Jeff Richardson

At the end of the day yesterday, Apple held its Fiscal Year 2009, Second Quarter earnings call.  As always, Apple executives read a prepared statement and then answered questions from analysts.  Apple has a lot to be happy about; this was Apple’s best non-holiday quarter in the history of the company — and this is during a recession when other companies are laying off people left and right.  Wow.

Just like last quarter, there were a number of interesting things said about the iPhone by Apple’s COO (and acting CEO) Tim Cook and the other Apple executives.  Here are some of the highlights:

• iPhones are now sold in 81 countries.
• iPhones are selling great.  There was only a small decline in iPhone sales this past quarter from the busy holiday quarter, which was a surprise to Apple.  And with iPhone Software 3.0 coming out [not to mention whatever new iPhone model that we all know Apple will release this summer] Apple believes that even more people will want to buy iPhones in the future.
• Apple sold 3.8 million iPhones during the past quarter.  To date, Apple has sold around 21 million iPhones and around 16 million iPod Touches for a total of around 37 million devices using the iPhone operating system.  Pointing out the obvious, the Apple executives noted that the iPhone a huge platform for developers.
• Indeed, iPhone apps are selling like hotcakes.  Apple noted that it is just hours away from selling its 1 billionth app.
• The iTunes app store now offers over 35,000 apps. To put this in perspective, three months ago during the last quarterly earnings call, Apple was thrilled to have over 15,000 apps.  The continued exponential growth in the number of apps is just staggering.
• Apple has no plan to change its relationship with AT&T.
• The iPhone has the highest overall customer satisfaction of any smartphone on the market.
• On the earnings call three months ago, Tim Cook referred to other smartphones such as the Palm Pre and said that Apple would be very serious about protecting its intellectual property.  An analyst asked why Apple hasn’t taken any actions to protect its IP this quarter, and asked whether it was because the Palm Pre isn’t on the market yet.  Cook didn’t answer the question, instead just saying that “competition is great, we think it makes all of us better, as long as other companies invent their own stuff.”
• Tim Cook also made very vague references to Apple’s future iPhone plans, stating that “between the product plans that we’ve got and the app store and the software that you’ve seen and then things I can’t talk about, we have a plan that we believe continues to make us the leader in the space, continues to keep us years ahead of others, and one of the things that we will make sure is that we don’t leave a price umbrella for people.”  So what I hear Cook saying is (1) Apple has some surprises in store for the iPhone — yeah! — and (2) Apple will keep iPhones affordable so that people are not tempted to spend less on a competitor’s product — yeah again.

Finally, Tim Cook had an interesting statement on netbooks.  A lot of people are wondering whether Apple has plans to release a netbook, perhaps based on the iPhone OS.  When asked about netbooks, Tim Cook responded essentially that the current netbooks are terrible, the iPhone is currently a good alternative, and Apple is thinking about a possible netbook.  He said:

If you want to listen to the earnings call yourself, you can do so over the next two weeks by downloading the podcast from iTunes: .  Or you can view a computer-generated transcript of the call on this page at the Seeking Alpha website.

It is great to see Apple having such a great quarter, especially during these troubling economic times.  And the iPhone is clearly a key reason that Apple is doing so well.

The day has come.  We finally have the ability to edit Microsoft Word files on the iPhone, including cut, copy and paste.  For a while now, Quickoffice, Inc. has sold an app called Quicksheet which allows you to view and edit Excel files (and view Word files) on the iPhone.  (I reviewed that app two months ago when it was called MobileFiles Pro, and then the company changed the name to Quicksheet.)

The developer has now released Quickoffice Mobile Office Suite.  The app contains just about all of the features of Quicksheet plus it adds the ability to edit Word files.  (The missing feature is e-mail support, which as I note below is coming very soon.)  The Word or Excel files must be in Windows Office 97 through 2003 format or Mac Office X through 2004 format to be edited. (Windows Office 2007 / Mac Office 2008 files can be viewed but not edited.)

The app does a nice job of viewing Word files.  You can pinch to zoom in and out, and when you do so the text reformats to fit the screen so you don’t have to worry about scrolling back and forth to read a file.  (Yeah!)  Indeed, even if you don’t need to edit Word files on your iPhone, Quickoffice may well be the best app currently available for viewing Word files on an iPhone.

