Amazon announced this week that the biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson is the top-selling book of the year for 2011, according to a report in Forbes. I recently finished the book, and really enjoyed it. The unprecedented access that Jobs gave to Isaacson resulted in lots of great stories that I had never heard before and revealed fascinating insights and opinions of Steve Jobs. I highly recommend it. And now, on for the other iPhone and iPad news of the week:
I find the iPad so much more enjoyable to use than a computer, and I am constantly finding new ways to use it instead of a computer. Along these same lines, Harry McCracken of Technologizer wrote a great article about how he has started using an iPad instead of a computer.
If you have an iPhone 4S, you probably already know how useful Siri can be. Lex Friedman of Macworld has some great tips for getting more out of Siri.
If you live in New York City, a cool new Apple Store opens today at Grand Central Station. Philip Elmer-DeWitt of Fortune wrote a good overview of the store, including a video walk-through.
Eli Milchman of Cult of Mac reports that if you are a customer of Chase bank, you can now use its free iPhone app to transfer money from your bank account to any other U.S. bank account (it doesn’t need to be a Chase account). The Chase app has long allowed you to deposit a check just using your iPhone, thus saving you a trip to the bank. Now, the app saves you a trip to the ATM when you need to pay someone. Neat.
David Pogue of the New York Times reviews the Epson Megaplex, a projector for the iPhone that can turn your iPhone into a home theater.
Oklahoma attorney Jeffrey Taylor writes about using an Android tablet in court on his site The Droid Lawyer. Everything in his post applies to an iPad as well, except that instead of the Android app RepliGo Reader, on the iPad you should use the excellent GoodReader app.
What happens when you cross The Three Stooges with an iPhone? Watch this trailer for the new Farrelly Brothers movie, around the 30 second mark. (via TiPb)
And finally, here is a story about an ill-fated iPad sale that, I’m embarrassed to admit, occurred in a town not too far from New Orleans, where I live. Chealsea Gaudin of WWL, the local CBS affiliate, reports that a man was at a gas station in Slidell, LA when two other men approached him and asked if he wanted to buy an iPad for $120. Our shopper tried to show some smarts by asking to asking to to see the iPad to check that it was real. They showed him an iPad, and then our shopper went to the ATM machine to get money, at which point our mobile retailers swapped out the iPad for “a stripped Dell laptop with an Apple logo taped to it.” I’ll put the picture below. This led to a skirmish when the shopper realized what happened, and the sale went downhill from there … guns were involved, as was a pursuit by the police, and finally capture, at which point the police found in the vehicle “several fake laptops and fake Apple iPads.” As you do your holiday shopping this year, I recommend that all iPhone J.D. readers consider shopping at the Apple Store, Amazon, or other fine establishments instead of your local neighborhood gas station. As for that picture I promised you, I think it is a stretch to even call this a “fake Apple iPad”:
If you are a litigator, I’m sure that at some point you have been (or you will be) involved in back-and-forth settlement negotiations, such as during a mediation. Whether you are on the plaintiff or the defendant side, the issue is the same — how much do I need to move to get the other party to move, is there any hope that we will reach a common ground, and what will that number be.
Don Philbin, an attorney and mediator in San Antonio, Texas, created a free iPhone app to help you with these negotiations. The app is called Picture it Settled Lite, and it allows you to track every offer made by each side in a negotiation along with the date and time of the offer.
Over time that app gives you a handy chart of each of the offers.
Better yet, once you have a few offers and counter-offers in the app, you get to take advantage of one of the key features of the app, a graph that shows you offers over time along with a prediction of what offers will be in the future using an algorithm based on prior offers. The app also predicts the dollar amount that you will eventually agree upon and the time that this will take place.
Just seeing offers on a graph like this can be helpful enough in planning your next move, but the app also helps you to plan that move by making it easy to make a new offer that matches the dollar amount or percentage change of your last offer, or the dollar amount or percentage change of your opponent’s last offer.
