Jeff Richardson

Do you pay much attention to the News app on iOS?  In the beginning I ignored it, but then I saw that it was doing a pretty good job of telling me about the important headlines of the day, and I noticed that the articles it recommended were of pretty good quality.  Yesterday, Jack Nicas of the New York Times reported that there is a reason for that.  Unlike services like Facebook which use algorithms to select headlines, Apple uses a team of humans, led by Lauren Kern, an experienced journalist who was previously the executive editor of the New York Times Magazine.  The article explains how the team selects the top stories from reputable sources and finds articles which do a good job reporting on each issue.  By the way, if you have any interest in reading iPhone J.D. in the News app, you can search for the iPhone J.D. channel and make it one of your favorites.  And now, the news of note from the past week:

• In a post on the LitSoftware Blog, Houston attorney Michael Beckelman of Wilson Elser explains how he uses TrialPad, TranscriptPad and DocReviewPad on his iPad at trial, in depositions, and in mediation.
• The latest episode of the Mac Power Users podcast by attorneys David Sparks and Katie Floyd recommends 30 products under $30, many of which are for the iPhone.  It’s a great episode.
• Thomas Brewster of Forbes reports that the GrayKey device used by many government and law enforcement agencies to hack into a seized iPhone no longer works in iOS 12.
• Rene Ritchie of iMore posted a comprehensive review of the iPhone XR, including a long video review.
• Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal also wrote a good review, but I especially like the video she prepared at an Apple orchid.
• Tony Romm of the Washington Post reports on a presentation that Apple CEO Tim Cook gave in Brussels about the importance of privacy among tech companies.
• You can now get the 1Password password manager app for free if you are running for office, ensuring that elections run fairly, or are protecting people’s rights, through the new 1Password for Democracy program.  That description would seem to apply to many public interest attorneys.
• If you want to use AirPlay 2 to have music or other audio come out of multiple speakers in your house but you don’t need Siri and the other features of the HomePod, Zac Hall of 9to5Mac posted a favorable review of the Libratone Zipp, a portable Bluetooth speaker that works with AirPlay 2.
• In an article for TidBITS, Julio Ojeda-Zapata sings the praises of using Overcast and the Apple Podcasts app on an Apple Watch Series 4.  I’m a big fan too.  When I’m doing errands around the house, I like being able to listen to a podcast using Overcast no matter which room I’m in without having to carry around my iPhone.  When I’m walking outside, I will often have my iPhone in a shirt pocket, but sometimes it will think that I have touched the screen and it will pause the podcast as if I tapped the pause button; I have no such problems when I just connect my AirPods directly to my Apple Watch Series 4.  Thanks to the new Apple Watch, I spend some time listening to a podcast on my watch almost every day.
• Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac reports on an interview of Apple’s Jony Ive about the Apple Watch that was in the Financial Times.
• It won’t surprise you that I vastly prefer iPhones to Android phones.  But there is one part of Android that I think gives Apple a run for its money — the computational photography used in the camera.  Vlad Savov of The Verge shows off Google’s upcoming Night Sight feature for Pixel phones, and it is astounding what Google is able to accomplish with very little light.  I’m sure that lots of smart folks at Apple are paying attention, and I look forward to seeing something like this on the iPhone in the future.
• Last week, I ended my Friday post with some of the amazing art that Apple used on the invitations for its upcoming October 30, 2018 event in Brooklyn, NY.  Juli Clover of MacRumors posted a link to an Imgur album which contains all 350 of these unique takes on the Apple logo.  I really enjoyed browsing through all of them.
• And finally, if you visit the Visitor Center at the new Apple Park campus in Cupertino, CA, you can buy Apple-branded T-shirts that are not sold anywhere else.  Michael Steeber of 9to5Mac reports that there are three new T-shirts being sold by Apple which hearken back to six-color Apple designs from the 1980s.  These hit me in a soft spot because that is when I started using Apple products; I used an Apple ][+ in the computer lab of my high school, and then I purchased a Mac SE as I started my sophomore year in college.  I’m glad that Apple brought back the classic logo, and I’m sure that means that Apple will soon bring back its Apple Gift Catalog with items like this:

Starting this Friday, you can purchase an iPhone XR.  If you have an older iPhone and you are ready to upgrade to the edge-to-edge screen of the iPhone X-type devices, that means that you now have a choice.  Do you get the iPhone XS, the iPhone XS Max, or the iPhone XR?

