Today is a big day in the world of iPhone. First, today is the day that the new iOS 6 will be available for download. [UPDATE: It is now available as of Noon Central time.] Click here for my initial thoughts from a few months ago on why iOS 6 will be great for lawyers. Once I have installed it and have had time to kick the tires myself, I’ll provide you with my follow-up thoughts and tips.
Second, we now are now seeing reviews of the new iPhone 5 from a select group of journalists who received a review unit from Apple last week. As a whole, the reviews are better than any review that I have ever seen for any previous model of the iPhone:
Ed Baig of USA Today: “I’ve been testing iPhone 5 for a week and want one, too. … People have always had lofty expectations for the iPhone 5, especially
as the competition stiffens. In delivering a fast, attractive,
LTE-capable and larger-screen handset, Apple has met those expectations
with a gem.”
Walt Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal / All Things D: “On balance, I still consider the iPhone the best smartphone on the
market, especially with its staggering 700,000 third-party apps and a
wealth of available content. … I found the new iPhone screen much easier to hold and manipulate than
its larger rivals and preferred it. In my view, Apple’s approach makes
the phone far more comfortable to use, especially one-handed.”
David Pogue of The New York Times: “This iPhone is so light, tall and flat, it’s well on its way to becoming a bookmark. …nearly every feature has been upgraded, with a focus on what counts: screen, sound, camera, speed.”
John Gruber of Daring Fireball: “I don’t know how else to convey the niceness of this thing. This iPhone 5
review unit is the single nicest object in my possession. I own things
that cost and remain worth more (e.g. my car). But I own
nothing this nice. It sounds hyperbolic to put it that way, but I offer
this observation with no exaggeration.”
Tim Stevens of Engadget: “Two times faster? Twice the graphics performance? Better battery life?
Actually, yes. The iPhone 5 over-delivers on all those promises. …the iPhone 5 absolutely shines. Pick your benchmark and you’ll find Apple’s thin new weapon sitting at or near the top. … This is without a doubt the best iPhone yet. This is a hallmark of design. This is the one you’ve been waiting for.”
MG Siegler of TechCrunch: “You’re going to want this phone. … I really do believe this is the best iPhone upgrade that Apple has done
yet (besting the iPhone-to-iPhone 3G jump and the iPhone 3GS-to-iPhone 4
jump). As such, it’s the best version of the iPhone yet. By far.”
Jim Dalrymple of The Loop: “That has been my takeaway from the design of the iPhone 5 — small design
changes that make for big user experience improvements. It’s important
to remember that while the changes on the outside may be small to the
naked eye, the changes on the inside are huge. Every major component of
the iPhone has been changed in one way or another.”
Scott Stein of CNet: “The more important audio improvement comes in the way of a third microphone, which aims to improve voice quality and, in particular, speakerphone quality, adding improved noise cancellation. In my tests, it was a definitive success: callers I reached via speakerphone noticed a crisper, clearer call on the iPhone 5 versus on the iPhone 4S. I didn’t experience any dropped calls over my time testing in the New York area, and based on responses from callers on the other end, it looks like call quality is generally improved via better microphone tech.”
Vincent Nguyen of SlashGear: “Apple has addressed the bigger-screen debate with a
solution that doesn’t undermine key usability promises, delivered LTE
without destroying battery life, and wrapped it up in a design that’s
both comfortably familiar and crisply revitalized.”
Harry McCracken of Time: “People who have owned non-Apple LTE phones for eons can mock the delayed
arrival of the technology on the iPhone all they want; Apple didn’t
wait until now out of lethargy. Instead, it bided its time until it
could introduce LTE without killing the battery. (With some early
Android LTE phones, you could practically watch the battery gauge
dwindle away as you stared at it.)”
Rich Jaroslovky of Bloomberg: “But if [LTE is] in your area, you’ll find the iPhone 5 roaringly fast —
far zippier than any previous iPhone at downloading Web pages, uploading
photos, installing apps and doing pretty much anything that requires an
Internet connection. My AT&T test unit routinely registered
download speeds 5 to 20 times faster than a 4S running over the slower
the same iPhone, but it’s completely different. That’s the main
takeaway point for the iPhone 5’s design. It’s something you can’t
really appreciate until you get up close and personal with the new
phone, but when you do, wow, you’ll really notice that difference. … This really is product design at its finest.”