Read more

This isn’t iPhone related, but it is related to Apple and the law.  Yesterday, Apple released four new “I’m a Mac / I’m a PC” commercials.  One of them is called “Legal Copy” and it makes fun of legal disclaimers that might be necessary for a PC to claim that it is as easy to use as a Mac.  Here is the ad from YouTube, or you can see a higher quality version here on Apple’s website.

If you want to actually read all of the fine print, Matt Deatherage of MacJournals.com has taken the time to include it all here.  As Matt notes, while some of the fine print refers to PC-only chores such as modifying the Registry, the fine print also talks about chores that you must do on any computer, Mac or PC, such as backing up files.  So perhaps the ad isn’t completely fair — something that can also be said of the latest Microsoft ads — but it is pretty funny.

I usually don’t review entertainment apps on this website, but I’ll make an exception for Smule’s newest app Leaf Trombone World Stage.  Last year, Smule came up with the ingenious idea of Ocarina, an app that turns your iPhone into a flute that works when you blow into the bottom of the iPhone.  Leaf Trombone is this year’s follow up.  Like Ocarina, you can use Leaf Trombone as a musical instrument.  You can still blow if you want, but you don’t have to; you can instead just tap your fingers to play the instrument.  You can either free play the instrument, or you can pick a song and the app will show you which notes you need to play (in the form of leaves that fly in from the left).  And on the Smule website, you can even compose a new song that you or others can play.  The instrument function alone is a lot of fun and an improvement on the Ocarina app.

But what really makes this app shine are the last two words in its name:  World Stage.  After you have practiced a song and you are ready to show off what you can do, you can choose to record your song and then immediately listen to your song while it is being judged by three judges.  In the spirit of American Idol, the judges can change their emoticon facial expressions, positive or negative, during your performance, can shout out any short words of encouragement (or despair), and can rate you on a 1 to 10 scale when you are done.  Both you and your judges are essentially anonymous, except that you can see a username and where they are located on the globe and they can see the same for you.  Being a judge is almost as much fun as being judged, plus you get a point every time you judge which you will need to be able to perform on the world stage, which costs three points.  

There is a much more to say about the features of this app, and for that I will simply point you to the excellent and comprehensive review by iLounge; I agree with everything that they say.  And we know that more features are coming when the iPhone software is updated to 3.0.  During Apple’s iPhone 3.0 announcement, the guys from Smule showed off a mode in which two Leaf Trombone users in the same room can play a duet.  Here is a video:

This app would be entertaining enough without the world stage aspect, but adding the ability to judge and be judged is pure fun.  I know a ton of lawyers who play a musical instrument at least a little bit, and if you have any talent at all — and from what I have seen as a judge, it doesn’t take much! — I think you will find Leaf Trombone World Stage to be easily worth the $0.99 cover charge.

Click here to download Leaf Trombone World Stage ($0.99): 

Here are some recent, interesting stories in the news relating to the iPhone, starting and ending with the Wall Street Journal:

• Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal updates his review of MobileMe and he likes it.  If you work at a company that uses Microsoft Exchange, then you know how useful it is to have your e-mail, calendar and contacts automatically synced between your computer and your iPhone.  If you are not in an Exchange environment, MobileMe can give you a similar experience for $99 a year.
• Former attorney and now full-time mother Jennifer of the These Are Days blog writes about her recent experience buying an iPhone
  
  and how it was a big deal for her.  I felt the same way when I first
  
  got my iPhone, and it is fun to read about similar experiences of
  
  others.  (By the way, Jennifer has a nice blog.  I liked this post about the differences between her former life as an attorney and her current life.)
• Do you and your spouse both have an iPhone?  iLounge discusses two chargers that let you charge both at one time.  They posted a review of the $45 Dual Dock Charger being sold by RichardSolo, and compared it to the Griffin Powerdock 2

  

  which you can get on Amazon for $30.  
  
