Jeff Richardson 
Many small law firms using Macs use Marketcircle’s Daylite program to manage their contacts, calendars, tasks, etc. For example, here is a post by Ben “The Mac Lawyer” Stevens talking about how he uses Daylite.
At Macworld Expo, Marketcircle is currently showing off an upcoming iPhone app called Daylite Touch which allows users to access most of the key data on Daylite from the iPhone. If your law firm uses Daylite, check out this video interview of Marketcircle CEO Alykhan Jetha by TUAW.
This morning, Phil Schiller (Apple’s VP of Worldwide Product Marketing) gave the keynote address at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco. Most of his announcements concerned Macs, but there were a few announcements of interest for attorneys using iPhones.
First, for any attorneys who use Apple’s Keynote software to do your slideshow presentations instead of Microsoft’s PowerPoint, you can now use your iPhone as a very slick remote control for your Keynote presentation if you are using the new Keynote ’09, part of iWork ’09. If you hold your iPhone in the normal portrait/vertical mode, you see your slide at the top of the iPhone screen and your speaker notes at the bottom of the screen. Or, you can turn your iPhone on its side in landscape/horizontal mode, and then you can see both the current slide that the audience is seeing and the next slide. The iPhone communicates with the Mac running the keynote presentation by using WiFi, and you can simply swipe your finger across the screen to advance to the next slide. Apple is charging $0.99 for the app. Just like Apple’s Remote app is a fantastic remote for an AppleTV or a computer running iTunes, the Keynote Remote app looks like it will be a must-have for any attorney giving a Keynote presentation.
The remaining iPhone announcements are essentially unrelated to the practice of law but will make your iPhone more fun. Apple’s second iPhone announcement has to do with displaying photos on your iPhone. The latest version of Apple’s iPhoto program for the Mac, part of iLife ’09 which will be released at the end of January, has a very slick Themed Slideshow feature. You can either let iPhoto ’09 create a slideshow for you automatically using any of six themes, or you can take the time to customize a slideshow. Once created, iPhoto has an Export feature that saves the slideshow as a movie and sends it to iTunes so that you can view the professional-looking slideshow on your iPhone.
Third, if you take pictures using the Camera app on the iPhone, the new iPhoto ’09 will pay attention to the GPS location tags that your iPhone adds to every photo and allow you to group your photos by where they were taken. This feature is commonly called geotagging. The quality of the photographs taken by the iPhone varies from horrible in low light conditions to reasonably good when you are outside or in a brightly-lit area, but it is nice to have more options for using the location data stored in each iPhone picture. And even if you are using a nicer camera to take pictures, if your camera doesn’t have GPS, you can use your iPhone’s camera to take one sample photograph in the same location where you are using your nicer camera, and then on your Mac in iPhoto ’09, apply the location from your iPhone’s sample photograph to all of the photographs you took with your nicer camera.
Fourth, if you use your iPhone to listen to music, Apple has improved buying music from iTunes. To begin with, you now have more flexibility when buying music directly on the iPhone. In the past, you could only use the iTunes app on the iPhone to buy music if you were on WiFi. Now, you can also use the iTunes app when you are using a 3G connection. [UPDATE: iPTIB reports that you can also buy songs over Edge, but it is so slow that you probably won’t want to. Also, there is a 10 MB file limit, the same limit we already had for podcasts — for larger files you must use WiFi.] I’ve tried this feature and it works as expected, so it is now even easier to buy a song when you are on the go and the mood strikes you. And when you do so, the price of that song may now be different. For the past six years, every song on iTunes was $0.99. Starting April 1, 2009, music companies can charge either $0.69, $0.99 or $1.29. I imagine that new releases will have the higher prices while older tracks might be cheaper. Fortunately, all iTunes music will soon be available with no DRM (digital rights management) and at a high-quality 256-Kbps AAC encoding. Until now, only some music on iTunes (songs identified as iTunes Plus) had this feature — specifically, songs from EMI and a few independent labels. If you want to upgrade a song that you previously purchased on iTunes to the higher-quality, DRM-free version, it appears that you can do this for $0.30 a song, but I haven’t tried this yet. [UPDATE: And to do so, you need to upgrade all previously-purchased songs at once. You cannot just select a specific song to upgrade for $0.30. UPDATE 1-31-09: Apple now allows you to select a specific song to upgrade for $0.30.]
I’m sure that there will be many more iPhone-related announcements at the Macworld Expo, and I will be discussing the best of them over the rest of this week. But these new iPhone announcements from Apple are great, especially considering that the focus of today’s Keynote was the Mac, not the iPhone.
