Jeff Richardson

Thank you to Clio for once again being a sponsor of iPhone J.D., and this week there is big Clio news to announce:  a brand new iPhone app, and a really great one at that.  As you may already know, Clio offers web-based practice management, time & billing and client collaboration services (including document management) for small and mid-sized law firms.  When you use Clio, your important client data is securely accessible anywhere that you have Internet access.

You have always been able to access Clio from a web browser, including Safari on an iPhone.  I discussed that interface earlier this year.  But Clio surveyed its users and learned that close to 70% of mobile Clio use was on an iPhone, and thus they worked hard to develop a native iPhone app.  Yesterday, it became available on the app store, and it is now a free download that can be used by anyone with a subscription to Clio.

Given the recent release of iOS 7, the timing of Clio’s app release could not be better.  The Clio app has a beautiful and easy to use interface that fits like a glove with iOS 7.  The graphics are clean and modern, and you will see the same icons that Apple uses in its own iOS 7 apps.  Jack Newton, the CEO and co-founder of Clio, explains:  “We designed the Clio iPhone app from the ground up to take full advantage of the new features and visual language of iOS 7, and deliver an unparalleled user experience as a result.”  The app also works with iOS 6 if you haven’t yet upgraded.

Start the app and you are asked to enter your pin for security.  You then see your information in Clio.  For example, one view shows you a list of your open matters.

 

If you tap on a matter you get more information, such as basic information about the matter, or an interesting timeline view which presents a graphical view of all of the activity on the file.

 

From any screen, you can swipe to the left or to the right to expose other panels. Swipe the screen from left to right and you see tabs for each function of the app:  Matters, Contacts, Calendar, Tasks, Time Entries, Documents and Settings.  Swipe from right to left and you see what Clio calls the Awesome Bar Awesome Dashboard [UPDATE: one of the software developers at Clio, Tys von Gaza, tweeted that they are instead calling it the Awesome Dashboard].  At the top of the Awesome Dashboard is a timer that you can start with the tap of a button to have your iPhone monitor and track your billable time on a matter.  The Awesome Dashboard also shows you your upcoming events and tasks.

 

When you display Contacts you are shown all of your Clio Contacts.  You can tap the + to add a new contact.  If you tap the word Clio Contacts at the top of your screen you can then switch to a view of all of your iPhone contacts — the contacts in the iPhone’s built-in Contacts app — and with a simple tap you can upload any contact on your iPhone directly to your Clio Contacts.

 

When you display the Calendar you see all of your events in Clio for that day.  Tap on the event to change any information about the event, such as the start and end time, whether it is a recurring event, who is attending the event, the matter to which the event is billed, etc.

 

When you display Documents you see a searchable list of your Clio documents.  Tap on any document to view it.  The app lets you select and copy text in the document, but unfortunately there is currently no option to send the document to another app.

 

Perhaps one of the most useful reasons to have Clio on your iPhone is the ability to create time entries as they occur, even when you are away from your computer.  There are multiple ways to enter time.  First, you can simply swipe the screen from right to left to bring up the Awesome Dashboard and start a timer to have the iPhone determine how long you are working on a matter.  A blue bar appears at the top of the screen (as shown on some of the above images) when your iPhone is tracking your time.  Second, in the Matters view, you can tap the three dots to the right of a matter name and a pop-up menu will apeal; tap + Time to enter time for that matter.  Third, you can swipe the screen from left to right to display Time.  From there, you can manually enter a time entry, including selecting a matter and entering the amount of time spent.  Right now the interface requires you to tap a button to manually display the Description and or Notes fields, but I’m told that this might change in the future.  The Description field is a list of activities that you can edit on your computer so that on your iPhone you can simply tap a selection such as “Research” or “Meeting.”  The Notes field allows for a more traditional text entry, such as “research motion for summary judgment.”

 

For more information on how this app works, here is a short two minute video from Clio that shows the app in action:

As you can tell, this 1.0 version of the Clio app is already quite impressive.  Massachusetts attorney and prolific blogger Bob Ambrogi says that “Clio’s iPhone app is the most highly functional and highly intuitive practice-management app I’ve seen.”  And fortunately, it will get better.  Minneapolis attorney Sam Glover of Lawyerist.com reports that the Clio app was developed in-house and there are six full-time developers at Clio working on the app.  The folks at Clio tell me that fresh on the heels of this 1.0 release, the team is already working on features for the next version.

If you already use Clio in your law practice, then you’ll want to download this app today to take advantage of the convenient interface to the Clio service.  If you are an iPhone-using attorney at a small or medium sized law firm and you don’t currently use law firm mangement software, you’ll definitely want to take a look at Clio.  The web-baed tools are powerful, and the new iPhone client makes the service even more useful.

Click here to get Clio (free): 

Knowing that the iPhone 5s is currently in limited supply, I arrived at my local AT&T store early Friday morning to get in line.  Supplies were indeed limited, and about 30 minutes before the store opened at 8 am I was reminded of the quote from Henry Ford that “Any customer can have a [Model T] car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black” when the AT&T employees announced that they were not provided with any white or gold iPhones.  I wanted a 64 GB black model anyway — technically called “space gray” — so the announcement did not affect me, but others in line were disappointed.  Indeed, according to ifo Apple Store, no carrier stores received any gold iPhones, and even Apple-owned stores only received two to five gold phones per store.  I understand that no store currently has an iPhone 5s of any color in stock, and it will be October before orders start to be filled.  So that is a long way of saying that if you don’t already have an iPhone 5s, you may have to wait a few weeks to get one — especially if you want gold.