• Macworld reports
  
  that market research firm Forrester finds more evidence that the iPhone
  
  works great in large businesses.  For example, almost half the mobile phone users at Kraft now use iPhones, and the company orders 400 more every month.  AppleInsider also wrote about the Forrester report.
• Steven Frank wrote a very interesting analysis of user interfaces, from the keyboard + command line to the mouse + desktop to multitouch on the iPhone.  It is a fascinating read.  Thanks to Daring Fireball for bringing it to my attention.
• LinkedIn, which is sort of the grown-up version of Facebook, now has an iPhone app.  But according to Dale Gardner of Macworld, it is just okay.
• Looking for a really short docking cable for the iPhone?  CableJive sells an $8 cord called iStubz that is around 3 inches long and a $9 version that is around 9 inches long.
• If you want to read the Wall Street Journal online, you need to pay about $100 a year.  Or, you can just get the new, free Wall Street Journal iPhone app, and access all of the content for free.  Rick Broida writes about the app for CNET and David Chartier reviews the app for Macworld.

Yesterday, in my review of Time Master, I stated that the app costs $9.99 and noted that this price is on the high end for an iPhone time tracking app.  That got me thinking about how lucky iPhone users are when it comes to app prices.  On my prior smart phone, a Treo 650, I didn’t buy software very often, but when I did it was frequently priced $25 or higher.  For example, Documents to Go by Dataviz for Palm costs $30 to $90, depending upon the version.  And yet on the iPhone, users are used to apps costing between $0.99 and $9.99.  Few developers cross the $10 threshold.

But some do, and if you want to spend a lot of money on an iPhone app — perhaps you are looking forward to that tax refund after filing your return yesterday — you can do so, although your options are limited.  And I’m not talking about silly apps like the previously available $999.99 I Am Rich app or the currently available and arguably just as silly $999.99 GoldBeggar app from mobileDev.  (iTunes link, if you must:  )  There are also legitimate iPhone apps that cost over $100.  Here are the ones that I found:

Surveillance camera apps.  If you have a lot of surveillance cameras that you want to monitor, there are several apps that let you do so from your iPhone, even viewing multiple live camera feeds at the same time.  iRa Pro ($899.99 ) from Lextech Labs allows you to easily navigate between hundreds of cameras by just flicking your finger across the iPhone screen.  And for cameras that support it, you can even pan and tilt the camera angle and zoom in and out just by using the iPhone app.  If you don’t need access to high-end servers, the company also sells iRa Direct ($499.99 ).  Another company with similar products is mobiDEOS which sells Mobile Cam Viewer Enterprise Basic Vesion ($349.99 ), Mobile Cam Viewer Standard ($99.99 ) and Mobile Cam Viewer Basic ($29.99 ).  Yet another example is CamControl for iPhone ($149.99 ).

MyAccountsToGo.  If you are a sales rep and your company uses Microsoft Dynamics GP (Great Plains), you can download the MATG app from CBR-Technology Corporation ($449.99 ) to access your company’s accounting and financial information from your iPhone.  There is a similar version for the same price that works with the SAP BusinessOne financial management system.  The developer also offers a free version that only syncs with a sample database so that you can get an idea of how the app works.

Medical apps.  It is easy for a doctor to spend money on iPhone apps.  Lexi-Comp sells various medical reference apps that vary in price from $74.99 to $219.99, or you can purchase a complete set by getting Lexi-COMPLETE ($299.99 ) or Lexi-DENTAL COMPLETE ($299.99 ).  Epocrates Essentials includes continually updated, peer-reviewed, drug, disease and diagnostic information for $149 a year (or $249 for two years).  And a doctor might also want to check out iChart EMR from Caretools, Inc. ($139.99 ) to keep track of patient medical records.

Home automation.  If you have SAVANT’s ROSIE home automation system to control your lights, temperature, security, etc., you can purchase the ROSIE Home Automation app ($199.99 ) to control your system from your iPhone, even if you are away from home.  If you use a similar system from AVAI Ventures, then iFusionHome ($149.99 ) does the same thing.  These app prices are actually quite reasonable because purchasing a touch panel control system for these devices can be quite expensive.

Audio spectrum analysis.  If you need realtime feedback of the audio spectrum while you are mixing or doing other audio work, XA1 ($179.99 ) will do the trick for you.  There is also a $9.99 Lite version with fewer features.

Guitar tuner.  There are lots of inexpensive or free guitar tuner apps, but if you want to spend money on a top product, Bernhard Stopper has developed Tunic Guitar Pro ($109.99 ) for professional use.

I am not aware of any law-related apps over $100, although I did recently review a version of Congress in Your Pocket called CongressPro ($99.99) which is updated throughout the year and would be useful for any attorney that does governmental relations work.

[Thanks to AppSherpa for making it easy to search for apps by price and to Inside iPhone for a similar post last year.]

