Many people, myself included, wondered how Apple would continue without Steve Jobs. But Apple CEO Tim Cook seems to have done a fantastic job with the company, and it is good to know that Apple is in good hands. Cook is famously private, but he recently agreed to two major interviews. Last night, NBC’s Brian Williams interviewed him on the show Rock Center, and you can watch the program here on the NBC website (or here on YouTube). (If you’d rather read than watch, Alex Heath of Cult of Mac posted a transcript.) Second, Josh Tyrangiel of Bloomberg posted a long interview with Cook. Both are worth your time if you are interested in how Apple works and how Apple prepares for what’s next. And now for the news of note:
Virginia attorney Sharon Nelson and her husband John Simek discuss using an iPad in court in this article for Litigation News.
California attorney Scott Grossberg answers questions from attorneys about using the iPad in a law practice.
South Carolina attorney Justin Kahn of iPad Notebook discusses JuryPad, a new app to assist with jury selection.
Kahn also notes the new features in an update to TrialPad, an app that you can use to present evidence at trial.
Nick Bilton of the New York Times explains why if he was forced to live on a desert island with one device, he would pick the iPad mini.
Apple updated iTunes to version 11. David Pogue of the New York Times likes it, and explains why.
Horace Dediu of Asymco wonders if Apple is moving to a six-month cycle, with an iPhone 5S due in Spring of 2013.
In a part of the Brian Williams interview with Tim Cook that didn’t make the cut for the TV show, Tim Cook explains that he does 80% of his work on an iPad, and the other 20% on a Mac or an iPhone. I use my iPad quite a bit in my practice, but I’m nowhere near 80%.
Kevin Fitchard of GigaOm reports that T-Mobile USA will start selling the iPhone next year, and will do it differently than other carriers. T-Mobile will sell the iPhone unsubsidized, which means between $650 and $850, but will then offer cheaper monthly plans, which saves customers money in the long run.
The Daily made a big splash when it debuted as an iPad-only newspaper. I’ve been a subscriber since day 1, in part because of the content, but in part because I wanted to support their efforts. The Daily is shutting down this month, and John Gruber of Daring Fireball offers some thoughts on why.
Andy Ihnatko of the Chicago Sun-Times recommends some interesting tech gifts, including iPad and iPhone accessories.
And finally, have you ever felt that you wanted to use a stylus with your iPad, but you wanted something that isn’t shaped like a pen? Woodees has come out with the iPic, a cross between a stylus and a guitar pick. I can understand using this with a virtual guitar app, but for other apps, is this crazy or ingenious? I’m actually not sure. If you want to find out yourself, it can be yours for $9.99. Here is the video:
Yesterday Apple updated its iWork apps for iOS: Pages, Keynote and Numbers. There are lots of new features in version 1.7 of these apps, and Leah Yamshon of Macworld provides a good overview. I want to dig deeper on just one new feature because it is so critical to most lawyers: the ability to track changes to a word processing document. The good news is that the feature works well for viewing and creating redline edits. The bad news is that the app doesn’t give you an easy way to review all edits at once, and there is no support for Comments.
I am often out of the office when I am sent a Word document containing redline edits that I need to read. When it comes to just reading a document and seeing the edits, version 1.7 of the Pages app works quite well. When you first open a document in Pages containing redline edits, you will only see what is added, not what is deleted. To see both, tap the Tools icon, tap Change Tracking, and then change the view from the default setting of Markup Without Deletions to Markup. With this change, you will see additions in a different color and deletions in that different color but with strikethrough. For example, you might see something like this if an amount is changed from $500,000 to $100,000: $500100,000.
If multiple authors have changed a document, you will see the changes of each author in a different color. The Pages app doesn’t show you the name of each author, but when you send
an edited document back to a computer running Word, changes made by the
iPad or iPhone will use the name of your iPad or iPhone as the author. For example, changes that I made with my iPad showed up on my computer as being made by “Jeff’s iPad.” If you use a wacky name for your iPad or iPhone, keep this in mind before you send redline edits to a client.
You can also accept or reject edits in Pages 1.7. To do so, double-tap on an edit, andthen select Accept or Reject from the pop-up menu.
Unfortunately, Pages 1.7 does not include a review mode in which you can view a change and decide to accept or reject it and then instantly go to the next change. Instead, you must double-tap on each change to accept or reject it. When Quickoffice Pro added a track changes feature this past October, it did include this feature, as I noted in my review. However, Quickoffice Pro doesn’t currently support footnotes, which prevents me from using it on most of my litigation documents. Pages, on the other hand, includes the best support for footnotes that I have seen in any iPad or iPhone app.
The biggest shortcoming that I see with Pages 1.7 is that it still does not support the Comments feature of Microsoft Word. I myself don’t use the feature — when I am editing a document and I want to say something, I usually just type it in bold and highlight my words — but I work with several other people who do use that feature when they send me a redlined document. If you try to open a document in Pages that contains Comments, Pages will warn you after it converts the document from Word to Pages format that it has deleted all of the Comments. This warning is presented to you on the iPad like this. (I added the red circle to emphasize where you need to look.)
On the smaller iPhone screen, you instead just get a warning that “This document may look different on your iOS device” and you need to tap a button marked “View Details” to see a list of warnings that the iPad shows automatically.
