Jeff Richardson

Happy New Year, and welcome back to iPhone J.D. for 2013.  I spent some time in New York over the holidays and brought both my iPad 3 and my iPad mini.  I used the iPad mini far more than the iPad 3, but there were times when I preferred the iPad 3, such as a time when I needed to connect to my office computer using LogMeIn to draft and prepare a motion and exhibits to file in federal court.  The larger, better quality screen made that task much easier.  There were also some entertainment apps that were better on the iPad 3 because of the large, Retina display.  But for day-to-day tasks like keeping up with emails, reviewing attachments, social media apps like Twitter and Facebook, the iPad mini worked great and was so much easier to hold because of its size and weight.  I mention this because I am frequently asked whether attorneys should get the iPad or the iPad mini, and I’m torn.  I can’t imagine not having my full size iPad, but I do use my iPad mini more.  As I continue to ponder that issue, here is the recent news of note:

• TechnoLawyer subscribers should check out the TL Research Guide to the iPad mini as a Serious Productivity Tool by New York attorney and TL publisher Neil Squillante for tips using an iPad mini in a law practice.  (If you are not already a subscriber, you can sign up for free.)  It’s a great article.
• Michigan plaintiff attorneys Stephen Goethel and Chad Engelhardt of Goethel Engelhardt, PLLC wrote an extensive article for the State Bar of Michigan Negligence Quarterly about using an iPad in the practice of law.  The article is in PDF format.  Click here to download it.
• Steven Sande of TUAW reports that 53% of all mobile phones in the U.S. are smartphones, and iPhones account for 18.5% of all smartphones.  Given the number of iPhones I see out and about, I thought that number would be higher.  Maybe that just reflects me being around lawyers.  According to a survey conducted almost a year ago by the ABA, 44% of all U.S. attorneys were using an iPhone.  I’m sure that number is now much higher.
• If you use the Do Not Disturb function on your iPhone automatically every night (like I do), you might have been surprised (like I was) to learn that it did not switch off on January 1.  Jacqui Cheng explains the bug, and why it won’t fix itself until January 7, 2013.  Lex Friedman of Macworld also has a good article discussing the bug.  Unfortunately, Apple has a history of New Year-related bugs on the iPhone.  Makes me think about when we all thought that Y2K was going to be a big deal.
• Connie Guglielmo of Forbes wrote an interesting article about the iPhone on AT&T.  Worth reading.
• Localscope, a useful app that I reviewed in 2011, is now free.
• If Siri has trouble pronouncing the name of one of your contacts, Rob LeFebvre of Cult of Mac explains that you can add phonetic spelling hints.
• Nicole Perlrtoh of the New York Times recommends apps that let your iPhone help you find your car.
• Matt Flegenheimer of the New York Times describes a new app from the Metropolitan Transit Authority that tells you exactly when a subway will arrive at a station.  It only works with the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and the S lines right now, but when I was in New York over the holidays I stayed in the Murray Hill area near Grand Central Station so I took the 4, 5 and 6 lines several times.  The app seems to work very well, and it is free.  Worth downloading out if you are in New York.  Click here to get MTA Subway Time (free): 

  

• Speaking of the New York Times, its iEconomy series has frequently criticized Apple for working conditions in China — unfairly, I think, because lots of companies use Chinese manufacturing besides Apple, and Apple is one of the few companies trying to make things better.  I was pleased to see that Keith Bradsher and Charles Duhigg of the New York Times wrote this article and the end of 2012 explaining that working conditions are now improving in Chinese plants that make Apple products, thanks to Apple’s efforts.  There are still problems, but things are headed in the right direction.
• And finally, as far as my seven-year-old son is concerned, by far the best Christmas presents this year were Lego kits.  He is especially fond of the Lego Space series, including the Space Shuttle.  And I have to admit, I enjoyed helping him put them together too … not that he really needed my help.  Perhaps because I have Lego on the brain, I was amused to see this article by Ray Basile of iPhone Savior linking to the BrickCase by Smallworks, a Lego-compatible case for your iPhone 5.  Cute.

Last month I noted that Apple finally added the track changes features to its Pages app, and since then, Pages has become my go-to app for working with Microsoft Word files on my iPad.  But there are still some things that Pages does not do, or does not do well, which causes me to sometimes use another app for working with documents on my iPad or iPhone such as Documents to Go, Quickoffice or Office².  Jeeyoung Jung, an app developer in South Korea with the company Infraware, recently sent me a free review copy of Polaris Office, a $12.99 app that can view and edit Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint files (in both the old .doc format and the new .docx format).  I haven’t spent much time using Polaris Office with Excel and PowerPoint files, so this review will focus on Word files.  Polaris Office does a very good job viewing Word documents, and a decent job editing Word documents. 

