I encountered a strange bug on my iPhone that has an even more bizarre solution. Here are the details in case the same thing happens to you. I have an Apple TV connected to my television and I wanted to mirror what was on my iPhone to the TV. Normally, this is very simple to do. As explained in this Apple support article, on an iPhone 4S or later, you can double-click the Home button (which displays your recently used apps) and then swipe twice from left to right to display the AirPlay icon on the bottom right of your screen. You then tap that icon, select an Apple TV that is on the same network, and turn on Mirroring. The procedure is fast and simple, and it makes everything on your iPhone screen also show up on the TV.
At least, it is supposed to be that simple. When I tried to do so the other night, I didn’t see an AirPlay icon:
After confirming that my Apple TV was working and that my Apple TV and iPhone were on the same local WiFi network, I wasn’t sure to do next. After a lot of searching the Internet, I finally found this thread on the Support Communities area of Apple’s website that offered a bizarre solution that actually worked for me.
It turns out that you can fix this problem by going to your Settings app and selecting General -> International -> Language. Then change your language from whatever you are using now (such as English) to another language (I chose French). Then switch it back to your original language.
That’s it. Now when you double-click and the Home button and then swipe twice from left to right, you should see the AirPlay icon. As you can see, it worked for me:
I am running what is now the latest version of the iOS for iPhone, version 6.1.4. I suspect that Apple will fix this in the future — indeed, iOS 7 handles the buttons for things like AirPlay in a whole new way — but for now, there seems to be some connection between changing your language and mirroring to an Apple TV.
For a while now I’ve seen rumors that Apple is developing a watch or other small personal accessory, something that many have called the iWatch. I didn’t think much of the rumors until Apple CEO Tim Cook said this past April that Apple is working on “the potential of exciting new product categories.” Not just a new product in an existing category (such as an updated iPhone or iPad) but a new category altogether. Then earlier this week there were reports that Apple applied for trademarks on the word “iWatch” in Russia, Japan, Mexico, Taiwan, Turkey and Columbia. Then there was a report this week by Mike Isaac of All Things D that Apple just hired Paul Deneve, who had been the CEO of fashion house Yves Saint Laurent, to work as a Vice President at Apple on “special projects” reporting directly to Tim Cook. Deneve has a history at Apple (he worked there from 1990 to 1997), although that was before Tim Cook and many others at Apple worked there. So Apple is working on a new type of product, they are applying for a trademark on “iWatch,” and they are hiring someone who has experience selling fasionable clothes and accessories. I’m sure there are many other possible explanations for all of this, but you can no longer ignore the interesting possibility that Apple is considering a new iWatch product this year or next year. And now, the news of note from the past week — which wasn’t much this holiday week:
Ian Paul of TechHive surveys Wi-Fi availability on domestic flights. Virgin and AirTran have WiFi on all flights; otherwise, your best bets are likely to be Delta or Southwest. The last few times that I’ve flown Delta after spending all day in a deposition I’ve noticed that there was an option for 30 minutes of Gogo Internet WiFi for only $3. That turned out to be a great option for me — enough time to catch up on the important emails that I missed during the day. Easily worth the three bucks.
Speaking of Southwest WiFi, Buster Heine reports that you can now watch in-flight TV for free using an iPhone or iPad on Southwest flights.
Alex Heath of Cult of Mac reports that Microsoft’s OneNote iOS app received a major update.
And finally, the funny folks at Scoopertino have a “report” that Apple is abandoning the iOS 7 icons that were previewed last month and is now going a different direction:
I write columns for two free TechnoLawyer newsletters that are distributed via email: SmallLaw and BigLaw. Although the newsletters have different target audiences, I encourage you to sign up for both of them because no matter what kind of law you practice you will often find useful tips in both newsletters. For example, while I work for a large law firm, I enjoyed Brett Burney’s June 6, 2013 SmallLaw column on the best iPad apps for scanning documents. If you don’t subscribe to the BigLaw newsletter, you should definitely click here to do so before July 9th because that issue will contain my interview with Jones Day attorney John Walker. John is a litigator in the firm’s Atlanta office who represents clients in high-stakes products liability litigation around the country, and he is very savvy with technology. My BigLaw interview with John will focus on his favorite iPhone and iPad apps.