If someone emails you a document with edits and you see that warning after opening up the file in Pages, I recommend that you go back to the email and open up the document in another app that does show Comments such as Documents to Go, Office2 or (if you don’t care about footnotes) Quickoffice Pro.
Track changes support has long been the Holy Grail for many litigators using an iPad or iPhone. For the most part, I really like the way that Apple implemented this feature in the latest version of Pages. I wish that the update included a better way to review each edit, but for the most part I suspect that I’ll just scroll through a document and look at the redline edits in the context of the document as a whole so this omission is not critical for me. The lack of support for Comments will sometimes be a problem (depending upon how often you work with people who use that feature), but as long as you know about it and have an app like Documents to Go, Office2 or Quickoffice Pro, you can work around the Comments omission when it becomes an issue.
I have long been a fan of Pages because it is a powerful, rock solid app. For example, Pages is my preferred app for creating Word documents on the iPad. And if I am in a meeting and I am typing notes on my iPad using a Bluetooth keyboard, Pages is the app that I always use. With the new track changes feature, I strongly suspect that Pages will also become my favorite app for viewing and creating redline edits on the iPad.
I rarely create redline edits on my iPhone, but if I need to do so, I suspect I’ll use Pages there too. For simply viewing redline edits on my iPhone, I still prefer using Documents to Go because it has the best pinch to zoom implementation of any other word processing app, and with the iPhone’s smaller screen I find that it really helps to have an elegant way to make the text larger.
Click here to get Pages ($9.99):
The other apps I discussed above:
Click here for Quickoffice Pro HD [for iPad] ($19.99):
Click here for Quickoffice Pro [for iPhone] ($14.99):
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):
Last week, I received an email from Portland attorney Josh Barrett. (Josh started the great Tablet Legal website in January of 2010 when the iPad was first announced, and ran that website until he finally called it quits earlier this year.) He was writing to recommend that I check out Fantastical, a calendar app for the iPhone from Flexbits. Josh has been a fan of the Mac version of Fantastical for some time, but it was a new product to me. The app is only $1.99 right now (at some point the price will increase to $3.99), and I decided to spend the two bucks to see what all the fuss was about. Boy am I happy that Josh sent me that email. This is a brilliant and beautiful app that I think every busy attorney using an iPhone would really appreciate. Indeed, anyone who manages a lot of appointments will find a lot to love in this great little app.
The focus of the app is version of a calendar that is similar to the list view in the built-in Calendar app. I’ve always liked the list view on the iPhone because it is a great way to browse a bunch of upcoming events at one time. But the list view is improved in Fantastical because there is also a row of dates along the top that you can quickly flick to jump forward or backwards in days. Alternatively, if you want to see a traditional calendar, you simply swipe your finger down on the top of the screen to replace that row of dates with a calendar, and then swipe left or right to change the month instead of the day. (Swiping to change the month is considerably easier than tapping those tiny arrows in the built-in Calendar app to change the month.) Swipe down again to return back to the row of dates. The gestures are very easy and quickly become second-nature.
I can’t show you my own calendar without showing some confidential information so I’ll start with two screens from the Fantastical website that illustrate the two views:
As you can see, both the list view and the calendar view include small bars indicating other appointments that you have on that day, just to give you a small visual clue that there are (or every once in a while, are not) other items already on your calendar for that date. If you use multiple calendars (I don’t) each will have a different color. In either view, you can jump to the current date just by tapping at the top (where in the above images it says “November 2012”). Tap on any event to see all of the details on a full screen.
If that was all that this app did, that would be enough to recommend it because it is such a fast and easy way to jump around a calendar and quickly see what is coming up. But that is just the beginning. The app also includes a nice search feature. Swipe down just a little bit on the calendar at the top (not far enough to switch views) and you will see a search box. Unlike the built-in Calendar app that only searches all fields, Fantastical also gives you the option to search by the Title, by the Location, or by the Invitees.
I notice that when I run a search in the built-in Calendar app, I only see results from the last 12 months. In Fantastical, I am seeing results from the last 10 years.
But I’m saving the best feature of Fanstastical for last. Creating an event in the built-in Calendar app always seems like it takes more time than it should. First you tap the + button, and then you have all of these fields to fill out. But in Fantastical, you can create events just by using natural language. Type “Meeting with John next Friday at 3” and the app creates that event. In fact, you can even watch the app create the different parts of the event as you type, an animation that is so neat and fun that you might want to spend the $2 just to see that at work.
Other examples that work, taken from the Flexbits website:
Grocery shopping at Wegmans Thursday at 5pm
Lunch with Matthew at 123 Main St at 1:30 Monday
Family vacation from August 9-18
Soccer practice every Tuesday at 6
Sam’s birthday every year on 5/16
When I see that big open field waiting for a narrative description, I often find myself tempted to just talk to my iPhone. You can do that too, and it works great — just tap the microphone icon and dictate. Of course, an iPhone 4S and 5 already have the ability to create events via speech thanks to Siri, and in some ways Siri is more powerful than Fantastical. For example, Siri will warn you if you have a conflicting event, and Siri will try to match the event with your Contacts (tell Siri “meeting with John” and it will show you a list of all of the John’s in your Contacts so you can select the right one). But I often find that I cannot talk to my iPhone when I am creating an event because I am on a call, or working with another person, and it is faster to type a narrative in Fantastical then it is to tap in each of the fields in the Calendar app.