If you receive a document as an email attachment, simply hold down on the attachment and you will be given the option to open the file in Polaris Office.  Documents recently added to Polaris Office show up on the main screen, and you can also connect Polaris Office with the cloud services Dropbox, Google Drive, Box and ucloud to download a document.

Polaris Office is a great document viewer.  You can flick your finger up and down to scroll through a document, or use a tab on the side to quickly move through a long document.  Polaris Office displays a wide variety of fonts, and displays footnotes.  I did notice one quirk in many of my documents:  numbers would sometimes appear in blue and underlined, as if they were hyperlinks, even though there was no such code applied to the text. 

One other problem that I noted was that, when working with large files, the app would sometimes have problems displaying text.  Scrolling up or down a little bit would often (but not always) quickly solve the problem, before doing that I would sometimes see screens like this:

If a document has redline track changes in it, Polaris Office will show those edits.  Unfortunately, the app does not let you accept or reject those redline edits.

Unlike Apple’s Pages app, Polaris Office can show comments in a document, although it does not do so by default.  The only way to know that a comment exists is to first tap the icon at the top right and select View Comment.  Text with a comment attached will then show up in yellow with a small box near it.  Tap the text, then tap “more” in the pop-up menu, then tap Comment to see the comment.

By default, Polaris Office uses a page view that approximates what the document will look like when printed.  However, the app also offers a useful “Reflow text” view that lets you pinch to zoom text with text reflowing on the line below.  This feature is especially useful on the iPhone because you often cannot read text in a normal page layout mode.  Documents to Go uses reflow text by default, and this feature is the main reason that Documents to Go has long been my favorite iPhone app for viewing Word documents.  The first picture below shows a document viewed in Polaris Office on the iPhone in the normal page view, and the second screen shows the same document with the Reflow text option enabled.

 

I’ve been talking about using Polaris Office as an app to view Word documents, but it can also edit documents.  The app is rather sophisticated in its features and offers lots of ways to reformat text, insert shapes, graphics, tables, bookmarks, etc.  Unfortunately, the app does not provide a way to create redline track changes edits, nor does it give you a way to insert comments.

Presumably as a result of Polaris Office being developed in South Korea, the text in the app and in help files is sometimes a little confusing or odd.  I realize that these are just translation issues, but it does jump out at you from time to time.  For example, the section of the FAQ that shows you how to rename a file is called “Do you have any idea to rename document?”  The website for Polaris Office states:  “Polaris Office is a premium mobile office product that enables the user to use MS Office documents conveniently, based on emotional experiences.”  I’m curious what phrase in Korean translated to “emotional experiences” in English.

I think that every attorney who works with Microsoft Word files on an iPad — which is essentially every attorney — should have a copy of Apple’s $9.99 Pages app.  That app is incredibly stable and offers a great way to view and edit documents plus it gives you the ability to view and approve or reject redline edits.  Unfortunately, Pages has some shortcomings, such as the fact that it cannot display comments and indeed it deletes all comments in a document, and the fact that Pages only has a page view mode which makes it hard to zoom text on a tiny iPhone screen.  Thus, while every attorney should have a copy of Pages, I think it also makes sense to have at least one other Office-compatible app.  The question is, shoud that app be Documents to Go, Quickoffice, Office² or Polaris Office?

Quickoffice has a fantastic interface — for example, the best in class for reviewing and approving/rejecting redline edits in a document — but still doesn’t handle footnotes, which is a huge shortcoming for many attorneys.

Office² was the first app to offer the ability to add redline track changes to a document, but now that Pages does the same thing this is no longer a unique advantage.  Office² also crashes a lot for me when I work with complex documents, and I don’t like the way that it displays track changes in very tiny text on the side.

