The focus of iPhone J.D. is the intersection of lawyers and the iPhone, and most of the time that means a focus on how lawyers can make the most of their iPhones. But one of my favorite stories from this week has to do with another intersection, the legal terms in Apple’s contract with iPhone app developers. One expects to see complicated legalese in such a contract, and I’m sure that there is a lot of that in there, but John Gruber of Daring Fireball has a fascinating post about changes Apple made yesterday to the contract including new bullet points at the start of the agreement that are certainly not legalese, and frankly are somewhat funny, such as: “We have over 250,000 apps in the App Store. We don’t need any more Fart apps.”; “If your App looks like it was cobbled together in a few days, or you’re trying to get your first practice App into the store to impress your friends, please brace yourself for rejection. We have lots of serious developers who don’t want their quality Apps to be surrounded by amateur hour.”; and “We will reject Apps for any content or behavior that we believe is over the line. What line, you ask? Well, as a Supreme Court Justice once said, ‘I’ll know it when I see it’. And we think that you will also know it when you cross it.” Also, Jason Snell of Macworld wrote an interesting editorial on the changes. Other interesting iPhone news of the past week:
If you sync your iPhone with your home computer but want to connect it to your work computer and play music on your iPhone through your computer speakers, in the past this was only possible if you enabled the “manual sync mode” option. Seth Weintraub of 9 to 5 Mac reveals that with iTunes 10, you can do this even without changing a setting.
Philip Michaels of Macworld writes about RIM’s acquisition of most of DataViz, although unfortunately he mostly raises questions and doesn’t have many more answers than I had when I wrote about this earlier this week. But maybe there is life in the app after all; yesterday, the company released version 4.0 of Documents to Go Premium with a revamped user interface, support for external keyboards, increased speed, new options for formatting paragraphs, support for the iPhone 4 retina display, and more. Is the release of 4.0 a sign that the app has a future? Is this update just the last hurrah? I can’t wait to find out.
California Lawyer magazine identifies iPhone apps that are handy for lawyers. (Link via Dan Friedlander.)
Bianca Male of Business Insider compiles a good list of 10 helpful iPhone apps for business travelers. Unfortunately, this one of those annoying posts where you have to click a button to page through each suggestion, so consider yourself warned.
If you like to run, check out Vlad Savov’s Engadget review of Nike+ GPS, the new app that lets you use your iPhone to track your run, even without using a Nike+ shoe-mounted sensor.
If you are a Florida lawyer interested in condominium and homeowner association laws, check out this post by Daniel Vasquez of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel on iPhone resources including the FLCondo and FLHOA iPhone apps.
I always love it when iPhone thieves get caught because of the Find my iPhone feature. Gary Allen of ifoAppleStore.com writes about one such incident in Madison, Wisconsin.
Chris Ziegler of Engadget writes about a headset that lets you control your iPhone, using your brain.
If you or a friend is thinking of getting an iPhone but doesn’t want the phone or the AT&T contract, the iPod touch is a great alternative, and Apple’s newest model makes it very similar to the iPhone 4. John Gruber explains what you don’t get in the iPod touch that you do get in an iPhone 4. And there are lots of well-written (and favorable) reviews of the new iPod touch that are worth a read such as these from Joshua Topolky of Engadget, Jim Dalrymple of The Loop and Christopher Breen of Macworld.
John Paczkowski of All Things D writes that more people are being iPads and fewer people are buying PCs.
Dan Friedlander of LawOnMyPhone reviews the Westlaw Next app for the iPad.
And finally, I previously mentioned Meninos, a company that sells coasters that look like iPhone apps. The New York Times Gadgetwise blog writes about another company called, appropriately enough, iPhone Apps Coasters, that sells even larger coasters that are rounded at the edges just like real app icons, not squared off like the Meninos product. If you love your iPhone and love to drink, then you might want to plop down £20 (about $30) for each set of six.
Yesterday around Noon, iOS 4.1 became available to install on your iPhone, and there are a lot of new features for a mere .1 upgrade. Here is what you can look forward to with the latest version of the iPhone operating system.
