Monday morning will be the start of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. The Keynote address will be at 10am, and unlike the rest of the conference which includes many confidential sessions, the Keynote will be public. I expect Apple to announce some of the new features of the next version of iOS, which will most likely be available this Fall when new iPhones come out. There was also a rumor that Apple was going to debut a new version of Apple TV, but Brian Chen of the New York Times reported this week that sources told him that the new Apple TV was not ready yet. Whatever Apple announces next week, hopefully it will be interesting. And if nothing else, perhaps it will give us something related to the iPhone and iPad to talk about for the next few months, instead of the Apple Watch continuing to dominate the iOS news cycle. And now, the news of note from the past week:
I use a clock face on my Apple Watch that shows my next calendar appointment right in the middle of the screen, and I love that I can just glance at my wrist and see what’s next — especially on those busy days with lots of meetings and calls. On my iPhone, I find that Fantastical does a much better job handling my calendar than the built-in Calendar app, so I was thrilled to see that Fantastical came to the Apple Watch this week. It’s got a few nice features, such as emphasizing how much time you have until the next event (similar to a feature that I praised earlier this week in my review of the Delta Apple Watch app). California attorney David Sparks shares my enthusiasm and he runs down the new features in this post. I also enjoyed the reviews by Susie Ochs of Macworld and the review by Federico Viticci of MacStories. I’m sure that this app will be even more useful when Apple lets third parties create native Apple Watch apps later this year, but for now Fantastical on the Apple Watch is already useful, not to mention being a good sign of things to come.
The Joy of Tech offers one theory on why the Apple TV won’t be ready on Monday.
This week, the Chase app was updated to support Touch ID, as noted by Joseph Keller of iMore. I use Chase for my banking, and I’m a big fan of this app. You can use the app to deposit a check just by taking a picture of it, saving you a trip to the bank, and now that the app supports Touch ID, you can securely log in to the app without having to even type in your long password.
Sharon Noguchi of the San Jose Mercury News reports that, after her husband died, a woman dropped off boxes of old electronics at a recycling center. It turns out that one of the things that she discarded was an original Apple I computer, which the center sold for $200,000. The center is now trying to find the woman to split the proceeds with her. If any iPhone J.D. readers want to recycle an Apple I, feel free to send it to me.
John Arlidge of the London Evening Standard interviewed Marc Newson, who helped Jony Ive design the Apple Watch.
Apple announced this week that, starting June 26, the Apple Watch will go on sale in Italy, Mexico, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland and Taiwan. It is interesting to see the Apple Watch go on sale in Switzerland since that country has long been synonymous with traditional watches. The same press release also announces that you will be able to buy certain Apple Watch models in the Apple Stores in about two weeks.
Speaking of traditional versus new watches, the New York Times reported on July 9, 1916 that some people were starting to use the new “strap watches” instead of the traditional pocket watch. The article notes: “Until recently, the bracelet watch has been looked upon by Americans as more or less of a joke. Vaudeville artists and moving-picture actors have utilized it as a funmaker, as a ‘silly ass’ fad.” Something to keep in mind the next time you see someone roll their eyes at an Apple Watch while they are simultaneously determining the time by reaching for a device in their pocket … i.e. a smartphone. (via M.G. Siegler)
One of the things that the Apple Watch encourages you to do is to spend more time being active and less time sitting down for many hours at a time. Brigid Schulte of the Washington Post explains why this is a good thing.
And finally, have you ever wondered what it might have been like if Steve Jobs had been around to debut the Apple Watch? Here is a video that shows us what that might have been like, created by mashing together clips of old Steve Jobs keynotes:
Thank you to Connected Data, maker of the Transporter, for sponsoring iPhone J.D. this month. The Transporter is a hard drive, but unlike a traditional hard drive that connect to just one computer, the Transporter securely shares your files with all of your computers and iOS devices so that you can access your files from anywhere. And unlike Dropbox or other cloud-based services, your data is stored on a hard drive that you own, and which you keep at your office or home, so you maintain full custody of your data. Thus, you don’t need to worry about your documents being on the cloud and in the possession of a third party that hasn’t signed a confidentiality agreement with you. Also, there are no subscription fees. Just buy the hardware once. If you want more information on how you can use a Transporter in your law practice, click here to access the Legal Solutions page of the Transporter website.