Shane Richmond of The Telegraph (UK): “The iPhone 5 is a marvellous piece of design, arguably the most beautiful object Apple has ever produced.”
Luke Peters of T3 (UK): “The main benefit is that you can just see more. Web pages are longer, movies are wider, though many we found from iTunes and YouTube still have to be stretched or cropped to fill the screen, the photo viewing area is bigger (just) and Apple’s own, optimised apps make good use of the extra space.”
Peter Nowak of CBC (Canada): “The weight difference is very pronounced. At 112 grams, it’s 20 per cent
lighter than the 4S, but when holding both at the same time, it’s easy
to think the difference is even greater. The iPhone 5 is amazingly light
and slightly thinner, too, mainly because its main shell is now
aluminum, rather than a big chunk of glass.”
If you take the time to read those reviews, you’ll see that Luke Peters of T3 was the only one who was nonplussed. Everyone else was extremely impressed with the iPhone 5.
For those of us who preordered an iPhone 5, we’ll be able to draw our own conclusions in around 48 hours.
Last week, I teamed up with Judge Dan Hinde from Harris County, TX (269th Civil Court) to give a presentation at the Texas Center for the Judiciary‘s Annual Conference. We did a “60 Apps in 60 Minutes” session recommending apps that might be of interest to Texas judges, but most of the apps that we discussed would be of interest to others as well so I thought it might be useful to share the list on iPhone J.D. Here are the apps that we recommended:
After our presentation, Judge Charles Stephens from New Braunfels, TX shared with me an interesting way that he uses his iPad. He has an account with eFax, which gives him a fax number that sends PDF versions of FAXs to his email. When officers need warrants signed after hours, they can fax the warrant to his eFax number, he can then review the warrant on his iPad, if it is appropriate he can sign and date it using one of the iPad PDF programs, and then he can e-mail the signed document back to eFax so that the officer receives a signed fax and can execute the warrant. It’s nice to know that an iPad can help the cause of justice, even after hours.
[UPDATE: After reading the last paragraph, Judge Steve Rosen from the Seattle Municipal Court wrote me to say that he does something similar, but he cuts out the fax portion. He writes: “At
3 am (or whenever), if an officer needs a warrant, she emails a .pdf of
the warrant to my work email. She then calls my cell phone to wake me
up. Using my iPad, I then log in to my work email and review the search
warrant application. If I agree to issue the warrant, I use an app
called Sign-N-Send to annotate the warrant, cross out parts I don’t
agree with if necessary, and then sign it. I then email it back to the
officer. Using this system, our officers get very fast turnaround on
warrants (there is no delay for sending and receiving faxes), and I
never even have to get out of bed.”]
At 12:01 a.m. Pacific / 3:01 a.m. Eastern today, Apple, AT&T, Verizon and Sprint started taking orders for the new iPhone 5. Orders placed early enough should be shipped a week from today, but last year it only took 24 hours to sell out of the first batch, with subsequent orders taking a week or two to ship. If you want to be an earlier adopter, stop reading this now and place your order. [UPDATE: As of around 9am Eastern this morning, Apple sold out of its initial supply and began quoting a two week wait for delivery. (via iMore) Carriers such as AT&T and Verizon still have some left but I epxect them to run out quickly too.] And now, the news of note from the past week:
Susan Decker and Adam Santariano of Bloomberg write an interesting profile of Noreen Krall, Apple’s Chief Litigation Counsel who is responsible for Apple’s recent successful patent lawsuit against Samsung.
I know of some law firms that require their attorneys to use Good software on their iPad for security reasons. With this software, instead of using the standard Mail app, the attorneys use a special Good mail app that is quarantined from the rest of the iPad. This is good for security, but it means that it is difficult to use other apps on your iPad with attachments to emails. GoodReader just released GoodReader for Good, an app that lets you use GoodReader (my favorite iPad app for reviewing documents) within the Good environment. Joel Mathis of Macworld provides details on this app.
