I noted yesterday that I’m curious to find out if the weight of the larger iPad Pro will be a problem. Jason Snell, the former head of Macworld who now writes at Six Colors, wrote about the weight based on his hands-on time with the iPad Pro, saying: “The thing that struck me the most about the iPad Pro was how light it feels. It weighs the same as the original iPad, but that pound-and-a-half is spread across its 12-by-8.7-inch body. During the stage presentation, they showed photos of someone casually holding the iPad Pro with one hand. It looked wrong—like a bit of marketing hype, trying to make you think that this iPad that’s so large it’s illustrated with a picture of Jupiter isn’t so huge—but it turned out to be right.” And Jim Dalrymple of The Loop wrote: “After using iPad Pro yesterday, I can tell you it’s gorgeous. The screen is outstanding, it’s fast, the battery will last 10 hours, and it’s lightweight.” That’s good news to me, because if the weight is not a problem, I see the larger size of the iPad Pro as a great feature for lawyers who need to work with documents all day long. And now, a few other news items of note from the past week:
Attorney Jeremy Horwitz of 9to5Mac points out 10 lesser-known items about Apple’s new products announced this week.
One set of the new Apple Watch bands were created by luxury-goods maker Hermès with assistance from Apple. Christina Passariello of the Wall Street Journal reports on how these bands came about.
Microsoft announced, on its Office Blog, that its iOS apps such as Word are being updated for iOS 9. For example, you will be able to use the Inking function to write handwritten edits on a document. I do that now, but I have to first convert a Word document to a PDF and open it in a PDF editor to do so. It will be handy to do it directly within Word.
Matt Apuzzo, David Sanger and Michael Schmidt of the New York Times report that when the Department of Justice asked Apple to turn over text messages of iPhone owners, Apple’s response was no — because the encryption that Apple uses makes it impossible to do so. DOJ wants Apple to figure out some way to give the government access, but the article quotes Apple’s CEO’s Tim Cook to describe the problems with this approach: “If you put a key under the mat for the cops, a burglar can find it, too. [And if criminals or countries] know there’s a key hidden somewhere, they won’t stop until they find it.”
Dieter Bohn of The Verge reports that BlackBerry is acquiring Good Technology. That story was like a walk down memory lane for me; before the iPhone existed I used a Palm Treo running Good Technology software for email, and before that, I used a BlackBerry device for email.
Do you want to watch a movie or a TV show but don’t know the best way to stream it? In an article for Macworld, J.R. Bookwalter reviews JustWatch, a free website that shows you everywhere that you can stream or download specific titles.
Rory Appleton of The Fresno Bee reports that a college student in California was shot by a robber — but fortunately he was protected when the bullet hit his iPhone in his pocket. Who needs Wonder Woman’s bracelets when you have an iPhone.
One of the Apple employees to show off the new Apple TV at the keynote event this week was Jen Folse, a member of the Apple TV team. It was her first appearance on stage at an Apple event, and while I noticed in the video stream that her fingernails were painted blue, I didn’t notice until I saw an up-close photograph after the event that she actually had them painted with the graphic that Siri makes when you talk to it in iOS 9, as you can see here and here. Awesome and funny.
And finally, if you want to sell your current iPhone to help pay for the new iPhone 6s, Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal offers some excellent tips in this video:
Yesterday, Apple announced all of its new hardware for the Fall of 2015. The new Apple TV looks like a lot of fun, and there are new bands and colors for the Apple Watch, but today I want to focus on the new products that lawyers will use to be more productive: the iPhone 6s (and the iPhone 6s Plus) and the iPad Pro. The new iPhone looks the same as last year’s model but includes amazing new features on the inside. The new iPad Pro looks very different from prior models, mostly because it is so large, but also because of two accessories made by Apple to work with the iPad Pro: a stylus and a keyboard/case. Here is why I think that lawyers will really love the new iPhone and iPad.
IPHONE 6S AND IPHONE 6S PLUS
The new iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus cost the same as last year’s models, so there is no extra charge for the “s” in the name. You can pre-order them starting in the wee hours of Saturday September 12 at 12:01 am Pacific / 3:01 am Eastern, and they will be available starting Friday, September 25.
3D Touch
The big new feature of the iPhone 6s is 3D Touch. Apple has taken the Force Touch technology on the Apple Watch (which distinguishes between simply tapping and pushing down harder) and has brought it to the iPhone. For example, you can still tap on an app’s icon to launch the app, but 3D Touch lets you push down a little harder on the app’s icon to see a pop-up menu of options to do with that app. This saves you steps. Instead of launching the app and then selecting an option, you can just jump straight to that option. For example, instead of tapping the Messages app, you can push harder on the app and jump directly into your conversation with a specific person.
Apple is also using 3D Touch to introduce something called Peek and Pop. Peek lets you preview something, and Pop let’s you act upon it. So if you are looking at a list of emails, a light press on an email lets you Peek to preview the contents, letting you see the email without formally opening the email. If you want to actually work with the email, press harder to Pop it open. Today you might tap an email, see what it is about and decide that you want to work with it later, and then mark it as unread and go back to your list. With 3D Touch, you can quickly Peek at the email and decide whether you want to do something with it or just leave it unread.
You can also use Peek and Pop on items such as a webpage URL (peek at the website before deciding if you want to actually load it in Safari) or an address (see a map preview).
3D Touch adds a certain degree of complexity, but many folks who were able to try it yesterday at the Apple demonstration say that it quickly becomes second nature. I’m sure that it is very similar to learning the difference between a left-click and a right-click on a computer mouse; the left-click is simple to understand, but once you learn to use the right-click you have a lot more power.
Faster Wi-Fi and LTE
The Wi-Fi on the iPhone 6s adds a feature called MIMO (multiple-input and multiple output). Most new routers have this, including Apple’s own Airport Extreme, which I reviewed last year. The end result is that your Wi-Fi can be up to twice as fast.
The iPhone 6s also supports LTE Advanced. This means that cellular data can be twice as fast, but you have to be using a carrier that supports LTE Advanced, and you must be in a city where it is available. Over time, however, LTE Advanced will spread to more areas, and the iPhone 6s will be ready for it.
Speed
The brain (the CPU) of the iPhone 6s is 70% faster than the iPhone 6, and the graphics processor (the GPU) is 90% faster. This means that the iPhone is even more responsive, which is always a good thing.
It also lets the iPhone do new things such as use the “Hey Siri” function even when the iPhone isn’t plugged in to power. Your iPhone can just be sitting on your desk and you can ask Siri a question and have it respond. I look forward to trying this to see how it works in the real world. Do I have to worry about someone else standing close to me and saying “Hey Siri” and triggering some option, such as placing a phone call? So the jury’s still out for me on whether I’ll turn that feature on, but I like that the new iPhone 6s is powerful and efficient enough to allow for new features like this.
Camera
The iPhone 6s also features an improved camera on the back (the iSight camera). It features a 12-megapixel camera (up from the 8-megapixel iPhone 6). Autofocus is faster and better. The iPhone 6s can record 4K video (up from 1080p on the iPhone 6).
The camera on the front (called the FaceTime camera) is also improved. It is a 5-megapixel camera (up from 1.2-megapixel) and the front of the iPhone can flash white to simulate a flash when you are taking that selfie picture in a bar late at night.
Other features
One of the things that I don’t like about the iPhone 6 is that it has slippery edges. The iPhone 6 was the first iPhone I’ve used that I feel needs to be in a case to prevent it from slipping out of my fingers. The iPhone 6s has the same design, so you’ll probably want a case for it too. But if you are not hiding your iPhone 6s in a case, then you might be interested to learn that in addition to the Silver, Space Gray and Gold colors that last year’s iPhone 6 came in, the iPhone 6s adds the color Rose Gold — sort of a shiny pink.
Touch ID is also improved, so the fingerprint sensor can read your fingerprint even faster. I suppose that is a good thing, although it is already pretty darn fast on my iPhone 6.
The iPhone 6s also features something called Live Photos — a photo that you can tap to see motion, based on a series of photos. For those of you with kids, this feature reminds me of the photographs in Harry Potter in which the individuals in photos move around as you look at them.
IPAD PRO
Apple will continue to sell the 2014 iPad Air 2 and the 2013 iPad Air, but if you want a new iPad you need to go either smaller or bigger. The new iPad mini 4 packs all of the power of last year’s iPad Air 2 into the smaller size of the mini, and starts at $269.
I know that the mini has its fans, but I’ve always considered a larger screen an advantage for getting work done with the iPad, whether I am reading documents or working with exhibits. Thus, I am particularly introduced in the brand new iPad Pro. It starts at $799 for a 32 GB version, and costs $949 for a 128 GB version. (And for another $130, you can get the 128 GB version with built-in 3G LTE.) It will be available in November, but Apple hasn’t given a specific date.
Larger Screen
The biggest feature of the iPad Pro is that it is big. The new iPad Pro features a 12.9-inch display. The iPad Air 2 has a 9.7-inch display. So whereas the iPad Air 2 is 9.4 inches high and 6.6 inches wide, the new iPad Pro is 12 inches high and 8.68 inches wide.
Another way to get a sense of the size difference it to consider pixels. The iPad Air 2 has a resolution of 2048 by 1536 (at 264 pixels per inch). The iPad Pro has the same number of pixels per inch, but has a resolution of 2732 by 2048. Note the 2048 in both resolutions. If you hold the older iPad in portrait orientation and look at how high the screen is (2048 pixels high), that is the width of the new iPad Pro.
I’m excited about this new screen size. I spend a lot of time reading documents on my iPad, whether they be Word files or scanned exhibits, and everything should be easier to read on the bigger screen.
One of the marquee features of iOS 9 is the ability to run two apps at the same time on an iPad. With the iPad Pro, you’ll be able to run one app with all of the pixels that it would have had on an iPad Air, plus you’ll have space left over to see a second app that is running at the same time. In other words, you can run two apps at once, and yet one of those apps will be the same size that it would have been on the non-Pro iPad.
Weight
My big concern about the iPad Pro is what do you sacrifice by having that larger size. Weight is the first thing that jumps to my mind. The original 2010 iPad was 1.5 pounds, which seemed heavy, but over time the iPad got thinner and lighter, down to about 1 pound for the iPad Air, and slightly under a pound for the iPad Air 2. But the iPad Pro is the heaviest iPad ever, weighing 1.57 pounds.
While the iPad Pro is essentially the same weight as the original iPad, it only .27 inches in depth, making it about half as thin as the original iPad. And that 1.5 pounds of weight is distributed over a much larger size. Does that distribution of weight over a thinner and larger device make the iPad Pro feel lighter that the original iPad? My hope is yes. Jason Snell of Six Colors got to try out the new iPad Pro yesterday, and he said last night on the Upgrade podcast that the iPad Pro feels super-light, and he had no trouble holding it with one hand. Similarly, Dana Wollman of Engadget says “it feels lighter than it looks.” On the other hand, Andrew Cunningham of Ars Technica says “The tablet is 6.9mm thick and weighs about a pound and a half, and as you’d expect you wouldn’t want to hold it in one hand for very long. You can hold it comfortably in one hand for short stretches, though—it manages to be large without feeling overly unwieldy.” I look forward to trying it myself to see what I think.
Speed
Like the new iPhone, the new iPad Pro is much faster. So much so that Apple says that it is faster than most laptop computers. Phil Schiller of Apple said yesterday that the iPad Pro is faster than 80% of PC laptops sold in the last 12 months.
The message here is that this is an iPad that can compete with a laptop computer. Much like Microsoft positions its Surface Pro as a computer that gives you many of the advantages of a tablet, the new iPad Pro is Apple’s version of a tablet that gives you many of the advantages of a laptop computer. I thought it telling that when Apple introduced the iPad in 2010, it showed off its iWork apps including its Pages word processor. But yesterday, Apple brought Microsoft executives on the stage to show off the iPad Pro running Microsoft Word. Apple clearly sees the iPad Pro as a tablet for folks looking to get work done. (Of course, the larger screen and improved speed will also be awesome for games and watching movies.)
Stylus
I’m a big fan of using a stylus with an iPad to take handwritten notes during a meeting and to annotate documents. Third-party manufacturers have done a great job of making some really good styluses, but they are not perfect. Active styluses can have small tips but are somewhat unresponsive and often do a poor job with things like diagonal lines, and traditional styluses need larger tips that make you feel like you are writing with a marker or a thick crayon instead of a pen.
Apple is introducing a $99 accessory for the iPad Pro called the Apple Pencil, and it looks amazing. Apple says that it has updated the hardware in the iPad itself to work with the Apple Pencil and be amazingly precise and responsive. The Apple Pencil is pressure sensitive, so you can push down harder for wider lines. And the iPad can sense with the Apple Pencil is at an angle, letting you create shading in apps much like you would do with a charcoal pencil.
The Apple Pencil gets 12 hours of battery life on a charge, so you can use it all day long. To charge it, you just remove the cap off of the back of the stylus and plug the stylus into the Lightning port on an iPad. Indeed, if your Apple Pencil’s battery is dead, you can simply plug it in to the iPad for only 15 seconds and you will get 30 minutes of battery life. Wow.
I am incredibly excited to try out the Apple Pencil and see how it works in real life. And while I’m sure that Apple made a high-quality stylus, I hope that third parties will be allowed to take advantage of the new technology to make their own iPad Pro styluses. I’m sure that companies like Wacom and Adonit could create some incredible styluses that built upon what Apple did with the Apple Pencil.
Keyboard
I often use an external Bluetooth keyboard with my iPad when I travel, such as when I want to write longer email messages. Yesterday, Apple introduced another accessory for the iPad Pro called the Smart Keyboard. It is a thin keyboard built into an iPad cover, and costs $169.
Putting a keyboard in an iPad cover is nothing new, and in the past I haven’t liked those keyboards because they didn’t feature full-size keys, the only way to make a keyboard small enough to fit on an iPad case. But with the larger iPad Pro screen, the case can also be larger, so the keyboard can also be larger. I’ll have to try this one out, but it looks promising.
The keyboard also has a new connector, which Apple calls the Smart Connector, which lets the Smart Keyboard talk to the iPad (without using Bluetooth) and get power (so no internal battery is required). Third parties can use this connector too, so Apple won’t be the only one offering cool new keyboards for the iPad Pro.
CONCLUSION
For those of us who use an iPhone and iPad to get work done, the new improvements to the iPhone and iPad sound great. I’m most interested in 3D Touch on the iPhone, the larger screen on the iPad Pro, and the Apple Pencil — three features that I can see myself using every day.
Today at 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern, Apple will give a keynote presentation at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco. Apple hasn’t disclosed what will be announced; the invitation merely says “Hey Siri, give us a hint.” If you actually ask Siri, you’ll get some humorous responses. But there is no doubt that today is the day that Apple will announce the 2015 version of the iPhone. If Apple follows tradition, it will add an “s” to the name, announcing the iPhone 6s and the iPhone 6s Plus today, but of course they might change that.
Apple is also expected to announced a new version of the Apple TV. The first Apple TV was introduced in 2007. It was updated in 2010, 2012 and 2013.
I’m sure that we will also hear something about iOS 9 and the Apple Watch. Some folks also believe we will see a new iPad introduced today, but I don’t expect that. In recent years, Apple has hosted a second event in October to focus on the iPad, and a new iPhone + new Apple TV + Apple Watch seems like more than enough for one presentation. Thus, I’d be surprised to see new iPads today. [UPDATE: OK, I was indeed surprised!]
If you want to watch a live video stream of today’s keynote, you can do so on an iPhone, iPad, Mac or Apple TV. You can also watch it on a PC if you are running the new Windows 10.
The International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) is a peer networking organization for people who work in the legal technology field, such as the people who work in law firm IT departments. ILTA just concluded its annual conference in Las Vegas, and at the conference, ILTA and InsideLegal released the results of their tenth annual technology purchasing survey. The survey was sent to almost 1,300 ILTA member law firms with responses from 184 law firms, about 83% of which were U.S. firms. You can download this year’s report in PDF format here. Here is what I saw in the survey results that struck me as interesting for attorneys who use iPhones and iPads.
iPhones, iPads and the Apple Watch are exciting to IT departments
Every year, ILTA asks respondents to identify the most exciting technology or trend — an open ended question. Two of the top seven answers in 2015 relate to iOS: mobility (use of tablets as desktop replacements; mobile device management; virtual mobile computing; ability for attorneys to connect remotely and perform work without issues) and the Apple Watch. The other five exciting tech or trends were cloud computing, security, virtualization, artificial intelligence, and big data.
For law firms that buy smartphones, 91% buy iPhones
This is a “technology purchasing survey” which means it asks about technology purchased by law firms. There are many categories of legal technology that are virtually always purchased by law firms and not individual lawyers, but the category of mobile technology is one that is moving away from IT purchasing departments. Many attorneys now buy their own device, a practice so prevalent in all companies that there is a common acronym for it: BYOD (bring your own device).
The ILTA survey asks about BYOD, and there has been a move towards BYOD since 2012 although it decreased somewhat this year. In 2012, 10% of firms were BYOD. That increased in 21% in 2013, then to 36% in 2014. This year the number dropped to 32%. This was somewhat surprising to me as I would have expected to see even more BYOD in 2015 among ILTA firms.
The ILTA survey also reveals that 62% of law firms have BYOD policies. I think that it is helpful for a firm to have such a policy, especially for larger law firms. (Of the 28% of law firms that reported not having BYOD policies, 53% were from smaller firms of 1-49 attorneys.)
The ILTA survey does not ask any questions about smartphones that attorneys purchase themselves (the BYOD smartphones), only the smartphones that law firms are buying. If 32% of law firms are BYOD in 2015, that means that around 68% are buying smartphones for at least some of their attorneys. What are they buying? Almost all are buying iPhones (62%), most are buying Android (43%), almost half are still buying BlackBerries (26%), and some are buying Windows smartphones (15%). Or stated differently, for those law firms that purchase smartphones for their attorneys in 2015, 91% are buying iPhones, 63% are buying Android, 38% are buying BlackBerry and 22% are buying Windows.
Here is what the last four years of survey data looks like:
What this chart doesn’t tell you is how many of each smartphone the firms are buying, just that the firm is buying at least one of that brand. On the other hand, the chart does tell us something about which smartphones are acceptable to IT departments at law firms. Back in 2012, half of the law firms were not buying iPhones, and now almost all of them buy iPhones. In 2012, very few law firms would buy any Android smartphones, and now almost two-thirds of them will do so. And while other surveys, such as the latest ABA Technology Survey that I analyzed last month, indicate that attorney BlackBerry use has plummeted over the last few years (only 5% in 2015), over a third of law firms still buy a BlackBerry for at least some of their attorneys. Sure, that is a downward trend, but it shows that BlackBerry still has a role for attorneys when it is the law firm buying the device instead of the attorney.
For law firms that buy tablets, the iPad remains popular
In the 2012 ILTA purchasing survey, only 13% of law firms purchased tablets for at least some of their attorneys. That increased substantially in the 2013 survey, when 58% of law firms purchased tablets for at least some of their attorneys. In 2014, the number dropped to 48%, but this year it is back up to 58%.
For those law firms that do purchase tablets for their attorneys, the iPad remains incredibly popular. In 2015, 81% of law firms that purchase tablets say that they purchase iPads. That’s down somewhat from prior years; it was 92% in 2014 and almost 100% in 2013. For those law firms that do purchase tablets for their attorneys, Android and Microsoft Surface tablets are also popular; about 50% purchase Microsoft tablets in 2015, and about 24% purchase Android tablets.
For the last three years, ILTA has asked “What percentage of your firm’s attorneys use tablets in their day-to-day work?” This year, the answer was 89%, compared to 91% in 2014 and 86% in 2013. I’ve always wondered about this question; does my IT department really know how many of us at my law firm are using iPads day-to-day? Having said that, it is good to know that IT departments understand that the tablet is an important tool for attorneys, and hopefully this knowledge encourages them to help their attorneys get even more value from their iPads.
If you don’t have an Apple Watch and you are wondering what folks use it for, or if you do own one and you want to see how your own usage compares to others, then you should check out the results of iMore’s first survey of Apple Watch users. Over 8,000 folks responded (including me), making this the largest survey of its kind so far. Respondents said that the best features of the Apple Watch are notifications, timekeeping, health and communications — which are also the four functions that are most useful to me. The most popular faces are the Utility and the Modular. (I myself use the Modular face because it has space for lots of complications, such as an indication of my next appointment, the date, and my activity circles.) And the most used apps are Dark Sky, Overcast, 1Password, Fantastical and Twitter. (I use the first four quite a bit; I use Twitterific instead of Twitter.) When watchOS 2.0 comes out — and it will be out soon, probably this month — the Apple Watch will be even more useful, with native apps and third-party complication support. I hope that iMore does a similar survey next year because it will be interesting to see what changes over time. There are not many apps that I’m still using today that I used with my first iPhone, although there are a few as I noted in this post last year, so I’m sure that Apple Watch usage will also change in future years. And now, the news of note from the past week:
Florida attorney Katie Floyd reviews the Ring doorbell, an Internet-connected doorbell that lets you use your iPhone to see who is at the front door.
Katie Floyd also checked out the Spigen Apple Watch Night Stand that I reviewed a few weeks ago. She likes it too, and she was able to test the pad that makes the stand work with the 38mm version of the Apple Watch, which works well for her.
New York attorney Neil Squillante of TechnoLawyer reviews Adobe Acrobat DC, a service that stores your PDFs in the cloud so that you can access them on both your computer and iPad.
Bellefield makes iTimeKeep, an app that you can use to track your billable hours. This week, Bellefield announced that you will soon be able to enter your time using an Apple Watch, which could be useful when you are on-the-go and want to quickly dictate time to your Apple Watch before you forget it. Here is a YouTube video showing how it will work.
The Expert Institute nominated iPhone J.D. for its list of best legal blogs, and is now running a contest to see which blogs get the most votes. If you want to vote for iPhone J.D., click here and then click the Vote button. It only takes about a second to do so; there is no registration required.
Mike Murphy reports, in an article for Quartz, on the most-downloaded apps of all time, according to App Annie. The top app is Facebook; the top game is Candy Crush Saga.
As noted above, one of the products that Apple is expected to update next week is the Apple TV. Luke Dormehl of Cult of Mac takes a walk down memory land to look at Apple’s prior TV-related devices. He actually left out one that I would have put on that list: the Apple Pippin, sold in the mid-1990s.
Apple is also expected to introduce a new iPhone next week. Should you change your carrier when you get a new phone? Brian Chen of the New York Times has advice on choosing the best smartphone plan.
Jason Snell of Six Colors reports that you can now use the Amazon Instant Video app to download certain movies and TV shows, which means that you can watching streaming video even when you cannot stream — such as when you are on a plane. I wish that Netflix would offer this feature.
Geoffery Fowler of the Wall Street Journal reviews the DxO, an external camera for the iPhone that has amazing quality, but is expensive.
If you want a link bracelet for the Apple Watch but don’t want to spend $449 to get the Apple version, you might be interested in third party link bracelets. Abdel Ibrahim of WatchAware reviews the HappyCell link bracelet which you can buy on Amazon for only $80. At this point, however, I encourage you to wait on buying third-party bands. Apple will soon be certifying third-party bands, giving the manufacturers Apple-made parts to connect those bands to the watch, so I would wait a little longer to see what the Apple-approved third party market looks like before spending money on another band.
This is not related to the iPhone or iPad, but it is tech-related and something fun to do with your kids this Labor day weekend. Next year, the InSight lander will be sent to Mars, and if you sign up by September 8, your name can be etched on a silicon chip that will be affixed to the lander. Click here to sign up.
And finally, starting today, you can pre-order from Sphero (the manufacturer) and places like Amazon a $150 iPhone/iPad accessory that just may be the hottest toy this holiday season: the BB-8 Droid. It is a miniature version of the droid that will star in the next Star Wars movie this December, and it looks really fun. It’s like a remote control car with personality. Select members of the press were given review units, and the embargo lifted on their reviews yesterday, so there are lots of great videos showing the BB-8 in action, including this one from Geoffrey Fowler of the Wall Street Journal, this one from Daniel Howley of Yahoo Tech, and even this one from Tina Nguyen who put the cute BB-8 in a room full of even cuter puppies. But my favorite video is the one from Sphero itself:
Thank you to Lit Software for sponsoring iPhone J.D. this month. Many of you have been using Lit Software apps on your iPad for a long time because of the excellent TrialPad and TranscriptPad apps. This month, Lit Software wants to let iPhone J.D. readers know about its newest app, DocReviewPad, an app that you can use to review and annotate documents on your iPad.
For my overview of the features of DocReviewPad, check out the review that I posted in July. I haven’t yet had an opportunity to use DocReviewPad extensively in my own cases just because of the current stages of the litigation that I am currently handling. I actually started to use it with all of the documents in one case recently, and then the case settled. (Note: using DocReviewPad does not guarantee that your case will settle.) But I’ve been paying close attention to the features of the app and I’m very impressed.
And I continue to be more impressed because Lit Software has been updating the app since it was first released to address user requests. I’ve updated my original review to note many of the biggest new features, such as the ability to import documents from other apps, more sophisticated handling of Bates numbers, etc.
If you want to read and annotate documents in a case that you are handling, whether you are reviewing your own client’s documents or you are working with documents produced by your opponent in discovery, DocReviewPad makes it easy to do so on your iPad.
Yesterday, Apple announced that it will give a presentation on September 9, 2015 at 10 Pacific / 1 Eastern to show off the 2015 version of the iPhone. Well, technically Apple didn’t say what it is showing off, but for many years now Apple has shown off the new iPhone in early September so I’m sure that is what they will do this year too. The event will take place at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, which is a large venue, and inspires one to think that this will be a big announcement. Invitations were sent to select members of the press with the teaser phrase: “Hey Siri, give us a hint.” What does that mean? Well, you could try asking Siri on your iPhone. I activated Siri and said “Give us a hint” and Siri answered “Why don’t you check a rumors blog? That’s what I do.” Very funny, Siri. Keep asking Siri and you’ll get other humorous answers, including: “You’ll have to wait until September 9. I bet you were one of those kids who snuck downstairs to open presents early, weren’t you?” Suffice it to say that if you are ready to get a new iPhone and have been waiting for the new model to come out, it looks like your wait is almost over. And now, the news of note from the past week:
This week, ABA Journal announced the its 2015 list of Legal Rebels. One of the honorees is Prof. Tanina Rostain of Georgetown University Law Center, who is honored because she developed a course called Technology, Innovation and Legal Practice in which law students learn to develop iOS apps that help make the justice system more accessible to everyone. You can learn more about the Iron Tech Lawyer program here. I wish that I could have taken this course when I was at Georgetown Law School, but alas, there was little demand for iOS apps in the early 1990s.
California attorney David Sparks discusses dictation on iOS and the Mac. When nobody else is around, I use Siri to dictate texts and short emails all of the time. It is much faster than typing.
Last year, I reviewed an app called Immigration that provides access to the key law relevant to an immigration law practice. This week I heard from the developer, Josh Adams, and he told me that he updated the app. He writes: “Last year you reviewed Immigration, an iOS reference app I created for immigration attorneys. In your review, you noted that the manner of accessing the full text of statutory sections was not ideal. In light of feedback from your review and from other users, I enhanced the app to show statutory sections in variable-length rows, as shown in this screenshot. I have also added to the app the practice manuals of the Immigration Court and Board of Immigration Appeals. By popular demand, I am adding the Foreign Affairs Manual. I enjoyed making Immigration so much that I recently left my attorney job and began creating software full time for a consultancy in San Francisco.” Good luck, Josh, in your new career, and thanks for making the app more useful!
Steven Sande of Apple World Today reviews the Inateck 2-port Rapid Car Charger, a device that fits into the cigarette lighter port in your car and can charge up to three iPads or iPhones at one time.
John Moltz of It’s A Very Nice Web Site reviews Bluetooth headphones that work with the Apple Watch and cost less than $100.
And finally, while I normally wouldn’t condone the mindless destruction of expensive items, I’m often intrigued by slow-motion video or split-second photography of a bullet piercing an object, such as the famous picture of a bullet going through an Apple. In that spirit, I offer today a slow-motion video of a bullet piercing an Apple Watch. And just to make it all even more ridiculous, the bullet is shot by Verne Troyer — the actor who played Mini-Me in the Austin Power movies. Take it away, Verne:
Black’s Law Dictionary is, of course, the leading dictionary of legal terms and phrases. Ever since Bryan Garner took over as editor for the 7th edition, released in 1999, a new edition has been released every five years. It was first available on iOS in April of 2009, when West released an iOS version based upon the 8th edition (which was released in 2004). That was actually West’s first app for the iPhone. (My review of that app is here.) In June of 2009, the 9th edition of Black’s Law Dictionary was released, and an iOS app based on that edition was released in November of 2010. (My review of that app is here.) The 10th edition of Black’s Law Dictionary was released in May of 2014, and a year later West released the iOS version based on the 10th edition in May of 2015. I had been meaning to check out what is new in this latest version of the app, and West recently sent me a free copy for this review. (Note also that Thomson Reuters is a sponsor of iPhone J.D.) At $54.99, this is likely to be one of the more expensive apps on your iPhone and iPad, but I have always found it very useful to have access to Black’s Law Dictionary at my fingertips, and this 10th edition is a nice step forward, so I recommend it to all attorneys.
There are two differences between the 10th edition and the 9th edition for iOS. First, the content is expanded based upon the improvements in the 10th edition. This means that there are 7,500 new entries. (The 9th edition was touted as having over 45,000 terms; for this edition West says over 50,000.) There are lots of other improvements and changes. Rather than me try to explain them, Bryan Garner himself wrote a good article in the ABA Journal explaining what is new in the 10th edition.
The other major improvement in this app over the 9th edition is a fresh new interface, and I really like it. There are five sections in the app, each represented by an icon on the left side of the screen. The main section is the first icon, which gives you access to the dictionary. Type in part of a search term and the app starts to show you choices that you can tap, saving you the trouble of typing the entire word. And a new feature in the 10th edition is that the app provides alternative suggestions for many misspelled search terms.
When you view an entry, you are provided with the definition, sources for the definition (often including caselaw) with hyperlinks to the WestlawNext app, related terms, and a pronunciation guide. Better yet, tap on the speaker icon for many terms and you can hear the term pronounced. You can chose between three font sizes. The first of these two pictures uses the largest font size, and the second one the smallest font size.
The second section of the app the Word of the Day. It’s a fun way to learn about legal terms that might be new to you. You can view previous words of the day by scrolling along the bottom.
The third section of the app is Bookmarks. Simply tap the bookmark icon when you are looking at any term and that term is added to the list.
The fourth section of the app is the History. You can see a full list of words that you have looked up, sorted either alphabetically or by the date that you looked up the term.
The final section of the app is the Information. In some apps the Information tab just provides boring information, but here it is full of useful items. First, you can read the Preface to the Tenth Edition by Bryan Garner, a Guide to the Dictionary and a List of Abbreviations in Definitions, all of which are useful. Additionally, unlike the prior version of the app, this version of the app includes ten appendices, including the U.S. Constitution, a list of all current and prior U.S. Supreme Court Justices, a map of federal circuits, and more.
One of the more useful appendices is the list of Legal Maxims, a list of Latin sentences and phrases that are sometimes used by lawyers and judges. Of course there are many Latin phrases that have entered regular usage; I suspect that anyone who has gone to law school knows what res ipsa loquitur means, and terms like that are in the main legal dictionary. But more obscure phases and sentences that do not show up in the dictionary are included in this appendix. For example, if you see a judge using the phrase in dubio sequendum quod tutius est, this appendix will tell you that means “In a doubtful case, one must follow the safer course.”
The layout of the appendices is less sophisticated than the other parts of the app. They are just a collection of PDF files, and you cannot search the text from within the app, although there is an easy workaround: you can export any appendix to another app that reads PDF files (such as GoodReader) and use that app to search the content of the appendix.
All of the screenshots above are from the iPad version of the app, but this is a universal app so once you buy it you can use it on both your iPad and your iPhone.
If you don’t yet own Black’s Law Dictionary for iOS, I recommend that you get it. Ever since I have been in law school, I have owned a book version of the 6th edition, and while I sometimes used it in my law practice, it mostly sat on my shelf and collected dust. But ever since I started having Black’s Law Dictionary available on my iPhone in 2009, and more recently on my iPhone and iPad, I’ve used it a ton more. This dictionary becomes much more useful when it is always available on the device in your pocket or in front of you on your desk. Of course, I sometimes use it to look up a legal term that I don’t know, and that is always useful. But I also use it to look up a term that I do know simply because reading a concise definition will often help me to craft a persuasive sentence in a brief that I am writing. And I have used the iPhone version many times when I am in court and my opponent uses a legal term — often because he or she is using the term incorrectly, and by quickly looking at the definition, I can easily explain why in my rebuttal.
If you already own the 9th edition of Black’s Legal Dictionary for iOS, then you know how often you use the app, and that will likely tell you whether it is worth purchasing the new edition. (This is a new app, so there is no discounted upgrade price.) Assuming that West continues on the current release cycle, perhaps it helps to know that we likely won’t see an 11th edition of the book until 2019, with the next iOS version perhaps not coming out until 2020, so you’ll get a lot of years of use out of the $55 that you spend on this version of the app.
Click here to get Black’s Law Dictionary, 10th edition ($54.99):
Did you know about the Medical ID feature on the iPhone? Florida attorney Katie Floyd and California attorney David Sparks discuss it on a recent episode of the Mac Power Users podcast. Just launch the Health app on your iPhone, tap Medical ID at the lower right, and you select which information should appear in your Medical ID, such as your name, birthday, a person to contact in case of emergency, your medical conditions, allergies, blood type, etc. If there is an emergency and a professional cannot talk to you but sees that you have an iPhone, hopefully they will know that — without unlocking your phone — they can tap Emergency and then see the info that you choose to put in your Medical ID. Obviously this system only works if (1) iPhone owners know to put info in the Medical ID and (2) EMS and other emergency professionals know to look there. But now you know, and hopefully over time the right professionals will learn about this too. And now, the news of note from the past week:
In a follow up to that Mac Power Users episode in which Medical ID is described, Florida attorney Katie Floyd wrote a blog post that discusses another app that does something similar on the iPhone and Apple Watch. It’s an interesting idea, but I think you can only count on emergency professionals knowing about the Medical ID that is built-in to the iPhone.
New York attorney Nicole Black discuses in an article for The Daily Record how wearable tech such as the Apple Watch may result in critical evidence in a trial.
There is an interesting article in Wired focusing on Jimmy Iovine, including how he and Dr. Dre helped to create what is now Apple Music.
Jem Aswas of Billboard interviews Zane Lowe to talk about the Beats 1 radio station on Apple Music.
Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal reviews Apple’s CarPlay, a technology built-in to many new cars. You can also watch a video associated with the article on YouTube.
According to an AP story, a man in Waterhill, TN became trapped under a truck that he was trying to repair, but Siri somehow activated, so he managed to tell Siri to call 911, and 911 was able to track his location and get someone to save him. Good job, Siri.
As we get ready for iOS 9 — which will probably be released in just a few weeks — Rene Ritchie of iMore wrote a good FAQ on what you need to know about iOS 9.
Tangerine is a movie that has been getting some very good reviews (94% on Rotten Tomatoes), but I mention it today because it was shot entirely on iPhones. Caitlin McGarry of Macworld interviews the director, Sean Baker, who explains how he used some adds-ons, such as a $175 device that fits over the iPhone lens to let it shoot in a wide-screen anamorphic mode, but the process was infinitely cheaper than using traditional movie cameras. Here is a link to the red band movie trailer (not safe for work) that lets you get a sense of how the end product looks. Amazing that it was shot on an iPhone.
You may have seen a video on YouTube from Alton Brown last year showing you how to open a champagne bottle using a sword. If that’s not crazy enough for you, Justin Gmoser of Business Insider shows you how to saber a bottle of champagne with an iPhone. It is sure to make you a hit at the next party — at least for all of the guests who you didn’t injure in the process.
And finally, are you looking for an iPhone and iPad charger that will look at home in your kitchen? Then you might need the upcoming Foaster, a toaster for your phones, as shown in this video:
The charger that comes with the Apple Watch is a circle at the end of a cord. You can place it on a flat surface, such as a nightstand next to your bed, and then place your watch down on it at night to charge. But the cord and circle can move around and can easily fall off of your nightstand. Also, if you are using a Milanese Loop or Link Bracelet watch band — bands that always form a circle — then you cannot just set down the watch on the charger and instead need to put the charger between the back of the watch and the band. Thus, for a while now, I’ve been keeping an eye on stands designed for the Apple Watch, but most of them seemed to me to have one or more drawbacks. First, some stands are $50 or more, which seemed too expensive. Second, some stands make it too difficult to remove the charging cord, which I do whenever I travel, and I was trying to avoid buying a second charging cord. Third, when Apple releases watchOS 2.0 (perhaps in just a few weeks?), it will feature Nightstand Mode, a mode that only works when the watch is oriented such that the two buttons are on the top, but many Apple Watch stands instead orient the watch with the buttons on the right (as if it is on your arm).
But fortunately, Spigen recently released its Apple Watch Night Stand, model S350. When I first saw it, I thought that it might address all of my issues. I bought it one from Amazon to try it out, and I really like it and I can recommend that you buy it.
First, it is inexpensive, only $10.99 on Amazon (MSRP of $19.99). I actually had a concern that it was too cheap; was this going to be a piece of junk? To the contrary, a product like this doesn’t need a lot of materials, and it doesn’t feel cheap even if it is inexpensive.
Second, the stand works very well. It has what Spigen calls a Nanotac Pad on the bottom, which means that it sticks firmly to a table top, but it can be easily removed without leaving any residue on the surface. (In the pictures in this post, there is a piece of plastic on the bottom, which included when it ships, so that it doesn’t stick to my legal pad, but you remove that plastic in normal use.)
The product has a circle cut out in the middle where you place the charger.
Here is a view from the back, and in the first picture, I have used Photoshop to artificially increase the light so that you can see where the grooves are.
As you can see, the circular part of the charger fits perfectly in the Spigen Night Stand. It is also easy to remove your charger and place it back in again.
Best of all, once you have placed the Spigen Night Stand on the perfect spot on a flat surface (such as the nightstand next to your bed), it is incredibly fast and easy to charge your Apple Watch. Just place the watch on the stand, and you don’t have to be very accurate about it — the magnet that is a part of the Apple charger quickly grabs the watch and starts the charging.
It is both easier and faster to charge an Apple Watch using the Spigen Night Stand than using the Apple charger on its own.
Your watch sits on a chin on the Spigen Night Stand
That chin is made for the 42 mm version of the Apple Watch. If you have the 38 mm version, there is a thin silicone pad included in the box. Just stick it on the chin the Night Stand and then the device will be sized for the smaller Apple Watch. I don’t own a smaller Apple Watch so I wasn’t able to test this myself, but it looks like it would work fine.
I’m not running the beta version of watchOS 2.0, so I cannot yet test Apple’s new Nightstand mode, but on Spigen’s website there is a picture of the stand with a watch using the upcoming Nightstand mode, and it looks perfect:
As you can tell, I’m very happy with this product. It works well, the price is right, and it has both made it easier to charge my Apple Watch at night and it has reduced the clutter on the nightstand next to my bed. And when watchOS 2.0 comes out, I’ll be ready with a stand that is already made for that mode.
