From time to time, attorneys who read iPhone J.D. write to tell me how they are using their iPhone or iPad in their practice. I love to read these stories, and with permission I like to share some of them here on iPhone J.D. I recently heard from William Axtell, a solicitor in London with the law firm Charles Russell LLP. Will is a corporate lawyer, and his areas of practice include equity capital markets and mergers and acquisitions. Before joining his current law firm, he worked in-house at Vodafone, so he has a background as well as a passion for the technology and telecom sectors. He currently uses an iPhone 5, an iPad 2 and a Macbook Air.
I asked Will to describe the apps that he uses in his law practice that he would recommend to others. Here is what he told me:
OmniFocus — a powerful task manager which allows you to organise tasks by project and context. OmniFocus syncs across all my devices and is a great personal assistant. This has pride of place in my iPhone real estate — it lives on the dock together with Phone, Mail and Safari. Getting into the OmniFocus ecosystem is not cheap but it helps me everyday and I would very much recommend it. [Click here for OmniFocus for iPhone ($19.99): Click here for OmniFocus for iPad ($39.99): ]
NotesPlus — a fantastic notes app. I tend to use a stylus but you can type as well. It can record audio (useful for meetings) and you can also insert pictures and grab stuff from websites. The great thing is that you can erase stuff, move things around, change font colours etc. It even converts handwritten text to typed text! You cannot do that with a Moleskin! The developer also gives great support and keeps pushing the boundaries. Check it out! [My review is here. Click here to get Notes Plus ($6.99): ]
GoodReader — I use this to store documents that I need to use on the go. It contains marketing material that I can show to clients, key statutes and cases that I may need to refer to, partners’ meeting notes and agendas etc. [My latest review is here. Click here to get GoodReader for iPad ($4.99): ]
TextExpander — this is a great utility that converts small “snippets” into longer chunks of texts. For example, after a meeting with a contact I will open TextExpander and type “-exp” and this will create a pro forma email asking my secretary to fill out an expenses form, update our CRM database etc. This saves me having to type out the same thing over and over again. [Click here to get TextExpander ($4.99): ]
Jotnot Pro — this is a great scanner. I can scan business cards, receipts etc. on the go. [Click here to get Jotnot Pro ($0.99): ]
Meeting Planner — most of my work in international. As such I often need to be able to find a slot for a conference call between many different time zones (e.g. the UK, India and New York). This app works out the best time to schedule such a call. No more scheduling calls when it is 4am in the Big Apple! [Click here to get MtgPlanner (free): ]
GetPacked — If I am actually travelling then I find this to be a very useful app to make sure I have packed all I need for the trip. [Click here to get GetPacked ($1.99): ]
Reeder — my go to app for RSS. I commute to work by train. This gives me time to read. RSS feeds
are great and give me a bespoke newspaper every morning of stuff that I
know will be of interest to me. [Click here to get Reeder for iPad ($4.99): Click here to get Reeder for iPhone ($2.99): ]
Daily Telegraph — for a more traditional experience, this newspaper has a decent app. [Click here to get Daily Telegraph (free): ]
Instapaper — this app works very well for saving interesting web articles for reading later on (including offline). [Click here to get Instapaper ($3.99): ]
Tweetbot — my app of choice for Twitter. I find this a great tool to see what my clients are up to, seeing trends in the marketplace and just having fun. I am @oxfordlawyer and am nudging up to 1000 followers. [Tweetbot is also my favorite Twitter app. Click here to get Tweetbot for iPhone ($2.99): Click here to get Tweetbot for iPad ($2.99): ]
Buffer — a great app for scheduling tweets throughout the day rather than bombarding people in one go. [Click here to get Buffer (free): ]
Flipboard — a beautiful way to consume your social media and other content on the iPad. This is my preferred way to look at my personal Twitter account and Facebook. [Click here to get Flipboard (free): ]
LinkedIn — I like the iPad app and find it useful to way to stay in contact with my business community and network. [Click here to get LinkedIn (free): ]
Other great utility apps I use are 1Password (just need to remember one password!), Dropbox (great for finding my personal docs on the go), Evernote (so many different uses) and PDFpen (my go to pdf application that syncs with iCloud).
[Click here for my reviews of 1Password, PDFpen for iPad and PDFpen for iPhone and the links to get those apps. I’ve never formally reviewed Dropbox, but it is an essential app. Click here for Dropbox (free): And click here for Evernote (free): ]
On the way home I will check UK Train Times [$6.99: ] to see that my train is not delayed and which platform it is going from, I will update my journal in Day One [$4.99: ] and may even have a quick go on Angry Birds Star Wars! [$0.99: ]
My work life is so much more productive with these great Apple products and apps. I would also recommend checking out macsparky.com, which is run by US attorney David Sparks. He has some great workflows for Apple-loving lawyers.
Best wishes from across the Pond!