If you are ready to buy a Transporter this month, the company was nice enough to create a special discount code for iPhone J.D. readers. Purchase a 1TB or 2TB Transporter at filetransporterstore.com between now and June 30, 2015, and use the offer code IJD75, and you will get a $75 discount.
Connected Data, which makes the Transporter, gave me a free review unit when it first sponsored iPhone J.D. in March of 2013. I love it, and I’ve used the product almost every single day for over two years. Thanks to Connected Data for making such a great product and for being a long time supporter of iPhone J.D.
These are early days for apps designed for the Apple Watch. There are quite a few good ones, but as developers are just starting to use an Apple Watch, it is no surprise that many Apple Watch apps need to go back to the drawing board. During a recent business trip in which a traveled on Delta Airlines, I tried out the Fly Delta app for the Apple Watch, and I was pleased to discover that it is very good. The developers did a great job of designing a useful app that has the info you need, but nothing else.
When you have an upcoming Delta flight, the app shows you in the center how much time you have until your flight departs. The bottom of the app shows you your flight number and your gate.
And that’s about it. The developers of the app could have included features such as a map of your current location, other flights you will be taking that day, frequent flier mile information, etc., but wisely chose not to do so. You can always use the Delta app on your iPhone for more detailed information, but when you are walking around the airport, the info you need is simple. You want to know how long you have until your next flight. You want to know your flight number, so that if there is an announcement or if you are reading a board you can determine which flight is yours. And you need to know the gate that you are walking to.
One of my favorite features of the Apple Watch is that it is so easy to lift your wrist and quickly look at key information, such as the time, the date, your next appointment, a text or email that just came in, who is calling you, etc. When you are in an airport, you are most likely to be focused mainly on the upcoming flight, so the info displayed by the Delta app is the most relevant info at that time.
In the Settings app on my Apple Watch, in General -> Activate on Wrist Raise -> Resume to, I always have my Apple Watch set to Last Used App. This means that when I am using an app, if I drop my hand to my side for a period of time and then lift my wrist again, I see the last app that I was using instead of going back to the watch face. This setting is perfect when used in connection with the Fly Delta Apple Watch app because when I lift my wrist in an airport, I would much rather see the Delta app with time to flight, flight number and gate number than see my normal watch face. And if I really do need to know the time, that is also on the top right corner of the Delta app. Thus, the Delta app functions as the perfect substitute watch face while I am traveling.
If you are actually on the plane, the Delta app instead shows you the info you would most likely want to see during your flight — how long until you land, and what gate will you land at.
When you land, the app welcomes you to your destination.
As much as I love the design of the Fly Delta app, there is room for improvement. First, instead of showing you how long until my flight leaves, it would be useful to have the option to instead see how long until my plane boards. That’s the actual time that I want to make sure that I am at the gate.
Also, there were times when the Apple Watch app got stuck and didn’t show me the correct time until my next flight … but then a few minutes later it would work again. And other times, I just got the generic screen indicating that the app was looking for information:
My guess is that this is not Delta’s fault but instead has to do with the way that Apple doesn’t currently allow native apps on the Apple Watch, so the apps instead have to work through the iPhone app, which can lead to a delay. Native apps should be out later this year, and when they are out hopefully this will go away.
Note that you also can use your Apple Watch as a boarding pass, but you do so using the Passbook app, not the Fly Delta app. Moreover, most every airline scanner screen that I see nowadays is a flat surface, which makes it easy to place your iPhone on it face down to scan a boarding pass from the iPhone Passbook app, but makes it incredibly awkward to use with a watch. You would have to twist your arm in a backwards position, or slip the watch so that the face was underneath your arm instead of on top of your arm. I can’t see using my Apple Watch as a boarding pass, so it makes sense to me that Delta did not include this feature in its Apple Watch app.
While there is room for improvement, I’m a big fan of the Delta Apple Watch app. When traveling, it is a great substitute for the normal watch face. When walking through an airport terminal, it is much easier to glance at my watch to confirm a gate number than to pull out an iPhone, unlock it, navigate to the Delta app and then locate that information. I hope we see more apps for the Apple Watch that use a single screen to show just what you need to know, and nothing else.