But let me tell you, the iPhone 5s is worth the wait.  After three days of extensively using mine, I love it.  It combines everything that I loved about the iPhone 5 — the great size and weight, the longer screen, the speedy 4G LTE — and adds three great new features.

Security and Convenience

The marquee feature of the iPhone 5s is the Touch ID fingerprint scanner.  Apple has managed to take a very complicated technology and make it work so well that it seems like magic.  The scanner always works, and it works so quickly that I find it hard to believe that my finger was scanned at all. 

One advantage is convenience.  I cannot even count the number of times that I pick up my iPhone every day to use it.  In the past, I would have to first press a button to wake the screen and then swipe to unlock the iPhone, and then if I had not used the iPhone in 15 minutes I would have to enter the four digit pin.  But with the iPhone 5s, I just press and release the home button and leave my finger on top of the button for the shortest of time — like a quarter of a second — and my finger is scanned and the iPhone is unlocked and I can use it.  Even if you never use a password on your iPhone, it is faster to use the home button plus fingerprint scanner than to first press a button to wake up the screen and then swipe to unlock.

But of course, you should use a password on your iPhone (and if you are a lawyer, I would say that you MUST use a password on your iPhone) and yet the iPhone 5s manages to combine convenience with security, concepts that are virtually always at odds with one another.  As I just mentioned, in the past I would only require a password on my iPhone every 15 minutes because it was just too inconvenient to have to enter a password every time.  I knew I was giving up some security, but I hoped to be lucky.  But with the iPhone 5s, I now tell my iPhone to require a passcode immediately every time someone tries to use it (Settings -> General -> Passcode & Fingerprint) because it never slows me down to have my fingerprint scanned so why not have the most security.  This gives me much more protection if someone else were to accidentally or maliciously pick up my iPhone and try to use it.  And given the amount of confidential information on my iPhone, making a passcode/fingerprint a constant requirement makes me feel much better about satisfying Rule of Professional Conduct 1.6(c): “A lawyer shall make reasonable efforts to prevent the inadvertent or unauthorized disclosure of, or unauthorized access to, information relating to the representation of a client.”

I also love the fact that I can use my fingerprint to buy apps or music on my iPhone.  Apple now has strong security requirements for an Apple ID password:  “Your password must be at least eight characters including a number, an uppercase letter, and a lowercase letter. You cannot use spaces, the same character three times in a row, your Apple ID, or a password you’ve used in the last year.”  I support the idea of strong passwords, but we all know what a pain they are to type.  It is infinitely easier to simply place my finger on my home button for a fraction of a second to approve a purchase.  I cannot wait for Apple to expand this feature to other iPhone apps that have a username and password requirement.

In short, the Touch ID fingerprint scanner is a great feature for anyone who uses an iPhone, but it is an especially great feature for anyone who keeps private information on their iPhone, which of course includes all attorneys.  You get both greater security and greater convenience at the same time.

Camera

I have a nice Nikon SLR camera that takes beautiful pictures and video, but I still take a large number of pictures and video with my iPhone just because I always have it with me.  One of the secrets to taking great pictures with my Nikon camera is to take a ton of pictures.  There are always going to be some bad ones because a subject blinks or looks to the side, but if I take a bunch in a row, I usually get at least one that works well.  My Nikon 5100 can take 4 frames a second in burst mode if I hold down the button, which helps to get the perfect picture.  The iPhone 5s can take an amazing 10 frames a second when you hold down the button (either the on-screen virtual button or the physical volume button, which is what I prefer to use).  I’m sure that I will get used to this over time, but right now, every single time I hold down the button I am again astonished at how quickly the iPhone 5s can take pictures.

The Camera roll keeps all of those burst mode pictures together in a bundle so they take up just one square on your grid of pictures.  You can do nothing more and simply keep all of those pictures, which makes sense if you want to look at all of them on the large screen of your computer at a later date to select the best one.  Or you can tap on the bundle and then tap on the word Favorites to select the one or more that you want to save (the iPhone 5s helps you by selecting the one that it likes best, and in my tests it usually made good picks) and then delete the rest of the pictures in the bundle all at once.

I tested this burst mode over the weekend with the toughest subjects I know — my kids.  Having a five and seven year old both look at the camera at the same time without making a goofy face can be one of life’s greatest challenges, but with 10 pictures snapped every second, it was far, far easier to get a picture worth keeping.  And when I took pictures of my son playing soccer this weekend, the burst mode made it so much easier to get just the right shot when there was a lot of activity.  The burst mode is amazing and I’m going to use it all of the time.  The new slow motion mode is also really fun, resulting in some ESPN-worthy videos of my son kicking the soccer ball.

Apple has some amazing sample pictures taken by an iPhone 5s on its website.  Here are two pictures that I took of some flowers.  Click each picture to see it full-size:

There are other things I like about the iPhone 5s camera.  It has a new f/2.2 aperture and other improvements to make each picture more sharp, even in limited light.  And while I hate to use a flash on any iPhone, the iPhone 5s flash is actually not that bad, thanks to the new dual-LED lights (one white LED, one amber LED) which are used in different combinations to cast the best color on your subjects.

Just yesterday, during the halftime of the Saints football game, my kids and I heard music outside of our house.  We ran outside to investigate, and a few blocks away found a street parade.  (You never know when you will run into a parade in New Orleans.  I later discovered that this one was the Young Men Olympian, Jr. 129th Annual Anniversary Parade.)  We listened and danced along to the music for a few minutes and I shot two quick videos, which I quickly trimmed and merged into a single movie using the powerful iMovie app on my iPhone and then uploaded the movie to YouTube.  Here is the result:

As always, the best part about the iPhone camera is that it is always with me.  Improvements to the camera hardware and software are always appreciated because it means that those unanticipated moments are preserved that much better.