– – – – – –
Thanks, Will, for all of your app recommendations. We use a lot of the same apps, but you also recommend quite a few that I am now interested in checking out.
If you are willing to share your experiences using an iPhone or iPad
in your law practice with other iPhone J.D. readers, I’d love to
hear from you! And in case you missed them, here are the reports that I
previously shared from other attorneys:
The iPhone 5 has a reasonably good camera that is incredibly convenient because it is always in my pocket. Unfortunately, I noticed a few weeks ago that there were two spots on pictures that I took with my camera. In most pictures the spots were almost invisible, but a picture of a light, solid color would reveal the spots.
For example, here is a picture that I took using the ABBYY FineReader Touch app that I recently reviewed, and another picture that I took of the floor of an Apple Store. I’ve added red ovals to emphasize the spots:
At first I thought my lens was just dirty, but cleaning was not a solution. Then I thought that the lens had gotten scratched, but I try as I might, I certainly couldn’t see anything. Some research on the Internet led me to discover others with this problem, and the working theory was that dust had somehow gotten inside of the iPhone 5. I gave my phone several vigorous shakes to try to dislodge any dust, but that wasn’t a solution either.
So I decided to make an appointment at the Genius Bar at an Apple Store. As always, the experience was fantastic. Before I left home, I backed up my iPhone to iTunes on my computer. As I entered the store I launched the Apple Store app, which instantly noticed that I was in an Apple Store and knew that I had an 11am appointment, so it immediately asked me if I wanted to sign in. I tapped one button to do so, and a few minutes later, the Apple Genius called my name. Perhaps he had seen this problem before because as soon as I started to describe it, he quickly said that he would just swap out my iPhone 5 for a new one. A few minutes later I had a new iPhone 5 in my hand, and when I got home I connected it to my computer, restored from a backup (which took a long time … maybe two hours for my 64 GB iPhone 5), and then I was back in business again. A shiny new iPhone 5 with no dots in my pictures.
I have not had many hardware problems since I started using an iPhone in 2008, but it is nice to know that if there is a problem, the Apple Store makes it as fast and easy as possible to get customers up and running again. Can you imagine if other business worked the same way — car mechanics, cable companies, the DMV?
If you see consistent, reproducible spots in the pictures you take, I recommend that you swap it out at an Apple Store.
Before Mardi Gras was even over in New Orleans this past Tuesday, I had to jump on a plane for depositions in another state. The New Orleans airport underwent a major renovation for the Super Bowl and it looks amazing — new restaurants, new furniture, new amenities, etc. Of course, being in the airport on Mardi Gras day, there were many other sights to see as I found myself walking behind people in costumes such as this:
While making a connection in the Atlanta airport, I was surprised to see an Apple presence. The BlackBerry Store that had been at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport for the last few years was replaced with a store called iTravel, an authorized Apple reseller. So the next time that you make a connection through Atlanta, if you need to pick up some extra cables and accessories — or for that matter, a new iPhone or Mac computer — you can do so right in the airport. Although I first noticed this store this week, I see from an article by Kelly Yamanouchi of the Atlanta-Journal Constitution that the iTravel store actually opened in August of 2012, and apparently there is a similar store at the Boston airport. The Atlanta iTravel store is located next to gate B18, near the middle of the concourse.
Enough about travel, let’s get to the news of note from the past week:
California attorney David Sparks explains in a Macworld article why users of Apple’s products shouldn’t get too worked up about the rise and fall of Apple stock prices.
Speaking of David Sparks, he and New Orleans attorney Ernie Svenson teamed up to teach an iPad Basics Webinar on Friday, March 1 at 10 Pacific / 1 Eastern. No CLE credit, unfortunately, but Sparks and Svenson are both excellent speakers who know this subject well — Sparks literally wrote the book on using an iPad at work — so I suspect it will be an excellent presentation. The cost is $50, but if you use the promo code “iphonejd” you can save 10%.
South Carolina attorney Ben Stevens of The Mac Lawyer reviews JuryPad, a jury selection app for the iPad.
John Paczkowski of All Things D reports that Microsoft could make billions of dollars if it released a version of Office for the iPad. Paczkowski correctly notes that even if that number is too high, the fact remains that Microsoft could make serious money if it released such an app. Microsoft is focused on its new Surface tablet right now, but of course Microsoft has sold a version of Office for Mac since the 1980s while at the same time Microsoft promoted Windows, so there is a precedent for Office being on competing platforms at the same time.
If you need a Lightning cable for your iPhone 5, iPad mini or fourth generation iPad, Juli Clover of MacRumors notes that both Monoprice and Amazon now sell low cost, Apple-certified cables. Click here for the Amazon cable which is only $14.99, versus Apple’s $19.99 cable.
One of the things that Cook discussed was the Apple Stores, and Horace Dediu has an interesting post at his Asymco website juxtaposing what Cook said with charts showing what it means.