Note that while this is a “lite” app, there is currently no “full” version of this app. Philbin tells me that his company is working on a browser-based, advanced product, due to be released next year, that will use sophisticated modeling, case diagramming and evaluation tools based not just on the amount and time of prior offers in a specific case but also based on the experiences in thousands of cases in a variety of disciplines and jurisdictions. He already has a patent application on file on the algorithms he is using. Indeed, you should keep in mind that when you use this app, some of the information that you enter is uploaded to add to this database. Your case name is not uploaded (just a non-identifying number), but the offer history is shared. Also, the app gives you the option of entering your jurisdiction (state and county), the type of case (such as products liability) and some basic information on the type of plaintiff and defendant. If you choose to enter that information, it is also uploaded. Just sharing that information is unlikely to breach any confidentiality, but fortunately you don’t have to enter any of that information to use this app.
Obviously there is no guarantee that past behavior will strictly determine future behavior, so an app like this can only go so far in accurately predicting how settlement negotiations will turn out. Having said that, this could definitely be a useful tool during your negotiations. And in my experience in mediations, I often spend a lot of time in a room waiting for the mediator to work with the other side, and during that down time you are often looking for something to do to plan your next move. Why not use an app like this as yet another tool at your disposal that might assist you in your strategic thinking.
Click here for Picture it Settled Lite (free):
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This article won the LitigationWorld Pick of the Week. LitigationWorld is a free weekly email newsletter that that provides helpful tips regarding electronic discovery, litigation strategy, and litigation technology.
One of the features I love about iOS 5 is the ability to get notifications on the iPhone screen when new e-mail comes in even when my iPhone is turned off. To enable this, go to Settings -> Notifications -> Mail and turn on View in Lock Screen. With this feature turned on, even if your iPhone is sitting on your desk in sleep mode with the iPhone screen turned off, you will see the screen come on for just a few seconds when an e-mail comes in with basic information about the new message. I love that I can be working on something else, I see my iPhone screen come on for a second with the notification of the new e-mail, and then I can return to whatever I was doing unless that e-mail looks important enough to read right away. This is much better than a simple beep or flashing light that doesn’t tell me anything about the importance of the e-mail.
Better still, if you get additional e-mails, notifications will build up. Thus, I can always take my iPhone out of my pocket, tap the button to turn on the screen, and then I instantly see on my lock screen the new e-mails that have come in. If nothing needs to be read at that time, I can return to whatever I was doing, and I only need to take the time to jump to the Mail app if I know that there is a new message that I want to see right away.
And here is where’s today’s tip comes in — when you see a notification on your lock screen about a new message that you want to read right away. If your iPhone screen is locked, you know that you need to swipe the bottom of the iPhone’s lock screen to unlock the iPhone using the Slide to Unlock arrow. But if you want to jump directly to one of the e-mails noted on your screen, instead of swiping at the normal location at the bottom of your screen, swipe on the icon right next to the e-mail that you want to read:
This performs the normal slide to unlock function, but additionally tells the iPhone to open up the e-mail that you selected. I have a sense that this feature is not well known because I have frequently had other iPhone owners see me do that over the last few weeks and then ask me to explain so that they can do it too.
This trick works with more than just e-mails. If another app gives you a notification that appears on your e-mail screen, you can slide the icon on that notification to unlock the screen and jump to that app. But I find this tip most useful for e-mails considering the large number of e-mails that I receive every day.
The slide to unlock feature on the iPhone is so natural that it seems obvious, but it wasn’t always so. In Chapter 36 of his biography of Steve Jobs, Walter Isaaacson describes the origin of this feature during the development of the iPhone:
Jobs spent part of every day for six months helping to refine the display [on the iPhone]. “It was the most complex fun I’ve ever hand,” he recalled. “It was like being the one evolving the variations on ‘Sgt. Pepper.'” A lot of features that seem simple now were the result of creative brainstorms. For example, the team worried about how to prevent the device from playing music or making a call accidentally when it was jangling in your pocket. Jobs was congenitally averse to having on-off switches, which he deemed “inelegant.” The solution was “Swipe to Open,” the simple and fun on-screen slider that activated the device when it had gone dormant. … In session after session, with Jobs immersed in every detail, the team members figured out ways to simplify what other phones made complicated.
One of the things that I love about the iPhone is that there are so many tiny features like this one that are so well-designed that they seem intuitive, and yet they are so useful and even fun to use that they make the iPhone delightful.
Every year, the ABA Journal looks at the 3,500 law blogs and prepares a list of their favorites. Yesterday, the ABA Journal announced the 5th Annual ABA Journal Blawg 100, and I was pleased to see that iPhone J.D. was on the list for the third year in a row. The ABA Journal asks you to vote for your favorites among the 100 by going to this page. You have to register to vote, but it’s quick and easy, and the requirement is there just to prevent one person from voting multiple times. After all, the ABA is based in Chicago, a city with a colorful history when it comes to elections. I’d be pleased as punch if you voted for iPhone J.D. — last year enough of you did so for this website to win the legal technology category — and you get to vote for 12 sites, which can be difficult because there are so many good ones. In fact, one of the best parts of this annual list is that it always helps me discover great sites that I had not run across before, so even if you don’t vote you’ll want to look at the list.
It has been a month since I’ve had a Friday “In the news” feature, so in addition to pointing out the iPhone and iPad news of note from the past week, I’m also noting some articles from the past few weeks that you might want to check out:
I always hesitate before posting rumors on iPhone J.D. because they often are nothing more than someone just making something up. I’d rather discuss real products once they are available. But considering how important Microsoft Office is to lawyers, I couldn’t help but notice this article by Matt Hickey in the iPad-only publication The Daily claiming that Microsoft is “actively working” on Microsoft Office for the iPad. And whether or not Hickey’s source is accurate, California attorney David Sparks provided a good analysis of why Microsoft would be foolish to not enbrace the iPad.
Nick Wingfield of the New York Times wrote about how large companies that once stayed away from Apple products are now very attracted to the iPad and iPhone. This has certainly been true in law firms. Virtually no large law firms use Macs any more. (My law firm was one of the last large firms to run exclusively on Macs; we switched to PCs a decade ago to take advantage of law-related software that worked only on the PC.) But as I reported recently, recent surveys show that virtually all of the most profitable law firms in the country now support the iPhone and iPad.
Tim Baran wrote about Shoeboxed, an app that helps you organize your receipts, on Legal Productivity, a good blog published by the folks who created Rocket Matter, time tracking software used by many lawyers.
Oklahoma attorney Jeffrey Taylor of The Droid Lawyer published his list of 2011’s best apps for lawyers. Why am I linking to a story about Android apps? Because many of the great apps on his list also exist on the iPhone.
The iSmashPhone website wrote about an (unidentified) lawyer’s view on using the iPhone 4S on Verizon.
Harry McCracken of Technologizer wrote about Apple’s GarageBand app coming to the iPhone. It seems bizarre to use a screen that small to create music, but this app is really fun, whether or not you have any musical talent.
Susan Stellin of the New York Times wrote about using an iPhone as a boarding pass.
St. Louis attorney Geri Dreiling reviews the Documents to Go iPad app, one of the essential apps on my iPhone and iPad.
Matt Chandler of Buffalo Business First reports that the Damon Morey law firm purchased 100 iPad 2s so that every lawyer in the firm would have one.
Cory Clements, a law student at BYU, shared with me this post by Greg Israelsen comparing the iPhone plans on AT&T, Verizon and Sprint. The post includes some great charts that would be very useful if you, or someone you know, is trying to decide which carrier to use with a new iPhone.
Here is a video clip of comedian Robin Williams talking to Ellen Degeneres about the Siri feature of the iPhone 4S.
And here is comedian Steven Colbert talking to Siri. Funny stuff. (For a serious take on the silly news about Siri having a political agenda, Adam Engst of TidBITS wrote this good article.)
Looking for a case for your iPad that is fit for a Commander in Chief? Matthew Panzarino of The Next Web reports that President Obama uses the DODOcase for his iPad 2. It does look like a very nice case.
And finally, it is often said that the best thing about the camera on the iPhone is that it means that you always have a camera with you when you need one, even if you didn’t expect to need it. So you have a camera when your child suddenly does something cute, when you suddenly want to preserve a memory, or when … SHARK!!! … an 18 foot shark suddenly starts circling your boat, which happened to this person. CAUTION: The audio in this video is not safe for work because there are a lot of curse words. (Frankly, I would have said a lot worse if I was suddenly this close to a huge shark.) Whether or not you turn on the sound, this is a pretty amazing video; good thing he had an iPhone with him. [via Daring Fireball]
When I started practicing law in the early 1990s, legal research often took place in a law library. Nowadays, legal research almost always occurs on a computer on the desk of a lawyer’s office, accessing a service like Westlaw, Lexis or Fastcase. But sometimes, you need to do legal research when you are outside of the office, such as when you are at trial — perhaps looking up a case cited by an opponent, or perhaps doing some quick research on a legal issue during a break in the proceedings. You can certainly use a laptop computer for your legal research, but for over a year now, West has offered a version of WestlawNext for the iPad. Although I’ve used this app in the past, I first gave the app a vigorous workout when I was in a long trial last month. I was very impressed with the app, so much so that I started to find myself using the iPad app to do research even when I was back at my office.
The WestlawNext app is a free app, but you must be a WestlawNext subscriber to use it. (West provided me with a free account to try out the app last month.) One of the things that makes next generation legal research tools like WestlawNext and Lexis Advance so useful is that they provide a simplified “Google-like” interface. You are presented with a single search box in which you can type just about anything — a citation, search terms, etc. — and then the service is smart enough to show you what you are probably looking for. Simplicity is a virtue of WestlawNext on a computer, and this is even more so on the iPad app thanks to a minimal, clean but very functional interface:
Type some search terms and select a jurisdiction and you will see search results. Cases are first, and the first few cases are listed on the right, but the column on the left side of the app shows you the number of hits in other sources such as statutes, secondary sources, briefs, etc. I would often start a search thinking that I was interested in cases, but the helpful links on the side would remind me that I might find just what I need in some other set of documents.
Tap a case name to bring up the full case. I love the way that WestlawNext displays a case on the iPad. It is very easy to read the case. Search terms are highlighted in yellow and easy to see, and arrows at the bottom make it easy to jump to search terms in the document. You can even adjust font size and typeface. All of these screenshots are in landscape view, but I often found reading a case easier when I turned my iPad to portrait view.
I love that it is easy to select text, either to copy the text (with or without a cite reference), highlight the text or add a note. I frequently found myself highlighting the most useful cases, and then I would use the Tools button to save the case to a folder. Thus, I might go through a dozen or so cases and quickly build up in my folder the two or three cases that are most useful to me, with the key passages highlighted for easy reference.
When you are researching you can use all of the normal WestlawNext filters, such as restricting by date, by jurisdiction, by judge, searching within your results to further narrow your search results, etc.
The WestlawNext app provides a clean and efficient interface for using Westlaw when you are on your iPad. But why not just use the “full” version of Westlaw on a laptop computer? In court, I actually find it much more powerful to use an iPad instead of a computer for legal research. First of all, one thing I don’t like about using a laptop in court is that the screen creates a barrier between you and the judge and jury. Those looking at you see the back of your laptop screen, creating a sense that there is something between you and them. With an iPad that lies flat on a desk or at a slight angle, there is no barrier between you and the judge or jury.