Here’s another shortcut for creating an event. On the calendar bar at the top of the screen (either the row of days, or the full calendar), tap and hold on a day for a second or two. That brings you right to the New Event screen and you can just type the event title and Fantastical puts it on that date.
Deleting an event is also very fast. Remember that in the built-in Calendar app, you
need to tap an event, then tap edit, then scroll down to the bottom,
and then tap Delete. In Fantastical, just swipe across an event to see
the option to delete (much like you can swipe across an email in the
Mail app to delete it).
Fantastical is only an iPhone app. It runs on an iPad, but I don’t recommend doing so because it is not formmated for that screen and the gestures are designed for something that fits in your hand. On the iPhone, it only works in portrait mode, not landscape mode. That one makes sense to me because the core of this app is to show lists, which works better in portrait mode. Also, this app makes great use of the iPhone 5’s longer screen because you can see more entries in the list.
For just the 1.0 version of this app, it is packed with features, and I can’t wait to see what is added in the future. One that I’d like to see is the ability to jump to a specific date so that you can see what was happening several years ago without swiping all the way back one month at a time. (Tip
for the advanced user: you can use Launch Center Pro to create an action that takes you to a specific date within Fantastical.)
Fantastical lives up to its name. It is a fantastic alternative to the built-in Calendar, offering a faster and easier way to add events, search for events and browse events, all in an app that has a beautiful design. I was tempted to actually replace the Calendar icon at the bottom of my Home Screen with Fantastical, but I like the way that the built-in Calendar app tells you the current date on the face of the icon itself (a feature that Apple doesn’t let third-party apps use). Also, there are still some things that you can only do with the built-in
Calendar app, such as accessing alerts or creating new events with
invitees. (Fantastical uses the same databse as the built-in Calendar app so you can switch back and forth.) But for most of your calendering needs, Fantastical is all
that you will need. Thus, I have placed Fantastical on the very first page of my home screen, prime real estate reserved for only my most favorite apps.
As noted above, the developer says that the current $1.99 price is 50% off of what the app will eventually cost, so you can save a few bucks by buying it now. But whether the price is $2 or much more, it would still be worth it. I strongly encourage you to give this app a try and see if you like it as much as I do. I suspect that you will.
Thank you to Lawyer.com for sponsoring iPhone J.D. this month. Every day, people use the Internet to try to find a lawyer. Lawyer.com offers a very fast search engine for finding lawyers, and offers users many different ways to find a lawyer. Thanks to its useful listings and its obvious name, Lawyer.com’s traffic has increased ten fold since it launched three years ago, and it has become a great resource for the over 300,000 individuals who visit Lawyer.com every month.
Lawyer.com already has information on 470,000 practicing U.S. lawyers. Indeed, unless you are a brand new attorney, if you search for yourself on Lawyer.com you will probably find that you already have a basic listing. If your practice involves representing individuals and companies who may use the Internet when trying to find a lawyer, you can purchase a premium account on Lawyer.com for only $59 a month. That includes an expanded profile to add information such as your picture and all of your practice areas so that it is easier for potential clients to locate you. Member representatives at Lawyer.com help all Premium Members make the most out of their listings and can also provide advice on best online practices, website reviews, local marketing, etc. To sign up, just find your Lawyer.com listing and click the “Upgrade to a premium listing” link on your page, or click here to create an account. You can sign up at Lawyer.com for no risk because the company offers a 30 day unconditional money back guarantee, plus you can instantly cancel at any time.
It’s worth noting that Lawyer.com is run by some folks who know a thing or two about the Internet. The CEO and President of Lawyer.com are Gerald Gorman and Gary Millin, two Internet pioneers who were behind Mail.com in the second half of the 1990s. See, for example, this article in Forbes back in June of 2000. I’ve enjoyed talking to Gorman — he clearly remains just as interested in the future of technology as he was 20 years ago when the Internet was new to all of us — and I appreciate Lawyer.com’s support of iPhone J.D.
We are about to start the last month of the year. If you are in the New Orleans area and still need CLE credits, I’ll be part of what looks to be a great CLE sponsored by the Louisiana State Bar Association two weeks from today called Techno Friday. I’d love to see you there. And now, the news of note:
Washington, D.C. attorney Reid Trautz recommends gifts for lawyers, including the Apple TV.
Dallas attorney Tom Mighell discusses a few iOS 6 features that you might not know about on the ABA TECHSHOW blog.
Similarly, Florida attorney Christopher Hopkins discusses iOS 6 features in this article from the December 2012 Palm Beach Bar Association Bulletin. (Note: link is a PDF file.)
California attorney Deanne Katz discusses how attorneys can use iPads.
South Carolina attorney Bill Latham of The Hytech Lawyer provides advice for attorneys looking to buy an iPad.
California attorney Scott Grossberg provides advice for using an iPad to present evidence in the courtroom.
Tim Eaton of the Austin American-Statesman discusses Texas legislators using iPads instead of laptops. (via Adriana Linares)
Jessica Lessin of the Wall Street Journal wrote an interesting profile of Apple’s Eddy Cue, who is in charge of services such as iTunes and iCloud.