Apple recently released iOS 6.1, and apparently there are two problems with it. First, Apple issued an alert that “When you respond to an exception to a recurring calendar event with a
Microsoft Exchange account on a device running iOS 6.1, the device may
begin to generate excessive communication with Microsoft Exchange Server.” Apple says that a fix is coming in a software update.
Second, Lex Friedman of Macworld notes that if someone gets physical access to your iPhone or iPad running iOS 6.1, and if they press a complicated series of buttons on the device, the person can gain access to your Contacts. And because the Contacts app lets a person add a picture from the Photos app to a contact, that means that a person can also view the Photos on your device. How in the world someone discovered this is beyond me, but now anyone who reads that article can figure out how to do it. Once again, Apple says that a fix is coming in a software update, but in the meantime, keep an eye on your iOS devices.
Infinity Blade, one of my favorites games on the iPad, is currently free due to Apple’s app of the week promotion, as noted by Eli Hodapp of TouchArcade. I was happy to spend $5.99 on this app. If you don’t have it yet, get it now for free:
And finally, it appears that Doctor Who predicted the iPad back in 1980, as shown in this clip from an old episode of the TV show. (via @Jason Snell and @Dalek Thay)
The iPad is powerful and plentiful, can be used to defend food trucks, and can even be used in the bathroom, all in today’s edition of In the news:
Restrictions on food trucks are being debated before the New Orleans City Council right now. New Orleans attorney Ernie Svenson tweeted a link to a video of a presentation before the City Council by attorney Andrew Legrand. Legrand made effective use of iThoughtsHD on an iPad mini to visually go through each argument against food trucks and show why the argument lacked merit. Watch a few minutes of the video to see what he did; it is impressive, and may inspire you to do a similar, effective presentation with your iPad. Click here to get iThoughtsHD ($9.99):
Ohio attorney and legal technology consultant Brett Burney discusses using an iPad in a law practice in a podcast with Ed Poll on the Law Biz Blog.
Craig Timberg of The Washington Post explains one more reason that iPhone users are safer than Android phones: iPhone users are able to upgrade their phones when the operating system is updated, and most do so, whereas many Android phones make it difficult to upgrade, and they do not do so.
Is it fair to count an iPad as a PC? According to a post on gdgt.com, an iPad mini is actually faster than a Cray 2, which was the fastest supercomputer in the world in the 1980s.
If you want an iPhone 5 case that includes a battery, the Juice Pack Helium from Mophie is the first Apple-certified device with a Lightning connector. Dan Frakes of Macworld offers this initial take while working on a full review.
Apple sold the 25 billionth song on iTunes, and Eric Slivka of MacRumors reports that the man in Germany who downloaded that song got an iTunes Gift Card worth €10,000.
And finally, for those who love their iPad and like to take it with them everywhere — really everywhere — you can now buy on Amazon for the low price of $44.99 the CTA Digital Pedistal Stand for iPad with Roll Holder:
There are many ways to use an iPhone to scan a document. The simplest way is to just take a picture with the Camera app, but there are other apps that let you do more. For example, a few months ago I reviewed an app called Scanner Pro by Readdle that does a very nice job of creating a PDF file from something that you scan. However, the PDF file merely contains a picture of the document; Scanner Pro does not create a searchable PDF. ABBYY FineReader Touch is a new app that lets you scan a document using your iPhone and then OCR the image (read all of the words) and save the file in one of many formats such as Word or PDF. ABBYY sent me a free review copy of the app and I’ve been testing it out. The app works pretty well, although it did leave me wanting for even more.
To use the app, you start by taking a picture of one or more pages in a document. You can turn on the iPhone’s flash to try to get a better picture.
Once you scan the document, you can tap the image to make simple modifications: rotate the image (if necessary) and crop to the document edges. When you tap on a corner, a zoom circle appears to help you to get the four corners just right.
Once you have the page or pages scanned, you tell the app to convert
the image, which involves selecting a file format and a language. The
app supports a number of file formats including Word, Excel, PDF, text
and RTF. I only tested Word and PDF. Also, I only tested the app with the English language, but ABBYY is
an international company and the app supports 42 languages (up to three
different languages in a single document).
When you tell the app to start recognizing the document, the app will bring you back to the home page of the app, which lists all of your documents. Documents that are processed and downloaded have a green bar. Documents that are processed but not yet downloaded have a blue bar. (Or, you can flip a switch in settings to tell the app to automatically download every file once the processing is finished, which in my opinion should have been on by default.) Documents that are still being processed have a yellow bar. In my tests, it took only about a minute to process a one page document. Note that you
need to have an internet connection for the app to recognize the
document because all of the processing takes places on the ABBYY
website. Indeed, this app is really just an iPhone interface to the FineReader Online OCR Service.
