ABA TECHSHOW took place in Chicago last week. I missed it this year due to a family vacation over the Mardi Gras holidays, but MyCase posted the visual notes that it had artist Leah Silverman create during some of the sessions this year. These are always fun to look at, and they give you a sense of what you missed if you did not attend a session. (Here is one from a session I did last year with Virginia attorney Sharon Nelson.) iPhone J.D. readers are likely to be particularly interested in the graphical representation of the session on iPhone and iPad apps by Brett Burney and Paul Unger. And now, the recent news of note:
If you are a solo or small firm attorney looking to improve your law practice, you should consider attending the Small Firm Bootcamp program in New Orleans that Ernie Svenson has run for the last few years. This year it is May 7-8, and it features a lot of fantastic speakers including David Sparks of MacSparky and the Mac Power Users podcast and Brett Burney of Apps in Law. Ernie himself is a dynamic speaker and great teacher; he was one of the very first legal bloggers (and encouraged me to start iPhone J.D. back in 2008), and every time I have co-presented a CLE with him, the session has gone really well. I see that the discounted (and refundable) early bird pricing for the program ends in just a few days.
Speaking of California attorney David Sparks, he recently explained why he has enjoyed the Apple Arcade service during its first six months. I don’t play a lot of games, but I signed up for the service for my kids — giving them access to lots of high-quality games without any in-game ads or in-game purchases — and they really like the games. (This week, my son has been playing Crossy Road Castle.)
Illinois attorney John Voorhees of MacStories reviews abode iota, a HomeKit home security system that he says works well and can be controlled in many different ways. It can be used with or without a monthly monitoring plan.
The coronavirus has had an impact on numerous aspects of our lives, including Apple products. Mark Gurman of Bloomberg reports that Apple has warned its retail employees to expect shortages of replacement iPhones due to the impact of the coronavirus on the supply chain.
Christopher Close of iMore describes the top HomeKit smart light switches. I’m a big fan of the iMore staff favorite pick, the Lutron Caséta devices that I reviewed in 2015 and 2019.
Apple recently had a contest to find the best pictures taken with the Night Mode features of the iPhone 11, and the results were posted this week. These pictures are stunning.
Joe Rossignol of MacRumors shares the story of the Troyer family of Montana. They lost an iPhone 11 (containing lots of vacation pictures) at Disney World when it fell into the Seven Seas Lagoon. But two months later, the iPhone was discovered by Disney’s scuba divers, and the iPhone still worked and was returned to the family. That’s impressive water resistance.
And finally, the newest music video from Lady Gaga is a for song called Stupid Love. I mention it today because it was filmed using an iPhone 11 Pro. So if you already own an iPhone 11 Pro, all you need is Lady Gaga and then you too can create a YouTube video with over 30 million views.
In 2013, Microsoft introduced the Microsoft Office Mobile app for iPhone. It was the first official Microsoft app that allowed you to view Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents on an iPhone. Unfortunately, it was so incredibly limited (for example, it didn’t support redline edits) that I concluded my review by saying that the app was unsatisfying and making a wish that it was the first step towards something better. Fortunately, that’s exactly what happened. A year later in 2014, when I was attending ABA TECHSHOW in Chicago, Microsoft surprised me and countless other attorneys by releasing a powerful version of Microsoft Word for the iPad (along with Excel and PowerPoint). Later in 2014, Microsoft updated the app to work on the iPhone as well. Since 2014, the Microsoft Word app has been one of the most useful apps on my iPhone and iPad, and I know that many other attorneys feel the same way. I use it all the time to review documents sent to me by others, revise my own documents, convert Word files to PDF, review redline edits made by others, and countless other tasks. It is an important part of my law practice.