While talking to John, I learned that as a result of all of the travel that he does around the country, he has gotten very good at “travel hacking” — reaping maximum benefit from airline and hotel loyalty programs. In an average year, John earns close to one million miles/points on top of those that he earns from regular travel. That gives John and his family the opportunity to travel, even internationally, for free. John told me about a number of iPhone and iPad apps that he uses and recommends for travel hacking, many of which were new to me. Here are John’s recommendations:
recently taken over by Google. It’s my favorite resource for flexibly
searching all airlines (except Southwest) at once. Click here for OnTheFly (free):
GateGuru: I use
this app for finding airline lounges in the U.S. and especially abroad.
Especially helpful for “mileage runs,” when you need to find a lounge with a shower. [Jeff adds: Here is a link to my review from 2010. The app now has a new interface, but I still use it almost every time I have a layover to figure out the best place to eat and to locate shops and services.] Click here for GateGuru (free):
AwardWallet:
Mobile front end to the website of the same name that helps track frequent flier
(and frequent guest) miles/points across different programs, including
expiration dates. Click here for AwardWallet (free):
link to mobile version of subscription site that lets me check seat
availability, upgrade availability, likelihood of being “bumped” from a flight, award
availability, etc. across several airlines. In many cases I can see what
the agents can see. Click here for the mobile website. Click here for the full website for more details and to sign up.
KayakPro: I use
it to search hotels primarily. Click here for KayakPro ($0.99):
Southwest Airlines: App to
search, buy, check in, etc. for Southwest flights. I don’t fly them often,
but using a travel “hack” last year, I obtained a ton of points and a
“companion pass” that lets my wife fly free on Southwest on any itinerary (paid
or award) that I book in 2012-2013. Click here for Southwest Airlines (free):
FlightBoard: The app gives abundant gate information similar to
what you might see at an airport. Especially good for (1) checking on the
status of a flight arriving to one’s departure gate; and (2) finding
out what destinations are available from a particular airport. Click here for FlightBoard ($3.99):
STAYConnect Mobile by LodgeNet: Good to
use as a remote control for hotel TVs in many hotel chains (better than the
nasty one hotels make available, which is rarely cleaned and sometimes
sticky). Click here for STAYConnect Mobile (free):
Priority Pass:
Mobile app that accompanies my Priority Pass lounge membership (free with
American Express platinum card) for lounge access in airports/terminals
where don’t have it with Delta. A lifesaver, especially for international
travel. Click here for Priority Pass (free):
SkyScanner:
Another tool for searching flights. Click here for SkyScanner (free):
Hyatt Hotels: Useful for
finding Hyatt hotels and searching availability. I use this more following my
recent “mattress run” for Diamond status with Hyatt. Click here for Hyatt Hotels (free):
SPG: Useful for
finding Starwood hotels and searching availability. I use this more following my
recent “mattress run” for Platinum status with Starwood. Click here for SPG (free):
Yelp: Similar to
TripAdvisor, but I also use for restaurants. Click here for Yelp (free):
By the way, when you read the BigLaw article, you’ll see that John names some of his favorite music apps, and he told me that he streams music from his iPhone to his stereo so that he and his four daughters can have a weekly dance party. Here is a cute picture of John’s family.
Thanks, John, for the great tips on travel hacking with an iPhone or iPad, and also for taking the time to talk with me for the upcoming BigLaw article.
Thank you to Thomson Reuters for sponsoring iPhone J.D. this month. The company is doing so for two of its technologies. First, WestlawNext is once again a sponsor. WestlawNext for iPad is one of the useful law-related apps out there, so if you haven’t tried it yet, click here to check it out.
Second, Thomson Reuters wants iPhone J.D. readers to know about its hosted practice technology solutions which provide a
secure, private cloud with scalable on-demand storage. You can now use online versions of Case Logistix for e-discovery and Case Notebook for case analysis solutions. Because the storage is online, you don’t have to purchase or maintain storage hardware. And that online storage is reliable — the same security, backup and support as WestlawNext. Plus, you don’t need to worry about software updates because the software online is always up-to-date.