Once the document is downloaded you can view it in the app or (probably more useful) choose to open the file in another app. For example, I scanned a letter that I created last August when I was testing Scanner Pro by Readdle, converted the letter to Word format, and then sent the file to Apple’s Pages app. As you can see from the below image, the OCR is almost 100% perfect. (The app thought that the “R” in “Reese” of my law firm name was instead a “K” but everything else looks good.) The formatting is not perfect and some fonts are confusing (such as in the date), but overall it is not a bad OCR. You can tap/click the below image to see it larger and read the words. (Indeed, you can tap most images on iPhone J.D. to see the images twice as large.)
I saw worse results with some other files. For example, I scanned a page from one of my son’s books that had a picture at the top and two columns of text. FineReader did a great job of recognizing what was a picture and saw the two columns without any trouble, but the OCR had a few more mistakes than I saw with the simple letter although it still got almost all of the words correct. Here is what the document looked like in MS Word on a computer:
One great feature of this app is that it not only lets you scan to PDF, but lets you create a readable PDF file. Readable PDF files are so much more useful because you can search for words within the file. Back to that letter I mentioned above, click here to see a sample of a PDF file that was created with FineReader Touch. Once again, the OCR accuracy was almost perfect. (This time it had no trouble recognizing “Adams and Reese” and the only mistake I saw was that instead of seeing the word “attorney” in the body of the letter the app saw the non-word “attomey”. But I never expect OCR to be 100% perfect, so this result is satisfactory. I do, however wish that this app would let you convert a document to black and white to make a better looking file. Compare that (searchable) PDF that I just referenced with this (non-searchable) PDF file that I created last August with Scanner Pro by Readdle; the Scanner Pro PDF file is black and white but looks much nicer.
Since I have both apps, I tried to get the best of both worlds. I scanned a letter using Scanner Pro by Readdle, then saved the cleaned up black and white scanned image to my Photos app, then I told ABBYY FineReader Touch to load the image from the Photos app and process it into a readable PDF. Unfortunately, the end result was a lower quality document that looked like a second-generation fax, although FineReader Touch did an almost perfect job with the OCR. I guess you lose something converting from a picture to a PDF then back to a picture and then back to a PDF again.
This app costs $4.99 and that includes the processing of scans of 100 pages. If you want to scan more than that, you need to pay more: $2.99 for 20 pages, $4.99 for 50 pages, $6.99 for 100 pages and $9.99 for 200 pages. Although I do scan documents on my iPhone from time to time, I don’t do it that often, so 100 pages will likely last me for a very long time and this price strikes me as very reasonable. On the other hand, if you plan to use this app to do a lot of scanning, you will have to pay a little more.
I haven’t yet tried all of the other iPhone apps that let you scan and create readable PDF files, and it looks like many of them are a little cheaper than ABBYY FineReader Touch. I will note, however, that ABBYY is a well-established company has been in the document scanning business for a very long time, so that makes me trust the quality of this app.
ABBYY FineReader Touch lives up to its name. It is a fine app. It does a nice job (although not a perfect job) of reading words in images. It does a very good job of turning a scanned document into a Word document (frankly, about as good as any product I’ve seen on a desktop computer). The readable PDFs that it creates are not nearly as good as what you would get using a flatbed scanner and a computer, but for the most part that is not ABBYY’s fault — the iPhone 5’s camera is no match for a large, dedicated scanner. I do, however, wish that ABBYY would let you convert the file to black and white or otherwise optimize the scan to make the most of the images that the iPhone can take. While I see some room for improvement in what is only version 1 of this app, there is a lot to like. If you need to use your iPhone to scan and OCR documents to create Word or PDF files, you’ll definitely want to check out this app.
A picture taken with a real camera, especially an SLR camera, is usually of much better quality than a picture taken with an iPhone or iPad. But once you take some pictures, it is so much more useful to have them on an iPad so that you can view them on the large screen, edit or crop them, and even email them. Although the iPad does not have a port for SD cards, you can add an SD port with an accessory. I’ve been testing an SD Reader with a Lightning connector from Photojojo. Photojojo is a company that specializes in photography-related items — their website has a great design and is full of fun products — and they sent me a free review unit so that I could check it out. This product is an inexpensive ($20) and compelling alternative to what Apple sells.
Using the Photojojo SD Reader is very simple. Just remove your SD card from your camera and insert it upside down (label face down) into the SD Reader. Then plug the SD Reader into the Lightning connector of a fourth generation iPad or an iPad mini. The Photos app will automatically open and ask if you want to import the pictures. (Videos are also imported.) You can import all pictures or select individual pictures to import. When finished, the app will ask if you want to delete from the camera (i.e., the SD card) the pictures that you just imported.