A few months ago, Microsoft announced that it was once again bringing an Office app to the iPhone. The app was officially released a few weeks ago — once again, around the same time as ABA TECHSHOW. When I first heard about this app, I wasn’t very enthusiastic. In part, this was because I had not forgotten about the disappointing 2013 version of Office for iPhone. But also, I was confused about the purpose of this app. We already have a Microsoft Word app for the iPhone; why do we need an additional Microsoft Office app that combines Word, Excel, and PowerPoint into a single app? However, now that I’ve used this app for a while, I see that there are some nice features in this app. And it doesn’t cost anything extra for you to use the app, so I encourage you to download it and try it out.
Why one app?
I’ll address what I like about this app in a moment, but I’ll begin by saying that, even after using this app for a while, I still don’t understand the value of having a single Office app that handles Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents. Microsoft says that it takes less space on your iPhone to have a single app, but given the capacity of modern iPhones, nobody will ever notice that small file size difference.
Microsoft also says that having a single app “simplifies the experience with fewer apps to download or switch between.” That doesn’t make any sense to me. If I want to work with a Microsoft Word document, it is 100% obvious that I want to use the Microsoft Word app to work with that document. I’m never confused about whether I should use the Word app or the Excel app or the PowerPoint app to open a Word document. Moreover, if I’m working with a Word document, how does it help me to have that exact same app also be the app that I use to work with an Excel document? Indeed, it makes it worse to use a single app for these different types of documents. With separate Word and Excel apps, I can switch back and forth between the apps to consult a spreadsheet while working on a Word document. But with a single app, it takes many more steps to close and then open another document.
While I don’t understand the advantage of combining multiple apps into one, I suppose I don’t see any major disadvantage. Microsoft says that its new Office app has “virtually all the capabilities of the existing mobile apps people already know and use.” As noted below, so far I’ve only discovered one missing feature.
Working with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents
The new Office app works well when you want to work with a Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint document. Much like the stand-alone apps, the Office app has a main screen that lists apps that you have recently opened, plus a file browser that you can use to access documents saved on your iPhone or on a cloud service such iCloud, Dropbox, SharefFile, OneDrive, Box, NetDocuments, etc.
When you open up a document, you can review the document or edit it. I had no trouble opening up and editing a PowerPoint file that I created back in 2001 for a presentation on how to make the most of a Palm organizer in a law practice. (I’ve been using Keynote on the iPad for all of my presentations for such a long time that I had to dig back into ancient history to find one of my PowerPoint documents.) I also worked with a spreadsheet that I created to compute legal interest.
But most importantly for me, the Office app works well with Microsoft Word documents. Documents automatically open in the mode that formats the text so that you can more easily read the words on a small iPhone screen, but you can switch back to a full-page mode if you want. You can edit the document, search for words in a document, create or review redline edits (if you subscribe to Office 365), etc.
So far, I’ve only discovered one difference between working with a Word file in the Office app versus the Word app. In the Word app, when you tap on text to start editing it, the bottom half of the screen shows editing options. When you are done editing, you can tap the icon showing a keyboard with a down arrow to make the editing features go away so that you can use all of the screen to view the document. In the Office app, that icon is missing. Once you start editing a document, the only reliable way I could figure out to go back to a full-page mode is to close the document and then open it up again. It is also possible to zoom out the document and then tap at the bottom to return to a full-page view, but that approach fails to work far more often than it works. I’m not sure if this omission is a bug or if Microsoft somehow considered this feature unnecessary and intended to remove it, but for now, it is a reason that I plan to stick with the Word app on my iPhone. In the following pictures, the Word app is on the left and the Office app is on the right:
By the way, for now, the Microsoft Office app only works on an iPhone (or the iPhone app mode of an iPad), but Microsoft says that it is working on a version of the Office app that is designed for the iPad.
