Early this morning, Apple and the carriers started to take online pre-orders for the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. (You’ll be able to buy them in stores starting one week from today, September 19th.) I have a business plan with AT&T so I cannot buy an iPhone through Apple, but I went to the AT&T website at 2:01 am Central time and purchased an iPhone 6 (128 GB, space gray). I hope that some of my friends buy an iPhone 6 Plus because I’m very curious to see what it is like to use an iPhone with a screen that large, but I’m pretty confident that the iPhone 6 is the best size for me. I’m not yet sure when I will receive the iPhone that I ordered — hopefully it will be on September 19 or very soon after that (the website currently says that that my estimated shipping date is 9/17 to 9/18) — but once I have kicked the tires on it, I’ll post my review here on iPhone J.D. And now, the news of note from the past week:
There were a huge number of articles posted this week about the upcoming Apple Watch. If you want to read a good one, I recommend this one by David Pogue of Yahoo Tech, which is based on his personal experience with a prototype and an interview with Apple.
I had assumed that Apple’s new wearable device would be called the iWatch, not the Apple Watch. Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac notes that in an interview with ABC, Apple Tim Cook actually called it the “iWatch” at one point. Was that just a slip of the tongue because he was thinking of the iPhone, or is that a hint that Apple had at one point planned to call the device the iWatch and that name was still in Cook’s mind? I suspect that at some point the future, someone will write about the history of the Apple Watch and we’ll find out.
By the way, if you are curious about the origin of the “i” in iPhone, I wrote about that in this post back in 2009.
The iPhone 6 comes with a new default wallpaper showing a picture of the Milky Way over some mountains. I just assumed that it was a complete fake created in Photoshop, but it is a real photograph taken by Norwegian photographer Espen Haagensen (although Apple did modify it for the iPhone). Michael Steeber of 9to5Mac talked to Haagensen and provides details on how the photo was taken and how it ended up on the new iPhones.
Whitson Gordon of LifeHacker reports that it appears that 5 million Gmail usernames and passwords may have been leaked on a Russian Bitcoin forum. Lovely.
Nathaniel Popper of the New York Times wrote an interesting article about how Apple worked with banks when developing the new Apple Pay system.
This week, Pete Souza, the official White House photographer, tweeted a photo of President Obama’s desk. I suppose it isn’t that different from my own desk — some papers at the back, and an iPad right at the front. I just don’t have that fancy presidential coaster. Or the nuclear codes. But otherwise it’s basically the same.
And finally, after watching Apple’s Jonathan Ive in a video introducing the Apple Watch, I enjoyed watching IKEA’s parody of an Ive video in this video for the enw IKEA catalogue:
iCloud is Apple’s cloud storage solution. You can use iCloud to back up your entire iPhone or iPad, although I prefer to back up my devices to my home computer. You can also use iCloud to store your documents created in Pages, Numbers and Keynote, and you can use iCloud to store movies and photos. Also, many third party apps include the option to store files using iCloud, which is a helpful way to share the file between versions of the app on your iPhone and your iPad.
Three months ago, Apple announced that it would make iCloud cheaper in connection with iOS 8. iOS 8 will be released on September 17, 2014, and it looks like the new iCloud prices are now in effect. Just a few days ago, when I tapped Settings -> iCloud -> Storage & Backup -> Buy More Storage on my iPhone, I saw these options:
But last night when I went there again, I saw this:
Everyone still gets 5 GB for free, and that has (just barely) been enough for me, but if you backup your iPhone or iPad to iCloud, it is easy to go over 5 GB. The old price was $40 a year for 20 GB, but you can now get 20 GB for only $0.99 a month, which is $11.88 a year. The old prices topped out at 50 GB for $100 a year, but you can now get 10x that much space, 500 GB, for around the same price: $9.99 a month, which is $119.88 a year. And if you really need a lot of space, you can get a full 1 TB for $19.99 a month, which is $239.88 a year.
Dropbox recently reduced its prices too, and the Dropbox Pro account now gives you 1 TB for $100 a year. While many third party apps can use Dropbox, Dropbox is not tightly integrated into the iOS experience like iCloud is. For example, you cannot automatically backup your iPhone to Dropbox, nor can you use Dropbox with Keynote, Pages and Numbers (at least, not directly).
Early next year, Apple will introduce a new program for the Mac called Photos which will let you share your full photo library with all of your iOS devices using iCloud. For those of us with large photo libraries — I see that my current iPhoto library on my Mac is at 300 GB — the reduced iCloud prices will be much appreciated when the new Photos for Mac is released in 2015.
Yesterday, Apple introduced the 2014 version of the iPhone. The new iPhone 6 is larger (although thinner) than the iPhone 5/5s, and for those looking for a huge screen, the iPhone 6 Plus is even larger.