This was a week of blockbuster opinions from the U.S. Supreme Court on a whole host of issues, most significantly same-sex marriage. Apple released a statement to AllThingsD about the rulings in U.S. v. Windsor (PDF link to opinion) and Hollingsworth v. Perry (PDF link to opinion): “Apple strongly supports marriage equality and we consider it a civil rights issue. We applaud the Supreme Court for its decisions today.” I read those opinions on my iPad while I was flying to a deposition this week, and both the majority and dissenting opinions are worth reading. It is fascinating to watch history being made.
Martha Neil of ABA Journal reports that an Ohio judge ruled that a will written on a tablet is valid; it need not be on paper to be a written document that was signed and witnessed. The tablet in question was a Samsung Galaxy; no ruling on how much more valid the will would have been if written on an iPad.
Heather Murphy of the New York Times reports an interesting fact that came out of the Edward Snowden incident: if you want to block signals getting to a cell phone to block any possible eavesdropping, put the cellphone in a refrigerator (it doesn’t even matter if it is cold) or a stainless steel martini shaker. Apparently, those objects act like Faraday cages and block signals.
It is hard to imagine a company purchasing every single ad in an edition of the New York Times, but Showtime is doing that on Sunday — on the iPad. Lauren Indvik of Mashable reports that every ad in the New York Times app on Sunday will be for a new Showtime series called Ray Donovan.
And finally, here is a way to incorporate your love of the iPad with your love of wine and cheese. HomeWetBar.com is selling the APPealing Glass Cutting Board for only $29.95. It is made from tempered glass and comes with a stainless steel cheese knife. (via Gizmodo)
Connected Data, maker of the Transporter, was kind enough to sponsor a contest for two lucky iPhone J.D. readers to win a free Transporter. Connected Data used random numbers generated by Random.org to select two winners, and they are:
J. Britt Phillips of Sutter O’Connell. Britt is the managing shareholder for the firm’s Nashville office. His core practice is a diverse mixture of products liability, medical malpractice, construction, contract and intellectual property matters. Last year, Britt obtained a multi-million dollar jury verdict in a trademark infringement case on behalf of a worldwide-recognized fashion products manufacturer.
Jack Sturgill, Jr. Jack is a solo practioner in Towson, Maryland (located just north of Balitmore) with over 35 years of experience in civil litigation. His practice areas include real estate, eminent domain/condemnation, business/corporate including corporate governance and transactions, and estate planning and administration. Jack is also an adjunct professor at Stevenson University.
Congratulations to Britt and Jack for being the winners. I hope that you enjoy using your Transporters in your law practice. Be sure to download the free Transporter app for iPhone and iPad!
The last item in my weekly In the news post is often something funny or offbeat from the world of iOS. In January of 2012, as my last In the news item, I mentioned a device that was shown off at the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas: the iShower. It struck me as funny that someone would want to have a Bluetooth speaker for their shower. Well don’t you know that about a year later, I received an iShower as a gift, so I’ve been using an iShower for many months now. Do you need a Bluetooth speaker in your shower? No. No, you don’t. Having said that, I often like to listen to podcasts or music when I am getting ready for work in the morning, and while I don’t take very long showers, I have to admit that it is nice to be able to continue to listen even while I am there. So here are my thoughts on this product, in what I suspect will be my only post on iPhone J.D. that discusses me in the shower.
There are two parts to the iShower, the speaker itself and a plastic holder. The holder is optional, but I liked the idea of mounting the iShower at the perfect height on the wall of my shower. The back of the holder has a 3M adhesive. I removed the red plastic to reveal the adhesive, firmly placed the holder on a clean and dry part of my shower wall, and then fit the iShower into the holder. You can remove the iShower from the holder if you want to take it elsewhere, such as next to a swimming pool, and replace it later.