Both kids and adults want an iPad for Christmas more than anything else, according to a Nielsen survey discussed by Jordan Golson of MacRumors.
I recently explained why an iPad mini might be the best iPad to get. David Pogue of the New York Times feels the same way.
Avvo launched an iPhone/iPad app for lawyers; details are in this press release.
I reviewed Nuance’s PaperPort Notes for iPad earlier this year. The new 2.0 version lets you take a picture using the iPad camera, or take a screenshot, and OCR any words in the picture to create editable notes. Click here to get PaperPort Notes (free):
Allyson Kazmucha of iMore links to an interesting Kickstarter project, an iPad stand called the Slope. I’ve never purchased a product via Kickstarter. For one thing, it takes a long time for the product to be manufactured and shipped. But this one looks like it could be good. (via Bill Burtis)
This report from Patently Apple is somewhat surprising. Apparently Apple had to pay Harley Davidson to use the name “Lightning” for the new iPhone and iPad connector.
Being told to turn off your iPhone and iPad so that you can watch a video explaining how to fasten an airplane seatbelt is usually annoying, but Delta is trying to make it more entertaining in its new set of pre-flight safety videos (1, 2). Delta did a great job with these and even kept the finger wag of Katherine “Deltalina” Lee. A Huffington Post article on the new videos includes links to other funny flight safety videos, such as the amusing New Zealand Airline video featuring a nude cabin crew (and don’t miss this related video).
Several of you have pointed out to me that one of the other honorees in the Legal Technology category of the ABA Journal Blawg 100 has quickly racked up the votes. Thanks for thinking about me, but with the support of other iPhone J.D. readers, I’m sure that gap can be narrowed. If you haven’t voted yet, it should only take you 10 seconds to do so, and I’d certainly appreciate the support. (You’ve already wasted lots of time watching those funny videos; you might as well do one more thing before you get back to work.) Simply click here, provide a name and email address, vote in the Legal Technology category, and then you’re done. Thanks!
And finally, iOS 6 on the iPad features a new Clock app that features an iconic clock face used by the Swiss national railway (recently licensed by Apple). If you want to use that clock face on a watch without having to strap an iPad to your arm, Peter Cohen of The Loop reports that you can purchase a Mondaine watch. Unfortunately, there is still no way to strap Siri to your arm.
Three months ago I reviewed the Jot Pro stylus by Adonit. I found it to be a high-quality stylus that offered a unique feature: a fine point with a clear disc at the end, a combination that made it the most precise stylus that I had ever tried with an iPad. But I had a few complaints about this otherwise excellent product: it was noisy every time the stylus tip tapped the screen, and there was something not quite right (to me) about how it felt on the screen. On November 1, 2012, Adonit released a second generation version, and Adonit sent me a free sample to review. I’m thrilled to see that the new Jot Pro fixes most of the problems I noted in my original review, resulting in a really incredible stylus.
If you haven’t read, or don’t remember, my review of the first generation version of this stylus, you might want to take it a look at it because 95% of the Jot Pro remains the same. The Jot Pro still has a very sharp point like a pen — unlike every other stylus on the market. That sharp point is connected to a clear disc that is large enough for the iPad to sense it (the iPad is made to sense something the size of a fingertip, not the size of a pen tip), but because the disc is clear you can see right through to the screen. As a result, you can be incredibly precise. With other styluses, you might feel like you are taking notes with a crayon or a marker. With the Jot Pro, you get the sensation that you are taking notes with a pen. And the stylus itself has a great weight, a rubber grip that is comfortable in your hand, and a cap to protect the tip that screws on the other side when you are using the stylus. The first generation Jot Pro felt like a premium product, and the same is true for the second generation Jot Pro. Here is the second generation Jot Pro next to my other favorite stylus for the iPad, the Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo:
What’s different about the second generation Jot Pro is that Adonit improved the tip. To reduce the harshness and the loud tap every time that the disc touches your iPad screen, the pointed tip is now two parts instead of one with a small point at the end that is supported by some sort of spring mechanism so that it gives when you press it down. View the animation on this page to see how it works in action. In this next picture, the old Jot Pro is on the left and the new Jot Pro is on the right:
Although you can still hear a slight sound when the second generation Jot Pro touches the screen, it is much softer than the first generation Jot Pro, and reduced enough to no longer be an issue. This is the major difference between the first and second generation Jot Pro, and it is a major improvement.
Adonit also made the disc itself smaller. Adonit bills this as a way to provide more accuracy. I’m not sure about that — the original Jot Pro already seemed incredibly accurate — but it does make the disc feel better against the glass screen of the iPad, and perhaps is another reason that the noise is reduced when tapping the screen.
If that was all that I had to say about the Jot Pro, I would conclude this review by saying that it is my favorite iPad stylus on the market today. Unfortunately, I noticed one problem with the Jot Pro that doesn’t occur all the time, but it is annoying when it occurs. Earlier this week I attended a court hearing that lasted about five hours and I took notes throughout the hearing using the excellent GoodNotes app on my iPad mini. I switched back and forth between the Jot Pro and the Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo to compare the two over the course of that long hearing. For the most part both were excellent, but every once in a while I would find that the “ink” drawn with the Jot Pro would skip. Here are some examples:
As you can see from the gaps in the “2” and the “3” in the first image, the “r” and the “f” in the second image, and the “g” in the third image above, the Jot Pro seemed to sometimes lose contact with the iPad screen. I tried applying more or less pressure to the Jot Pro, but that didn’t seem to make a difference. Let me emphasize that this happened rarely with the Jot Pro, but it did happen enough for me to notice it, and it never happens at all with the Bamboo Stylus duo.