Before talking about the iPhone 6, a brief word about Apple’s even bigger announcement yesterday: the Apple Watch. It will be released in early 2015, and there will be many different models, starting at $350. While the beautiful screen on the Apple Watch will remind many of the iPhone, it runs a new operating system (not just a version of iOS) and includes brand new features and input methods, with a user interface that is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. This has the potential to be the next big thing for Apple, and there is so much to learn about — including so many details that Apple has yet to reveal — that I am only beginning to understand this new product. I’ll talk about this product more in the future as I learn more and as more information is revealed. Having said that, yes, I will absolutely be getting one just as soon as they go on sale.
But back to the iPhone 6, which is something that you can buy actually buy this month, with pre-orders starting on September 12 and sales in retail stores beginning at 8am on September 19. After watching the video in which Apple announced the new iPhones and reading everything that I could get my hands on last night, I have no doubt that the new iPhones include a lot of features that lawyers are going to love.
Bigger Display
The most obvious new feature of the new iPhones is that they are larger. The 2012 and 2013 models — the iPhone 5 and 5s — had a 4-inch diagonal screen. In 2014, the iPhone 6 has a 4.7-inch diagonal screen, and the iPhone 6 Plus has a 5.5-inch diagonal screen. The screens are larger because the devices themselves are larger. The iPhone 6 is 5.44 inches tall and 2.64 inches wide. The iPhone 6 Plus is 6.22 inches tall and 3.06 inches wide. (By comparison, the iPhone 5s is 4.87 inches tall and 2.31 inches wide.)
What does the new iPhone do with the extra space? Older apps that have not been updated will simply zoom to fill the screen, so everything will just be larger. And as I understand it, you can select a mode on the new iPhones called Zoom View that will show, even with new apps, the same screen that you would have seen on an iPhone 5/5s, but just a larger version of it.
Alternatively, you can select the Standard View, and then apps can be written to take advantage of the larger screen size. For example, the iPhone 5/5s home screen can display four columns and five rows of apps (plus the dock) per screen. In Zoom View, you see the same layout on the new iPhones, but the icons and text are just larger. But in Standard View on the new iPhones, the home screen can show six rows of apps per screen — an additional row. You still get four columns, but there is just more space between each column. The following images show the Standard View on the left and the Zoom View on the right:
I can see both modes being particularly useful for lawyers. The ability to have larger text may mean that you don’t need to reach for your iPad or a computer when you need to read a brief on your iPhone or read the fine print in a document. The ability to have more options on the screen means that you can be even more productive when you are trying to use your iPhone to get work done. And from what I have read from people who have actually held the iPhone 6, while it is certainly bigger than an iPhone 5/5s, it doesn’t feel so much bigger that it feels wrong in any way. When I switched from an iPhone 4S to and iPhone 5, I immediately noticed the taller screen, but after about a week or so the taller screen seemed normal and the iPhone 4S seemed tiny and wrong. I suspect that the transition to the larger iPhone 6 will be similar. [UPDATE 9/12/14: David Pogue of Yahoo Tech said today: “The iPhone 6 (not PLUS) does NOT strike most people as bigger! Unless you have the iPhone for comparison, it doesn’t hit you as bigger at all, which was a surprise to me.”]
As for the even larger iPhone 6 Plus, I address that below.
Better Display
Apple calls the iPhone 5s screen a Retina screen. The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus have what Apple calls a Retina HD screen. It has a higher contrast so that text is sharper and blacks are deeper. This will make pictures and videos look better, but it will also make it easier to read email and documents on an iPhone screen.
The Retina HD screen also has a winder viewing angle. Thus, if you need to show a client or a colleague something on an iPhone, they will find it easier to see what is on the screen of the iPhone in your hand.
Thinner
The new iPhones are thinner than ever. The original iPhone was .46 inches thick. The iPhone 3G and 3Gs were slightly thicker, at .48 inches. The iPhone 4 and 4S were noticeably thinner at .37 inches. The iPhone 5 and 5s were thinner still at .30 inches. The new iPhone 6 is only .27 inches, and the iPhone 6 Plus is only slighly thicker at .28 inches. In my experience with prior generations of iPhones, as the devices get thinner, they become easier and more pleasant to hold in your hand, and they become easier to store in a shirt pocket because they bulge out less. Thus, I suspect that I will appreciate the even thinner iPhones this year.
Note that while the new iPhones are thinner, because they are also larger, the new iPhones weigh more than the iPhone 5/5s did. The iPhone 5s weighs 3.95 ounces; the iPhone 6 weighs in at 4.55 ounces, and the iPhone 6 Plus is 6.07 ounces. Fortunately, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they will feel heavier in your hands, thanks to the thinner design and the better distribution of weight — especially for the iPhone 6. For example, Brian Barrett of Gizmodo got a chance to hold the new iPhone 6 after Apple’s announcement yesterday and wrote: “The iPhone 6 is also light as hell. Yes, it’s about half an ounce heavier than the iPhone 5S, but with the weight distributed over larger area it ends up, oddly, feeling even lighter than the previous generation.” I suspect that the extra weight will be more obvious with the iPhone 6 Plus.
