Jeff Richardson

The iPhone 4 officially goes on sale today, so if you pre-ordered last week or you stand in line today,  you will soon be the proud parent of the hottest piece of electronics on the planet right now.  Congrats!  (And if you were really lucky, like this guy, your shipment arrived early back on Tuesday.)  On the other hand, if your AT&T plan requires you to upgrade only through AT&T, and if AT&T refused to process your pre-order last week because of all of the chaos, and then AT&T stopped taking pre-orders and now says that they won’t have any new iPhones at all this week except for pre-orders … well then you and I are in the same boat and we won’t be getting a new iPhone 4 until, well… hopefully some time before Apple releases the iPhone 5.  But no.  I’m not bitter.  Ahem.

So what might you want to know if you are getting an iPhone today, or soon thereafter?  Well, hopefully you read all of the reviews I noted yesterday, especially the great Engadget review.  If you don’t have a pre-order and want to stand in line, Serenity Caldwell of Macworld has the full details on what you can do.  (In short:  don’t go to an AT&T store; Best Buy and Radio Shack are poor options; and an Apple Store is likely your best option.)  Be prepared for more chaos because, as Jonathan Seff of Macworld notes, it was a disaster last week and could be just as bad today.  Miguel Helft of the New York Times explains that Apple doesn’t expect any white iPhone 4 models for another month, so hopefully you want black.

Once you get your iPhone, what do you get?  Heather Kelly of Macworld has pictures of what it looks like to unbox an iPhone 4.  While you are marveling at the new screen, you might want to check out this Engadget post featuring photos taken under a microscope of the new screen.

So now what do you do with your old iPhone?  Christopher Breen of Macworld runs down some options.  Breen doesn’t specifically mention any of the websites that buy old iPhones, so I’ll tell you to keep in mind that Gazelle (a reputable company that purchases old electronics including iPhones) will pay you up to $212 for a 32 GB iPhone 3GS with all of its cables in perfect condition.  Since a 32 GB iPhone 4 costs only $299, that nets out to be a pretty inexpensive upgrade.  Even a two year old 8 GB iPhone 3G will get you $95.  Of course, you can always just share the love and pass along your old iPhone to a friend or family member.

And finally, once you get your new iPhone 4, how do you resist the urge to tear it open?  Well, the real answer to that question may involve seeking professional help, but hopefully this will get you through until you do so:  the experts at iFixit posted tons of pictures from their taking apart an iPhone 4.  There were able to determine lots of technical information about what is inside, if that is of interest to you.  Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit, gave me permission to post three of the pictures here, so this will give you a taste of what it looks like inside of the iPhone 4.  Head on over to iFixit to see more.

 

 

As usual, Apple sent early review units of its new hardware, this time the iPhone 4, to select journalists.  Their reviews are now in, and boy are they positive.  If you had any doubt about whether you should get an iPhone 4, these reviews will likely convince you to do so.

• Joshua Topolsky of Engadget has an incredibly well-written review, full of details, facts, pictures and videos.  And he loves the iPhone 4, concluding:  “We’re not going to beat around the bush — in our approximation, the
  iPhone 4 is the best smartphone on the market right now. The combination
  of gorgeous new hardware, that amazing display, upgraded cameras, and
  major improvements to the operating system make this an extremely
  formidable package. Yes, there are still pain points that we want to see
  Apple fix, and yes, there are some amazing alternatives to the iPhone 4
  out there. But when it comes to the total package — fit and finish in
  both software and hardware, performance, app selection, and all of the
  little details that make a device like this what it is — we think it’s
  the cream of the current crop.”  If you only read one review, read this one.
• Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal writes that the iPhone 4 is a “big, well-designed update that, in my view, keeps it in the lead in the
  smartphone wars.”  He criticizes the AT&T network, but otherwise concludes that “Apple has built a beautiful smartphone that works well, adds impressive
  new features and is still, overall, the best device in its class.”
• David Pogue of the New York Times writes that the iPhone 4 is “amazing” and that it “feels solid and Lexus-like.”
• Ed Baig of USA Today writes that the iPhone 4 “demonstrates once again why Apple’s handset is the one to beat.”
• Xeni Jardin of Boing Boing especially loves the new camera, and has posted some great pictures taken with the iPhone 4.
• Boy Genius Report — who I suspect did not get an official review unit from Apple but instead got their hands on one yesterday from one of the few people to get an early iPhone pre-order delivery — reports that the screen is “stunning,” that you feel like you are “holding a luxury item,” and that the speed is fast and the camera is great.