If you are trying to decide between AT&T, Verizon and Sprint for the new iPhone, Dan Seifer reminds us that you cannot talk and use data at the same time on Verizon and Sprint, but you can on AT&T. You cannot use voice and 4G LTE at the same time on any network, but on AT&T you can use voice and 3G (including the faster variants of 3G that AT&T calls 4G) at the same time.
Macworld posted one of its “what you need to know” features on the iPhone 5, and this one is packed with details that I haven’t seen before. For example, if you want to export video using a cable on the iPhone 5, you need an HDMI and VGA connector that works with the new Lightning adapter — but Apple is still working on those and they won’t be available for perhaps a few months. For now, your only option for getting video out is AirPlay (wireless) sharing.
John Gruber of Daring Fireball wrote a great “first look” article on the iPhone 5, plus a great analysis of the Apple announcement in general.
Dan Moren of Macworld reports that Apple has unveiled support for Notes and Reminders on iCloud.com. In my initial tests last night, it worked well with Reminders, but some of the Notes on my iPhone don’t appear on iCloud.com yet.
Dan Frakes of Macworld writes about the new Lightning connector on the iPhone 5 and what it means for you.
A couple in San Francisco recently hired a professional photographer, Kim Thomas, to photograph their wedding, but instructed Thomas to only use her iPhone. Thomas shows some of the results on her website. There are actually some great photos there, but I can’t say that I would recommend that other engaged couples go this route.
And finally, for those looking for yet another accessory for their iPhone, how about a T-Shirt? CuteCircuit has come up with a prototype for something they call tshirtOS, a T-shirt that contains 1,024 ultrathin RGB LEDs, and the video is amusing. (via SlashGear)
Yesterday, Apple unveiled the new iPhone 5, which (in the U.S. and many other countries) can be pre-ordered starting this Friday, September 14 and will be in stores starting Friday, September 21. The price is the same as the iPhone 4S that it replaces: $199 for 16GB, $299 for 32GB and $399 for 64GB. Except perhaps for the screen size, there is no single, new hardware feature that really stands out with the iPhone 5. Instead, Apple has tried to enhance every part of the iPhone, and the combination of these major and minor enhancements adds up to a much better 2012 model of the iPhone.
I watched the video of Apple’s presentation last night and I’ve read initial reviews from lots of people who were there and who had a chance to try out the iPhone 5 yesterday. Here are the key features of the iPhone 5 and the reason that I think that lawyers will love this new device.
Design
Apple has come out with a new iPhone every year since it first debuted in 2007 so the iPhone 5 is the sixth model, but it is not the sixth design. The original 2007 iPhone had one design, the iPhone 3G in 2008 and 3GS in 2009 had a second design with rounded corners, and the iPhone 4 in 2010 and iPhone 4S in 2011 had a third design that was thinner and more squared off on the sides. The iPhone 5 is thus the fourth design for the iPhone, the first update since June of 2010, and it is a really nice design.
The most noticeable new feature is that the screen is now taller. The iPhone width stays the same at around 2.3″, which Apple considers the best size for your hand. I’ve tried some of the larger Android phones, and while a large screen can be nice, the larger width does seem awkward to hold. Thus, I’m glad that Apple kept the width the same. The height is now 4.87″, up somewhat from 4.54 on the the iPhone 4 and 4S. With that slight increase in height, and by devoting more of the front of the iPhone to the screen (shrinking the bezels at the top and the bottom), the iPhone 5 has a 4″ screen instead of the prior 3.5″ increase (using traditional diagonal measurements). Instead of 640 x 960 pixels, the iPhone 5 has 640 x 1136 pixels.
The extra pixels allow for one extra row on the home screen: six rows with 24 apps instead of five rows with 20 apps. It also allows apps to present more information at one time — more emails without having to scroll in the Mail app, a view of all five days in the work week when the Calendar app is in landscape view instead of just three days — and for some apps will mean that there is now space for additional options.
