This tends to be a friendly website and it is rare that I spark controversy on iPhone J.D., but I seem to do so whenever I mention Gogo, the service that lets you access the Internet while you are on many airlines. While I consider the service somewhat overpriced (currently $40/month or $13/24 hours) and I don’t use it all the time when I travel, it is often very useful. For example, instead of facing dozens of new e-mails that I need to wade through when my plane lands, Gogo lets me work through those e-mails when I am stuck on the plane and even deal with the urgent e-mails immediately.
I first discussed Gogo on iPhone J.D. in 2009, and that original post continues to get comments from people griping about how slow the service is. My follow-up post from 2011 has similar comments, including one reader who suggests that the service should instead be called “NoNo.”
Every once in a while, Gogo offers significant discounts, and around the holidays they sometimes offer free service sponsored by a third party. I mention Gogo today because I see that through the end of June, you can use Gogo for free for 15 minutes on any Delta flight. No promotional code is required.
15 minutes is not very long, but is enough to check your e-mail and respond to a few messages during your flight.
If you are looking for more deals after this one ends, keep an eye on the Gogo blog, which recently moved to this new location. And for a good recent article on in-flight WiFi, check out this article by Rocky Agrawal for VentureBeat which notes that over 25% of the passengers on Virgin America cross-country flights are using Gogo. As Agrawal points out, for all of Gogo’s flaws, he sees better service on Gogo at 30,000 feet than he often does at SFO. Swap “ATL” for “SFO” and I can say the same thing.
The big iPhone and iPad news of this week was Apple’s preview of iOS 6. Earlier this week, I highlighted a few reasons that I think that lawyers will love this free upgrade that is coming in the Fall, but I wasn’t alone. New Orleans attorney Ernie Svenson of PaperlessChase.com discussed some of the new features in iOS 6, as did the Evan Koblentz of Law Technology News. Macworld published one of its “What you need to know” columns on the newly announced iOS 6, and Lex Friedman of Macworld examined some of the lessor-known features of iOS 6 features that you might have missed. John Ribeiro of IDG News Service reports that Apple teamed up with TomTom to produce the new Maps app in iOS 6, which is good news because TomTom has a great reputation for navigation software. You can see some of the user interface changes in iOS 6 in this short video produced by Michael Steeber of Cult of Mac. If you have the latest iPhone 4S or the 2012 version of the iPad, you’ll be able to take advantage of all of the new features of iOS 6 announced so far, but Jordan Golson of MacRumors produced a handy chart to identify the features that will be missing for older devices. Note, however, that if you have an iPhone 4S you shouldn’t start sicking your tongue out at older devices just yet because I’m sure that when iOS 6 is released later this year, we’ll also see a new version of the iPhone released with lots of cool new features that make it much better than the iPhone 4S. But it wasn’t all iOS 6 news this week, and here are some of the other news items of note:
Boston attorney Martha Sperry of Advocate’s Sudio reviews the Adonit Writer Plus, an iPad case with an included keyboard.
Attorney Sam Glover of Lawyerist reviews the Pogo Sketch+ stylus and calls it the “best-value iPad stylus I have seen or reviewed.” The Sketch+ is the 2012 model of the Pogo Sketch, and it includes an improved tip.
Utah federal judge David Nuffer discusses the use of iPads by judges in this post on 3 Geeks and a Law Blog.
Martha Nell of the ABA Journal discusses apps by plaintiff attorneys used to sign up clients.
Evan Koblentz of Law Technology News discusses forensic challenges in e-discovery of information on iPhones and iPads.
This week, Apple came out with a new iPad product called the Apple iPad Smart Case. It is similar to the Smart Cover that debuted with the iPad 2, but this $50 product also covers the back of the iPad. Nick Guy of iLounge posted this review. The Gadgeteer posted two reviews, this one by Douglas Forrester and this one by Janet Cloninger. Leanna Lofte of iMore posted this (less favorable) review. Tyler Gold of The Verge posted another unfavorable review.
Peter Burrows and Adam Satariano of Businessweek profile Apple Marketing VP Phil Schiller.
Eric Slivka of MacRumors writes that you can now use the Apple Store app to order an item on your iPhone so that the order is ready as soon as you walk in the door of the store.
Kit Eaton is the new App Smart columnist for the New York Times, and in his debut column he describes a few of his favorite apps, including some photography apps.
I’ve recently noted that it is now possible to get an iPhone with a prepaid plan instead of the traditional plans with two year contracts. Daniel Ionescu of PC World does the math and concludes that you can save hundreds of dollars over two years with the Virgin Mobile iPhone prepaid plan.