As 2008 draws to a close, this is a natural time to look back at the last year of iPhone J.D. Natural, but impossible, because the site has only been around for about six weeks. Even so, I’d like to thank everyone who has helped to make this the #1 site for lawyers using iPhones … a claim that I make with some authority because I believe this is the only such site.
Thanks to my wife (an iPhone-using lawyer) for her support, and to my son for showing me that even a three year old can figure out how to use an iPhone.
Thanks to my blogger friends such as Ernie Svenson (Ernie the Attorney), Robert Peyton (Appetites), Ray Ward (Minor Wisdom) and Ben Stevens (The Mac Attorney) for educating me, inspiring me to start a blog, and linking to this site when it first started.
Thanks to my law firm and the increasing number of iPhone-using attorneys there who are frequently giving me ideas for this blog
Thanks to Daring Fireball and TechnoLawyer (and its TechnoFeature newsletter) for bringing thousands of visitors to iPhone J.D., many of whom have become regular readers.
Thanks to iFUN.de/iPhone, also known as iPhone-ticker.de, for sending thousands of visitors from Germany due to a link several weeks ago that is still sending traffic today. If there are any German lawyers reading this site — Willkommen! The Internet really does make the world feel like a small place. For example, using Google Translate, you can easily read that site in English and readers in other countries can easily read this site and others in their native language. Amazing technology.
Thanks to Steve Matthews for his interesting thoughts on how blogs like this can be marketing tools. The truth is that this site is just a hobby, not some elaborate marketing plan, but Steve’s blog offers tons of useful advice that can help all lawyers market ourselves better.
Obviously, thanks to Apple for all that it has done with the iPhone in 2008. It is hard to believe that when this year started, the iPhone had no third party apps, no 3G, didn’t work with Microsoft Exchange e-mail (and lacked MobileMe as another push e-mail alternative beyond Yahoo! Mail), and maxed out at 8 Gigs. When the 16 Gig iPhone was introduced in February of 2008, it cost $499. Dan Moren of Macworld has an excellent article on how the iPhone has evolved in 2008. Check it out. Considering all of the hardware and software features added to the iPhone in 2008, I am very excited to see what Apple has in store for 2009.
But most of all, thanks to all of you for reading and contributing to iPhone J.D. I know it is a little cliché for a blog to thank its readers, but your comments and e-mails have given me so many ideas for getting more out of my own iPhone and have resulted in dozens of posts to this website. Thanks!
Happy New Year, and please keep your comments and e-mails coming in 2009. Let’s all plan to meet up this time next year to look back on all of the improvements to the iPhone that we saw in 2009. I predict that it is going to be an awesome year.
-Jeff Richardson
The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) recently added a post listing a few ways that your iPhone can come in handy when you are traveling. Click here to read it. They discuss using an iPhone as an electronic boarding pass (a topic I recently discussed), getting movies on your iPhone using Handbrake so that you have something to watch on the plane, using Google maps to get travel directions and public transportation information, etc.
I recently traveled to New York over the holidays and my iPhone was incredibly helpful and fun while traveling. I kept up with e-mail. I took a few pictures of interesting sights with the iPhone camera. I used the recently added public transportation information in the Maps app to figure out which New Jersey Transit trains to take to get to and from Newark airport. While I was riding a train, I used the Wikipanion app to quickly access information from Wikipedia (even with a slow Edge connection) and learn a lot of interesting historical facts about the route I was taking. I listened to music and podcasts and played a few games to pass the time on the plane (and I finally got far enough in the game to unlock all of the songs on Guitar Rock Tour, a fun Guitar Hero type game for the iPhone). I kept my three year old son entertained during down time at the airport with games like Preschool Pals and videos he likes on YouTube such as the Maurice Sendak classics Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen. And my RichardSolo external battery was essential to keep my iPhone running from early in the morning when my travels started until 10pm when I landed in New Orleans.
I have traveled with various smartphones and PDAs for over 15 years, but the iPhone far surpasses any other device I have previously used. It is amazing to have something almost as powerful as a laptop that weighs practically nothing and slips into a pocket. The iPhone is a great travel companion.
If you are willing to buy a refurbished phone — which AT&T says is a previously owned phone that was returned during the 30 day trial period and has been tested — AT&T will sell you an 8 GB iPhone for only $99 and a 16 GB iPhone for only $199.
Click here for more details.