British actor Stephen Fry talked to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Apple’s Jony Ive, and wrote an interesting article about it earlier this week in The Telegraph. The article reveals that Ive has a new position at Apple: Chief Design Officer. This led to much speculation as to whether this new position signals that Ive will be spending more time in England and less time designing cool new Apple products, but John Gruber of Daring Fireball disagrees with that and thinks that it means that Ive can spend less time focusing on administrative duties and more time thinking about design, which seems like a good thing to me. Whether Ive is involved or someone else, hopefully we will have a very long future of well-designed products from Apple. And now, the news of note from the past week:
This week, there were reports that if someone sends a very strange series of characters to you in a text message, it can crash the Messages app on your iPhone. If this happens to you, yesterday Apple posted instructions for fixing it, and also said that a permanent fix will come in a future software update.
Marques Brownlee put together a video addressing 10 common Apple Watch questions.
Jason Snell of Six Colors explains that even after you decide to get an Apple Watch, it is very difficult to decide which one to get because of the large number of choices, something new for Apple.
Zac Hall of 9to5Mac reports that the new Marriott app lets you check in and check out from your Apple Watch.
I noticed the day that I received my Apple Watch that the box / storage case that it comes in is really nice, which almost makes me feel guilty about never using it. Zac Hall reports that people are actually selling the boxes on eBay — not the Apple Watch, just the empty box — and people are buying them.
Marco Arment notes that the circles on the Apple Watch have caused him to exercise every day. The same thing has happened to me. I realize that this is just gamification, but I know many people who pay for a personal trainer mostly for the encouragement, so there is nothing unusual about using encouragement to be healthier. It’s nice to see that the Apple Watch is providing positive reinforcement for others, not just me.
This week I reviewed the excellent Weather Line app, but as I noted in that review, there are lots of other good weather apps too. Allyson Kazmucha put together a list of some of the best weather apps for the iPhone. I own most of the apps on that list and I agree with her that these are good ones.
M.G. Siegler, a partner with Google Ventures and tech expert, says that force touch works so well on the Apple Watch that it makes sense to also put force touch on the iPhone and iPad. I agree, and I hope the rumors are true and that Apple adds this to the 2015 version of the iPad and iPhone, which I expect to come out this Fall.
ITV News reports that a man in England survived a shotgun attack because he was lucky enough for the bullets to hit his iPhone 5c, which absorbed most of the impact.
And finally, the Jasper Hamill of The Mirror reports that Gregory Papadin handed his iPhone 5 (in a waterproof case) to his brother to dive into the ocean near San Diego. Then the brother tried to throw the phone back to him… but instead it fell in to the water and went down, down, down. But the camera was on, so the whole thing was captured on video — including the captain swimming down and saving the phone. It’s a fun video:
When it comes to using a stylus with an iPad, the Holy Grail is a stylus that gives you the precision and feel of a nice pen. Unfortunately, the iPad is not designed to recognize something as small as a pen tip. It is designed to recognize input from a finger — something the size of a thick crayon. Thus, for a long time, all iPad styluses had larger rubbery tips to simulate the touch of a finger.
Adonit changed all of that in late 2013 when it introduced the original Adonit Jot Script, a stylus with a tiny, hard tip just like a pen. Adonit figured out a way to have the iPad recognize a tip that is far, far smaller than a finger by emitting an electrical pulse that the iPad is tricked into thinking is input from a fingertip. This meant that the stylus needed a power source, and the original Script used a AAA battery. Other stylus makers followed suit with similar models, and this type of stylus is often called an active stylus.
When I reviewed the that original Adonit Jot Script, I was amazed at the engineering, but I was frustrated by some disadvantages. One thing that I didn’t like was that when you tried to make a diagonal line, the line would appear somewhat wavy on the iPad. This improved in 2014 when Adonit gave updated software to app developers, which made apps like GoodNotes work even better with the Jot Script. But then it got worse in late 2014 when Apple introduced the iPad Air. Something about the iPad Air screen made it less compatible with the original Jot Script, and this continued to be a problem with the iPad Air 2 introduced in late 2015. You could use an active stylus like the original Jot Script with the iPad Air and iPad Air 2, but it was not as precise as when you used an active stylus on older iPads.
Fortunately, the Adonit engineers recently figured out how to solve this problem, and the result is the new Adonit Jot Script 2. Adonit sent me a free sample to review, and I’ve been using it for the past few weeks to take notes in my office. My conclusion is that is a huge improvement over the original Jot Script, but it still has some drawbacks.