Curves
The new iPhones have curved edges. Apple says on its website: “The first thing you notice when you hold iPhone 6 is how great it feels in your hand. The cover glass curves down around the sides to meet the anodized aluminum enclosure in a remarkable, simplified design. There are no distinct edges. No gaps. Just a smooth, seamless bond of metal and glass that feels like one continuous surface.” Virtually every article that I have read about the new iPhones written by folks who held them yesterday notes that the new iPhones feel really great in your hand thanks to the curved sides.
Faster
Of course, a new iPhone model is going to have better processors and thus be faster. In the announcement yesterday, Apple VP Phil Schiller said that the new iPhones have up to a 25% faster CPU, and up to 50% faster GPU (graphics), compared to last year’s iPhone 5s. The new iPhones are also up to 50x faster than the original iPhone on CPU tasks, and up to 84% faster on graphics. In real world use, this typically means that the device can do more and feels more responsive, which is always a good thing.
Camera
Apple knows that more and more folks are relying on an iPhone to be their primary camera, and thus Apple improves the camera every year. The new iPhones have a better sensor that takes better pictures with better, faster auto-focus for both photos and videos. The new iPhones also do a better job with handling colors, and do a better job with noise reduction when you are taking a photograph in low light.
So in short, the camera is better.
Apple Pay
Apple spent a lot of time yesterday describing the new Apple Pay system. At a large number of merchants, you will soon be able to pay for items just by tapping your iPhone 6 or 6 Plus — and soon your Apple Watch — on a device at the store. The whole process is much faster, and much more secure, than using a credit card. This has the potential to be one of the best, and most convenient, features of the new iPhones and I look forward to learning more about it and using it myself.
Other new features
Those are the highlights, but there is a lot more that is new in the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. For example, for carriers that support it, the new phones have better LTE support for faster data. Many carriers will also soon support Voice over LTE, which lets you talk using the better 4G LTE network instead of the 3G network for better sounding calls.
If you have a relatively new router that supports 802.11ac, the new iPhones also support this as well, which can result in up to 3x faster Wi-Fi. On T-Mobile, and hopefully other U.S. carriers in the future, you will even be able to take advantage of the superior bandwidth of Wi-Fi to make better quality phone calls, and then the call will seamlessly switch to the cellular network when you leave the Wi-Fi area.
The new iPhones can even tell how high you are — i.e., they have a barometer. Thus, the health-related apps can keep track of (and give you credit for) walking up stairs.
The new iPhones come in the same colors as before — silver, gold and space gray. Just like before, the entry model comes with 16 GB, but for an extra $100, you now jump up to 64 GB, and an extra $200 will get you 128 GB. For most attorneys, the 64 GB model will be the sweet spot.
Which size to get?
So you have decided to get a new iPhone. Which size should you get? As California attorney David Sparks tweeted yesterday: “I will probably spend more time considering iPhone 6 vs. 6 plus than most people spend choosing a tattoo.” I’ve been thinking about it a lot. On the plus side of the iPhone 6 Plus (ahem), I see four advantages to paying an additional $100 for an iPhone 6 Plus over an iPhone 6.
First, bigger is often better when it comes to looking at things on a mobile device. Video and photographs will virtually always look better when then can be made larger on a larger screen. And for those of us with aging eyes, having larger text in emails, web pages, etc. is better. There are actually two ways that the iPhone 6 Plus screen can be better. First and most obviously, the screen itself is physically larger, as noted above. But in addition to being a larger screen, it should be a better screen because the iPhone 6 Plus has pixels that are packed more tightly together, making it all the more impossible to see individual pixels. The iPhone 6, like the iPhone 5s, has 326 pixels per inch. The iPhone 6 Plus has 401 pixels per inch. To be sure, 326 pixels per inch is awesome, and at some point the dots become so small that your eyes can’t distinguish the difference anyway, but I imagine that the iPhone 6 Plus screen could look better in addiiton to being larger.
Second, as noted above, apps can be written to take advantage of the larger screen of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. But on the iPhone 6 Plus, the screen is so much larger that many apps will include features that we previously saw only on an iPad. For example, in the built-in Mail app, when you turn to landscape mode on an iPhone 6 Plus, you have the option to see a list of messages on the left and the message itself on the right, similar to what you can see on an iPad:
Thus, app developers can take advantage of the larger screen of the iPhone 6 Plus to display all of the same text and graphics, at the same size, that they appear on the iPhone 6, but then add some additional information in the extra space. This has the potential to make you more productive with an iPhone 6 Plus than with an iPhone 6.
Third, the iPhone 6 Plus has a larger battery, and while you need some of that extra battery to power the larger screen, the larger iPhone also lasts longer. For example, Apple says that an iPhone 5s can use the Internet for up to 8 hours on 3G, whereas an iPhone 6 can go up to 10 hours and the iPhone 6 Plus can go up to 12 hours. Video playback is up to 10 hours on the iPhone 5s, up to 11 hours on the iPhone 6, and up to 14 hours on the iPhone 6 Plus.