[UPDATE 6/24/2013: I encountered those gaps using the GoodNotes app. On June 21, 2013, GoodNotes was updated to version 3.10 and one of the new features is “Jot Touch improvements.” The Jot Touch is a version of the Jot Pro that adds Bluetooth and thus adds pressure sensitivity. Rhys pointed out in a comment to this post that the update appeared to solve the gap problem, and in my initial tests, I’ve seen this too. Thus, it appears that software developers can fine tune their apps to work better with the Jot Touch/Jot Pro. This is great news, and should mean that as long as you use the correct app, you may not have to worry about gaps.]
The only other drawbacks I noticed with the Jot Pro also existed with the original version. First, I wish the Jot Pro had a clip for when I put it in my shirt pocket. Second, the Jot Pro works best when you are moving the tip across your screen, but when you need to tap once on an on-screen button, the Jot Pro does not always work — whereas my fingertip or a stylus with a more traditional tip such as the Bamboo Stylus do always works. Perhaps the iPad’s occasional inability to respond when you tap once with the Jot Pro is in some way related to the gaps that would sometimes appear when I was writing?
My main use for a stylus is taking handwritten notes, but I should note that if you are using a drawing program such as the fun Paper app by FiftyThree, the Jot Pro is miles ahead of other styluses. The more precise tip and the see through disc makes it much easier to be precise with your drawings.
For taking notes with an app such as GoodNotes, however, I’m torn as to whether the new Jot Pro or the Bamboo Stylus is better. They each have a different feel against the screen, but both feel really good. The Jot Pro is more precise but as noted above occasionally less responsive, while the Bamboo Stylus always elicits a response from the iPad but does feel more like you are using a crayon than a pen tip. If you think that a more precise tip would be appealing to you, I highly recommend the Jot Pro. It is one of the very best iPad styluses on the market today.
Note that while you can buy a Jot Pro on Amazon, it appears that Amazon is still selling the first generation version. Until that changes, I recommend that you buy directly from Adonit. [UPDATE: You can now get the second generation on Amazon; link added below.] You can get it in Gun Metal (what I tested), Silver, Turquoise or Red.
Every year, the ABA Journal looks at the 3,600 law-related blogs and prepares a list of their favorites. Yesterday, the ABA Journal announced the 6th Annual ABA Journal Blawg 100, and I was pleased to see that iPhone J.D. was on the list for the fourth year in a row. Click here to see this year’s list in alphabetical order. As always, this list is a fantastic resource for discovering new law-related blogs, so I guarantee that you’ll find some great posts to read.
The ABA Journal asks you
to vote for your favorites among the 100 by going to this page.
You have to register to vote (even if you registered last year), but it’s quick and easy, and the
requirement is there just to prevent one person from voting multiple
times. Plus, that page actually provides a better way to explore the list of the 100 blogs because they are divided into 14 categories. I’d be honored if you
voted for iPhone J.D. in the Legal Technology category. Some of my other favorites among this year’s picks are the Jonathan Turley blog, Taxgirl, the always funny Lowering the Bar, Abnormal Use, and the definitive source for U.S. Supreme Court information SCOTUSblog.
I love using my new iPad mini, so much so that I find that I am using it far more than my full-sized third-generation iPad. I never expected to type that sentence when I ordered the iPad mini last month. I almost didn’t order it at all — $329 is cheaper than a regular iPad, but certainly not an impulse buy — but I wanted to be able talk intelligently about whether attorneys should consider getting an iPad mini instead of (or for those feeling decadent, in addition to) a full-sized iPad. After almost a month of use, I am incredibly impressed by this device, and for many attorneys, this is the iPad to get.
Yes, it is simply a smaller iPad, with a screen that is about 80% of the size. But to just stop there is about as silly as saying that an iPad is just a big iPhone. In both cases, the difference in size has a drastic impact on how you use the device. The iPad mini is so much lighter than a full-sized iPad that I find myself wanting to pick it up and carry it around with me. I love that it weighs so little when you hold it in your hand, even if you are holding it for a very long time, that your arm and hand doesn’t get tired and distract you from the content on the screen. Because of the weight, I find myself reaching for the iPad mini, not the iPad 3, when I want to lean back in my chair and read pleadings in my office. Because of the size, I often found myself reaching for the iPad mini, not the iPad 3, when I was headed to court to attend a status conference or monitor a hearing. The iPad mini fits in the pocket of most of my pants, and also fits in the outside pocket of my suit jacket, so I could slip the iPad mini in one pocket and pick up a stylus to use when taking notes and head off to court without worrying about a briefcase. Sure, for some tasks like looking at my calendar or reviewing emails, an iPhone would have been enough, but when you need to look at pleadings or take notes in court, you need a larger screen, and the iPad mini is vastly better than an iPhone for those tasks. And because of both the size and the weight, I found that when I was at home and headed to a couch, it was the iPad mini that I reached for to surf the Internet.
