Jeff Richardson

I often link to news stories that share the tell of someone whose life was saved by an Apple product, such as an Apple Watch. Just this week, for example, Ambar Rodriguez of KSNV in Las Vegas shared the story of a man who credits his Apple Watch with saving his life after his blood sugar got low and he fell unconscious. And Destany Fuller of KSWO News in Oklahoma shares the story of a woman who received an Apple Watch notification that she was in AFib; she decided to go to see a doctor and learned that if she had not come in, she probably would have died within days. But only rarely is the author of the story also the subject of the story. Daniel Eran Dilger has been writing about Apple technology for decades; I first linked to one of his articles in the tenth edition of In the News back on June 12, 2009. The title of his latest article for Apple Insider is Apple’s Crash Detection saves another life: mine. He crashed while using a rental scooter and ended up knocked unconscious on the side of a bridge and losing blood. Fortunately, his Apple Watch called for help, and when he regained consciousness, he found himself in a hospital. Check out the story for more details. Reading his story makes me happy that my wife, my two kids, and I all wear an Apple Watch. And now, the other news of note from the past week:

• Paul Thurrott has been covering Microsoft and writing about Microsoft Windows since the 1990s, and he has switched back-and-forth between the iPhone and Android and other smartphone platforms over the years. This background provides him with a unique perspective for reviewing the iPhone 15 Pro Max, and sure enough, he wrote a very interesting review. I don’t agree with all of his opinions—for example, he thinks Apple should have done more with the camera, whereas I’m loving the results I have been getting with both the regular and the 5x zoom lenses—but I do agree with his conclusion: “Apple still delivers the best overall smartphone experience available today, as always. Whether you’re a convert or not, you will not be disappointed.”
• Apple released iOS 17.1.1 this week to fix a few glitches, as noted by Zac Hall of 9to5Mac.
• Apple updated other operating systems this week as well. For example, Juli Clover of MacRumors notes that watchOS 10.1.1 fixed an issue that caused some Apple Watches to drain the battery more quickly than expected.
• Clover also reports that the new HomePod 17.1.1 makes Siri more responsive.
• If 17.1.1 doesn’t solve your problems with Siri, and if you happen to be Barbra Streisand, you can always just call Tim Cook for tech support. Zac Hall of 9to5Mac reports on an appearance by Barbra Streisand on the BBC in which she explains that after Siri kept mispronouncing her name, she simply called Tim Cook and had it fixed.
• Ashley Belanger of Ars Technica reports that cops in Washington, DC, are handing out free AirTags (and Tiles) so that folks can hide them in their vehicles and use the devices to try to recover the cars after they are stolen. You may recall that six months ago, I reported that New York City had done the same thing. I haven’t been keeping an AirTag in my car, but in light of this report, I’m going to start doing so.
• If you are interested in getting started with using Apple HomeKit devices in your home, or you just want to learn more about it, Paul Lamkin of The Ambient wrote a great, comprehensive guide to everything you need to know about Apple’s HomeKit smarthome technology.
• Apple announced that Taylor Swift is the 2023 Apple Music Artist of the Year. My home certainly contributed to the play count, especially after my daughter and wife recently went to the movie theater to watch The Era Tour concert.
• Andrew O’Hara of Apple Insider reviews the new Apple Pencil (USB-C).
• If you don’t want to pay $79 for the new Apple Pencil (USB-C) you can instead pay $69.99 for the Adonit Note+ 2. Both of those devices attach by magnets to an iPad for storage, and for both you need to plug-in a USB-C cord to charge them. However, as noted by Rael Hornby of Laptop, the Adonit stylus lacks the hover feature of the low-end version of the Apple Pencil, but it adds support for pressure sensitivity, comes with interchangeable nibs, and has a shortcut rocker switch for switching between tools or colors. As much as I love my Apple Pencil, I’ve also had great experiences with Adonit styluses over the years, so it seems like a decent alternative choice.
• Would you rather use a high-tech pin on your chest instead of carrying around a smartphone or Apple Watch? Stephen Hackett of 512 Pixels discusses the $699 Humane AI Pin, which was announced this week, a product developed by two former Apple employees.
• Season 4 of For All Mankind starts today on Apple TV+. This is one of my absolute favorite shows on any network, and I cannot wait to start watching it. The third season ended in 1996 and the fourth season begins in 2001, so as Amber Neely of Apple Insider reports, Apple released a number of fake news clips to explain what happened in the fictional world of the series between those two years. The show did the same thing for prior seasons, and it is always interesting to see the alternative takes on significant events that did happen in the real world.
• And finally, Apple TV+ also released a trailer for the new show Hannah Waddingham: Home For Christmas, which premieres November 22. I have no idea if this show will be worth watching, but I do know that on the few occasions when Hannah Waddingham sang on the Ted Lasso show, her voice was excellent. I’m sure that other Ted Lasso cast members will show up in her holiday special, so for now at least, this is the closest that we have to a Ted Lasso spin-off show.

A few days ago, Apple released the results for its 2023 fiscal fourth quarter (which ran from July 2, 2023, to September 30, 2023) and held a call with analysts to discuss the results. The fiscal fourth quarter is typically a less important quarter for Apple. It is the first fiscal quarter—the one that we are in now—that is traditionally Apple’s big revenue quarter because of holiday sales. Nevertheless, there are always a few interesting items whenever Apple announces quarterly results. This year, the revenue for the quarter was $89.5 billion, down slightly from $90.1 billion this time last year. If you want to get all of the nitty-gritty details, you can listen to the audio from the announcement conference call on the Apple website, or you can read a transcript of the call prepared by Jason Snell of Six Colors.  Apple’s official press release is here.  Here are the items that stood out to me.

iPhone

• Apple’s iPhone revenue for the quarter was $43.8 billion, which is 3% better than the $42.6 billion this time last year. This was a new record for iPhone revenue in a fiscal fourth quarter.
• Apple CFO Luca Maestri said that the number of iPhones in active use “grew to a new all-time high” and added that “fiscal 2023 was another record year for switchers,” but he didn’t provide specific numbers for either statement.
• People are ordering the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max faster than Apple can currently make them.

iPad

• Apple’s iPad revenue for the quarter was $6.4 billion, which is down 10% from $7.2 billion this time last year.
• Maestri said that the reduction in iPad sales was a “function of a difficult compare from the supply disruptions in the June quarter a year ago and the subsequent fulfillment of pent-up demand in the September quarter.” In my opinion, the fact that Apple didn’t come out with a new iPad in 2023 probably had a lot to do with it too.
• Maestri said that over half of the customers who purchased an iPad during the past quarter were purchasing their first iPad.

Other

• Cook said that the upcoming Apple Vision Pro, which will go on sale early next year, has gotten “an amazing response from developers who are currently creating truly incredible apps.”
• Services revenue for Apple set an all-time record of $22.3 billion, a 16% year-over-year increase.
• Maestri said that there are over 2 billion Apple devices in active use that can stream Apple services.
• Cook announced that since Apple TV+ launched four years ago, its shows have earned nearly 1,600 award nominations and nearly 400 wins.

Brett and I start this week’s episode of the In the News podcast by discussing Apple’s announcement from earlier this week. Yes, there were new Macs introduced, and that is of interest to some, but the most surprising announcement was that Apple shot the entire thing on an iPhone. We also discuss the 40th birthday of Microsoft Word, how to get the most out of watchOS 10 on an Apple Watch, getting information about your iPhone battery (if you have a new iPhone), the latest-and-greatest eero and whether you need it, HomeKit devices to sense motion and turn on lights, and more.

In our Where Y’at segment, Brett talks about the role that his AirTag played when someone walked off of an airplane with Brett’s luggage. It’s quite a story.

In our In the Know segment, Brett explains why you should consider getting the Bartender app if you use a Mac laptop. I discuss the long and winding road of the relationship between Apple and The Beatles, which led to the release of the band’s final song on Apple Music this week.

Click here to listen to the audio podcast, or just listen using your podcast player of choice.  You can also watch the episode on YouTube:

“The year was 1983. Never Say Never Again was the top movie in the land. Total Eclipse of the Heart was the #1 song, and the most popular show on TV was Dallas. A gallon of gas cost 1.59 cents.” So begins this post on the Microsoft 365 Insider blog, a post announcing that Microsoft Word is now 40 years old. When first introduced in 1983, it was actually called “Multi-Tool Word” and an article in InfoWorld that you can still read on the Internet explained that the program worked with a mouse (which the article helpfully described for those unfamiliar with such a device). That article also notes that it would be a “‘see what you get’ word processor, which means text appears on the screen just as it will appear when it is printed on paper.” The original versions of Word ran on Xenix and MS-DOS, but as noted by Adam Engst of TidBITS this week, it was ported to the Mac in 1985. I started using Word on my first Mac in 1988 (a year before it was ported to Windows in 1989) and I have been using Word virtually every week, if not every day, since then. The release of Microsoft Word for the iPad on March 27, 2014, was one of the most important app releases of all time for lawyers who use an iPad. Later that year, the app was updated to work with the iPhone as well. Over the last forty years, Microsoft has certainly made some decisions about the Word app that I disagreed with (yes, I’m thinking about you, Word for Mac version 6.0 released in 1993), but I cannot deny how consistently useful this software has been for me ever since the 1980s. So happy birthday to Word, and thank you to the fine folks at Microsoft for the efforts over the last forty years. And before I leave the topic of birthdays, I’m happy to note that you are reading the 700th edition of the In the News post on iPhone J.D. If you are interested, I explained the origin of In the News back in 2011 when I published the 100th edition. Okay, enough about the past. Let’s turn to the present and the top news of note from the past week:

• I cannot say enough good things about this review of watchOS 10 by Alex Guyot of MacStories. Reading that review made me realize that there are tons of new features in watchOS 10 that I really wasn’t taking advantage of yet. Now that I have taken the time to edit my Smart Stack and remember that I can double-click on the digital crown to see and switch to recently used apps, I’m getting much more out of my Apple Watch.
• If you are interested in a leather case for your new iPhone, John Gruber of Daring Fireball recommends models from Ryan London and Bullstrap.
• Jason Cross of Macworld identifies six hidden features of the iPhone 15 line, including the ability to find out the date that your battery was manufactured and first used.
• If you are looking to upgrade the Wi-Fi in your home or office, this article from Darrell Etherington of TechCrunch makes me think that the eero Max 7 is about as good as you can get. It is expensive, so it will be more than many folks need, but combining the ease of use of eero with the advances of Wi-Fi 7 sounds pretty nice for those who already pay for super-fast Internet and want to turn that into super-fast Wi-Fi. Having said that, if $1,149.99 for a two-pack seems like too much money for you, eero is also selling cheaper models with fewer features. The eero Pro 3-pack that I reviewed in 2020 continues to work amazingly well for my home.
• Peter Cohen of Apple Insider reports that Apple’s tap to pay feature on the iPhone is coming to Ukraine for the first time now that it is being supported by PrivatBank, the country’s largest bank. I’m sure that this will be useful for many folks in that country, and it sure is nice to be able to report on good news from Ukraine.
• I’ve been using an Eve Motion sensor since I reviewed it in 2018, and it works well for me. Mine is in my TV room, and whenever I enter the room and the lights are off, the motion sensor sees me and triggers a shortcut to turn on the lights in the room. Benjamin Mayo of 9to5Mac explained this week why the Eve Motion is the best HomeKit motion sensor. He is using a more advanced model than the one that I reviewed in 2018, so I’m sure that the new version ($49.95 on Amazon) works even better.
• Megan Wollerton of The Verge recommends some of the best smart plugs for your smart home.
• Two years ago, Apple introduced the Apple Music Voice Plan. It provided access to Apple Music for only $5 a month, but the catch is that you could only use Siri to access music. I guess the idea is that if you only wanted music on a HomePod, you were going to use Siri anyway. The idea never made sense to me—I use my iPhone to pick music to play on a HomePod—and as noted by Roman Loyola of Macworld, Apple cancelled that plan this week.
• Derek Wise of 9to5Mac notes that you can use the new app from NASA called Spot the Station to learn about the International Space Station and get alerted when you can see it in the sky.
• And finally, this past Monday night, Apple streamed a 30-minute presentation to announce new Macs using the new M3 chip—which is similar to the A17 Pro chip used in the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max. The most amazing thing to me about the presentation was not the new hardware but the quality of the video. I watched it at home on my 4K HDR television by LG, the C1 model, and I was amazed at how good everything looked. And then I was truly amazed when the very end of the video said that it was shot using an iPhone 15 Pro Max, the same iPhone that I use. Obviously, Apple used sophisticated equipment to hold the iPhone and move it around, much like anyone shooting professional video would do with any camera, but even so, I thought that it was neat that the hardware being used to take that amazing video was the same hardware that I use to create home movies. We’ve come a long way from the very first edition of In the News in 2009 when I said that it would be nice if Apple would introduce an iPhone “with video recording capabilities.” Apple can check that one off of its to do list. Apple created a two-minute behind the scenes video to provide a peak at how the iPhone was used to create the video it streamed a few days ago:

Brett and I start this week’s episode of the In the News podcast discussing the technology that made it possible for The Beatles to release one last song, and then we turn our attention to the Apple event planned for Monday night. Neither of us has a good idea for why Apple made the change to an after-hours event. Maybe Apple is just trying to mix things up? We also discuss the recent release of iOS 17.1 and what is coming next in iOS 17.2. We also discuss iPhone sales, what is coming in smart home technology, Apple services price hikes, USB-C cables, and more.

In our Where Y’at segment, we share the story of a man who recovered his Apple Watch Ultra after being at the bottom of a lake for three months.

This week’s episode is sponsored by Lit Software, the company behind must-have apps for many lawyers such as TrialPad and TranscriptPad. Today, we discuss a way that a law firm can purchase 10 or more licenses at once, which can not only provide a significant discount but also makes it easier to manage all of the different licenses. Learn more at the Lit Software website.

In our In the Know segment, Brett explains what happens when you press your fingers on the end of AirPods Pro and how you can adjust that as a result of recent changes. I explain a new feature in iOS 17.1 that makes it easy to extend a picture so that it works great for wallpaper or a contact photo on the iPhone.

Click here to listen to the audio podcast, or just listen using your podcast player of choice.  You can also watch the episode on YouTube:

On the list of things that I expected to happen this past week, there are two items that were way down near the bottom of my list and yet, to my surprise, they occurred. First, The Beatles announced that they have a new song coming out next week. No, you are not reading this website from the 1960s; there is a partial song recorded by John in the 1970s that George, Paul, and Ringo tried to turn into a song in the 1990s. They couldn’t do so at the time because the recording was too hard to work with; John recorded the piano and vocals on the same track and there was a loud hum on the recording. But as Mike Spohr of BuzzFeed explains, Peter Jackson was able to use sophisticated AI technology to clean up John’s track, the part that George recorded in the 1990s is still usable, and Paul and Ringo were able to finish the song. Thus, after being worked on for multiple decades, the song “Now and Then” will be released on November 2 as the very last song by The Beatles. I should have realized that anything was possible this week because just a few days before the Beatles announcement, Apple announced that it will stream a product release video on October 30. That’s a little late in the year, but not unprecedented. But what is unprecedented is that the event will occur at 8pm Eastern. I’ve been following Apple for decades and I cannot think of any precedent for an event like this at nighttime. What will Apple announce on the Eve of Halloween as the sun sets across this country? The page on Apple’s website for this event shows the Finder logo, so I’m sure that new Macs will be announced. But Apple hasn’t introduced a single new iPad in all of 2023, so I guess there is the slight possibility of an iPad announcement. (But probably not, because if Apple was going to do that, it probably would have waited instead of releasing the new Apple Pencil last week.) And now, here is the other news of note from what has been an extraordinary week:

• Apple released iOS 17.1 this past week, along with similar updates for other devices. Federicco Viticci of MacStories explains what is new. The promised improvement to AirDrop is now working: start sharing while you are close to someone else, but then the download can continue using the Internet if you go farther apart. There are also improvements to StandBy mode if you use an iPhone 14 Pro or 15 Pro with an always-on display; you can now control in Settings when the display should turn off. As I noted in this post, I’m a huge fan of StandBy, and I want to give another big shout-out to the Anker 3-in-1 Cube with MagSafe ($149.95 on Amazon) because everything about it works so incredibly well. There are also improvements to Apple Music and more.
• Now that iOS 17.1 is out, Apple is working on iOS 17.2, and beta versions are available. Chance Miller of 9to5Mac reports that one feature coming in iOS 17.2 is Apple’s new Journal app.
• That new iPhone is apparently a hit. Apple doesn’t have its next quarterly earnings call until November 2, but AT&T had it call recently and said the carrier saw “the strongest iPhone pre-orders we’ve had in years” thanks to the iPhone 15 lineup, according to Chance Miller of 9to5Mac.
• The Matter standard has been updated to version 1.2, and Jennifer Pattison Tuohy does a great job in her article for The Verge describing what this means. On the plus side, it allows your Apple device to control refrigerators, robot vacuums, smoke alarms, room air conditioners, laundry washers, air purifiers, and more. But as the second half of that article notes, this open standard only works with manufacturers update their devices to work with Matter and Apple updates the Home app to support the new standard. Hopefully, this will all happen soon.
• Brent Dirks of AppAdvice describes updates to the Google Maps app that make it easier to preview a route in an immersive view before you take a trip.
• Apple is raising the prices for some of its subscription services including Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, Apple News+, and Apple One. John Gruber of Daring Fireball discusses the implications of these price hikes.
• Filipe Espósito reports on a lost Apple Watch Ultra that was found at the bottom of a lake. A person whose watch fell in a lake hired a scuba diver to try to find it (after dropping a marker) but had no luck. Three months later, another diver found it, and the Apple Watch Ultra is back in the owner’s hands and still works.
• Why is it that USB-C cables can vary so much in price, from a few dollars to over $100? The folks at Lumafield used an X-ray CT scanner to provide part of the answer. (Spoiler alert: you get what you pay for.)
• And finally, here is a silly new video from Apple to celebrate the power of the A17 Pro chip in the iPhone 15 Pro.

Brett and I start this week’s episode of the In the News podcast discussing surprises. First, many folks are being surprised by Apple’s new 3D reactions while in video calls, so we discuss what will happen and how you can control it. Second, virtually everyone was surprised to see Apple announce a new product this week: the Apple Pencil (USB-C). We also discuss iOS 17.1 (expected to come out in just a few days), how Wi-Fi will soon change substantially because of the new 6 GHz band, using Generative AI to make pictures better fit an iPhone screen, and much more.

This week’s episode is sponsored by Lit Software, the company behind must-have apps for many lawyers such as TrialPad and TranscriptPad. I discuss a great new feature in Lit Software that lets you incorporate video with a transcript and why this can be truly game changing, a topic that I also addressed in this post. Learn more at the Lit Software website.

In our In the Know segment, Brett talks about one of my favorite features of TranscriptPad: the ability to quickly search across all of the transcripts in a case. I provide tips for what to do when you are using the Maps feature in CarPlay and your car has trouble figuring out where you are (i.e. the GPS doesn’t work correctly).

Click here to listen to the audio podcast, or just listen using your podcast player of choice.  You can also watch the episode on YouTube:

Both iOS 17 and macOS Sonoma bring new features to FaceTime and other video apps: 3D reactions. If you do a thumbs up or thumbs down, you will see a similar bubble on the screen. If you do a double thumbs up, fireworks appear behind your head. If you do a double thumbs down, rain appears. If you use two hands to make a heart, floating red hearts appear to come from the center of your hands. A peace sign from one hand results in balloons around you, and from both hands results in confetti. And finally, if you use both hands, palm forward, and fold down your third and fourth fingers to make the Sign of the Horns, lasers go off behind you. It’s cute, but you can turn it off if it is not for you. However, by default, it is turned on, and Jay Peters of The Verge reports that it is surprising some people. Sometimes that is a pleasant, amusing surprise. But in other situations, like a business meeting, you may be embarrassed if you create special effects by mistake. Even worse, some folks have reported being in a remote video therapy session when a hand gesture made during a difficult moment can result in special effects that are exactly the opposite of how you are feeling, interrupting the therapy. Yikes. Jason Snell of Six Colors suggests that Apple should provide more warnings to prevent this. If you want to turn these special effects off, you need to first be in a video call, then activate the Control Center, tap Video Effects, and tap Reactions to toggle the feature off. And now, the news of note from the past week:

• iOS 17.1 is expected to be introduced next week. Chance Miller of 9to5Mac explains what will be new.
• A few days ago, I mentioned the new entry-level Apple Pencil (USB-C). Jason Snell of Six Colors shares some theories on what this new product might indicate about the upcoming changes to the iPad line.
• For many years, Apple and other tech companies have been asking the FCC to let them use the 6GHz band for wireless devices, and Wes Davis of The Verge reports that the FCC granted the request this week. These signals will not go far, but they are high speed, and this spectrum could be perfect for inside of a car or for augmented reality devices. I look forward to seeing what Apple does with this.
• I recently recommended two fantastic 3-in-1 chargers that work great for StandBy mode: (1) the Anker 3-in-1 Cube with MagSafe, which is $149.95 on Amazon and (2) the Twelve South HiRise 3 Deluxe, which is $149.99. Twelve South recently came out with another interesting product: a wall-mounted organizer for your Apple Watch bands called the TimePorter, an interesting idea for folks who have lots of different watch bands that costs $29.99.
• Stephen Hackett recommends using Generative AI photography to change your photos so that they work well for wallpaper. This also works for assigning full-screen photos to contacts.
• Speaking of which, Jovana Naumovski of Gadget Hacks shares tips for setting a custom contact poster that others will see when you call them.
• Dan Moren of Six Colors discusses some of the recent problems that Apple has been having with the iCloud service.
• Bradley Chambers of 9to5Mac recommends an inexpensive ($20) Onvis Smart Plug.
• In an article on MacStories, Niléane discusses some of the new features of Apple’s Translate app.
• In another article on MacStories, John Voorhees discusses the fantastic widgets from the Fantastical app.
• And finally, we are three weeks away from Season 4 of For All Mankind, one of my all-time favorite shows on Apple TV+. Here is the Season 4 trailer. If you haven’t started watching the show yet, I recommend that you watch a season each week for the next three weeks so that you are ready on November 10:

Apple introduced the first-generation Apple Pencil in 2015. That is the one that has a cap at the end covering a Lightning connector, and you plug it into the Lightning port of an iPad to charge it. Awkward, but functional. In 2018, Apple introduced the second-generation Apple Pencil. It was a big step forward because that flat edge meant not only that it was less likely to roll off of a table but also it attached magnetically to the top/side of an iPad. Not only is that a convenient place to store the Pencil, but it also charges the Pencil. The second-generation Apple Pencil also added a new gesture: you can double-tap the side of the Pencil to change what the Pencil does. Now that so many years have passed, I have been wishing that Apple will introduce a third-generation Apple Pencil with even more new features.

Apple has not yet done that, but it did introduce a new entry-level Apple Pencil yesterday called the Apple Pencil (USB-C). At only $79 (compared to $99 for the first-generation Pencil and $129 for the second-generation Pencil), it is the least expensive Apple Pencil ever. The new Apple Pencil works with every iPad model that has USB-C: the iPad Pro 12.9" third-generation (released in 2018) and later; any model of the iPad Pro 11"; the iPad Air fourth-generation (released in 2020) and later; the iPad tenth-generation (released in 2022); and the iPad mini sixth-generation (released in 2021).

Unlike the other two models, this entry-level Apple Pencil lacks pressure sensitivity, so you cannot change the width of a brush depending upon how much pressure you apply on the iPad screen. Artists will miss that feature, but if you are just taking notes and annotating documents, that feature is not very valuable. I rarely ever use it myself.

The new Apple Pencil gets 50% of the design advantage of the side of the second-generation Apple Pencil. I say that because just like the second-generation model, this new model has a flat side and contains a magnet, so you can attach it to the side of an iPad for easy storage (plus that flat side makes it less likely that the Pencil will roll around on a table). That’s good. But it is just a magnet, so the new Apple Pencil does not charge when it is attached to an iPad, nor does it wirelessly pair to an iPad by being attached to the iPad.

Instead of magnetic charging, the new Apple Pencil charges at the end, but does so in a way that seems better than the first-generation Pencil. With the original Apple Pencil, you remove a cap to charge via Lightning, and the cap could get lost. With this new Apple Pencil, you slide back back the cap (so it stays attached) to reveal a USB-C port. This is still far less elegant than charging when attached to the side of an iPad, but that is one of the trade-offs for saving $50.

The new Apple Pencil does support the hover feature of the second-generation Apple Pencil that was introduced with the 2022 version of the iPad Pro (the one with an M2 processor). However, it does not support double-tap to switch tools, which I think most folks would use more than hover. Frankly, if you have already spent the money on an iPad Pro, you would be much happier spending the extra $50 to get the second-generation Apple Pencil with both magnetic charging and double-tap support. Nevertheless, by adding hover support to this new Pencil, Apple is indicating that hover support is coming in the future to less-expensive models of the iPad.

Indeed, I think that a primary reason that Apple developed this new Apple Pencil is that it is a better solution for the least expensive iPad: the iPad (10th generation) introduced in 2022, which starts at $449. That iPad uses USB-C instead of Lightning but doesn’t support the second-generation Apple Pencil. You can use the first-generation Apple Pencil but you have to use a USB-C to Lightning dongle to charge, which is an extremely awkward solution. All of this makes me wonder why this new Apple Pencil was introduced yesterday instead of on October 18, 2022, when the iPad (10th generation) was introduced. But hey, better late than never.

I love my Apple Pencil and use it almost every day to take handwritten notes, highlight and annotate documents, and more. But I frequently talk to attorneys and others who use an iPad and don’t see a need for an expensive stylus. If that sounds like you, then perhaps the $79 selling price will make this the perfect Apple Pencil for you. You don’t get the advanced features of the second-generation Apple Pencil (pressure sensitivity, magnetic pairing and charging, double-tap to change tools) but you do get a stylus that is made by Apple, so it is likely to work better than any third-party stylus, at the lowest price ever. I’m sure that this new Apple Pencil will do a great job for taking notes and annotating documents.

Meanwhile, I’ll continue to hope that Apple is working on an even better Apple Pencil (an Apple Pencil Pro?) with even more features. 

The smart folks at Lit Software have been making top-quality apps for lawyers who use iPads since the year that the first iPad was introduced in 2010. My favorite has always been TranscriptPad because I often work with deposition transcripts. A recent update to the app adds the ability to work with video when that is available. I’ve been trying it out for a few months, and it is very impressive. Whenever you feed a transcript and a video into the app, the app can automatically sync the audio and video—a process for which video professionals will sometimes charge around $75/hour. Better yet, you can easily edit deposition excerpts to create the perfect edited video to present to a jury, to a judge, at mediation, to a client, etc. And you can do it all yourself, without having to wait for or rely on anyone else to make precisely the edits that you want.

Adding video to a deposition

After you have imported your transcript in the app, press the new icon at the top of the screen that looks like a monitor to import the video. The import process will link that video to the transcript that you are viewing. Follow the directions for the next few steps, and then you will see a circle with a percentage so you can see how much longer it will take to import the video:

What takes place during this import process is pretty sophisticated. First, the app transcribes the raw speech. Next, the app uses Natural Language Processing to further improve the accuracy in synchronizing the speech with the words in the transcript. Next, the app uses AI technology to account for similar words with the same meaning, just in case the person says something and the transcript gets it slightly wrong. (I’m amazed how often this happens; you assume that the written transcript is 100% accurate, but then you go back and listen to the video and hear that there are minor differences.)

All of this takes place on your iPad—not in the cloud—so newer and better iPads with more sophisticated processors will be faster than older iPads. On my fifth generation iPad Pro 12.9" (the one that was released in 2021), the process took long enough for me to set aside my iPad and let it do its work while I turned my attention to something else, but not very long.

When this process is done, you can review your transcript just like you normally do in TranscriptPad with one big difference: you will also see video at the top.

At any point, you can tap the icon at the top that shows a monitor with a play button to play the video and have the transcript move automatically as the video progresses. While video is playing, you can scroll up and down to jump to another part of the deposition and the video will quickly jump to that point as well.

If you want more information on importing video, Lit Software created this blog post with step-by-step instructions.

Even if this is as much as you do with this new feature, it is really nice. It gives you the ability to not just read the words in the transcript but also hear them spoken and see the witness say them. Sometimes, the manner in which something is said is just as important as what is said, and you don’t miss any of that thanks to this new feature as long as you had a video created at the time of the deposition.

Create video excerpts

When you are ready to show off the video to someone else, TranscriptPad has great tools for doing so. Perhaps you want to create a short video clip of a few questions and answers to share it with your client. Or maybe you want to select the most relevant parts of a deposition to show at a mediation or at trial. No matter what you need to do, TranscriptPad can handle it.

To create video excerpts, simply tap the line in the transcript for the start and the end of a clip—the same process that you do in TranscriptPad to highlight, assign issue codes, etc. Then tell the app that you want to create a video clip. You can follow step-by-step directions in this second blog post from the developer.

When you select the first video clip, you need to assign a name like “Mediation” or “Trial” or “Testimony on Causation.” Next, select the next set of question(s) and answer(s) that relates to that issue and assign the same name. Keep going until you have everything relevant designated.

Next you have two choices. The easy choice is to just export a video and save it in your Photos. Then, you can watch it and see how it looks. If everything is good, then you are done.

Although you can often stop there, I find that you get a better result if you edit, more precisely, where the video starts and stops. The app includes an easy-to-use editor that allows you to pick the perfect start and stop point for each video. There is even an audio waveform at the bottom so that you can see whenever there is noise, so your editing can be very precise—starting or stopping the video after a specific word, or even after an “umm” or a cough.

Once you have edited each clip as appropriate, you can export the total video that contains just the relevant parts. The quality of the video is excellent. The witness is shown at the top, and the words from the deposition are shown at the bottom as the witness is speaking.

Best of all, if you want to change anything, it easy to do so. Just add more designations (taking the time to precisely end the start and stop point, if you want) or delete ones that you no longer need, and then export the video again.

iPad and Mac

Although I primarily use these apps on my iPad, the Lit Suite apps also work on a Mac. Because I store my TranscriptPad depositions in iCloud, I can start working with a video deposition on my iPad, then work with it on my Mac, then go back to my iPad.

Pricing

There is no extra cost for this or any other new feature added to the Lit Software apps. When you pay for an annual subscription to LitSuite—which I believe is currently $399—you get access to all of the developer’s apps for your iPad: TrialPad, TranscriptPad, DocReviewPad, and ExhibitsPad. The company is currently working on its next new app that will be part of the bundle: TimelinePad.

If you want to pay for access for 10 or more users in a single law firm, you can take advantage of the Enterprise Program, with discounts of up to 50% for the first year with a three-year license. 

Conclusion

The developer of this app notes that by syncing video/audio to a transcript on your own, you can save money. I’m sure that is true and will be a selling point for many. But for me, the real advantage is total control. I’ve been involved in many trials where late night changes needed to be made to video excerpts and it can be inefficient to have to wait for a graphics professional to implement the needed changes. With this new feature in TranscriptPad, an attorney or a paralegal can create the perfect edits right on an iPad or Mac, without the need to involve anyone else. It is the same reason that many attorneys prefer using TrialPad on their own iPad rather than hire a graphics professional to present evidence at trial.

Moreover, because working with video becomes so much easier thanks to this new feature, you may find that you will start to use videos for depositions in settings in which previously it was not worth the trouble. Favorable witness testimony comes to life even more when it is presented in a video format. And impeachment can be more effective as well, with video sometimes showing how a person was uncomfortable with their answer even though the words on a black-and-white transcript won’t show that.

Adding support for video is a great feature update for the already outstanding TranscriptPad app.

Click here to get TranscriptPad from the App Store.

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This article won the LitigationWorld Pick of the Week award on October 24, 2023. The editors of LitigationWorld, a free weekly email newsletter for litigators and others who work in litigation, give this award to one article every week that they feel is a must-read for this audience.