Diagonal lines
The biggest improvement in the Jot Script 2 is that it has no problem at all with diagonal lines. What you draw is what you get on the screen. If your line isn’t straight, the fault lies with your penmanship, not the stylus. Here is an example of using the original Jot Script and the new Jot Script 2 on an iPad Air 2 using GoodNotes:
As you can see, the difference when you making a diagonal line is substantial. But even when just writing words, I find that the Jot Script 2 does a much better job. Whatever Adonit did to make the iPad work when making a diagonal line also makes the stylus more precise for any writing that you are doing. You can see this in the above picture, especially in the T, o and w where I wrote “The quick brown fox…” The stylus may not improve your penmanship, but unlike other active styluses, the Jot Script 2 won’t make your penmanship any worse than it already is.
Rechargeable and slimmer
Another disadvantage of the original Jot Script that I noted in my review was that it needed a AAA battery to be powered. Not only did this mean that you need to go through batteries to keep it charged, but it also added to the diameter of the stylus.
The new Jot Script 2 is rechargeable. It comes with a small charger than plugs into a USB port, and the stylus fits into the circle on the charger. A magnet keeps the stylus connected to the charger. The charger works very well. Adonit says that the Jot Script 2 “will function for over 20 hours of pen down writing time before a charge is needed. A full charge only takes 45 to 50 minutes.” Those claims seem about right to me.
The new version of the Jot Script is also skinnier than the original version. It is still not nearly as thin as a traditional pen, or as thin as most non-active styluses, but it is a noticeable improvement. In the following picture, the original Jot Script is on the left, and the Script 2 is on the right.
Design
The design of the Adonit Jot Script 2 is very similar to the original Jot Script, but there are a few subtle changes, one of which I really appreciate. One of my complaints in my review of the original stylus was that the button that you press to turn on the stylus was very hard to distinguish from the rest of the stylus, forcing me to waste time hunting for a button when I wanted to turn on the stylus. I included this photo in my review of the original Jot Script to show the problem:
In the Jot Script 2, the button is still flush with the rest of the stylus and thus somewhat hard to find just by touch, but now it is a shiny silver that is much easier to see.
Here is a picture from the Adonit website that does a good job of showing you the difference in the buttons:
Note that the button is only used to turn the stylus on. Some active styluses also have a button that can perform functions when used with a compatible app. When I use those styluses, I really enjoy being able to press a button to undo whatever I wrote last. Adonit sells another active stylus, the Jot Touch, which has both buttons that can perform functions and pressure sensitivity, but I don’t know if it has yet been updated to work well with an iPad Air and iPad Air 2 like the Jot Script 2 has.
The Jot Script 2 is also a tiny bit shorter than the original Jot Script, but the difference is not enough to make any real difference.
The one design feature that Adonit did not change, even though I really had hoped that they would do so, is that the Jot Script 2 still lacks a clip on the side. This means that you cannot easily clip it to a pocket, and thus the stylus rolls around in your shirt pocket. It also means that if you put down the stylus on a table, it can roll around on the table and sometimes for me would roll off the table completely.
Noise
One of my biggest complaints about the original Jot Script was that the hard tip is noisy when you tap against the screen. I even posted a video so that you could hear the sound. The sound in the Jot Script 2 is similar; it is perhaps the slightest bit less noisy, but when I tried to record the difference, the difference was too slight to hear. Thus, that original video still gives you a sense of what kind of noise you will make with the Jot Script 2.
I realize that we are not talking about a lot of noise, and some folks won’t mind it at all, especially if you are in an environment with background noise. But I tend to take notes in rooms that are very quiet except for whoever is speaking, and the noise bothers me. It also makes me want to tap more slowly on my screen and with less pressure to reduce the noise, but that often results in the stylus not working as well, so then I need to erase what I just wrote and write it again — an annoying process.
If you are taking notes in a noisy environment, or if you are drawing in a room by yourself, and thus the slight noise doesn’t matter, I very much like the feel of the hard tip against the iPad screen. I’m sure that this is why the original Jot Script was so popular. It’s a very nice stylus. But if I am in a quiet room with others around me — which is a very typical environment for meetings and team conference calls that I attend — the noise produced by the hard tip of the Jot Script 2, like the lack of a clip, annoys me.