Of course, there are disadvantages to using an iPad mini versus a full-sized iPad. When I use the GoodNotes app to take handwritten notes with a stylus, the full-sized iPad is better if I have a table because of the larger, nicer screen — and when resting on a table, the weight is not an issue. But if I am sitting in a chair and holding a device while I take notes, the iPad mini is often preferable because it is so much lighter and easier to hold.
Similarly, when I am using a device to review pleadings in GoodReader, it is tough to decide which device to use. Documents are larger and text is easier to read on the iPad, but when I am working with a document with large enough text — such as deposition transcripts, which usually have a wide margin that I can crop off in GoodReader to fill the screen with just the text — a lighter device is usually the better device if I am going to be holding it for a while.
The iPad mini uses the same processor as the iPad 2, so I know that means that it is slower than the fourth generation iPad and the iPhone 5. In every day use, however, I really didn’t notice it being much slower. I suspect that much of the processor oomph in Apple’s latest devices goes towards powering the Retina display, which the iPad mini lacks so the more advanced processor is less necessary.
Speaking of the Retina display, the lack of that display is the biggest drawback of this first generation of the iPad mini. As Rene Ritchie of iMore noted in this post, there are good reasons that Apple did not include a Retina display in the first iPad mini — in brief, a desire to keep the device thin and light with a long battery life. As battery technology improves and becomes cheaper, I fully expect to see a Retina display in an iPad mini in another year or so. But for now, the lack of a Retina display is an important consideration for anyone trying to decide between an iPad and an iPad mini. This is not something that I notice all the time (and if you don’t already have experience using an iPad 3 or an iPad 4, you might not notice it at all), but I definitely notice that text is not as crisp when I am reading emails or other text. Yesterday, I was reading the New York Times using the nice New York Times app on my iPad mini, and it was slightly annoying that the text was not as crisp … enough that I actually put down the iPad mini and picked up my iPad 3, but then after a few minutes I decided to go back to the iPad mini after all.
I suspect that most people will find a full-sized iPad preferable to an iPad mini when using the device as a laptop replacement. For example, I started typing this review using the Pages app and a Bluetooth keyboard on my iPad mini, but within a few minutes I switched over to my iPad 3. The larger, brighter, Retina-quality screen provides a much better experience, whereas I was squinting somewhat to read on the iPad mini screen. Of course I could have worked around this — for example, I could have increased the font size. And in the past I’ve been known to connect a Bluetooth keyboard to my iPhone and use that to type a memo or long email, and the iPad mini’s screen is certainly much larger than the iPhone. But with the iPad mini, I really felt like I was using a compromised substitute for a laptop. With my iPad 3, I don’t feel like I am making compromises. And I didn’t just notice this when typing text. For example, when I use the LogMeIn app to connect to my PC, the experience is far better using the iPad 3’s larger and more detailed screen.
For photos and videos, the full-sized iPad is also much better. Pictures look amazing, and 1080p video is stunning, on the iPad 3 or 4. The only time I noticed any advantage for the iPad mini for photographs was on Thanksgiving day when I was showing off some picture to relatives. The light iPad mini was easy to pass around, and photos of our recent family trip to Disney World looked good enough on the iPad mini to provide a springboard for sharing stories of our trip. Similarly, on Thanksgiving my family had a FaceTime videochat with my brother who was across the country, and the video quality on the iPad mini was fine for a video chat and the weight made it easy to pass around the iPad mini among family members who wanted to provide long-distance greetings.
For several weeks now, I’ve been struggling with the answer to one question: if a lawyer wants to get an iPad right now, would I recommend the fourth generation iPad or the iPad mini? Before I started using an iPad mini, I thought that the answer would be that the iPad mini is a fun little device for some, but most attorneys will prefer a full-size iPad to get real work done. Now, I’m not so sure. I estimate that over the last few weeks, I’ve used my iPad mini about three times as much as I’ve used my iPad 3. Some of that is just because it is the new gadget, but more often it is because the iPad mini is better suited for the work I’m trying to do. For a more casual iPad user, such as an attorney who will mostly use it as a consumption device to read websites, briefs, and someone who doesn’t expect to watch many HD movies, the iPad mini is an excellent device. You can hold it for a very long time without your hand getting tired, it is super-easy to carry around in a large pocket or a purse of almost any size, and the size is, frankly, fun. On the other hand, if you plan to use the device as a replacement for a laptop to do more sophisticated work, such as word processing, or if you are already used to the Retina display on an iPhone 4 / 4S / 5, and you want text, pictures and videos to look their best, then I think you are likely to be happier with a fourth generation iPad.
The problem is that I think that most attorneys will fall between these two extremes. Sure, you want something light and easy to carry, but you also like the idea of traveling with just an iPad and an external keyboard to get work done on the road. So for most, the decision will be tough. If you can only have one car, do you want a full-sized luxury car, SUV or mini-van that is comfortable and carries lots of people and tons of groceries, or do you want a two-seater convertible that is fun to drive and fits in even the smallest of parking spots?
Ultimately, after weighing the pros and cons, I cannot imagine not having a full-sized iPad, so if I were forced to buy only one today, I’d buy Apple’s fourth generation iPad. But I am someone who really pushes my iPad to the limits, and I realize that I am not the typical attorney buying an iPad. For many attorneys, the iPad mini will handle just about everything that they want to do, and the reduced size and weight will more than compensate for the smaller screen and lack of a Retina display.