Once the pictures are on your iPad, you can do just about anything you want with them. It is especially nice to be able to view the pictures on an iPad screen, which is much larger than the screen on your camera. You can easily delete the pictures that you don’t want to keep. If you want to edit the pictures on your iPad, you can do that using the edit features of the Photos app or any of the more sophisticated third party apps. Whenever you get back to a computer, simply connect your iPad to your computer using the USB to Lightning connector, and your computer will import the pictures just as if you had connected your camera or an SD Reader to the computer.
The Photjojo SD Reader includes a Micro SD slot. I don’t use Micro SD cards so I wasn’t able to test that. It also includes a USB slot that you can use to connect directly to a camera using the cord that came with your camera. I tested the USB slot by taking some pictures with my iPhone 5 and then using the Lightning to USB cord that comes with the iPhone to connect the iPhone to the Reader. It worked great and transferred all of my pictures from my iPhone to my iPad. If you use the Photo Stream feature to automatically send pictures from your iPhone to iCloud then you won’t need to use a physical connector, but I don’t use Photo Stream so this is useful.
I previously reviewed a similar product from Apple for the 30-pin connectors, the Apple iPad Camera Connection Kit. I like that product because for $29 you get two tiny, well-made items, one with an SD card slot and one with a USB slot. But if you have an iPad 4 or an iPad mini, you cannot use that 30-pin connector kit. Instead, Apple now sells two different items. For $29 (a little cheaper on Amazon) you can get a cable with a Lightning connector at one end and an SD slot at the other end, and for another $29 ($21 on Amazon) you can get a cable with a Lightning connector at one end and a USB Camera Adapter at the other end. So you have to pay up to almost $60 for the same type of product that used to cost $29. Moreover, unlike the 30-pin versions that were small and compact, the products sold by Apple are long with cords, making it less convenient to pack them into a camera bag. Here are the Apple products:
So how do you decide between these Apple products and the Photojojo SD Reader? First, you should consider quality, and while I haven’t tried the Lightning versions of these products, based on my extensive experience with the 30-pin versions, I suspect that the Apple products win in this category. My biggest gripe with the Potojojo product is that it feels very cheap. It uses very light plastic, the connections are rather tight, and the build quality is not that impressive. Second, however, consider price. Instead of almost $60 for both of the Apple products, you can get the Photojojo product which handles both SD and USB (and even Micro SD) for only $20. Third, I love the small size and design of the Photojojo product which is similar to the versions that Apple made for the 30 pin connectors. It takes up very little space making it easy to toss in a briefcase, bag, or even your pocket. The following picture shows the old Apple 30-pin products on the left and the Photojojo SD Reader on the right.
If you plan to get heavy use out of a product like this, and if you don’t mind having only an SD slot or only a USB slot, then the Apple product may be worth it for you because Apple’s products are always well made. But if you want to have versatility, or if you want something that is small and compact, or if you don’t plan to use this product all the time and just want to have something inexpensive for when you need it, then the Photjojo SD Reader is the one to get. As much as I liked the 30-pin products I bought from Apple in 2011, I have used them maybe 10 times a year, making it tough to justify spending another $60. But at $20, the Photojo SD Reader is a perfect alternative.
This week, Apple announced a new version of the full-sized iPad 4. Starting Tuesday, February 5, you will be able to buy a fourth generation iPad with 128 GB of storage, twice as much as the 64 GB that had been the max. You pay an extra $100 for the extra memory, so the WiFi only model goes for $799, and for an additional $130 you can purchase the version with 3G/4G. I can’t imagine that many lawyers would need that much space unless they need to carry a ton of video. John Brownlee of Cult of Mac notes that you can fit “up to 64 hours of 1080p HD video, enough music to listen to for almost 40 days straight, over two thousand games and almost six thousand apps, and enough photos to open your own Getty.” And now, the rest of the news of note from the past week:
South Carolina attorney Bill Latham of The Hytech Lawyer wrote a great article explaining how to use an iPad and the fantastic TrialPad app during a high stakes class litigation hearing.
Florida attorney Katie Floyd discusses using her iPhone and the Fitbit One to exercise.
Similarly, New Jersey attorney Victor Medina talks about using his iPhone and a Jawbone Up Band to exercise in this article for Small Firm Innovation.
St. Louis attorney Dennis Kennedy discusses using folders on an iPhone or iPad to manage your apps in this article for ABA Journal
I absolutely, positively, do not recommend that any attorney jailbreak
their iPhone because of the security risks, not the mention the risk
that you will damage your iPhone. Having said that, some people want to
do it anyway, and the legality of doing so has become more murky.
Attorney Mitch Stoltz of the Electronic Frontier Foundation discusses the issue.
I previously reviewed Picture it Settled Lite, a free app by San Antonio mediator Don Philbin that can help you during mediations. Philbin has analyzed all of the data from the use of that app to come up with a computer program called Picture it Settled that can help predict when and where a case will settled based upon the empirical data. I haven’t tried it, but it sounds interesting.