Conclusion
The Adonit Jot Script 2 works well, and I do like this stylus. When you use a fine point tip on the iPad, you can be incredibly precise on where you want the digital ink to be drawn. It feels much more like writing with a pen, whereas many non-active styluses feel more like you are writing with a crayon.
When you use an active stylus like the Jot Script 2 with a compatible app, such as Evernote or GoodNotes, the app knows to ignore input from anything except for the stylus. If you rest your palm on your iPad screen while you write and you find that this often results in the iPad thinking that you intended to write on the screen when you just rested your palm, then an active stylus like the Jot Script 2 will solve that problem.
But having said that, I feel that I can be just as precise when I use another stylus which also happens to be made by Adonit, the 2015 version of the Adonit Jot Pro, which I reviewed two months ago. That non-active stylus creates the illusion of a fine tip by using a clear disc at the end of the stylus. The Jot Pro is only $30, whereas the Jot Script 2 costs $75. Also, with the Jot Pro, I don’t need to worry about charging or replacing batteries; no power is needed at all. And finally, while the Jot Pro does make a little bit of noise when you use it, it makes far less noise than the Jot Script 2. There are also some newer non-active styluses with rubber tips, like the third generation Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo, that do an excellent job of writing on the iPad Air or Air 2. The Stylus duo tip is not as small as the Jot Script 2 or the Jot Pro, but it gets the job done, and it is silent to use (and has a clip on the side).
If you want to use an active stylus so that you can use a fine tip and take advantage of compatible apps, this is a really good stylus — and likely the best active stylus for the iPad Air and iPad Air 2. If only it were silent and had a clip, then I would use it all of the time. Instead, I can only give it a qualified recommendation.
There are a ridiculous number of iPhone apps that can tell you the weather. I have purchased a whole bunch of them, partly because weather apps are inherently useful, but also because whenever I find one with an interface or a feature that I like, it is often not long before another one comes along that seems like it might be better. But for quite a while now, I’ve stuck with just one Weather app on the home screen of my iPhone: Weather Line, which is currently on sale for only $1.99. Here’s why this has been my favorite weather app, and perhaps it will appeal to you as well.
A line is worth a thousand words
Weather Line shows you a series of hours, days or months, and then displays the temperature for each day. Many apps do this, but what I love about Weather Line, and what gives the app the name, is the line that connects the temperatures. The line means that your brain does not even need to process the numbers. You quickly see that a line is going up to indicate that it is getting warmer, a line going down to indicate that it is getting colder, or the line is relatively straight if the temperature is staying about the same.
For example, in the following images from the Hourly view, I can see that the temperature starts at 80° and then slowly rises to 86°. I wouldn’t use the app if it didn’t include the numbers, but it is the slight incline of the line that helps me to quickly see the gradual increase in temperature. Moreover, the lines are yellow when it is mostly sunny and blue when there is a chance of rain, another quick and helpful visual clue. You can tap on any hour to get more detailed information about the temperature during that hour, such as what the weather will actually feel like, the chance of rain during that hour, the humidity, etc.
If you swipe from right to left, you can see the hourly forecast for the next 48 hours.
In the Daily view, you see the high and low temperature for each day, again with lines to help you see how the highs and lows will change (or not change) from day to day, plus blue or yellow colors to indicate rain or shine. I use this view all the time to get a sense of whether it is getting warmer or colder during the week. Tap on any specific day for a mini-forecast for that day at the bottom. The app was updated last week to show you the date in addition to the first letter of the day of the week, which was a nice addition.
On an iPhone 5s or earlier, you can see up to seven days on the screen. Although I use an iPhone 6, I have it set to the “Zoomed” view (Settings -> Display & Brightness -> View -> Zoomed) so that all of my apps are bigger and easier for me to see, but if you instead use the Standard view on an iPhone 6, a recent update to Weather Line will take advantage of that extra space to show an extra day. In the following images from my iPhone 6, the first one is in Zoomed mode, and the second one is Standard mode.
I am sure that you can also see the extra day on an iPhone 6 Plus, but I don’t have one to test so I don’t know if you only see the extra day when you are in Standard view.
The app also has a Monthly view that shows monthly averages for a city. I can see how that might be useful, perhaps for a city that you will be visiting. In practice, however, I rarely use this view.