Apple gave review units of the iPhone XR to select members of the press, and the initial reviews were published yesterday.  Interestingly, there is largely a consensus:  the iPhone XR is the right phone for most folks who are ready to upgrade.  Although I haven’t tried to iPhone XR myself, based on what I am reading, I think that this conclusion will also hold true for most attorneys. 

Save $250 — make that $350 — with the iPhone XR

One of the most helpful reviews comes from John Gruber of Daring Fireball.  He points out that the price difference is even bigger than what you might expect.  I had been thinking of the iPhone XR as being a $250 discount over the iPhone XS (and $350 less than the iPhone XS Max) because that is the price difference for the entry-level 64 GB models.  However, while 64 GB will be enough for many folks, if you want the ability to carry around tons of documents, pictures, and videos, it is nice to have more than that.  In the iPhone XS line, the next step up is $150 more for the 256 GB model.  But for the iPhone XR, the next step up is only $50 more for the 128 GB model.  128 GB is a perfect size for almost any attorney today, and $50 is a small price increase for double the capacity.  As much as I use my iPhone, I only have about 140 GB (of my 256 GB model) used right now, so 128 GB seems like a very reasonable number for most attorneys.

Thus, for most attorneys, the real choice will be between the $1,150 iPhone XS 256 GB versus $800 for the iPhone XR 128 GB model.  That’s a $350 difference.

More battery life with the iPhone XR

Another reason to go for the iPhone XR over the iPhone XS is battery life.  The iPhone XR seems to have the best battery life of any iPhone ever sold, with performance similar to plus-size iPhones like the iPhone XS Max.  Attorney Nilay Patel of The Verge got 13 hours of battery life under normal use conditions.  That’s very impressive, and is around an hour more than the iPhone XS.

Colors

If you don’t plan to use a case with your iPhone, or if you plan to use a clear case, then another advantage of the iPhone XR is that it can be more colorful, coming in blue, white, yellow, coral, and red.  If you want silver or gold, you need to go with the iPhone XS.  Both models come in black.

The tradeoffs

So you save $350 and get more battery life.  Why isn’t the iPhone XR the best iPhone for everyone?  There are only a few downsides, and if these don’t matter to you, then the iPhone XR is your best bet.

• Screen size.  Most obviously, if you want the very largest iPhone screen, then you will want to go with the iPhone XS Max, which Apple says has a 6.5″ screen, versus 6.1″ for the iPhone XR and 5.8″ for the iPhone XS.  John Gruber points out in his review that the actual measurements are 6.46″, 6.06″ and 5.85″, so the iPhone XR is actually closer to the iPhone XS size than the iPhone XS Max size.

For the rest of these tradeoffs, I’ll focus on the iPhone XR versus the iPhone XS.

• Telephoto camera.  I think that this is the biggest thing you miss with the iPhone XR.  I didn’t have an iPhone with two lenses, one of which is a telephoto lens, before I started using the iPhone X last year.  Now that I am used to this feature, I would never want to give it up.  I use the telephoto lens on a significant number of the photos and videos that I take, and it results in a much better picture when people or objects are farther away.  I get much better pictures of my kids and other family members thanks to the telephoto lens, and because I love taking pictures, this is important to me.  If you also like taking pictures, this is a major difference.

If you like taking portrait mode pictures, you also get better results with the iPhone XS, but most of the reviewers seemed to find that the difference was typically pretty minor.

While this is the #1 reason that I know that the iPhone XS is the best iPhone for me, it is just as true that if a telephoto lens doesn’t matter to you, then the iPhone XR will almost certainly be the best phone for you.  The rest of the tradeoffs listed below just are not as important, in my mind.