Unfortunately, the adhesive only stayed attached to my shower wall for about 5 weeks. I walked in my shower one morning to find both the holder and the iShower on the floor. Fortunately, the approximately four foot drop onto a tile floor didn’t damage the iShower in any way that I could see. The owner’s manual says that you are not supposed to reuse the adhesive, and I didn’t want to tempt fate and risk another fall, so since that fall I have just placed the iShower on a ledge in my shower. That works fine, but I wish that the holder had worked for longer because I did prefer it in that orientation.
Note that the speaker is on the back of the iShower. The holder holds the unit about an inch and a half away from the wall. If you are not going to use the holder, for best results you want to leave some space between the back of the iShower and the wall. Sound is muffled if the iShower is flat against a wall.
While I wasn’t happy about the holder, the iShower itself has worked great. It is simple to pair a device to the iShower, and you can actually pair up to five different devices. After that initial pairing, to use the device just hold down the power button (bottom left of the front of the unit) for a second and that’s it. After a second or two, any audio on your iPhone (or iPad or other Bluetooth device) will instead play through the iShower. You can tell that the iShower is on because a small blue light appears above the word “iShower” on the front. Press the power button again to turn the iShower off, or it turns off by itself after a few minutes of inactivity.
In normal use that one blue light is the only light you see, but there is also a LED display area just below that. If you increase or decrease the volume using the buttons on the bottom right, you will see the volume number displayed. In my tests, volume number 7 (on a 1 to 10 scale) was more than loud enough to hear over the sound of water in a shower. I haven’t used the iShower outside, but the highest volume is reasonably loud for personal use, although too soft to provide booming music for a party.
The LED indicator also says “Hi” when you turn on the unit and “Bye” when you turn it off. And if you press the clock button to the right of the display, you can see the current time. Having a clock in the shower is sometimes quite useful.
Finally, there are buttons to play/pause the audio, jump to the prior track and jump to the next track. It is nice to have access to those controls in the shower considering how inconvenient it would be to leave the shower, dry your hands, and then tap your iPhone screen just to pause or skip a song.
The sound quality is just fine. Even my ears can tell that the quality of the audio is not comparable to a premium Bluetooth speaker, but if your shower is in use, any sound quality is going to be impaired because it has to compete with the sound of the water. And even when the room is quiet, the audio sound coming from the iShower is perfectly fine, and is certainly far better and louder than the sound coming from the iPhone itself. This is not the speaker that you want to use in your living room, but for the bathroom, it is perfectly appropriate.
The iShower is not completely waterproof, so you don’t want to drop it into a bath. But it is water resistant and is designed to get wet. As a support page on the iShower website puts it: “If you are sitting next to the pool and someone decides it would be fun to do a cannonball right next to you, you don’t have to worry about the iShower getting splashed. If you are on the patio grilling and it starts to rain, the iShower can continue to play without a problem. If you are on a boat and the iShower falls overboard … well, the fish may have a few minutes of your favorite music, but you may have to get yourself another iShower.”
The iShower uses 3 AA batteries. I typically use the device a few times a
week, and each time I use it for only between 3 and 15 minutes, and it
lasted about three months using the included batteries. My replacement
batteries have been in for about two months and it is still going
strong. The manufacturer says that a fresh pair of batteries will last about 15 hours.
There is a frame around the sides that you lift up to access the battery compartment. You can also use that frame as a kickstand.
I thought that the iShower was just a funny idea when I wrote about it in January of 2012, and when I started using it earlier this year, my wife did roll her eyes a few times. This is clearly an extravagance. But I have to admit, it is fun and useful. I use it a few times a week, and I always enjoy using it. And I even caught my wife using it with her iPhone.
I wish that the adhesive on the plastic holder had worked better, but for the most part I’m happy with the design of the iShower, and it works well as a speaker that can get wet. If you think it is worth $100 (or about $87 on Amazon) to listen to music or podcasts or anything else from your iPhone regardless of whether you are wet or dry, or if you are looking for a gift for the iPhone owner who has almost everything, the iShower lives up to its name.