HDR Photos. If you have an iPhone 4, you can ow turn on HDR mode when you are taking a photograph to tell your iPhone to take three pictures in a row with three different exposures and then automatically combine them to create a high dynamic range photograph in which you see more even more details in the photograph. In the settings for the Camera app, you can elect to keep the original photo without HDR enhancement in addition to the HDR photo. Taking an HDR photo adds a few additional seconds of processing time, but when you have vastly different lighting situations such as a person or object in the foreground and a bright sky in the background, you can get much better pictures with the HDR mode turned on. HDR can help you to bring out details in dark areas, such as the bricks and the flowers in the following picture, with minimal sacrifice to the bright areas (HDR photo on the right):
HDR really shines when you want to focus on an object that is indoor while also being able to see what is out of a window on a sunny day, such as this picture where I tapped on the plant in my office to make it the focus, but with HDR you can also see the Mississippi River Bridge out of the window of my office:
(You can click on any of those pictures to see them full size.) For many pictures, HDR will not make a difference. Indeed, if the lighting is uniform throughout your picture, HDR will often make the picture look worse, taking some of the richness out of the picture. But when you have a lot of lighting contrast, HDR can make a huge difference in the quality of the photo.
HD video upload over WiFi. In iOS 4.0, you can take
HD video with an iPhone 4 but need to connect to your computer to get that video off of
your iPhone in full HD quality. With iOS 4.1, if you have a WiFi
connection, you’ll be able to upload that video so that you can more
easily share HD video with others when you are on the road, away from
your computer.
Fix the Proximity Sensor Bug. iOS 4 had the annoying
tendency to turn the screen on when the iPhone was next to your face,
meaning that your cheek could touch a button on the phone while you were
talking. iOS 4.1. is supposed to fix that bug. In my limited tests last night, it still seemed like the screen was sometimes coming on when I held the iPhone close to my face, so I’m not yet convinced that Apple has completely solved this one, although I have not yet found the screen coming on when the iPhone is so close to my face that my cheek could press a button, which sometimes happened under iOS 4.0. I’ll be keeping track of this one to see if it is really fixed.
Fix the Bluetooth Bug. I don’t use Bluetooth with
my iPhone 4 very often so I had not noticed that there was a problem
with Bluetooth, but if you noticed any problems with the Bluetooth
connection dropping, you’ll be happy to learn that these problems
are supposed to be fixed in iOS 4.1.
Enhancements to Bluetooth. In addition to fewer Bluetooth bugs, there are also more Bluetooth features with full support for the Bluetooth Audio/Video Remote Control Protocol (AVRCP). In the past, you could only adjust audio controls using a Bluetooth device such as a headset or a car stereo. Now, you can also skip forward and backward.
Speed up the iPhone 3G. iOS 4.0 was very slow on an iPhone 3. iOS 4.1 improves the speed in certain applications on an iPhone 3G. Adam Dachis of Lifehacker ran these tests and found that there are speed improvements in Safari, Photos, Messages and especially the Maps app.
Game Center. If you want to play multiplayer games on your iPhone, the new Game Center enhances the experience, allowing you to play against your friends or play against player with similar skills in certain games.
Landscape Camera Tweaks. The icons are rearranged in the Camera app when you are in landscape mode, making the button placement more consistent with what you see in portrait mode. Here is how the buttons and zoom slider were placed in landscape mode on an iPhone 4 with iOS 4.0:
And here is the button and zoom placement in iOS 4.1:
FaceTime Improvements. In iOS 4.0 you could only use FaceTime
with another iPhone 4 user. In iOS 4.1, you can now use an e-mail
address to initiate FaceTime, which opens the door to the new fourth generation iPod touch that doesn’t have a phone number. I still wish that Apple would make
FaceTime work with iChat on a Mac; I’m sure that this feature must be
coming soon. Additionally, you can now add someone to your Phone
favorites using FaceTime making it even faster to initiate video chats. And just like the Camera app, the buttons are rearranged in landscape mode in FaceTime.