Fourth, the iPhone 6 Plus is the first and only iPhone to feature optical image stabilization, which helps to correct for your hand shaking when you take a picture with the iPhone.
All of those advantages seem pretty nice. Nevertheless, I still think I am going to get the iPhone 6 for myself, not the iPhone 6 Plus, because my sense is that the Plus will just be too big to be comfortable to me.
Until I hold one myself, it is difficult to know how big and awkward the Plus will feel in my hand. But there are ways to get a sense of it. First, you can look at this page on Apple’s website and scroll down to the part that says “Select your current iPhone and compare it to iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.” You can select a picture of your current iPhone on the left and the iPhone 6 or 6 Plus on the right so that you can see the releative sizes. And if you use your browser to adjust the magnification settings just right, you can get the iPhone on the left to be the exact same size on your monitor as it is in real life, which then shows you the true size of the iPhone 6 or 6 Plus on the right.
Second, Aurich Lawson of Ars Technica took the exact dimensions provided by Apple and drew wireframe drawings to scale. At the end of this post you can download the PDF. Print it out on your printer (make sure you do so without letting your computer shrink or expand the size of the image), cut out the wireframes, and you can see for yourself what the height and width looks like — although of course not the depth or the weight. I did so, and I’ve been looking at my iPhone 5s as compared to the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus:
As I mentioned above, it seems to me that the iPhone 6 is bigger but not dramatically so, just enough to be good without being too extreme. But the iPhone 6 Plus just seems far too large. When I place my iPhone 5s in a a shirt pocket, you cannot even see the top of the phone. With the iPhone 6 cutout, you can see just a little of the phone sticking out. But when I place that iPhone 6 Plus cutout in my shirt pocket, the pocket is more than wide enough for the phone, but the top of the phone sticks out quite a bit, so much so that it doesn’t seem right. And when I hold the cutout iPhone 6 Plus in my hand, it just seems wrong, almost like the way that it just doesn’t look right when you look at yourself in a fun house mirror.
Having said that, based on the reports that I read from folks who got a chance to hold the new iPhones yesterday, many — perhaps even most? — of them really liked the larger iPhone 6 Plus. More than one were happy that the iPhone 6 Plus is almost like a small version of the iPad mini — an iPad mini mini, if you will. I’m not sure that I agree with that; if I want a larger screen, I’ll just use my iPad, although to be fair my iPad is not always with me.
Apple does include a new mode with the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus to help with the larger size: if you tap (not press) the home button twice, the top of the screen slides down so that you can reach items on the top of the screen that are too far up for your thumb to normally reach on a larger device. Here is a short video by Joshua Topolsky of Bloomberg Digital that shows this in action.
If you don’t plan to buy an iPhone 6 immediately, you can wait until you can hold the two new phones for yourself in an Apple Store, AT&T store, Verizon store, etc. But if you are like me and you plan to get one on Day 1, you’ll need to make a choice now. I’m fairly sure that I have decided to get the iPhone 6, not the 6 Plus, but I want to think about it some more.
[UPDATE 1:15 pm: Over lunch today, I went to my local AT&T store and spent some time with the LG G3 phone to try to get a sense of what the iPhone 6 Plus will feel like. As noted by CNet, there are some similarities. Both phones have a 5.5-inch diagonal screen, but the LG G3 is not as tall (5.76″ vs. 6.2″) and not as wide (2.94″ vs. 3.1″), although the LG G3 is thicker (.35″ vs. .28″). The LG G3 is also lighter (5.26 oz. vs. 6.1 oz.) I didn’t much care for the size, and as noted this phone is somewhat smaller in height and width and weight, which makes me even more suspicious of the larger iPhone 6 Plus. It just didn’t feel like a phone to me, but instead felt like a miniature tablet. To be fair, a miniature tablet is a cool idea, but it’s just not what I want to carry around in my pocket all day long and hold up to my face to make calls. And I didn’t like the fact that it is impossible for my thumb to reach across the device with one hand. I see that California attorney David Sparks posted that he is leaning towards the iPhone 6 Plus specifically becuase it seems like a different device: “I’ve been leaning toward the larger phone because I’m really curious about how a bigger screen would change my relationship to my iPhone.” That’s a fair point, but I’m not sure that I’m ready for such a drastic change in my relationship with my iPhone. Bottom line, though, is that if you are also on the fence, until you can touch an iPhone 6 Plus yourself, consider checking out some of the similar Android phones that are currently in stores such as the LG G3.]
Conclusion
While most of my work gets done on my computer and my iPad, I can be mighty productive on an iPhone reading and responding to emails, reading and making quick edits to documents, keeping track of my contacts and calendar appointments, etc. With the larger, better screen, and a thinner, curvier design that makes it more pleasant to hold in the hand, the new iPhone 6 looks like it will be much better in performing all of these tasks. I still think that the iPhone 6 Plus will be too large for me, but who knows, maybe I will change my mind on that and opt for the jumbo size when the 2015 version of the iPhone comes out next year. But whatever size you prefer, the two new iPhones look like clear winners, and I have no doubt that they will be incredibly popular. I can’t wait to have one in my hands.