Speed

The final advantage of the iPhone 5s is speed, thanks to the new A7 64-bit processor.  Many features of the iPhone 5s such as the ones I described above — the fingerprint scanner, slow motion video and the burst mode — wouldn’t be possible without that fast processor.  (If I hold down the button on my iPhone 5, I get closer to one frame per second.)  The processor also helps to make the iPhone 5s as a whole feel more zippy and responsive.  

I also used the Safari app to load lots of webpages on both my iPhone 5 and my iPhone 5s at the same time.  The iPhone 5 was no slouch, but even so, the iPhone 5s typically loaded pages about twice as fast.

I also look forward to seeing what app developers can do when they have more powerful resources to work with, and in the coming months I expect to see apps that really show off the power and speed of the iPhone 5s.

Conclusion

The jump from the iPhone 5 to the iPhone 5s does not feel quite as substantial as the jump from the iPhone 4S to the iPhone did last year, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t a real leap forward.  And I’m not the only one who feels this way.  As I noted last week, the reviews from those who received early review units from Apple were almost universally glowing.  The subsequent reviews have been just as positive.  For example, I see that the website The Verge (which reviews every major smartphone) rated the iPhone 5s an 8.8.  Only once before has The Verge ever rated a smartphone that high; it was the iPhone 5 this time last year.

The improvements to security, convenience, photography and speed result in an iPhone that is a joy to use every single day.  The iPhone 5s is a fantastic device that any lawyer would appreciate using.

The iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c go on sale today [UPDATE: And I bought my new iPhone 5s this morning], and this past Wednesday Apple released iOS 7.  That makes this the busiest week this year in the world of iOS.  If you have not yet updated to iOS 7, I encourage you to do so.  The different appearance is startling at first, but you will get used to it, and along the way you will discover hundreds of improvements.  For example, did you know that when you swipe to unlock your iPhone or iPad, you no longer need to swipe across the bottom, and instead you can swipe anywhere on the screen?  Did you know that you can see a list view in the Calendar app by tapping the magnifying glass icon at the top of the screen?  Did you know that when you tap the tabs button in Safari not only can you scroll (in 3D) through open tabs, but your iPhone can also show you tabs that are currently open on your iPad and iPad mini?  There is a seemingly endless number of small improvements, not to mention all of the important new big improvements.  I cannot even begin to list all of the interesting articles that were published this week, but here are some of the highlights:

• California attorney David Sparks has been using a beta version of iOS 7 for six weeks and here are his observations.
• Kevin Bostic of AppleInsider reports that New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon issued a joint statement encouraging users to upgrade to iOS 7 because of the additional security features.  So if you don’t upgrade your iPhone or iPad, you are ignoring bi-coastal law enforcement advice, something that I am quite sure that I have never said before.
• Glenn Fleishmann of TidBITS explains those new security features in iOS 7.
• If you are looking for a long, comprehensive report on what is new in iOS 7, thre are quite a few good ones out there.  Rene Ritchie of iMore wrote this epic article.  Andrew Cunningham of Ars Technica wrote this one.  David Pogue of the New York Times wrote this review.
• Having trouble finding some of the features you used in iOS 6 now that you have upgraded to iOS 7?  Thorin Klosowski of Lifehacker offers this advice.  (via Houston attorney Reginald Hirsch)
• Siri is much better in iOS 7.  Steven Sande of TUAW notes some of the Siri improvements.  You can also now ask Siri to read you your recent emails.
• Chris Herbert of Macstories provides some iOS 7 tips and tricks.
• Aaron Souppouris of The Verge points out some of the best hidden features of iOS 7.
• Macworld has more articles on iOS 7 than you can shake a stick at.  Just to pick a few good ones, here is what the Macworld editors have to say on AirDrop, Siri, Notification Center, the Activation Lock, Safari and Settings.
• Marco della Cava of USA Today interviewed Jony Ive and Craig Federighi, the Apple executives responsible for the new iOS 7 and new iPhones.
• Sam Grobart of BloombergBusinessweek interviewed Ive, Federighi and Apple CEO Tim Cook.
• Joseph of Keller of iMore notes that the Quickoffice app is now free.  Quickoffice is one of the best apps for viewing and editing Microsoft Office documents on an iPhone or iPad.  Google now owns the app and has decided to make it free.  I hope that doesn’t mean that Google is ending development of the app (I keep waiting to see the app add the ability to view and edits footnotes), but now that the price is free I definitely recommend that you check it out.
• And finally, if you plan to get a new iPhone 5s, one of the decisions that you need to make is what color to get:   Space Gray (essentially the black model), Silver (essentially the white model) or the brand new Gold.  The funny folks at the Conan TV show put together this video to help you decide which is best:

At some point today — my guess is around lunchtime for folks in the Central and Eastern time zones [UPDATE: It is available as of 11:55 am Central] — you will be able to update your iPhone and iPad to the new iOS 7.  iOS 7 gives your devices an all-new look, and includes some cool new features like the Control Center and Air Drop.  Click here for my preview.  Folks interested in the latest and greatest will want to use iOS 7 right away; for others, an argument can be made to wait a little bit, but eventually you are going to want to make the upgrade.  Every report that I have heard from those who have been using the beta versions of iOS 7 is that once you start using it, you’ll never want to go back to iOS 6.

The new iPhone 5s won’t go on sale until Friday, but last week Apple gave select reporters early access.  Last night, the reviews started to come in, and they are very positive.  The fingerprint sensor seems to work flawlessly and makes it much, much faster to pick up your iPhone and start using it.  The camera improvements (in both hardware and software) results in much better still photos and videos.  Plus, the new A7 processor means that the iPhone seems much zippier and more responsive, and you get a little more battery life. 