Use of the camera in the Office app
The new Office app doesn’t just incorporate the features of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. It also makes good use of the camera on the iPhone by incorporating features of the Microsoft Office Lens app, which has been available for iPhone since 2015. The Lens app allows you to take a picture of a document, and then it performs an OCR to read the text and then allows you to export to another app such as Word. With the new Office app, you can choose to create a Word document by first taking a picture of a paper document. Office then creates a Word document with that text so that you can start editing the document that you just scanned. This is a situation in which I do like having multiple functions (the Lens app + the Word app) in a single app, and it is very nice.
In my tests, the OCR feature was far from perfect, so I needed to clean up the text after scanning. Obviously, you get better results with better quality documents. But I like that if someone hands you a paper version of a proposed contract, you can use the Office app to scan the document, convert to Word, and then you can modify the document and create a new version that contains the additional terms that you need.
The Office app also includes a function that lets you take a picture of a table and then turn that into an Excel spreadsheet. The Excel app has the same feature, but for it to work you need to already have a spreadsheet open and then you can insert what you scanned into that document. I prefer the approach of the Office app in which you start by taking a picture and then use that as the basis for a new spreadsheet document. (In theory, you can also insert what you scan in to an existing spreadsheet in the Office app, but for some reason the feature never seemed to work for me when I tapped the button. I presume that this is just a bug that will be fixed.)
Notes
The new Office app also gives you the ability to create a note. When you do so, that note will be listed along with your other recent documents. I myself don’t see any value in creating notes in the Office app considering that it lacks many of the features in Apple’s own Notes app that is built-in with the iPhone. But the feature is there in the Office app if you see some value.
Price
The Office app is free, and the free version allows you to do many things including view and edit a Word document. But for more sophisticated features, such as the ability to create and approve redline edits in a document (the track changes feature), you (or your law firm) needs to have an Office 365 subscription. The price of a subscription varies depending upon the features; you can get a personal version for $69.99/year, or for $99.99/year you can get a family plan that works for up to 6 people. If your law firm or other company already subscribes to Office 365, then you should not have to pay to unlock the app on your iPhone, but even if you do, you may be able to take advantage of the Microsoft Home Use program, which offers a discounted price.
All of this is no different for the Office app than it is for the stand-alone Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps.
Conclusion
I don’t know if Microsoft intends to continue to maintain the stand-alone Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Lens apps while also supporting this new Office app. If it does, then the existence of this new Office app is nothing but good news. You can now decide whether you prefer to use different apps depending upon the type of document you are working with, or whether you prefer to use a single Office app for all of your Microsoft document needs.
If Microsoft plans eventually get rid of the stand-alone apps and focus only on the Office app, I suppose that would be fine as long as we don’t lose any features. As noted above, the main difference I’ve noticed so far is that icon to hide the keyboard. (I noted above that it is missing when you are working with a Word document, but Office is also missing the same icon when you are working with an Excel or PowerPoint document.)
Whether you are a subscriber to Office 365 or you just use the free version, every single attorney should have either the Word or the Office app on your iPhone, if for no other reason so that you can quickly review a Word document that someone else emails to you. You might as well get both the Word app and the new Office app since there are some differences. That way, you can use the one that you prefer depending upon the task at hand.
Click here to get Microsoft Office for iPhone (free):
Today is Mardi Gras day in New Orleans. Technically, it has been Mardi Gras season since January 6 (King’s Day), but most of the festivities began on Friday, February 14, when we started the first of the two big weekends of parades. My family and I had a great Mardi Gras season. Hopefully some of you had the opportunity to enjoy it as well, but if not, I encourage you to plan a trip to New Orleans in the future. Happy Mardi Gras!
The Look Around feature in Apple Maps is similar to the Street View feature in Google Maps, but I find that it works much better with higher quality pictures and smoother transitions when you move around. However, it is only available in a small number of cities including New York and San Francisco. Michael Potuck of 9to5Mac reports that the feature is now available in Washington, D.C., Boston, and Philadelphia. So now, you can easily see the United States Supreme Court and other important and historical locations from the Maps app. (When Look Around is available, you will see an icon with a pair of binoculars near the top right of the screen. Just tap that ot enter the Look Around mode.) And now, the news of note from the past week:
The most recent episode of the Mac Power Users podcast — hosted by California attorney David Sparks along with Stephen Hackett — is called State of the iPad. It includes a great look at what is great about the iPad, especially the iPad Pro, and a nice look at what might be coming in the future. I enjoyed the episode.