That leaves Documents to Go and Polaris Office, and both are decent options.  If you are working with a file containing comments, I prefer the way that Documents to Go shows you the comment by default, whereas in Polaris Office you need to first turn on that feature.  That means that you may miss a comment if you didn’t know that it was there in the first place.  Documents to Go and Polaris Office both offer the useful option of reflowing text, helpful when you want to make the text larger on the iPad and essential on the iPhone because you will almost always want to make text larger.  If a document has footnotes and you just want to view the document, Documents to Go works better becuase you can tap on a footnote reference to see a pop-up window with the text of the footnote.  When Polaris Office is in the reflow text mode, you just see the reference number but you need to switch back to the page layout view to read the footnote text.  On the other hand, Polaris Office (like Pages) gives you the ability to edit or select text in a footnote, something that you cannot do in Documents to Go.  Documents to Go also supports the longer screen on an iPhone 5, whereas Polaris Office currently does not, wasting screen real estate with black bars on the top and bottom (see above pictures) instead of displaying more of the document.

For now I have a preference for Documents to Go, but I admit that this is in part because I have been using Documents to Go for many years now and I am just now starting to work with Polaris Office.  With just a few more features, such as support for the iPhone 5’s longer screen, I could see Polaris Office becoming my prefered app.

I’m glad to see that there is another option for viewing Microsoft Office files on the iPad and iPhone.  Polaris Office does a lot of things very well.  It is a universal app that works on both the iPhone and iPad so you don’t have to buy the app twice.  In its current form, I don’t see myself using this app more than Pages or Documents to Go, but that may change if more features are added to the app in the future.

Click here for Polaris Office ($12.99): 

The other apps that I discussed above:

Click here to get Pages ($9.99): 

Click here for Documents to Go [both iPad and iPhone] ($9.99): 

Click here for Documents to Go Premium [both iPad and iPhone] ($16.99): 

Click here for Quickoffice Pro HD [for iPad] ($19.99): 

Click here for Quickoffice Pro [for iPhone] ($14.99): 

Click here for Office² HD [for iPad] ($7.99): 

Click here for Office² [for iPhone] ($5.99): 

This Apple commercial is not an exaggeration.  I’ve successfully used an iPad, an iPad mini and FaceTime to bring my family together when they were miles apart. 

Whether you are in the same room with your family members over the next few days or just connected in spirit, I hope that you have a Very Merry Christmas.

As we start the weekend before Christmas, I hope that you and yours have a wonderful holiday season.  I suspect that for many of you, Santa will be leaving some presents created by his elves in Cupertino.  And now, the news of note:

• Pittsburgh attorney David Ries and security expert John Simek recommend encryption options for lawyers, including lawyers using an iPhone, in this article in the ABA’s GP Solo magazine.
• Last week I linked to an article by Robyn Weisman of Law Technology News about how attorneys handling the huge BP oil spill litigation in New Orleans used Trial Pad and TranscriptPad and a whole bunch of iPads to manage key aspects of the litigation.  If the link last week didn’t work for you, try this one.
• Evan Koblentz of Law Technology News recommends tech holiday gifts for lawyers, several of which relate to the iPhone or iPad.
• Are you wondering about the ethical implications of using cloud services, such as Dropbox, for confidential documents?  Check out this page on the ABA website linking to ethics opinions from various states on the issue.  (via Ernest Svenson)
• Speaking of Svenson, he discusses PDFpen, an excellent iPhone and iPad app, on his PDF for Lawyers site.
• Speaking to Svenson (see what I did there?), he recently wrote a book for the ABA called Blogging in One Hour for Lawyers.  He asked me and a bunch of other bloggers some questions while he was writing the book, and you can click here to see the Qs and As.
• For the second year in a row, the Law Firm Mobile website has an extensive report on law firms from the AmLaw 200 and Global 100 that have mobile websites.  I’m proud to see that my own firm, Adams and Reese, is #1 on the list.  Oh wait, the list is alphabetical.
• St. Louis attorney Dennis Kennedy writes about BYOD (bring your own device) in law firms.  For most law firms, I suspect that BYOD is the explanation for the rise in iPhone and iPad use.
• New York Law School student Steve Cohen wrote an article in the New York Times recommending that the criminal justice system use iPads to increase efficiency.
• One more note about PDFpen for iPhone and PDFpen for iPad:  both apps are currently discounted for the holidays.  Click here to get PDFpen for iPhone ($1.99): 

  

    Click here to get PDFpen for iPad ($6.99): 

  

• Tim Cook was almost Time’s man of the year, but the title instead went to President Obama.  Nevertheless, Lev Grossman wrote an interesting article about Tim Cook as a runner-up.
• Alexander George of The Wirecutter reviews the field of iPad mini cases and recommends his favorites.
• I had been noticing some slight issues with WiFi on my iPhone 5 and iPad mini, such as the WiFi icon not showing up in the menu bar even when I had a connection.  Apparently Apple saw some issues too because, as Lex Friedman of Macworld notes, Apple released iOS 6.0.2 for those devices this week.
• Unfortunately, Siri currently lacks the ability to read you your emails.  However, there are a few useful things that Siri can do with emails, as Dom Esposito of AppAdvice explains.
• And finally, the Onion “reports” on the new iPhone 5C.  It is aimed at college-aged girls, and therefore comes with a pre-shattered screen.  Click here for the short but amusing video.