If you have been reading iPhone J.D. consistently since April of 2009 (thanks!), then this is the 200th time that you have read In the news, my weekly round-up of iPhone and iPad news of note. I discussed the history of this weekly post when it reached the 100 mark two years ago, but after Apple’s recent preview of iOS 7, all eyes are directed to the future. So rather than get wound up in nostalgia, let’s jump right in:
For the last three weeks, the DOJ has been litigating a price-fixing
case against Apple. Closing arguments were yesterday. I won’t comment
on the substance of the claims, but if you are interested in trial advocacy and are curious what kind of slides would be created by lawyers representing Apple (and lawyers opposing Apple) in a
high-profile trial, John Paczkowski of All Things D posted the slides that both sides used during closing arguments. I recommend that you click the link to download each set of slides and then view them in full screen using the PDF viewer of your choice. If you are a litigator, these are worth a look.
Speaking of that trial, Yoni Heisler of TUAW reported that testimony during the trial revealed the
reason that Winnie the Pooh is the free book included with Apple’s
iBooks app: Steve Jobs liked the book itself and the pictures in the book. For the record, so do I.
California attorney David Sparks and Florida attorney Katie Floyd recorded a special edition of their great Mac Power Users podcast immediately after Apple’s recent WWDC announcements. I didn’t get a chance to listen to it until this week, but they do a great job of discussing the changes in iOS 7 (plus the Mac-related news from WWDC). That edition of the podcast also includes an interesting interview of Jean MacDonald of Smile (maker of the PDFpen apps) in which she discusses her App Camp for Girls project, which I mentioned two weeks ago. If you are looking for something interesting to listen to, definitely check it out.
St. Louis attorney Todd Hendrickson has an article on Lawyerist.com in which he reviews Trial Guides for iPad, an iPad app that is an ebook reader for books on trial practice and trial techniques. The review did leave me wondering why the publisher couldn’t just sell the books through the iBookstore. Hendrickson suggests that it is an attempt to avoid giving Apple a cut of the sales, but I don’t follow that logic because Apple takes a cut of in-app purchases too. Regardless, if you want to read trial advocacy books on your iPad, check out Hendrickson’s review.
I reviewed Microsoft Office Mobile for iPhone earlier this week, and so did a bunch of other folks. David Pogue of the New York Times says that the app offers very little, very late. Katherine Boehret of All Things D likes it better, but she doesn’t even mention the limitations that annoyed me such as the lack of footnote support, the inability to read .doc files and the lack of track changes support.
You’ll also want to read this article from Sharif Sakr of Engadget that compares that Belkin case to the Logitech Keyboard Folio for iPad and the ClamCase Pro. Sakr likes the ClamCase Pro the best, but notes that the others have their advantages too.
And finally, I recently mentioned that my favorite way to clean an iPhone or iPad screen is to use a MOBiLE CLOTH (and you still have time left to take advantage of the 25% discount I mentioned), but if you insist on using the corner of your shirt to clean the screen, then you might want to check out this shirt from VoyVoy which has a microfiber glass cleaner built-in to the shirt tail … plus a pocket made to hold an iPhone. It can be yours for only $98.00. (via Cult of Mac)
The other day I was talking to a group of attoneys about some of the most useful apps on my iPhone and I mentioned TripIt. Soon thereafter, I realized that I’ve never posted a review of TripIt on iPhone J.D. This review is long overdue because TripIt has long been one of my favorite apps on my iPhone. The TripIt app is free (as noted below there is also a $0.99 version) but to use it you need to sign up for an account. The TripIt website offers both a free account and a $49/year TripIt Pro account. I use the free account, and the free account is all that you need to use almost all of the features in the iPhone app. The Pro account offers flight status alerts — and as noted below, I have another recommendation for that — and other tools and services such as finding alternate flights.
Once you create a TripIt account on the website, TripIt knows your email address. This is critical because whenever you make travel plans with an airline, hotel, car rental service, etc. and the vendor sends you an email with your travel details and confirmation number, you simply forward that email to plans@tripit.com. TripIt knows how to understand all of those emails and automatically puts together a travel itinerary. (TripIt understands emails from over 200 airlines, over 200 hotels, over 60 rental car companies — just about every service you are likely to use.) It also understands that when travel occurs at the same time that it should organize trips. Thus, if you forward an email with plane travel on the 1st and the 4th, a hotel during those same dates, and a car rental during those same dates, TripIt automatically puts it all together into one trip.