In the latest episode of the Apps in Law podcast, Brett Burney interviews Kentucky attorney Stephen Embry to talk about the CES conference and consumer technology that is of interest to attorneys.
Photoshop has been around for 30 years, and to mark the anniversary, there is a new version of the Photoshop iPad app. Illinois attorney John Voorhees of MacStories describes what is new. I pay for a Photoshop subscription, mostly so that I can use it on my Mac but also to use the app on my iPad. It is very powerful, but I still find it somewhat confusing — largely because I haven’t been using Photoshop for decades like some other folks. One of these days I’d love to find a good, simple tutorial on how to make the most of the iPad version of the app, but for now, I’m figuring out how to get things done.
Jason Cross of Macworld reviews five good weather apps for the iPhone. Most of the time, I use Carrot Weather, but sometimes I instead use Dark Sky — especially if I want to view a weather radar, which I think that Dark Sky does better than any other app.
If you have a camera in your home that works with HomeKit, you should definitely check out HomeCam. The app was updated to version 2.0 this week, and based on this review by Bradley Chambers of 9to5Mac, it sounds quite powerful.
As noted by Filipe Espósito of 9to5Mac, watchOS was updated this week to version 6.1.3 to fix a bizarre bug: irregular heart rhythm notifications were not working for certain Apple Watch owners in Iceland.
This week, Apple announced that it will make less money this fiscal quarter than it had previously announced because of COVID-19, the Coronavirus. As a result of the virus, (1) Apple is not able to manufacture iPhones in China at the pace it had expected, and (2) Apple expects to sell fewer iPhones in China.
I haven’t tried this yet myself, but I can see how this could come in useful. You can connect an iPhone or iPad to a TV in a hotel by using an HDMI cable and a dongle on your iPhone or iPad that connects to HDMI. That way, you can show video from your device on the larger TV, useful for streaming video from a service like Netflix. But some hotel TVs restrict access to the HDMI port, presumably to encourage you to watch their TV service and pay for pay-per-view. Charlie Sorrel of Cult of Mac shares a tip from Deviant Ollam on Twitter: just disconnect the phone-like cable on the back of the TV, restart the TV, and then it works like a normal TV and you can plug in your HDMI cord.
Just about every lawyer I know uses some system to keep track of tasks that need to be done, and often they do so using an iPhone. There are tons of great apps to use for this, from the built-in Reminders and Notes apps to numerous third-party apps. (I use the app Things.) But there are some tasks that we all do with some regularity that don’t need to be done at a specific time or date; nevertheless, it is often nice to know when you did it last. For example, you might not have a strict schedule for tasks like getting a haircut or washing your bed sheets, but it would be nice to have a quick way to see when you last did it, not to mention a way to see how often you usually do that task. When Did I…? is an app designed for this need. It works very well and I think that most anyone would find a good way to use this app on their iPhone.
The main screen of the app lists whatever actions you want to track. Tap the plus sign at the top left to add a new action, give the action a name, and then select an Emoji that you want to associate with the action. Once the action is in your list, all you need to do is tap the action and your iPhone will record that you just did that task. When you come back in the future, you can then easily see at a glance when you last did the actions that you are tracking.
Tap the arrow to the right of each action to see a lot of whenever you did those actions.
If you forgot to log something, or if you are using the app for the first time so there is no history, you can go back and add past events. Just tap the three dots at the top right to do so.
If you recorded an action by mistake, just swipe right to left to delete the action. Or you can tap the three dots at the top right, tap Delete Events, and then you can easily delete multiple events at once.
Those three dots also give you a way to add a specific action to Shortcuts. Tap that button and give Siri a specific phrase — such as “when did I last wash my car” — and then whenever you ask Siri that question, Siri will determine the answer from the When Did I…? app and then will tell you the answer. You can also configure a Shortcut so that when you say a certain phrase to Siri, the When Did I…? app will log that you just conducted one of your activities.
I really like this app because there are so many ways that it can be helpful. When did I last change the batteries in my smoke detector? When I did last replace a light bulb? When did I last have lunch with my college roommate? When did I last get flowers for my wife? When did I last charge the battery of the jump starter that I keep in my trunk? The ways that you can use this app are limited only by your imagination.
I do wish that this app would add one feature. Once you have logged a number of entries for an activity, the app could easily determine the average interval between each time you do the task. It would be nice if the app had a way alert you to this interval on the main page, perhaps by telling you that you normally do this task once every X months/days, or perhaps by suggesting that you are X days away (or past due) from when you would normally do this activity again. Perhaps this will be added in the future.
I like this app, and the more that I use it, the more useful that it becomes. I think this app is well worth the $2.99 price.
Today’s In the news post comes on Saturday instead of Friday thanks to my busy schedule at work plus lots of activities in my life as we started the prime portion of the Mardi Gras season here in New Orleans. Last night, I used my iPhone 11 Pro to take lots of pictures of friends and family at a nighttime parade, and Night Mode did an amazing job using the limited light available to produce pictures that I would have never been able to take before. Not every picture came out great — the ones with lots of motion got blurred — but I knew that would happen so I just took lots of pictures. After deleting the ones that didn’t work, I’m left with a great set. Night Mode is really a fantastic feature. I wish my iPhone pictures from previous years were so good. And now, the news of note from the past week:
Edmund Lee of the New York Times reports that Judge Victor Marrero of Southern District of New York rejected a challenge by 13 attorneys general to the T-Mobile and Sprint merger, clearing the way for the merger to go through.
I love my iPad Pro. It debuted in October 2018, but it works so well that I don’t have many good ideas of what would make it better. But there are rumors that a new iPad Pro is coming out soon, and in an article for Macworld, Dan Moren has a few ideas for what might be included.
I don’t edit podcasts, but it amazes me that this complicated task can be done on an iPad Pro, and it can be done quite well using an app called Ferrite Recording Studio along with an Apple Pencil. Jason Snell of Six Colors shows how Ferrite works, and even if your primary interaction with podcasts is just listening to them, you will find this interesting. In addition to showing how the app works, Snell shows how the content of podcasts is edited to make the final product sound more professional.
TJ Louma reviews Bobby, an iPhone app that you can use to track your subscription services.
Microsoft Word for iOS was updated to version 2.34 this week. The release notes say: “Redesigned From Scratch: We have redesigned the app to be simpler, faster and more beautiful than before.” That sounds like it would be significant update, or at least a noticeable update, but so far I’m having trouble seeing what is new on my iPad. And I use Word on my iPad almost every day, so I would think I would notice. According to Erik Schwiebert, the Principal Software Engineer in the Apple Productivity Experiences group at Microsoft, this update is part of an effort to increase mobile productivity that was described by Jon Friedman, the head of Microsoft Office Design, in this article from December 2019.
As reported by Samuel Axon of Ars Technica, Google announced that Gmail for iOS was updated this week to support the Files app.
Chance Miller of 9to5Mac reports that a woman in Oklahoma credits the Apple Watch for figuring out that her 13-year-old son had an unusually high heart rate and need to go to the emergency room to have a procedure that took over seven hours. I know that many schools, especially middle schools, don’t allow electronic devices like an Apple Watch during the day, and there are good reasons for that, but it worked out well for this boy that he was able to wear his during school.
Emanuel Maiberg of Motherboard posted a review of the iPhone 6s. Yes, the 6s, which was released in 2015. You certainly cannot say that he rushed this review.
And finally, travel photographer Harshit Vora created this fantastic video of Egypt using his iPhone 11 Pro:
I love to hear how other attorneys are using an iPhone or iPad in their law practice, so I always appreciate it when one of you is willing to share what you are using with the rest of the readers of iPhone J.D. Today I am sharing a submission from Russell Knight, a family law and divorce lawyer with offices in Chicago, Illinois and Naples, Florida. Russell considers his iPhone an essential part of his law practice. Here is what Russell told me about some of the ways that he uses his iPhone:
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Living and working in two cities would have been impossible years ago before the almost instantaneous communication that the internet allows. The portability of digitally communicating through a handheld phone has been the true ultimate key in the essentially freeing me professionally from the restraints of any particular location.
My law offices use all Apple products. All of the staff have Macs. This is probably because I use a Mac at home and I am just more comfortable with the interface, but if I had to state an official reason, it’s because there are no computer viruses associated with Apple products. Also, my staff is usually a decade or more younger than me and it seems that all millennials are Apple devotees.
I use my iPhone on an almost constant basis whether I am working or not (and I’m almost always working). My iPhone is most useful for email and I access my email in two different ways. First, I use the Gmail app for my personal email account. Second, I have two family law firms, one in Chicago and one in Naples, Florida. Both law firms have their own email account. To access these accounts, I just log onto Google Chrome and access Gmail through the internet browser. Gmail via the internet browser lets me toggle between the two accounts.
I use the Google calendar app constantly as well because it governs my schedule. As a family law litigator with daily status calls judges are constantly requesting dates for the next court. With just a quick glance down at my iPhone, I can confirm or deny my availability. Meanwhile, my staff is able to see any changes I put in my schedule and they can make changes to my schedule themselves.
I use practice management software called MyCase largely as a way to input billable hours and send out invoices. When I’m out of the office, I will access the MyCase app to input my billable time as it is occurring. There is even a timer on the app if a longer term project comes up away from my desk.
In family law, there are frequently hearings where we take testimony from people (usually family members). If someone is not available on the hearing date, a motion to appear electronically is filed. This effectively means, “a motion to appear via FaceTime.” FaceTime in court is becoming more and more common and it’s getting harder and harder to object to these FaceTime witnesses by saying “my client has a 5th amendment right to confront their accusers.” I’m not sure how you can’t confront someone effectively via FaceTime but invoking the Constitution usually works.
Speaking of FaceTime, FaceTime Audio is amazing. For whatever reason, cellular reception will go in an out in my Chicago office but we always have WiFi. FaceTime Audio calls are crystal clear.
The Dropbox app lets me access any file I need at any moment on my phone. Of course, a phone can’t hold all those files so I’m just accessing them online. I do always carry my MacBook Air in case I need a file and the internet is not working well.
Finally, I use Notes for all of my offline work. When I’m back online, I just forward the note to my email account. I’m writing this article using Notes on my iPhone while I am on a plane with no WiFi. (Spirit Airlines promises WiFi by the end of 2019 … but alas, it hasn’t happened.)
I wish I was one of those lawyers that synced Evernote with Clio and had a million Zapier functionalities on their iPhones, but I’m not. The half dozen apps I listed above are all I need and have needed for years. I believe in keeping it simple … which is part of the appeal of the iPhone’s design and functionality.
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Thanks, Russell, for sharing how you use your iPhone in your law practice. This is the first time I have heard of using FaceTime to bring a witness to court, and that is a fascinating idea.
If any of you are willing to share your own experiences using an iPhone or iPad in your law practice with other iPhone J.D. readers, I’d love to hear from you. In case you missed any of them, here are stories that I previously shared from other attorneys:
Apple doesn’t reveal that actual number of Apple Watch devices that have been sold, but according to a new report by Strategy Analytics (as reported by Chance Miller of 9to5Mac) Apple shipped 31 million in 2019. To put that number in context, Miller reports that the entire Swiss watch industry sold 21 million watches in 2019. Anecdotally, I still remember the days when it was very rare to see someone else wearing an Apple Watch, but now I see that all the time. And now, the news of note from the past week:
Illinois attorney John Voorhees of MacStories reports on a recent update to the Overcast app, an app for playing podcasts. It now supports AirPlay 2 and has improved the way that it boosts the sound of voices so that podcasts sound better.
In a new post on the Lit Software blog, Michigan attorney Aaron Silvenis describes his successful use of TrialPad on his iPad in a trial.
Josh Nadeau of Fast Company reports on a law in Russia that takes effect in July, pursuant to which all smartphone devices must come with certain applications preinstalled, applications that the Russian government can use to find out all sorts of information about its citizens. Apple has not yet announced how it will respond.
Every year, Jason Snell of Six Colors conducts a survey to determine what Apple seems to be doing right and wrong, and he recently released the report from the most recent survey.
And finally, Apple released a video to show off Night mode on the iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro. The music is We Only Come Out at Night by The Smashing Pumpkins:
If you wear an Apple Watch, it is possible to have your watch speak the time out loud. I offer this tip partially for those of you who want to use this feature. But I also consider this as much of a warning as anything else — if you are in court or some other situation in which it is a bad idea for your Apple Watch to make a noise, you should understand how this feature works so that you don’t trigger it accidentally.
You can use this feature when your Apple Watch is displaying the clock (i.e. you don’t have another app running). Hold down two fingers on the screen of the watch for about a second. Your watch will then speak the time out loud. This is a nice feature when you trigger it intentionally. But I can easily imagine someone placing one hand on the wrist of another hand and triggering the feature by mistake and then not realizing what caused their watch to start talking.
There are two ways to turn the feature on or off. First, you can open the Apple Watch app on your iPhone, tap the “My Watch” button at the bottom left (if it is not already selected), and then scroll down to “Clock” and tap it. There, you will see a Speak Time option that you can turn on or off.
Note that even with the option turned on, you can decide whether you want the two-finger gesture to always make the clock speak the time or have it only speak the time if Silent Mode on the Apple Watch is turned off.
A second way to turn this feature on or off is on your Apple Watch. Open the Settings app, and then select Clock. From there, you will see the same options that are shown in the iPhone app.
I rarely find a talking clock to be all that useful — I can always just look at the clock to see what time it is — but I’m glad that I know how it works. Having said that, if you are going to use this feature, I recommend doing so with the Mickey Mouse watch face. When that clock is displayed and the Speak Time option is turned on, a tap with either one or two fingers will cause your Apple Watch to speak the time in a Mickey Mouse voice, often with a laugh or other comment from Mickey. Having Mickey speak the time is far more entertaining than the generic voice you get with other watch faces. And you can customize that watch face to display Minnie instead of Mickey, and you will hear her voice instead.
Since 2009, I have been reporting on Apple’s quarterly earning calls, not because I have any interest in Apple’s stock price, but instead because it is one of the few times a year when Apple makes public statements about the iPhone and iPad and answers some questions. Thus, every quarter I pay attention to the parts that concern the iPhone and iPad and related products. Click here to see my prior reports.
Last week, Apple released the results for its 2020 fiscal first quarter (which ran from September 29, 2019 to December 28, 2019, and did not actually include any days from calendar year 2020) and held a call with analysts to discuss the results. This is typically Apple’s best quarter of the year because it includes holiday sales, and this year it was Apple’s best quarter ever with revenue of $91.8 billion, an increase of 9% from this time last year. If you want to get all of the nitty gritty details, you can download the audio from the announcement conference call from iTunes, or you can read a transcript of the call prepared by Seeking Alpha, or a transcript 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 CEO Tim Cook said that Apple’s record financial performance “was fueled by iPhone where December quarter revenue was up 8% year-over-year” along with double-digit growth outside of iPhone. iPhone revenue was $56 billion, compared to $52 billion this time last year. Every week during the quarter, the iPhone 11 was the top-selling model, and the three most popular models in the quarter were the newest models: the iPhone 11, the iPhone 11 Pro, and the iPhone 11 Pro Max. Cook said: “We had double-digit growth in many developed markets, including the U.S., the UK, France and Singapore, and also grew double digits in emerging markets led by strong performances in Brazil, Mainland China, India, Thailand, and Turkey.”