And finally, WarGames: WOPR from Be-Rad Entertainment is now available in the App Store. The gameplay is somewhat similar to Bejeweled but with several layers of strategy on top of that. I bought it for $0.99 and it is actually quite fun. You can buy it by clicking here: But what is most striking to me about this game is the idea that an officially licensed game is still being produced from a motion picture that was released in 1983. Almost 30 years ago! Too funny, and I suppose that means that next we’ll see iOS games based on other classic movies from 1983 such as Risky Business, Vacation and Flashdance. I tease, but of course — like anyone of my generation who is interested in technology — I loved WarGames, so an additional reason that this game is worth the buck is that you once again get to hear the voice of WOPR, see the characters from the movie, and recall memorable lines such as:
[UPDATE 11/15/16: The Oral Argument app is no longer available in the App Store. The developer tells me that the app was pulled because it was never updated for iOS 10 and therefore is not 100% functional. But the developer is considering an update to the app, so perhaps the app will return in the future.]
I have used my iPad during oral arguments in court many times, and it has come in very handy. It is typically a replacement for carrying a big binder to the podium with cases, exhibits, transcripts, etc. Instead I drop all of the files I need into a folder in GoodReader and then I can easily get the document I need if it becomes relevant, such as if the judge asks me a question about a footnote in a case or a clause in a contract. The company TabLit Applications, founded by Detroit attorney Jeff May, created the app Oral Argument with the idea that the iPad can act as your oral argument outline. May sent me a free review copy of this $20 app. After working with it for a while, it strikes me as interesting idea for an app, but I don’t think I see myself ever using this app in court.
Of course you don’t need this app to put an oral argument outline on your iPad. Just create your outline on your computer, open the outline using one of the countless apps that can read Word or text files, and bingo, you have an outline on your iPad. TabLit tries to go one better than that by adding some extra bells and whistles.
When you launch the app you see your Dashboard. This is where you see a list of the oral argument outlines saved in the app. You can choose to edit an existing outline, view that outline (e.g. to use it in court), or you can add a new argument outline.
If you create a new argument or edit an existing argument, you are presented with a text editor screen. Unfortunately, this built-in editor is a disaster. The buttons are way too small and parts of the interface just don’t even make sense. It looks like this is an off-the-shelf editor created for use in a web browser that the company has simply added to this app, without any attempt to conform to typical iPad style guidelines. Every other text editor I’ve seen on the iPad at least tries to use easy to tap buttons that take advantage of the full screen. This editor does not, plus it has blank areas that are unused, for no apparent reason. And I see there are two different buttons to create a Pop-Up Box (more on that feature in a moment) that both do the same thing. Why have two buttons? Ugh.
Perhaps recognizing that it is difficult to create and edit outlines in this editor, TabLit gives you the option of editing your outlines on a website using your computer, but to do so you need to purchase a monthly plan. For $10 a month you can edit up to 3 outlines and view your 10 most recent outlines. For $20 or $30 a month you can edit and view even more. I didn’t try out the website editor, in part because those prices strike me as rather high, and in part because there is a relatively easy (and free) work-around. You can mostly ignore the built-in editor by just creating your outline on a computer, e-mailing it to yourself, and then copying the text of your outline and pasting it into the editor window.
Once your text is there, you can take advantage of another nice idea in this app, the use of Pop-Up Boxes. The idea is that your outline can mention a word or a phrase, and then you can create a hyperlink so that during oral argument you can tap to get more information. For example, in this screen I attached a Pop-Up Box to the case name “Marbury v. Madison” so that when I tap it during oral argument I see the citation and some details on the case — information that I normally wouldn’t need in the outline itself, but it is there in case it becomes relevant during the oral argument.
Unfortunately, creating each Pop-Up Box is time-consuming and cumbersome. You manually create the text for the link and then the text for the Pop-Up Box, then you save it, then you put the cursor where you want it in the outline, then you tap a tiny arrow next to the Pop-Up Box item on the right side. Just creating one took me about a minute. I cannot imagine taking the time to create a whole bunch of them. And putting aside the time it takes to create the Pop-Up Boxes, when you go to use them, the text in the Pop-Up Box is small and hard to read, which would be awkward during oral argument.