From there you can manage your trip on the TripIt website, but I rarely do so. Instead I just use the TripIt app on my iPhone. When you launch the app it automatically downloads all of your upcoming travel itineraries (and your prior travel) into the app. And this is the real beauty of TripIt. You have a central location on your iPhone with everything that you need to know about your upcoming trips — your airline flight numbers, your hotel confirmation numbers, the address and phone number of the hotel, maps that show you where the hotel is located, etc. Having everything in one location is so much easier than having to hunt through emails to find a confirmation number.
For example, earlier this year, I traveled to Chicago to speak at ABA TECHSHOW. I took a flight from New Orleans to Chicago, stayed at the Chicago Hilton, and then my family met me up there and we all took the overnight train back home from Chicago to New Orleans. (We had a sleeper car on the City of New Orleans train made famous by the Arlo Guthrie song of the same name — “Good morning America how are you?” — and I had as much fun on the train as my kids did.) After I simply forwarded the confirmation emails to TripIt, Tript assembled all of the plans into a trip itinerary without me having to do any extra work:
You can tap on either of the legs of the plane flight to get more details:
And you can tap on the hotel or train entries to get more details:
TripIt also offers a $0.99 version of the app that has no ads. I never
found the ads obnoxious, so the free version may be all that you need,
but frankly I didn’t even realize there was a paid version of this app
until I started to write this review. I just downloaded it a few
minutes ago — why not pay a buck for something so useful? — and I already see that without the ads you can often see one more row of information without having to scroll, which is nice and I think is worth a dollar. If you’re not sure, just start with the free version.
If that was all that TripIt did, that would be enough for me to love it. It remembers all of the details of my travel so that I don’t need to worry about it, and everything is there on my iPhone when I need it. But you can also tell TripIt to give other services (that you select) access to your travel details. I use a great $9.99 app called FlightTrack Pro that always knows all of my travel plans (because it connects to TripIt). FlightTrack Pro does a fantastic job of keeping track of flight details such as gate changes, flight delays and cancellations, etc. And it usually knows the details before they are even announced to other travelers. So I have frequently been waiting for a flight at a gate when FlightTrack Pro alerts me that my flight is delayed or the departure gate has changed several minutes before the gate agent announces the changes to others. Thus, I am the first to know that I have extra time to go get a snack or I should start looking for a seat at a different gate. I believe that TripIt Pro offers many of those same features, but rather than pay $49/year I’ve been happy with my one-time purchase of FlightTrack Pro years ago.
My point here is not to plug FlightTrack Pro — although it is a great app — but simply to mention that if you want to use other travel apps on your iPhone or iPad, there is a good chance that they will integrate with TripIt because the service is so popular. Click here to see the huge list of other apps and services that work with TripIt.
And TripIt offers lots of other features that I haven’t even tried yet. For example, if you use Gmail, you can give TripIt permission to automatically find travel-related emails in your inbox and create itineraries for you, saving you the step of forwarding emails (not that this step takes more than a second or two of my time anyway). And there are tools to put trips on your calendar, share trip details with others, etc.
TripIt also works on the iPad, although I must admit that I don’t use it that much. When I am traveling, I’m on the go, and my iPhone in my pocket is just much more convenenient to use. Having said that, sometimes I’ll be using my iPad for another purpose and I’ll want to check a trip detail, so it is nice to also have the TripIt app there.
If you use a travel agent or similar service to plan and monitor all of your travel, perhaps you don’t need TripIt. But if you don’t already have someone else handling the grunt work for you, TripIt is an incredibly useful and free service and app. Every single time that I travel, I find myself using and appreciating this app.
For lawyers and many other professionals who work with Microsoft Word documents every day, one of the most-requested apps for the iPhone and iPad has been a version of Microsoft Office that is fully compatible with Office for the PC and Mac. Last week, Microsoft released Microsoft Office Mobile for the iPhone. Unfortunately, this version 1.0 of Microsoft Office Mobile is so lacking in features that it will not be the right solution for many lawyers. Microsoft Office Mobile works with Excel and PowerPoint documents, but this review is focused on Microsoft Word documents.