Today at 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern, Apple will introduce the 2014 version(s) of the iPhone, which I presume will be called the iPhone 6. I add the possible “s” to “version” because the rumor is that Apple will announce two models, one with a larger 4.7 inch screen and another with an even larger 5.5 inch screen. Additionally, Apple is rumored to announce a new wearable device that could be called the iWatch. For a good take on what Apple is expected to announce today, read this article by John Gruber.
You can watch a live stream of the announcements at this link on an iPad, iPhone or Mac, or you can watch on an Apple TV. If you want to also (or instead) read a live blog of the event, I recommend that you look at this one on Macworld; Jason Snell and Dan Moren are Apple live blog pros. If you can’t watch the live video during the day, Apple usually posts it on their website a few hours later, so you should be able to watch it tonight.
And of course, come back to iPhone J.D. tomorrow and I’ll give you my initial thoughts on the announcements.
For many attorneys, the best new app that was released in 2014 was Microsoft Word for iPad. As I noted in the review I wrote in April, the app works great when you want to view or edit Microsoft Word documents on an iPad. I use the app almost every day in my law practice. But as I also noted in my review, while the app itself is free to download, if you want to edit documents you need to have an Office 365 subscription, and the pricing of that can be confusing.
Last week, Microsoft announced new monthly subscription plans for Office 365, and some folks have asked me which plan is best for attorneys who want to use all of the features of Word for iPad and the other Office suite apps (Excel for iPad and PowerPoint for iPad). The two new plans are Office 365 Personal for $6.99/month, which allows access on one computer and one tablet, and Office 365 Home for $9.99/month, which offers access to up to five computers and up to five tablets. Those monthly subscriptions are actually not a bargain because they cost more than an annual subscription. For example, you can get Office 365 Home for $99/year. Or you can even buy a subscription key card on Amazon and pay a discounted price of only $63.99 per year, which is only $5.33 a month. So which of these plans is best for attorneys?
Actually, I think that the answer is none of them. Technically, any of those plans will give you a license number that you could enter to make Microsoft Word work on your iPad. However, the license agreements impose limitations on what you are supposed to do with those plans.
If you look at the Microsoft website, you will see that Microsoft offers many different plans for Office 365. This page lists six of them, ranging from Office 365 Personal to Office Professional 2013, but that isn’t close to all of the plans offered. Nevertheless, I link to that page because it does state that Office 365 Home and Office 365 Personal are licensed only for “home use.” What does that mean? The Microsoft Software License Agreement includes the following in the “Additional Terms” section:
8. HOME AND STUDENT SOFTWARE
“Home and Student” edition software may not be used for commercial, non-profit, or revenue-generating activities.
If you are an attorney, presumably you are using Microsoft Word for “commercial” or “revenue-generating” activities. Even if you are doing purely pro bono work, you would still seem to be doing “non-profit” activities. Thus, if I am reading the license correctly (and I think I am), attorneys are not supposed to use an Office 365 Home or an Office 365 Personal subscription to use Microsoft Word for iPad to view and edit work-related files.
Instead, you need to look at the Office 365 for business plans to purchase an appropriate license for using Microsoft Word on an iPad. This page lists seven such plans, which range from $5 per user a month to $22 per user a month. Four of those plans provide access to Microsoft’s mobile apps (which includes Microsoft Word for iPad). The Office 365 Small Business Premium plan costs $150 per user a year and supports a maximum of 25 years. If you have 26 to 300 users, it looks like you can use the Office 365 Midsize Business plan, which also costs $150 per user a year. Microsoft also offers the Office 365 Enterprise E3 plan, which costs $240 per user a year for unlimited users.
But that’s not all. Microsoft also offers education plans, government plans, and nonprofit plans. Plus, Microsoft has sales representatives with whom you can negotiate packages based upon your specific needs.
I know that at first blush, $150 a year seems like a lot, but remember you are not just paying for the iPad apps. That also gives you the latest versions of the desktop versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Access and other programs (if you use a PC; only some of those programs are available for Mac). It also gives you 1 TB of storage on OneDrive for Business and access to other Microsoft services.
[UPDATE 9/16/14: Legal tech consultant Ben Schorr alerted me that Microsoft has new plans coming out on Oct. 1 for companies with 1 to 250 employees. The current Small Business, Small Business Premium and Midsize Business plans will be replaced with Office 365 Business Essentials, Office 365 Business and Office 365 Premium. The Office 365 Business plan will cost $8.25/month per user ($99/year) and includes all of the Office applications for up to five PCs or Macs plus the iPad apps. If you also want Exchange, you’ll have to get Office 365 Business Premium, which is $12.50/month per user ($150/year). Thanks, Ben!]
I suspect that many attorneys are already paying for an Office 365 subscription to use the desktop software, and if that applies to you, then you can think of the iPad apps as a free add-on. If you are using older versions of Microsoft Office software on your computers, consider whether you want to upgrade to Office 365 to get a license for the iPad apps. If you cannot yet upgrade, I recommend that you talk to a Microsoft sales representative about the best options for your law office.