You can also see in the above image that I have included two different pages, one called Point 1 and one called Point 2. (You can call them whatever you want.) The idea is that in a typical oral argument you will have a few major points to make, and you may need to address the points out of order. You may start with your first point, but the judge may then tell you he wants to talk about something that was going to be your third point. With up to six different pages in this app, you can just tap on the page tab at the top and you will instantly see the outline for that argument. This is a great idea for this app, and it is nicely implemented.
In the editor you can select the length of your oral argument, such as 15 minutes. Then, during your oral argument, you simply tap the timer button to start a count-down timer. I like the idea of seeing how much time you have remaining right next to your outline. (The program includes an option to count up instead of count down if that makes more sense to you.)
Instead of a white background, the app lets you select “Legal Pad” or “Old Paper.” Both seem like horrible options to me because the backgrounds are way too busy. To my eyes, at least, they make the text too hard to read.
The large column on the right side of the screen is a place to type notes. The idea is that if you think of something at the last minute in the courtroom, or come up with a point to say in rebuttal, you can tap in the column (which brings up the iPad keyboard) and then type it here so that you have it in the margin.
Unfortunately, this notes feature also has a flaw. If you want to create a note near the bottom half of your screen, you can tap to place a cursor down there, but then when the iPad on-screen keyboard comes up, it covers the note. Thus, you cannot see what you are typing. In the previous picture, when I typed “I have another note” I couldn’t see anything that I was typing until after I made the keyboard go away. Ugh again.
Utah attorney Peter Summerill reviewed this app on his MacLitigator website a few months ago, and he pointed out that the app is missing a search feature. If you have a long outline and you need to quickly find some part of it, it seems logical to have a search feature. (I presume that virtually every other iPad app that handles Word or text files includes some sort of search feature.) Perhaps that feature will come in a future update.
Ultimately, I see two reasons that I am unlikely to ever use this app. First, I just don’t think that I gain enough reading an oral argument outline on the iPad. I’d rather use the iPad to hold all of my additional materials but just keep the outline on a few sheets of paper. If I want to have additional information on a particular point (the Pop-Up Box feature of this app) I can always make space for it in the outline or on another sheet of paper.
Second, even if I was going to use an iPad to hold an oral argument outline, the current version of this app (version 1.01) just has too many flaws. The editor is poorly implemented. Adding Pop-Up Boxes is time-consuming. Adding notes in the margin on the right during oral argument by typing them on the iPad screen seems to me to be MUCH slower than just jotting down notes on a legal pad, or in the margin of my printed-out outline, using a pen, and when you are in Court every second matters. TabLit CEO Jeffrey May posted a comment back on February 15, 2012 on Summerill’s review of the app saying that improvements to the app are being worked on, including a better editor, and that is good to hear.
The TabLit website says that it is working on two other apps for the legal market: a trial notebook app and an app to use when taking depositions. I look forward to seeing how those apps work. A nicely-designed deposition app sounds like a great idea. But as for TabLit’s Oral Argument app, perhaps some of you would find an app like this useful, but this doesn’t seem like the type of app that I would want to use in court, and even if I felt differently, the flaws in the design of this version of the app are problematic. For now, the next time I have an oral argument, my iPad will be with me, but my outline will stay on paper.
UPDATE: Jeff May of TabLit posted a comment to this review that I was thought was worth including at the end of the review itself:
Thanks for the review! Everyone here at TabLit Apps appreciated the time and the honest feedback. As I said a while back on Pete’s blog, we have been working on an update for Oral Argument, and I anticipate a release in the next few weeks. While we’re addressing a few other issues and bugs, the major overhaul will be to the editing interface. In addition to a few other features, we’re using the extra space that you noted to increase the size of the on-screen buttons. We hope that our users will continue to provide feedback so we can improve Oral Argument and our future apps.
To kickoff Apple’s WWDC conference yesterday, Apple CEO Tim Cook and other Apple executives announced many new Apple products. (If you want to watch the entire two hour presentation, you can do so here.) Apple announced new Mac hardware (including the cool new MacBook Pro with a Retina Display) and new features in the upcoming Mac OS X Mountain Lion due next month. And although not mentioned during yesterday’s keynote, Apple also released a new product similar to the the iPad Smart Cover called the iPad Smart Case; it’s like the polyurethane version of the Smart Cover but it covers the back as well as the front of the iPad.
Cook also announced that there are now over 650,000 apps in the App Store, and over 225,00 of those are designed specifically for the iPad. Cook said that as of March of 2012, Apple has sold more than 365 million iOS devices.