Keeping track of time is very important to lawyers and many other professionals, so I have been keeping track of the iPhone time tracking apps.  I previously wrote about 17 such apps, then I wrote about an 18th app, and then I wrote about some online options you can use with your iPhone. 

Even though there are already quite a few good time tracking apps, there is always room for another good one, and I found one.  Adam McInnis of On-Core, Inc. recently wrote me to tell me about Time Master, an iPhone app that tracks time and expenses.  Adam is not an attorney (although his brother is a partner at Akin Gump) and this app is not specifically written for use by attorneys, but it includes all of the key features that an attorney would want to track time on an iPhone.

The app stores a list of clients and projects for each client, and can
optionally associate billing codes with a client and a project.  You can also
associate a billing rate with a client and project if you want.  You
can either manually tell the app how much time to bill on a project, or
you can tap in the gray area on the time entry screen to start a
timer.  One nice feature that I don’t remember seeing on other time
tracking apps is the ability to bill in specific increments — for
example, you can tell the app to bill in 6 minute increments for .1 billing, and you
can have the app automatically round up, down, or to the nearest such
increment.

The app gives you the ability to have multiple timers at once, although this is, of course, useless for attorneys who ethically cannot bill two clients at the same time.  (See ABA Formal Opinion 93-379.)  If you have a timer running and then you exit the app, the timer continues to run, and a badge appears on the icon of the app to let you know how many timers are currently running.  You have the ability to go back to a prior entry and adjust the time, which I consider an essential feature for when you go back to working on a project later in the same day or you need to fix a time entry because you let the timer run too long.

The app can easily prepare reports of your time and then you can e-mail the reports to yourself (or anyone else, such as your secretary).  The app gives you lots of options to customize the report that you e-mail, such as identifying which fields to include and the order in which the fields should appear.

I haven’t played around with the Expenses feature very much, but the app does give you the ability to track your expenses.  I can see this being useful when you are on the road.

All in all, this is a very nice app.  It includes all of the key features of an iPhone time tracking app and for this reason alone is one of the best, plus it adds a lot of customization features and polish.  At $9.99, it is one of the more expensive time tracking apps, but that is a reasonable price considering all that you get with this app.  To help you decide whether to buy this app (and to help you learn how to use it), the developer’s website includes helpful videos of all of the major features. 

If you are looking for a time tracking app for your iPhone, there were already several good options, but Time Master enters this crowded field as one of the best and it is definitely worth your consideration.

Click here to get Time Master ($9.99): 

Apple is about to sell its one billionth app, and if you are the lucky person to download app number 1,000,000,000, you will get a $10,000 iTunes gift card, an iPod Touch, a Time Capsule, and a MacBook Pro.  Visit this page on Apple’s website for more information, including the opportunity to enter the contest for free without even downloading an app.

But it is a lot more fun to just download some apps.  So what have other people been downloading?  Apple has a page on the iTunes store listing the all-time most downloaded apps.  The top paid apps of all time are:

1. Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D ($5.99)

   

   — a racing game
2. Koi Pond ($0.99)

   

   — interact with fish in a pond of water
3. Enigmo ($3.99)

   

   — a puzzle game in which you direct drops of liquid
4. Bejeweled 2 ($2.99)

   

   — the classic game in which you get three or more jewels in a row to make them disappear
5. iBeer ($1.99)

   

   — a visual gag in which your iPhone appears to contain beer (or mouthwash)
6. Moto Chaser ($0.99)

   

   — a racing game
7. PocketGuitar ($0.99)

   

   — a virtual guitar
8. Flick Fishing ($0.99)

   

   — virtual fishing
9. Tetris ($4.99)

   

   — the Tetris game
10. Texas Hold’em ($4.99)

    

    — the only iPhone game sold by Apple, this poker game includes great graphics
11. Super Monkey Ball ($5.99)

    

    — a game in which your monkey rolls through mazes
12. Pocket God ($0.99)

    

    — control the ongoings on your island to either help or hurt your islanders
13. Cro-Mag Rally ($1.99)

    

    — a racing game
14. Ocarina ($0.99)

    

    — a virtual flute
15. Fieldrunners ($2.99)

    

    — a tower defense game
16. iFart Mobile ($0.99)

    

    — a productivity app
17. Touchgrind ($4.99)

    

    — a skateboarding game
18. iHunt ($0.99)

    

    — a hunting game
19. iShoot ($1.99)

    

    — an aim-and-shoot game
20. Monopoly Here & Now ($4.99)

    

    — a new version of the classic game

Arnold Kim at MacRumors.com has an interesting analysis of how many times some of these top 20 apps have been downloaded and how much money each has made for the developer.