• Screen quality.  I love the colors and deep blacks on the OLED screen of the iPhone XS.  But to my surprise, the consensus among the reviewers seems to be that the LED screen of the iPhone XR is almost as good, and is close enough that it probably won’t make a difference to most people.  Unless you are comparing them side-by-side, you are unlikely to notice the difference.  As Raymond Wang of Mashable says in his review:  “The bottom line is: The iPhone XR’s screen looks terrific and unless you’re comparing it to the iPhone XS, you’re not gonna find much to dislike.  Sure, you’re giving up deeper blacks for a very dark gray, and the XR’s screen isn’t HDR-ready like on the XS, but neither of these are deal breakers.”  Similarly, Rene Ritchie of iMore says that while you will notice the nicer screen on the iPhone XS if you are using virtual reality apps, “[f]or everything else and everyone else, you probably won’t notice a difference.  It looks terrific and is yet another example of the overall experience being far more important than any one spec read off any one sheet.”

• Larger bezels.  The iPhone XR also has larger bezels on the sides than the iPhone XS.  Because the edge-to-edge screen is such a key feature of an iPhone X-class device, I thought that the reviewers would be universally bothered by this.  And some were.  For example, Nilay Patel wrote:  “But the bezel… well, you’re going to notice that bezel every time you see an iPhone X or XS anywhere near an XR.  It’s very large, and it definitely makes the iPhone XR seem less premium than the iPhone XS.”  On the other hand, Matthew Panzarino of TechCrunch said the larger bezels are just “slightly less elegant” and “not a big deal.”  John Gruber says:  “People who use an iPhone case — which is to say the vast majority of iPhone owners — may not even notice the larger bezel.  And even without a case it’s not a problem, per se, and is really only evident when compared side-by-side.”  And Raymond Wong said:  “They were larger than I remembered from my hands-on with them back in September, but they didn’t bother me at all. Almost all the time, you’re looking at the screen, not the bezels around it.  At the same time, some people are bound to find them downright distasteful.”

• 3D Touch.  I really like 3D Touch on my iPhone XS.  For example, I like being able to push on the app icon for the Shortcuts app to see a menu of my top four shortcuts so that I can tap one to launch it.  But if I somehow lost that feature, it wouldn’t be a major issue for me.  The iPhone XR doesn’t have 3D Touch, although there are some circumstances in which you can hold your finger on the screen for a little bit and the iPhone will trigger a similar Haptic Touch feature.  The reviewers generally thought that it wasn’t a big loss to not have 3D Touch, and that sounds about right to me.

• Etc. There are some other smaller differences, but the reviewers seemed to indicate that they were less important, and I agree.  The iPhone XR is slightly less waterproof.  If you are in an area that supports Gigabit-class LTE, you can take advantage of those faster speeds on an iPhone XS but not on an iPhone XR.  And while the front glass is the same on the iPhone XR and the iPhone XS, the iPhone XR has a less durable glass on the back.

Conclusion

After reading the numerous hands-on reviews quoted above and many more, I’m still happy that I have the iPhone XS.  The telephoto lens alone makes that iPhone worth it to me, and then all of the other minor differences add up to make me happier with that model.

Having said that, I think that the iPhone XR with 128 GB is the best iPhone for most attorneys.  If you like a larger screen, get the iPhone XS Max.  If you like taking pictures with your device, you’ll really appreciate the telephoto lens on the iPhone XS.  But if those two don’t matter to you, I don’t think that the additional differences are worth the $350 you can save and the extra battery life that you get by choosing the iPhone XR instead of the iPhone XS.

I recently purchased an Apple Watch Series 4, which meant that I had an Apple Watch Series 2 that I was no longer using, and there is nobody in my family that would have a need for that device anytime soon.  Thus, I decided to take advantage of the new Apple GiveBack program to trade in my old watch.  My old device will be refurbished for someone else to buy, or perhaps it will be used for parts, but at least something useful will happen with it.  Plus, Apple pays for many devices turned in through the program.