Here are all of the reviews that I have seen so far, along with some quotes to give you a sense of the new features of the iPhone 5s:

• Jim Dalrymple of The Loop:  “I’ll be honest, heading into the event, I was wondering if Apple’s
  
  implementation of the sensor would be good enough to actually make it
  
  useful. Not just for a demo to make people gasp and clap, but could I
  
  use it every day. The answer is unequivocally yes.”
• Walt Mossberg of All Things D / The Wall Street Journal:  “It sounds like a gimmick, but it’s a real advance, the biggest step ever
  
  in biometric authentication for everyday devices. After using Touch ID, I
  
  found it annoying to go back to typing in passcodes on my older iPhone.”
• David Pogue
  
  of the New York Times:  “The most heavily promoted feature is the 5S’s
  
  fingerprint sensor, which,
  
  ingeniously, is built into the Home button. You push the Home button to
  
  wake the phone, leave your finger there another half second, and boom:
  
  you’ve unlocked a phone that nobody else can unlock, without the hassle
  
  of inputting the password. (And yes, a password is a hassle; half of
  
  smartphone users never bother setting one up.) The best part is that it
  
  actually works — every single time, in my tests. … Apple says battery
  
  life is about 25 percent better than before; I’ve
  
  been getting nearly two days of moderate use on a charge.”
• Harry McCracken of Time:  “The most significant new thing in the iPhone 5s may be a security
  
  feature. The phone’s home button now doubles as a fingerprint sensor,
  
  via a feature Apple calls Touch ID. It’s optional, but I can’t imagine
  
  anyone not wanting to use it, since it makes securing your phone and
  
  entering your iTunes password not only painless, but very nearly fun.”
  
• Vincent Nguyen of Slash Gear:  “Touch ID is magical in how simple it makes using
  
  the iPhone 5s. Press the home button and you’re looking at the
  
  homescreen; it’s actually cutting down on even more taps compared to an
  
  PIN-free device, since now you don’t have to swipe the unlock bar
  
  either. We haven’t had a single occasion where someone else could unlock
  
  the phone with an unregistered finger, and nor have we had to resort to
  
  the PIN code.”
• Rich Jaroslovsky of Bloomberg:  “The Touch ID is built into the 5s home button. Once you’ve scanned your
  
  fingers — I used both thumbs — a light press of the button wakes the
  
  phone and simultaneously unlocks it. It works far better than any other
  
  biometric device I’ve used, not requiring your finger to be positioned
  
  just so. It makes security transparent and even pleasurable.”
• Scott Stein
  
  of CNet:  “Touch ID may be getting all the headlines lately, but the
  
  iPhone 5S’ improved camera is probably its biggest selling point.”
• Stuart Miles of Pocket-Lint:  “When slow-mo is selected you can record video at 120fps at 720p
  
  quality and then retrospectively slow down any part of the footage
  
  after. Reduce it to 30fps and it’ll run at quarter time, but still
  
  super-smooth. To make it look even better the audio is also slowed down
  
  automatically. Cue beach-running scenes, or near-misses with trains, or,
  
  in our case, the Burberry Spring/Summer 2014 catwalk show at London
  
  Fashion Week.
  
  As you can imagine there is plenty of fun to be had, especially with
  
  the kids, and we’ve been snapping slow-mo footage when we can of a range
  
  of different things.”
• Luke Peters of T3:  “Other iPhone 5s-specific camera features
  
  include; auto image stabilisation (steady), 3x video zoom (bit blurry),
  
  30fps panorama with varying light control (megabyte-y), burst mode at 10
  
  photos per second (cheeky) and, best of all, slo-motion video capture,
  
  which is absolutely brilliant. It’s the iPhone 5s’s Panorama moment and
  
  you can expect to see your social feeds filling up with quarter-speed
  
  120fps 720p footage very shortly. The fact that the iPhone 5s can process it all on the fly is testament
  
  to the new A7 chip. Video quality is outstanding and, even if capturing
  
  your child’s meteoric face-plant (we speak from experience), all
  
  emotional guilt is washed away as you become Spielberg for a second,
  
  seizing every last crunch in superb clarity and detail.”
• Darrell Etherington
  
  of TechCrunch:  “Also new to the iPhone 5s is image stabilization that
  
  happens automatically in-camera, using four exposures taken in rapid
  
  selection from which the best, most-stable parts are chosen. It
  
  recombines elements from each, rather than just picking the best.
  
  Similar is how the new Burst mode works, which can take full-res pics at
  
  a rate of 10 snaps per second (better than most DSLRs). The 5s then
  
  automatically picks one it deems ‘best’ based on a number of factors,
  
  like whether someone’s eyes are closed, and also makes available the
  
  entire series for you to page through and extract individual pics to
  
  your camera roll from.”
• Ed Baig of USA Today:  “One thing not seen elsewhere is the True Tone flash system in the 5s. It
  
  is based on two flashes working in tandem to automatically determine
  
  the intensity and best combination of flashes. I got generally lovely
  
  results taking flash photos, though I noticed it sometimes took an extra
  
  second or so before the camera actually took a picture.”
• John Gruber of Daring Fireball:  “Apple claims this is the biggest year-over-year improvement in computing performance in the history of the iPhone, and in both my day-to-day experience and some benchmark testing over the past week, I have no reason to doubt them. The iPhone 5S is fast. … The iPhone 5S is, in some measures, computationally superior to the top-of-the-line MacBook Pro from just five years ago.”
• Anand Lal Shimpi of AnandTech:  “The A7 SoC is seriously impressive. Apple calls it a desktop-class SoC,
  
  but I’d rather refer to it as something capable of competing with the
  
  best Intel has to offer in this market. In many cases the A7’s dual
  
  cores were competitive with Intel’s recently announced Bay Trail SoC.
  
  Web browsing is ultimately where I noticed the A7’s performance the
  
  most. As long as I was on a good internet connection, web pages just
  
  appeared after resolving DNS. The A7’s GPU performance is also insanely
  
  good – more than enough for anything you could possibly throw at the
  
  iPhone 5s today, and fast enough to help keep this device feeling quick
  
  for a while.”
• Myriam Joire of Engadget:  “The iPhone 5 may be fast enough for some, but the 5s is significantly
  
  faster. In a few tests, the 5s performed more than three times better,
  
  while in others, it was closer to a 50 percent increase. Regardless, the
  
  5s was the clear winner according to every single metric, whether it
  
  was CPU performance or JavaScript rendering.”
• Matt Warman of The Telegraph:  “This is a device that adds features that make the existing iPhone
  
  even easier to use, more powerful and turn it into a better camera, all in a
  
  package that remains the classiest on the market. It doesn’t have the most
  
  features, but those that are there are accessible in a way the no other
  
  manufacturer has yet mastered. That improved ease of use and continued
  
  elegance mean the 5s is a worthy flagship to persuade iPhone users to
  
  upgrade, and it retains all the apps that have powered Apple’s success.”

Last month I reviewed the Stable PRO by Thought Out, a high-quality iPad stand made out of solid steel.  As noted in the review, that product is well constructed and well designed, and I find that stand very useful on my office desk.  Thought Out also sent me a free review unit of a similar product for the iPhone called the PED 4 Planet CH50.  It works as advertised, letting me mount my iPhone in different positions in either landscape or portrait orientation.  My only real complaint is that I simply haven’t found it nearly as useful to have my iPhone on a stand of this nature as it is to have an iPad on a stand.

Most of the product is made of shiny, thick plastic, but it also has a steel shaft with a ball on the end.  Thus, this stand is much lighter than the Stable PRO iPad stand, but that is not a problem because you don’t need much weight to support an iPhone 5.  I use my iPhone 5 without a case, but you can expand the holders to provide the prefect grip for an iPhone that is in a case.  The ability to adjust the holders mean that it should work with any iPhone, including the upcoming iPhone 5c and iPhone 5s.

Once the iPhone is in the device, you can adjust the stand to angle your iPhone in virtually any position.  It is very easy to adjust the stand, but once you get it in a position that you like, the stand is stiff enough to stay in that position.

The base has rubber feet to keep it steady on your desk.

In addition to using the PED4 Planet CH50 on the base, you can unscrew the shaft from the base.  The bottom of the shaft has a standard 1/4"-20 female thread so you can attach it to any tripod.  If you want to take a photo or video with your iPhone and want to keep it very steady, this is a great solution.  I tried this with a JOBY GorillaPod portable tripod that I use with my Nikon SLR camera and it worked great.

Note that if you are just looking for a nice way to mount your iPhone on a tripod, you can purchase the PED4 CH50 without the Planet base and save a few bucks.

As noted above, when using this device with the base, my only real complaint is that after about two months of having this product on my desk, I haven’t found it very useful to have an iPhone mounted in this position.  Unlike an iPad which has a large screen and can function as a sort of second monitor, I rarely found it useful to have an iPhone in a fixed, mounted position on my desk.  It’s not that I don’t use my iPhone in my office — to the contrary, I use my iPhone all the time as a quick way to check an email, my calendar, my to do list, etc. — but I prefer keeping my iPhone on my shirt pocket or on my desk and just picking it up when I need it. 

The one exception was using my iPhone to make a video call using FaceTime.  Your hand can get tired holding out the iPhone for a while, and it is quite nice to mount the iPhone in a fixed position on a stable surface.  If you travel and use FaceTime on your iPhone to call home to talk with your spouse or kids, I could definitely see the PED4 Planet CH50 being worth it.  As noted above, you can unscrew the shaft to break down the unit into two pieces, so it can easily fit in your briefcase or luggage.

[UPDATE 11/19/13:  This past weekend, my son and I started to play with iStopMotion, an iPad app that you can use to create fun stop motion videos.  The app lets you use an iPhone as an external camera, which is really the best way to use the app.  The PED4 Planet CH50 stand is a perfect macth for the iStopMotion app.  You can adjust the iPhone as a camera to whatever position that you want, and then it stays in that exact position from shot to shot — exactly what you want for stop motion videos.  When I wrote this original review, my own real complaint was that I didn’t have a good use for the product, so I wanted to update the review to note that iStopMotion is a perfect use for this product.]

You know how you use your own iPhone in your office, and if you use it in a way for which it would be useful to have your iPhone mounted in a fixed position a few inches above your desk (such as my FaceTime example), then I can highly recommend the PED4 Planet CH50 because it is well-designed for that task.  But if you are like me and find it most useful to always have your iPhone in your pocket so that it is close to you when you need it, then this product is not for you.

The PED4 Planet CH50 retails for $50, but you can save $10 if you buy it on Amazon.

Click here to get PED4 Planet CH50 from Amazon ($39.99)

Click here to get PED4 CH50 [without the Planet base] from Amazon ($27.99)

Starting today, you can preorder an iPhone 5c and get it as soon as a week from today.  Kevin Bostic of AppleInsider has the details for doing so.  But unfortunately, and unlike the last few years, Apple is not allowing preorders of its new top-of-the-line iPhone, the iPhone 5s.  Thus, if you want to be one of the first to get one, you will need to find an Apple Store or a cellphone store and get in line early in the morning next Friday.  I did that back in 2010 when the iPhone 4 was released and it wasn’t too much of a hassle.  I haven’t yet decided what I am going to do this year.  And now the news of note from the past week, most of which relates to the new iPhones:

• Indiana attorney Bill Wilson explains why he thinks that attorneys will like the iPhone 5s on his Third Apple website.  His thoughts are similar to mine.
• California attorney David Sparks explains how he uses Smart Playlists in iTunes to create great mixes of songs to listen to on his iPhone.
• I am not the only one confused and annoyed by the lower case “s” in the new iPhone 5s.  Adam Engst addresses the issue in this article for TidBITS.  Amen!
• Danny Yadron and Ian Sherr of All Things D provide more information on the Touch ID fingerprint scanner on the new iPhone 5s.  For example, your iPhone doesn’t store an image of your fingerprint.
• Mary Branscombe of CITE World also discusses the Touch ID sensor, explaining that it doesn’t read the outside lawyer of your skin but instead reads a living layer of skin under the surface of your finger and therefore cannot be used with a finger that is severed from your body.  Well that make me feel better.  (via Daring Fireball)
• Neil Hughes of AppleInsider reports that the new iPhones have a slightly larger battery and get two more hours of battery life.  That’s good news, but isn’t enough to get me to stop thinking about that severed finger.  Jeesh.
• Russel Brandom of The Verge discusses the use of online services such as Gmail and Dropbox by attorneys.
• Hari Gottipati of GigaOm wrote a fascinating article on iBeacon, a technology in iOS 7 the allows objects in the vicinity of your iPhone to transmit information to your iPhone.
• David Pogue of the New York Times discusses a new book called Cockpit Confidential that provides honest answers for just about any question you have on air travel.  Even if you don’t get the book, Pogue answers many common questions in his article.  For example, he debunks the suggestion that keeping an iPad or iPhone turned poses any danger to the flight.
• If you are buying a new iPhone, should you get AppleCare?  Jonathan Seff of Macworld provides his thoughts.  I’m on the fence.  There have been times that I have purchased it and used it, but I usually don’t purchase it and those times have been lucky enough to not need it. 
• Rene Ritchie of iMore runs through all of the decisions (including whether to buy AppleCare) that you will need to make if you plan to get a new iPhone.
• In light of the recent revelations about the NSA, is it safe to use password security software such as 1Password?  There’s a great post on the 1Password blog that addresses this question.  Another post from this past June also addresses the issue.
• Scoopertino offers a humorous, alternative take on Apple’s new iPhone announcements.
• And finally, when Apple showed off the iPhone 5s earlier this week, it selected only a single app to show off the power of the new A7 processor that provides the engine for the iPhone 5s:  Infinity Blade III.  That game will be available next week and will actually work on devices as old as the iPhone 4 and the iPad 2, but of course you will need an iPhone 5s to see all of the dazzling graphics.  Here is the official trailer for the game.  It is amazing that a device as small as the iPhone can render graphics like this in real time.

There are quite a few great PDF editing apps for the iPad.  For a long time, I’ve heard people sing the praises of iAnnotate, but it wasn’t until recently that I started to use the app to prepare the review that I posted last month.  As you can tell from my review, I really like the app.  Indeed, since I posted my review, I have continued to use iAnnotate quite a bit.  I love the tabs, I love all of the powerful features, and I love how easy it is to convert a Word file into a PDF that I can easily mark-up.

The app normally costs $10, but it is on sale today only (Thursday, September 12th) for only $2.  I saw one indication that the sale ends at midnight on Thursday, and another indication that it ends at noon on Friday; suffice it to say that this is a limited time offer.  [UPDATE: The developer informs me that the sale ends at 1pm Eastern on Friday Sept. 13.]  If you were on the fence about buying the app, perhaps because you already have another app that you use for working with PDF files, I encourage you to take advantage of the one-day sale today.  The 80% discount is substantial, and the app is incredibly powerful and useful.

Click here to get iAnnotate (normally $9.99, but $1.99 today only): 

Yesterday, Apple introduced two new iPhones, the iPhone 5s and the iPhone 5c.  The iPhone 5s is the flagship model.  It will be available starting September 20, 2013, and it costs the same as the iPhone 5 that it replaces:  $199 for 16 GB, $299 for 32 GB and $399 for 64 GB.  The iPhone 5s includes some great new features, and the more I read about this device, the more I am sure that lawyers are going to love it.

Before I get to the phone itself, I have to be a technical lawyer and comment upon the typography of the name.  To my eyes, it looks wrong for the “s” to be lowercase.  Apple used an uppercase letter for the iPhone 4S and the iPhone 3GS; why is it different this year?  Back in 2009 when Apple introduced the iPhone 3GS, some parts of Apple’s website called it the “iPhone 3G S” but then Apple realized that the space before the S was silly and removed it.  The chance of a change this year seems smaller, especially since there seems to be an argument for using a lower case “s” in the Helvitica family font used by Apple, but I’m still holding out hope that the anti-e.e. cummings crowd at Apple prevails.

On to the phone itself.  For many years now, Apple has had a “tick tock” cycle in which they introduce a bold new design for the iPhone one year, and then the next year they use the same design with improvements.  Thus, we had the iPhone 3G, followed by the iPhone 3GS that used the same form factor; the iPhone 4 followed by the identical-from-the-outside iPhone 4S.  In 2012 we had the new design of the iPhone 5, and this year, the iPhone 5s looks almost exactly the same, and has the same dimensions, weight and battery life.  If the iPhone 5 was the “tick” what is the difference in this “tock”?  The changes include a speedy new processor, a fingerprint sensor, a better camera and a few more features such as new colors.

 

1. New Processor

The iPhone 5 used an A6 processor.  The iPhone 5s uses an A7 processor with a 64-bit architecture.  The A7 is twice as fast as last year’s A6 and is 40 times faster than the original iPhone introduced in 2007.  This will make the iPhone itself seem more responsive, reducing the friction between you and getting things done.  More importantly, apps can use the faster processor to include features that were previously impossible.  Yesterday, Apple showed off a game — Infinity Blade 3 — that looked incredible thanks to the A7 processor.  I’m not a big gamer (although I did play and enjoy Infinity Blade 1 and 2, so I suspect I’ll buy the sequel), but I look forward to seeing what app developers can do with this new processor to make more powerful apps.

2. Touch ID

Apple is combining the power of the A7 chip with some new hardware inside of the home button on the iPhone 5s to add a fingerprint scanner, technology that Apple calls Touch ID.  If you are an attorney using an iPhone, then I certainly hope you are using the passcode lock feature so that someone cannot simply pick up your iPhone and start reading your email and other confidential information.  But of course, it is a pain to have to type in that passcode every time you go to use your iPhone.  With the iPhone 5s, you won’t have to type in that passcode.  Simply place your finger on the home button and the iPhone will scan your finger, confirm that you are really you, and then unlock the phone.  Similarly, you can use your fingerprint instead of typing your Apple ID every time you download a new app.

Touch ID can store up to five fingerprints, so you can choose your thumb, your index finger, fingers on left and right hands, etc.  And they can be from different people, useful if you want your spouse to be able to easily unlock your iPhone while you are driving.

At first I assumed that the iPhone 5s is taking a picture of your finger, but that’s not how it works.  Security expert Rich Mogull explains in an article at Macworld that it uses a “capacitance fingerprint
reader [that] leverages a handy property of your skin: The outer layer of your
skin (your dermis), where your fingerprint is, is non-conductive, while
the subdermal layer behind it is conductive. When you touch the
iPhone’s fingerprint sensor, it measures the minuscule differences in
conductivity caused by the raised parts of your fingerprint, and it uses
those measurements to form an image.”

According to folks who tried it out yesterday, it works really well.  For example, John Gruber of Daring Fireball wrote:  “It’s fairly quick to train, and once trained, it is really fast, and in
my brief hands-on testing, very accurate. The optimal way to use it to
unlock your phone seems to be to tap the home button once to wake the
phone, and then just keep your thumb or finger on the button for just
another moment. Boom, unlocked. It’s very impressive technology. I
already feel silly tapping in my passcode to unlock my iPhone.”  David Pogue of the New York Times wrote:  “I got a few minutes with the 5S at Apple’s event introducing the phone. I
trained it to recognize my finger, then used it to unlock the phone a
couple of times. It worked perfectly, which is a welcome advance. And
the placement on the Home button is ingenious.”  By the way, I see that Pogue and the Times seem to agree with my opinion that “5S” looks better than “5s”.

For now, third party apps cannot use Touch ID, but I’m sure (or at least I hope) that will change in the future.  For example, I’d love to be able to simply use my fingerprint to unlock the 1Password app on my iPhone.

Security is incredibly important to lawyers — especially in this age of mobile devices — but it always involves a trade-off between protection and ease of use.  Using a password of “1234" is easy to remember and easy to enter, but provides horrible protection.  Complex passwords provide more protection at the cost of convenience.  Touch ID has the potential to provide both high security and high convenience at the same time, a juxtaposition that was previously impossible.  I’m very excited to try it myself and see future enhancements to Touch ID.

3. Better camera

Every year, Apple finds a way to improve the camera in the iPhone 5, and I’m incredibly glad that they do so.  Since your iPhone is always with you, it is the camera that you are most likely to use, whether you are taking pictures of your kids or photographing a document to scan it.

The iPhone 5s combines the A7 with new camera hardware — a larger sensor and an improved flash — to take even better pictures.  And the faster processor lets the camera do things like take 10 photos a second in a burst mode, provide auto image stabilization, and improve the color balance.  The camera also supports slow motion video, something that I don’t think that I’ll use in my law practice but will be fun while taking videos of the kids.

4. And that’s not all

Colors.  The iPhone 5 came in black and white.  The iPhone 5s has a white-and-silver model, a black-and-gray model (Apple calls it “space gray” whatever that means) and a new white-and-gold model.  There have been rumors of a gold iPhone for a while now and I feared that it would be tacky and gaudy, but this is Apple after all so it is no surprise that their version of gold looks tasteful and rather nice, even if it is a bit too much bling for me.

Free apps.  When you buy a new iPhone, you now get some great apps designed by Apple — Pages, Keynote, Numbers, iPhoto and iMovie — for free.  The first three cost $10 each while iPhoto and iMovie cost $5 each, so that’s $40 in free apps, all of which I use on my iPhone and recommend.  (I use them even more on my iPad, so hopefully they will also be included with the 2013 version of the iPad that I expect Apple to introduce next month.)

Motion data.  The iPhone 5s comes with a new M7 motion data processor that measures data from the accelerometer, gyroscope, and compass much more efficiently, using less power, than prior iPhones that used the main processor for that task.  As a result, the iPhone can monitor your motion all the time and react accordingly.  Apple explains on its website:  “Since M7 can tell when you’re in a moving vehicle, iPhone 5s won’t ask you to join Wi-Fi
networks you pass by. And if your phone hasn’t moved for a while, like
when you’re asleep, M7 reduces network pinging to spare your battery.”  Fitness apps such as the Nike+ Move app will be able to take advantage of the M7 to better monitor your exercise.

Improved LTE coverage.  If you travel internationally with your iPhone 5s, the improved LTE coverage will give you faster speeds on more networks around the world.  This isn’t something that I plan to use because international roaming charges are expensive, but if your job takes you around the world, you might appreciate this feature.

Conclusion

The iPhone 5s only adds a few more things to the iPhone 5, but they look like features that most any lawyer would appreciate.  The security and ease-of-use improvements of the Touch ID would be enough of a reason for me to upgrade, and when you add the faster A7 processor, the better camera and all of the other improvements, there is no doubt that I will be getting one — and that would be true even if I didn’t publish this website.  If you currently use an iPhone 5, the upgrade to an iPhone 5s is certainly not essential, but it will make your constant companion even more useful.  (If you are not eligible to pay the subsidized price because you bought an iPhone 5 within the past year, you might be able to use a subsidized upgrade available to someone else on your wireless plan such as a spouse; that’s what I did last year.)  If you currently use an iPhone 4S or older model of the iPhone, then you get all of the improvements noted above plus the improvements of the iPhone 5 such as the larger screen and the thin, light design — so you are in for a treat.  And if the iPhone 5s will be your first iPhone, then welcome to iPhone J.D., and I hope that you stick around.

A few words about the iPhone 5c

Yesterday, Apple also announced the iPhone 5c.  It is $100 cheaper than the iPhone 5s, but you lose almost all of the advantages of the iPhone 5s.  For the most part, the iPhone 5c is just last year’s iPhone 5 with some bright colors added to the back.  If you are trying to get a less expensive iPhone for your teenager who wants a cool color anyway, the iPhone 5c is a fine choice.  But I think that most attorneys would be wise to spend the extra $100 to get a much more powerful device with better security and an improved camera.

Today at 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern, Apple will introduce the 2013
version(s) of the iPhone.  I add the possible “s” to “version” because the rumor is that Apple will announce both a flagship iPhone 5S and a lower cost iPhone 5C.  I also expect to get more details on iOS 7. 

A year ago, Apple held this event at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco.  This year, Apple is holding the event at a smaller venue on its own campus — the Town Hall auditorium at 4 Infinite Loop — which may indicate a more focused event.  Or it could have no significance at all; who knows.

The event will be attended by select members of the press, many of whom will
live-blog the announcements as they occur.  Here are direct links to the live
coverage at some of the sites that have in the past provided the best live
coverage:

• Macworld.  Jason Snell and Dan Moren are perhaps the best live-bloggers in the world for Apple announcements.
• The Verge. 
  
  Joshua Topolsky typically live blogs Apple announcements for The Verge.  UPDATE: Dieter Bohn is doing the live blog, and is doing a fantastic job.
• Engadget.  I’m not sure who will do this one.  Tim Stevens recently left Engadget, and Ryan Block says he is sitting this one out. UPDATE: Brad Molen and Myriam Joire will cover.
• Ars Technica.  In past years, Jacqui Cheng has done a great job with this live blog, but she says that this year it will be handled by Andrew Cunnigham.

Sometimes Apple provides a live video stream of the event.  If one is announced, I’ll update this post and provide a link.  But whether or not a live video stream is offered, Apple always posts a video of the event later on in the day, so you
should be able to watch it on Tuesday night.

We are just a few days away from Apple’s introduction of the next model of the iPhone, plus I expect we’ll see more information and a release date (and perhaps a few surprises) on iOS 7, the next version of the iPhone and iPad operating system with a radical new interface and lots of improvements.  If you plan to upgrade to a new iPhone, Apple has a new iPhone trade-in program whereby Apple will give you some cash for your old iPhone if you get the new one at an Apple Store.  As Joseph Keller of iMore notes, you can get $250 for a 16 GB iPhone 5.  It’s a pretty exciting time of the year for iPhone lovers.  And now, the rest of the news items of note from the past week:

• Should your law firm create an iPhone app for publicity purposes?  While a few law firms have had success doing so, for the most part I don’t think that this is a good use of your time and money, and I instead encourage you to make your law firm website iPhone-friendly.  Erik Mazzonne, the director of the Center for Practice Management at the North Carolina Bar Association, feels the same way, as he explained in this article for Law Practice Magazine.
• Your iPhone (and iPad) can be made more useful with the right accessories.  John Edwards of Law Technology News identifies some of the best smartphone accessories.
• What external battery do you get if you want to get the most extra battery life?  Alan of the website Art of the iPhone explored that question and decided that the Turcom 33,600 gives you the most.  He says you can recharge an iPhone around 15 times, so I’m sure you could recharge an iPad many times over.  You can get it on Amazon for $129.99.
• Earlier this year, I reviewed ABBYY TextGrabber + Translate, an excellent iPhone app that can perform OCR on the device itself.  The app is about to be updated to version 4.0 to add support for the iPad as well, and the update may be available by the time that you read this.  You can get more info here.
• Jonah Bromwich of the New York Times reviews KeyMe, an app that lets you scan a key so that if you lose it, you can provide a blueprint to a locksmith to recreate the key.
• Marco Tabini of Macworld discusses Apple’s improvements in iOS app security.
• And finally, what do you do when it’s time to pop open an ice cold bottle of beer but you don’t have a bottle opener handy?  According to a bunch of folks including Michael Rose at TUAW, you can just use your iPad charger.  The below picture comes from Susie Ochs of TechHive.  I absolutely, positively, do not in any way condone doing this … but you have to admit, it is tempting to try.