We are now very close to September 9, 2014, when Apple will introduce new products. For sure, we will see the 2014 model of the iPhone, which I presume will be called the iPhone 6. We might also see the wearable device that Apple has been working on for so long (the iWatch?), and possibly even a new iPad, although in past years Apple has waited until October for iPad announcements. Brian Chen of the New York Times wrote a good article explaining what his sources told him will be announced next week. But whatever it is that is being announced, all signs are that this will be a BIG announcement for Apple. First, Apple sent out invitations to the press a week earlier than normal. Second, as I noted last week, Apple booked a venue for the event that holds over three times as many people as the venue that Apple traditionally uses for iPhone announcements, and as if that is not enough, Apple is constructing a huge building next to the theater, presumably for product demonstrations. (AppleInsider sent a drone over it to get aerial footage.) Third, Apple is providing a live stream to the event, and unlike past years when the live stream was confirmed shortly before the event, this year they confirmed the live stream the week before the event. There is even a page on Apple’s website with a countdown timer to the event. So tell Siri to clear your calendar at 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern on Tuesday, September 9. I am very excited. And now, the news of note from the past week:
New York attorney Nicole Black has posted on Above the Law the second part of her article based on her interview of U.S. Second Circuit Judge Richard Wesley on how he uses an iPad.
The Lawyerist has posted a Dropbox for Lawyers and Law Firms user guide. It is a useful article, but there is one part of it that gives me pause. The article opines that “Dropbox is perfectly safe for most lawyers to use for client files.” I know many smart lawyers who I respect who agree with that statement, but as the article itself notes, other lawyers disagree because Dropbox is a third party and has not signed a confidentiality agreement with its attorney users. Don’t get me wrong, I love Dropbox and I use it extensively, but for me it stores public items such as pleadings. For confidential documents that I want to share between my computers and my iPhone and iPad, I use a Transporter (a past sponsor of iPhone J.D.).
Speaking of the security of online files, one of the big items in the news this past week was celebrities who use an iPhone that was backed up to iCloud who had some of their pictures stolen by criminals who seem to have somehow gotten access to their passwords, and then got access to their iCloud backups. It is still unclear how the criminals did so, although Andy Greenberg offers some theories in an article for Wired, as does security expert Rich Mogull in an article for TidBITS, and I also liked this article by Ben Lovejoy for 9to5Mac.
One knee-jerk reaction is to say that people should not backup to iCloud, but as John Gruber notes, the alternative is (for most people) even worse — losing irreplaceable photographs if an iPhone dies or is lost and there is no backup. Of course, you can also backup to iTunes on a computer, but it seems that most folks don’t do that, and for them, an online backup is better than no backup at all if a device can no longer be used.
Hopefully the publicity surrounding this incident will result in better security options for all of us. Whether a thief breaks into your home or accesses your online data, it is still a criminal invasion of privacy that makes us all feel vulnerable. Daisuke Wakabayashi of the Wall Street Journal interviewed Apple CEO Tim Cook on the subject. Cook told the Journal that “celebrities’ iCloud accounts were compromised when hackers correctly answered security questions to obtain their passwords or when they were victimized by a phishing scam to obtain user IDs and passwords.” Cook noted that “none of the Apple IDs and passwords leaked from the company’s servers” but said that Apple is taking steps to make it harder for this to happen in the future, such as sending email and push notifications when someone tries to restore iCloud data to a new device.
Cook is also encouraging everyone to use two-factor authentication, which I also strongly recommend. This eliminates the possibility of someone getting your password by answering security questions, and also can make it harder for a criminal to access your account even if the criminal does know your password. I explained two-factor (or two-step) authentication and how to use it in this post from early 2013.
After all of that serious talk about security, I think we can all use something on the light side. Thanks to a tweet by Ohio attorney Chad Burton, I saw a funny-yet-true article for Gizmodo called 11 Reasons Email is the Worst by Tim Urban. The pictures are great.
Boston attorney Heidi Alexander, a law practice management advisor for the Massachusetts Law Office Management Assistance Program, co-hosts The Legal Toolkit, a podcast that provides law practice management tips. Heidi recently asked me to join her on the latest episode of the podcast to discuss some of our favorite iPhone and iPad apps and accessories. That topic is far too broad for a podcast episode that lasts only 42 minutes, but we did our best to hit some of the highlights.
I’ve embedded the podcast below if you want to listen to it in your browser. Or you can click here to launch the podcast in iTunes, or click here to download the episode as an MP3 file. Click here for the show notes for the episode, which includes links to just about all of the apps and accessories that we discussed.