UPDATE on 1/6/08: The AT&T promotion is now over, but Best Buy will now sell you a refurbished iPhone for $50 off ($149 for 8GB and $249 for 16 GB).
Those of you who have read iPhone J.D. from the beginning (thanks!) know that I am a big fan of Citrix and I am eagerly looking forward to the app that they are writing for the iPhone. In fact, I was using Citrix earlier today. Even though I am currently with my wife’s family in New York for the holidays, I was able to fire up the Citrix client on a Mac and connect to my office to revise an appellate brief.
The Citrix Receiver for iPhone will not only look and feel native to this platform but it will leverage many of the software and hardware advancements incorporated into this ingenious device. Expect a rich combination of multi-touch gestures, great usage of the iPhone’s accelerometer and many more.
This video shows pictures of 30 years of Apple products in just over 3 minutes. It’s not complete — where is the Apple Hi-Fi? the Apple iPod socks? — but it is a fun trip down memory lane. Perhaps many of you, like me, have actually used a large number of these products. I remember using an Apple ][+ to program in BASIC in middle school, using my summer job earnings in college to buy a Mac Plus, my first exposure to digital photography with the Apple QuickTake 100 camera, etc. I never owned a Newton, but I was always intrigued by it, and today’s iPhone is clearly what the Newton always wanted to be. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this video. Thanks to BuzzNewsRoom for posting it and to iPhone Savior for pointing it out.
There are not many lawyer-specific iPhone apps available, and many of the most useful — for example, the great FRCP app recently reviewed on this site — have been written by attorney Cliff Maier of WaffleTurtle Software. Cliff is an Intellectual Property attorney in the Palo Alto office of the prestigious Mayer Brown law firm. Click this button to see all of the current iPhone apps by Cliff Maier: 
I recently caught up with Cliff to talk to him about his double-identity as an IP lawyer by day and an iPhone app programmer by night. Cliff has some interesting thoughts and the road that led him to developing apps for the iPhone is fascinating. I hope you enjoy reading this interview as much as I enjoyed talking to Cliff.
iPJD: What kind of law do you practice?
Maier: My practice is now almost entirely intellectual property litigation, and, of that, almost all of the litigation is patent-related. I do a little licensing work, a little of what patent folks call “clearance” work, and a little bit of “opinion of counsel” work, as well. Although I don’t do much now, I’ve also done a fair amount of patent prosecution work (I am a registered patent attorney).
iPJD: Can you tell us a little bit more about the patent law work do you do?
Maier: My practice has specialized in the technical areas associated with patent and copyright cases. My practice is probably not the sort of practice that would be very familiar to most attorneys, even most patent attorneys. I do my best to become an expert in the underlying technology, whether it be cryptographic algorithms, memory circuit designs, or software user interfaces. I try to get to the point where I could go get a job in that industry. This helps me make our expert witnesses more efficient, helps me locate potentially invalidating prior art, helps me communicate with our clients’ engineers, helps me figure out reasons our client doesn’t actually infringe, etc. It also enables me to easily punch holes in opposing experts’ testimony and reports. In one big recent case, I actually got to use a couple of my own engineering journal publications as prior art in our patent invalidity case. That was great fun.
iPJD: What type of work did you do before you went to law school? I know that you obtained a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering in 1996.
Maier: After I got my Ph.D. in New York, I came out to Silicon Valley and worked at a start-up. It was the most fun I’ve ever had, but we went out of business eight months later. I was a chip designer, working on super-high-end microprocessors for Apple’s Macintosh computers. I had a ton of responsibility because, despite being a youngster, I had spent four years working on exactly the same technology for my Ph.D. (and no one else in Silicon Valley other than the folks I was working with really understood the technology).
iPJD: Many readers of iPhone J.D. are Macintosh users and are familiar with the different microprocessors that Apple has considered using over the years. Which one did you work on?
Maier: The name of the company was Exponential Technology. We were working on a 500MHz PowerPC back in the days of the PowerPC 601. Apple was an investor, back in the days when Gil Amelio was the CEO of Apple. We had working silicon and a big coming-out party at the Fairmont in San Jose with all the tech press. Apple fans used to send us mail offering to be janitors just so they could work for us. Then Steve Jobs came back to Apple and sort of put the kibosh on the whole thing.
iPJD: Where did you go after Exponential Technology?