But I think that the most exciting announcements yesterday had to do with iOS 6, the next version of the iPhone and iPad operating system that will be available this Fall. Apple says that there are over 200 new features in iOS 6, and some great new features were demonstrated yesterday. Here are some of the reasons that lawyers will love iOS 6:
Mail
The iPhone and iPad can do lots of fancy things, but the Mail app is probably the most important and most-used app for most lawyers. Enhancements to Mail in iOS 6 will make this app even more useful.
First, Mail will support a feature called VIP. You can designate certain people (such as your biggest clients and your spouse) as VIPs, and when one of them sends you an e-mail, you will get specific notification, similar to when you get a text message. In your inbox, messages from your VIPs will have a star next to them so that they jump out at you more easily. A VIP mailbox gathers all of these messages in one central location. All of this should make it faster and easier to get and respond to the e-mail messages that matter the most to you.
Currently, if you are composing an e-mail message and you decide to add a picture, you need to go to the picture in the Photos app and start a new e-mail. In iOS 6 you will be able to insert a photo or video into an e-mail that you are already composing.
If you have different mail accounts on your device, such as a work account and a personal account, you can now have different automatic signatures for different accounts.
If you like to flag messages, there is now an inbox of all items that are flagged.
If someone sends you a Microsoft Office document that is password protected, the iPhone will now give you the option to enter a password to view the document.
Finally, to refresh your inbox, you can now pull down the screen to refresh—the same feature used by others apps such as Facebook and many Twitter apps.
Phone
Apple is making the iPhone a more useful phone, or at least a less annoying phone.
If there is a period of time when you don’t want to be bothered by a phone ringing or a text message tone or other alerts (such as when you are sleeping or when you are in a meeting), you can turn on a do not disturb setting to stop the phone from making noise or the screen from lighting up. At the same time, however, you can designate specific people for whom the phone will make noise and light up. And you can also ensure that other urgent calls get through by telling your iPhone that if someone calls twice in the last three minutes, the call should come through even if you are in do not disturb mode.
Also, when the phone is ringing but you cannot pick up, you can instead choose to reply with a text message such as a message that I’ll call you back later. And you can also tell the iPhone to remind you to call back later—either call back at a later time, or even call back when you leave your current location, so that when you leave your meeting the iPhone will remind you to return the call.
Siri
For me and many other lawyers who I know, the best part of Siri is simply the ability to convert voice to text so that you can dictate an e-mail instead of typing it. There were no announcements on this.
However, Siri is also useful a useful way to tell your iPhone to do something or to ask your iPhone to answer a question. This part of Siri will see major improvements in iOS 6. First, Siri will be able to cover more subjects. For example, Siri in iOS 6 knows about sports and can answer questions about sports scores, player statistics, schedules, etc. With iOS 6, I suspect that Siri will be able to settle many bar bets. Apple also expanded Siri support for restaurants by partnering with Yelp to get more information and reviews and by partnering with OpenTable to let you make reservations. Apple also expanded Siri support for movies, with integrated reviews, movie trailers and show times.
Second, you will able to use Siri to tell your iPhone to launch apps. This will be useful when you have a lot of apps and cannot remember the page on which an icon is located.
Third, Apple is working with a number of car manufacturers (such as BMW, GM, GM, Mercedes, Audi, Jaguar, Toyota, Honda, and others — but notably not Ford) to add a Siri button to the steering wheel so that you can talk to Siri without your hands leaving the wheel. This feature should be coming to cars in the next 12 months.
Fourth, Siri will understand many more languages and be available in many more countries.
Fifth, full Siri support is coming to the third generation iPad.
FaceTime
FaceTime works well for videoconferencing, but currently you can only use it if you have Wi-Fi access. With iOS 6, you will be able to use FaceTime over a cellular connection. And when a FaceTime call comes in on one device, you can now choose to answer it on either an iPhone, iPad or your Mac.
Passbook
iOS 6 will add a new app called Passbook, an app to store boarding passes, store cards, movie tickets, and other similar items. These are the sort of things that traditionally existed in paper or plastic form so you would stuff them into your wallet or purse. Nowadays, more companies are offering digital versions, but they are scattered throughout your iPhone in e-mails, different apps, etc. Passbook will be a central location to store all of this information so that it is always at your fingertips.
Safari
Safari will add a feature called iCloud tabs so that you can see any tab that you have open in Safari on your iPad or computer.
Safari also adds an offline reading list to make it easy to read an article later, even when you don’t have internet access.
Safari also gains a few other features such as the ability to upload photos to websites.
Facebook
If you use Facebook, you’ll appreciate full Facebook integration throughout Apple’s apps. Third parties will be able to easily add Facebook integration to other apps.