Dark Sky forecasts
Dark Sky is an amazing weather app that provides very precise forecasts for the next hour in your specific location. If you are about to head out of the office for lunch, this is the app that lets you know whether you need to bring an umbrella. But other apps can also tap into the Dark Sky database, and Weather Line does so. Thus, at the very bottom of the screen, Weather Line tells you whether or not it will rain in the next hour. Tap that forecast to get a detailed minute-to-minute forecast of precisely when it will start and stop raining and how heavy it will be.
These Dark Sky forecasts are very useful and I use them all of the time. For example, I often find out that the rain is going to stop in a few minutes and then start up again, so I know that I can wait for a short window to go out without getting wet. Or, I can find out that it is just going to get worse, so I might as well go out now.
Although I also have the Dark Sky app on my iPhone, I love that much of its functionality is built in to the Weather Line app so that I can have everything that I need in a single app. (The Dark Sky app is still useful if you want to see a radar from the last few hours plus an excellent forecast of the predicted radar for the next hour.)
Conclusion
Weather Line has a few other features. For example, tap the information icon at the top right to switch to another city, or to add new cities to your list of favorites. You can also switch from Fahrenheit to Celsius.
However, the core of the app is just a single screen that I use to see the hourly, or the daily, forecast. I find this app to be incredibly easy to use, and I find that it is better than any other weather app that I have tried when I want to quickly see the current weather and how that weather will change in the future. Whenever I take a trip to another city, this is my favorite app for helping me to quickly figure out what weather I need to pack for.
I highly recommend Weather Line to anyone looking for a great weather app. It is normally $2.99, but I see that it is currently on sale for $1.99.
It was the end of the era this week with David Letterman going off of the air. I remember Letterman using an iPad for a Top Ten list when the iPad first debuted, but until this week I did not know the back story. It turns out that Andy Ihnatko, a Boston-based technology columnist for Chicago Sun-Times, had a pre-release iPad for review from Apple, and he let Letterman use it — and lick it — on the program. His story was published this week in the Sun-Times, and it is worth reading for anyone who enjoyed watching Letterman over the years. The article also includes a video clip of Letterman with the iPad that night. And now, the news of note from the past week:
New York attorney Nicole Black interviewed me to talk about the Apple Watch in an article for the Above the Law website.
If you use, or want to use, TranscriptPad for the iPad — a fantastic app for reading and annotating transcripts — the free TranscriptPad Quick Start Guide has been updated to version 2.2. You can download it from the iBookstore by clicking here.
If you have been thinking of getting 1Password for the iPhone, iPad, Mac or PC, it is currently 30% off, as noted in this post on the developer’s blog.
Tech columnist John Moltz explains why it is great to use the Apple Watch in the kitchen. I’m a big fan of using the “Hey Siri” function to dictate tasks to my Apple Watch, and I love that you can do it hands free, whether you are in the kitchen or anywher else. I can just lift my wrist and say “Hey Siri remind me to [whatever]” and Siri will remind me at the right time or place.
Roger Fingas of AppleInsider reports that MD Anderson Cancer Center is giving patients Apple Watches as a part of its breast cancer treatment.
Do you use Emoji on your iPhone, iPad or Apple Watch? Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal wrote an article about learning to write using Emoji. Much of the article is actually written using Emoji, although an English translation is available.
Andy Faust of WatchAware recommends using the Mickey Mouse watch face with black and white mode enabled for a retro look.
Mickey Campbell of AppleInsider reports that Apple CEO Tim Cook gave the commencement address at George Washington University this past weekend. The article includes the full 20 minute video.
It’s an old joke that people claim to read Playboy just for the articles, but as Andrew Tarantola of Engadget reports, you can now download the free Playboy Now app, an app which contains Playboy articles but absolutely no nudity. I downloaded it yesterday — to perform my research for this post, of course — and it was interesting to see articles about very explicit intimate acts juxtaposed with far less titillating articles such as “How to recover an unsaved draft in Microsoft Word.”