The iPad mini is a great device that any attorney would enjoy using. There are still some tasks that are better suited for a full-sized iPad, but for a large number of the things that you will want to do with an iPad, the iPad mini is fantastic. Good luck to those trying to choose, and I hope that this review helps to nudge you one direction or the other, depending upon how you see yourself using your iPad. On the other hand, for a few of you who just want to have it all, you’ll get both and enjoy getting to decide between the sedan and the convertible every time you hit the road.
Every year, the American Lawyer ranks the top 200 law firms based on revenue, a list called the Am Law 200. Firms on the list include megafirms with thousands of lawyers such as Skadden, Baker & McKenzie, Latham & Watkins and Jones Day, relatively smaller firms with very high profits per partner such as Wachtell and Cravath, and successful regional law firms such as Lewis and Roca and my firm, Adams and Reese. For the last 17 years, The American Lawyer has conducted an annual technology survey of the AmLaw 200 firms. This year’s survey has information about iPhone and iPad support.
iPhone support
Back in 2008, only 5% of the firms reported having
attorneys using an iPhone. In 2009, that number jumped to 55%, leading
me to report (back when iPhone J.D. was not even one year old yet) that “Over half of the most profitable law firms use iPhones.” That number rose to 77% in 2010, 96% in 2011, and according to this year’s survey results, it is now at 99%. Suffice it to say that virtually every profitable law firm in America has lawyers using the iPhone. (Virtually all of the firms still support BlackBerry as well. 74% now support Android, and 37% support Windows Phone 7.) Given that we now see iPhones everywhere that we go, it no longer seems surprising to say that lots of lawyers use iPhones, but when you consider how dominating the BlackBerry was four years ago when only a few lawyers were using iPhones, this has been a big shift.
iPad support
This year’s AmLaw survey also asked about tablets. In 57% of the AmLaw 200 firms, over a quarter of the firm’s lawyers are using tablets. In 10% of AmLaw 200 firms, over half of the firm’s lawyers are using tablets. My own law firm has almost 300 attorneys, and while we’re not yet at the point where half of our attorneys use an iPad, we’re getting very close. And I say “iPad” not “tablet” in the context of my own law firm because while we have a handful of people using other platforms, virtually all of our attorneys using a tablet are using an iPad. I suspect that the same is true at most other AmLaw 200 firms. This year’s survey reveals that 99% of AmLaw 200 firms support the iPad, 31% support Android tablets and 12% support a BlackBerry tablet.
The survey also reveals that only 8% of AmLaw 200 firms pay for iPads. As I wrote in an article for the Big Law newsletter earlier this year, I don’t recommend that most law firms buy the iPads that their attorneys use. Instead, the key is to support iPads, including having someone in the tech department who can help people configure new iPads and select the best apps. Based on this year’s survey, that seems to be the approach that AmLaw 200 firms are taking.
On November 17, 2008, I took a picture of my iPhone for the banner of this website and started iPhone J.D. with the post “Why I use an iPhone.” That makes this website four years old now. It seems hard to believe that I’ve now spent more time on iPhone J.D. than I did in college.
Popular posts. It’s a tradition on iPhone J.D.’s anniversary to identify the most popular posts over the prior 12 months because it often reveals something about the topics that iPhone and iPad owners have been thinking about lately. I think that is certainly true this year.
1. Reviews of Notes Plus and GoodNotes. Many lawyers have explored taking handwritten notes on the iPad. There are many great apps that let you do that. Notes Plus includes lots of great features, including the ability to select something that you wrote and then translate it into text. GoodNotes remains my favorite app for taking handwritten notes, and I use it every week when I attend meetings.
2. Reviews of Wacom Bamboo Stylus Duo, Wacom Bamboo Stylus Solo and the BoxWave EverTouch Capacitive Stylus. If you are going to use your iPad to take handwritten notes, in addition to an app you need a good stylus. There have been lots of pageviews of these three reviews. The Wacom Bamboo Stylus Duo has been my favorite stylus for most of the past year, but I’m currently in the process of trying out a new version of the Adonit Jot Pro that I reviewed this year, and it is very impressive. My full review of the new Jot Pro will be posted here soon.
3. Missing apps in the “Open in…” menu. I mentioned in January of 2012 how frustrated I was that I would sometimes hold my finger down on an email attachment to try to open a document in an app only to have that app not show up in the list. Given the large number of pageviews of this post, I wasn’t the only one frustrated. But fortunately, Apple solved this problem when it released iOS 6 in September of 2012. The new “Open in…” screen has a much better layout, and now always shows the apps that I want. Finally!
4. Review of Office². There is little question in my mind why this post got so many pageviews. Office² was the first app to let you both see and create redline (track changes) edits in a Microsoft Word document. As of October of 2012, Quickoffice Pro now has the feature as well. Unfortunately, Quickoffice Pro does not show footnotes, which for my practice as a litigator is a huge omission.
5. 60 Apps in 60 Minutes. The 60 Apps in 60 Minutes session that I co-present at ABA TECHSHOW in Chicago every spring is always a packed room, and the post that lists those apps is always a popular post on iPhone J.D.