These new dimensions are also roughly 16×9, so watching a movie that is in widescreen format should be even more enjoyable on the iPhone 5. And while I prefer to type with my thumbs with the iPhone in portrait mode, if you are one of those people who prefer turning the iPhone to landscape mode to type with larger keys, you’ll like the even larger keys that you get with the extra 176 pixels.
All of Apple’s apps are, of course, updated for the taller screen. Third-party apps will need to be updated to take advantage of the increased screen real estate, but those that are not yet updated will simply have black bars on the top and bottom (or the two sides in landscape mode) so they will look the same that they looked on an iPhone 4 or 4S.
The iPhone 5 keeps the all-glass front that has been on every iPhone model. But unlike the all-glass back on the iPhone 4 and 4S, the iPhone 5 has aluminum on both the sides and most of the back. (There are small glass bands at the top and bottom of the back to let the antennas get a better signal.) On the black version of the iPhone 5, the aluminum has a black slate color; on the white iPhone 5 the aluminum has a bright silver color.
The iPhone 5 is thinner than previous models: 7.6mm versus 9.3mm. The main way that Apple was able to do this is that instead of having one layer for the touch sensor and one layer for the screen, Apple has figured out how to combine those two layers. This not only makes the phone thinner, but also makes the image sharper and reduces glare in sunlight. Vincent Nhuyen of SlashGear says: “We loved the Retina Display in the iPhone 4/4S,
but the iPhone 5 trumps both: it looks somehow crisper and cleaner, and
it’s bright, even under the lights of Apple’s demo area. The anti-glare
coating certainly helps there.”
Even though the iPhone is taller, because it is thinner it is also lighter, 112 grams instead of 140 grams.
The weight difference may not sound like much, but reports from people who were able to handle the iPhone 5 yesterday are that the weight difference is quite noticeable — in part because the iPhone is taller, so that weight is distributed across a wider area, which makes the whole thing seem even lighter. As Joshua Topolsky of The Verge states: “The 7.6mm, 112-gram chassis is incredibly sleek, and exceptionally
light… it feels almost too light in the hand. This isn’t just in
comparison to the relatively heavy iPhone 4S — sure, the iPhone 5 may
not be the thinnest phone out there as Apple claims — but this feels
incredibly light against smartphones in general.” Similarly, Andy Ihnatko reported on MacBreak Weekly: “It is much, much thinner in hand than it looks in any video or photo that you might get. It feels noticeably lighter than my iPhone 4S.” Thus, the iPhone 5 is not just technically thinner and lighter, but also it really feels thinner and lighter.
Apple emphasized yesterday that it uses very exacting manufacturing processes to produce a high-quality phone. This is good to hear, but it is nothing new; the iPhone has always felt like a more premium phone than most any other smartphone on the market. For example, for the iPhone 5, Apple disclosed that before the front glass is attached to the aluminum back, Apple first uses two high-powered cameras to take a picture of each back housing so that it can pick one of 725 different cuts of the front to get the best possible fit. As Darren Murph of Engadget states: “there’s no doubting the premium fit and finish when you clutch one of these things.”
There are a few other changes to the design. For example, the front-facing camera is now centered at the top so you will no longer have to hold the iPhone slightly to the side for your face to be centered in the screen during a FaceTime videochat. The headphone jack is now on the bottom instead of the top.
All in all, it looks like Apple has come up with a fantastic design. Ryan Block of GDGT joked on Twitter: “Great. Use the iPhone 5 for ten minutes and now my iPhone 4S feels tiny, fat, and ugly. And that’s how they get me every time.” I wouldn’t be surprised if this 2012 design remains the same for the 2013 version of
the iPhone too, just like the last two designs lasted for two years each.
Ultrafast Wireless Technology
A lot of what lawyers do with the iPhone involves sending and receiving data such as large email attachments, websites and PDF documents. Thus, I’m excited to see two improvements to the iPhone’s wireless technology.
First, the iPhone 5 supports 4G LTE with up to 100 Mbps theoretical capacity. I discussed this feature on Tuesday.
Second, Wi-Fi can be faster with the iPhone 5 because it supports the 5 GHz flavor of 802.11n (and 801.11a if that makes a difference to you) in addition to the 802.11b/g/n that the iPhone 4/4s support.