Maps
Apple is getting rid of Google Maps support in the Maps app, and instead will use a new mapping system that Apple designed from the ground up. It will include turn-by-turn navigation which may make it unnecessary to purchase a third party GPS app. It also includes beautiful 3D, full-color renders of buildings in cities. (No indication of which cities. [UPDATE 6/13/12: David Pogue of the New York Times reveals that Flyover is finished for 35 cities with more to come.] [UPDATE 6/14/12: Cult of Mac says that the following cities are included: Cupertino, Chicago, Copenhagen, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Montreal, Sacramento, San Francisco, Seattle, Sydney.]) It also includes local search to find businesses.
The Maps app will also add traffic information which is based in part on anonymous, real-time crowdsourced data from other iPhone users. Thus, as long as other folks with iPhones are on the road, their misery from being stuck in traffic and moving slowly can be your gain by learning that you should take an alternative route. When the iPhone is navigating you to a destination and it notices that a faster route is available, it will suggest the route and tell you how much time you can save by taking the alternative route.
The new Maps app will also work with Siri, which should make the turn-by-turn directions even more useful while you are driving and need to look at the road, not the iPhone screen. It also lets your kids ask the age-old question “are we there yet” and get a response with the estimated time remaining.
One of the things that I like about Google Maps support is the ability to use Street View to see what a building looks like from street level. Apple did not announce any such feature in the new Mail app. To give you access to this feature and other features unique to Google Maps, I wonder if Google will soon offer its own Maps app for the iPhone.
And more to come
Apple was clear that these are only some of the many new features. It wouldn’t surprise me if Apple has a big, new feature or two waiting in the wings just so that it has something exciting to announce when iOS 6 is finally available. Plus there will be tons of tiny new features that didn’t merit mention in the keynote but will be appreciated by many, such as putting a Bluetooth on/off setting just below the Wi-Fi entry in the Settings app instead of keeping it buried in sub-menus.
Apple says that iOS 6 is coming this Fall. My guess is that, like last year, we will see both iOS 6 and the 2012 version of the iPhone in October. I can’t wait!
Today is the start of WWDC, Apple’s developer conference. Most of the conference is confidential, but the event always starts with a public keynote that provides details on what Apple has planned for the future. This year, Apple CEO Tim Cook will give the keynote presentation today at 10:00 a.m. Pacific / 1:00 p.m. Eastern. I am sure that there will be many announcements that relate to the iPhone and iPad. If you want to follow the event as it happens today, there are a number of websites offering live coverage. Based on their coverage of prior events, I suspect that these will be some of the best (click to jump to their page with live coverage):
There are four major office suites for the iPad and iPhone that work with Microsoft Office files: Apple’s iWork apps such as Pages, Documents to Go, Quickoffice, and Office2. I reviewed Office2yesterday so you know the latest on that app. Documents to Go was purchased by RIM (manufacturer of the BlackBerry) in September of 2010. I used to be worried that RIM would cancel Documents to Go in order to help the BlackBerry, but fortunately it doesn’t look like that is happening. Now Evan Rodgers of The Verge reports that Google acquired Quickoffice this week. I think that the goal is to improve Google services like Google Docs. Once again, only time will tell whether this has a negative impact on the app for the iPad and iPhone. All of this uncertainty in the market demonstrates why it is a good idea for Apple to have its own Pages, Numbers and Keynote apps to ensure that there will always be good options for iPhone and iPad users. And now, for the rest of the iPhone and iPad news of note from this week:
I recently reviewed Paperless, a great ebook by Florida attorney David Sparks. Macworld just posted an excerpt from the book, the great chapter on naming files. Ever since I read this chapter earlier this year, I changed the way that I name all files on my PC and my Mac.
Karen Sloan of the National Law Journal writes about a seminar at my alma mater, Georgetown University Law Center, devoted to writing law-related iPhone apps. What a great idea!
An Australian attorney sent me a note about this article in the Sydney Morning Herald about an interesting Kickstarter project that aims to create a far more precise stylus for the iPad. I’d love to see how this works.
Maryland criminal defense attorney John Katz explains why he switched from a BlackBerry to the iPhone.
Last week I noted that Cricket was the first pre-paid carrier to offer the iPhone. Dan Moren of Macworld reports that Virgin Mobile is now offering the iPhone as well. You have to pay full price for the phone ($649 for the iPhone 4S with 16GB) but then you can pay as little as $35 a month for 300 minutes and 2.5 GB of data. For many people, this will be cheaper than buying a subsidized phone with higher monthly fees from AT&T, Verizon or Sprint.