I am always interested in surveys that provide information on attorney iPhone and iPad use, and the latest report that I have seen on this subject is the 2014 Survey of American Lawyers at Major Law Firms: Use of Tablet Computers by Primary Research Group, Inc. Primary Research Group is a professional research firm that publishes research reports, surveys, and benchmarking studies for businesses, colleges, libraries, law firms, hospitals, museums, and other institutions. This is a survey of randomly chosen partners, associates, of counsel and contract attorneys at U.S. law firms with 25 or more attorneys who have used (but do not necessarily own) a tablet computer. The sample size for this survey was 104 law firms and 256 attorneys. There are some interesting results in this new report, and Primary Research Group gave me permission to report on some the findings. If you purchase the report, you get a huge amount of additional information, essentially everything that you might want to make use of all of the survey responses.
As noted above, the participants in this survey work at a law firm with 25 or more attorneys and have used a tablet before, but don’t necessarily own one. The survey asked respondents what brand of tablet that they own. The results were 66.0% iPad, 6.6% Samsung, 4.8% Microsoft Surface, 1.6% Google, 0.8% Lenovo, 0.4% Asus. Samsung and Google both make tablets that use the Android operating system. I believe that Lenovo and Asus make both Android and Windows tablets.
Assuming that no respondents owned more than one brand of tablet, that means that a total of 80.2% of the surveyed attorneys actually own a tablet. If 66 of the of 80.2 is iPad, that is 82.3%, so that means that of the population of survey respondents who own a tablet, approximately 82% of them own an iPad. Here is a pie graph showing those results:
The results of the Primary Research Group survey are similar to what we saw in the 2014 ABA Legal Technology Resource Center tech survey, where 84% of tablet-using attorneys used an iPad, 10% used Android, and almost 6% used Windows tablets.
Although the overall survey showed 66.0% owning an iPad, the report breaks down that number by age and by gender. As for age, the report shows a slight tendency, up to age 59, for older attorneys to own an iPad. Specifically:
Age under 30: 58.82% own an iPad
Age 30-39: 59.65% own an iPad
Age 40-49: 69.35% own an iPad
Age 50-59: 75.38% own an iPad
Age 60 or Over: 60.00% own an iPad
As for gender, there was a slight tendency for female attorneys to own an iPad (71.62%) versus male attorneys (63.74%).
Where are these attorneys getting their tablets? 90% of survey respondents bought their own tablet; 10% of them used a tablet provided by their law firm.
The survey also provides a lot of information about the apps that attorneys are using. I think that the most significant new iPad app for attorneys that was released this year was the Microsoft Office suite, especially the Word for iPad app. Almost 19% of all respondents said that they use Office for iPad, and considering that 66% of all respondents own an iPad, that means that around 28% of attorneys in the survey that own iPads are already using those Microsoft apps that were released on March 27, 2014.
When I travel, one of the most useful iPad accessories that I bring with me is my Apple Wireless Keyboard, which makes it so much easier to type emails and edit documents when I am working at night in my hotel room. One of the questions in the survey was: “Do you use some form of detachable or auxiliary keyboard with your tablet?” 34% said yes, 55% said no, and 11% did not answer the question.
Speaking of travel, the survey also asked: “Has your tablet computer helped you increase your billable hours?” 28% said yes, 57% said no, and 15% did not answer. For the attorneys who used a tablet to increase their billable hours, the report notes: “Overwhelmingly they said that tablets helped them to add billable hours while traveling. The term ‘traveling’ here is meant broadly and can include commuting to and from work or to and from local destinations.” That makes sense to me. I use my iPad in my office all of the time, and when I do so, it increases the quality of my work but probably not the number of billable hours. But when I am out of the office, the iPad does make it easier to do billable work that I otherwise might not do at all.
If you are interested in more results from this extensive survey, you can get more information, view the Table of Contents, download an excerpt, and purchase a copy at this page on the Primary Research Group website. Thank you to the Primary Research Group for giving me permission to share some of the survey results with iPhone J.D. readers.
Late yesterday morning, Apple announced that is hosting an event on September 9, 2014 at the Flint Center in Cupertino. My first reaction was that we finally have official confirmation of the date on which I expect Apple to debut the iPhone 6. That was quickly followed by my second reaction, which was that it seems pretty special for Apple to host the event at the Flint Center — the only time I could remember Apple doing so was when Steve Jobs first debuted the Macintosh in January of 1984. (Jim Dalrymple of The Loop subsequently posted that Apple also used it in 1998 and 1999, events where Steve Jobs announced the first iMacs.) When Apple has smaller announcements (e.g., the iPhone 4s, the iPhone 5s), it typically uses the Town Hall located on Apple’s campus, which seats 301 people. For a larger announcement, such as the iPhone 5, Apple typically uses the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco, which seats 755 people. The Flint Center seats 2,400 people, significantly more than those other venues. And to get even more space, that post from Dalrymple also reveals that Apple is right now constructing an additional building next to the Flint Center to use for this announcement.