Faster
The iPhone 5 uses a new chip that Apple calls the A6. Thanks to the faster CPU and graphics, Apple says that the iPhone 5 will feel twice as fast when you are launching apps, saving images, viewing attachments, etc. Joshua Topolsky of The Verge said after using the iPhone 5 yesterday that “the device is noticeably faster than the iPhone 4S.” The iPhone 4S is no slouch, but the less time that you spend waiting on your device, the more time you can spend getting your work done — plus you have less frustration associated with waiting.
Improved Camera
Like the iPhone 4S, the iPhone 5 has an 8 megapixel camera and takes pictures with an f/2.4 aperture. But the iPhone 5 camera now does a better job taking pictures in low light, up to two F-stops greater in low light. And improved optics make your pictures even sharper.
Perhaps more important, the iPhone is now 40% faster when taking photographs, making it easier to take a large number of pictures in a row — just like a fashion photographer. Vincent Nhuyen of SlashGear says that “there’s no shutter lag or app delay that we can
see, and the whole thing – together with the camera shortcut on the iOS
lockscreen – makes an even stronger case for replacing your dedicated point-and-shoot.”
If you are taking video with an iPhone, the camera now has better stabilization. And Apple says that you can even take photographs while you are recording video; I’ll be interested to see how that works in practice.
If you like to use FaceTime, the camera on on the front now uses 720p instead of VGA, so you should look much better.
The iPhone 5 Camera app also lets you take panorama shots. David Pogue of the New York Times says: “I took only two panorama shots in my limited time with the iPhone 5, but they came out crazy good.” This may just be a feature of iOS 6, so perhaps older iPhones will gain the panorama feature as well.
Better Audio
The iPhone 5 does a better job of getting audio in and out of your iPhone.
First, the iPhone 5 features three microphones: one on the bottom, one on the front, and one on the back. The multiple microphones provide better audio for telephone calls, better noise cancellation, and better voice recognition for Siri.
The iPhone 5 also reportedly has better speaker quality.
Third, the iPhone 5 comes with a new type of earphone that Apple calls the EarPods. The shape is supposed to be a comfortable fit for a broad range of ears, and the acoustics are enhanced.
Jason Snell of Macworld says that he didn’t use the EarPods for long enough to judge whether they are more comfortable, but that they “sound a whole lot better than the old Apple earbuds did.” And David Pogue of the New York Times noted that the new EarPods seem to do a better job of staying in his ears.
The EarPods come with a storage and carrying case:
Finally, the iPhone 5 can take advantage of something called Wideband Audio which uses more frequency to make your voice sound more natural on a phone call. However, carriers need to provide special support for Wideband Audio, and as of now, none of the U.S. carriers have announced plans to do so.
Battery
You might imagine that these new features would cause a loss in battery
life. That was the problem with the original 4G LTE phones; battery
life was horrible. But the iPhone 5 actually has slightly more battery
life than previous models, such as 8 hours on 4G LTE or 3G, versus 6 hours on 3G with the iPhone 4S and 10 hours on Wi-Fi, versus 9 hours of Wi-Fi on the iPhone 4S.
The new “Lightning” Connector
Up until now, the iPhone has always had a 30-pin connector on the bottom. That connector first debuted with the iPod back in 2003. The iPhone 5 replaces the 30-pin connector with the new Lightning connector.
The Lightning connector is much smaller, so it helps the iPhone 5 to be smaller and lighter. It is reversible so you can plug it in either way; there is no “right side up” as there is with the 30-pin connector and most other cable connectors. And the Lightning connector is supposed to be more durable. David Pogue of the New York Times says that the Lightning connector “clicks nicely into place,
but it can be yanked out quickly.” That sounds good.
iPhone accessory makers can be expected to add the new Lightning connector to their products just as soon as they can. But what about all of your existing accessories that still use the 30-pin connector? You’ll have to use an adapter. Apple sells a $29 version that is just an adapter and a $39 version that includes a six inch cord between the 30-pin connector and the Lightning connector if you are also looking for a small extension.
iOS 6
The iPhone 5 comes with iOS 6 installed. (Current iPhones can upgrade to iOS 6 starting Wednesday, September 19.) I don’t mean to shortchange this because the fantastic iOS software is one of the main advantages of the iPhone. But Apple previewed iOS 6 this past June and announced virtually no new features yesterday, so take a look at this post to see all of the reasons that I think that lawyers will really like iOS 6.