Over the last several months, I’ve read with interest articles about airlines such as Continental and Delta starting to allow digital boarding passes on your iPhone or other cell phone. (The photo on the right is from this post on Engadget.) One of the things that I love about my iPhone it that it allows me to keep all of the information that is important to me in one place, replacing the countless pieces of paper that I am likely to misplace. So moving my boarding pass from a piece of paper to my iPhone is just another step in my attempt to reduce the paper in my life.
While I have seen a few articles about digital boarding passes, I haven’t come across many first-hand accounts about how it works in practice, with the exception of this one post by Grant Martin a few weeks ago on the Gadling travel website. Martin describes how he was able to use his iPhone as his boarding pass. It is worth reading his entire post to get the full story, but he ends it as follows:
The reason for my post is that I am curious to hear from others who have used a digital boarding pass on their iPhone at one of the few airports that allows them to learn about how the process has worked in practice. Except for that one post from Grant Martin, I haven’t come across much more on the Internet, even on FlyerTalk which is usually one of the best places to get advice and stories from frequent flyers. Here is a story about someone using a PDF version of his boarding pass on his iPhone with success, which is not the same thing but is certainly related.
A lot of you will, like me, be traveling over the next few weeks for the holidays. If you have the opportunity to use your iPhone as your boarding pass, I would love for you to share your experiences. Post a comment or send me an e-mail.
On July 19, 2000, I had a chance to attend a Steve Jobs keynote address at the Macworld Expo in New York. It was a memorable presentation. Jobs gave an early sneak peek at the first version of Mac OS X, replaced the infamous round “hockey puck” mouse with an optical mouse, and for his “one more thing” introduced the G4 Cube — a computer that was not a financial success, but was a design marvel and had devoted fans. Plus, Steve Jobs surprised all of us in the audience by telling us to look under our chairs to find a certificate we could use to get one of the new mice for free. Ever since that Macworld, I’m told that attendees always look under
their chairs before a keynote address just to see if that stunt is
repeated.
And while that show was memorable, the award for best Steve Jobs keynote ever has to go to the keynote address at Macworld San Francisco in January of 2007. That was when Jobs introduced the iPhone. It was Steve Jobs bravado at its finest:
This is a day I’ve been looking forward to for two and a half years. Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything. And Apple has been, well, first of all, one is very fortunate if you get to work on just one of these in your career. Apple has been very fortunate. It has been able to introduce a few of these into the world. In 1984, we introduced the Macintosh. It didn’t just change Apple, it changed the whole computer industry. In 2001, we introduced the first iPod. And it didn’t just change the way we all listen to music, it changed the entire music industry.
Well, today, we’re introducing three revolutionary products of this class. The first one is a widescreen iPod with touch controls. [Crowd cheers] The second is a revolutionary mobile phone. [Crowd cheers even louder] And the third is a breakthrough Internet communications device. So, three things. A widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone, and a breakthrough Internet communications device. An iPod, a phone and an Internet communicator. An iPod, a phone and an Internet communicator. [Crowd goes wild] Are you getting it? These are not three separate devices. This is one device. And we are calling it iPhone. Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone.
Given the history of great Steve Jobs keynotes at Macworld conventions, it was a little sad to hear Apple announce this week that after the Macworld Expo being held in San Francisco in a few weeks, Apple will no longer participate in Macworld conventions. And to underscore that Apple would no longer be using the Macworld Expo to make great product introductions, Apple also announced that Steve Jobs will not give the keynote in a few weeks — instead, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, Phil Schiller, will give the address.
A lot has been written about Apple’s decision. While I understand why so many people are disappointed, Apple’s decision makes sense for the future. First, now that Apple has Apple Stores in malls across the country, a customer no longer needs to attend a big Macworld Expo to get the full Apple experience. Also, I’m sure that Apple was frustrated with having to introduce new exciting products every January. That timing is horrible — it is just days after the holiday buying season ends — plus Apple would prefer to make big product announcements whenever big products are ready to announce.
There are dozens of articles analyzing Apple’s decision, but these are some of the best:
(My views are closest to those of John Siracusa.)
While many are now thinking about what Apple’s decision means for the future, this seems like an appropriate time to reflect on the past. Apple still has a page on their website on which you can watch the January 2007
iPhone introduction (or, if you want, the entire keynote). Even
two years later, it is still a good show and I encourage you to watch it. I would love it if, just once in my life, I could channel that famous Steve Jobs charisma and enthusiasm as I am making a jury closing argument or giving a CLE presentation.
[UPDATE on 1/23/09: John Gruber has an excellent, poignant post reflecting on Macworld Expo.]