Twice as many people turned in an old iPhone to get credit towards a new iPhone during the quarter as compared to a year ago.
Apple does not report the specific number of iPhones that are in active use, but said that this quarter that number was at an all-time high.
Two analysts tried to get Cook to talk about an upcoming 5G iPhone. Cook declined to do so, noting that Apple does not comment on future products. All he would say is that “we’re in the early innings of its deployment on a global basis” and he is “very excited about our pipeline as well and wouldn’t trade our position for anybody.”
iPad
iPad revenue in the quarter was almost $6 billion. It was $6.7 billion this time last year, but that is because at that point the 2018 version of the iPad Pro was still new.
Cook noted that the iPad “saw growth in key emerging markets like Mexico, India, Turkey, Poland, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines and.”
About half of the people around the world who bought an iPad were buying their first iPad.
Other
Without providing any specific number, Cook said that it was a “blowout quarter for wearables” such as the Apple Watch and AirPods. For the category of “wearables, home and accessories,” Apple reported over $10 billion in revenue, compared to $7.3 billion a year ago.
For wearable devices, Cook said that Apple set “an all-time record in virtually every market we track around the world, and this product category is now the size of a Fortune 150 company.”
Apple couldn’t make enough of the AirPods Pro to keep up with demand, and even now, Cook cannot predict when Apple will be able to catch up.
Over 75% of the people who bought an Apple Watch during the quarter had never before owned an Apple Watch. Although Cook did not reveal a specific number for Apple Watch revenue, he did say that it was an all-time revenue record. He also said that Apple had trouble making enough of the Series 3 Apple Watch to keep up with demand; the Series 3 starts at $199, whereas the Series 5 starts at $399.
Apple had all-time record revenue in the services category of $12.7 billion. Services include Apple Music, Apple Pay, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, iCloud, the App Store, Apple News+, Apple Card, and AppleCare.
Across all of its services, Apple has over 480 million paid subscriptions. Apple expects to have over 500 million by March 2020 and is trying to reach 600 million by the end of 2020.
As Jason Snell points out in an article on Macworld, services is a very important segment for Apple because it can be so profitable: “Apple’s gross margin on products was 34.2 percent. Its gross margin on services was 64.4 percent. … In other words, every dollar of Services revenue generates nearly twice the profit of product revenue. Apple’s product margins are really good, but its Services margins are spectacular.” As both product and services revenue grow, I wonder how long it will be before Apple reports revenue of over $100 billion in a single quarter?
Cook said that Apple feels strongly that Apple TV+ should be an ad-free product without commercials.
Apple CFO Luca Maestri said that every Fortune 500 company in the healthcare sector now uses Apple technology.
When it predicted revenue for Apple’s fiscal second quarter ($63 billion to $67 billion), Maestri said that this is a wider than normal range because of “uncertainty related to the recently unfolding public health situation in China.”
In family law, there are frequently hearings where we take testimony from people (usually family members). If someone is not available on the hearing date, a motion to appear electronically is filed. This effectively means, “a motion to appear via FaceTime.” FaceTime in court is becoming more and more common and it’s getting harder and harder to object to these FaceTime witnesses by saying “my client has a 5th amendment right to confront their accusers.” I’m not sure how you can’t confront someone effectively via FaceTime but invoking the Constitution usually works.