The top free apps of all time are:

1. Facebook

   

   — nice client for the social messaging giant
2. Google Earth

   

   — 3D version of satellite and aerial images of Earth
3. Pandora Radio

   

   — start with a song you like and Pandora will stream you the audio of similar songs
4. Tap Tap Revenge

   

   — tap scrolling dots in time with the music
5. Shazam

   

   — identify a song by just letting your iPhone listen to it for a few seconds
6. PAC-MAN Lite

   

   — the first stage of the classic game
7. Backgrounds

   

   — thousands of iPhone background images, updated daily
8. Touch Hockey: FS5

   

   — air hockey game
9. Labyrinth Lite Edition

   

   — the wooden maze, steel ball game you played as a kid
10. Flashlight

    

    — fill your screen with white
11. Urbanspoon

    

    — pick a restaurant with a fun slot machine interface and get reviews
12. Movies

    

    — see what is playing and more
13. iBowl

    

    — a bowling game
14. Lightsaber Unleashed

    

    — admit it, when were a kid you would have done anything to have a lightsaber with you at all times
15. Sol Free Solitaire

    

    — Klondike and more
16. MySpace Mobile

    

    — client for the social messaging giant
17. Virtual Zippo Lighter

    

    — Freebird!
18. The Weather Channel

    

    — one of the better weather apps
19. Bubble Wrap

    

    — pop the virtual bubbles
20. Remote

    

    — Apple’s app to remotely control iTunes on your computer or an Apple TV

Download an app, help Apple reach the one billion mark, and maybe you will be the lucky person who brings Apple into the 10 digit download number range.

Here is a quick tip suggested to me by Ernest “Ernie the Attorney” Svenson that is helpful if you are ever trying to remember who you recently talked to on your iPhone (perhaps as you are doing your billable time entries).  In the Phone app, tap the “Recents” button at the bottom to see a list of all of the people who you recently called or who called you.  For older entries you just see the day of the call listed, but tap the blue arrow on the right of each entry to see the specific time of the call.  Unfortunately, there is no way to display how long the call lasted once the call is over, but this might be enough to jog your memory and remember who you talked to and what you talked about. [UPDATE:  I haven’t tried this myself, but Martin points out in a comment to this post that you can use a script called alllog2ical.rb, available here, to get more info such as call duration.]

For some entries you may see a number in parentheses next to the person’s name, indicating that there were multiple calls with that person.  The time or date of the most recent call is listed in Recents, and you can tap the blue arrow to see a list of the precise date and times of the calls.

I’m not sure how many recent calls are stored.  I vaguely remember reading somewhere that the iPhone logs the last 80 calls, but mine doesn’t seem to have quite that many.  Suffice it to say that dozens of the most recent calls are logged.

The call log will be greatly improved when Apple releases the iPhone Software 3.0 this summer.  But even the current, limited, version of the call log is a useful part of the iPhone that you might forget is there.

There was a lot of iPhone news this week.  Much of it concerned rumors of features that may be included in the next iPhone that Apple will release, but so many of those predictions are mere guesswork that I won’t comment on them here, except to note that I think it would be a good idea for Apple to include a better camera with video recording capabilities in the next iPhone.  But there was other news, and here are a few iPhone-related stories that caught my eye this week.  If you missed them, click the links for more information.

• DRM-free music and variable pricing on iTunes.  (Macworld)
• GM and Segway have come up with what looks like a really cool iPhone accessory.  (iLounge)
• New Gmail interface for iPhone.  I really like the pop-up menus.
• Video preview of the classic game Myst on the iPhone.  (AppVee)
• Documents to Go by DataViz will be released in May.  (Just Another iPhone Blog)
• Working out with your iPhone is not a good idea.  I recommend that you just use an iPod shuffle.  (TUAW)
• Confessions of an iPhone app addict.  (Mercury News, via Apple Hot News)
• Ten crazy iPhone cases.  (TUAW)

Enjoy the weekend, and have a good Easter or Passover or whatever it is that you are celebrating.