Apple’s WWDC developer conference was earlier this week, and Apple has released a ton of information about the upcoming iOS 13, iPadOS, and watchOS 6. These all look like substantial updates. No matter what Apple mobile technology you are using now, it is going to get much better in just a few months. Here is the news of note from the past week, most of which concerns these new announcements:
Shortcuts is going to get a big update in iOS 13. One big addition is a large list of events that can be used to automatically trigger an automated task such as time of day, when you arrive at a location, when you tap an NFC tag, etc. Ryan Christoffel of MacStories discusses many of the new Shortcuts triggers.
Another change in iOS 13 is that you will be able to swipe across the keyboard to type instead of taping each key. Put your finger on the letter T, move over to the H, and then move over to the E, and you can enter the word “the” without lifting your finger. Chance Miller of 9to5Mac explains how the new iOS 13 QuickPath swipe keyboard works.
One new feature in iOS 13, iPadOS, and MacOS will be the new Find My app, which includes the ability to locate your device even if the screen is off and it is not connected to a network. It does this by sensing the Bluetooth of another Apple device in the vicinity, such as another iPhone. There are a lot of potential security implications here — will someone else be able to figure out where I am located, or will Apple know where I am located — but it sounds like Apple has thought through all of the issues and come up with some clever solutions that maintain privacy. Andy Greenberg of Wired wrote a really fascinating analysis of the clever cryptography behind Apple’s new Find My feature.
One (of many) changes that I’m happy to see: you can now rename a file as you save it to the Files app.
Emily Sweeney of the Boston Globe shares the story of a woman who was paddle boarding when the wind blew her so far from the beach that she was unable to get back. But fortunately she was wearing an Apple Watch, so she was able to call for help and have her exact location provided to rescuers.
In addition to potentially saving your life, the Apple Watch will look more interesting when watchOS 6 comes out later this year thanks to some new watch faces, as shown off by Chance Miller of 9to5Mac.
Apple Park, the new corporate headquarters of Apple, is known for many things, including looking like a spaceship. Thomas Fuller of the New York Times reports that it is also one of a very small number of buildings in the United States to a special technology that allows the building to move so that it can stand up to earthquakes.
CarPlay is getting a major overhaul in iOS 13, with new apps like Calendar, big improvements to the interface of apps like Music, and new features such as a dashboard view which shows different information, such as a map and now playing screen, all on a single screen. Andrew O’Hara of AppleInsider writes about what is new in CarPlay and has a great video showing off all of the new features.
Last night, I watched part of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. Colbert wears an Apple Watch almost every night, and apparently he normally puts it on do not disturb mode or airplane mode before taping each show. But he forgot to do so last night, and while he was interviewing Mindy Kaling and she was talking, his watch started to vibrate because a call was coming in. He immediately put his hand over the face of the Apple Watch to stop his watch from ringing (which should work), but he must not have put his hand flat against the watch because the watch instead thought that he pressed the button to answer the phone. Suddenly the entire audience could hear a recorded voice from a Marriott Rewards program starting to play an automated message using the speaker on Colbert’s Apple Watch. Mindy Kaling was able to turn that into a pretty funny comedy bit, but it made me realize that all of us who wear an Apple Watch need to be careful to avoid this happening in court or some other environment in which you need to be quiet. If a call comes in on your Apple Watch, you can place your hand over the face to silence the ringing (or stop the vibrating, if you have sound turned off on your Apple Watch), but you need to completely cup the face without tapping any of the on-screen buttons.
If you want your iPad Pro to look like a library book, the BookBook by Twelve South is what you need. Ed Hardy of Cult of Mac shows off the BookBook.
Yesterday, at Apple’s WWDC developer conference, Apple had a keynote presentation where it debuted new operating systems for the iPhone, Apple TV, Apple Watch, and Mac, a new high-end Mac Pro computer, and more. But my favorite part of this jam-packed presentation was a brand new version of the operating system for the iPad. Since 2010, the iPhone and iPad have both run iOS, although there were always some features that worked on the iPad and not the iPhone. But this Fall, Apple is adding so many new features to iOS for iPad that Apple has given the operating system a new name: iPadOS. There are a breathtaking number of new iPad features, and I have no doubt that I’ll be spending the rest of 2019 figuring them all out, especially once iPadOS is released later this year — probably in September if Apple takes the same approach it has in past years. Here are the major new features that I think will be of the most interest to attorneys, but I’m just scratching the surface of everything that is new.