Other Announcements
Apple made a few more announcements that might be of interest to lawyers using an iPhone.
Apple said that there are now over 700,000 apps in the App Store. 250,000 of them are tailored for the iPad. And here is an interesting statistic: 90% of iOS apps are downloaded by at least one person every month, and the average person has over 100 apps on their iPhone or iPad. So it’s not like everyone is just downloading the same thing.
Apple also announced that it has sold over 400 million iOS devices as of June of 2012. And that reminds me, I suppose I should mention that Apple also updated the iPod touch yesterday to include many (but not all) of the new features in the iPhone 5. So if you are looking for an iPhone without the phone, the new iPod touch may be just the ticket.
Finally, for those looking to get an iPhone who don’t want the latest and greatest, Apple will now sell the iPhone 4S (16 GB) for $99 and the iPhone 4 (8 GB) for free when purchased with a contract.
The Bottom Line
It comes as no surprise that the next version of the iPhone is even better, but with the larger screen, increased speed, and thinner and lighter design, I’m much more excited about the new iPhone this year than I was for the iPhone 4S last year. And that is saying something because the iPhone 4S has been a great phone.
Thus, I am excited to pre-order my iPhone 5 this Friday, and I’m sure that many other lawyers will be doing the same. I usually buy my iPhones directly from AT&T, and as of Wednesday night AT&T has yet to announce how it is handling pre-orders, but I’m sure we’ll hear more about that very soon. You’ll also be able to pre-order on the Apple website.
Today at 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern, Apple will introduce the 2012 version of the iPhone at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco. Because of the “5” in the shadow of the picture on the invitation, I presume that this new model will be called the iPhone 5, but we’ll find out in a few hours.
The theater will be full of members of the press, and many of the people who are attending plan to
live-blog the event as it happens. Here are direct links to the live
coverage at some of the sites that I expect to provide the best live
coverage:
Macworld. Jason Snell and Dan Moren are perhaps the best live-bloggers in the world for Apple announcements.
GDGT. Ryan Block has a great track record of providing excellent live coverage of events.
Joshua Topolsky will handle the live blog for The Verge, a relatively new website that has quickly became one of the very best sources of tech news.
Engadget. I believe that Tim Stevens is covering the event.
Ars Technica. Jacqui Cheng will be posting live updates.
Apple usually posts a video of the event later on in the day, so you should be able to watch it on Wednesday night. I look forward to finding out what Apple has to announce, and I’m sure I’ll be posting my thoughts on Thursday.
Apple will announce the next version of the iPhone tomorrow, which may be called the iPhone 5. Only Apple knows what features the new iPhone will have, but my hope is that it will include access to the fast 4G LTE network in addition to the 3G network supported by current iPhones. Earlier this year, Apple added 4G LTE to the iPad, so it makes sense to me that this feature will be extended to the iPhone tomorrow. Additionally, the Wall Street Journal has reported that the new iPhone will include 4G LTE, and their reporters typically have good sources for Apple information.
We’ll have to see how fast 4G LTE on the new iPhone will be, but on other smartphones 4G LTE can be up to ten times faster than 3G, so this feature on the new iPhone should make it considerably faster to surf the web, download music, stream video, etc. even when Wi-Fi is not available. If you are at your home, office, etc. where Wi-Fi is available, Wi-Fi will typically be about twice as fast as 4G LTE, but this can vary based on many circumstances so there will be times when 4G LTE is actually faster than Wi-Fi.
But even if the new iPhone supports 4G LTE, is 4G LTE available where you live? The answer varies based upon the carrier that you use. Here in the U.S., the iPhone is available on three carriers, and they all offer 4G LTE, but not in all cities.