One thing I find interesting about many of these reviews is that they conclude that the new design of the iPhone 4 is so amazing that it makes it hard to go back to an iPhone 3G or 3GS.  As Xeni Jardin writes:  “It feels really nice to hold. Once my hand got used to it, the 3GS body
felt more like a toy, and I didn’t much feel like holding it anymore.”

Yesterday, Apple released iOS 4.  I’ve only just started to kick the tires, but on my iPhone 3GS this is a great update.  The features I previously touted are all there and are welcome.  For example, I love organizing apps into folders.  I now have a single folder containing my different weather apps, two folders containing all of my legal reference apps, a single folder containing calculators (the built-in one, some date calculators, and the great Convertbot app), a folder containing photography apps, etc.  I figured that I would like folders and other marquee iOS 4 features, and so far I really do.  I wish more of my apps supported multitasking (such as fast app switching), but it looks like tons of apps are being updated every day to add support for iOS 4.

In addition to what I knew I would like, I’ve already come across some nice surprises.  First, I didn’t expect the speed increase to be so noticeable.  Everything seems much more zippy.  I expected to see more speed on the iPhone 4 with its enhanced processor and extra internal memory, but it is nice to see that the operating system itself is also more efficient on both an iPhone 4 and a 3GS.

Second, the mail improvements for an iPhone, especially one that syncs with Microsoft Exchange, are very nice.  We’ve long known about the unified Inbox and the ability to view threaded messages (so you can follow prior e-mails with the same Re: / subject line in one set).  Those additions are nice.  But it was also a pleasant surprise to see pictures at the top of e-mails for those senders who have pictures in the Contacts on the iPhone. 

Better yet, I love that you can now tell the iPhone which folders to push to the iPhone.  In the past, only the Inbox was pushed, but now you can tell your iPhone to also keep your Sent folder or any other folder up to date.  In the past, when I wanted to see a recent e-mail in my Sent folder, I’d first have to wait for my Sent folder to sync since the last time I checked it … which sometimes was weeks earlier.  Now, I can always keep my Sent folder up-to-date.

I also like the improvements to Contacts.  When you are editing a info on a contact, more space is made available for you to enter contact info (first name, last name AND company name, different e-mail addresses, etc.) on the main page without having to move over to sub-pages, making it faster to edit and update. 

I’m sure I will be discovering many other great new features, and I’ll be sure to share them here as I find them.  To learn more about what is new, I recommend that you read the following articles released yesterday containing lots of information and tips:

• Macworld has a ton of great posts, including What you Need to Know, a complete review by Dan Moren, and spotlights on new folder features, multimedia, Mail and Photos.
• Jeremy Horwitz of iLoung has a great review of iOS 4 with tons of great screen shots.  
• Rene Ritchie of TiPb wrote this great
  
  article that I mentioned yesterday.
• Jacqui Cheng of Ars Technica has a detailed review.
• Gizmodo notes a bunch of new features in this post.
• [UPDATE] Adam Pash of Lifehacker has a great list of iOS 4 Shortcuts.

Apple’s newest operating system for the iPhone will be made available for download today is available now.  iOS 4 comes installed on the new iPhone 4, which some of you will be lucky enough to get this week.  iOS 4 will also work on an iPhone 3GS, and a 3GS can take advantage of just about all of the new features.  If you have an iPhone 3G, you can install iOS 4 but some of the great new features which require more horsepower, such as multitasking, won’t work.  iPhones earlier than the iPhone 3G cannot run iOS 4.

If you want an overview of the reasons that you should install iOS 4 on your iPhone, read my post Why Lawyers Will Love iPhone software 4.0.  If you want a great and detailed look at all of the iOS 4 features, Rene Ritchie of TiPb wrote this great article.  Apple’s website also has this page on the new features in iOS 4.  And perhaps of some interest, Jeff Gamet of The Mac Observer offers his tips for upgrading an iPhone to iOS4.

What time today will iOS 4 be available?  Rene Ritchie noted in this post that last year, iPhone OS 3 was available at 10:30 am Pacific / 1:30 pm Eastern.  We’ll see whether Apple follows a similar schedule this year.  [UPDATE: Apple was just a little bit earlier this year.  The update became available shortly after 10 am Pacific / 1 pm Eastern.]