Viewing Microsoft Word files
The iPhone has the built-in ability to view Microsoft Word files, but the built-in viewer has limitations. For one thing, the text of a document is tiny using the iPhone’s built-in viewer, and while you can pinch to zoom in, you have to then scroll back and forth so it is not very useful:
Microsoft Office Mobile reformats line breaks so that the text is larger, which makes a document easier to read. But unfortunately you cannot make adjustments. You cannot zoom out to see more words at one time, and if you zoom in you once again need to scroll back and forth, so it is not very useful:
I far prefer the way that Documents to Go views documents because you get the best of both worlds. You can zoom out to see more words at one time, or if you zoom in the line breaks reformat to fit the screen. Thus, you can pick the best compromise between the size of the text and the number of words you can see at one time on the screen:
Another problem with viewing documents in Microsoft Office Mobile for iPhone is that you don’t see footnotes or track changes. The iPhone’s built-in viewer has the same shortcomings, but other apps such as Documents to Go, Quickoffice, Pages and Office2 do show track changes, and Documents to Go, Pages and Office2 can show footnotes too. The track changes omission can be a trap for lawyers, so be careful. If a colleague sends you a document with tracked changes and you just look at the document in Microsoft Office Mobile, you won’t know that the tracked changes are there. If you then forward the document to opposing counsel, you risk sharing your confidential work product or attorney-client communications. Ouch.
Fortunately you can see comments in Microsoft Office Mobile. Text with a comment is highlighted in blue and you can tap to read the comment:
It is also difficult to work with long Word documents in Microsoft Office Mobile — anything but they shortest of briefs — because you need to flick a million times. Other apps like Documents to Go have a handle along the right that you can drag to quickly move through a document. But fortunately there is a Find option so if you are looking for a specific word in a Word document, Microsoft Office Mobile will get you there.
Thus, as a viewer of Microsoft Word files, it is difficult to recommend Microsoft Office Mobile. It offers little over the built-in viewer beyond Find and the ability to see comments. The other third-party apps that can view Microsoft Word files can do far more, with Documents to Go being my favorite.
Editing Microsoft Word files
The iPhone’s built in viewer is just that, a viewer. The only way to edit Word files is to get a third party app. Surprisingly, the Microsoft Office Mobile app has a drawback that I didn’t expect to see; it cannot edit .doc files. It can only edit .docx files. Sure, .docx has been the default format for Word files since Word 2007 for Windows and Word 2008 for Mac, but I suspect that you probably have far more .doc than .docx files on your computer, and when other attorneys send me Word documents, they are in .doc format at least 50% of the time. If you try to edit a .doc file in Microsoft Office Mobile, this is what you see:
Ugh.
If you do have a .docx document, you switch from the view mode to the edit mode by tapping the middle icon at the top right. Upon doing so, you see a blinking cursor and a keyboard so you can type, and that middle icon changes to a formatting icon. Formatting options are limited. You do get bold, italic, underline and strike-through, which, to be honest, for many lawyers will be enough. You can change the font color, but only to red, yellow or green, and you can highlight text, but again only in red, yellow or green. You can also tap – or + to change the font size, although Microsoft Office Mobile doesn’t tell you what font size you are using.
Any formatting more complicated than that cannot be done in Microsoft Office Mobile. You cannot change the font. You cannot change the formatting of paragraphs, even simple formatting like a bullet list or a numbered list. You cannot change the justification or the line spacing. You cannot change the left or right indent. You cannot view a word count.
I mentioned above that you cannot view track changes, and obviously that means that you cannot make them either. If you want to use track changes to edit a document on an iPhone, you need to use another app such as Pages, Quickoffice or Office2. (Documents to Go will show track changes but you cannot create redlines.)
You can create new documents, and you can open documents from a Microsoft SkyDrive or from SharePoint.