Rent TV Shows. You can now rent TV episodes for only 99¢. You have 30 days to start to watch the episode, and then once you start to watch it, you have 48 hours before the episode disappears. (You can watch it as often as you want during that 48 hour window.) For now, this feature only works for ABC and FOX shows; hopefully NBC, CBS and other networks will jump on board soon. If you would rather own an episode, you still have the option to buy it for $1.99 (SD) or $2.99 (HD). Note that if you rent a TV show in HD, Apple says that it can only be watched on an iPhone 4; if you rent the SD version then you can watch the episode on an iPhone 3GS or 3G. Also note that there is an odd restriction involving moving a rented TV show between iTunes on your computer and your iPhone. If you rent a TV show on your computer, you can tap a “Move” button to transfer it to your iPhone to continue to watch it while you are on the go. (And at that point, it disappears from iTunes on your computer; it can exist on only one device at a time.) But if you rent a TV show on your iPhone, you cannot transfer that show back to iTunes to finish watching it on your computer.
Spell Check. In the Settings app, you now have the option to disable spell check so that you don’t get the red dots under words that the iPhone thinks that you misspelled.
Parental Restrictions. In the Parental Restrictions area of Settings, you can now restrict the use of Facetime or Game Center.
New Carrier Settings. The About panel in Settings reveals that the iPhone is now using Carrier settings of AT&T 8.0 instead of 7.0 in iOS 4.0. I have no idea what is new in 8.0, but obviously 8.0 is one better than 7.0.
Auto-Lock. In iOS 4.0, you only had five choices for when the iPhone would Auto-Lock: 1 minutes, 2 minutes, 3 minutes, 4 minutes or 5 minutes. In iOS 4.1, there is a sixth option: Never. I suppose this is nice for those rare times where you want your iPhone screen to stay on even when you are not using the iPhone (and don’t mind wasting the battery), but this seems to be a security flaw because it allows you to circumvent the iPhone setting that causes a Passcode Lock to be required after a certain amount of time. For example, even if your employer requires that your iPhone lock after 15 minutes of inactivity, the passcode lock screen only comes up when the screen is in Auto-Lock mode and you wake up the iPhone. If you have Auto-Lock set to Never, then your screen will never enter Auto-Lock mode, and someone could walk up to your iPhone hours after you last touched it and use your iPhone without entering a passcode (assuming that your iPhone hasn’t died by then after using the battery to keep the screen lit for several hours).
Ping. Apple’s new social network for music isn’t really a feature for iOS 4.1; it went live last week in iOS 4.0. Nevertheless, Apple’s website advertises it as a new iOS 4.1 feature, which I suppose is fair considering that it was announced at the same time as iOS 4.1. I’ve just started to make use of this service, but I like the idea of it and I’ve already discovered a few great songs.
Nike+ Uploads. If you use Nike+, you can now upload you data directly to the Nike server using the iPhone, without having to sync to your computer first. And note that even if you don’t have fancy Nike+ shoes or even just the Nike+ sensor attached to another pair of shoes, Nike recently released the Nike+ GPS app that uses the iPhone’s built-in accelerometer and GPS to determine how fast and how far you ran. Click here to get Nike+ GPS ($1.99):
Security. Like every iOS update, this update addresses potential security flaws. Jeff Gamet of The Mac Observer explains: “iOS 4.1 also fixes several security issues including a flaw that could
let an attacker redirect FaceTime calls with a maliciously crafted
certificate, and a flaw where maliciously crafted TIFF or GIF images
could be used to crash apps or run arbitrary code. WebKit for iOS
received its fair share of security patches related to maliciously
crafted SVG files, the handling of text nodes and element focus, fonts,
HTTP redirect handling, CSS encounters, JavaScript arrays, and more.”
GMail. If you use your iPhone to sync with a GMail account, iOS 4.0 added the ability to either delete or archive messages. In iOS 4.1, if your preference is to archive, then the trash can icon at the bottom is changed to an arrow pointing to a file box, which makes more sense.
One of the things that I love about iPhones is that, due to frequent software updates from Apple, the phones get better over time. iOS 4.1 is a nice update, and as noted, there are more features than I would expect for a mere .1 update. iPhone 4 owners will especially love this update because of the new features such as HDR photography and HD TV show rentals that work only with Apple’s latest iPhone.