Since I started iPhone J.D. in 2008, only once have I devoted an entire post to a product that competes with the iPhone. On June 4, 2009, soon after the Palm Pre was introduced to the world, I called it the first true competitor to the iPhone. The Pre had some neat features, but it was never successful and it is now gone. Chris Ziegler of The Verge wrote a long, amazing and well-researched article on the story of the Palm Pre. If you have any interest in the business side of technology, I strongly recommend that you read this great article.
In a similar vein, Jessica Vascellaro and Amir Efrati wrote a great article for the Wall Street Journal on the competition between Google and Apple in the mobile map arena.
If I’m going to mention the Palm Pre, I should also mention that it is the 20 year anniversary of the Newton, the first personal digital assistant sold by Apple. Harry McCracken of Time started using an original Newton again and wrote this article about the experience.
Alan of Art of the iPhone offers 25 useful iPhone tips. There are some good ones in there.
Bryan Wolfe of AppAdvice notes that Apple now has a free book on iOS security. It is quite technical; attorneys are not the target audience, but the IT folks at your law firm might find this interesting.
Glenn Fleishmann of Macworld reviews Dropbox, an essential file-synchronization system used by many attorneys who use an iPhone or iPad.
If you are looking for a case for your iPad, Georgia of iMore provides a good overview of some of the best options available.
Adam Dachs of LifeHacker offers a tip for marking all e-mails read on an iPhone.
And finally, for all of you who are looking for an iPhone case to use when you are talking on your iPhone (?), the All Ears iPhone Case will be available for purchase in just a few short weeks. Available from Perpetual Kid, for $11.99, it comes with all six designs. And yes, there is also a version for men.
When I travel with an iPad and leave my laptop computer at the office, one of the few features that I sometimes miss is the ability to create redline edits to a document. I could use apps like Pages or Documents to Go or Quickoffice to view or revise a Microsoft Word document, but to make my edits obvious I would have to enter the new text and then manually highlight my text in yellow so that the other attorney could see what I added, and even then there was no easy way for the other attorney to accept my edits. For serious edits I often had to resort to using LogMeIn to connect to my work computer from the iPad and use my work computer to make the edits in MS Word with the track changes feature enabled. Fortunately, those days may be coming to an end. Yesterday, the iPad app Office² HD from Byte2 was updated to add support for true MS Office track changes support, so I bought a copy of this $7.99 app to try it out. Unfortunately I’ve run across a few bugs in this app, but the track changes feature is implemented quite well.
The app has a nice layout. You can view a list of your documents and organize documents into folders. The app doesn’t include Dropbox support, but you can use the Dropbox app and then the “Open in…” feature to open a document from your Dropbox in Office² HD. [UPDATE: As pointed out in a comment, the app does have support for Dropbox, Google Docs, SkyDrive, Box and other services. I didn’t see it the first time I looked for it.] When editing a document, the standard features are all there to format text, highlight text, change the font or font size, etc. Strangely, all of my documents showed up in the app with Helvetica as the font, even though the app seems to support Times New Roman and that is what I used on my computer. Even so, after editing a file and then sending it back to my computer, I once again saw Times New Roman as the font on my computer.
Office² HD is more than just a word processor. It can also review and edit Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations, and in my simple tests last night it did so quite well. But I focused last night on track changes support for Word documents because that is the main reason that lawyers will consider purchasing this app.
The website for Office2 includes this full explanation of the track changes feature, but it works pretty much like you would want it to. Tap the tools icon at the top right of the screen and tap the last option, Track Changes. In the next window, you can turn on the track changes feature and then decide how you want to view the document, either the original (without any of your changes shown), the original with redline indication of what is changed, the final document with all of your changes shown as if accepted, and final with markup so that you can see what you have edited.
In the following appeal brief, for example, I am using the final with markup view. I inserted a few words (The Supreme Court explained) and they are shown in blue and an underline with a black line in the left margin to show that a change is there. Next I deleted a sentence, and the main body of the screen shows the text without that sentence but a bubble on the right shows where I made a deletion and what I deleted.
The bubble on the right is small and a little hard to read, but you can simply tap once on the bubble to enlarge it.
The final with markup view is also useful if you want to review the changes in a document that someone else has edited. As you can see in the last picture, from the bubble you have the option to reject or accept a change. You can also tap on an edit and from the popup menu choose to accept or reject that change. Also, there is an option under the tools menu to accept or reject all changes in a document. Thus, another attorney can create redline edits in a document and send them to you for review, and using Office² HD on your iPad you can accept or reject each of those edits, make whatever additional edits are necessary (with the track changes feature turned on if you want to make it obvious what you changed), and then you can send the document back.
The track changes feature alone would make this a great app, but this app has other powerful features. For example, Office² HD lets you export a document to PDF format. I’m not aware of any other app that lets you create a PDF from a Word document on the iPad itself. [UPDATE: A reader tells me that iAnnotate can export from Word to PDF, but I haven’t tried that app so I cannot confirm this.] Also, Office² HD is one of the rare apps that lets you create and view footnotes in a Word document. Quickoffice doesn’t support footnotes at all, and Documents to Go lets you view footnotes but not add them. Unfortunately, even Office² HD doesn’t support editing or deleting footnotes. Moreover, I found that when I added a footnote in Office² HD and then later viewed the footnote in the document on my computer, the footnote had two question marks instead of a space between every single word. (I reproduced this bug in several different documents.) I’m thrilled to see that Office² HD attempts to go beyond all other iPad apps in handling footnotes, but clearly more work is needed.
And since I’m mentioning problems, let’s get to my major gripe with Office² HD, and it is a big one. This app crashes more than any other app I have ever used on an iPad. Documents of around 25 pages or less on letter size seemed to work without incident, but for larger documents, such as a 27 page appeal brief and a 38 page appeal brief, both on legal size paper, the app crashed so frequently that I frankly lost count. I’m not sure if the problem was the page size, the fact that the documents were on legal size paper, or just the fact that these were long documents with lots of footnotes and formatting, but the crashes were a real problem for me. I even restarted my iPad to clear the memory and then started editing a document, and the crashes still happened. And when the app crashes, you lose all edits made since the last time that you manually told the app to save your work, so unless you get in the habit of saving every few minutes, you can lose work that will take a while to recreate. I deal with large and complicated documents in my practice almost every day, so I was annoyed to see these crashes. Ugh. My hope is that this problem will be fixed in a future update, but for now, you need to be cautious when working with longer documents.
In this review, I focused on the iPad version because word processing on an iPad is superior to using the small iPhone screen, but the company also sells Office² for the iPhone and it also now has the track changes feature and the other features I noted above, including the ability to export a Word file to PDF format. It is harder to edit a document on a small iPhone screen, but it does work in a pinch, and with Office² you can now make redline edits when you are on the go. Note that when I edited large briefs on the iPhone version, I experienced the same types of crashes that I saw with the iPad version.
Later this year we may have more options for editing a Word document with track changes support. I know of one other app developer who is currently working on this feature for another app, and there are fresh new rumors that a version of Office from Microsoft itself will be out this November, and if that happens perhaps we will see a Microsoft-sanctioned option for track changes support. (Before you starting counting non-hatched chickens, note that earlier this year there were rumors that Office for iPad would be out in March of 2012, and that obviously didn’t happen.) But for now, there is only one app in town with the important track changes feature for litigators who want to make or review edits in briefs, transactional attorneys who want to revise contracts, or anyone else who wants to take advantage of the track changes feature in a Word document.
I usually talk about adding apps or accessories to your iPhone or iPad to make it more useful, but we shouldn’t forget that sometimes all you need is a book. Thanks to modern self-publishing tools, it is possible for anyone to create and publish a book that you can easily read on your iPad without finding an agent or signing with a traditional publisher. I recently wrote about how California attorney David Sparks self-published the ebook Paperless, and Sparks plans for that to just be the first in a series.
Brian Owens is a docketing professional in the Atlanta office of an AmLaw 100 firm. As someone who often calculates deadlines in different jurisdictions, he thought that there would be a demand for an ebook that covers the basics of court rule on date calculations and provides the rules for calculating deadlines in federal court and all 50 states. The result is the $10 ebook Calculating Court Deadlines: 2012 edition. Owens sent me a free copy of the iBooks version of the book to review (which requires the iPad; it does not work on the iPhone), but I see that it is also available in Kindle and Nook formats.
Unlike the Paperless ebook that David Sparks authored, Calculating Court Deadlines doesn’t take advantage of all of the bells and whistles that one can add to a modern iBook such as video, sophisticated graphics, animation, etc. This ebook just contains little more than the basic text. Having said that, it provides the information that you need if you are a national counsel, in-house counsel, or someone else who wants to have a resource on your iPad with date calculation rules for all U.S. jurisdictions.