The program could not have been easier to use.  Start by going to the Apple GiveBack page of the Apple website.  Select the item you are giving back — iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, etc.  It doesn’t even have to be an Apple product; Apple will also take items like smartphones made by other manufacturers.  Then answer a few simple questions about the device, such as does it turn on and what condition is it in.  Apple will then give you a quote of how much they will pay you for the device.  For example, Apple will pay $100 for an iPhone 6s and $200 for an iPhone 7.

For some items, like the Apple Watch, Apple makes you enter the serial number of the device, a way to protect against fraud.  You don’t want someone stealing an Apple Watch from your wrist and then turning it in to Apple to get money.  For my stainless steel 42 mm Apple Watch Series 2, Apple gave me a quote of $125.

I completed the online form on Apple’s GiveBack webpage on October 2, 2018.  Apple told me that I would hear from a company called Brightstar, and that company emailed that same day to let me know that it was sending me a box.  On October 8, 2018, I received a cardboard box which was designed to hold in a secure fashion either an Apple Watch or an iPhone, along with a shipping label.  There were very clear instructions on where to place my watch in the box to keep it safe during transport.  (I didn’t have to return a band; just the watch itself.)

I dropped that box off with UPS on October 9, and Brightstar received it on October 12.  Brightstar took a few days to check out the condition of my watch, and then on October 16 sent me an email saying that everything looked good and that I would soon get a gift card.  On October 19, I received an email with my $125 Apple Gift Card, with a button I could click to add it to the Wallet app on my iPhone.

The entire process was incredibly easy.  I didn’t have to worry about finding a buyer myself or dealing with an unsavory character on eBay looking to take my watch without paying me, or anything else like that. 

Note that I also still have my original, first generation Apple Watch,  The GiveBack program would only give me $25 for that one, and thus I decided to hang on to it.  Many years for now, it should be interesting to compare that first generation Apple Watch with the Apple Watch Series 10 or whatever they are calling it in the future.

There are also some items that Apple won’t pay you for, like an old iPod, but you can still use the GiveBack program to recycle it.  Also, you have long been able to walk into an Apple Store to recycle many older devices.  About a year ago I turned in an old iMac that wasn’t working anymore to my local Apple Store.  Apple wouldn’t pay me anything for it because the screen no longer came on, but they were happy to take it and recycle it.

If you are have an Apple Watch (or other device) that you no longer need, I encourage you to take a look at the Apple GiveBack program.  You can reduce clutter in your own house, turn in a device to be reused or recycled, and you may even receive a gift card to use towards your next Apple purchase.

Apple announced yesterday that it will have a “Special Event” in Brooklyn, New York on Tuesday, October 30 at 10am EDT.  Presumably, this is when Apple will announce new versions of the iPad Pro, as well as other products.  The event will take place at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s 2,100-seat Howard Gilman Opera House.  Apple must have a special reason for wanting to hold the event there instead of its new Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, which seats 1,000, but I’m not sure what that reason is.  And now, the news of note from the past week:

• Chicago Attorney John Voorhees of MacStories notes that Tweetbot version 5 was released yesterday, which numerous interface improvements.  I use this app every day to read Twitter, and I like the new interface.
• In another post, Voorhees shows off some possible cool Apple Watch faces that we could have if Apple were to allow third parties to create watch faces.  My hope is that Apple will support this in the future, and perhaps Apple just wanted to get the larger Series 4 watch faces on the market before opening the door to developers.  We’ll see.
• Andrew O’Hara of AppleInsider shows off some of Apple’s new bands for the Apple Watch.
• Starting today, you can pre-order the iPhone XR.  Ryan Christoffel of MacStories collected some YouTube videos prepared by folks who got a sneak peak at the new iPhone.
• Jason Snell of Six Colors reviews the iPhone XS.
• Jim Dalrymple of The Loop reviews the iPhone XS.
• In an article at AppleWorld.Today, Bob LeVitus provides tips for using Shortcuts in iOS 12.
• Apple will soon release iOS 12.1, with support for new Emoji.  A beta is already available, and many folks criticized Apple’s version of the bagel Emoji.  Averting this disaster, Jason Snell of Six Colors reports that Apple will include an improved version of the bagel Emoji in iOS 12.
• Josh Ginter reviews the Apple Watch Series 4 in an article for The Sweet Setup, with a focus on style.
• Louisiana artist Matt Dawson tweets a version of a Halloween pumpkin that will be super scary for any iPhone owner.
• And finally, Apple did something different in announcing its next event.  Instead of designing a single graphic to go along with the invitations sent to members of the press, Apple created multiple images.  Each of them is a play on the Apple logo, but each is unique.  You can see some of them on the page on the Apple website associated with the event (reload the page to see different versions) and one person on Twitter, @alixrezax, said that he found 370 different versions of the art.  I look forward to reading at some point the story behind the creation of all of this art.  Here are just a few of my favorites.  How about them Apples!

I don’t talk about music very much on iPhone J.D., but if you are looking for something truly amazing to listen to on your iPhone and you enjoy the piano, I strongly recommend that you check out the newest album by Jon Batiste called Hollywood Africans.  Although Jon Batiste has been playing music his entire life — he comes from a big music family in New Orleans — I suspect that most folks simply know him as the bandleader on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.  But he is far from simply a TV personality; he is a seriously talented musician, and I often find my jaw dropping as I watch him play the piano. 

Before listening to the album, I recommend that you listen to the first 20 minutes of a great recent episode of NPR’s Fresh Air podcast, in which Batiste sits down at a piano with Terry Gross, plays parts of some of the songs on the album, and explains what motivated him to create this album.  Click here to listen on the NPR website, or if you use the Overcast app to listen to podcasts, here is a direct link. Using just my Apple Watch Series 4 and my AirPods, I enjoyed listening to that episode last night during an outdoor walk.  As I used my Apple Watch to listen to Jon Batiste, I remembered that he was actually featured in a 15 second ad for the Apple Watch in early 2016; the link in my In the news post from back then no longer works, but you can still watch the video on YouTube at this link.

As for the album itself, every song is great, but I’ll just mention the first two.  The first song is Kenner Boogie (Apple Music link), an original piano song that that will make you tap your toes and smile, all the while wondering how one person can play all of those piano keys so quickly with just two hands.  The second song is What a Wonderful World (Apple Music link), a song first recorded by Louis Armstrong in 1967.  That song has been performed and interpreted countless times, but I’ve never heard an arrangement anything like this.  Incredibly beautiful and moving.

I’ve seen Jon Batiste perform several times, and the first time I saw him was on May 1, 2005 at Jazz Fest in New Orleans, back when he was a teenager studying at Juilliard.  I only know the date because I was so impressed by his performance that I bought his first album, Times in New Orleans (Apple Music link), and my wife took the picture at the right of me doing so.  He was good back then; he is fantastic today.

Click here to listen to Hollywood Africans on Apple Music

Click here to get Hollywood Africans on Amazon

I was talking to an attorney this week about buying a new iPad, and I’ll tell you the same thing I told him:  don’t.  At least, not right now.  All signs are that Apple will introduce two new models of the iPad Pro in the next few weeks, and perhaps a second generation version of the Apple Pencil — which part of me hopes Apple will call the “No. 2 Pencil.”  The speculation is that it will support Face ID, have smaller bezels, and perhaps even use USB-C instead of Lightning.  We’ll see.  And now, the news of note from the past week:

• Virginia attorney Sharon Nelson discusses a recent incident in which the FBI compelled an iPhone owner (via a warrant) to unlock his iPhone using Face ID.
• Nelson also discusses an incident in which police arrested someone for murder based on data from the victim’s Fitbit — and it could have just as easily been an Apple Watch.  Her heart rate spiked, and then ceased to register at all, during the time that video surveillance showed that her stepfather was in her house.
• California attorney David Sparks discusses Apple’s announcement yesterday that 53% of users of iOS devices sold in the last four years have already updated to iOS 12.  Once iOS 12.1 comes out with the new Emoji I discussed earlier this year, I’m sure even more folks will rush to upgrade.
• Speak of Sparks, yesterday I recommended his video field guide on using the Shortcuts app, and I also see that this week he experimented with replacing all of the icons on his iPhone’s home screen with Siri shortcuts.  Interesting.
• If you are looking for a place to find and download some interesting iPhone shortcuts, check out Sharecuts.app.
• Don’t be like Kanye West.  There are probably many ways one could apply that rule, but right now I’m referring to his Oval Office meeting with President Trump yesterday morning in which Kanye entered his iPhone passcode while a camera was filming him from behind — his first no-no — and then the entire world saw that Kanye’s password is 000000, i.e. just six zeros.  Chance Miller of 9to5Mac has the details including a video clip.  Seriously, don’t do that.
• Speaking of iPhone security, Glenn Fleishman of TidBITS explains how two-factor authentication is improved in iOS 12, and also explains why you should try not to use SMS (text messaging) as a second factor.
• As I noted above, the next version of the iPad Pro might have USB-C.  In an article for Macworld, Jason Snell analyzes what that could mean for users.
• Zac Hall of 9to5Mac wrote a great overview of the types of HomeKit accessories that you can use to control your home with Siri, and he even recommends some of the best specific brands.  I continue to be a huge fan of the Lutron switches in my house, which I reviewed in 2015. 
• Bryan Wolfe of the iDownloadBlog explains how to use the Live Listen feature of iOS 12.  Place your iPhone close to a source of sound, put on your AirPods, and then your iPhone will act as a remote microphone for your AirPods.  Useful if you need to hear something or someone but you are too far away to do so.
• One of my favorite features of Apple Music is the ability to request a song by part of a lyric — Hey Siri, play the song that goes [say a few words in the lyrics].  Benjamin Mayo of 9to5Mac reports that this function will improve because Apple is now incorporating more lyrics from a company called Genius.
• There was a horrible story in the news this week about a reporter who wrote for the Washington Post being killed while in the Saudi consulate in Turkey.  Reuters reports that information gained from the Apple Watch he was wearing might help the investigators to figure out what happened.
• Here is a useful page on the Apple website which describes each of the status icons and symbols on the Apple Watch.
• Security expert Rich Mogull happens to also be a paramedic, and in an article for TidBITS, he describes how the Apple Watch Series 4 may (and may not) help to save lives.
• Matthew Cassinelli of The Sweet Setup explains why the 1Password app is so useful on an Apple Watch.  I agree.
• Jesse Hollington of iLounge reports that today Apple is debuting Season 2 of Carpool Karaoke, including one episode featuring the Muppets.  It’s time to play the music, it’s time to light the lights…
• And finally, here is a video from Apple showing off some of the new features of the iPhone XS and XR.  That’s one reason to watch the video, but another reason is that it does a great job of showing off Apple’s new Apple Park campus:

One of my favorite features in iOS 12 is the new Shortcuts app and its deep integration with iOS, allowing you to create all sorts of useful automations to be more productive on your iPhone and iPad.  There is a learning curve, and thus I’m sure that lots of iPhone users won’t even bother to pay much attention to shortcuts.  But if you are smart enough to have made it through Con Law I and the Rule Against Perpetuities part of your 1L Property class, you are more than smart enough to use the Shortcuts app.  Even so, it helps to have a guide hold your hand while you get started.

California attorney David Sparks created what he calls a video field guide — a series of short video lessons, a total of 3 hours and 15 minutes — to walk you through the Shortcuts app.  The course is called the Siri Shortcuts Field Guide and costs $29, although it is currently discounted to $24 during the introductory period.  David gave me a free pass to the course so that I could check it out, and I’m super impressed.  Whether you are starting from square 1 or you have a general sense of how shortcuts work but want to learn more (which describes me), this is a fantastic resource.

You access the course in any web browser.  It was perfect to watch it on my iPad Pro, but you could also watch it on an iPhone or a computer if you prefer.

On the iPad, there is a list of chapters on the left.  I’m sure that David designed the course to go through each one in order, but instead I jumped around, skipping the chapters devoted to topics that I thought I already knew.  Sometimes I went back to watch that chapter anyway because I realized that I didn’t know as much as I thought I knew.

The course does a great job of walking you through the Shortcuts app itself, and then it shows you how to do things with the app, including working with different types of information.  In each lesson, you see David’s iPad screen as he is describing to you what he is doing.  There is a great interface for the videos; you can scroll your finger across the bottom to jump ahead or go back.

I particularly enjoyed the lesson in the Advanced Siri Shortcuts Tools section on creating and using variables.  Before this course, I had no idea what a Magic Variable was, but after watching David describe what they do and actually create a shortcut using Magic Variables, now it all makes perfect sense to me.

I think that the best part of the course is the last main section called Useful Shorcuts.  David walks you through 12 shortcuts that you might actually use, explaining how he created each one why he did what he did.  You can create the shortcuts on your own by following along with David, or you can just download the complete shortcut.

One such shortcut useful to lawyers is a date calculator.  The shortcut David created lets you count a certain number of days after a date or before a date, or even the number of days between dates.  For me, this is so useful that I even added a Siri command to it so that I can just say “Hey Siri, date calculator” to bring it up.  And now that I understand how the shortcut works, I can modify it to meet my particular needs.  Here is a very short video showing me using the date calculator shortcut that David describes and provides in the lesson:

Conclusion

If you have any interest in creating shortcuts to increase your efficiency and accomplish tasks, I highly recommend this video course.  And I especially recommend getting into this now.  What Apple has already done with the Shortcuts app is amazing, but I know that it will get more useful in future updates.  By getting your arms around this stuff now, you will be well-positioned to take advantage of the improvements to the Shortcuts app over the coming months and years.

Click here to get more information and to sign up for the Siri Shortcuts Field Guide.

The Apple Watch has supported third party apps since it first went on sale on April 24, 2015.  Unfortunately, however, because of the limitations of the hardware and the software, usability has been limited.  Graham Bower of Cult of Mac wasn’t very far off the mark when he wrote an article in 2016 titled “Apple Watch apps kinda suck, but Cupertino hopes you won’t notice.” 

Fortunately, with the new Apple Watch Series 4 and watchOS 5, I think those days are over.  Third party apps which have complications on my watch face or which are stored in my dock now launch pretty much instantly.  And just as impressively, even third party apps which I use less often and need to access by pressing the Digital Crown to see all of my apps now launch almost instantly, often under a second.  Moreover, with the speed of the Apple Watch Series 4, performance is high enough that apps are much more responsive.  As a result, Apple Watch apps no longer “suck,” and I’m sure that Cupertino is happy for you to notice that.

All of this means that I’m starting to download more apps for my Apple Watch.  Some are more useful than others, but at least now all third party apps have the ability to be really good. Just to name one example, PCalc is a great calculator on the iPhone, but it is also a very usable calculator on the Apple Watch — much better than the Casio Calculator Watch I wore back in the 1980s.

   

As I have downloaded more apps to my Apple Watch, there are more apps to choose from when I press the Digital Crown on the side of my watch.  To make it easier to find the app that I want, I’m now taking advantage of a feature that was introduced in watchOS 4 last year:  the ability to switch from grid view to list view.  Grid view with its honeycomb layout is pretty, but unless you remember exactly where you placed an app, you will waste time searching around the screen to find it.  In list view, everything is alphabetical, and it is quick and easy to spin the Digital Crown to scroll to the name of the app that you want — something which is made even easier with the haptic feedback added to the Digital Crown in the Apple Watch Series 4.  You can now feel it as you scroll past every app in the list.

   

To switch from one view to another, simply press the Digital Crown to get to your app screen, and then regardless of whether you are currently in grid view or list view, force press on the center of the screen.  This brings up a screen with the option to select either grid or list view.

If you own an Apple Watch Series 4, I encourage you to enable the list view so that it is easier for you take advantage of third party apps, even if you don’t use them very often.

I posted my review of the Apple Watch Series 4 earlier this week, and so did many others.  I particularly enjoyed the reviews by Jason Snell of Six Colors and Zac Hall of 9to5Mac.  Michael Steeber of 9to5Mac writes about the new-and-improved Digital Crown on the Apple Watch Series 4.  Also notable was the review by Joann Stern of the Wall Street Journal because of the video which accompanies that review; she hired a stunt woman to test the fall detection feature.  Even if you don’t read the review, you should watch the fun video so that you can see how fall detection works without having to fall down yourself.  And now, the news of note from the past week:

• Legal technology expert Brett Burney reviews the TextExpander app for the iPhone and iPad, and even created a nice video showing you how it works.
• The Lit Software blog discusses how Ohio criminal defense attorney Adam Stone has used the TrialPad app.
• The Google Maps app is being updated to add features for commuters, as noted by attorney John Voorhees of MacStories.
• The Thomson Reuters ProView app was recently updated to version 4.1 with an improved search feature.  As before, you can read and annotate hundreds of legal titles on your iPad or iPhone.  Click here for more information.  (Note that the Westlaw division of Thomson Reuters is a current sponsor of iPhone J.D.)
• In an article for Tom’s Guide, Jason Snell discusses the improvements to the camera on the iPhone XS.
• Dan Moren of Six Colors notes that Wi-Fi is giving up its former, bizarre, approach to naming each version (802.11b, 802.11n, 802.11ac, etc.) and changing to just numbers.  The next version will simply be called Wi-Fi 6.  Amen!
• Federico Viticci used the new iPhone Shortcuts app to create a shortcut which shows you pictures on your iPhone which were taken in prior years on the same day.
• There is a post on the 1Password Blog explaining how 1Password integrates into iOS 12.  I use this feature every single day, and I love it every time.
• Apple shows off some amazing pictures taken on an iPhone XS.
• Jimmy Kimmel Live took the Presidential Alert from earlier this week and turned it into a major motion picture.
• And finally, here is a fun ad from Apple called Growth Spurt to show off the new, larger, iPhone XS Max:

A few years ago, I wrote about wireless emergency alerts on the iPhone, and I explained that there are three kinds:  (1) emergency alerts issued because of an imminent threat to public safety or life, such as evacuation orders or shelter in place orders due to severe weather, a terrorist threat, or a chemical spill; (2) AMBER alerts for when a child is abducted, and (3) Presidential Alerts.  All three alerts arise out of the Warning Alert and Response Network Act, sometimes called the WARN Act, 47 U.S.C. § 1201, and more specifically the Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) program which was created pursuant to the WARN Act by the FCC working with FEMA.

When I wrote that post in 2013, I noted that no president had ever issued a Presidential Alert under WEA or similar prior systems.  And I also noted that while the WARN Act provides in 47 U.S.C. § 1201(b)(2)(E) that cell phone users may opt-out of emergency alerts and AMBER Alerts, a user may not opt-out of Presidential Alerts.  Thus, if you open the Settings app on your iPhone and tap Notifications and then scroll to the bottom, you will see that you only have on/off switches for the first two types of alerts:

Tomorrow, October 3, 2018 at 2:18 p.m. Eastern / 1:18 p.m. Central / 12:18 p.m. Mountain / 11:18 a.m. Pacific, FEMA and the FCC will conduct the first-ever test of a Presidential Alert.  Note that while the test will start at 2:18 p.m. Eastern, it will continue for 30 minutes, so if your iPhone doesn’t get the alert right away, it may come at some other time during that 30 minute window.  (This test was originally planned for September 20, but it was delayed because of Hurricane Florence.)  The message will have a header that reads “Presidential Alert” and the body of the message will say:  “THIS IS A TEST of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System.  No action is needed.”

If you will be in court or somewhere else where it would be inappropriate for your iPhone to make a loud noise, TURN OFF YOUR IPHONE BEFORE THAT TIME.  And if you are around other cellphones that make a loud noise tomorrow, now you know what is going on.

Hopefully the test will be deemed a success and we won’t have to go through this again for a long time.  And also, my understanding is that the rumors are false, and President Trump will not begin using the Presidential Alert system to send all of his tweets to each of us.  At least, I hope those rumors are false.