The big news of the week was the iPhone 4 becoming available for pre-order, and all of the chaos associated with that due to AT&T problems and unprecedented demand.  I still haven’t been been able to pre-order one myself, as I can only do so through AT&T (because of my account) and they have stopped taking pre-orders.  Here are other news items from the past week that might be of interest to you:

• Last December, I reviewed West CLE Mobile, an app that lets you get CLE credit on your iPhone.  The app was updated to version 2.0 this week to add the ability to search for and download content directly from the app itself (removing the need to do that on a West website).  Over 3,000 CLE programs are available for you to download.  Click here to get West CLE Mobile (free): 

  

• If you have video on your computer that you would like to view on an iPhone or an iPad without having to convert to an iPhone-friendly format and sync the files, Air Video is a great app.  Dan Moren of Macworld wrote a nice review.  Click here for Air Video ($2.99): 

  

• Jeremy Horwitz writes an editorial on iLounge to share his thoughts on “How Apple + AT&T Should Fix The iPhone 4 Fiasco, Now.”
• How much 3g data will you use with an iPhone 4?  Jacqui Cheng of Ars Technica lists five reasons that your data use may go up with an iPhone 4.
• Earlier this month, I wrote about the extensive interview of Steve Jobs at D8, a large portion of which focused on the iPhone.  You can now download the full interview from iTunes, and it really is worth watching.  Click here to download it: 

  

• The Joy of Tech has a cute comic strip about the Island of Apple-Banished Toys.  Worth reading.
• I still don’t have an iPad yet, but seeing apps like this make me want to get one to use at trial.  Scott Falbo wrote an iPad app called iJuror that allows you to track juror information during voir dire.  You can just tap seats to add juror info, share with colleagues, quickly see juror names, drag and drop to dismiss jurors, etc.  If you have an iPad, give it a look, and hopefully one of the many iPad lawyer websites will review the app soon.  Click here for iJuror for iPad ($14.99): 

  

• Another app that I’m sure I will use whenever I get an iPad is Quickoffice.  Aulia Masna of Macworld wrote this review.  Harry McCracken of Technologizer wrote this review.
• And finally, here is a fun video of magic tricks performed with an iPad.  The video isn’t in English, but the language barrier won’t stop you from enjoying the tricks:

Apple statement released yesterday:  “[On Tuesday, June 15, 2010] Apple and its carrier partners took pre-orders for more than
600,000 of Apple’s new iPhone 4. It was the largest number of pre-orders
Apple has ever taken in a single day and was far higher than we
anticipated, resulting in many order and approval system malfunctions.
Many customers were turned away or abandoned the process in frustration.
We apologize to everyone who encountered difficulties, and hope that
they will try again or visit an Apple or carrier store once the iPhone 4
is in stock.”

600,000?  Wow.

Jenna Wortham wrote in the New York Times that AT&T has suspended taking pre-orders and will wait to evaluate its expected inventory before it decides whether it will take more pre-orders over the next week.  Likewise, apparently you can no longer pre-order an iPhone 4 on the Apple website, although I can’t confirm whether this is true or not.

If you can’t pre-order, can you just buy one in person next week?  For now, Apple and AT&T still hope to have a limited supplies of iPhone available on June 24, 2010.  David Chartier of Macworld reports that Apple “will have a limited supply of iPhone 4s on hand for walk-up customers.”  I suspect it is more accurate to put it this way:  Apple will have a limited supply of iPhone 4s on hand for customers who walk to the front of the store and then wait in line a super long time and are lucky enough to be the first ones in the door.

This set of comments on my post from yesterday still has me laughing.  First, Philippe Radley posts around 10am:

Why are
you and others wasting so much time like this? Can’t you wait a week or
two? I will go to my Apple store sometime in July and just upgrade then
and there. I tried twice yesterday via the Apple store and just gave up.
I will get one sooner or later. Is it so crucial to be the first? Will
your present iphone stop working on June 24?

Then, two hours later, Philippe posts again:

You guys
got me all hepped (is that a correct spelling?) up so I just went online
and ordered the new phone, which will ship (???) on July 2. So I take
back what I said, as obviously I couldn’t wait either. BTW, I have
learned all kinds of things from this site, so keep it up!