Utah attorney Peter Summerill of MacLitigator reviewed Trial Notebook, an iPad app from TabLit.
Arsenio Cantu Garza, the Director of Information of the Supreme Court of the State of Tamaulipas, Mexico, asked me to announce that his office developed a free app called e-Justitia. It allows Spanish-speaking attorneys to manage clients and matters, schedule hearings, manage file expenses, and more. If you practice law in Mexico or Latin America, this may be of interest to you. Click here for e-Justitia (free):
Ashton Kutcher and Josh Gad, stars of the upcoming movie jOBS, discussed the film at the Macworld/iWorld conference yesterday. Jacqui Cheng of Ars Technica has a report.
I recently reviewed 1Password, a powerful app for storing your passwords, and I really love it. For a limited time to celebrate Macworld/iWorld, the app is 50% off, so this is a great time to get it if you don’t have it yet. I myself wish I had started using it long ago. The iPhone/iPad app is currently $8.99 instead of $17.99: The Mac version of the app is currently $24.99 instead of $49.99:
Another Find my iPhone success story: there was an armed robbery in San Francisco and thieves stole a number of items, including an iPhone, and then jumped in a getaway car. The victims found a police officer with an iPad, he used Find my iPhone to track the car. This led to a high-speed chase, but eventually the criminals were caught. Todd Lappin of Bernalwood has the story. (via Cult of Mac)
Speaking of police officers and iPhones, this tweet from the Dallas Police Department made me chuckle: “Our apologies for the fruit Ninja tweet sent earlier. One of our kids
played the game on our iPhone and unknowingly tweeted their score.”
Alan Henry of Life Hacker reviews iPad cases that contain keyboards.
Joel Mathis of Macworld writes that people love using the iPad mini as a business tool. I certainly do.
This week I reviewed the dockBoss air, a method of adding Bluetooth to a speaker. You can also use Apple’s AirPlay to add wireless support to a speaker. Jessee Hollington of iLounge discusses and compares these two methods. I find AirPlay over WiFi to be less reliable in my house … the music can drop out. But if you have less WiFi interference in your own house, you may get better results with AirPlay than I do.
And finally, a guy looking for a unique way to propose to his girlfriend this past Christmas (who thought she might get an iPad) put an engagement ring in the iPad box. But to go the extra mile and make the box the right weight when it held a ring instead of an iPad, he machine cut a slab of aluminum to make a one-of-a-kind ring holder. Here are three of the pictures, but to see the full set from “robbie92835” a/k/a “rad_rob” on Reddit, click here and here. According to this thread on Reddit, she said yes … and of course, he also gave her the iPad.
If you are a long-time owner of an iPhone or iPod, there is a good chance that you own a speaker system with a 30-pin connector. Many years ago, I picked up a Bose SoundDock Portable speaker system when it was discounted at a Bose factory outlet store. It has worked great with my old-but-still-works Apple iPod (5th Generation – 64 GB) and my iPhones through the years … until I purchased the iPhone 5 late last year. The speaker uses the traditional 30-pin connector and of course the iPhone 5 has the new Lightning connector. I previously reviewed the 30-pin to Lightning connectors sold by Apple, but those didn’t work well with the SoundDock Portable because the connector with the cord is too awkward and the connector without the cord makes the iPhone sit up too high against the speaker without enough support to prevent it from bending backwards too much. The Bose speaker also has an auxiliary input in the back that lets you plug a cord into the headphone jack of the iPhone 5, but I was looking for a more elegant solution than having my iPhone 5 hanging off of the back of the speaker. That led me to explore the idea of adding Bluetooth to my existing speaker. Bose itself does not sell such a product (Bose now sells speakers with built-in Bluetooth, plus they sell a new SoundDock with a Lightning connector). However, CableJive makes exactly what I was looking for, and that company sent me a free review unit of the dockBoss air, a device that plugs in to the 30-pin connector of a speaker and adds Bluetooth to the speaker. It works well and gives new life to a speaker with a 30-pin dock connector.
[UPDATE 8/29/13: CableJive recently announced a new version of the dockBoss air, which the company says features clearer audio and bigger volume, one-touch Bluetooth pairing (apparently without the need to enter a code) and the ability to work with a speaker’s remote control. I haven’t tested the new version, but if you are going to buy this product you might want to make sure you are purchasing the latest version.]
Using the product is very easy. Simply plug it in to the 30-pin dock connector. The first time that you connect to it on your iPhone, you need to go to Settings -> Bluetooth and select the dockBoss air. Once your iPhone is paired to the dockBoss air, your iPhone will remember the connection in the future.
So for example, in the future you can simply plug in the dockBoss air, and then your iPhone will either pair with it automatically after a few seconds or you can app on the sharing button on the bottom right of the Music app to start streaming to the speaker.
The range is fine if you are in the same room, and I could even take my iPhone one or two rooms away and have it continue to stream without problems.