Why does Apple need so much additional space, and why pick a venue so significant in Apple history? Is the iPhone 6 going to be so special that Apple needs three times the space that it could get at Yerba Buena? I suspect the answer is that in addition to showing off the new iPhone, Apple also plans to debut on September 9th its long-rumored wearable device — which I presume will be called the iWatch. I can imagine it being touted as the ultimate accessory for an iPhone. Who knows, maybe I’m wrong, but I am certainly excited to see what Apple has in store for us on September 9; it should be a memorable announcement. And now, the rest of the news of note from this past week:
TrialPad, widely considered to be the best app for displaying documents at trial or in a meeting on an iPad, was updated to version 4.1 this week. New features include a custom sort option, the ability to automatically make a straight line when you underline using the pen tool, and iOS 8 compatibility. You can get more information here and on the TrialPad website.
Washington attorney James Gayton and Greg Tolbert explain how lawyers can get into trouble with iPhones and other technology in a post for Lawyerist.
Massachusetts attorney Robert Ambrogi discusses PaperWork, an app developed by Massachusetts attorney William Palin that can be used to create family law forms for use in — you guessed it — Massachusetts.
GoodNotes is my favorite app for taking handwritten notes on my iPad using a stylus. This week the app was updated to version 4.3, which adds the option to convert handwritten notes to text and search the text, as noted on the developer’s blog.
Dropbox is lowering its pricing and expanding its storage space. In the past, the free Dropbox plan provided 2 GB of storage, or you could get a Dropbox Pro plan with an annual fee of $99 for 100 GB, $199 for 200 GB, or $499 a year for 500 GB. As noted on the Dropbox blog this week, there is now just a single Dropbox Pro plan, which will cost $99 a year (or $9.99/month) for 1 TB (1,000 GB) of storage space. Additionally, Pro users will have new sharing features, such as the ability to add a password to your share link, an expiration date for a shared link, and optional view-only permissions for shared folders.
Speaking of Dropbox, Allyson Kazmucha of iMore explains how you can use Dropbox to sent large email attachments from your iPhone or iPad.
Speaking of online storage options, OneDrive is Microsoft’s answer to Dropbox, and as Mark Hearn of 9to5Mac notes, Microsoft updated its OneDrive app for iOS this week.
I’m a big fan of Cloak, an app that runs in the background on my iPhone and iPad and automatically establishes a secure VPN connection anytime that I am on public Wi-Fi such as at a hotel, airport or coffee shop. I reviewed it in April of 2014, and I continue to use it. Bradley Chambers wrote an article for The Sweet Setup in which he looks at the available options and concludes that Cloak is the best VPN solution for iOS and the Mac.
And finally, when Apple sends out invitations to its iPhone announcements, it frequently uses graphics and a tagline that provide some hint as to what is coming. For example, the September 2011 invitation said “Let’s talk iPhone” and the event debuted iPhone 4s, which introduced Siri so that your iPhone could talk to you. The September 2012 invitation had a picture of a 12 with a shadow of a 5, indicating the iPhone 5 would be announced. The September 2013 invitation said “This should brighten everyone’s day” and the iPhone 5s added the new gold iPhone. But as further evidence that Apple has something big, but really secret, to announce on September 9, 2014, this time the graphic reveals nothing, and the tagline is simply: “Wish we could say more.” Apple, you are such a tease.
f you were an early purchaser of the iPhone 5 like I was, you may be eligible for a free replacement battery from Apple. As noted on this page of the Apple website: “Apple has determined that a very small percentage of iPhone 5 devices may suddenly experience shorter battery life or need to be charged more frequently. The affected iPhone 5 devices were sold between September 2012 and January 2013 and fall within a limited serial number range.” I gave my iPhone 5 to my wife last year when I upgraded to an iPhone 5s. She uses it every day and tells me that — so far — she hasn’t noticed shorter battery life, but it turns out that the iPhone 5 I bought on September 21, 2012 and that she now uses is a part of the serial number range.
To find out if your iPhone 5 is affected, determine your iPhone’s serial number by opening up the Settings app and then tapping General and then About. You will see a list of lots of information about your iPhone 5, including the Serial Number. Then go to the Apple website that I mentioned above, and enter your Serial Number. If you have an iPhone 5 that is eligible for the program, you will get a message that “The iPhone 5 serial number you entered is eligible for this program. Please choose one of the service options below.”
You don’t need to rush to an Apple Store to get a new battery; the program lasts until two years after the first retail sale date of the iPhone 5 (which is September 21, 2014 if you bought it on the release date like I did) or March 1, 2015, whichever date provides more coverage. So in other words, you have at least six months from now, or perhaps longer if you bought your iPhone after March 1, 2013 (although Apple thinks that most affected units were sold before February of 2013). Of course, if your battery does seem to be exhibiting problems, you probably don’t want to wait very long to get a replacement battery at an Apple Store or other authorized service provider.
I suspect that many iPhone 5 owners are nearing the end of a two-year contract, and thus plan to upgrade to the iPhone 6 when it is released next month (if you believe the rumors). I know that many folks pass on their used iPhones to family members or friends, and if you have an affected iPhone 5, then you might be able to get a fresh new battery for free before you pass along the device, which I’m sure that your family member or friend will appreciate.