This Friday is the deadline for votes in the ABA Journal Blawg 100.  The ABA is now hiding the vote tallies, but before the numbers were hidden, iPhone J.D. was about 200 votes behind Groklaw in the Legal Technology category.  That’s a formidable gap, but it ain’t over ’till it’s over, and thousands of people read iPhone J.D. every day so anything is possible. 

If you found iPhone J.D. useful at some point this year, I’d appreciate it if you could spare 10 seconds — it really is that quick! — to click here, provide your name and email address (which the ABA asks for just to prevent vote fraud), select the Legal Technology category and then vote for iPhone J.D. 

To those who have already voted and those who are about to do so — thanks!  You are awesome.

P.S.  Kudos to Prof. Jonathan Turley for this amusing Mayan Apocalypse-themed post aimed at getting out the vote for his blog in the News/Analysis category.

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 them here on iPhone J.D.  I recently heard from K. Lindsay Rakers, a personal injury attorney with Hefner, Eberspacher & Tapella who practices in Missouri and Illinois.  She tells me that she frequently finds herself traveling to meet with injured clients, potential clients and fact and expert witnesses, and with her iPad and iPhone she has everything that she needs without having to lug around a computer.  She currently uses an iPhone 4 (and plans to upgrade to an iPhone 5 in the future) and the third generation iPad. 

I asked Lindsay to share with iPhone J.D. readers the most useful apps on her iPhone and iPad.  Here is what she told me:

1. 
   
   Twitter/LinkedIn/Avvo
   
   – These apps allow me to connect with and keep in touch with other attorneys
   
   across the nation and also allows me to stay on top of personal injury news.
2. Mr.
   
   Reader – The app allows you to select different RSS feeds relating to the topic
   
   areas you are interested in.  When I have
   
   extra time, I can read the news clips and create my own original blogs.
3. Dragon
   
   Dictation – I don’t always dictate but if I am on the road or away from my
   
   computer, I can easily dictate a letter or memo with this app, from my iPhone
   
   or iPad, and email it to my assistant.
4. Scanner
   
   Pro – This app uses the camera feature to take a picture of a document and then
   
   save it as a PDF, just as if you had scanned it with a desktop scanner.  [Jeff adds:  here is my review.]
5. Dropbox
   
   – I store many files in Dropbox so that I do not have to carry my computer
   
   everywhere or remember to put files on a flash drive.
6. PDF
   
   Expert – This app allows me to move PDFs from Dropbox or other applications and
   
   highlight, sign or otherwise mark up the PDF document and then save or email
   
   it.  [Jeff adds:  here is my review.]
7. Note Taker
   
   HD – There are several note taking apps out there but I think this one looks
   
   the best and is the most user friendly.  [Jeff adds:  I reviewed this app in 2011, but it has since been updated with a new interface.  My current favorite app for taking notes is GoodNotes, but Note Taker HD is also an excellent app.]
8. Google
   
   Earth – Because I represent a lot of car accident victims, having access to a
   
   3D map has proven to be very useful when meeting with clients and experts.
9. TrialPad – This app allows me to display evidence to a jury or other audience.  It can work wirelessly with a TV or projector
   
   and is very user-friendly.

I asked Lindsay if she has tried using an Airport Express in a courtroom to create her own wireless network to use for TrialPad — the setup that California attorney David Sparks described in this post that I discussed this past Friday.  She has not; she tells me that so far she has simply relied on the WiFi available in the courtroom, and that has worked well for her (although she emphasizes that she practiced first).

Thanks for sharing with us, Lindsay!