6. Review of PDFpen for iPad. For most attorneys using an iPad, I suspect that the most valuable use (besides handling emails) is handling PDF files. PDFpen for iPhone and iPad is a great app, so I wasn’t surprised to see so many people reading this post. My review of GoodReader was posted in mid-2011 so that post isn’t eligible for this year’s list of most popular posts, but that review also continues to get a huge number of page views this year. Fortunately there are lots of great options for attorneys looking to read and annotate PDF files on the iPad (or iPhone), and PDFpen and Goodreader are some of the very best apps.
7. Review of TranscriptPad. Of all of the legal-specific apps that I reviewed over the past 12 months, my review of TranscriptPad received the most pageviews. If you read and annotate transcripts in your law practice, this is a fantastic app.
This time last year, I noted that some of the older posts on iPhone J.D. continue to see a lot of traffic. These same five “old favorites” once again saw a ton of traffic again this year:
1. iPhone “No SIM card installed” message. When I first had this problem with my iPhone 4, it didn’t seem like many other people were talking about it. This post from July of 2010 has now been viewed well over 100,000 times. Clearly, I was not the only person to have the problem, and it must continue to be an issue for some if people are still reading that post today. As I noted in a follow up, the only real solution was to have the Apple Store replace my iPhone 4, leading me to believe that this is a hardware flaw affecting a small number of iPhone 4 devices.
2. My favorite iPhone shortcuts. iPhone J.D. was only a week old when I wrote this post in November of 2008, and it continues to see a lot of traffic. The tips are as useful today as they were four years ago.
3. A look at the iPhone passcode lock feature. This post from September of 2009 continues to be popular, and I hope that means that lots of people — especially attorneys — are using the passcode lock feature on the iPhone. You never know when someone else might pick up your iPhone.
4. iPhone Tip: create an Apple folder. I wrote this tip in June of 2010, and I continue to use an “Apple folder” on both my iPhone, my iPad and now my iPad mini.
5. Why the “i” in iPhone? If you were ever curious about the origin of the name of the iPhone, this is the post for you.
Visitors to iPhone J.D. My favorite part of publishing iPhone J.D. is hearing from readers, and once again I’d like to use this as an opportunity to talk about what I know about those of you who read this website.
About 43% of iPhone J.D. readers during the past year accessed this site using Windows, about 19% used a Mac, and over a third of visitors accessed the site from an iPhone or iPad. There were also about 1,000 visits from a BlackBerry device over the last 12 months. My guess is that those were mostly people looking to upgrade from a BlackBerry to an iPhone, something that I continue to see all the time.
Most iPhone J.D. visitors are in the U.S., but there continues to be viewers from cities around the world. For the fourth year in a row, there were more visitors from New York than any other city. London continues to be the top non-U.S. city, and I frequently get emails from barristers and solicitors in the U.K. who love their iPhones and iPads. Nine of the top 10 cities were on the list last year too. Last year, Singapore was #10 on the list. This year, Singapore just barely missed the top 10 (it was #11) and Sydney (which was #14 last year) moved up to the #8 spot. G’day, mates!
New York
Chicago
London
Los Angeles
Houston
Washington, DC
San Francisco
Sydney
Dallas
Atlanta
One of these days I suppose I should update the banner picture on iPhone J.D. Many of the apps that were important enough to me four years ago to be on my first homescreen have been replaced. Instead of TwitterFon, my favorite Twitter client is now TweetBot ($2.99): . I rarely play 2 Across or Wurdle any more. My current word game obsession is Letterpress (free, but you’ll want to spend $0.99 for the in-app upgrade to add features): Feel free to send me a GameCenter friend request if you want to play a game of Letterpress with me; I’m jeff@iphonejd.com. And instead of the built-in weather app, my home screen now features a folder with many of the weather apps I mentioned this past August, plus a new weather app that has quickly become one of my favorites: Check the Weather ($1.99):
On the other hand, I appreciate the nostalgia when I look at that banner picture and think of the state of the iPhone four years ago. The iPhone 3G was the hot new model and it would have seemed foolish back in 2008 to think about a Retina display. There were no folders on the iPhone, no copy and paste, no push notifications, no tethering, no landscape keyboard on the iPhone’s screen and no support for external Bluetooth keyboards, no Find my iPhone, no multitasking, no ability to open email attachments in another app, no FaceTime, and no Siri. Back in 2008, only 5% of AmLaw 200 law firms had attorneys using the iPhone. Now, there are lawyers using iPhones at almost every law firm.
Publishing iPhone J.D. for the last four years and discussing all of these improvements has been great fun. This website has given me a good excuse for learning how to make the most of my iPhone and iPad, it has given me the opportunity to meet some fascinating attorneys from around the world, and it has been so gratifying when people tell me that they learned something interesting and new from this website. Over the last four years, iPhone J.D. has served well over two million pageviews to well over a million different people. As the number of lawyers and others using the iPhone and iPad grows, I’m sure that I’ll continue to see many new visitors, but I especially appreciate those of you who continue to read iPhone J.D. every week, either in your browser, in your RSS reader or by subscribing to the email version of this website. Please continue to share with me your ideas for topics and apps worth considering on iPhone J.D. during the next year.
