Today at 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern, Apple is holding an event at its Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, CA to announce its new video service, and perhaps other new services as well. (A news service and a game service are both the subject of rumors.)
You can watch a live stream of the event on this page on Apple’s website. Normally, a page like that would start showing video about a minute or so before the event starts. But this time, Apple actually turned on the camera yesterday — or perhaps, more likely, prepared something to stream so that it looks like that is what is going on. When I checked it out last night, I just saw feeds from various cameras showing a dark, empty theater, such as these:
[UPDATE: Apple finally ended the pre-event live stream at 7am Pacific / 10am Eastern. One of the last things I noticed in the stream this morning was a CarPlay screen showing someone driving to the Steve Jobs theater, arriving around 6:40 Pacific.]
For many years now, Apple has typically avoiding entering an existing market unless it could be a dominant player. I’m fascinated to see the service that Apple proposes to bring to the streaming video market today, and it will be interesting to watch over the next few years how Apple does in this market.
This past weekend, my family and I saw one of the touring productions of Hamilton while it was playing at the Saenger Theater in New Orleans. It was amazing; the best show I’ve ever seen at the Saenger, and I have seen so many over the years. We all loved it. After the show, I watched some clips of Hamilton on Broadway, and as much as I enjoyed the show that we saw, I am jealous of those who saw Lin-Manuel Miranda in the original production as he really brings something special to that role that was missing in the touring production. I was thinking about this as I read articles this week about the new iPad Air and iPad mini. If you are already using a new iPad Pro, those devices are a step down as they don’t support the Apple Pencil 2, don’t have the gorgeous edge-to-edge screen, don’t have the larger 12.9″ size, etc. On the other hand, these new iPads are a fraction of the price of an iPad Pro, and they are still really, really good. Much like it might make sense for you to see the touring version of Hamilton instead of paying for the trip to New York and the high cost of Broadway tickets with the original cast, opting for an iPad Air (or if you want something really small, an iPad mini) is still a great option for attorneys using an older iPad, even if it isn’t as good as a brand new, expensive, iPad Pro. “Da da da dat da, dat da da da da ya da.” Sorry, but I can’t get that King George song out of my head. And now, the news of note from the past week:
Apple also announced some new bands for the Apple Watch and some new iPhone cases this week. Attorney John Voorhees of MacStories shows off what is new.
California attorney David Sparks may no longer doing the Mac Power Users podcast with Florida attorney Katie Floyd, but he is still producing MPU episodes with great content for lawyers. In Episode #474 and co-host Stephen Hackett discuss using an iPad instead of a laptop, and Sparks gives lots of examples from his own law practice.
President Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen used an iPhone, and Special Counsel Robert Mueller appears to have gotten access to it. Lauren Feiner of CNBC reports that a year before the FBI raided Cohen’s home and office, the DOJ requested a search warrant and court permission to use Cohen’s face or fingerprints to unlock his iPhone. The article implies that the court granted the motion, but that part of the article isn’t 100% clear.
Many journalists were given early access and posted reviews of the iPad mini yesterday. If you think that a smaller iPad might be right for you, the most helpful reviews that I saw were the review by Jason Snell of Six Colors (who says “Say hello to my little friend, again”) and the review by John Gruber of Daring Fireball (who says “[t]he iPad Mini puts the ‘pad’ in iPad.”).
In an article for Macworld, Jason Snell explains why today’s iPad lineup is the strongest in years. I fully agree. There is something for every price point, and there lots of size and feature options.
Luke Dormehl of Cult of Mac reports that according to a large study by Stanford scientists, an Apple Watch can safely identify atrial fibrillation with very few false positives.
Sarah Brown of 1Password recommends that you change your Facebook password now the Facebook admitted that hundreds of millions of passwords were stored in a plain text file. Ugh. And whether you use 1Password or some other password manager, this is yet another reminder that you should really be using a password manager, right now.
Apple’s GarageBand app is 15 years old this year. Amy Wang of Rolling Stone writes about the origins of GarageBand. I re-watched the video the other the day in which Steve Jobs debuted GarageBand, along with John Mayer, and it is a classic and fantastic Steve Jobs demo.
Just over two years ago, Apple released the AirPods, its first wireless earpods. It immediately became one of my all-time favorite Apple products. In almost every circumstance, I find AirPods to be the best way to listen to an iPhone, iPad, or other device that supports Bluetooth. My only real complaint was that after using my AirPods numerous times throughout the day, virtually every day, for over two years, my battery life decreased. Instead of being able to listen for five or more hours, I was down to less than an hour, and even less on phone calls. It’s easy enough to put them in their case for a few minutes to recharge them, but I’d rather not have to do that.
This is the week before Apple will announce its new streaming video service on March 25. Perhaps to drive-home the point that there will be no new Apple hardware announced next week, Apple has been releasing new hardware every day this week. On Monday, Apple introduced the new iPad Air and iPad mini. On Tuesday, Apple introduced new iMac computers. (The five-year-old iMac I use at home is due for an upgrade, so I ordered one of the new models, and I can’t wait to use it.) On Wednesday, Apple introduced the new version of the AirPods. Apple is still just calling them the AirPods, but I’ll call them the AirPods 2 in this post just to make it clear I’m not talking about the original model.
The AirPods 2 look the same as the original version, but add a few new features:
The (starting) battery life remains five hours for listening to audio (after which you need to put them in the case for a few minutes to charge them again), but you now get three hours of talking on the phone instead of two hours. I would sometimes run out of battery life on long conference calls, so I’m glad that this was improved.
You can now trigger Siri on the AirPods just by saying out loud “Hey Siri.” With the original AirPods, you would have to tap one of the AirPods to trigger Siri.
It is now twice as fast to pair AirPods to a new device. I frequently switch between my iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch, so I’m happy to see this.
While AirPods still cost the same $159, you can pay $40 more to get a version with a case that supports Qi charging — charging by placing it on a charging mat instead of plugging the case into a Lightning cable.
For no extra charge, Apple can engrave some letters onto the AirPods case. My wife and I frequently lose track of which case belongs to which one of us, so putting names on the case sounds like a great idea.
The idea of using a Qi charging device — so-called “wireless charging” — doesn’t appeal to me that much. I’ve had an iPhone that supports Qi for almost a year and a half and I virtually never feel the need to use that feature. But if you already own AirPods and Qi charging appeals to you, you can buy a new Wireless Charging Case that works with your current AirPods for $79.
I was looking to get new AirPods anyway because, as noted above, I’m wearing out the batteries on the AirPods I purchased over two years ago. I ordered the new AirPods yesterday (the $159 version, not the version with the Wireless Charging Case) and I’ll let you know what I think about the new features after I have had some time with them.
As for Apple’s streak of three hardware announcements in three days, I’ve seen some speculation that on Thursday Apple will start selling the AirPower — an Apple version of a Qi charger that Apple first announced back in 2017, when Apple said that it would go on sale in 2018, but Apple missed that date. We’ll see.
This time last year, Apple introduced the sixth generation of the 9.7″ iPad, a device which remains on sale today. It isn’t nearly as powerful as the iPad Pro and its screen isn’t nearly as nice as the iPad Pro, but it has two things going for it: it supports the first-generation Apple Pencil, and it is cheap. I think that the $329 version with only 32 GB is too small for most attorneys, but the $429 version with 128 GB is a way to get support for the incredibly useful Apple Pencil while spending far less than an iPad Pro.
Recognizing that there was a large gap in features and price between the iPad and the iPad Pro, yesterday Apple introduced two new mid-range iPads. The names of these new devices are the iPad Air and the iPad mini, which are familiar names; the original iPad mini came out in 2012, and the original iPad Air came out in 2013. But the names are just being recycled; these devices are really improved versions of the 10.5″ iPad Pro which came out in 2017. Indeed, this new third generation 10.5″ iPad Air even works with the same accessories as the 10.5″ iPad Pro, such as the Apple Smart Cover and the Apple Smart Keyboard. The new fifth generation iPad mini is just a smaller version of the same thing.
The new iPads are $100 apart — $399 for the iPad mini or $499 for the iPad Air, both with 64 GB; for an additional $150 you can jump from 64 GB to 256 GB, giving you much more space for all of your documents, photos, and videos. These prices — $399/$549 for the iPad mini and $499/$649 for the iPad Air — are more expensive than the $329/$429 9.7″ iPad but cheaper than the iPad Pro, which ranges from $799 to $1549 for the 11″ iPad Pro and $999 to $1749 for the 12.9″ iPad Pro. So just from a price standpoint, these are mid-range iPads.
From a feature standpoint, these are also mid-range iPads. Like the inexpensive 9.7″ iPad, you only get support for the first generation Apple Pencil, and you get a button with Touch ID instead of super-thin bezels with Face ID. But you also get a screen that is much better than the 9.7″ iPad, although not quite as nice as the iPad Pro, and you get an A12 bionic chip, the same super-fast chip used in the iPhone XS albeit not the A12X used in the latest versions of the iPad Pro.
If you use an older iPad and it is time to upgrade, spending $649 for the 256 GB version of the 10.5″ iPad Air is going to be very compelling to many attorneys as an alternative to spending $949 for the 256 GB version of the 11″ iPad Pro. Both devices are almost exactly the same size and weight; the larger screen on the iPad Pro is a result of the smaller bezels. The second generation of the Apple Pencil is only available with the iPad Pro and it is much better than the first generation Pencil for the reasons I explained in this post. But the older version of the Pencil is still a very nice stylus, especially if this will be the first time you have used an iPad that can support an Apple Pencil. (John Gruber of Daring Fireball explains in this post the likely reasons that Apple didn’t support the second generation version of the Apple Pencil.)
As for me, I wouldn’t want to give up the fantastic large screen of my 12.9″ iPad Pro. Yes, it is hundreds of dollars more than these new mid-range iPads, but that larger screen is fantastic for reviewing and annotating documents, surfing the web, looking at pictures and videos, etc. But if you want something closer to the size of a traditional iPad, now you have a choice to make.
As for the new iPad mini, I find that size far too small for most folks trying to get work done. Documents, exhibits, etc. are going to be tiny. But I used to own an iPad mini many years ago, and there is something compelling about a small iPad which feels like you are holding a book in your hands. It is still larger than an iPhone for reading emails, reading text, jotting down notes, etc. If you are looking for an electronic version of a smaller notebook, the new iPad mini with Apple Pencil support could be just what you need.
What do you use for keeping track of a grocery list on your iPhone? My wife is a big fan of the Things app for all of her lists, including groceries. Illinois attorney John Voorhees of MacStories recommends the Grocery app for keeping a grocery list. David Chartier explains why the AnyList app works well for grocery lists that you can check off using an Apple Watch. I myself often just use the simple checklist feature of the built-in Notes app. And now, the recent news of note:
Speaking of Sparks, Sparks also recently shared some free templates for use in GoodNotes for planning your day, taking notes during a phone call, and other tasks.
And speaking of Shortcuts, MacStories put together an archive of 150 Shortcuts that you might find useful. I use the Apple Frames shortcut for posting images on iPhone J.D. of an iPhone screen with an iPhone frame around it.
I’m a big fan of Lutron smart home devices with HomeKit support. Zac Hall of 9to5Mac reports that Lutron has just released a wall switch to control a ceiling fan.
And finally, here is a fun video posted by Apple called Private Side emphasizing that the iPhone is the best smartphone to use if privacy is important to you. Very cute.
Five years ago, I posted a review of Immigration, an app by San Francisco immigration attorney Josh Adams that lets you access the text of the Immigration & Nationality Act and related law and resources such as the Code of Federal Regulations. I recently received an email from New Jersey immigration lawyer Paul Gilbert telling me that the Immigration app is more useful than ever due to some recent updates. Although I don’t practice immigration law myself, I — like much of the rest of the country — now have a heightened interest in immigration law as a result of the policies of the Trump administration. Paul was nice enough to volunteer to write a guest review so that iPhone J.D. readers could hear about this app from someone who actively uses the app in a law practice. Take it away, Paul!
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The Immigration app was first reviewed in iPhone JD in 2014, where I first heard about it, and I have been using it ever since. I recently asked Jeff to consider an updated review due to some new features, and he asked me if I would be willing to write a guest review.
Disclaimer: I did receive a free copy of the app when the pricing scheme was a onetime payment of $25 (it is now offered as a free app with a subscription plan for additional features – more on that in a minute), because I did some early bug reporting and helped to spread the word among colleagues, and I am mentioned in the Credits Section of the app for this.
This app is for iPhones and iPads and is designed to be a tool for attorneys practicing immigration law (in private or government practice), law professors and students, and anyone else who needs to refer to immigration law primary materials. It contains the text of the INA (Immigration and Nationality Act), Title 8 of the CFR, and the Immigration Court and BIA (Board of Immigration Appeals) Practice Manuals.
The first screen of the app is the INA:
Swiping to the left will reveal the 2 PMs.
Tapping the screen opens a box showing several options, depending on where you are in the app:
The Show Section option presents this:
Similar boxes appear when tapping on sections of the CFR or PM screens.
I find it useful to have this app open on my iPad while I’m on the computer drafting a document. Having the ability to jump to a corresponding section of the CFR while viewing the INA is very helpful, as is the ability to search for a particular term using the search box at the top of each screen (results are highlighted in red), and to copy and paste text for insertion into a document (I usually open my Word document on my iPad using OneDrive and just paste the text there, and then go back to the document on my computer, or you could copy the text you need into Evernote or a similar app, or email it to yourself, and then open it on the computer and copy it into your document).
I also use Immigration in Immigration Court if I need to refer to a primary source. (Unfortunately, I cannot currently do this when appearing before a USCIS Officer due to their policy of no electronic devices during hearings – hopefully this will change soon.)
I find the interface to be simple and intuitive. It is possible to save bookmarks for sections that you find yourself referring to regularly, and the developer recently updated the app to include a feature where text can be highlighted, and the highlights saved, for future reference. This will be useful when you are trying to go back to a particular section buried deep within a sub- sub- section of CRF (e.g. 204.2(d)(2)(vii)(D)).
There are also customizable settings and a help screen.
The developer of the app is a former ICE attorney and is now a full-time app developer (he worked as a software developer prior to going to law school). He is very responsive to suggestions and the occasional bug report (when I suggested the highlighting feature, he wrote back to me within 10 days with a sample of what he would be providing in the next update, and the update appeared as promised).
The current version of Immigration (Version 3.2) is a free app. To get updates to the primary source materials you must subscribe ($1.49 / month, auto renewing but can be cancelled at any time). All of these primary sources are available elsewhere of course, whether in print or online, but it is certainly much more convenient to have all of them in one app which updates them regularly. I would recommend Immigration to any anyone who has to refer to these materials on a regular basis.
Paul Gilbert is a life-long resident of New Jersey, and a graduate of Rutgers College and Rutgers-Camden School of Law. He has been practicing immigration law since 1977, first as a General Attorney with the (then) INS, and for the past 37 years in private practice. He is doing his best to go, if not paperless, than at least “less paper”, which would not be possible without an iPhone and an iPad.
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A big thanks to Paul Gilbert for taking the time to write this review, and thanks to Josh Adams for his continued development of this app over the years. We need good immigration attorneys in this country, and hopefully this app will help them to be more effective in their practice.
Yesterday, Apple sent an invitation to select members of the press inviting them to its campus in Cupertino, CA on March 25, 2019 at 10am Pacific. The invitation says that it is for a “special event” but the invitation also features an animation of a film reel counting down to 1 with the tagline “It’s show time.” Here are two tweets from Matthew Panzarino showing the invitation:
I think it is pretty obvious that this is the event at which Apple will unveil its new streaming video service. I’m sure that the service will work on the iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, and other Apple devices. It will be interesting to see what other devices will work with the service, what will be available to watch, the cost, and just about everything else about this new service for Apple. For those of us who did not receive an invitation from Apple, the Apple website states that a live stream of the special event will also be available.
There is a rumor that Apple is also planning to unveil a newspaper and magazine subscription service, and possibly even new Apple hardware too. We’ll see.
One of the presentations that I gave at ABA TECHSHOW in Chicago this year was devoted to useful iOS tips, apps, and hardware accessories, a presentation that I gave with Brett Burney. Brett and I were asked by Laurence Colletti, host of the On the Road Podcast on the Legal Talk Network, to share just a dozen of those tips, apps, and gear recommendations in an episode of his podcast that was recorded in the Expo Hall of ABA TECHSHOW. If you want to get a sense of the audio portion of the presentation that Brett and I gave, this short and fast-paced ten minute podcast is worth a listen. Click here to listen in the Overcast app on your iPhone or on the Overcast website, or you can listen using the embedded player right here:
Today is Mardi Gras day in New Orleans, the culmination of many weeks of parades and parties with family and friends. There has been more rain than one would prefer for Mardi Gras season this year, but it has still been a lot of fun. Whether you are in New Orleans today in person or just in spirit, have a Happy Mardi Gras!
Last week, I attended ABA TECHSHOW 2019 in Chicago. It was a great conference; I learned a lot, and had fascinating and fun conversations with lots of interesting people. Here are a few pictures from the conference, along with some information that you might find useful even if you were not at the conference.
The Expo Floor had lots of booths of interest to attorneys using an iPhone or iPad. Smile had a booth to show off ways that lawyers can use TextExpander. The primary person manning the booth was Jeff Gamet, who recently became a Smile employee but who you may know from his 13 years covering Apple-related news for The Mac Observer, or from one of his numerous podcasts such as The iOS Show.
Sharon Stewart was part of the crew from Bellefield showing off iTimeKeep, a great app for entering and tracking your time on your iPhone, iPad, Mac, or PC. I first heard about iTimeKeep many years ago at ABA TECHSHOW, and now it is a product that I use almost every day.
Ed Walters, the CEO of Fastcase, was a speaker at the conference and was also showing off all of the new technology that Fastcase is using to improve legal research.
I had an interesting conversation with Dan McCade, the Chief Information Officer at Casemaker. A while back, Casemaker purchased an app called Rulebook which contains sources of law (like a state’s code of civil procedure) as well as other useful legal texts, most notably The Bluebook. I’ve been frustrated with that app for a while now because it has some bugs and I was wondering if the app had been abandoned. McCade ensured me that the app is still being developed, and he even showed me a beta of new version of the app which he said should be out very soon. He showed me that it (finally) restored hyperlinks to the index at the back of The Bluebook — thank goodness. I love having The Bluebook and other rules right there on my iPad and iPhone, so I am really looking forward to the next update to this app.
MyCase was doing lots of things at ABA TECHSHOW. For example, Niki Black was interviewing folks to ask about a good tech tip (here was mine). They also had one of their programmers, Quy Phan, programming code for the next update to MyCase right there in the booth. His Javascript programming was way over my head, but it was still neat to see and hear him describing what he was doing to add new features to the service. Here he is with Niki:
There were two companies offering iPhone apps with the same basic goal: give you a way to have a text message conversation with a client, but include a way to preserve the conversation so that you can store a copy in your document management system. One of the companies is a new startup called JurisBytes, and their app was so impressive that they were the winners of the 2019 Startup Alley competition, as Jason Tashea of the ABA Journal reported in this article. For their product, your client can use whatever normal app he or she uses to text, but the attorney uses the JurisMS app to text and there is a special phone number (that can be in your normal area code) to provide to clients to reach the attorney via text.
The folks from EIE Legal had a similar product. For their app to work, both sides have to text within the special EIE app. Once again, you can get a PDF document for preservation purposes containing the entire conversation.
And finally, Rocket Matter had a Game of Thrones theme at its booth, and its CEO Larry Port was dressed up as character Robb Stark to get in the mood.
Of course, the sessions are the best part of TECHSHOW, and I attended some great ones that related to the iPhone and iPad. Craig Bayer and Stanley Louissaint discussed Mobile Device Management:
Brett Burney and John Simek discussed collecting and preserving evidence and other information from mobile devices. If you have access to someone’s password (such as your client’s) there is a lot of information you can get from an iPhone. If you don’t, you probably won’t be able to get anything off of the phone at all, although some companies claim to be able to crack certain devices for a large fee.
Antigone Peyton and Bob Ambrogi discussed legal issues surrounding the Internet of Things, an interesting issue as we find ourselves surrounded by more devices, such as the Apple Watch and smart home technology, which record lots of information that could be relevant in litigation.
Friday morning, Sharon Nelson and I gave a presentation on selecting the best technology for your law firm. MyCase hired artist Leah Silverman to create cartoons to record what was discussed during certain presentations, including the one. Thus, if you missed our session, you can get the gist of it from this cartoon. (Click to enlarge.) Also, Jason Tashea of ABA Journal wrote this article about our session.
I also teamed up with Brett Burney to discuss a huge number of iOS tips, app recommendations, and hardware accessory recommendations. It was a fast-paced and fun presentation with an enthusiastic audience, as you can see.
The last session I attended was a presentation by David Sparks and Craig Bayer with tips for improving security on iOS devices.
On Thursday night, David Sparks and I hosted a Taste of Techshow dinner, and it was great fun with a really fantastic group of old and new friends: Neil Squillante who publishes TechnoLawyer, Jeff Gamet of Smile, Prof. April Dawson of NCCU School of Law, Brett Burney of Apps in Law, Oklahoma prosecutor Russ Cochran, Judge Joseph Adams of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvnia attorney Evan Kline, Louisiana attorney Gregg Tweed, Idaho attorney David Cummings, and Michigan attorney Tom Howlett.
It was great catching up with so many of you in Chicago, and I hope that we can do it again soon!