Second, if you need to stand up and argue to a judge, it is awkward to pick up a laptop to walk to a podium and it is awkward to read off of a laptop screen. But holding an iPad and reading off of the iPad screen is similar to holding and reading off of a legal pad — much more natural. In an ideal world, you would have done all of your legal research before you entered the courtroom and you already have every relevant case or statute with you, either printed out or in a PDF format on your iPad. But of course, things are not always ideal in trial. Your opponent may mention a case that you have never read, or you may have to research a legal issue that you didn’t think about beforehand, and when that happens, finding a case and puling it up on your iPad, and then holding the iPad while you argue to the court, is almost as good as having brought the case with you in the first place.
I noted above that I found this app so useful in trial that I started to find myself using the app to do legal research even when I was out of the courtroom. Doing legal research on a computer with a large monitor and a keyboard is usually the ideal, but sometimes you need to change your perspective. Using an iPad to do legal research gives you the ability to step away from the computer and free your mind a little. You can lean back in a chair, run some searches, and think creatively. Eventually you may decide to move back to the computer, but you can easily switch back and forth between the WestlawNext iPad app and WestlawNext on a computer. Plus, sometimes it is useful to have one screen (your iPad screen) focused on doing legal research while another screen (your computer screen) displays the brief that you are writing. The iPad turns into a sort of second monitor.
The WestlawNext app only works on the iPad, but if you need to access WestlawNext and all you have is your iPhone, you can launch the Safari app and go to https:/m.next.westlaw.com to access a mobile browser version of WestlawNext. I’ve used the Fastcase app on an iPhone in court in the past, and while legal research on an iPhone does work in a pinch (and has even helped me win some arguments in the past), the larger screen of the iPad makes the iPad infinitely more useful than an iPhone for legal research.
The WestlawNext app is a brilliantly designed and incredibly useful app. The interface is simple enough to be intuitive and to not get in your way, but the app is powerful enough to satisfy all of your legal research needs. In the courtroom, this may be the best way to do quick legal research. In your office or at your home, it is nice to be able to lean back in a chair and run searches or read cases and statutes. If you already subscribe to WestlawNext, you need to download this app. If you don’t subscribe, this app provides a strong argument for doing so.
I spent the month of November trying a case in Florida. Spending all day in court and all night preparing for the next day meant that there was no time to update iPhone J.D. But fortunately, now I have lots of thoughts about ways to use the iPad and iPhone in trial, and I’ll be sharing these thoughts over the next few weeks.
While I was in trial, iPhone J.D. celebrated its third birthday. In previous years (2010, 2009), I used that opportunity to reflect upon the prior year, and I thought that would be a good way to get this website started again.
There is little doubt about the biggest change to iPhone J.D. in the past year: the iPad. I first started using an iPad in November of 2010, and over the past year I have found that the iPad is just as useful a tool for attorneys as the iPhone. As a result, I expanded the focus of this website to include both the iPhone and the iPad. I took a look at great iPad apps such as GoodReader, LogMeIn and Note Taker HD, and great iPad accessories such as styluses (1, 2, and 3), the MOBiLE CLOTH, the FreeOneHand, the GorillaMobile Yogi, and the Tom Bihn Ristretto.
Most popular posts. Here are the posts from the third year of iPhone J.D. that have gotten the most attention:
1. E-mail improvements in iOS 5. The iPhone and iPad can do so many amazing things, but I suspect that the most important function for both attorneys and non-attorneys is e-mail. Thus, e-mail improvements are always appreciated, and in October of this year I was excited to talk about the e-mail improvements in iOS 5.
3. Review: Google Translate. The ability to say something to your iPhone and then have it speak it back in another language is amazing. It is more than just a great technology demonstration; it makes communication possible between people who otherwise could not communicate. Neat stuff. I wrote this post in February of this year, but now that the iPhone 4S has Siri, we have many more reasons to talk to an iPhone.
4. The iPhone as a boarding pass. I first used my iPhone as a boarding pass in February of this year. I have since used it countless more times thanks to very useful apps from airlines such as Delta. I love not having to worry about finding a computer to print out a boarding pass when I am away from home. Instead, I can just launch the app while taking a taxi to the airport, see if there is a better seat on the plane, check in for my flight, and get an electronic boarding pass. When I step out of the taxi, I’m ready to walk straight to the security line.
I also find it interesting that many older posts on iPhone J.D. continued to see a lot of traffic over the past year. These “old favorites” included:
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 over 60,000 times. Clearly, I was not the only person to have the problem. As I noted in a follow up, the only real solution was to have the Apple Store replace my iPhone 4.
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 three 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 and my iPad.
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 iPhone J.D. readers — besides, of course, the obvious: you are all smart and good-looking folks.
Half of iPhone J.D. readers during the past year accessed this site using Windows, a quarter used a Mac, 15% used an iPhone and 8% used an iPad. Four people accessed iPhone J.D. in the past year using the PalmOS. I was once a big fan of Palm devices myself, but hopefully those four folks have now upgraded to an iPhone.
Visitors to iPhone J.D. come from around the world. This past year, once again, there were more visitors from New York than any other city. Unlike prior years, my home town of New Orleans didn’t crack the top 10. (It was #11.)
New York
Chicago
Los Angeles
Washington, DC
San Francisco
London
Atlanta
Houston
Dallas
Singapore
The third year of iPhone J.D. was great fun, and I’m excited to start the fourth year. Thanks to all of you for your comments, e-mails and other feedback over the past year. I love hearing about the interesting things that people are doing with their iPhones and iPads.
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.
The American Lawyer conducts a technology survey of those firms every year. In the 2008 survey, 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.” In 2010, that number rose to 77%. This year’s results came out this week, and the new number is … drum-roll please! … 96%! In other words, virtually every one of the most profitable law firms in the United States now lets their attorneys use iPhones. Alan Cohen of The American Lawyer explains:
For yet another year, 100 percent of the firms surveyed support BlackBerry devices. But that number is starting to warrant a Roger Maris–like asterisk, as the number of lawyers actually using BlackBerrys continues to slide. An eye-popping 96 percent of survey respondents report users on iOS, the platform that powers both Apple’s iPhone and its iPad. That’s up from 77 percent in 2010. And 67 percent of firms count Android users among their ranks, up from 43 percent last year.
I think it is now safe to say that if you are an attorney and you want to use an iPhone, your firm should let you do so.
Profitable law firms love iPads too
This year’s survey also includes some information on iPads. Only 7% of the surveyed law firms provide tablets to their attorneys, but 99% support the iPad, versus 25% for Android tablets and 10% for the BlackBerry tablet.
I’m starting a long trial and thus there won’t be much new activity on iPhone J.D. for the next few weeks. In the meantime, I recommend that you read the eulogy for Steve Jobs given by his sister, the acclaimed writer Mona Simpson, which was published yesterday in the New York Times. It is beautifully written and shows a side of Steve Jobs rarely seen in public. It will make you smile, but be warned that it will also bring a tear to your eye.
There were lots of stories about Siri this week. The more I use it, the more I find more uses for it. For example, I saw a reference on Twitter to the fact that you can perform date calculations in Siri. How useful! Just tell Siri “45 days after October 18” to quickly see the answer. This is so much faster than using an app (even though there are some good ones like Court Days Pro and DaysFrom) and MUCH faster than using a calendar and counting by hand. Here is the news of the week:
Chris Smith of Stepcase Lifehack offers some great tips for being productive with Siri.
Evan Koblentz of Legal Technology News discusses both sides of the debate over the importance of Siri.
New York attorney Niki Black linked to this helpful YouTube video from “ThatSnazzyiPhoneGuy” that offers 10 trick to better Siri dictation.
Conan O’Brien offers this humorous take on Apple’s new TV commercial for Siri.
Scoopertino, the funny fake Apple news site, reports that Apple has fired Vice President Phil Schiller and replaced him with Siri.
Do you like reading about legal loopholes? David Heath of iTWire explains how Steve Jobs managed to always drive a car without a license plate.
Josh Barrett of Tablet Legal explains the new support for Outlook tasks in iOS 5.
Lex Friedman of Macworld notes that Apple has updated the Smart Covers for the iPad 2. One nice addition is that you can now get a polyurethane version (the cheaper model) in Dark Grey. In the past, if you didn’t want a bright color, your only alternative was to get the more expensive leather models. Apple has discontinued the orange model, but you can still get it on Amazon. For the record, I have the black leather model and I really like it. My wife has the red leather model, which looks very distinctive and is part of (PRODUCT) RED‘s fight against AIDS.
Angela West of PC World provides some reasons why the iPad is good for businesses.
David Pogue of the New York Times reviews Microsoft’s answer to the iPhone, Windows Phone 7.5.
Joe Sharkey of the New York Times reports that so many travelers are using iPads that Wi-Fi service at hotels is slowing down and may become more expensive.
Steven Sande of TUAW reports that Conde Nast is selling a lot of magazines now that the iPad has the Newsstand feature in iOS 5.
I recently reviewed the new Adobe Reader app. I’ve since learned two new things that make the app more useful. First, as reported by Evan Koblentz of Law Technology News, the app supports PDF files protected by Adobe’s LiveCycle Rights Management. Second, I encountered a PDF file this week that wouldn’t display correctly in Safari, but did display correctly when I opened it in the Adobe Reader app. So the moral of the story is that you definitely want to download this free app so that you have it when you need it. Click here for Adobe Reader (free):
And finally, if you have kids, you probably know the famous book Goodnight Moon. Ann Droyd wrote a parody called Goodnight iPad, which you can watch in video form here:
The day after Apple announced the iPhone 4S, I wrote the reasons that I predicted that lawyers would love it. Now that I’ve been using an iPhone 4S for over a week, all of those reasons have turned out to be very true for me. I love Siri, and even though I have used it for less than two weeks, I cannot imagine using an iPhone without the feature. It is amazing how well Siri works to quickly give me information that I need, and I love being able to dictate e-mails on my iPhone. The improved camera takes beautiful pictures and video, and the speedy processor and iOS 5 make that camera even more useful. The improved antenna is giving me faster speeds downloading over 3G, typically over 6 Mbps in New Orleans, versus the 3 or 4 Mbps that I had been seeing. (It wasn’t that long ago I was paying AT&T for a 3 Mbps DSL line for my home computer, and now I’m seeing twice that on a phone!)
I’ve also discovered a few things about the iPhone 4S that I had not expected:
Louder. The internal speaker on the iPhone is just so-so for music, but has always been very useful for when I want to listen to a podcast. My only complaint in the past was that the volume on my prior iPhone 4 (and previous models) was sometimes not loud enough. On the iPhone 4S, the speaker is much louder. I don’t have the equipment to measure volume, but I can say that the volume is increased enough that I often find turning down the volume while listening to a podcast, something I rarely did in the past.
Good vibrations. The internal mechanism used to make the iPhone vibrate is different in the iPhone 4S. I’m not sure how to describe it except to say that it is smoother and, as a result, somehow more pleasing when it vibrates.
From Russia, with love. In addition to using the U.S. GPS satellites to determine where your iPhone is located, the iPhone 4S can also use Глобальная Навигационная Спутниковая Система (Globalnaya Navigazionnaya Sputnikovaya Sistema). GLONASS, as it is more commonly known (and not to be confused with GLaDOS), is a global navigation satellite system operating by the Russian government. According to Mikey Campbell of AppleInsider: “By combining location data from the two dozen Russian satellites with U.S. GPS’s 31, accuracy and speed of determining a user’s location are greatly increased.” Also, including GLONASS support may help Apple avoid taxes on iPhones sold in Russia, an emerging and important market for Apple. Quickly determining your location is increasingly important on an iPhone, so it is nice to see that this feature is improved on the iPhone.
These three features are minor, but add them to the marquee features of the iPhone 4S, and the result is a very impressive device.
New York