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:

• Zane Cagle:  1/1/12
• Megan Erickson:  5/11/11
• Tom Freeland:  7/13/10
• Cliff Maier:  12/22/08
• Alfred Saikali:  5/4/11
• Mike Schneider:  4/28/09
• Clark Stewart:  7/22/10

Virtually every time that I have to give a presentation to any sort of audience, I prepare slides using the Keynote app on my iPad.  Sure, I could use PowerPoint or Keynote on a computer, but Keynote on the iPad is a powerful app that creates beautiful presentations, and I prefer using the touch interface on an iPad to move objects around.  Also, I use my iPad to give presentations, and I like that the software that I am using to give the presentation is the same software that I used to create the presentation so I never have to worry about incompatibilities when I make last minute changes to slides.  There is a slow trend towards using HD screens or projectors, but virtually every place that I go to give a presentation still uses a projector with a VGA connector.  Thus, I consider a VGA adapter an essential part of my iPad accessory toolkit.

With my iPad 3, I use Apple’s 30-pin to VGA adapter ($29 from Apple, or much cheaper on Amazon).  But if you want to run a presentation from the latest fourth generation iPad, the iPad mini, or an iPhone 5, you need a way to connect the Lightning connector to VGA.  The answer is Apple’s Lightning to VGA Adapter, which Apple sells for $49 but you can save about $5 if you get it on Amazon.  I recently purchased this adapter from Amazon, and it works great.

 

You would expect this adapter to be the same as the old 30-pin to VGA adapter except that it works with the Lightning connector.  To a certain extent, this is true.  This is a true plug-and-play accessory.  Just like the old one, you connect one end to the VGA plug and connect the other end to your iPad or iPhone, and that’s it.  Wait a few seconds and you will see your presentation on the large screen.  And thanks to the iPad/iPhone mirroring feature, you can easily show off to an audience everything taking place on your iPad/iPhone screen.  This is a great tool for showing an audience how an app works.

There are a few differences with this new adapter, besides the obvious — it has Lightning instead of 30-pin, and it costs almost twice as much.  Fortunately, most of the differences are improvements.

First, I love that you can plug this device into your iPad with either side up (a feature common to all Lighting connectors).  When I give a presentation from an iPad, I will sometimes disconnect the iPad from the projector to hold up my iPad, or to switch from my iPad to my iPhone, or for some other reason.  I like that I don’t have to worry about this accessory being upside down when I plug it in.  Snafus like that interrupt your flow and make you stumble in front of your audience.

Second, the Lightning to VGA Adapter has another Lightning plug on it so that you can add a Lightning cord connected to a power source.  That way, you can charge your iPad during a presentation without any worries about running out of power.  You can’t do that with the old 30-pin to VGA adapter.  iPads have much better battery life than laptop computers, and I’ve always loved that I can run hours and hours of slides from an iPad without having to worry about power as long as I start with a good charge.  But thanks to this Lightning plug, I’ll be safe even if I forgot to charge my iPad the night before and I only have a small charge remaining.

Third, the Lightning connector does a better job staying connected to the iPad.  Even though the Lightning connector is tiny and is easy to unplug from an iPad or iPhone, it makes a firm connection.  Several times in the past I have had an iPad or an iPhone 4 or 4S connected to a projector and the 30-pin connector would come out just a tiny bit, not enough for you to really notice if you look at it, but it results in the connection being lost to the projector.  The audience instantly sees that I am no longer showing anything on the screen, but it sometimes takes a few seconds for me to notice.  Ugh; very embarrassing.  In my initial experiences with the Lightning to VGA Adapter (I gave a presentation from an iPad mini this past Friday, and I conducted several tests last week), the Lightning connector stayed very snug and did not disconnect until I was ready for it to disconnect. [UPDATE 7/3/13:  I’ve now given countless presentations with my iPad mini using this Lightning to VGA Adapter over the last six months and I continue to love that the Lightniing connector is much more snug.  The adapter has never accidentally disconnected from my iPad during a presentation.]

Fourth, the Lightning to VGA Adapter seems to do a slightly better job of sending the video signal to a projector.  When I use the 30-pin VGA connector and I switch from mirroring my screen to running an app that displays something different on the projector than the screen — such as Keynote, where your audience just sees the slide but the iPad screen can show you the current slide, the next slide, a timer, etc. — there will sometimes be a flicker as the screen mode changes.  I’ve never figured out what causes the flicker to occur.  Sometimes I think it is the projector I’m using, sometimes it seems to have something to do with the app I’m using on the iPad, and sometimes I think it is just complete randomness.  But so far I have yet to see any flickering at all when I switch modes on the iPad mini using the Lightning to VGA Adapter — even when I try to recreate the exact same circumstances that caused flicker on my iPad 3 using the 30-pin to VGA adapter.