And finally, this past Sunday, the first trailer was released for the Steve Jobs movie coming out in October. This is the movie written by Aaron Sorkin, based on the book by Walter Isaacson. Here it is:
Yesterday, Apple released the first update — I’m sure the first of many updates — for the Apple Watch, updating the software from Watch OS 1.0 to Watch OS 1.0.1. That is only a minor number change, which seems appropriate because this is only a minor update. No new features are added, and instead Apple improved the performance of Siri and several activity monitor functions such as measuring stand activity and calculations during workouts, along with some other minor improvements. If you open the Apple Watch app on your iPhone (which is what you use to update the watch) you can see all of the details of Watch OS 1.0.1:
Although this update is a minor one, it is nice to see that the Apple Watch is already starting to mature, even though it is a brand new device. And as I think back to the carefree youthfulness that was Apple Watch 1.0, I find myself thinking of the origin of my Apple Watch. How was my Apple Watch born? Well, um, when a mommy iPhone and a Daddy iPad love each other very much …
Let’s try a different question. When was my Apple Watch born? There may be a more ascertainable answer to that one. I learned from Episode 37 of the Upgrade podcast released this week, with hosts Jason Snell and Myke Hurley, about how you might be able to determine this date from the Activity app on the iPhone.
The purpose of the Activity app is to show how you are doing with your three circles measured by the Apple Watch — Move, Exercise, and Stand. The Watch wants you to stand up and move around at least once an hour for at least 12 hours, to exercise for at least 30 minutes, and to move around enough to burn a certain number of calories every day (an amount that varies based on how active you normally are). For example, last week I was able to complete all of my circles every day, and I can see that in the Activity app:
If I scroll back even further, I can see the first day on which I started to measure real activity on the circles was Friday April 24, 2015, which makes sense because that is the day that my Apple Watch first arrived:
But if I scroll back to the prior week, I see that my watch measured some activity on Tuesday, April 14 and Wednesday, April 15. That’s around ten days before my Apple Watch was first on my wrist. On April 15, my watch even measured enough activity around 5am Central to record two calories being burned:
How was my Apple Watch measuring movement before I even had the watch? It’s just a theory, but it makes sense to me that April 14 was the day that my Apple Watch was first born, the day that it was first turned on and able to measure something. It measured activity on the 14th and 15th, and was then powered down. It was then powered back on again on Thursday April 23, sent to me overnight FedEx, and then I had it on April 24. That would explain all of the movement measured by my Apple Watch.
Does learning an Apple Watch’s birthday constitute useful information? Perhaps not, but you never know, maybe one day it will be important to know that my watch was born on April 14, 2015. My own horoscope sign is Scorpio, so hopefully Aries and Scorpio are compatible.
If you have read this far into this post, I suspect that you either already have an Apple Watch or you will have one someday. When you get it, check your Activity app to see when your own Apple Watch was born. And feel free to post your watch’s birthday in the comments to this post. I’m curious to learn of the birthdays of the earliest Apple Watches to be sold.
In September of 2014, when Apple released iOS 8 for iPhone and iPad, Apple began an overhaul of the way that its products manage photographs. On April 8, 2015, Apple completed that transition by releasing an update to the Mac operating system, OS X Yosemite 10.10.3, which introduced the new Photos program, a replacement for iPhoto. You can still use iPhoto for now, but Apple doesn’t plan to update it anymore, so its days are numbered. Photos, on the other hand, is not only the supported program, but is also a much better program with great new features, such as being much faster to use, even if you have tens of thousands of pictures, plus with Photos you can make all of your pictures available on all of your devices. Thus, I recommend that anyone who uses a Mac start moving from iPhoto to Photos, especially if you also have an iPhone and/or iPad.
The problem is that Photos is new. Many of the ways that you used to do things in iPhoto are different in Photos. Indeed, the entire philosophy for how the software organizes photos is different. Knowing that I would need to learn how to make my way through this transition, I bought, and posted a review of, an ebook called Photos for Mac – A Take Control Crash Course by Jason Snell. That book is still only available in preview form, with the full content expected to be released very soon, but for now that book won’t tell you all that you need to know about Photos.
In the meantime, California attorney David Sparks recently released a 2.5 hour video called Photos Video Field Guide. It costs $9.99, and I had planned to buy a copy because I’ve always been impressed by the other videos and iBooks produced by David, but he was nice enough to send me a free copy to review. I finished it over the weekend, and I loved it.