I saw rumors of this a few days ago, but now it appears to be official. RIM, the company that makes the BlackBerry, has purchased “some of the assets of DataViz and hired the majority of its employees to focus on supporting the BlackBerry platform” as noted in a statement given to CNET. Om Malik of GigaOM reports that RIM paid $50 million for the DataViz assets.
DataViz makes one of three main productivity suites for the iPhone, the Documents to Go app. Whenever attorneys ask me what apps they should get for their iPhone, this is always one of the first apps that I mention. I have been using Documents to Go for more years than I can remember, most recently on an iPhone but before that on my Palm Treo 650. As I have noted in the past, I am a big fan of Documents to Go. Over the years, DataViz has frequently been the first to add useful features to its product that were lacking in offerings of competitors. For example, Documents to Go was the first iPhone app to let you access Word documents that are attached to e-mails. This is now a built-in feature of the iPhone operating system that any app can use, but DataViz made the feature available a year before Apple did. Similarly, Documents to Go is currently the only app that handles footnotes in documents. Here is an example of a document with footnotes in Documents to Go. Just tap on a footnote to see a pop-up window with the text of the footnote:
The competitors to Documents to Go still cannot handle footnotes correctly. In the left picture below, here is the document displayed in Quickoffice, which just ignores the footnotes. On the right is a picture from the Office2 app which gives you the text from the two footnotes at the end, but doesn’t tell you where the footnotes occurred in the text:
It goes without saying that for attorneys, footnotes are very important. Thus, when I am reviewing a brief on my iPhone, I always prefer to do so using Documents to Go.
The history of Documents to Go, Quickoffice and Office2 has been that the apps are frequently updated to add new features missing in the competitors’ apps and to catch up to the competitors’ latest features. I’m surprised that we have gone this long without Quickoffice or Office2 adding real footnote support, but one has to hope that this support is coming soon.
The hallmark of DataViz has always been compatibility and interoperability. I remember that back in the 1980s and early 1990s, I was an avid user of the company’s MacLinkPlus software which always did the best job of converting PC documents to and from Mac formats. The logo of the company even includes the word “Compatibility.” And yet now that RIM owns most of the company, I fear that this will change. A few days ago, DataViz announced that it abandoned plans to come out with a version of Documents to Go for the Palm Pre. And now that most of the DataViz employees are working for RIM, one has to wonder whether Documents to Go has a future on the iPhone. As the CNET article by Jessica Dolcourt notes, “it’s uncertain if or how quickly RIM will dial down support for the moneymaking Documents To Go on other mobile platforms.”
On the one hand, I suspect that the product sells well, so there could be a financial incentive to continue to support and improve the iPhone and iPad app. On the other hand, it is not in RIM’s interest to make the iPhone and iPad better tools for professionals such as attorneys who deal with a lot of documents. RIM would much rather keep all of the attorneys using BlackBerry devices.
Documents to Go is not the only game in town, and even without that app we’ll be able to use Quickoffice or Office2 but I do fear that without DataViz pushing the envelope and adding new capabilities to the iPhone, the other developers will have less incentive to innovate and we’ll miss out on improvements to this category of iPhone apps. Considering that RIM did not purchase the entire company, maybe the
portion of DataViz that remains will continue to push iPhone products. But whether the development continues at what is left of DataViz or moves to RIM, my fingers are crossed that, somehow, Documents to Go for the iPhone survives.
[UPDATE 9/10/10: On September 9, 2010, DataViz released version 4.0 of Documents to Go Premium
with a revamped user interface, support for external keyboards,
increased speed, new options for formatting paragraphs, support for the
iPhone 4 retina display, and more. Is the release of 4.0 a sign that
the app has a future? Is this update just the last hurrah? I can’t
wait to find out.]
[UPDATE 9/13/10: Today, DataViz updated its Facebook page to respond to speculation about the future of Documents to Go on platforms other than the BlackBerry. The statement reads: “Despite the rumors, DataViz is alive and kicking and remains very much committed to many of the smartphone platforms we previously supported. While we did extend our business relationship with RIM, which included the sale of some of our assets, the details of this (and any other) partnership will remain private. Watch for some exciting releases in the near future!” With this statement, and the release of Documents to Go Premium 4.0, hopefully we can look forward to many more years of this app on the iPhone!]
Apple released version 10 of iTunes last week, and there are quite a few changes. Ping is the marquee new feature, and while I haven’t used it much, I like the idea of new ways to discover great music. Some people are upset about some of the changes in iTunes 10, such as the removal of the ability to create a ringtone out of music that you own (which I personally don’t care about) and the new vertical red/yellow/green buttons at the top left corner (which I agree looks odd). I’ve even seen people complaining about the new icon.
But one thing that seems to be a definite change for the better is improved iPhone syncing. Syncing an iPhone to iTunes has been a painful experience in some of the prior versions of iTunes. The process sometimes took a long time and you had no sense of how long it would take to finish. In iTunes 10, Apple now displays information that tells you where you are in the five step process of syncing including backing up, installing apps, syncing music and podcasts, syncing photographs, etc.
I’m very happy to see this new feature. Just having additional information about the process makes the syncing process seem to go much faster.
Moreover, it may be the the process actually is faster. The time that it takes to sync always varies based on the amount of information that you have to transfer, but I’ve seen reports online of people finding their syncs to be much faster in iTunes 10. I cannot say that I’ve noticed one way or the other myself, but it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that in each new version of iTunes, Apple looks for way to speed up the syncing process. Apple’s own website identifies as one of the new features of iTunes 10 “Improved syncing. Feed your devices, faster.” although it appears that Apple is referring more to the ability to manage the syncing process as opposed to the time it takes to actually perform a sync.
Any week that Apple hosts an event with a presentation by Steve Jobs related to the iPhone, the Apple announcements dominate the news of the week. But there were a few other news items that I ran across this week that might be of interest to you.
Liane Cassovey of PC World reviews the Netflix app for the iPhone and likes it. I’ve kicked the tires on the app a little bit too, and I really like what I see so far.
Patrick DiDomenico of iPad4Legal writes about the presence of iPads at the recent ILTA conference. I’ve been to several meetings attended by a lot of attorneys over the last few weeks, and I am amazed at how many more iPhones and iPads I am seeing recently. Apple just may have some hits on its hands.
Scott Canon of the Kansas City Star says that the smartphone that you use says a lot about who you are.
Jeffery Battersby of Macworld reviews Office2, one of the three big word processors for the iPhone (along with Quickoffice and Documents to Go).
Many years ago, I really enjoyed playing Riven on my computer. That sequel to Myst had beautiful graphics and created a truly immersive world. If you also have fond memories of the game, you should check out this report from Casey Tschida of AppAdvice with screen shots of the upcoming version of the game for the iPhone.
When I recently reviewed iVacuate, I noted that one missing feature from the app was good tools for tracking a hurricane. Jeff Merron of Macworld recently reviewed several apps for the iPhone and iPad that can be used to track hurricanes.
Neil Hughes of AppleInsider has additional details on the HDR features coming next week in iOS 4.1 and some comparison pictures to show you how it works.
And finally, The Daily Nail shows off the perfect painted nail design for the ladies who love their iPhones.
The focus of the Apple September announcement is always the iPod, but yesterday there was a ton of iPhone news announced by Steve Jobs. Here are the iPhone-related news items and my thoughts on each.
The numbers. Steve Jobs started by noting that Apple has sold over 120 million iOS devices, including the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. Apple now activates 230,000 new iOS devices every single day. There are over 250,000 apps in the App Store, and there have been over 6.5 billion downloads from the App Store. 200 apps are downloaded every second. Wow.
HDR Photos. The new iOS 4, due out next week, will give you an option for the iPhone camera to take high dynamic range photographs, allowing the iPhone to take even better pictures that don’t wash out the background. I have some iPhone apps that do the same thing and dramatically increase the quality of pictures, but with this ability built-in to the iPhone I’m sure that it will work even better. The iPhone 4 already has the best smartphone camera, and with HDR it will be better than many “real” cameras. Here is an example from the Apple website of what HDR can do for an iPhone photo:
HD video upload over WiFi. In iOS 4.0, you can take HD video but need to connect to your computer to get that video off of your iPhone in full HD quality. With iOS 4.1, if you have a WiFi connection, you’ll be able to upload that video so that you can more easily share HD video with others when you are on the road, away from your computer.
Fix the proxmity sensor bug. iOS 4 had the annoying tendency to turn the screen on when the iPhone was next to your face, meaning that your cheek could touch a button on the phone while you were talking. iOS 4.1. is supposed to fix that bug. Thank goodness.
Fix the Bluetooth bug. I don’t use Bluetooth with my iPhone 4 very often so I had not noticed that there was a problem with Blluetooth, but if you noticed any problems with the Bluetooth connection dropping, you’ll be happy to learn that these problems supposed to be fixed in iOS 4.1.
Speed up the iPhone 3G. If you use iOS 4.0 on an iPhone 3G, you know that it is V-E-R-Y S-L-O-W. iOS 4.1 is supposed to speed it up.
Rent TV shows for 99¢. You can already rent movies on your iPhone, but with iOS 4.1 you can rent TV shows for only 99¢. That is cheap enough that you won’t feel guilty renting an episode (or two, or three) of the show that you missed last night to watch on a plane when you are traveling home from business. In the past you had to buy TV shows, and with very rare exception I only want to watch a TV show once. A cheap rental makes a lot more sense.
Game Center. If you like the idea of playing multi-player games on your iPhone, Game Center in iOS 4.1 will let you connect with friends and share a game. I’m not sure that I will ever use this feature, but I’m sure many people will like it.
Ping. Yesterday, Steve Jobs showed off a new social network for music that lives in iTunes called Ping. You can choose to let your friends see the music that you are buying on iTunes, your friends can allow you to see their purchases, artists can let you follow them, etc. It looks like Facebook with a music angle. While mostly a feature of iTunes 10, Ping will also be incorproated into the iTunes app on the iPhone.
Printing from the iPhone and iPad. In November, iOS 4.2 will be available for both the iPhone and iPad, and one of its features will be the ability to print documents from an iOS device. I suspect that this will be more useful for iPad owners than for iPhone owners, but it will be nice to see this addition.
AirPlay. Apple also announced a new $99 AppleTV today (due in four weeks). With iOS 4.2 on your iPhone or iPad, any video that you are watching on your iOS device can be viewed on your large screen TV connected to an AppleTV with just one button. That way, if you haven’t finished watching the TV shows you rented on that plane ride home, you can finish watching on your TV once you get home. Nilay Patel of Engadget notes that Apple will let third-parties use this technology. “That means you’ll be able to stream music from iTunes, your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad to speaker docks, receivers and stereos from companies like Denon, Marantz, Bowers & Wilkins, JBL and iHome, complete with song, album, and artist info and album art.” Sounds great.
New iPod touch. I know tons of people who want an iPhone without the phone (and the monthly AT&T contract) and thus they use an iPod touch. The new version of the iPod touch incorporates most of the great new features added to the iPhone 4 such as the retina display, the fast Apple A4 chip, the gyroscope, FaceTime with a front-facing camera, and a camera on the back that can take HD video (although the picture quality is lower than the iPhone 4). Suffice it to say that if you like the iPhone 4 but don’t want the phone, you’ll love the new iPod touch.
New iPod nano. I understand that the new iPod nano doesn’t use the iOS, but with the multitouch interface and the icons lifted from the iPhone, the new nano definitely copies from the iPhone.
New AppleTV. My focus here is on iPhone news, but the new AppleTV has a relationsihp to the iPhone because of the AirPlay feature I noted above. Additionally, I understand that the new AppleTV actually runs a version of iOS, although you cannot tell that just by looking at it. That makes some sense becuase the the AppleTV has always been essentially an iPod for your TV. If the best selling iPod (the iPod touch) runs the iOS, then why not put it on the AppleTV. Will we ever see third-party apps on the AppleTV? Only time will tell.
These were interesting announcements for iPhone owners. You can download the new iTunes 10 now, and look out for iOS 4.1 next week.
Today at at 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern will be Apple’s annual September iPod event. There used to be a time, long ago, when Apple provided live video streams of Apple events.* But then Apple stopped doing so, which resulted in many websites becoming experts at live blogging Apple events.
This year, we will have the best of both worlds. Apple PR announced yesterday that there will be a live video stream of the event on Apple’s website. Note that Apple says that you need to use Apple hardware (such as a Mac or an iPhone) to view the livestream; we’ll find out tomorrow whether the stream can be viewed with non-Apple hardware and software. But if you prefer to read instead of watch and listen, here are links for live blogging by the experts at Engadget, Macworld and GDGT. Be sure to tune in to iPhone J.D. on Thursday for my thoughts on the announcements.
Or, if you can’t wait and you just have to know right now what will be announced, John Moltz of Crazy Apple Rumors Site spills all the beans on the new products.
– – – –
* How long has it been since Apple streamed an event like this? There was a period of time in the range of 2000 to 2002 when Apple did it frequently, and I found this Apple press release in which Apple bragged that 50,000 people watched a webcast of the July 17, 2002 Macworld New York keynote by Steve Jobs. That may have been the last time that Apple did a live webcast of a Steve Jobs presentation. I remember that those live streams would often stutter and lead to much aggravation. I presume that Apple is providing a live stream today only after taking steps to make sure that the quality is good. We’ll see.
Shoeboxed is a service that manages your receipts. You scan receipts and e-mail them to Shoeboxed, or just use their iPhone app to scan receipts, or you can even mail them paper receipts if you want to, and they have real people review the receipts and organize them into categories. If you use the service to manage all of your receipts, then by the end of the year you have all of your expenses organized and available in multiple formats including Excel, PDF, etc.
I have had the Shoeboxed app on my iPhone for a while now and had intended to try it out, and then I read that my friend, New Orleans attorney Ernie Svenson, has incorporated this app into his daily life. Thus, instead of me doing a review after a week or two of usage, let me refer you to Ernie’s excellent and comprehensive post. I am already loving that with the Chase app I can just scan a check to deposit it without having to visit a bank. Scanning receipts sounds just as easy considering that your iPhone is always with you when you get those receipts.
A few days ago, I was working in my office when I picked up my iPhone to look up something. I glanced at my home screen as I prepared to launch an app and then did a double-take. Something wasn’t right. The first thing I noticed was that there were only three icons at the bottom of my screen instead of the normal four, and then I saw that there was an empty spot on the first of my home screen pages, which is never the case. I didn’t think to take a picture at the time, so here is a dramatic reenactment of what I saw:
It took me a few seconds to figure out what was gone, and then I realized that the Safari and the Camera icons were missing. My first thought was that one of my kids must have gotten a hold of my iPhone and deleted an app, so I started to wonder how I could restore a missing app while I was in my office (considering that I sync my iPhone with my home computer). But then I realized that the missing apps — Safari and Camera — are built-in apps. You cannot delete those apps on the iPhone. You can, however, move them around, so I started to swipe through screens to see if my kids had moved them. But again, no luck.
Because I was trying to get work done at the time, I put down my iPhone and decided to try to resolve this issue later. But then ten minutes later, one of my partners called me to ask me how to get her Safari icon to come back. I asked her if her Camera app was also missing, and after she looked she confirmed that sure enough it was missing too. So at that point I knew that the problem was not unique to my iPhone. A quick Google search revealed that there was not some worldwide Safari and Camera outage on the iPhone affecting everyone else, but I did run across this article on the Apple website: Knowledge Base Article HT3582 “iOS: Restoring a missing Camera or Safari Application.”
The article explains: “If your iOS device is configured to use an Exchange account, your Exchange Server administrator may have configured your account with a policy to disallow use of Safari or the Camera.” Bingo. I contacted someone in my law firm’s IT department, and it turns out that a tech person was in the process of doing something to configure an iPhone when he accidentally flipped a switch that turned off the Safari and Camera apps for an entire set of users. Ouch. Apparently, the IT folks realized the problem and then fixed it, and within a few hours the two apps had reappeared.
