviews.
Rene Ritchie also reviews the new iPad mini 4. It is basically everything that you like about the iPad Air 2, but in a smaller and lighter size.
Dan Moren of Six Colors discusses how he uses his Apple Watch after five months. My experience is similar to his.
Federico Viticci of MacStories reviews Just Press Record, a simple voice recorder for the iPhone that you can be used to record and play audio on the Apple Watch.
T-Mobile announced this week that it will start selling the Apple Watch, and will let you pay for the Apple Watch Sport in 24 monthly installments with no interest — so only about $15 or $16 a month.
A high school football player says that his Apple Watch recently saved his life when the heart rate monitor readings prompted him to go to the hospital and discover that he had a life-threatening condition. Chance Miller of 9to5Mac reports that Apple CEO Tim Cook heard about this, talked to the guy, and then offered the guy an Apple internship, which is a great stepping stone to getting a job at Apple — sort of like Apple’s version of a summer associate at a law firm.
Sandy Stachowiak of AppAdvice reviews iTranslate, an app that can translate between languages on the Apple Watch.
If you use your Apple Watch when you workout and find that you sometimes accidentally tap the screen — it has never happened to me, but I guess it does happen for others — Serenity Caldwell of iMore reports that there is a new option in watchOS 2 that you can use to lock the screen during a workout.
Roman Loyola of Macworld reports that he temporarily lost his Apple Watch because he uses the last notch on the Sport Band to fit his wrist. But as he notes, Apple recently started selling a L/XL version of the Sport Band (although only in black or white, not the 16 colors available in the other sizes) which is perfect for larger wrists. I myself have a larger wrist and use the last notch on my M/L Sport Band, and Loyola’s experience is making me wonder if I should get the larger size band.
If you watch the Netflix show Orange is the New Black, then you should watch this video produced by Netflix to announce that you can now pay for Netflix via iTunes. Funny stuff.
And finally, there is now a two-minute long trailer for the upcoming Steve Jobs movie, which will be in theaters next month. This is the movie written by Aaron Sorkin and based on the popular book by Walter Isaacson. The early reviews have been very positive, so my hope is that this will be a good movie. Here is the new trailer:
The iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus go on sale this Friday. Apple gave review units to a small number of people two weeks ago, and they were allowed to post their reviews starting yesterday. Thus, if you want to learn more about the 2015 models of the iPhone from folks who have had a chance to try them out, now you can do so. Some reviews are more interesting than others, and here are the ones that I recommend if you want to read more:
John Gruber of Daring Fireball explains why the iPhone 6s is a bigger advancement than last year’s iPhone 6 was.
Christina Warren of Mashable believes that 3D Touch is a game changer, likes the new Live Photos feature, and also likes the new pink color (which Apple calls Rose Gold).
Attorney Nilay Patel of The Verge prefers the iPhone 6s Plus, and likes 3D Touch but thinks that third party developers need to start implementing 3D Touch before it will live up to its potential.
David Pogue of Yahoo Tech says that the biggest improvements are speed and 3D Touch.
Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal is disappointed that Apple didn’t improve the battery life, and thinks that Live Photos is the best new feature.
Yesterday, Apple released watchOS 2, the first major software update for the Apple Watch since the watch was first released about five months ago. With watchOS 2, the Apple Watch feels more complete, with lots of features that seemed to be missing in the past. For example, you can now use the Apple Watch to reply to an email. I’ve found it very useful to reply to text messages on the watch, so I suspect that I’ll use this feature quite a bit too. You have the ability to dictate a reply, but I suspect it will be far more useful to tap one of the default replies. Apple includes some common useful replies such as “Let me get back to you” and “Got it, thanks” and “Working on this now.” You also have the ability to create your own default replies.
But I think that the big new feature in watchOS 2 will be the better support for third party apps. Because the update just came out yesterday, we’ll have to wait and see how third parties take advantage of the new features. Third party apps should be faster since they can now run natively on the watch. Also, I’m really looking forward to seeing third parties take advantage of the opportunity to add their own complications to a watch face. I’m sure that developers will come up with some creative and useful complications that provide features on the watch face that Apple doesn’t provide. And if you use your Apple Watch when you workout, third parties will be able to make their own workout apps that can use the same live health sensor data (such as your heart rate) that the built-in Workout app uses, plus you can use those third party apps and still get credit on your Activity circles.
Speaking of working out with an Apple Watch, it is now much faster to start a workout. Instead of taking the time to find the Workout app, launch it, and then press the correct buttons to start a workout, you can now use Siri both to launch the app and to start the workout. Just activate Siri on the watch (hold down the Digital Crown for a second) and say something like “Start outdoor run workout” and the workout begins, without you having to press any other buttons. It’s nice to be able to get right in to your workout without fiddling with the watch.
As someone who uses Apple’s HomeKit technology (I have Lutron Caséta Wireless Dimmers installed in some of the rooms in my house), I’m thrilled that Siri on the Apple Watch can now control HomeKit. I can just tell my watch to turn on, or dim, lights in different rooms in my house, even if my iPhone is on the other side of the house. Not only is it useful, but also it feels like magic.
I’ll warn you that the update process wasn’t as smooth for me as I would have liked. During my first attempt to update my watch, the process seemed to just hang when my iPhone was at the stage of verifying the update (before putting the new software on the watch). I had to restart my iPhone and Apple Watch and try again. Fortunately, the second time worked fine.
There’s lots that is new today in watchOS 2, but perhaps most of all, I’m really excited to see what will be new on the Apple Watch in the coming weeks and months as third party app developers come up with innovative ways to take advantage of the powerful new tools that Apple has given them in watchOS 2. If you own an Apple Watch, you should upgrade.
There are lots of great new features in the new iOS 9, and for the last few days I’ve been looking at a feature that I think will be really useful for lawyers and their clients: the new Markup feature in Mail in iOS 9. This feature gives the Mail app the built-in ability to perform simple annotations on documents, including adding a signature to a document. Thus, it is now quick and easy to circle some key parts of a document that one of your colleagues or opposing counsel needs to address. It is also easy for you to emphasize a part of a document for your client to review. And because it is simple to add a signature in a document, you can sign something that someone else sent you without leaving the Mail app.
Selecting a file to markup
I suspect that this feature will be most useful to me when someone sends me a PDF file and I want to reply with an annotated version of the document. It is now very easy to do this on an iPad or an iPhone. (The below pictures are on an iPad.) Just hold down your finger on the PDF attachment, and look at the bottom row of options. One of the options on that row is now Markup and Reply; it has an icon that looks like a toolbox. Tap that icon, and the Mail app will start a reply email (note — in my tests it started a Reply All, not just a Reply to the original sender) with the documents attached and then will open up the attachment so that you can annotate it.
Alternatively, if you already have a PDF attachment to an email that you are working on, just hold down on the document, and in the pop-up menu you will see an option called Markup. Looks like it is the fourth option.
In this post, I focus on annotating PDF files because we use them so much as lawyers, but note that the Markup feature also works with images.
Annotating the document
The next step is to annotate. The new Markup feature only includes basic annotation tools. You cannot highlight, add stamps, etc. Instead, your options are limited to freehand drawing, typing text or creating a zoom circle.
To start drawing on a document, select the pen tool at the bottom left. You can then draw anywhere on the document.
You can change the color of the ink by pressing the circle icon, third from the right at the bottom of the screen. You can change the size of the pen by tapping the icon with the three lines.
If you draw something that looks like a shape (a circle, ellipses, square, rectangle, line, triangle), after you draw you will see an option at the bottom of the screen to leave it the way that you drew it or to change it to a perfect shape. That option is shown in the prior image, and this next image shows what a corrected shape looks like:
I wish that there was an option to turn a line into an arrow by adding a triangle head to one end of it. For now, it looks like you need to draw your own arrows.
UPDATE: Another lawyer at my firm just showed me that you can create arrows. Just draw something that looks close to an arrow, in a single stroke, and then at the bottom of the screen tap the arrow option to clean it up. My error was making a line, then lifting my finger, then drawing the triangle on the end of the line with a second stroke. You instead need to keep your finger on the screen while you are making both the line and the head of the arrow.
When the pen tool is turned on (blue box around the pen icon), you can draw on the screen. When the pen tool is turned off, you can tap on any annotation that you have made and choose to delete it, edit it or duplicate it.
The second tool is a magnification loupe. It creates a circle that zooms in on a part of the document. Both the size of the circle and the magnification of the zoom are adjustable. This gives you the ability to zoom into a part of the document.
The third tool is the text tool. It works as you would expect — tap a part of a document and then write some words. You can adjust the color, and you can also adjust the font by tapping the icon at the bottom right.
Signatures
Markup also makes it fast and easy to add signatures to document. Just tap the fourth icon at the bottom. The first time you do so, you will be prompted to enter your signature.
You can then add the signature to your document. Drag the four corners of the signature to adjust the size, and drag the signature to the right location.
After you enter your signature once, it is stored and shared to your other devices. Thus, you might want to sign the first time on your iPad, taking advantage of the larger screen and perhaps even using a stylus to create a nice signature, and then you can easily use that same signature in the future on your iPad or iPhone just by tapping on it after you press the signature icon. You can create and store multiple signatures.
When you are done with all of your annotations, just tap Done. Then you can send your email with the annotated file attached.
Usefulness of Markup
The Markup feature doesn’t do anything that you cannot already do with third-party apps. And third-party apps offer more annotation features, such as highlighting. And many third party apps, such as GoodReader, let you flatten a file before you send it so that the annotations become a more permanent part of the document. Annotations that you create using the Markup feature can be deleted, edited or moved around by the person to whom you send the annotated document.
Having said that, it is nice to have an option built-in to Mail because it is so much faster to use. If you just want to quickly circle something in a document, Markup can do it well, and do it fast.
I can also see Markup being useful if you want to send a document to a client and you want them to circle something or sign the document. Plus, you can send a document to anyone else using an iPhone or iPad and ask them to sign it without needing to worry about whether they have a third party app installed that can perform that function. They do need to be running iOS 9, which is currently brand new, but eventually most people will be on iOS 9.
Have you updated your iPhone and iPad to iOS 9 yet? You should. From everything I have been reading, this is the most problem-free iOS upgrade ever. The new features are fantastic (some of which are discussed below), you’ll get more battery life, everything is more polished and advanced, and it costs you nothing to upgrade. Bravo, Apple. And now, the news of note from the past week:
watchOS 2.0 was supposed to be released this week, but Apple delayed it for a short time to fix a bug that it found at the last minute. While you wait to update your Apple Watch, you can read about all of the upcoming new features in Rene Ritchie definitive review of watchOS 2.0 on iMore.
Apple has cut the price of iCloud storage, which you can use to share documents between an iPhone, iPad and Mac. iCloud is most useful for me as a way to make all of the photos on my Mac (almost 50,000) also available on my iPhone and iPad, which is great when I want to share that one picture from 13 years ago that I remember. And of course, iCloud is also a place to store your documents. Dan Moren of Six Colors describes the new iCloud plans and shows how they compare to Dropbox and other cloud storage services.
Jeff Benjamin of iDownloadBlog says that one of his favorite features of iOS 9 on the iPad is the new folder layout, which now shows you 16 apps in a folder (up from 9). I like this change too.
David Pogue of Yahoo Tech reviews the DxO One, a $600 accessory for an iPhone that lets it take SLR-quality photographs.
Apple CEO Tim Cook was in New York this week, and John Paczkowski of BuzzFeed had the chance to ask him some questions.
And finally, the reason that Tim Cook was in New York was to be a guest on the new Late Show with Stephen Colbert. It was a great interview, with Cook and Colbert both at their best. Definitely worth watching. Here is the video:
Yesterday, Apple released iOS 9 for the iPhone and iPad. It is a solid, free upgrade that adds some great new features. The new Notes app is particularly nice, with support for inserting pictures, creating checklists (great for a packing list), etc. The split view will help me to be even more productive on my iPad.
But I’m just as excited about all of the tiny improvements, each of which makes your day-to-day usage of the iPhone and iPad so much better. For example:
The keys on the keyboard change to uppercase or lowercase letters depending upon the mode. Thus, you no longer have to stare at the shift key and try to guess whether it is on or off. Amen.
When you hold down the home button on the iPhone to activate Siri, you no longer get an audible beep and instead just get a discreet vibration.
You can swipe from left to right on your first home screen to perform a search, but that page also gives you helpful shortcuts that Siri thinks that you might want to use, such as recent contacts, apps you are likely to want to launch, etc. It is a little thing that makes the iPhone faster and easier to use. I really like it.
Third parties can now add themselves to that Siri search screen. For example, I use 1Password to store my passwords. I can now swipe to the search screen and type “Apple ID” to see an entry for my Apple ID password in the 1Password app. When I tap it, the 1Password app launches directly to that entry so that I can quickly see my long and complicated password. Other apps can also add themselves to the search screen.
The system font on the iPhone used to be Helvetica Neue, but in iOS 9 it changes to an Apple-designed font called San Francisco, the font used on the Apple Watch. It is a subtle change, but I find it easier to read.
For more information on everything that is new, I have two sets of recommended articles. First, if you just want a nice short overview of the highlights, I liked these articles:
Today, Apple will release the latest version of the iPhone and iPad operating system, iOS 9, plus the first major upgrade to the Apple Watch operating system, watchOS 2.0.
[UPDATE: iOS 9 was released around 10 Pacific / 1 Eastern. However, Apple is delaying the release of watchOS 2.0; Rene Ritchie of iMore has more details in this article.]
I discussed the major features of iOS 9 in my post three months ago. Many iPads will get the option to run two apps at the same time, Siri is greatly improved, there is a much better Notes app, better battery life, and lots of other little improvements that will make the overall experience of using an iPhone and iPad much better.
For Apple Watch owners, today will be the first major upgrade. I think that the biggest two improvements will be native third party apps (which should be much faster and more powerful) and third party complications, so that you can better customize your watch face. The new Time Travel feature gives you the opportunity to see upcoming events by just turning the Digital Crown. And there are lots of other improvements: Siri is improved, you will be able to reply to an email on the watch, the new Nightstand mode is added, etc. If you want more details, Serenity Caldwell of iMore wrote a good post on what is new in watchOS 2.0.
It’s always nice when the device that you already own gets better. If you own an iPhone, iPad or Apple Watch, that will happen today. Apple hasn’t announced what time the updates will go live, but based on what has happened in the past my best guess is around 10 Pacific / 1 Eastern. Enjoy!