New gestures for text editing
When you are using a computer, are you the type of person who always uses your mouse to go to the File menu to go down and select copy and then goes to the File menu to select paste? Or do you typically use keyboard shortcuts, such as Control-C / Control-V on the PC or Command-C / Command-V on the Mac? If you appreciate using shortcuts to work faster on a computer, you’ll like the new gestures for text editing on the iPad.
First, it is easier than ever to move the cursor around the screen. Second, you can quickly select a block of text by dragging your finger over it. Or you can double-tap a word to select it, triple-tap to select a sentence, or tap four times to select an entire paragraph.
Once you have text selected, you can quickly copy by pinching three fingers over the selected text. Move the cursor to another location and do a reverse three-finger pinch to paste. And perhaps best of all, if you want to undo, you no longer need to hunt for a tiny undo icon or shake the iPad; in iPadOS you swipe three fingers to the left to undo, and three fingers to the right to redo.
Mouse support
As excited as I am to use these new gestures, when my iPad is propped up and I’m using an external keyboard to type, I sometimes wish that I could use a mouse or trackpad instead of reaching up to touch the screen. iPadOS adds the ability to connect an external mouse, using either Bluetooth or a USB cable.
Improved Files app
This felt inevitable, but Apple redesigned the Files app to make it much more powerful. You can now connect an external hard drive or a USB thumb drive. The thumb drive support seems especially useful for attorneys. It allows you to trade large files more easily without having to rely on Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, making it so much easier to exchange a huge set of exhibits, a large Keynote or PowerPoint presentation, etc. And if your iPad does have enough internal storage to fit all of the files that you need when you are headed out of town or to court, just put the extra files on a thumb drive. (Note that a USB-C thumb drive will fit into an iPad Pro, but otherwise you may need an adapter of some sort to use a traditional USB thumb drive with the Lightning or USB-C connector on your iPad. Or better yet, if you own an iPad Pro, use a thumb drive that has both USB and USB-C, such as this Samsung Duo Plus flash drive.)
The Files app can also use a Column View, allowing you to see folders nested within folders. The Files app can also connect to a folder on a server or a folder on a PC using SMB. The Files app can zip and unzip files. And if you use iCloud Drive, you will be able to share a folder with someone else.
The Files app also has a Downloads folder. This is a central place to store documents downloaded from the web. Apple says that it is also a central place to access attachments from Mail, but I don’t yet have a sense of how it integrates with the Mail app.
Multitasking
There are a number of multitasking improvements, making it easier to use multiple apps at the same time — or multiple instances of the same app of the same time. For example, you could have Microsoft Word running on the left side of your screen while another instance of Microsoft Word runs on the right side of your screen, making it easy to view with two documents at once. There have been a number of times that I’ve had to open one document, copy something, close the document, open another document, paste, close the document, go back to the original document, etc. I can avoid all of that nonsense in iPadOS.
I’m going to also like being able to view two PDF files side-to-side without having to use a special app such as GoodReader which has a built-in split screen option. And you can drag a window to compose an email next to your inbox so you can see another message while you are typing your message, and copy and paste between messages without one message obscuring the other one.
In the current iOS 12, you can have one app slide over from the right side to appear on top of your other windows. In iPadOS, you can multiple apps open at the same time in Slide Over, and you can swipe across the bottom to switch between apps. It sort of looks like having a mini-iPhone running on top of your iPad apps.
I’m not a big user of the current spaces feature where you can two apps paired in a side-by-side mode, but if this is a feature you use now, you’ll like that the same app can now be active in multiple spaces at the same time.
Apple Pencil improvements
Before yesterday, I would have thought that Apple Pencil performance improvements would require buying a new Apple Pencil. But Apple said that it has reduced latency with the current Apple Pencil from 20 milliseconds to 9 milliseconds, reducing even further the already very tiny lag between when the Pencil touches the screen and when digital ink appears. As a result, the experience will feel even more like writing on paper.
iPad currently have the ability to take a screenshot by pressing buttons on the side of the iPad and you can already use an Apple Pencil to annotate the screenshot. This experience is improved in iPadOS. Just drag your Pencil from either bottom corner to take a screenshot and enter annotation mode. Better yet, instead of just capturing what is on the screen, you can instead choose to capture an entire document, an entire webpage, or an entire email. I already find it useful to use the Pencil to add handwritten annotations to a Word document using the Microsoft Word app, so I suspect it will be even more useful to have this feature built-in to the operating system and available to multiple apps.
New Home Screen
The Home Screen has been redesigned. Apps icons are closer together, and you have an option to move all of the apps to the right, resulting in extra space on the left where you can display widgets. This means that right there on your home screen you can see upcoming appointments, the time, weather, alerts, or anything else that you choose to place there.
Safari improvements
Safari on an iPhone does a good job of giving you a mobile version of a website, but on the iPad Safari sometimes feels limited as compared to the browser you would use on a computer. In iPadOS, Safari now automatically presents the desktop version of a website. When a website expects a mouse or trackpad input, Safari in iPadOS figures out how to substitute touch input.
Scrolling websites in iPadOS is faster and more fluid. New options make it easier to zoom in on text. A new download manager makes it easier to download multiple, large files. And you can now send a webpage as a PDF file without having to use clever workarounds.
Performance improvements
iPadOS should make your current iPad feel faster. Unlocking using Face ID on an iPad Pro is up to 30% faster. Apps launch up to twice as fast. App downloads and updates are faster because Apple will be packaging apps in a new way later this year to make them smaller.
The new features I listed above are either exclusive to the iPad or most useful on an iPad. (For example, you can also connect a mouse to an iPhone in iOS 13, but I’m don’t see a lot of need for that.) But there are some other features coming to both iPadOS and iOS 13 that I think are going to be fantastic on both the iPad and iPhone. Here are a few of those.
Photos
The Photos app gets some major new features this Fall. It will now be easier to browse your library because, in addition to scrolling through thumbnail versions of every single photo, there is now a mode in which your device picks what are likely to be the best, representative photos of each day, month, or year.
Photos will also provide intelligent titles for events when your device can figure that out, such as a location, a holiday, or a concert performer. This is technology that was previously in Memories and is now applied to other parts of Photos.
Photos will also gain the ability to edit video, removing the need to open another app such as iMovie to perform some simple edits such as turning a video from portrait to landscape orientation.
Find offline devices
If you misplace an iPad (or it is stolen or taken by mistake), you may be able to track it if it has built-in cellular, but if it isn’t connected to a cellular or Wi-Fi network, you may not be able to determine where it is located using the Find My iPhone feature. In iPadOS and iOS 13, once you mark your device as missing in the app (whose name is changing to “Find My”), if your missing iPad or iPhone gets close to anyone else using an Apple device with Bluetooth (such as an iPhone or iPad), your missing device will be able to alert you where it is located. It’s completely anonymous so you won’t know who else had an iPhone close to your missing iPad; you’ll just be told the location where your missing iPad or other device was discovered. If you ever need to use this, you will be incredibly grateful for this feature.
Maps
Maps look much better in iPadOS and iOS 13, with additional details. And Apple added its version of Google Street View so that you can see what it would be like to stand in a location and look around 360º with smooth transitions from one spot to another.
Messages
You can choose to have Messages share your name and photo when you send a text message to someone else. That way, the recipient can more easily see who you are, even if the recipient hasn’t already assigned a name and photo to you in their Contacts app. There are also improvements for searching past messages, and improvements to Animoji and Memoji.
Reminders
Reminders has long been a simple and useful app. Apple is now turning it into a more powerful app. You can add attachments like photos, documents, and web links to reminders, customize the appearance of your list, group reminders lists, and more.
Mail
In addition to Reply and Reply All, Mail gains the ability to notify you of all replies or mute all replies. You can change fonts, color, indenting, and you can add numbered and bulleted lists. The photo picker is now on the bottom of the screen so you can still see your email when selecting a photo to add as an attachment.
AirPods
Two people can use AirPods to listen to the same iPhone or iPad. And Siri improvements make it easier and faster to hear and respond to messages without touching your iPhone, which can be especially useful if you are exercising.
…and I could go on and on discussing other new features such as lyrics that follow along with music as it plays, an even more useful Shortcuts app, improved mobile device management, support for PlayStation and Xbox controllers for games, security improvements, new features in the Notes app, dark mode, new relationship labels in Contacts, the ability to purchase fonts from the App Store, share sheet improvements, and so much more.
Apple even showed a little love for lawyers who use iPads yesterday. At one point, Apple displayed a bunch of app icons on the screen, and two of the best legal-specific apps, TranscriptPad and TrialPad, were included. (To save you from a “Where’s Waldo” search, look at the first column on the left, and seventh column from the right.)
iPadOS and iOS 13 are going to be major updates that will make every iPad and iPhone much better. I can’t wait.
When Apple released iOS 12.3 a few weeks ago, I said that I suspected that there were some features in there that I had not yet found. It turns out that one of them is a new feature called Express Transit, and this one looks really useful. If you have ever used Apple Pay to pay at a store, you know that it takes three steps to use. First, you trigger Apple Pay — on my iPhone XS and my Apple Watch, I do this by double-tapping on the side button. Second you authenticate that you are really you — on my iPhone XS I do this using Face ID, but on older iPhones you use Touch ID. (Your Apple Watch is authenticated just by virtue of it remaining on your arm since the last time that you unlocked it.) Third, you hold your iPhone close to the scanner to pay.
Express Transit cuts out the first two steps. All that you need to do is tap and pay. Tap your iPhone (or your Apple Watch) to the screen on a turnstile — or hold it within a few centimeters — and your iPhone or watch pays for your trip on the subway. You don’t need to worry about purchasing a subway card, or making sure that your subway card has enough money on it. Just tap your iPhone or Apple Watch, and the cost of the ticket is charged to your credit or debit card. Your iPhone screen does not even need to be turned on.
This system is still pretty new, and I was waiting for reports of it being used successfully before posting about it. This past Friday, the system debuted on the New York subway system, run by the MTA. The first systems enabled are Staten Island buses and all stops on the 4, 5, and 6 subway lines between Grand Central and Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center in Brooklyn. The system should be enabled on the entire MTA system by 2021. Right now, the MTA system only supports full fare pay-per-ride, but in the future Express Transit will work with time-based passes, reduced fares, student fares, and more.
To use Express Transit, you first need to enable it on your iPhone. Go to the Settings app and tap Wallet & Apple Pay -> Express Transit Card and then select whether you want to pay using a credit card, debit card, Apple Cash, or some other payment program that you have configured for Apple Pay.
The initial reports that I’ve seen from this past weekend indicate that the system works well. Just tap your iPhone, and then the turnstile says GO and you can walk through. Edgar Alvarez of Engadget described using the system in this post, Raymond Wong of Mashable did so in this post, and even actor Neil Patrick Harris tweeted a picture of him using Express Transit:
The big advantage of Express Transit is that it is so fast to use, but note that by cutting out the authentication step, this also means that someone could steal your iPhone and then use it to ride the subway. If you lose an iPhone with Express Transit enabled, you’ll want to put the device into Lost Mode using the Find My iPhone app or using that option on the iCloud.com website.
You don’t have to be in New York to use Express Transit. According to Apple, the system also currently works in Portland, Japan, and in China (Beijing and Shanghai). I’m sure that over time we will see even more systems supporting Express Transit. If Express Transit ever comes to the historic streetcars in my hometown of New Orleans, then I’ll know that there is truly widespread adoption.
Note also that there are even more transit systems that allow you to pay with Apple Pay without using Express Transit, which means that you need to use all three of steps noted above — activate Apple Pay, authenticate, and then tap. This currently works in places like Chicago, Moscow, and Vancouver.
On Monday, June 3, Apple begins its WWDC developer conference in San Jose, CA. It all kicks off with a keynote presentation at 10am Pacific on Monday, and Apple is expected to make lots of hardware and software announcements. I’ll be particularly interested to see what Apple has to say about iOS 13, the next version of the iPhone and iPad operating system. The rumors are there that will be major improvements for the iPad, and I certainly hope that is true. And now, the news of note from the past week:
John Voorhees of MacStories is no longer practicing law so he doesn’t have to record his time to bill clients, but he still keeps track of his time to ensure productivity. He recently reviewed the Timery app as a front-end for the Toggl service as a way to track time.
Mark Gurman of Bloomberg interviewed Phillip Shoemaker, Apple’s former head of App Store approvals to discuss the app review process.
The iPod touch has long been the device for those who want an iPhone with the phone part of it, making it perfect for younger kids and also for some businesses using lots of devices as tools when there is no need for cellular connections. But the iPod touch had not been updated in four years until this week, when Apple introduced a new iPod touch with an A10 processor starting at $199. That’s the same processor that was used in the iPhone 7 released in 2016, which means that it’s far from the latest technology but still good enough to get the job done for many tasks. Of course, an old iPhone that isn’t being used and doesn’t have a cellular plan may work just as well as a new iPod touch, but it is nice to see Apple still paying some attention to this device — which I imagine is not a big seller for Apple.
If you use smart light bulbs such as the Phillips Hue series, you know that the light switch on the wall needs to be left in the on position if you want to control the bulb. Michael Brown of TechHive reviews the Lutron Aurora, a $40 cover for the switch that prevents someone from turning off the light at the switch. But more than that, it lets you control the smart light bulb from the switch. Looks like a good solution for many smart homes.
And finally, here is a new video from Apple encouraging folks to use the Apple Trade In program so that an iPhone that one person is no longer using can be refurbished for someone else to use, and so that the parts can be recycled when an iPhone reaches the end of its life:
The Apple Pencil is a fantastic iPad accessory for attorneys because it allows you to easily highlight and annotate documents and take handwritten notes. But the first generation Apple Pencil costs $99, and the second generation Apple Pencil costs $129, and I’ve heard attorneys tell me that they wonder if they will get that much value out of it in light of the way that they use their iPads. Fortunately, there is a less expensive option: the Logitech Crayon. It uses Apple’s Apple Pencil technology, so it works just as well as the first generation Apple Pencil except that isn’t pressure sensitive. I’m sure that there are artists who use pressure sensitivity when drawing, but I doubt that many attorneys find that feature useful.
The Logitech Crayon usually costs $69.99, making it more affordable than an Apple Pencil, and schools can take advantage of a $49.99 educational price. But right now, I see that the Crayon is on sale on Amazon for $49.99, and anyone can take advantage of that price, even if you are not an educational institution buying in bulk.
The Logitech Crayon isn’t compatible with every iPad, but it works with these recent iPads:
If the price of an Apple Pencil has deterred you from using a stylus with your iPad, $50 is an excellent sale price for a stylus that uses Apple Pencil technology, so the Logitech Crayon is worth considering.
I’m not a patent attorney, but if I were, I have no doubt that I would frequently have the need to get an electronic version of a patent or an application publication so that I could work with it on my iPad or on my computer. Accio Patent was created by patent attorney Corey McCaffrey to address this need. Give the app a number, and the app downloads the patent or the application publication. (That’s a mouthful, so for the remainder of this review I’ll just say “patent.”) Better yet, the app streamlines the task of fetching a patent in multiple ways.
First, the app makes it as easy as possible to enter the patent number. You can type the number using a numeric keypad. Better yet, if you have access to a hard copy of the first page, you can tap the barcode button at the top right of the app to scan the barcode.
Once a patent number is entered, you can get some summary information about the patent.
Second, you can configure the app to automatically download the PDF file associated with the patent.
Better yet, the app can be told to always save a copy of the PDF file either in iCloud Drive or in Dropbox. The PDF file is stored in a folder called Accio Patent. This is nice because it lets you scan or enter a patent number on your iPhone and then, within seconds, the PDF file is available on your iPhone, your iPad, and your computer.
The app itself is free to download, and there is no charge to get summary information about a patent. If you want to download PDF files so that you can view them in the app or have them downloaded to iCloud and/or Dropbox, you need to pay for a subscription. The normal price is $4.99/month or $49.99/year, but for a limited time there is a discounted price of $1.99/month or $19.99/year.
When you start either a monthly or annual subscription, the app gives you the first seven days for free. Thus, you can kick the tires for a week and find out whether this app will be useful in your practice before you decide whether you want to spend money on it.
McCaffrey tells me that he is already thinking of ideas for new features to add in the future, such as potentially improving the metadata shown for each patent. And he also hopes that more countries add barcodes to their patent publications in the future because that is the fastest way to get an electronic copy of a patent.
I always love it when an attorney has an idea for a useful iPhone/iPad app that nobody else is making and then implements the idea. Kudos to Corey McCaffrey for creating this app. (And on behalf of my daughter, who is an avid Harry Potter fan, good job on the app name!) If you want to learn more about the background of this app, Gaston Kroub of Above the Law interviewed Corey McCaffrey earlier this month.
This Summer, Apple is coming out with a credit card called Apple Card. Ken Segall wrote an interesting article about an effort by Apple back in 2004 to come out with a credit card that never came to fruition. He even shares some interesting ad concepts for the credit card, which would have let you earn points to get free music from iTunes. (Ads might have included lines such as “Buy bed, get R.E.M.” and “Buy balloons, get Zeppelin.” How does he know about this if it was never released? Segall used to work for Apple’s advertising agency, TBWA\Chiat\Day, where he not only authored the Think Different campaign in the 1990s, he also came up with the name “iMac,” which makes him in some way responsible for every Apple product to follow with an “i” including, the iPhone. There is one oversight in Segall’s article; he didn’t know that Apple also had a credit card back in the early 1990s. I know about it because I used it as my primary card when I was in law school. The card let you earn credit to use towards an Apple product, and I was able to earn enough over a few years to pay much of the price for a Macintosh Performa, the home computer I was using when I first started practicing law in the mid-1990s. And now, the news of note from the past week:
I often link to articles by California attorney David Sparks that related to the iPhone and iPad, and he has also created some useful video field guides for those devices such as his great Siri Shortcuts Field Guide (my review). Today, I’m going a little off topic to mention that Sparks created a video field guide for a Mac product called Keyboard Maestro, which you can use to automate tasks on a Mac. I purchased Keyboard Maestro a while back to use with my Mac at home, but I hadn’t quite figured out how to use the software. David let me try out his Keyboard Maestro Field Guide for free, and I absolutely loved it. His videos show you exactly how to use the product, and after watching about half of the videos (there are lots of mini-sessions so you can just watch the ones that interest you, or you can watch them all), I had already created a number of new automation tasks on my Mac that I’m now using every day. If you own a Mac and you want to make it more powerful, you should check out the Keyboard Maestro Field Guide and the Keyboard Maestro software for the Mac. And here’s a post by David Sparks introducing his new Field Guide.
Ryan Christoffel of MacStories reviews Vignette, a new app by Casey Liss which can automate the task of adding pictures to the Contacts entries on your iPhone. You can use the app for free to find out what pictures it can find, and then for a one-time $5 charge you can unlock the app to add the pictures to your contacts.
Last week, Apple released iOS 12.3, and I recommended that everyone update their iPhone and iPad. Even if you don’t care about the new TV app, iOS updates always improve security. For example, Roger Fingas of AppleInsider explains how iOS 12.2 (released in March), fixed an exploit that websites could use to identify your specific device by using your iPhone’s motion sensors. It’s fascinating that someone was smart enough to figure that one out in the first place, but I’m glad that Apple fixed it.
I like that the Music app on the iPhone can tell my song lyrics and let’s me search for a song based upon the one line in the song that I remember. But apparently there can be some pretty big errors in some of the lyrics. Jason Snell of Six Colors explores how these errors in lyrics happen.
And finally, you can no longer buy a gold Apple Watch from Apple, but apparently you can make one. Casey Neistat teamed up with Zach Nelson to gold plate an Apple Watch, and it looks like the process actually worked, as you can see in this video:
On Father’s Day four years ago (June 21, 2015), my wife and kids gave me one of Apple’s Milanese Loop watch bands for the Apple Watch. It normally costs $149 if you buy it from Apple, but I see that Best Buy is currently selling it for half-price at $74.99 as part of a clearance sale, or as low as $55.99 if you buy an open-box version. This is a great price for a great watch band. And I say that from personal experience because I’ve been wearing a Milanese Loop band almost every day for almost four years. I wear it every day at work, Monday through Friday, and I wear it on the weekends whenever I want something a little fancier such as when going out to a nice dinner or a party.
Everything I wrote in my 2014 review of this band remains true. It looks really nice, it feels incredibly comfortable, and because it uses magnets it is infinitely adjustable to any size. It is also very thin, so it works well even if I’m wearing a dress shirt with tighter cuff on the sleeve. I’ve seen both women and men wearing the Milanese Loop watch band and I think it looks good on everyone.
One way that you can tell that the Milanese Loop is a great band is that there are tons of knock-offs for sale. The few that I’ve seen in person didn’t seem nearly as nice as what Apple sells. In fact, I see that Amazon is currently selling one knock-off that costs $0.01 — that’s right, only a penny — with $10.99 shipping. It scares me to even think about what would show up in the mail if someone orders that one.
There are two other Apple Watch bands that I use all the time. I love wearing the Sport Band on the weekend and when working out. I use the XL version (my review) for a larger wrist. I also like the Woven Nylon Band (my review), but for some reason Apple is no longer selling those — strange because that is also a really good watch band. But I’ve spent more time wearing the Milanese Loop watch band than any other Apple Watch band, and I really love it.
If you own an Apple Watch and you don’t yet have a Milanese Loop watch band, I encourage you to check it out, especially if you act quickly enough to take advantage of this half-price sale at Best Buy.
GoodNotes is my go-to app for taking handwritten notes on my iPad. I use it all the time to take notes in meetings and in court, and I also use it at my desk just to organize my own thoughts. I typically use a template with lines and a light yellow background so that the app mimics writing on a legal pad, but I also frequently import a PDF file and write on it. For example, if there is an agenda for a meeting, I will often import the agenda into a notebook and then, if there is space, take notes directly on the agenda, and when more space is required I write on a page behind the agenda.
GoodNotes was recently updated to version 5 and I reviewed it earlier this year. It’s a great update, with full support for the second generation Apple Pencil. Double-tap on the side of the Pencil to switch between your current writing tool and an eraser and then back again.
An eraser is useful when you want to change something you wrote, but sometimes all that you want to do is undo your last stroke or your last few strokes. You have always been able to tap undo and redo buttons at the top of the screen but they are small and you need to hunt for them. A few days ago, the app was updated to version 5.1 to add a very useful new feature. Now, you can use two fingers to double-tap anywhere on the screen to undo your last edit. Double-tap again to undo even more. There is also a new gesture for redo; double-tap with three fingers to redo your last edit.
I find this to be a very useful update. It only takes a fraction of a second to move the Pencil in my hand so that my hand is in a position to tap on the screen with two fingers, and I find that it is much faster to undo using this gesture than finding and tapping the undo button at the top of the screen. I use the undo function far more than I use the redo function, but using three fingers to redo also seems to work very well.
Thanks to this update, one of the most-used apps in my law practice now works even better. I recommend that you check out GoodNotes if you want to take handwritten notes on an iPad.
On Saturday, May 18, 2019, Apple CEO Tim Cook gave the commencement address at Tulane University, right here in New Orleans in the Superdome. It was a good speech that encouraged graduates to make the world a better place by working on hard problems and having the courage to experiment to find solutions. As an example, he stressed the need to address climate change. He encouraged graduates to listen to and have empathy for the viewpoints of others instead of demonizing the other side so that real work can be accomplished.
You can watch a video of his speech on YouTube, but here is a transcript I prepared because it can be easier and faster to read text than to watch a video. (In a few places, I added hyperlinks and annotations.)
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Hello Tulane! Thank you President Fitts, Provost Forman, distinguished faculty, other faculty [laughs], and the entire Tulane family, including the workers, ushers, [and] volunteers who prepared this beautiful space. And I feel duty-bound to also recognize the hard-working bartenders at The Boot. Though they’re not here with us this morning, I’m sure some of you are reflecting on their contributions as well. [The Boot is a popular college bar right next to Tulane’s campus which has been around for decades.]
And just as many of you have New Orleans in your veins, and perhaps your livers, some of us at Apple have New Orleans in our blood as well. When I was a student at Auburn, the Big Easy was our favorite getaway. It’s amazing how quickly those 363 miles fly by when you’re driving toward a weekend of beignets and beer. And how slowly they go in the opposite direction. Apple’s own Lisa Jackson is a proud Tulane alum. Yes. She brought the Green Wave all the way to Cupertino where she heads our environment and public policy work. We’re thrilled to have her talent and leadership on our team.
OK, enough about us. Let’s talk about you. At moments like this, it always humbles me to watch a community come together to teach, mentor, advise, and finally say with one voice, congratulations to the class of 2019!
Now there’s another very important group: your family and friends. The people who, more than anyone else, loved, supported, and even sacrificed greatly to help you reach this moment. Let’s give them a round of applause. This will be my first piece of advice. You might not appreciate until much later in your life how much this moment means to them. Or how that bond of obligation, love, and duty between you matters more than anything else.
In fact, that’s what I really want to talk to you about today. In a world where we obsessively document our own lives, most of us don’t pay nearly enough attention to what we owe one another. Now this isn’t just about calling your parents more, although I’m sure they’d be grateful if you did that. It’s about recognizing that human civilization began when we realized that we could do more together. That the threats and danger outside the flickering firelight got smaller when we got bigger. And that we could create more — more prosperity, more beauty, more wisdom, and a better life — when we acknowledge certain shared truths and acted collectively.
Maybe I’m biased, but I’ve always thought the South, and the Gulf Coast in particular, have hung on to this wisdom better than most. [Tim Cook grew up in Robertsdale, Alabama, which is about an hour from New Orleans and is similarly close to the Gulf of Mexico.] In this part of the country, your neighbors check up on you if they haven’t heard from you in a while. Good news travels fast because your victories are their victories too. And you can’t make it through someone’s front door before they offer you a home-cooked meal.
Maybe you haven’t thought about it very much, but these values have informed your Tulane education too. Just look at the motto: not for one’s self, but for one’s own. You’ve been fortunate to live, learn, and grow in a city where human currents blend into something magical and unexpected. Where unmatched beauty, natural beauty, literary beauty, musical beauty, cultural beauty, seem to spring unexpectedly from the bayou. The people of New Orleans use two tools to build this city: the unlikely and the impossible. Wherever you go, don’t forget the lessons of this place. Life will always find lots of ways to tell you no, that you can’t, that you shouldn’t, that you’d be better off if you didn’t try. But New Orleans teaches us there is nothing more beautiful or more worthwhile than trying. Especially when we do it not in the service of one’s self, but one’s own.
For me, it was that search for greater purpose that brought me to Apple in the first place. I had a comfortable job at a company called Compaq that at the time looked like it was going to be on top forever. As it turns out, most of you are probably too young to even remember its name. But in 1998, Steve Jobs convinced me to leave Compaq behind to join a company that was on the verge of bankruptcy. They made computers, but at that moment at least, people weren’t interested in buying them. Steve had a plan to change things. And I wanted to be a part of it.
It wasn’t just about the iMac, or the iPod, or everything that came after. It was about the values that brought these inventions to life. The idea that putting powerful tools in the hands of everyday people helps unleash creativity and move humanity forward. That we can build things that help us imagine a better world and then make it real.
There’s a saying that if you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. At Apple, I learned that’s a total crock. You’ll work harder than you ever thought possible, but the tools will feel light in your hands. As you go out into the world, don’t waste time on problems that have been solved. Don’t get hung up on what other people say is practical. Instead, steer your ship into the choppy seas. Look for the rough spots, the problems that seem too big, the complexities that other people are content to work around. It’s in those places that you will find your purpose. It’s there that you can make your greatest contribution. Whatever you do, don’t make the mistake of being too cautious. Don’t assume that by staying put, the ground won’t move beneath your feet. The status quo simply won’t last. So get to work on building something better.
In some important ways, my generation has failed you in this regard. We spent too much time debating. We’ve been too focused on the fight and not focused enough on progress. And you don’t need to look far to find an example of that failure. Here today, in this very place, in an arena where thousands once found desperate shelter from a 100-year disaster, the kind that seem to be happening more and more frequently, I don’t think we can talk about who we are as people and what we owe to one another without talking about climate change.
[applause] Thank you. Thank you.
This problem doesn’t get any easier based on whose side wins or loses an election. It’s about who has won life’s lottery and has the luxury of ignoring this issue and who stands to lose everything. The coastal communities, including some right here in Louisiana, that are already making plans to leave behind the places they’ve called home for generations and head for higher ground. The fishermen whose nets come up empty. The wildlife preserves with less wildlife to preserve. The marginalized, for whom a natural disaster can mean enduring poverty.
Just ask Tulane’s own Molly Keogh, who’s getting her Ph.D. this weekend. Her important new research shows that rising sea levels are devastating areas of Southern Louisiana more dramatically than anyone expected. Tulane graduates, these are people’s homes. Their livelihoods. The land where their grandparents were born, lived, and died.
When we talk about climate change or any issue with human costs, and there are many, I challenge you to look for those who have the most to lose and find the real, true empathy that comes from something shared. That is really what we owe one another. When you do that, the political noise dies down, and you can feel your feet firmly planted on solid ground. After all, we don’t build monuments to trolls, and we’re not going to start now.
If you find yourself spending more time fighting than getting to work, stop and ask yourself who benefits from all the chaos. There are some who would like you to believe that the only way that you can be strong is by bulldozing those who disagree or never giving them a chance to say their peace in the first place. That the only way you can build your own accomplishments is by tearing down the other side.
We forget sometimes that our preexisting beliefs have their own force of gravity. Today, certain algorithms pull toward you the things you already know, believe, or like, and they push away everything else. Push back. It shouldn’t be this way. But in 2019, opening your eyes and seeing things in a new way can be a revolutionary act. Summon the courage not just to hear but to listen. Not just to act, but to act together.
It can sometimes feel like the odds are stacked against you, that it isn’t worth it, that the critics are too persistent and the problems are too great. But the solutions to our problems begin on a human scale with building a shared understanding of the work ahead and with undertaking it together. At the very least, we owe it to each other to try.
It’s worked before. In 1932, the American economy was in a free-fall. Twelve million people were unemployed, and conventional wisdom said the only thing to do was to ride it out, wait, and hope that things would turn around. But the governor of New York, a rising star named Franklin Roosevelt, refused to wait. He challenged the status quo and called for action. He needed people to stop their rosy thinking, face the facts, pull together, and help themselves out of a jam. He said: “The country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it and try another. But above all, try something.”
This was a speech to college students fearful about their future in an uncertain world. He said: “Yours is not the task of making your way in the world, but the task of remaking the world.” The audacious empathy of young people, the spirit that says we should live not just for ourselves, but for our own. That’s the way forward. From climate change to immigration, from criminal justice reform to economic opportunity, be motivated by your duty to build a better world. Young people have changed the course of history time and time again. And now it’s time to change it once more.
I know, I know the urgency of that truth is with you today. Feel big because no one can make you feel strong. Feel brave because the challenges we face are great but you are greater. And feel grateful because someone sacrificed to make this moment possible for you. You have clear eyes and a long life to use them. And here in this stadium, I can feel your courage.
Call upon your grit. Try something. You may succeed. You may fail. But make it your life’s work to remake the world because there is nothing more beautiful or more worthwhile than working to leave something better for humanity.
Thank you very much, and congratulations class of 2019!