Those are four major advantages.  The only slight disadvantage that I’ve seen is that the cord is much shorter.  The 30-pin version is over 10 inches end-to-end; the Lightning version is under 5 inches end-to-end.  VGA plugs tend to be big and bulky, and I prefer having a slightly longer cord to separate that plug from my iPad or iPhone.  Having said that, the shorter cord does make it easier to carry around the Lightning version.

I realize that in some ways, this list of advantages and disadvantages is irrelevant.  If you want to connect your iPad or iPhone to a projector and you have a newer model with the Lightning connector, you simply need to get this adapter.  Nevertheless, it’s nice to see that Apple took the time to make this a better adapter.  And frankly, I like these improvements in the Apple Lightning to VGA Adapter enough that I suspect that in the future I will be using my iPad mini, not my iPad 3, to run presentations.

Click here to get Apple Lightning to VGA Adapter from Amazon ($43.59).

Apple’s new Maps app in iOS 6 has certainly received its share of bad publicity.  Even Apple CEO Tim Cook admitted that Apple “fell short” of its goal of “deliver[ing] the best experience possible to our customers,” adding that he was “extremely sorry for the frustration this has caused our customers.”  My experience with the app is that it works quite well when I provide a street address, and I love the turn-by-turn directions and the flyover feature.  Where the app has fallen short for me has been its database of points of interest.  Every once in a while, I give it a place name instead of an address, and the app gives me an old or otherwise incorrect address.  This week, Google brought its maps back to the iPhone by releasing the free Google Maps app.  I’m happy to see streetview back on the iPhone — it is often very useful to preview what a place looks like before you go there — and the reviews have been very positive.  The end result is pretty good for iPhone users.  We now have a better version of an app containing Google’s maps, while at the same time we have Apple devoting serious resources towards adding improvements to its own Maps app.  Click here to get Google Maps (free):  .  And now, the rest of the news of the week:

• I regularly use my iPad to give presentations.  This afternoon, for example, I’m giving a presentation on using an iPad in your law practice for the Louisiana State Bar Association’s Techno Friday CLE.  (If you are in New Orleans, join us!)  But one thing that I haven’t done yet is cut the cord — i.e., use an Apple TV and an AirPort Express instead of a VGA cord connected to the projector.  It seems like a great idea, but in my (admittedly limited) tests, I’ve had problems with the connection being flaky, so I’ve stuck with the tried-and-true method.  But California attorney David Sparks has apparently had some success with it, and he describes the process in this post.  I suppose I’ll have to give it a try in 2013.  In the meantime, if any of you want to live on the cutting edge, I’d love to hear about your experiences and any tips.
• Robyn Weisman of Law Technology News explains how attorneys handling the huge BP oil spill litigation in New Orleans used Trial Pad and TranscriptPad and a whole bunch of iPads to manage key aspects of the litigation.
• Indiana attorney Bill Wilson explains
  
  on his Third Apple blog why he uses Liquid-Armor instead of a case on
  
  his iPhone and iPad.  I’m not sure that I’m ready to spray something
  
  like this on my device, but Wilson says that it worked for him.
• David Pogue of the New York Times reviews the new Google Maps app.
• Dan Moren of Macworld offers this hands-on assessment of the Google Maps app.
• John Gruber of Daring Fireball wrote this excellent analysis of the Google Maps app.
• Lex Friedman of Macworld offers theories on why it is good for Apple for the Google Maps app to exist.
• Andy Ihnatko of the Chicago Sun-Times explains why he prefers the Google Maps app to Apple’s app.
• Attorneys and others have been looking forward to a Microsoft Word app on the iPhone/iPad for a long time.  Now that there are signs that such an app will be released in 2013, Derek Kessler of iMore opines that it might be too late.  I think he has a point.  Had Microsoft Office been available for the iPad soon after launch, it might well dominate the word processing market on iOS just like it does on the PC.  But by waiting, we now have other credible solutions, including Apple’s own Pages.  Interesting food for thought, although I’m sure I’ll still buy Office for iOS if it is ever released.
• It’s the end of the year, so once again Apple has announced the iTunes Best of 2012.  Click here to launch iTunes and see the list of the best apps of the year, where you will also find links to the best music, movies, TV shows, books and podcasts. 
• By the way, congratulations to California attorney David Sparks, author of Paperless, for making the iTunes list of best books of the year.
• The Pope is now on Twitter (@Pontifex), and as you can see in this picture in the New York Times, he is using an iPad.  
• Time magazine named the iPhone 5 the best gadget of the year.
• Art of the iPhone shares three hidden features of the iPhone Camera’s Panorama mode.
• And finally, if you are still coming up with gift ideas for the person who has everything, Juli Clover of AppAdvice found some funny over-the-top iPhone handmade iPhone cases on Etsy.  Click here to see them.  But Clover’s article just hit the tip of the iceberg, there are so many more.  For example, I found these after just a few seconds of searching Etsy:

Love Pink Candy iPhone 4G Case

iPhone 5 bling crystal case

Christmas Deco Whipped Frosting Candyland Gingerbread Cabochon iPhone 4 4S Phone Case

I recently received an email from Matthias M. Edrich, a tax attorney in the Denver office of Kutak Rock LLP, letting me know about an app that he developed called TouchTax.  The app contains the full text of the current IRS Code and the related Treasury Regulations.  I don’t practice tax law, but Edrich sent me a free copy of his $5.99 app so that I could check it out.  It looks like a useful app for anyone who wants to have access to federal tax laws wherever they go.

The app has a nice interface with a main page from which you can choose to browse the Code, Regs or IRS Bulletins, jump to a specific section in the Code or Regs, perform a keyword search, or go to one of your favorites.  The relevant laws then appear in a layer on top (on the iPhone), but you can always tug the icon at the bottom left to move away that layer and go back to the main page.  Edrich (pictured at right) has versions of TouchTax available on a large number of devices — not only the iPhone and iPad, but also Google Android phones and tablets, the gone-but-not-forgotten HP/Palm TouchPad Tablet, and the BlackBerry PlayBook.  For example, here is a recent review of the TouchTax app on Android devices by Jeff Taylor of The Android Lawyer.  And Florida attorney Rick Georges of FutureLawyer, an Android user, helpfully advises:  “I would not mention to a date that you carry the entire Revenue Code on your phone. You are really already plenty dorky enough.”  Ahem.

 

If you know the Code section that you want to see, just make sure that the “Code” tab at the top is selected and enter the number.  For example, if gift-giving is on your brain now that we are in the holiday season, you can enter “102” to jump to 26. U.S.C. § 102, the general rules on gifts and inheritance income tax.

 

One thing I like about the way that the sections are displayed is that major sections — e.g. § 102(a) and § 102(b) — are highlighted in pink.  Major subsection titles are highlighted in purple, and then grey.  This highlighting was helpful when browsing through a long section, often making it quick and easy to orient myself as to where I was in the statute. If you want to use the entire screen to read the law, just tap the double arrows at the top right to make the bars at the top and bottom disappear.

Use the left and right arrows at the bottom to browse backwards or forwards through the sections.

Unfortunately, the text is read-only and cannot be selected.  Thus, you cannot copy a sentence of the law and then paste it into an email or another app.  (See below for a work-around.)

The Code provisions also contain hyperlinks to the related Treasury Regulations, saving you the trouble of entering a new search.

 

If you want to email a section, tap the paper airplane icon.  Instead of sending the text, the app prepares an email with a link to the same provision on the TouchTax website.

If you want to search for a keyword in the Code, Regs and IRS bulletins since 2003, tap the Keyword tab on the main screen.  The search does not take place within the app itself but instead takes place on the TouchTax website.  This means that the results come quickly, but it also means that you need to have internet access to perform a search.

 

Once the search results load, you have the option of redoing the search using a natural language relevancy search, which will give you even more results, although some might not include your exact keyword(s).

There is currently a problem with the keyword search feature:  the keyword itself is not highlighted in the text.  Thus, you know that the keyword appears somewhere, but you need to hunt for it manually.  One (awkward) work-around:  email the section to yourself, then click on the link which pulls up the text of the same section in the Safari browser, and from there you can use the search feature in Safari to see your search terms highlighted.  You can also select and copy text in Safari, something that, as noted above, you cannot do in the app itself.  Here are screens from Safari:

 

Fortunately, Edrich tells me that highlighting search terms is already on his list for the next update of the app.

The app includes a notes feature.  Tap the pencil icon and enter a note associated with a section.  From the main page of the app, you can see a list of notes that you have created.  When viewing a note, you can choose to email it, which composes an email with the link to the statute but also includes your note in the text of the email.

 

I spent most of my time testing this app on an iPhone 5, but it is a universal app so it will also work on an iPad.  On the iPad, the main page portion of the app is always visible on the left, with the content shown on the right.

The app does not give you any options for changing text size or font.  The default actualy looked fine to me on an iPhone 5, but on the iPad mini I did find myself wishing that I could make the text larger.

Apps like this that contain the text of laws are only valuable if they are kept up to date.  Edrich tells me that since he uses this app himself, he has been keeping it up to date and plans to continue to do so.  He gets the content directly from the Government Publishing Office and uses the most recent official version of the Code and Treasury Regulations, updating the app each time the GPO publishes new official versions.  Edrich tells me that he updates the Internal Revenue Bulletin information weekly. Edrich also states on the website for this app:

TouchTax is updated within a few weeks of each federal update of the
official finalized Code and Regulations.  The federal government appears
to be updating these materials each May and June.  The next Code update
is expected in May 2013, and the new Regulations update is expected in
June 2013.

This app itself was originally released a year ago, and it has already been updated six times since then, which bodes well for the future.  Edrich tells me that there are already 2,000 people using his app, most of
whom are iPhone/iPad users.

I’m glad to learn that the search issue I noted above is already on the list to be addressed in a future update.  Hopefully Edrich can also add the ability to select text.  But even in its current form, TouchTax is a useful app for those attorneys or accountants who work with the tax laws and want to have easy access at all times.

Click here for TouchTax ($5.99): 

As I noted this past Friday, there is a part of the Brian Williams interview of Apple CEO Tim Cook that was not included in the 20 minute segment that ran on TV, a part in which Tim Cook explains that he does 80% of his work on an iPad.  I was surprised at how high that percentage is.  I love my iPad, but I can’t imagine doing 80% of my work on it, and I don’t run the largest company on the planet.  Watching that clip again, I also find it interesting that Tim Cook apparently likes to use the iPad’s on-screen keyboard.  Here is the full question and answer:

Q: How adapt are you at the virtual keyboard [of the iPad] which confounds a lot of us?

A: Pretty good.  I think if you stick with it a little while, you get quite good at it.  And the auto-correction is quite good.  And so I ditched physical keyboards.  80% of my time is spent on iPad in terms of authoring emails and working on things.  And I still spend time on the Mac, and of course I have this [holding his iPhone] with me all the time.

So not only is Tim Cook using an iPad a lot more than a computer, he is doing his typing on the iPad’s virtual keyboard.

I was thinking about that over the weekend when I saw an interesting article by Jason Snell, the Editorial Director of Macworld, PC World and TechHive, called Why I’m Writing on the iPad.  He says that he is writing most of his articles on the iPad using the virtual keyboard.  He admits that he is faster with the physical keyboard on his computer, but explains that when uses the iPad’s virtual keyboard and has to type slower, his brain spends more time choosing his words and the end result is better.  He compares it to writing with a pen and paper, in which the process of getting words written is so much slower that your brain is forced to spend more time thinking about what you are writing.

I don’t type on the iPad’s virtual keyboard very often.  Just about any time that I am going to sit down at a table and type something with the iPad, I use the Apple Bluetooth keyboard.  I am a fast typist on a physical keyboard, and my writing style is to quickly get the words on the page, and then once that is done, I go back and edit to improve the sentences, move things around, etc.

Those times that I don’t use the physical keyboard with my iPad, I tend to use a stylus and take handwritten notes in GoodNotes.

I’m not saying that I never use the iPad’s virtual keyboard — I use it with emails all the time — but unlike Tim Cook and Jason Snell, I never really consider using it for serious writing.  But Snell’s article has me thinking, and maybe I’ll try writing with the virtual keyboard just to see how it changes both the way that I think and the final work product itself.

Note that when I say “iPad” above, I’m just talking about the full-size iPad.  The virtual keyboard on the iPad mini is so much smaller that I don’t see how anyone could touch type very quickly on it.  Indeed, with the iPad mini, I find it faster to turn the device to portrait orientation and then use my thumbs to type on the keyboard, which is similar to typing on an iPhone’s virtual keyboard with your thumbs except that you have to stretch your thumbs a little bit more on the iPad mini. 

If anyone else out there had found it to be advantageous to type text of any real length on the iPad’s virtual keyboard, I’d love to hear from you.  Cook and Snell are both pretty smart guys, so you are in good company.