I enjoy reading books and articles when I am trying to learn something new, but sometimes there is no substitute for having someone actually show you something. Photos Video Field Guide is a screencast, so you see David’s computer screen, iPad screen or iPhone screen while you listen to him explain exactly what he is doing. This is an excellent way to show how Photos works. Sure, I could have eventually figured out many of the features of Photos by just fiddling around with the software, but now that I’ve watched David edit and manipulate photos while explaining what he was doing, I no longer need to waste time figuring out the basics.
While I most wanted to watch this video to learn about Photos on the Mac, this video also does an excellent job of explaining how to use Photos on the iPad and iPhone. Even though I’ve been using those apps since last Fall, I learned a ton about those apps that I didn’t previously fully appreciate. One of the key advantages of Apple’s new approach to photographs is that you can now view and seamlessly work with your photos across platforms — Mac, iPad and iPhone. Thus, it makes perfect sense that this video pays attention to all three platforms.
The video also does a good job of appealing to a spectrum of user levels. David walks you through everything, so this video is perfect for a complete novice, but I found the entire video interesting and educational even though I consider myself an advanced iPhoto user and I even use Photoshop a little. I can recommend this video to you regardless of your digital photography skill level.
In addition to showing off how to use all of the features, David does an excellent job of explaining the new philosophy of Photos. I’ll admit that I had been upset that Apple got rid of Events, which was the central focus of iPhoto, and something that I felt very comfortable using. But now that I understand Apple’s new organization philosophy in Photos of using years, collections and moments, along with the new super-fast search features of Photos on the Mac, iPad and iPhone, I finally get it. There was a moment this past weekend when I was listening to David talk and I all but heard a bell ring in my head (much like Don Draper in the Mad Men finale Sunday night) and suddenly I got it. (And I’ll refrain from making further references to Mad Men for those of you who have not yet watched it on your DVR.) For me, finally understanding why Apple did what it did in Photos, as opposed to the old approach in iPhoto, was perhaps the best part of watching the Photos Video Field Guide.
The video is fully bookmarked, so after you finish watching the video if you want to go back to, say, the section on Searching Photos in iOS, just click on the chapter icon in QuickTime Player (or whatever you use to watch videos) and you can jump right to 01:18:51 where that starts.
Rather than me continuing to wax poetic about this video, let me stop and simply refer you to the very generous 30 minute sample of the Field Guide provided by David. This is essentially the first 30 minutes of the screencast, so you can watch this, and if you like it, you can buy the full video to watch the other two hours and have a copy that you can save on your computer to refer to in the future.
The Photos Video Field Guide is an excellent way to learn all about Apple’s new approach to photographs and all of the powerful things that you can do in Photos on the Mac, iPad and iPhone. I really enjoyed this video, and if you enjoy taking photographs, you will too.
I only ran across a few articles this week that struck me as good candidates for In the news, so here is today’s shorter-than-normal list of articles that you should consider reading and other items that you should be aware of:
New York attorney Nicole Black discusses her first week using an Apple Watch in an article for The Daily Record. Niki and I had the opportunity to talk on the phone about the Apple Watch earlier this week, and she made the good point that the Apple Watch can be even more useful for female attorneys than for male attorneys. While men often store an iPhone in an easy-to-reach shirt pocket, women often keep the iPhone in a purse. Being able to glance at your wrist to get information is even more valuable when the alternative is having to dig through a purse to find an iPhone. As Niki writes in her article, with the Apple Watch, there is “[n]o more reaching for your phone or digging through your purse to locate it when it’s ringing. Instead, you just look at your wrist for the time, the weather, your upcoming appointments, notifications of important communications and more.”
Minneapolis attorney Sam Glover of Lawyerist wrote a 35-page PDF e-book called 4-Step Computer Security Upgrade in which he provides advice on the four best things that attorneys can do to improve their security. The e-book costs $10, and Sam gave me a free copy to review this week. I agree with all of his suggestions, and any attorney that follows his advice will be much better protected.
Tech analyst Ross Rubin discusses the future of the iPad in an article for iMore.
Apple explains on this page that you can improve the accuracy of distance and pace measurements on an Apple Watch by doing a 20 minute workout with both your iPhone and Apple Watch.
And finally, David Pogue of Yahoo Tech shows in this video why Apple’s new ResearchKit for the iPhone is a big deal. He calls it the best product that Apple has ever produced:
