I frequently use my AirPods with two different devices: my iPhone and my iPad. I use them with my iPhone to listen to music and podcasts. I use them with my iPad to watch videos such as TV episodes. When AirPods are connected to one device, like my iPad, it is a pain to have to go through the multi-step process to switch the pairing to my other device. I can either open Settings, tap Bluetooth, and then tap on my AirPods (three steps), or I can swipe down from the top right to see the Control Center, long-press on the media controller, then tap on the source icon and then tap on my AirPods (four steps). Fortunately, thanks to the Shortcuts app, there is a way to switch pairing between an iPhone and an iPad using only one step. Here is how.
Open up the Shortcuts app and create a new Shortcut. You only need to add a single action to it: Set playback destination. Once you enter it, tap on the variable (which by default may say iPhone) and then change it to your AirPods. The result will look something like this:
Next, tap on the three dots at the top right and give your Shortcut a name and an icon that makes sense to you (I selected a purple icon with a speaker icon) and then tap Add to Home Screen.
That’s it! Save your shortcut and you are done. Any shortcut that you create on your iPhone will be synced over to your iPad. After it syncs, you need to edit the shortcut on your iPad to add an icon to your iPad home screen — the same step that I just showed you. Now, you will have an app icon on both your iPhone and iPad home screen called AirPods (or whatever you called your shortcut).
At this point, you are ready to use your shortcut. If your AirPods are currently paired to your iPad, just tap the icon on your iPhone home screen. The Shortcuts app will open and after a few seconds your AirPods will be paired to your iPhone — and it only took one step. Similarly, if your AirPads are currently paired to your iPhone, just tap the icon on your iPad home screen, and then the AirPods will become paired to your iPad.
Here is another way to use the shortcut that is perhaps even better. Invoke Siri on the device that you want to pair to your AirPods and just speak the name of your shortcut. So in my case, I just say “Hey Siri. AirPods.” That will run the shortcut and pair the AirPods to my iPhone.
There are lots of ways that you can customize this shortcut, such as adding a step at the end to open up a particular app on your device after pairing to your AirPods — although if you want that to be a different default app on the iPhone and iPad you will need to create two shortcuts. Or I suppose you could even create a pop-up menu with a list of apps to open next.
If you want to create more complicated shortcuts, I refer you to folks who are better at this than me, such as California attorney David Sparks who created a great video guide on using Shortcuts. But even I can handle a shortcut with only one step, and so can you.
Over nine years ago, I reviewed an app created by Houston attorney Anthony Shorter called Courtroom Objections. Shorter reached out to me to tell me that he had recently updated his app, and it has been so long since I mentioned the app on iPhone J.D. that I thought it was time for another look.
The purpose of the app is to provide you with a quick guide to making and responding to objections in court. The app includes a list of common objections and responses. I think that the app would be most useful for those who are relatively new litigators, but any attorney who tries cases could use this app.
The app divides objections into two categories. If you tap the first button at the bottom, the app lists admissibility objections. Tap the second button to list objections to form.
When you tap on any objection, the app first gives you an example of words that you could use to make the objection. Next, the app explains the objection.
Finally, the app lets you see the text and number for the rule of evidence associated with that objection. Of course, this varies depending upon the state or federal jurisdiction in which you are trying a case, so the bottom of the app has buttons that you can use to select a jurisdiction. Currently, the app has the rules of evidence for the following jurisdictions: Federal, AZ, CA, CO, FL, GA, IL, IN, LA, MD, MA, MI, NJ, NY, OH, PA, TX, UT, WI.
If you ever want to scroll a list of all of the objections (to both admissibility and form), at the bottom of any page dedicated to a rule there is a big button called All Rules. Tap it and you can select any jurisdiction and any type of objection to see the rule.
Although I like the interface of this app better than the version I reviewed nine years ago, there is room for improvement. The buttons for jurisdictions at the bottom of the app are very tiny. It would be nice if there was a way that you could only display the jurisdictions that pertain to you. (For example, I’m licensed in Louisiana and Florida so I’d like to see those two and federal, but I’ll probably never have a reason to view the other states.) And it seems that the All Rules button should be an option from the main screen (such as a third button at the bottom), not a feature that you can only access by first going to some other rule.
Nevertheless, the app is quick and simple to use, which I like. If you find yourself preparing to make an objection, you could quickly scroll through the list of admissibility or form objections to remind you of the objection that you need to make. Even if the app only helps you to make a few objections, that’s more than enough to justify the $3 price tag.
Click here to get Courtroom Objections ($2.99):
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This article won the LitigationWorld Pick of the Week award on October 31, 2019. 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.
Apple released iOS 13.1.3 and iPadOS 13.1.3 this week to fix more bugs — the fifth version of iOS 13 released since 13.0 was released on September 19, 2019. And it looks like Apple is getting close to the release of iOS 13.2, which will add new features. One feature planned for iOS 13.2 is Deep Fusion, a technology that will improve the detail in photos when there is a medium amount of light, such as indoors. This week, Jason Snell reviews Deep Fusion for Tom’s Guide based on the beta version of iOS 13. Another new feature is support for the new Emoji that are coming out in 2010, which I previewed in July. And now, the news of note from the past week:
Josh Ginter of The Sweet Setup explains why he picks Lightroom as the best app for editing photos on the iPad. It’s a good article that also discussed some of the other great iPad apps for editing photos, but I wish that he had included more than just a passing reference to the fact that Photoshop is coming to the iPad in just a few weeks (early November, according to a recent Bloomberg report). When it comes out, Photoshop for iPad may immediately become the best app for editing photos. Having said that, it may be that the same Adobe Creative Cloud subscription will get you access to both apps; we’ll know more about that when Photoshop for iPad is released.
Matt Birchler of The Sweet Setup offers advice for using Microsoft PowerPoint on an iPad. I prefer to use Apple’s Keynote app when I give presentations, but sometimes I need to work with a PowerPoint deck, and the iPad app is very good.
Reed Albergotti of The Washington Posts explains that clever kids have found ways to circumvent the Screen Time function on the iPhone, which is supposed to allow parents to restrict what kids can do on an iPhone during certain hours of the day.
That article in the Washington Post links to this article by Chris McKenna which describes 12 tricks that kids use to circumvent Screen Time and explains how you can protect against just about all of them. Kids these days are pretty smart; if only they could devote that brain power to studying for tests instead of circumventing parents. (And while you are at it, you kids get off my lawn…)
Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac reviews the RapidX MyPort, an interesting wireless charger that can stand on your desk, but can also turn into a portable battery with wireless charging.
Charlie Sorrel of Cult of Mac has tips for using the Dock on the Apple Watch, which you access by pressing that large button on the side. There are some good tips in there, including a trick I had forgotten — double-press the digital crown button on the side to switch between the last app that you used on the Apple Watch and the app that you use most frequently on the Apple Watch (which for me is the Overcast app).
And finally, here is a story that I probably wouldn’t have believed if it wasn’t captured on video. A man dropped his iPhone X while on a roller coaster in Spain and someone else managed to catch the iPhone in mid-air as it was falling. And the whole thing was recorded because the roller coaster has cameras that record your ride. Impressive.
Thank you to Bellefield Systems, the creator of iTimekeep, for sponsoring iPhone J.D. again this month. iTimekeep is a fantastic service for attorneys because it allows you to eliminate all of the miserable parts of timekeeping. Here are three specific ways in which iTimekeep is a big improvement for me, and can be for you too if you click here to try iTimekeep for attorneys.
Eliminate the burden of reconstructing time entries
iTimekeep is everywhere that you are. If you are in front of your computer at work, you can use iTimekeep in your browser. If you are in front of your personal computer at home — Mac or PC — you can similarly use a browser to enter your time. If you are working off-site at someplace like a coffee house on your iPad, you can use the fantastic iPad app. And, if you are on-the-go, you can use the iPhone app.
Having iTimekeep everywhere is important because it means that you can enter your time as you are doing tasks, no matter where you are located. And this matters because it vastly reduces the need to reconstruct your time entries. For example, if you take a client call while you are out of the office, just take a few seconds using the iPhone app to log the call, something like: “Telephone conference with Mr. Smith re revisions to contract in light of change in legislation.” This way, at the end of the day (or the week), you don’t need to waste time trying to reconstruct everything that you did, such as remembering who you talked to on the phone and what you talked about.
I find it so easy to enter time in iTimekeep that my time entries are complete, but you don’t have to use the product that way. You could also have an entry that just has a few words in it along with the time. Then, later on, either you or a secretary could clean up the time entry. The point is just to get something recorded contemporaneously so that you don’t have to reconstruct from scratch at a later time when the work that you did is no longer fresh in your mind.
Stop losing time
A related advantage of being able to enter the time anywhere, especially when you are not in front of a computer, is that you are more likely to log everything that you did. Tasks that involve small time increments that take place while you are on the go are often not captured when you are not doing contemporaneous time entry. By using iTimekeep, you don’t lose that time.
iTimekeep also helps you with missing time. You can tell iTimekeep the minimum number of hours that you typically record in a day. (I have mine set to 8.) Then, using the missing time feature of the app, you see at a glance if there are any days in the month in which your hours were low. For example, this past Friday, I left work early to take my daughter to a volleyball game. (She won!) When I tap the Missing Time button, the app alerts me that I recorded only 7.1 hours that day. In this case, there is a good explanation, so I don’t have anything else to add. But if there were not some special circumstance, the app would help me to realize that I failed to complete my time entries for that day.
Sometimes, the time entries that iTimekeep helps you to save are small — a 0.1 here, a 0.2 there — but they all add up over time. Moreover, your timesheets are not just a way for your clients to pay your bills; they are also a way to tell your clients the story of everything that you did for them during the month. By having a more complete timesheet with all of the 0.1 entries, the story of what you did for the client is more complete. Thus, iTimekeep helps you to give your clients a better picture of what you did throughout the month, improving your relationship with clients as well.
Stop using overcomplicated and difficult to use technology
iTimekeep is simple to use, requires no training, and provides a consumer-grade experience where attorneys can track time in a consistent way across devices. Unlike some other software developers, the developers of iTimekeep have a laser focus on making the experience for the attorney entering and reviewing time as great as possible. That’s the whole reason that iTimekeep exists and has been so successful over the years.
Also, the iTimekeep user experience is consistent across platforms, whether you are using it on a PC, a Mac, an iPhone, an iPad, or Android. This is similar to how you can learn how to use Netflix on one platform, like a TV, and then you already know how to use it on another platform, like an iPad or computer.
Because it is so easy to use, you can give iTimekeep to all of the attorneys in your law firm and they can start using the service right away. And every time that iTimekeep updates the service (which happens frequently), the focus is always on making the product even more valuable while still keeping it incredibly simple to use.
I frequently talk to attorneys who use iTimekeep. The tech-savvy attorneys love it because it is such a powerful tool. But even the attorneys who don’t live-and-breathe technology like I do tell me how much they like using iTimekeep — and I know that they wouldn’t be doing so if they found the app to be complicated.
Conclusion
Everything about the time entry process is better with iTimekeep. You spend less time entering your own time, and you do so more accurately and efficiently. And because your iPhone is probably always with you, it is incredibly easy to enter time contemporaneously or record an entry from earlier in the day whenever and wherever you think about it. Thanks to iTimekeep for sponsoring iPhone J.D. this month and for improving my own law practice.
Two years ago, at the same time that Apple introduced the Apple Watch Series 3, Apple introduced its first Sport Loop band for the Apple Watch. Until last month, I had never tried one. This year, with the Apple Watch Series 5, Apple has introduced a new mix-and-match approach where you can purchase almost any Apple Watch band to pair with any style of Apple Watch. (You do, however, have to purchase some type of band; you cannot just purchase the body of the watch without any band.). So when I purchased an Apple Watch Series 5, I used that as an opportunity to try out something new and I opted for one of Apple’s Sport Loop bands — which cost $49, just like Apple’s Sport Band. If I had any idea how fantastic this band is, I would have purchased one two years ago. This is by far the most comfortable band that I’ve ever used with the Apple Watch.
Hook-and-loop
The Sport Loop band opens and closes with a hook-and-loop … don’t call it Velcro™ … system. But more than just a fastener, the hook-and-loop is what defines this entire band. Almost all of the band is composed of a double-layer nylon weave with tiny loops.
You cannot really see the loops with your eyes, but they make the entire band very soft, light, and breathable.
Underneath one of the ends of this band are five small pads with hooks on them. The hooks are smaller than any other hook-and-loop or Velcro system that I’ve tried before, so much so that when I touch the hooks they almost don’t even feel like hooks. But when you place the end of the band down, the hooks easily attach to the loops.
You can sweat while working out with this band and it dries very quickly thanks to the tiny loops. One of the biggest complaints about the Apple’s Sport Band is that sweat can get trapped under the band. The Nike version of the Sport Band tries to solve that by having lots of holes in the band, but that still isn’t a perfect solution. With the Sport Loop, unlike the Sport Band, I never really notice sweat. I do notice that the Sport Loop will get a little damp as it absorbs sweat but then it dries out pretty quickly.
I haven’t tried swimming with the Sport Loop, but I have gotten it completely drenched in a sink. The nylon band absorbed a small amount of water but not enough to feel like it was getting heavy — nothing like a wet cotton cloth rag — and it dries pretty quickly once your arm is out of the water.
Perhaps my favorite feature is that the nylon loops give this band a very soft and comfortable feel. I also own Apple’s Woven Nylon band, and it feels nothing at all like the Sport Loop band even though both bands use woven nylon. The Woven Nylon band feels good but feels flat. This one feels soft.
The hook-and-loop system adds a feature to this band that I also love with Apple’s Milanese Loop band: the band adjusts to any size. With other bands like the Sport Band, Classic Buckle, and Woven Nylon band, sometimes one hole can be a little too tight and one hole can be a little too lose. By using hook-and-loop or magnets, the Sport Loop and the Milanese Loop can be adjusted to the perfect size.
But the Sport Loop is even better than the Milanese Loop because the band itself is slightly strechy. So if your wrist gets just slightly bigger or smaller during the day, you don’t need to adjust the Sport Loop band. It is always snug without being too tight around your writ. And unlike the Milanese Loop, the Sport Loop won’t slide up and down your wrist unless your purposefully make the band too lose.
Size
I have a larger wrist, around 215mm. While I can use a large Sport band (which Apple says is designed for up to 210mm wrists), I prefer the XL version (designed for up to 245mm wrists), which currently comes in only black. Apple says that the Sport Loop for the 44mm Apple Watch is designed for 145-220mm wrists. Even though I’m at the top of that range, the Sport Loop fits great on my wrist. And it looks to me like you could probably go up to 225-230mm before your wrist would be too large to use the Sport Loop (because then the part of the band with the five pads of hooks would not be able to fold over). On the other extreme, if you have a small wrist and use a 40mm Apple Watch, the Sport Loop is designed for a 130-200mm wrist. If your wrist size is around 130mm or smaller, I imagine that you might run out of room to fasten the band, so you might want to try a Sport Loop in an Apple retail store before buying it.
Style
Rene Ritchie of iMore calls the Sport Loop the yoga pants of Apple Watch bands, and that’s not a bad comparison. It’s very comfortable. I love this band so much that I would be tempted to wear it all day long with my Apple Watch. But just like those yoga pants wouldn’t be appropriate for work, I find the style of the watch to be a little casual for work. Thus, I’ve been using the Milanese Loop at work and when I want to look more dressy at night, and I’ve been switching to the Sport Loop after work, on the weekends, and when working out.
If you are thinking about buying this band, keep in mind that it has a loop style. Like the Milanese Loop, this band always forms a circle with the watch. You slide your hand in and out of the circle to put it on or take it off. If you use some sort of a stand for your Apple Watch charger, make sure that it works for the band to loop around the stand; you cannot just have two wings coming off of each side of the watch like you can with many other bands.
The Sport Loop comes in lots of different colors. When the watch was first released in 2017, the colors were uniform on both sides of the watch band. Although Apple no longer sells that style of Sport Loop band in its online store, you can still find it on Amazon. Indeed, as of the time that I am typing this, some of the colors such as Indigo and Hibiscus are on sale on Amazon for under $25, which is a fantastic price.
If you buy from Apple, the current generation of the Sport Loop (other than Pride Edition) has one color on one side and a different color or shade on the other side. Because the Sport Loop wraps around itself, the end result is that it looks like the band coming from the top of the Apple Watch is a different color/shade than the band coming from the bottom of the Apple Watch.
The current color combinations being sold by Apple this season are Anchor Gray with two shades of gray, Midnight Blue with black one one side and blue on the other and a blue trim, Alaskan Blue, with a darker blue on one side and a lighter blue on the other side and a yellow trim (the one that I bought), Khaki with one side blue and one side tan, Camel with one side yellow and one side lighter tan with a light blue trim, Pomegranate with two colors that are almost pink, and Pride Edition. To my eye, they all look like nice combinations. Having said that, if Apple were still selling versions that used the same single color on both sides, I’d probably opt for that style.
Conclusion
If you plan to get your Apple Watch wet a lot, such as when swimming, or if you will be using your Apple Watch in an environment in which food or other substances are likely to come in contact with your band, then the Sport Band with its easy-to-wipe-off fluoroelastomer might be the best band for you. But otherwise, the Sport Loop band is so incredibly comfortable that it gets my highest recommendation. I’m very happy that I opted for this style when I purchased my Apple Watch Series 5. If you are not buying a new Apple Watch, consider buying one from Apple for $49 or getting one of the older color styles on Amazon for only $25.
Having said that, the Sport Loop is such a casual watch band that I recommend that you also get a nicer watch band to wear whenever you are dressed up. For me, that is the Milanese Loop.
Almost every week for over ten years, I’ve been collecting the news of note related to the iPhone from the prior week and posting a Friday column called In the news. Add them all up and you’ll see that today is the 500th edition, a number that I certainly did not have in mind when I wrote this post in 2009. If you are interested, I explained the origin of In the newsback in 2011 when I published the 100th edition. Having said that, if you are around my age and used to watch Saturday morning cartoons in the 1970s and/or early 1980s, then you already know what my inspiration was for the title. Before I head out to the fancy 500th celebration gala, here is the news of note from the past week:
Lit Software makes some of the very best apps for attorneys who use an iPad, such as TrialPad and TranscriptPad, and has more lawyer-specific apps coming in the future. In a post on the Lit Software blog, the company explains what is on the future roadmap for Lit Software, including a new subscription model and better support for iPadOS 13.
In an article for Law Technology Today, attorney Dennis Kennedy discusses attorney use of cloud computing, including use on mobile devices.
Illinois attorney John Voorhees of MacStories discusses the new features in GoodNotes, my favorite app for taking handwritten notes on the iPad (and a current sponsor of iPhone J.D.)
This week, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to three scientists who developed lithium-ion batteries: Stanley Whittingham, John Goodenough, and Akira Yoshino. As John Timmer of Ars Technica explains, that discovery spawned the mobile-electronic revolution, including the iPhone. And in an article in the New York Times, Prof. Whittingham is quoted as saying that “he always hoped lithium-ion technology would grow, ‘but we never envisaged it growing this far. We never imagined it being ubiquitous in things like iPhones.'” Congrats! All three of you are invited to New Orleans for the 500th celebration gala.
When iOS 13.0 debuted on September 19, 2019, it had an unfortunate number of bugs, resulting in the need for numerous software updates over the past few weeks. Chaim Gartenberg of The Verge says that there is still a long way to go, but fortunately, both iOS 13 and iPadOS 13 are fairly stable for me now.
iOS 13 and iPadOS 13 are very similar, but there are some important differences, as noted by David Nield of Gizmodo.
If you liked the idea of using a Logitech Crayon with your iPad instead of an Apple Pencil but the bright colors deterred you from doing so, Malcolm Ower of AppleInsider reports that you can now buy an all-gray version of the Crayon for the same price of $70.
In just a few weeks, Apple will debut its Apple TV+ streaming video service. Ramin Setoodeh of Variety interviews Jennifer Aniston, who talks about her new show and why she brought it to Apple TV+. Aniston explained that Apple is “all about quality, not quantity, so that was really appealing. And in spite of their comical secrecy, it’s been worth it. Who doesn’t want to be part of the Wild Wild West?”
And finally, here is a one-minute video from Apple that shows off some of the new features of iPadOS 13. In showing off the new swipe-to-type feature that Apple calls Quick Path, the video shows that you can pinch on the full-size iPad keyboard to turn it into a small, iPhone-size keyboard. Even when I’m not using Quick Path, I use that feature quite a bit when I want to type something but I also want to be able to see more items on my screen. If you haven’t tried it yet, you should check it out.
I recently tried to sync my iPhone 11 Pro to my Mac (using iTunes on macOS Mojave) and I was told that there was not enough space on my iPhone to fit everything that iTunes wanted to sync. That seemed wrong to me; there should have been plenty of space on my iPhone. The specific error message that iTunes gave me was: The iPhone ‘Jeff iPhone Pro’ cannot be synced because there is not enough free space to hold all of the items in the iTunes library (additional 85.03 required).
The strange thing was that iTunes was also telling me that my iPhone had about 70 GB in free space more than my iPhone itself was telling me that it had. Why would iTunes think that my iPhone had more free space than my iPhone itself did? And which one was correct?
It turns out that my Mac was correct and my iPhone was wrong. To try to see what was taking up all of the space, and to try to account for the huge discrepancy between what iTunes and my iPhone thought was available for free space, on my iPhone I opened the Settings app, went to General, and then tapped on iPhone Storage. From there, I could see that my TV app was taking up over 140 GB in space, but when I reviewed the files in my TV app there were only about 70 GB in files. In other words, my iPhone somehow thought that my videos downloaded to my TV app were about twice as large as they really were.
The solution was to do a hard reset on my iPhone. How you do this depends upon the model of iPhone that you are using, and Apple has a webpage with all of the instructions. For modern iPhones (from the iPhone X and iPhone 8 and forward), you quickly press and release the volume up button, quickly press and release the volume down button, and then hold down the side button for about 10 seconds or so until you see the screen turn black and then the Apple logo appears, showing that your phone is restarting.
After I did this, my iPhone reported that there was only about 70 GB of videos in the TV app on my iPhone. Also, iTunes on my Mac was happy to sync with my iPhone, now that both my Mac and my iPhone were in agreement on how much space was available.
Whether you encounter this particular bug or something else that you cannot figure out how to fix, the moral of this story is: if all else fails, restart … and if even that fails, then do a hard restart.
iPadOS 13 and iOS 13 included many changes that gave developers the opportunity to make their apps much better. Some developers have done a great job taking advantage of the new operating system, which has been great to see. GoodNotes is a sponsor of iPhone J.D. this month, which gives me a good excuse to discuss the extensive improvement that were made to this app to take advantage of iPadOS 13.
But before I do so, let me note that GoodNotes has been my favorite app for taking handwritten notes on the iPad for many years, long before it first became a sponsor last month. I use this app almost every day in my law practice, whether I am taking notes while on the phone or in a meeting, talking to a client, in a CLE, or in court. GoodNotes comes with lots of different paper styles, or you can take any PDF document and turn it into a template for the virtual paper in a notebook. GoodNotes comes with a legal pad template, but I prefer to use one that I created myself because I like having the dotted red lines on the left and right side. If you want to download my legal paper template and use it yourself with your own notebooks in GoodNotes, click here to download my legal paper template file. Also, while GoodNotes is primarily an app to use on an iPad, there is also an iPhone app which syncs all of your notebooks. Thus, if you need to look at something from your notes and you only have your iPhone with you, you still have access to your notes.
Here are the features that are new to GoodNotes on an iPad running iPadOS 13:
Multiple windows of GoodNotes at the same time
You can now have two instances of GoodNotes running side-by-side. This opens up lots of possibilities. Sometimes I use this because I want to review one set of notes while I am writing another set of notes.
Sometimes I use this to open two instances of the same set of notes so that I can use different pages. For example, I often attend a meeting where there is an agenda sent around by email before the meeting. I will often make the first page of notes the agenda. If it is a PDF file, I just insert that file before the first page of notes. Then I take my notes. A few pages in, I may find that it is helpful to see the agenda at the same time that I am taking notes, and with GoodNotes 5.3, this is now easy. I can put my agenda on the left (page 1 of the notes) while I continue to handwrite on the right side on a different page of the notes.
There are lots of ways that you can start the dual-screen mode. First, when you are looking at one document in GoodNotes, you can swipe up from the bottom of the screen to reveal the dock and then drag GoodNotes app from your dock to the right side of the screen, where it will open up a new instance of GoodNotes. Second, if you already have multiple tabs in use in GoodNotes, you can hold down on one of the tabs and drag it over to the right side. Third, when you are looking at all of your folders or documents in the library view, just select a folder or document and drag it over to the right side of the screen. Or you can use the action menu on any one document to select Open in New Window. Fourth, when you are looking at all of the pages of a single document in the thumbnail view, just drag any page to the right to create a new window. Fifth, if you have at least two tabs open, you will an icon at the top right of each notebook; tap that icon to see an option to open that notebook in a new window.
It is great to have all of these options to start the two-window mode. Suffice it to say however it feels natural to you to open a second window in GoodNotes, that approach is likely to be supported.
Although I mostly use the two-window approach so that I can look at something on the left while I write on the right, you can also copy something from one notebook to the other one. Use the lasso tool to draw a circle around something in one notebook. Then tap down on your selection and hold for just a second, until the object seems to lift off of the screen a little bit. Now you can drag to the other window, and when you do so whatever you copied will be pasted.
If you have the thumbnail view open on one of the sides, you can drag a page of that document into the other document. This approach creates an image of the document and inserts that image in the second document. Because you can scale this image larger or stronger, you can use this feature if you want to annotate a document but there isn’t enough room in the margins. With this method, you can move an image of a document into a page, then scale the image to whatever size you want, and then the margins around the image give you lots of space to write in the margins about the document.
Presentation Mode
When you use GoodNotes and your iPad is connected to an external monitor, you can decide what kind of Presenter Mode works best for you. One option is to just mirror the entire screen; the audience sees everything that you see. Another option is to mirror the presenter page. That way, the audience sees everything on the screen except that the audience doesn’t see the tools and other interface elements. Thus, the audience won’t see as you select a new pencil or pen or highlighter; they will just see what you write as you are writing it. Third, there is a similar view called mirror full page. This is similar to the second mode except that when you zoom in on your iPad, the audience will continue to see the full page. Thus, you can zoom in to write or draw something in a more precise fashion but the audience will just see the end result.
Note that there is also a laser pointer function in GoodNotes, so you can show your audience notes and then use the laser pointer to emphasize certain things while you are speaking.
If you are using the new side-by-side window function, the audience will only see one of the windows. Thus, you can have your presentation notes open in a window that only you can see as you write something in the window that your audience can see.
Dark Mode
If you enjoy using Dark Mode on your iPad, GoodNotes works with that too. Of course, your paper will probably be white or yellow or some other color, so to fully take advantage of Dark Mode, choose one of the new dark paper templates so that you are writing on dark paper. So far I’ve only played around with this mode, but if you are taking handwritten notes in a very dark environment, I can see it being much less obnoxious to use Dark Mode with a dark paper background.
OCR scanning
I mentioned above that I often take the meeting agenda and make that the first page of my notes. This is easy to do if someone previously sent you the agenda in a PDF file. What if they just hand you a piece of paper with the agenda? That isn’t a problem thanks to the new OCR scanning feature.
Tap the + button at the top right to add a new page, and then select Scan Documents. You can then use your iPad to take a picture of the document. Edge detection is automatic, but you can adjust the corners yourself or switch to manual mode. GoodNotes will take a picture of the document and will also use OCR to look for all of the words in the document, and then the picture of the document becomes the next page of your notes in your notebook. Because of the OCR function, you can` search for all pages in a notebook that contain in a specific word — even if the word was on the document that you scanned. And of course, once the document is in GoodNotes, you can write on top of it to annotate it.
For any attorney who, like me, works with paper documents but wants to make them digital, GoodNotes is now even more useful.
New iPadOS gestures
iPadOS 13 and iOS 13 brought new editing gestures that can be triggered when you put three fingers on the screen. Three-finger swipe left is undo, three-finger swipe right is redo, and hold down three fingers on the screen for a second to bring up the menu. (The new three-finger pinch gestures to cut, copy, and paste do not appear to be supported in GoodNotes.)
GoodNotes also supports the new multiple item gesture of iPadOS 13. When you are in the thumbnail view, touch the screen with two fingers on top of one page of a document and then start to swipe to the left or right to select other pages. This switches you into the selection mode (without having to even tap “Select” first) and allows you to select multiple page as you slide your two fingers over to them. This is a much more efficient way to select multiple contiguous pages in a document.
Conclusion
If you own an iPad and a stylus and you are not yet taking digital notes on your iPad, I strongly encourage you to try doing so with the GoodNotes app. This is a fantastic app — one of the most useful apps on my iPad, and a key part of my paperless law practice. Thanks again to GoodNotes for sponsoring iPhone J.D. this month.
Since I posted my review of the Apple Watch Series 5 and the iPhone 11 Pro, I’ve seen lots of articles on the Internet talking about the battery life of both devices. Folks have been happy with battery life on the iPhone 11 Pro, and I have been too. I’ve had some long days out of the office this week with no good opportunity to recharge my iPhone 11 Pro during the day, but the better battery life on the iPhone 11 Pro has made this a non-issue. There was even a time this week when I could have plugged in my iPhone for a short while during the late afternoon but I didn’t bother doing so because it just wasn’t anywhere close to being necessary. On the other hand, I’ve seen some folks, such as Zac Hall of 9to5Mac, reporting that some folks are finding that it is difficult for their Apple Watch Series 5 devices to last all day. I’m certainly noticing less battery life than with my Series 4, but my Series 5 with cellular still lasts all day. I have seen it tell me that I was down to 10% battery life, but that was after midnight while I was about to go to bed anyway. I’ve also seen some speculation on the Internet that folks seeing limited battery life on a Series 5 are suffering from a software bug not a hardware problem, so maybe Apple will release a patch. And now, the news of note from the past week:
To take full advantage of iOS 13 and iPadOS 13, Apple improved its three iWork apps: Pages, Keynote, and Numbers. Illinois attorney John Voorhees of Mactories explains what is new in the iWork apps. Because I use Microsoft Office in my law practice, the Pages and Numbers apps are not very important to me, but Keynote is a fantastic app that I use frequently to give presentations from my iPad. In fact, I’m giving one such presentation today.
One of the new features of iOS 13 and iPadOS 13 is the addition of a Download Manager in Safari, similar to a web browser on a computer. Sandy Writtenhouse of the iDownloadBlog explains the new Download Manager.
Another new feature of iOS 13 and iPadOS 13 is that the Files app is much improved. Jason Snell of Six Colors discusses the new Files app.
This year, Apple introduced clear cases for all of the new iPhones. I haven’t had a chance to try one out yet, but Jeff Benjamin of 9to5Mac reviews the new Apple clear cases and is impressed, especially considering that the Apple clear case he bought last year for the iPhone XR has held up well.
In August, I noted that the improved version of Apple Maps was available in Texas, Louisiana, and parts of Mississippi. Given the direction on a U.S. map that Apple seemed to be moving, I predicted that places like Atlanta and Mobile might be next. I was wrong; Apple instead added parts of the Northeast this week. Justin O’Breirne wrote a comprehensive post explaining what is new in the Maps app.
Apple has released a large number of updates to iOS 13 since it first released iOS 13.0. Josh Centers of TidBITS explains that we are now up to iOS 13.1.2, and more updates are expected this year.
And finally, Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal created a humorous video to show off Apple’s new Sign in With Apple feature, which allows you to use your Apple ID to authenticate yourself on another website or in an app. As she explains, Apple respects your privacy much more than similar options from Facebook and Google.
It has been possible to use an external keyboard with an iPad since the very first iPad was released in 2010. But whenever you needed to switch from typing to selecting something on the screen, you have always had to reach up your hands from the keyboard and touch your screen with your finger. Although the touch interface is fantastic when I’m using my iPad as a tablet, when my iPad is propped up to be a screen behind my keyboard, it is more awkward to have to touch the screen. Thus, I’ve long wanted to have optional mouse support on an iPad, for those times when I’m using my iPad the same way that I would typically use a computer. With iPadOS 13, we finally have that capability. It is limited, but it works well, and it helps me to be more productive with my iPad. Here are details on how it works, including the (numerous) steps necessary to get started.
Pairing a mouse
This is Apple’s first implementation of mouse support on an iPad, and Apple has prioritized mouse support for folks with special accessibility needs. Thus, to pair a mouse and configure your settings, you need to open the Settings app and go to Accessibility -> Touch -> AssistiveTouch. On the AssistiveTouch screen you can turn on AssistiveTouch (so that it recognizes a mouse) and then you configure your mouse by using the Pointer Devices section.
Tap Devices to pair your mouse. You can use three types of mouse. First, you can use most Bluetooth mice. (Surprisingly, Apple’s own Magic Mouse 2 and Magic Trackpad don’t seem to work; I’ve read that the Magic Trackpad 2 works but only with a Lightning cord, not over Bluetooth.)
Second, you can connect a wired mouse. Since wired mice use USB, you will need a connector. If you have a third generation iPad Pro with USB-C, the HyperDrive 6-in-1 that I reviewed in August works great for this. I plugged in an old Apple wired mouse and it just worked immediately. You can also use Apple’s $29 Lightning to USB Camera Adapter (for an iPad that uses Lightning) or its $19 USB-C to USB Adapter (for the third generation iPad Pro). Leif Johnson of Macworld reports that if you use a wired mouse that requires anything more than minimal power, you might find that older iPads which use a Lightning connector cannot provide enough power. However, if you have a third generation iPad Pro — the one with USB-C — it provides more than enough power for a mouse.
Third, you can connect a wireless mouse that uses a USB dongle. For many years now, I’ve had a Logitech wireless mouse with a dongle for use with my PC laptop. The model that I have (C-UAY59) is no longer for sale, but it is similar to the Logitech M525 that you can get for $19.99 on Amazon.
One you have paired a device, tap or click on it on this screen and you can assign the buttons on your mouse. By default your left-click button will be assigned to Single-Tap. There is no right-click on the iPad, but in iPadOS 13, a Long Press is similar, so I assigned my right-click button to Long Press. And on my mouse, pressing down on the scroll wheel is a third button, so I assigned that to Home so that when I press it, it is similar to swiping up from the bottom of the screen, showing the app icons on my Home screen.
There are a huge number of shortcuts that you can assign to buttons, so if you are using a mouse with a lot of buttons, you can get pretty creative on what you assign. For example, you can assign shortcuts that you create in the Shortcuts app to a mouse button, which allows for lots of sophistication.
On the AssistiveTouch screen, you can also change the tracking speed. I also recommend that you select Pointer Style and make the pointer size as small as possible. That still makes it a circle much larger than a typical computer cursor — remember that you are using the mouse to replace the tip of a finger — but it is small enough that it doesn’t get much in the way. On that same screen, under Visual, I recommend that you also turn on Auto-Hide so that the circle mouse circle disappears if you are not moving the mouse. I have mine set to Auto-Hide in five seconds, and that seems to work very well.
Here is one final tip for your initial configuration. I recommend that, in the Settings app, you go to Control Center -> Customize Controls and then add Accessibility Shortcuts to the “Include” section of the Control Center. And then, in the Accessibility section of the Settings app, under General, tap Accessibility Shortcut -> AssistiveTouch. That way, in the future, you can just swipe down from the top right of your screen to bring up the Control Center and then tap the icon for Accessibility Shortcuts to easily turn on or off the mouse function without having to dig into the Settings menus to do so.
Using a mouse
When you move the pointer around the screen with the mouse, it is like you are hovering the tip of your finger over the screen but not yet touching the screen. And then whenever you press the left mouse button, it is as if the tip of your finger is touching the screen. Thus, to scroll up or down, you hold down the left mouse button and move the mouse while you are still holding down. If your mouse has a scroll wheel, it is supported in some apps on some functions, but not all. For example, the scroll wheel works fairly well in Apple’s built-in apps like Safari and Mail. The scroll wheel mostly works in third-party apps, but I’ve seen inconsistent results in apps like Microsoft Word and Things.
But what works very well is moving the cursor around the screen and selecting text, which is the main thing that I want when I am typing a long email or editing a Microsoft Word document with an external keyboard. For example, in Word, I can use the mouse to select a paragraph, which makes it easy to cut it and paste it somewhere else in the document.
There are still times when I prefer to use my fingers on the iPad screen, such as to invoke multi-finger gestures like pinching two fingers in or out to zoom in or out. Having said that, thanks to keyboard and mouse shortcuts, you no longer need to use your fingers for many tasks. For example, switching apps by using Command-Tab is much better than putting all five fingers on the screen and swipe right or left to change apps.
Although using a mouse with an iPad is not exactly the same as using a mouse with a computer, it still works very well when you are using your iPad and an external keyboard to work with text, whether you are drafting or modifying a document or just writing a long email.
Citrix
Sometimes I need to work in a PC environment on my iPad to get something done for work. I currently have two ways of doing that. First, I use the LogMeIn app on my iPad to connect to the PC in my office. Using an external mouse works reasonably well for that, but the scroll wheel doesn’t work, and a right-click on the mouse doesn’t equal a mouse-click in the PC environment. But it still works well enough that I find a mouse useful in LogMeIn.
Sometimes I use the Citrix Workspace app to connect to a Citrix virtual environment at my law firm. With iPadOS 13, a normal mouse will generally work, but just like in the LogMeIn app there are some things that it cannot do like right click, use a scroll wheel, and perform certain hover events. However, Citrix sells a $60 mouse called the Citrix X1 Mouse. As explained on this page of the Citrix website, if you use the X1 Mouse with the Citrix Workspace app, it works just like a normal mouse on a PC (so you can right-click and scroll), and as a bonus you can also use the X1 Mouse with other apps to perform normal mouse functions that are enabled in iPadOS 13. I haven’t tried the X1 Mouse myself, but if you plan to purchase a Bluetooth mouse to use with your iPad and if your law firm uses Citrix and you plan to use it regularly, I can see some real advantages to buying that Citrix mouse instead of a standard Bluetooth mouse.
Conclusion
The mouse support in iPadOS 13 is limited, but it does work, and in my tests over the last week or so I have found it very helpful. I suspect that almost every time that I use an external keyboard with my iPad Pro, I’ll also take out my mouse so that I can use it too. Hopefully this is just a first step and Apple will improve mouse support in the future. Nevertheless, it works well enough now that if you have ever missed having access to a mouse while you use an external keyboard with an iPad, you should definitely try it and see what you think.