The book starts with a basic overview of the concepts relating to calculating legal deadlines such as calendar days versus court days, how to handle the last day when it falls on a holiday, adding additonal days for service, etc. The book then has a chapter for federal courts followed by a chapter for each of the 50 state courts. In each chapter there is a summary of the rules for calculating dates in that jurisdiction, the full text of each of the applicable rules, and then a series of examples that applies the rules. Chapters also include links to the appropriate court website that will open in Safari when tapped. Here is an example of one of the Louisiana pages in the ebook:
I suspect that most attorneys, paralegals and legal secretaries are only concerned about the rules for calculating deadlines in their own jurisdiction, and (hopefully) they already know those rules well. But if it would be useful for you to have the rules for all jurisdictions, this ebook is a way to have all of the rules that you need at your fingertips. I can’t decide if $10 is too much for this ebook; it includes much less content than the $5 Paperless, but on the other hand this ebook is written for a much more narrow audience.
Click here for Calculating Court Deadlines on the iBookstore ($9.99):
Earlier this year, I started writing a monthly column for the TechnoLawyer BigLaw newsletter. My columns address topics related to the use of iPhones and iPads in midsize to large law firms. If you work for such a firm, this is a great (and free) newsletter and I encourage you to sign up for a free subscription. I’ve enjoyed writing my articles, and I’ve enjoyed reading a bunch of other great BigLaw articles.
The first article I wrote for BigLaw discussed the usefulness of iPads for attorneys and whether this means that law firms should buy each of their attorneys an iPad, similar to what Minneapolis firm Bassford Remele did as I noted in this article from August of 2011. If you weren’t a subscriber when my first BigLaw article was first published on January 17, 2012, you can now read it on the TechnoLawyer website.
Although my law firm doesn’t purchase iPads for attorneys, we now have around 100 iPad users and that number is steadily increasing every month. I suspect that most of you have seen more and more iPads at your law firms, too. Last year’s ABA Technology Survey revealed that around 13% of lawyers used an iPad. We should see this year’s numbers in about a month or so, and I have no doubt that we’ll see a significant increase.
The All Things D conference, run by Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal, took place this week. This was the only conference that Steve Jobs spoke at in recent years, other than the Macworld Expo and Apple presentations. His presence was noted in the form of tributes and frequent references by the other speakers. I reference a few of those today, along with other news of note from the past week:
Apple CEO Tim Cook gave the opening keynote at All Things D. It was an interesting presentation that signalled that we will soon see big improvements to Siri, Facebook integration with the iPhone, and maybe even something new from Apple in the TV space. Jordan Golson of MacRumors wrote a good liveblog as it happened, as did Jason Snell of Macworld.
Macworld also published an edited, near-transcript of the highlights of Cook’s presentation.
Ina Fried of All Things D reports on a tribute to Jobs by Ed Catmull of Pixar and Larry Ellison of Oracle.
When I wrote about the Wacom Bamboon Stylus duo earlier this week, little did I know that so many other people would be talking about styluses at the same time. I updated the end of the article to note that Serenity Caldwell of TechHive and Macworld published an article in which she also named the duo the best stylus for writing. Additionally, I see that Charlie Sorrel of Cult of Mac named a number of “best of” styluses and concluded that the Bamboo Stylus is the best stylus for drawing.
J.D. Biersdorfer of the New York Times reminds us of the helpful multitasking gestures that you can use with an iPad.
If you use TABS3 for time entry at your law office, you’ll be interested to learn that you can now use Bellefield’s iTimeKeep app to enter your time on mobile devices. I watched a demo of this app in action at ABA TECHSHOW this year and I was very impressed.
Andy Ihnatko of the Chicago Sun-Times reports that you can finally buy an iPhone that uses no-contract, pre-paid plans thanks to Cricket, although it isn’t available in all cities.
You can use Apple’s Cards app to create and send a paper card from your iPhone or iPad. It wil be beautiful, but it won’t have the personal touch of handwriting. Alex Heath of Cult of Mac reviews Thank You Pen, an app that creates beautiful cards and then uses a room full of machines with real pens to create the appearance that you hand-wrote your cards. Interesting.
If you like casual games, Bejeweled has long been one of the best. There is finally a version for the iPad with great retina display graphics for the third generation iPad. I bought it and have had a lot of fun with it, and so has my six-year-old son. Click here for Bejeweled HD ($3.99):
And finally, here is a fun video from magician Simon Pierro that shows how the iPad can quench your thirst:
