Yesterday, Apple released the results for its 2015 fiscal third quarter (which ran from March 29, 2015 to June 27, 2015) and held a call with analysts to discuss the results. This is typically not a big fiscal quarter for Apple; the important quarter for Apple every year is the first fiscal quarter containing the holiday sales season, and during the fiscal third quarter, most potential Apple customers wait to see what new products Apple will introduce in the Fall. Even so, Apple reported record results for a third fiscal quarter: revenue of $49.6 billion and net profits of $10.7 billion. Apple CFO Luca Maestri said that “growth was driven by the tremendous performance of iPhone, the introduction of Apple Watch and the continued strength of Mac and App Store sales.” If you want to get all of the nitty gritty details, you can download the audio from the announcement conference call from iTunes, or you can read a rough transcript of the call prepared by Seeking Alpha. Apple’s official press release is here.
As always, I’m not as interested in the financial details as I am the statements of Apple executives during the call, including Apple’s CEO Tim Cook, that are of interest to iPhone and iPad users. Here are the items that stood out to me as of interest to iPhone and iPad owners:
iPhone
During the past quarter, Apple sold 47.5 million iPhones, the most that Apple has ever sold in a fiscal third quarter. By my count, as of June 27, 2015, Apple had sold over 773 million iPhones
Cook said that iPhone unit sales grew 35% since the 2014 fiscal third quarter, which he said was almost three times the growth rate in the overall smartphone market.
Apple did particularly well in China, with iPhone unit growth of 87% — which is particularly remarkable when compared to the overall growth in the China smartphone market of only 5%.
Cook said that 27% of the people who used an iPhone before the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus went on sale in September of 2014 upgraded to an iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus. Apple sees that as a market of 73% of iPhone owners who have yet to upgrade, which Cook said makes him bullish on future iPhone sales.
Cook announced that in this latest financial quarter, Apple saw the highest ever rate of switchers from Android smartphones to the iPhone. I suspect that this is because a lot of folks who prefer larger smartphones now have a reason to switch thanks to the larger iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. But Cook said that the increase in sales was not just due to switchers and was also because of a large number of first-time iPhone buyers around the world.
iPad
Apple sold 10.9 million iPads. That’s the smallest number of iPads that Apple has sold in a fiscal third quarter since 2011. Apple still sells a lot of iPads — by my count, as of June 27, 2015, Apple had sold over 282 million iPads — but clearly people do not buy new iPads as frequently as they buy new iPhones.
Even so, Cook said that he is bullish on the future of the iPad, especially in light of the iPad productivity enhancements coming in iOS 9 such as split view, slide over, and picture-in-picture (which I discussed last month).
Apple Watch
Apple told the world last year that it would treat the Apple Watch differently than the iPhone and iPad and would not announce the number of units sold every quarter. Cook did say that June sales were higher than April and May, dispelling rumors that there had been a huge demand in the beginning and then decreasing sales after that.
Apple groups Apple Watch revenue in the same category on its quarterly report as revenue from Apple TV, Beats Electronics, iPod, Apple-branded and third-party accessories, and a few other items. In Apple’s 2015 fiscal second quarter, Apple reported $1.689 billion in revenue in the Other category. In the fiscal third quarter, Apple reported $2.641 billion in that same Other category. Just comparing those two numbers, and assuming that everything else in that category sold the same from quarter-to-quarter, that suggests perhaps that the Apple Watch brought in $952 million. But it’s actually more than that because we know that we cannot assume that everything else in “Other” stayed the same; Cook specifically said that the rest of the items in that category (such as iPods) are selling less. So it seems fair to guess that Apple sold over $1 billion in Apple Watch devices and accessories (such as watch bands) last quarter, although we still don’t know precisely how that corresponds to a specific number of Apple Watches sold.
Apple started taking pre-orders for the Apple Watch on April 10, 2015, and for most of the time since then, demand has outstripped supply. But Cook announced that, in just the last few days, Apple has finally been able to catch up with demand, and thus Apple will soon be ready to expand Apple Watch sales to additional countries.
Cook said that the most popular uses of the Apple Watch are text messaging and monitoring activity (e.g. when exercising). He said that the most popular third party apps are social messaging apps such as Twitter. Cook said that Apple Watch owners are “tracking their fitness, getting breaking news alerts, following their investments, connecting with friends, and living a healthier day.”
Tomorrow is the seven year anniversary of my being an iPhone user. (I’m posting this today because tomorrow I plan to discuss Apple’s financial call that will take place at the end of the day today.) The original iPhone was released on June 29, 2007, but I didn’t get one because it didn’t work with the Microsoft Exchange email used at my law firm (and most other large law firms). So instead I continued to use my Palm Treo 650, a device that I really liked for many years but which, by mid-2007, I was eager to replace with an iPhone. Apple added support for Microsoft Exchange in iOS 2, which became available on July 11, 2008, the same day that Apple released the iPhone 3G.
Early in the morning on July 11, 2008, I lined up at my local AT&T store to get an iPhone 3G, but the store ran out of stock of the model that I wanted almost immediately (if they even had any to begin with). So instead I placed my order and waited for notification that my iPhone arrived.
Seven years ago, I received that email on my Treo shortly before lunch, and that was the day that I switched from being a Palm Treo user to an Apple iPhone user:
As a side note, it amuses me to look at that screenshot. For the many years that I used a Treo, that is how all of my emails looked — so very different from what I see on an iPhone today.
But back to 2008. The AT&T store is just a few blocks from my office, so I took an early lunch break, picked up my new iPhone 3G, and started to once again use Apple products in my law practice. (My law firm was an all-Mac firm when I started in 1994, but switched to PCs in the early 2000s, so it had been many years since I had anything with an Apple logo on my desk in my office.)
The iPhone 3G was a great first iPhone. That’s when the App Store was brand new, so there were only 500 apps to start (there are over a million in the App Store today), but there was so much potential. Like many attorneys, I looked forward to good legal-specific apps and a good way to work with Microsoft Word documents on the iPhone, both of which of course we have today, but back in 2008 it was just exciting to see all of the new apps coming out. Also, as the name indicates, the iPhone 3G was the first iPhone to use the 3G network, which was so much faster than the Edge network used by the original iPhone. It was also the first iPhone to include GPS.
As I think of how much of an improvement the iPhone 3G was over the original iPhone, it does make me wonder how much Apple will add to the next version of the Apple Watch. Don’t get me wrong, I love my current Apple Watch and don’t regret buying it at all. But all technology improves over time, and I wonder if the additional features in the 2016 version of the Apple Watch (or whenever the next model comes out) will seem like as big of an improvement (in hardware and software) as the iPhone 3G was over the first generation iPhone.
About four months after I started using my first iPhone, I started iPhone J.D. It is my first iPhone, the iPhone 3G, that appears in the banner at the top of this website. But it all began with that email that appeared on my Treo 650, seven years ago. That Treo still works today, and the email saying that my iPhone is ready is one of the last emails that displays on it.
Today marks the 300th time that I have written an In the news post with links to news from the past week that might be of interest to attorneys who use an iPhone or iPad. I discussed the history of this weekly post when it reached the 100 mark back in 2011. The link in that post to the music from an old IN THE NEWS segment on CBS no longer works, but better yet, here is a video of a sample segment from 1980 — which should be nostalgic for any of you who, like me, watched Saturday morning cartoons in the 1970s or early 1980s. Of course, my kids can now watch cartoons any time of day, any day of the week, thanks to Cable TV, DVDs, the iPad, etc. As I think about it, the 1970s version of me as a child is quite jealous. And now, let’s move along and focus on the much more recent history of just the past week, in which these were the news items of note:
This week, Apple substantially updated the iPod touch, which I have always considered an iPhone without a phone. California attorney David Sparks discusses the new iPods.
In an article for Macworld, Jason Snell wonders whether the new iPod touch means that we will see a new, smaller iPhone.
Kimber Streams picks the best Bluetooth keyboard in a post for The Wirecutter. I almost always agree with the picks in The Wirecutter, so I’m sure that the Logitech Bluetooth Easy-Switch Keyboard K811 is nice, but my favorite Bluetooth keyboard for the iPad is the Apple Wireless Keyboard. Streams briefly mentions the Apple keyboard, but dismisses it for reasons that don’t persuade me. She starts by saying that the Apple keyboard “offers a solid typing experience, sturdy design, and all the OS X and iOS function keys a Mac user could hope for. It’s less expensive than the K811, too.” (The Apple keyboard costs $69, versus $99 for the K811.) Sounds good, so why doesn’t she like it? First, she says that it doesn’t have backlit keys. I admit that could be a nice feature, but I’ve never missed it. Second, she says that it runs on AA batteries. I consider that a plus, not a minus — the Apple Wireless Keyboard lasts for many months, and AA batteries are cheap and easy to find when you need to replace them. Next she says that it is heaver than the K811. The K811 weighs about three-quarters of a pound, and the Apple Keyboard weighs about a pound. I’ve never once considered the Apple Wireless keyboard heavy. Finally, she says that the Apple Keyboard “leaves Windows and Android users out in the cold,” which is irrelevant if you are buying it to use with an iPad (or iPhone).
If you want a more portable Bluetooth keyboard, Jordan Kahn of 9to5Mac reports that Microsoft is now shipping its $99 foldable keyboard for iOS.
Maurizio Pesce reports for Wired that there will soon be a Commodore smartphone. As someone who happily used a Commodore 64 in the 1980s, this intrigues me. (The C-64 even got me through my Freshman year of college, before I purchased a Mac Plus as a Sophomore.) Having said that, the Commodore name has bounced around to so many different companies since the 1980s that I’m not sure it has any real meaning today, other than nostalgia.
Software developer and podcaster Marco Arment notes that, according to a study by The Verge, Apple Music streaming sounds about the same as Tidal, even though Tidal charges more and advertises being higher quality.
iOS 9 will be released in about two months, and is now in public beta. Rene Ritchie of iMore provides a first look at the new features, many of which I discussed last month when Apple first previewed iOS 9.
Software architect Opal Alapat wrote an interesting post on what she loves, and doesn’t like, about the Apple Watch.
Last month, I reviewed the Lutron Caséta Wireless Dimmer and Smart Bridge, which you can use to control the lights in your house using your iPhone and Apple Watch. I like it a lot. This week, Michael Brown of Macworld/TechHive reviewed and compared the Lutron product with the Insteon Smart Hub Pro. He prefers the Lutron product, for many of the same reasons that I like mine.
Software developer Craig Hockenberry wrote an extensive post on using an Apple Watch to track exercise while swimming in the ocean. Apple doesn’t encourage using an Apple Watch while swimming, but Hockenberry says that it does work, although you should rinse it off with clean water when you are finished.
It has nothing to do with the iPhone, but New Horizons flew by Pluto to take a picture this week. How cool is that?
And finally, Apple came out with four new ads for the Apple Watch this week, as noted by Zac Hall of 9to5Mac. If you try to complete your activity circles with your Apple Watch like I do, then the final few seconds of this ad will make you smile:
There is a fascinating article in the Wall Street Journal written by Shira Ovide and Daisuke Wakabayashi which reports that Apple makes 92% of the profits in the smartphone industry. The report is based on numbers from Canaccord Genuity, an investment banking and financial services company. I myself don’t know if all of the data and conclusions of Canaccord Genuity are 100% valid, nor do I know the margin of error, but based on the commentary that I have seen elsewhere since this report was released, there seems to be a good chance that the 92% figure is roughly accurate.
The 92% figure on its own is pretty striking. There is no question that Apple is making a lot of money from the iPhone because every quarter Apple reports record profits, but I never realized that Apple was taking so much of the profit in the industry.
Moreover, the 92% number is even more remarkable when placed in proper context.
First, it is amazing that Apple is so profitable when so few smartphone manufacturers make money at all. The report says that Apple makes 92% and Samsung makes 15% of the profit in the smartphone industry. You might question how it can be that those two numbers add up to more than 100%, but it is because everyone else loses money in the industry. In other words, Apple and Samsung make more money on smartphones than the industry does as a whole. The article reports that there are around 1,000 companies making smartphones, but all of them except for Apple and Samsung either break even or lose money. Apple, and to a lesser degree Samsung, make all of the profit in the smartphone market.
Second, the 92% number is fascinating in light of the previous estmates. Only one year ago, Canaccord Genuity estimated that Apple received 65% of smartphone profits. And in 2012, Apple and Sumsung each had about 50% of the profits.
Why the meteoric rise in the past year? Rene Ritchie, an astute Apple observer from the iMore website, believes that the difference is that last year, folks who wanted a larger phone had to choose between the 4 inch screen of the iPhone 5/5s/5c and larger phones sold by Samsung and other companies, and many of them opted for a non-Apple smartphone to get that larger size. But since the Fall of 2015, Apple now sells the 4.7 inch iPhone 6 and the 5.5 inch iPhone 6 Plus, along with other (older) models with smaller screens. I myself am not a fan of the super-large screens on some iPhones. I still sometimes find my iPhone 6 a little big and I cannot imagine using an iPhone 6 Plus. But I know many folks who feel differently and prefer to use a larger phone. Whether the credit goes to the larger iPhones, improvements in iOS 8, or other unique advantages, Apple is clearly selling more iPhones than ever before, and apparently it is making good money doing so.
By the way, here is a chart showing the increase in iPhone and iPad sales over the years. This chart is based on quarterly data that Apple releases, and at this point the most recent data is from April of 2015. We’ll get new numbers next week when Apple has its fiscal second quarter conference call on July 21, 2015.
Third, the 92% figure is surprising because the iPhone does not have 92% of the smartphone market. Far from it, in fact. The Wall Street Journal article says that Apple sells less than 20% of all smartphones worldwide. The article also says that Apple is able to demand higher prices than its competitors, and there is some truth in that because Apple doesn’t sell new smartphones than are cheap (although Apple does sell older models of the iPhone at lower prices). But there are lots of other smartphones that sell for the same price as an iPhone, so that’s not the full story. I believe that Apple’s profits also stem from the company doing an excellent job in manufacturing and predicting demand.
Thus, if the 92% figure is even close to accurate, it is truly remarkable on so many different levels.
An interesting counter-example to Apple’s recent success with the iPhone is the news last week about Microsoft’s smartphone business. Back in 2007 when the iPhone was introduced, Nokia was making about two-thirds of the profits in the smartphone industry. In August of 2013, Microsoft announced that it would pay $7.2 billion to acquire Nokia’s smartphone business. Microsoft announced that the deal closed in April of 2014, so for just over a year now, Microsoft has been making and selling smartphones that had previously been sold under the Nokia brand name. But just last week, it was reported by Robert Cyran in the New York Times and others that Microsoft is now writing off most of what it paid for Nokia in 2014. So during the past year, while Apple’s share of the smartphone industry profits soared, Microsoft essentially threw away $7 billion in the smartphone industry.
Apple’s strategy has never been to sell the most of any product, but instead to sell the best of any product, with the expectation that profits will follow regardless of market share. In the smartphone arena, it appears that this strategy has paid of in a big way.
Do you use your iPhone or iPad in your bed before you go to sleep at night, thinking that it will help you to get tired? Maria Konnikova writes in an article for the New Yorker that doing so makes it harder for you to go to sleep. She cites a Harvard Medical School study that finds that the blue light emitted by these devices is interpreted by your body as daylight, resulting in a surge of energy instead of the melatonin release that tells your body that it is time to go to sleep. The study found that people who read a (traditional) book at night got tired over an hour before people who read an e-book at night, and the e-book readers were less alert the next morning. It’s an interesting study, and perhaps I’ll read it on my iPad before I go to sleep tonight. And now, the news of note from the past week:
Security expert Glenn Fleishman of Macworld discusses the new two-factor authentication coming in iOS 9. iOS 9 will also require six-digit verification codes, unlike iOS 8 and prior versions that allowed a four-digit code to unlock your iPhone.
Ken Segal reviewed the Apple Watch on his blog. Segal knows a thing or two about Apple — he used to work for Apple’s advertising agency, where he not only authored the famous Think Different campaign, he also came up with the name “iMac.”
Analyist Ben Bajarin wrote an interesting article on using the Apple Watch, and then not using it for a week, noting that “the Apple Watch is a modern day convenience … in the same way a dishwasher or washer/dryer or a microwave is. None of the items are absolutely necessary, yet so many of their owners can’t imagine life without one.”
Ariel Adams of A Blog to Watch reviews the Apple Watch from the perspective of someone who reviews traditional watches (including luxury watches) for a living.
The Apple website has advice for not letting your Apple Watch get too hot or too cold. “For example, Apple Watch shouldn’t sit unattended in direct sun for long periods, undergo dramatic changes in temperature or humidity, or be left in a car on hot days.”
And finally, Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal wrote an interesting review of Apple Music. She gives some tips on using the service, including Siri tips, and also talks about the drawbacks. She doesn’t love the service, but feels that Apple has time to work out the kinks, and she pointed out on Twitter, “I also didn’t love the iPod at first.” She also prepared a humorous video to describe Apple Music, doing it in the form of a music playlist:
One of my favorite podcasts is the Clockwise podcast, and thus I was thrilled to be a guest on yesterday’s show. This podcast has a lot going for it. First, it is a podcast about technology (especially Apple technology) hosted by two of the best in the field: Jason Snell, the former Macworld Editor in Chief who has been writing about Apple since the 1990s, and Dan Moren, who wrote for Macworld from 2006 to 2014. Second, the podcast always includes two other guests, which change from week to week, so every show includes different perspectives. Third, each episode is strictly limited to 30 minutes, so it is fast-paced and doesn’t waste your time.
Yesterday’s show (Episode 94) was a good one. The two guests were me and Georgia Dow, who lives in Montreal and is both a psychotherapist and a regular contributor to the great iMore website. (She is also a two-time Canadian Jujitsu Champion.)
We started off with a pretty narrow topic — whether Apple is doing a good enough job updating the Safari web browser — and then discussed everyone’s all-time favorite Apple hardware products, the future of the iPod, and finally we speculated on what might be the next big advancement for the iPhone. So this episode features discussions of Apple technology past, present and future.
You can download the show in your podcast player of choice, or you can click here to listen in your browser or download the show. I encourage you to check it out.
LIT SOFTWARE is one of the best publishers of iPad apps designed for lawyers. The TrialPad app lets you present evidence at trial. The TranscriptPad app lets you review and annotate deposition transcripts (and is one of the most useful apps in my law practice). Yesterday, LIT SOFTWARE released its third app for the iPad, and it is called DocReviewPad. To me, DocReviewPad is sort of like TranscriptPad for documents. The app lets you easily review, annotate and apply codes to documents as you review them on your iPad, and then export documents for production. The app applies Bates numbers as you import documents. You can use the app for a document production from your own client, marking documents as relevant, privileged, etc. as you review them, so that when you are done you can produce all of the relevant documents, plus create a list of documents for which you will need a privilege log. You can also use the app to review and annotate documents as you work up your case — either your own client’s documents or documents produced by other parties in the litigation.
A few days ago, LIT SOFTWARE gave me a free review copy of this $89.99 app. (Note also that LIT SOFTWARE has been a sponsor of iPhone J.D., although the company is not a sponsor this month.) While I haven’t yet had the opportunity to make real-world use of this app with one of my litigation files, I did kick the tires on the app over the Fourth of July weekend to get a feel for it. Overall, I’m impressed. The app lacks some of the features that you find in similar software for the desktop computer, but there is still quite a bit in this 1.0 version of this app, plus this app is far easier to use than any similar software (such as Summation) that I have used on my PC.
Importing documents
The app can import documents in PDF format, which is what I typically use, but can also handle TIF, JPG, PNG and TXT. It is far easier to have each document in a separate file before you import into DocReviewPad. For example, if your opponent produces a single 200-page PDF file in response to a request for production of documents, I recommend that before importing into DocReview Pad, you use your computer (or have an assistant do so) to break up that single PDF file so that each file corresponds to a document. It is possible to split up a document within the app: press Select, tap the document, press Edit, tap on Extract Pages, and choose a page range to export. (The Bates numbers will be retained.) But in my tests, it was faster and easier to handle this task on a PC or Mac before importing in to DocReviewPad.
[UPDATE: Version 1.1 of the app, released on 7/16/2015, makes it faster to split a document as you review by using the new Split button to split the document at the current page.]
There are lots of ways to import documents. I suspect that most folks will import from a cloud storage service, and the supported services are Dropbox, Transporter, Box, Citrix ShareFile and WebDAV. You can also connect your iPad to your computer and import documents using iTunes, or you can import an attachment to an email simply by opening the attachment in the DocReviewPad app. The app asks you to assign a case for the imported documents, or create a new case if this is the first set of documents for that case. [UPDATE: Version 1.1.1 of the app, released 7/31/2015, lets you import documents from email attachments or other apps using the “Open in…” function.]
Next, you tell the app how to apply Bates numbers to each page of each document. You can decide what prefix to use, how large the Bates number should be, where it should be placed, etc. By default the app assigns the numbers sequentially; for example, if your last import finished with ABC-001234, then the next import will begin with ABC-001235. But if you need to change that, you can manually adjust the starting number.
A quick note on Bates numbers. I know that some attorneys purchase expensive desktop software, such as the Pro version of Adobe Acrobat, primarily because that software can assign Bates numbers. Because DocReviewPad includes this feature, this $90 app may make it unnecessary for you to pay for much more expensive software on your PC or Mac.
[UPDATE: Version 1.1 of the app, released on 7/16/2015, lets you skip Bates number on import, or even skip it entirely, useful if you are working with documents that already contain Bates numbers.] [UPDATE: Version 1.1.1 of the app, released 7/31/2015, lets you remove or add Bates numbers at any time.]
Once your documents are imported, you will see a list of each document on the left, and the document itself will display on the right. A magnifying glass icon indicates that a document was OCR’d before you imported it (and thus searchable).
Reviewing and annotating documents
To read a document, just tap it from the list in the left. If you press the double-arrow button at the bottom of the screen, the list disappears so that you can review a document using the full iPad screen.
Swipe left and right to move between pages of a document. Swipe up and down to move between documents. You can also use scroll bars on the right and bottom to navigate between pages or between documents.
The three main tools that you will want to use as you are reviewing documents are at the top: Review, Annotate and Flag.
Review. The review tab lets you tag a document as Confidential, Privileged, Relevant or Responsive. You cannot change those four tags. However, you can create your own Issue Codes, and they work just like Issue Codes in the TranscriptPad app.
Review codes and issue codes make it quick and easy to indicate which documents are important and why they are important. But note that you have far fewer options than when you use more sophisticated (and expensive) computer-based document review software. For example, there are no fields for document date, author, recipient, etc. You can approximate many of those typical fields by creating appropriate Issue Codes, but it is not quite the same thing.
Thus, if your primary reason for reviewing documents is to place them in chronological order, DocReviewPad isn’t a great solution. But if instead you want to indicate which documents are important and assign them to general or specific categories that you create for your case, DocReviewPad works great.
Annotate. Use the Annotate button to annotate the document. A long press on the button will bring up a list of tools that you can use: the highlight tool, and a pen — either one that lets you write freely, or one that creates lines.
If you just tap the annotate tool, it will automatically select the last tool that you used. This is helpful if you just want to highlight one useful passage after another.
The highlight tool works by creating boxes — tap at the top left corner, then drag down to the bottom right corner of the box. It works this way even if you OCR a document. Thus, unlike the highlight tool in many PDF apps, it does not just annotate individual words and sentences. Having said that, the app highlights the correct way — it doesn’t just produce an opaque box that makes the words underneath harder to read. The underlying text remains black (or whatever color it originally was) with a yellow box on top. It looks great.
Flag. Finally, the flag function is a way for you to write something important about the document. It is the digital equivalent of writing a few words on a sticky note and sticking that on the document. But unlock a sticky note, you don’t have to worry about it falling off of a piece of paper.
Reports
Once you have reviewed your documents, you can create reports. The report is a table that includes the document name, Bates number range, number of pages in the document, any Flag notes that you created for that document, any tags that you assigned, etc.
Export
There are two ways to export documents. If you just want to export a single document, use the Share button at the top right (the box with an arrow coming out of it). This lets you email, print, upload to cloud storage or export to iTunes on a connected computer. You have the option to include or exclude the annotations, the Bates numbers, and a Summary Report.
The second option is to tap the Export button at the bottom of the list on the left. This lets you export multiple documents from within a folder, or from all of the folders in a case. You have lots of options on what to export. You can include or exclude documents that you have yet to review. You can include or exclude document that you tagged as confidential, privileged, relevant or responsive, plus you can include or exclude documents that you have tagged with issue codes.
When you export multiple documents, you have fewer options than when you export a single document. For example, you can remove or exclude annotations, but you cannot remove Bates numbers. Also, your destination options are limited to two: (1) the TrialPad app (useful to prepare the documents that you want to display at trial), or (2) iTunes, which you use by connecting a USB cord between your iPad and your computer. I wish that the app included a third choice to export to a cloud service. I realize that document productions can get large and uploading hundreds of documents using Wi-Fi to a cloud service could take a very long time. But I’d still rather have the option, especially for those times that I just want to upload a small number of documents that I, for example, tagged as being relevant to my motion for summary judgment.
Pricing
The app itself costs $89.99, but LIT SOFTWARE also offers bundles that can make the cost of the app much less. For example, the Ultimate Litigation Bundle costs $249.99, which includes DocReviewPad, TrialPad and TranscriptPad — a $60 savings over purchasing each app separately.
With Apple’s Complete My Bundle option, you can often take advantage of the savings if you own other apps. For example, if you already own TrialPad and TranscriptPad, and if you previously paid full price for those two apps ($129.99 and $99.99), then Apple gives you credit for the $230 that you already paid and you just pay the extra $20 to get DocReviewPad. LIT SOFTWARE sometimes puts its apps on sale (and I often announce those sales on iPhone J.D.), so if you bought the other apps at a deep discount then Complete My Bundle might not save you money, but it is nice to have the option in case you did pay full price.
[UPDATE 7/8/2015: The below link to the Ultimate Litigation bundle is now working.]
Conclusion
This is a very powerful and useful app. I have long found it easier to review documents on my iPad rather than on a computer screen, and in the past I have used general purpose PDF apps such as GoodReader to do so. Those apps are useful for annotations, but don’t have any of the other features of DocReviewPad such as tagging, issue codes, Bates numbers, etc. It is great to be able to use an iPad to review documents in an app that has a full set of tools designed for this specific function. There are a few features that I would like to see included in this app, but it is very full-featured for a version 1.0. And if the company updates this app the way that it has updated TrialPad and TranscriptPad over the years, then this app will become even more powerful over time.
If you are a litigator, this is a great app. And even if you are a transactional attorney, you may still appreciate the ability to apply Bates numbers, annotate and code documents. LIT SOFTWARE has another hit on its hands, and I appreciate all that the company does to make the iPad even more useful for attorneys.
Click here for DocReviewPad ($89.99):
Click here for Ultimate Litigation Bundle ($249.99):
If your office is closed tomorrow (like mine is) then I hope you enjoy the long Fourth of July weekend. If you are looking for something to keep your weekend entertaining, I strongly recommend that you update your iPhone to iOS 8.4 so that you can start to use the new Apple Music service. I’ve been using it for the last two days, and I’m really impressed. It is great fun to listen to any music I can think of. For example, I had been thinking about checking out the new albums from Barenaked Ladies and the Indigo Girls, and with Apple Music it was quick and easy to do so. I even listened to the ultra-famous Taylor Swift album 1989 yesterday, the first time that I had heard it all of the way through, and I see why it has been so popular. I doubt I would have ever purchased an entire Taylor Swift album, but I’m glad that I heard it.
Also, I really love the For You tab. I usually rely on a small group of friends to alert me to new artists and new songs, but with the possible exception of one friend of mine (yes, Bill, I’m talking about you), they cannot know everything about music that might appeal to me. But the For You tab has been giving me a great mix of music, from old favorites that I hadn’t heard in a while to new groups that I never knew about. Last night while on the treadmill finishing up the circles on my Apple Watch, I listened to a group called Of Monsters and Men that I had never heard of before, and they were fantastic. (Why haven’t any of you told me about that group yet? No, don’t say it, it’s too late for you to apologize now.) The For You tab is a great way to find music that you are likely to want to listen to, even if you didn’t know it yet.
Finally, I’ve even enjoyed listening to the Beats 1 station more than I thought I would. There seems to be a lot of rap music that doesn’t appeal to me, but I’ve also heard quite a few songs that are really good. Also, the energy and enthusiasm of DJ Zane Lowe is contagious, and the lack of commercials makes this unlike any radio that I’ve ever heard. (Beats 1 just has occasional sponsor mentions, sort of like public radio.)
Overall, this is a great service. Apple has rekindled my love for music this week. If you haven’t checked it out yet, it’s time to pull out your headphones and enjoy some great music. And now, the news of note from the past week, which is mostly about Apple Music:
Barrie Hadfield of Workshare recommends his own app but some other good ones too in a post on Law Technology Today listing some good apps for lawyers.
Christina Warren of Mashable also wrote a great overview.
If you value using DRM-free music, you should read this post by Serenity Caldwell of iMore with theories on why Apple is adding DRM to songs in Apple Music.
Julia Mayhugh of the WatchAware podcast (a podcast devoted to the Apple Watch) showed off her Apple Watch home screen on the MarkDMill blog, and it is fun to see what a color-coordinated group of icons looks like.
And finally, the full trailer for the upcoming Steve Jobs movie was released yesterday. Here it is:
A big thank you to Bushel for becoming a new sponsor of iPhone J.D. this month. Bushel provides you with a way to manage all of the Apple devices in your organization — iPhones, iPads, and even Macs — through cloud-based Mobile Device Management.
What can you do with Bushel? You can automatically install apps from the App Store to all of the devices in your organization at once. You can see an inventory of all of the devices that you are managing in your organization. including what users are using each device, which apps you have installed on the devices. You can also automatically configure email on all of the devices in your organization, so your users can get up and running quickly. (Works with Microsoft Exchange, Google Mail, Yahoo! Mail, and any other IMAP or POP mail accounts.) You can configure all devices to automatically join your secure wireless networks, saving all of your users the time of typing in those long passwords. And for iPhones and iPads owned by your organization, you can configure devices automatically before users get them.
If a device in your organization is lost or stolen, Bushel gives you a quick and easy way to remotely lock the device, or wipe it completely.
Here are some screenshots that show you Bushel in action:
The first three devices that you register with Bushel are free forever, so it is easy to try out the service at no cost. Each additional device costs just $2 per month, with no contracts or commitments.
If this sounds like something that would be useful at your organization, you can learn more at Bushel.com.
The new Apple Music service starts today. And because there is a three month free trial, that means that all iPhone users are getting free music. It all starts at 8am Pacific / 11am Eastern today, when Apple will make the iOS 8.4 update available. Update your iPhone (or iPad), and then you will see a new version of the Music app, including tens of millions of songs that you can listen to, for free. There is really no reason for you to not check it out, and I plan to do so. Here are the details.
Features
With the new Music app and the Apple Music service, you get basically three things.
Streaming music. First, you can stream any song in the Apple Music catalog. If someone mentions a song or an album to you, or if you suddenly find yourself thinking about that song that you remember from your youth, or if you hear about some new artist and want to find out what all of the buzz is about, you can just play the song. You don’t have to first buy the track(s) from iTunes. And even if you cannot think of something to listen to, the new Music app will make recommendations tailored for you, based on the songs that you already have.
Siri is also smarter with the new Music app. You can now ask Siri to play the top songs from 1987. Or if you like a song that you are listening to, tell Siri to play more music like this. Or say things like, after this song, play Cheeseburger in Paradise.
It’s not the entire iTunes catalog; some artists don’t make some of their songs available for streaming. But Apple says that it has tens of millions of songs, so you’ll have quite a few choices.
What if you want to listen to music that you already own, which is already in iTunes on your computer or already on your iPhone? Well that works too. Apple scans your library and makes a copy of anything it doesn’t already have so that it can stream it to you. For example, The Beatles are not currently on any streaming services, Apple Music included, but if you already own Beatles songs, you’ll be able to play them along with the music that you stream on Apple Music. So feel free to make a playlist that includes both Lady Gaga and The Beatles; Apple won’t judge you. (And yes, this part of Apple Music is identical to the current iTunes Match service for which Apple has been charging $25; it looks like you can cancel your iTunes Match subscription if you will be using Apple Music.)
And even though this is a streaming music service, you can listen to music offline, such as when you are on a plane. I’m not yet sure how this works; you might have to press a button or add a song to a playlist to tell the Music app to download it for you.
Radio. Second, Apple Music includes live, 24/7 streaming radio. The flagship station is called Beats 1. It features the DJs Zane Lowe (formerly of BBC1) who will work out of Los Angeles, Ebro Darden (formerly of WQHT) who will work out of New York, and Julie Adenuga who will work out of London. And apparently many celebrities and others (such as Elton John) will have shows too.
In addition to Beats 1, there are also other “stations” that feature music without a DJ. This part sounds similar to the current iTunes Radio. And Apple Music also retains the feature where you can choose a song and Apple Music creates a radio station based on that one song that you like. In the past, though, you had a limited number of times that you could skip songs every hour with those stations; with Apple Music, you can skip as many times as you want, assuming that you are a paid customer or you are in the free trial period. (For folks who decide not to pay for Apple Music after the three month trial, you go back to the old system of a limited number of skips.)
Connect. Finally, Apple Music introduces a service called Connect. It provides a way to interact with artists. You can hear exclusive music, read posts by the artists, comment on those posts, etc.
Cost
The first three months are free. If you like the service, you can subscribe for $9.99 a month. Better yet, for $14.99 a month, you can get the family plan that works with up to six people. Just turn on iCloud Family Sharing, a service that Apple had already been offering which lets you share media that you own with others in your family.
If you already buy a lot of music, paying $10 a month for an all-you-can-eat plan sounds pretty good, especially considering that you can let your entire family use the plan for only $15 a month. But keep in mind that if you decide to stop paying for Apple Music in a year, you’ll no longer have access to those songs — as opposed to music that you buy on iTunes that you can continue to listen to essentially forever.
Conclusion
If you want more details, Serenity Caldwell of iMore put together a very comprehensive FAQ on Apple Music. But in light of the generous three month trial subscription that we all get starting today, my advice is just to try it out and see what you think. That’s what I plan to do.
The radio and Connect features don’t hold a lot of interest for me right now, but I’ll check them out, and who knows, maybe they will appeal to me. It is the streaming music part of Apple Music that appeals to me the most right now. I’ll try it, and if it seems worthwhile, I’ll start paying for the service in October. If not, I’ll just go back to buying music one song, or one album, at a time.
Whatever you decide to do come October, enjoy your Summer of Free Music, courtesy of Apple Music.