Philippe is not alone.  There are a lot of people getting swept up in iPhone 4 mania right now.  Although this is strictly anecdotal, I have had a TON of friends and
colleagues tell me over the last few days that they plan to get an
iPhone 4, and most of these are people who don’t have an iPhone right
now.  I’m sure that Apple is going to sell a record number of iPhones
over the next few weeks and gain a huge number of new iPhone users.

If you tried to pre-order an iPhone 4 yesterday, I hope that you were successful.  Many were not, including me, as a result of a number of AT&T problems.

To put a positive spin on it, AT&T announced that it had its “busiest online sales day in AT&T history” and has already sold out of the iPhones that it expected to have available on June 24, 2010, the day that the iPhone is officially released.  To put a negative spin on it, what a fiasco yesterday!

As David Pogue of the New York Times reported, the first problem was that the AT&T web servers crashed.  “AT&T’s Web site has essentially melted down. You can’t order an
iPhone there.”   Engadget reported yesterday morning that “AT&T’s servers seem to be completely hosed here in America, and
since Apple’s own online order process has to ping those to check on
your contract status, neither option is… um, working.”  The situation got so bad that some AT&T stores had to resort to pen and paper to jot down customer information.

To make matters worse, it appears that some of the people who were able to use the website encountered a security flaw.  Gizmodo has reports of people who tried to sign in to their account to pre-order an iPhone 4, only to be shown someone else’s account information.

My own personal experience mirrored much of what I saw online.  I have split billing on my account, meaning that my law firm pays for my
data and I pay for the voice, so I knew that I would need to get an
iPhone 4 through AT&T and not someone else (like Apple) because my account is too complicated for Apple or other third parties to manage.  No problem, I would just use the AT&T website, and at first that seemed to work early Tuesday morning.  But then when I got to the order page, I was told would have to call a specific AT&T number to complete my order.  It took me 45 minutes to get through to someone at that number, only for the person to tell me that I actually had to call a different, Premier Support number.  Numerous phone calls and 45 minutes later, I was told by someone in Premier Support that they didn’t know how to help me and that I should just use the website, which at that point had melted down and wasn’t working for anyone.  Then, later in the day when the AT&T website finally started working again, I was again told that I needed to call Premier Support:

 

I then, once again, tried to call Premier Support, but I guess they stopped answering the phone at that point because every time I tried to navigate the automatic system, I was routed to a recording which cheerfully announced that AT&T could not help me today, goodbye.

According to a (very unscientific) poll on Gizmodo, thousands of other people also had problems with AT&T’s website that prevented them from pre-ordering a website.  But as noted above, some people clearly were able to get the system to work because AT&T sold out.  As has Apple, which according to Engadget is now listing July 2 as its earliest ship date for additional new iPhones.

So it looks like I will not be among the first to get an iPhone 4.  Hopefully, many of you reading this had better luck and will have your shiny new iPhone on or soon after June 24.  Just try not to rub it in for the rest of us who had a frustrating day yesterday.

I had hoped to give detailed, specific instructions on how to pre-order an iPhone 4 today so that you can have one as soon as they come out next week.  Unfortunately, as of the time that this post is going live (just after midnight Central time) this is still very uncertain.  Here is what I know:

• The two best, comprehensive posts with details on how to pre-order an iPhone 4 seem to be this post from Chris Ziegler at Engadget and this post from Jeff Gamet at The Mac Observer.  Both say that there are several options including the Apple, AT&T, Best Buy, Radio Shack and Walmart stores, plus the online Apple and AT&T stores.
• Gizmodo’s Kyle VanHemert also has a good post on how and where to get an iPhone 4.  First, Gizmodo suggests that you pay $5,000 to a guy in a bar….  (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)
• But just to make things confusing, Rene Ritchie at TiPb writes that you might not be able to pre-order at stores other than an Apple Store.  Hmm.
• And then there is the question of when today you can start to get an iPhone.  Michael Rose at TUAW tries to tackle this issue, but raises more questions than he answers.
• If you want a white iPhone 4, you might need to go to an Apple Store.  Kyle Matthews of modmyi.com asserts that you can get any color iPhone you want at the AT&T store, as long as it is black.  You’ll have to wait for white.
• What if you are not yet eligible to upgrade your iPhone at a subsidized price, but your spouse is?  According to Glenn Fleishman at TidBITS, you can upgrade your phone instead of your spouse’s phone.  Just make sure that you clear that with your beloved spouse first, or you might be using your new iPhone … while you sleep on the couch.