If you haven’t streamed music to the dockBoss air for a long time (I haven’t figured out how long), you may need to unplug it from the speaker and plug it in again to wake it up. Then your iPhone will see it and let you use it. On the other hand, earlier this week I had been using the dockBoss air at night to listen to a podcast while I was doing dishes downstairs, and then the next morning (7 hours later) I tried to continue listening the podcast upstairs while I was was getting ready for work but my iPhone was still connected to the dockBoss air … causing some confusion for my wife and kids who were downstairs at the time right next to the Bose speaker. Oops.
I was interested in this device just because I was unable to plug my iPhone 5 into a 30-pin connector. But now that I’ve used it for a while, I actually prefer this approach to connecting my iPhone directly to a speaker. With my iPhone in my pocket, it is easy to change songs. When an iPhone 4S is in the dock on the speaker, I have to walk over to the speaker to tap buttons and make changes.
I am not an audiophile, but music played through my speakers via the dockBoss air sounds fine to me, and podcasts and audiobooks sound excellent. I’m sure someone will tell me that Bluetooth audio quality is inferior to a direct connection to a speaker, and perhaps in a quiet room with a side-by-side comparison I might notice some difference. But when I am just listening to music in my house — or if I take advantage of the portable nature of my SoundDock Portable and bring it outside — keeping my iPhone in my pocket and the dockBoss air in the speaker sounds great and is incredibly convenient and easy to use.
I first learned about this type of product when I read this article by Alex Castle of The Wirecutter several months ago. He recommended a product called the i-Wave. I clicked on the link in that article and ordered it through Amazon, but the product that the seller actually sent me just calls itself the “Wireless Music Receiver” and doesn’t have the i-Wave name on it — but I thought that this might happen because Castle’s article notes that the same product has different designations on Amazon. (Indeed, if you click on the Amazon link in that article, it now brings you to a product called TekuOne, not i-Wave.) But I had a problem with the device I bought from Amazon: it would often stop working after just a few minutes. This led me to look at the dockBoss air, which Roy Furchgott of the New York Times gave a very favorable review. Unfortunately, the first unit that CableJive sent me had a similar problem — after a few minutes of use, the iPhone would appear to be playing music but no music would come out of the Bose SoundDock Portable. But unlike the virtually anonymous product that I purchased on Amazon, the dockBoss air comes from CableJive, a respected company with fabulous customer support. Once I mentioned the problem, CableJive told me that others had reported something similar with Bose systems because of the way that Bose communicates over the 30-pin connector and CableJive had engineered a solution and updated the dockBoss air to fix this. CableJive sent me the updated version, and sure enough, it works like a champ. I don’t know if this problem was unique to Bose speakers or exists with other speaker brands too, but if you buy this product, you might want to make sure that you are getting the latest version. Perhaps this is also evidence that it can make sense to pay just a few dollars more to buy a product like this from a good company like CableJive versus some no-name company on Amazon.
If you don’t already own speakers and you are in the market, you should probably just buy something that has Bluetooth built-in such as the popular Jawbone Jambox (or, if you want something larger, the Jawbone Big Jambox). But if you already own speakers that you like which have a 30-pin connector, the dockBoss air is perfect. It is simple, elegant, inexpensive, and adds new life to speakers that you may have paid several hundred dollars for.
Yesterday, Apple released the latest version of the operating system for the iPhone and iPad, iOS 6.1. There was a time when Apple released more frequent updates to iOS throughout the year, but nowadays we just see one major release every year and, except for bug fixes, maybe just one or two .1 or .2 updates during the course of the year. iOS 6.0 was released on September 19, 2012. There was a tiny update on November 29, 2012 when iOS 6.0.1 was released to add some performance and stability fixes, and in December Apple released iOS 6.0.2 for the iPhone 5 and the iPad mini to fix some WiFi bugs. Perhaps we’ll see an iOS 6.2 at some point this year, but maye not. With iOS 5, the last release was iOS 5.1.1 on in May of 2012.
So what is new in iOS 6.1? Just a few things.
LTE
First, Apple added support for LTE on many more carriers — an additional 36 iPhone carriers and an additional 23 iPad carriers. For example, here in the U.S., the iPhone can now take advantage of LTE on Alaska Communications, Alaska GCI, Bluegrass Cellular, C Spire, Cellcom and Pioneer Cellular. Visit this page on Apple’s website for a list of all of the more than 50 currently supported LTE carriers around the world. I’ve loved using the screaming fast AT&T LTE here in New Orleans where I often see well over 30 Mbps and sometimes see speeds over 50 Mbps — much faster than any WiFi I’ve ever used. Thus, if this update brings LTE to your iPhone 5, you are going to love it.