It is a shame that the Word document edit function in Microsoft Office Mobile is so limited, but I will admit that in some circumstances it will be sufficient. If you just need to add a few words to a document and make a few simple formatting changes like put something in italics, then Microsoft Office Mobile will do the job. And although you cannot use a track changes mode to make your edits obvious, you can manually format your edits using bold, underline, one of the three font or highlight colors, etc. to make it obvious to someone else reading a document that you want to change something.
Moreover, in my tests, Microsoft Office Mobile does an excellent job of preserving the formatting of the original document. You might not be able to see footnotes or change the style of a paragraph, but all of that information remains in the file even when you make edits, so you can send the edited file to another person and then can work with it using Microsoft Word on a PC or Mac. This is one drawback of using the Pages app by Apple. It has a nice track changes feature, but whenever you use Pages your Word document is first converted to Pages format. You can convert back to Word, but I often see something lost in the Word-to-Page-to-Word process such as some of the document formatting. This is another reason that I like Documents to Go — it also does an excellent job of preserving the attributes of the original file when you edit a file.
Price
Microsoft Office Mobile is either free or expensive, depending upon your perspective. The app itself is free to download, but you need to be an Office 365 subscriber to use the app. If you are already a subscriber, then the app is free. Otherwise, you need to purchase a subscription. From within the app itself you can purchase a one year subscription for $99.99. Or you can go to the Office page of the Microsoft website and select one of many different options including:
$9.99/month or $99.99/year for the Home Premium plan which lets you install Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) on up to 5 computers (PC or Mac).
$15/month per user or $150/year per user for up to 25 users with the Office 365 Small Business Premium plan which includes lots of other features such as SharePoint internet sites
$15/month with an annual commitment for the Office 365 Midsize Business plan for up to 300 users
Other plans are available. And if you sign up for a monthly plan on the Microsoft website (which is what I did), the first 30 days are free, enough time for you to kick the tires and see if the service and the app are right for you.
Office 365 subscribers get 27 GB of space on SkyDrive, Microsoft’s cloud storage service. When you save files in Microsoft Office Mobile, the files are uploaded to SkyDrive (when you have Internet access) and local copies are kept on the device (so that you can still read a file on a plane).
Wrap up
I’m glad to see that we finally have a version of Microsoft Office for the iPhone, and my hope is that in the future we see more features added. For now, however, the version 1.0 of Microsoft Office Mobile is very limited. If you are already an Office 365 subscriber, you might as well get the app because it is free, and it gives you a quick way to perform the most simple of edits to a document. As Microsoft encourages its users to subscribe to Office 365 instead of purchasing software only once or twice a decade, perhaps one day many of us will already be Office 365 subscribers.
But if you do not subscribe to Office 365, for most people it will not be worth spending $100 each year just to use Microsoft Office Mobile. You can get Documents to Go or Pages for a one-time purchase of just $9.99. Office2 for iPhone is only $5.99, and Quickoffice Pro for iPhone is only $14.99. Heck, you can buy all of these apps for less than half of the annual subscription price for Microsoft Office Mobile. Even customers who just prefer to go “name brand” and who would normally buy the app sold by Microsoft over anything sold by a competitor, regardless of features, will probably pause before spending $100 a year for this app.
My critical review of this app is tempered by the knowledge that Microsoft traditionally releases limited 1.0 versions of software and then gradually improves the software over time. If Microsoft improves this app by adding support for the iPad, footnotes and track changes and adds a few more interface tweaks, I could see this app one day becoming the best way to edit Word documents in iOS. On the other hand, Microsoft does sell its own tablets and its own phones with the major selling point being that those devices can work with Microsoft Office documents. Will Microsoft keep its iOS apps limited to make Microsoft hardware look better? We’ll see. Keep in mind that my favorite Word document viewer for the iPhone and iPad, Documents to Go, is made by DataViz, and while the DataViz doesn’t advertise this fact on its website, DataViz is actually now owned by BlackBerry, an Apple competitor. And as of last year, Quickoffice is now owned by Google, which is of course makes Android and is another Apple competitor.
I’m not satisfied with the current 1.0 version of Microsoft Office Mobile, but if we see improvements in the future, perhaps one day this app will live up to its potential.
Click here to get Microsoft Office Mobile for iPhone (free, but subscription required):