To everyone who plans to pre-order the iPhone 4 today:  GOOD LUCK!

There have been reports over the last few days of an AT&T security breach.  A group of hackers was able to obtain the e-mail addresses of over 100,000 iPad users from an AT&T server.  The hackers notified Ryan Tate of Gawker, who wrote about the incident a few days ago.  

If you want a comprehensive overview of the incident and the latest developments, Nick Bilton of the New York Times wrote a good article on it last night, including reports on an FBI investigation, correspondence that AT&T sent last night to its customers, and comments from the hackers seeking to justify their actions.

What a week!  It was great to learn about the iPhone 4, and now many of us are looking forward to next week when we can pre-order one and the following week when we can get one.  There wasn’t much iPhone-related news besides the iPhone 4 news I’ve been talking about all week, but here are the items I came across that might be of interest to you.

• When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone 4’s Retina display during the WWDC keynote this week, he explained it this way:  “It turns out that there’s a magic number right around 300 pixels per inch that when you hold something around 10 or 12 inches away from your eyes is the limit of the human retina to differentiate the pixels.  And so they’re close together when you get at this 300 pixels per inch threshold that all of a sudden things start to look like continuous curves.  Text looks like you’ve seen it in a fine printed book.  Unlike you’ve ever seen on an electronic display before.  And at 320 pixels per inch we are comfortably over that limit.  And it’s extraordinary.” Brian Chen, a former Macworld writer who now writes for Wired, wrote an article titled “iPhone 4 ‘Retina’ Display Claims Are False Marketing.”  That article cites an expert named Raymond Soneira who says:  “It is reasonably close to being a perfect display, but Steve pushed it a
  
  little too far.”  This prompted a rebuttal by Phil Plait, an astronomer who spent 10 years working on the Hubble Telescope.  Plait points out:  “As it happens, I know a thing or two about resolution as well, having
  
  spent a few years calibrating a camera on board Hubble. Having looked
  
  this over, I disagree with the Wired headline strongly, and disagree
  
  (mildly in one case and strongly in another) with Soneira. Here’s why.”  Read the rest of his rebuttal here.  In just a few weeks, we’ll be able to decide for ourselves when we get an iPhone 4.
• Dallas divorce attorney Michelle May O’Neil assisted with the development of a do-it-yourself-divorce app.  Victor Godinez of the Dallas Morning News has the story.  (via Brett Burney)
• Who founded Apple Computer?  Easy question, right?  Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, the “two guys in a garage.”  Except that there was also a third guy in the very beginning, Ron Wayne.  He’d be a billionaire today if he had held on to his original Apple stock, but instead he just gets articles like this one (by Bruce Newman of the Mercury News) written about him from time to time.  It’s an interesting story.
• David Pogue of the New York Times writes about the costs of upgrading to an iPhone 4.  (By the way; I’d bet anything that Pogue already has an iPhone 4 in his hands right now and is working on a comprehensive review to be published in two weeks.  Apple frequently gives Pogue advance review units of its hardware.)
• Mikael Ricknäs of Macworld writes about a Mastercard app that lets you send or receive money.
• With the right software, an iPad could be a great tool for reading and editing PDF files.  Brian Malcom of the Young Lawyers Blog reviews iAnnotate PDF, an app that allows you to do just that.
• Michael Shear of The Washington Post has a great article on the growing interest in the iPad among senior staffers at the White House.
• Chad Garrett of TiPb has a good review of Documents to Go for iPad.
• Quickoffice is now available for the iPad.  I love the app on the iPhone, and I’m glad to see another good option available for the iPad.
• And finally, a few weeks ago, someone reportedly sent Steve Jobs an e-mail about Apple banning pornographic apps from the iPhone, prompting Jobs to reply that “folks who want porn can buy an Android phone.”  This in turn prompted the creating of the following spoof of this week’s Steve Jobs WWDC keynote address, a parody of a song from Avenue Q, one of my favorite Broadway shows in recent years.  BE WARNED — THIS IS LIKELY NOT SAFE FOR WORK so if you start blaring the audio from this YouTube clip through your office speakers and the managing partner of your law firm happens to walk by your open door, don’t say I didn’t warn you.