I was afraid that they wouldn’t reappear without some additional intervention. The Apple article says: “This policy will remain in effect until you delete the Exchange account from the device. This is true even if your Exchange Server administrator later relaxes the policy to allow use of Safari or the Camera—the iOS device will not recognize the policy change. To restore use of Safari or the Camera, you will need to delete the Exchange account from the device.” That wasn’t my experience at all. After a few hours, the apps just reappeared again, on their own.
I don’t know how common a problem this is, but I must not be the only person to fall victim to it for Apple to see the need to draft and post a Knowledge Base article, last modified on July 19, 2010. If you use your iPhone in a corporate environment and you ever discover that the Safari and/or Camera apps are missing, hopefully you will remember this post and know that you should blame the IT department, not the kids.
[UPDATE: As noted by several people in the Comments to this post, another possible cause for this sort of problem is the Restrictions setting. Go to Settings -> General -> Restrictions and make sure that they are turned off. If they are turned on, one or more built-in apps can be made to not appear.]
We’re just a few days away from Apple announcing new products. I’m excited to learn what Apple announces next week, and I hope that it has something to do with the iPhone. The announcement of the upcoming announcement was one of the biggest iPhone-related stories this week, but here is other news of note from the past week:
If you use the next generation version of Westlaw called WestlawNext, you may have already noticed that the website has a nice interface formatted for mobile devices such as the iPhone. I’d still rather see a dedicated WestlawNext iPhone app, but the website is a nice start. However, if you use an iPad, yesterday West released WestlawNext for the iPad. The preview pictures on the West website look very nice, and I’m sure that this app will be a very useful tool for attorneys who use iPads. Click here for WestlawNext for iPad (free):
If you get poor AT&T coverage in your home or office are are contemplating purchasing an MicroCell, you’ll want to read this informative review from Wall Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal.
Vicki Steiner, a reference librarian at the UCLA Law School Law Library, created a list of iPhone apps that may be helpful to attorneys using iPhones. (Link via Martha Sperry.)
If you are a Netflix subscriber and you like to watch movies or TV shows on your iPhone, you are in luck. Yesterday, Netflix debuted an iPhone app that will let you stream video. The app is focused on that one task and (surprisingly) doesn’t even let you manage your queue on the iPhone, but in my very limited tests it seems to work quite well. Click here for Netflix (free):
If you would rather rent a movie from iTunes, Jessee David Hollington of iLounge points out that as of right now, if you rent a movie on your iPhone, you cannot transfer it back to your computer. However, if you rent the movie on the computer, then you can sync it to your iPhone and continue watching it there. That seems odd. If Apple announces an update to Apple TV next week (as some are speculating) perhaps Apple will remedy this.
If you have a webcam or other security camera in your home, you can use the iCam app to monitor the video on your iPhone. According to this report from Jason Whitely of WFAA-TV, a Dallas-area couple on vacation in Connecticut got an alert from iCam that there was activity in their house, and using the iPhone they could actually see the burglars. They called the police who immediately went to the house. The intruders were gone, but perhaps that is because the police scared them away, in which case the app was a good purchase. Click here for iCam (Webcam Video Streaming) ($4.99):
The Quickoffice app (which I reviewed here) has finally been updated for iOS 4. This means that you can now use fast app switching to switch back and forth to a document in Quickoffice and you can tap on an e-mail attachment and directly open it in Quickoffice. I’ve been using Quickoffice a lot more over the last few days thanks to this update.
California family law attorney John Harding writes about how he loves his new iPhone but notes that it took him a while to get his e-mail working correctly.
Marco Arment writes about using AA batteries to recharge an iPhone.
Ben Worthen of the Wall Street Journal reports on businesses adopting the iPad, including the Chicago law firm Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP.
Debra Cassens Weiss of the ABA Journal reports on the iJuror app that allows an iPad to help a litigator during voir dire. (Link via Des Moines attorney Megan Erickson.) Click here for iJuror ($9.99):
And finally, I always thought that I was a pretty fast iPhone typist until I saw this video. Wow. According to Dave Caolo at iLounge, this is a new world record for texting, and the text typed is “The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus
are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they