Siri gains Fandango support
With iOS 6.1, you can use Siri to purchase movie tickets using the Fandango app. It’s always nice to see Siri support another external app, and this is a pretty good one to support. The fastest way to use your iPhone to find out what movies are playing in your vicinity is to activate Siri and just ask “What movies are playing?” But now, in addition to seeing a list of movies and times, you can tap on an entry in the list and Siri will launch the Fandango app where you can quickly purchase tickets. And since the Fandango app works with Passbook, your tickets will be right on your screen waiting for you when you get to the theater. Note that I haven’t tested this feature yet — I did not go out and watch a movie last night — but whenever I next catch a movie, I look forward to trying it out.
iTunes Match
If you use iTunes Match, you can now download individual sounds from iCloud. I don’t use iTunes Match, so I haven’t tested it.
Advertising Identifier reset
There is a new button to reset the Advertising Identifier. OK, great … so what’s the Advertising Identifier? It all has to do with iPhone apps that include ads. App developers can potentially make a lot of money from ads in their apps, but the advertisers often seek to target a specific audience and will pay more if they have more of a sense of who is seeing their ads. About a year ago, this caused privacy concerns, and even inquiries from people like Congressman Waxman, because every iPhone has a unique number associated with it called the UDID. Apps were telling advertisers the UDID, and because the UDID is forever tied to a specific iPhone, there were some privacy concerns about being able to connect information with a specific person.
To address this, Apple banned app developers from using the UDID, and starting in iOS 6.0, lets developers instead simply associate you with an Advertising Identifier. That number is not forever tied to your device, is random, and isn’t associated with any personal information about yourself. It’s similar to the cookies that many websites use so that they know that you have visited the site before but don’t know your name (unless you give it to them). And just like you can turn off cookies in Safari on the iPhone and web browsers in your computer, in iOS 6 you can choose to turn off the Advertising Identifier…
…except that it’s not even quite that simple. From what I understand, you can’t actually tell your iPhone to turn off the Advertising Identifier, but you can tell your iPhone to “limit” it. Huh? According to an article by Laura Stampler of Business Insider: “Even if users take the time to limit tracking,
their identifiers will still be sent to advertisers. The information,
however, is flagged and advertisers should respect users’ wishes.”
So that brings us to iOS 6.1. Now, in addition to choosing to limit the Advertising Identifier, whatever that means, you also have the option to reset your number. Presumably this means a fresh start on life … or at least, on your relationship with advertisers.
I have to admit that I don’t get too worked up over this stuff. Some people are very concerned about privacy when it comes to advertisers, and I see where they are coming from. But frankly, I don’t really mind seeing advertising targeted towards me. I don’t have any interest in the musicals at a theater in South Dakota, but if someone wants to show me an ad for a Broadway show coming to the theater here in New Orleans, well that just might be relevant to me. Likewise, I don’t mind when Amazon shows me ads based on my prior purchases becuase the ads tend to be for items that interest me. But maybe one day I’ll decide that I want a do-over for iPhone app advertisers, and now there is a button to press for that.
To use this new feature, go to the Settings app, then tap General, then tap About, and then tap Advertising. The new button is the one that says “Reset Advertising Identifier.”
Security
As with every iOS update, there are updates to make the iPhone and iPad more secure. The descriptions of the security updates are a little over my head, but if you are so inclined, you can read about them on Apple’s website.
Passbook
The Passbook app has added a new card — a Welcome card that includes a helpful link to the section of the App Store where you can download apps that work with Passbook. I’m a little surprised that we are four months into iOS and yet there are only 22 such apps right now, although the ones there are pretty useful. There are airline apps (Air Canada, American Airlines, Delta, United Airlines and Lufthansa), apps for buying tickets (Eventbrite, Fandango, Live Nation, two MLB.com apps, Ticketmaster and Viator Tours), apps for shopping including rewards cards (Apple Store, Belly, Living Social, Sephora, Starbucks, Target and Walgreens), payment apps (Discover Card and Square Wallet) plus an Amtrak app and a Starwood Hotels app.
Etc.
There are also some other minor changes. For example, and as always, the update includes various bug fixes.
The music controls on the lockscreen are updated to have an aluminum finish, and the circle on the volume control has a reflection that changes as you tilt the device, just as it would on a “real” aluminum knob in your hands. (iOS 6 brought this same minor but amusing addition to the Music app itself.)
And I’m sure there are some other minor updates that I haven’t noticed yet.
Installing the Update
You can install the update right on your iPhone or iPad without needing to connect to a computer. In the Settings app, tap General, then Software Update. You will see an indication that iOS 6.1 is available. If you are low on power you might want to plug in your device, but it only takes a few minutes to update. Just tap Download and Install.
All of the screenshots above are from my iPhone 5, but I also installed this update on my iPad 3 and my iPad mini, and everything seems to be working fine.
Jotnot Pro — this is a great scanner. I can scan business cards, receipts etc. on the go. [Click here to get Jotnot Pro ($0.99): ]