AT&T will add 4G LTE to the following cities by the end of 2012:
Albany, NY
Albuquerque, NM
Allentown, PA
Birmingham, AL
Boise, ID
Boulder, CO
Cincinnati, OH
Charleston, SC
Columbia, SC
Columbus, OH
Denver, CO
Detroit, MI
El Paso, TX
Fayetteville, NC
Fort Myers, FL
Gary, IN
Grand Rapids, MI
Green Bay, WI
Harrisburg, PA
Hartford, CT
Honolulu, HI
Knoxville, TN
Lancaster, PA
Little Rock, AR
Louisville, KY
Memphis, TN
Milwaukee, WI
Minneapolis-Saint Paul, MN
Nashua, NH
New Haven, CT
Philadelphia, PA
Pittsburgh, PA
Portland, ME
Providence, RI
Reading, PA
Rochester, NY
Sacramento, CA
Salinas-Seaside-Monterey, CA
Seattle, WA
Springfield, MA
Toledo, OH
Tucson, AZ
Tulsa, OK
Wilkes-Barre, PA
Wilmington, DE
Verizon has a much larger 4G LTE coverage with 371 cities. That’s too many markets to list here, but here is a map from the Verizon website with red dots on the cities that have 4G LTE, and you can click here to check the Verizon website to determine your city is on the list.
If you use an iPhone with Sprint, 4G LTE coverage is currently available in these 18 cities:
Atlanta, GA
Athens, GA
Baltimore, MD
Calhoun, GA
Carrollton, GA
Dallas-Fort Worth, TX
Gainesville, GA
Granbury-Hood County, TX
Houston, TX
Huntsville, TX
Kansas City, MO / Kansas City, KS
Manhattan-Junction City, KS
Newnan, GA
Rome, GA
San Antonio, TX
Sedalia, MO
St. Joseph, MO
Waco, TX
Sprint says that in the “coming months” (who knows if that means before the end of 2012 or not) 4G LTE will come to 100 additional cities. Click here for a page on the Sprint website that lists those cities.
There was no In the news last week because my house had no electricity due to Hurricane Isaac, so in today’s issue I’m pointing out some interesting articles I’ve seen over the last two weeks. Of course, the biggest news right now is that in just a few days, on September 12, Apple is going to announce the new iPhone, and presumably will also release iOS 6. As we wait to learn more about that big news, here are the other news items of note:
Rocket Matter is a cloud-based legal billing and law practice management solution for small and medium larger firms, and I know many attorneys who use and love the service. This week, Rocket Matter announced a new iPhone app, so attorneys who use the service while on-the-go no longer need to use a more cumbersome web-based interface. The app looks really nice.
San Francisco attorney Deanne Katz of FindLaw recommends external keyboards for the iPad. My favorite combination is the Apple Wireless Keyboard with the Incase Origami Workstation.
Saul Elbein of the New York Times reports that Paris, Texas Judge Bill Harris decided a complicated and controversial oil pipeline condemnation suit by sending a 15-word ruling from his iPhone.
California attorney Morgan Smith explains his verdict calculator for iPad and gives you a link so that you can download it yourself. It requires Apple’s Numbers app.
iOS 6 will have a lot of great new features for iPhones and iPads when it comes out (presumably next week). One change is that the Maps app will no longer use information from Google Maps and instead will use Apple’s own map information. This means that we will no longer have Google Street View, but we will have Flyover, which uses detailed 3D models. Daniel Eran Dilger of RoughlyDrafted Magazine has a great explanation of what will be new in Maps.
David Pogue of the New York Times recommends apps that let your iPhone act like a walkie talkie to send quick voice messages to another person instead of text messages.
Joe Kissell of Macworld recommends apps to edit Microsoft Excel files on the iPad. I usually use Appple’s Numbers app to do this.
Dan Miller of Macworld discusses three cloud-based solutions for running Microsoft Office on an iPad.
Jeff Gamet of The Mac Observer reports that Delta Airlines is providing 4,500 iPads to airport restaurants so that diners can order meals using the iPads, and then use them to check news, weather, etc. I’d much rather use my own iPad when I travel, but I’ll be interested to see what becomes of this.
Speaking of flying, I wish that I could use my iPhone or iPad during takeoff and lasting — not to talk on the phone, but just to use the device. Todd Shields of Bloomberg reports that the FAA is now studying letting people do that.
Reporter Harry McCracken of Time explains whey the iPad is his favorite computer and what he uses to do most of his work.
Katherine Boehret of the Wall Street Journal / All Things D has a good list of iPhone tips and tricks.
TeleNav, a company which provides GPS navigation software, conducted a national survey and learned that 83% of iPhone users believe that other iPhone users make the best romantic partners, and 33% of respondents would rather give up sex for a week than give up their mobile phone.
If you are around my age, then chances are you remember using an Atari 2600 in the early 1980s, and you know that some of the best games were made by Activision — the first third-party publisher of video games for consoles. Last week, Activation released a free app called Activision Anthology that lets you play some of those great 2600 games on an iPhone or iPad. You need to buy the classic games (like Pitfall) in the app, but it comes with one free game, and it was one of my favorite games when I was a kid: Kaboom! Using a finger to play the game doesn’t seem right — that game was the best ever use of a paddle controller — but it is fun to see the sights and sounds of a great game from 1981. (I wonder what ever happened to my Activision Bucket Brigade patch?) Click here for Activision Anthology (free):
And finally, while you are playing those video games from the early 1980s, why not also blow the dust off the box containing your old cassette tapes and convert them to MP3 files that your iPhone can play? Later this month, Hammacher Schlemer will start selling the Cassette to iPod Convertor, an $80 device that turns your iPhone or iPod touch into a cassette player and recorder. I think I still have some cassette tapes stuffed into a box somewhere around here, but I can only imagine how disappointing the sound quality would be if I tried to play them today. You may make better use of your $80 by just purchasing those songs from iTunes. Nevertheless, this device does look amusing:
Yesterday, Apple announced that it will make an announcement on September 12th. Apple didn’t actually say what the announcement is for — the invitation to select journalists simply states “It’s almost here” — but we all know that it will be the new iPhone. The invitation includes this picture:
The “12” surely corresponds to September 12, and the shadow shows the number five. That could simply refer to the fifth anniversary of the iPhone (which debuted in 2007), but I think it more likely means that the next iPhone will be called the iPhone 5.
We’ll find out next week what the new iPhone will include, but Macworld has a good summary of the current best guesses, including fast LTE connectivity, a bigger 16×9 display, a smaller dock connector, and an improved camera.
The announcement will occur at 10 Pacific / 1 Eastern on September 12 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco.
Thanks to all of you who sent kind notes over the last week. Hurricane Isaac was “only” a Category 1, but it was slow-moving and packed a real punch for the City of New Orleans and especially for some surrounding areas such as Braithwaite. Being without power for four or more days caused all sorts of issues, but fortunately most of New Orleans now has electricity again. I did learn every trick there is for squeezing the most battery life out of an iPhone while you are simultaneously making extensive use of it to get news and to communicate using an overloaded 3G network — multiple backup batteries, brightness turned way down, shutting down the phone between uses, etc.
Now it is time to get back to work. Give me a few days to catch up and I’ll get iPhone J.D. running again.
If you get the paper edition of the Wall Street Journal, then you may have seen that the very top of the front page of yesterday’s edition announced a special section of the paper called “The Best Mobile Apps for Almost Anything.” The special section includes almost two dozen helpful articles recommending a wide variety of apps. Click here for a link to all of those articles in the Wall Street Journal.
Journal reporter Geoffrey Fowler talked to me when he researched his “Take a Trip” article which recommends travel-related apps and accessories. If you ever take an iPhone or iPad when you travel, you’ll enjoy that article. (And if you enjoy that article, you may also be interested in this this article I wrote for the BigLaw TechnoLawyer newsletter last month about how iOS 6 — which Apple is likely to release in just a few weeks — will make it even easier to travel with an iPhone or iPad.)
You usually need to be a paid subscriber to read articles on the Wall Street Journal website, but for now it appears that you can still read the articles from the special section even without a membership. If you are not a subscriber, just be aware that you may not have long to click the above links.
