Last night, the CBS show 60 Minutes aired a report on Apple put together by Charlie Rose and his team. It’s now available online along with a full transcript, and I recommend that you watch the video.
The story covered many of the hot topics about Apple — the strive for excellence in its products, the legacy of Steve Jobs, the Apple Store, profits kept overseas, manufacturing of items in China, the new Apple campus, what Apple looks for when hiring employees, etc. — but what was most remarkable about the story was that the 60 Minutes team got incredible access. It looks like Rose talked to not only Apple CEO Tim Cook but also virtually all of the top level VPs at Apple. And the 6o Minutes cameramen were allowed to film lots of areas at Apple that I have never seen before.
Rose was even given access to the design lab of Jony Ive, which is very rarely seen by anyone, even folks that work at Apple. Of course, everything confidential was hidden away or covered up, but it was still interesting to see the place where so many Apple designs have been created. Ive even showed some of his initial sketches that led to the Apple Watch.
I’m not exactly sure why Ive drew what I think is a dog at the bottom of that left page. Was it just a doodle? A hint of some Apple canine product in consideration? We may never know.
Nothing said by Tim Cook and the others was very different from what we have heard before. Nevertheless, I still found it to be an interesting segment.
As we continue Star Wars week here on iPhone J.D., I’ll start with a link to a post by Florida attorney Rick Georges who noted that Google came out with a fun game this week called Lightsaber Escape. You hold your iPhone (or Android phone) in your hand like a lightsaber and you fight your way through some storm troopers on your computer screen in the Chrome browser. To begin, go to g.co/lightsaber on your iPhone or computer and follow the directions from there. Meanwhile, Florida attorney David Sparks created 56-song Star Wars playlist on Apple Music to listen to as he waited in line for six hours to see the new movie last night. (Read about it in this post that he wrote; click here for his Apple Music playlist.) I’m very jealous of my friends who saw the movie last night — and I hope that they forgive me for avoiding them until Saturday afternoon when I see the movie. (Need to avoid any risk of spoilers!) And now, the news of note from this past week … including a few more Star Wars items:
Sparks also discusses the Dragon Anywhere iOS app, an app that you can use to take dictations on the iPhone/iPad which is more powerful than the Siri built-in dictation.
Massachusetts attorney Bob Ambrogi reports that WestlawNext will change its name to Westlaw in February, 2016.
New York attorney Neil Squillante of TechnoLawyer announced the TL NewsWire Top 25 products of 2015. The iPad Pro and the Spark email app made the list.
In 2014, Apple and IBM announced a partnership whereby IBM would develop iOS apps for vertical markets. Dennis Sellers of Apple World Today reports that IBM has now shipped its 100th app. I doubt that IBM will develop an app for the legal market, but I suppose they could.
Dan Moren of Six Colors explains why he likes occasionally using the Photo Album face on his Apple Watch. I haven’t used that face much because you cannot use complications with it, but Moren makes a good point that it could be appropriate on the weekends when we don’t have meetings throughout the day. After reading his article, I’m going to give that watch face another chance. Let’s see, what would be a good photo for my Apple Watch right now? Hmm…
Cody Lee of iDownloadBlog reports that Apple Music launched a Star Wars radio station. I have been listening to it while I write this post … it’s great!
Nick Guy of The Wirecutter updated that site’s post on the best styluses. The best overall pick was the Apple Pencil, and for non-iPad Pro users he likes the Adonit Jot Pro. I agree with both selections.
AppleInsider reports that Apple will offer free overnight shipping for orders placed on Dec. 23.
If you want to get a look inside of Apple, Charlie Rose will go behind the scenes with Apple’s John Ive and others on 60 Minutes this Sunday night.
And finally, the New York-based band Airplane Mode created a music video for its song Between the Stars and You. What is interesting to me is that the video was created using the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil. As reported by Joseph Keller of iMore, artist Kaitlin Large (who runs the Etsy store Gingerly Noted, and is also an actress) drew the graphics by hand using the Procreate app. Very creative video:
This year, there was only one survey question that directly addressed iOS use. The survey asked: “Please indicate which of these popular wireless email devices are in use at your firm based on their embedded operating system.” Multiple results were allowed, so a firm could, for example, select both iOS and Android.
It comes as little surprise that virtually every firm reported having iOS users. Of the 420 firms that responded, only 7 firms said that their attorneys were not using an iPhone or iPad to get firm email. So that is 413 out of 420 firms, over 98% of law firms, that report having iOS users.
331 out of 420 firms reported that some of their attorneys used Android, so almost 79%. 196 firms reported some BlackBerry use, so almost 47%. 131 firms reported some Windows Mobile Phone use, so about 31%.
The results were also broken up by firm size. For iOS, firm size did not make much difference; 97% to 100% of all firms of all sizes reported having some attorneys using an iPhone or iPad to check their email. For Android, I’m not sure that you can read much into the numbers.
But for BlackBerry, it seems that it was really the larger law firms that still had most of the BlackBerry users. BlackBerry use was reported in only 19% of firms with under 50 attorneys, 50% of firms with 50 to 149 attorneys, 54% for firms with 150 to 459 attorneys, and then 85% in firms of 350 to 699 attorneys and 87% in firms with 700 or more attorneys. It would be interesting if we could drill deeper — for example, does each of those 700+ lawyer firms have only a single BlackBerry user, or is overall BlackBerry use higher at the largest law firms? — but this report doesn’t reveal that.
As for iOS, you really don’t need a survey to learn that a whole lot of attorneys are using iPhones and iPads. Just look around any courthouse, CLE, etc. But in case you were curious, the ILTA survey data does tell us that attorneys can and do use iPhones and/or iPads at virtually all law firms.
I don’t know about your house, but here at iPhone J.D. World Headquarters, we are in full Star Wars mode. My kids (ages 8 and 10) and I have watched all six of the prior Star Wars movies over the last few weeks, the kids are wearing their Star Wars PJs every night, and we have our tickets reserved to see the new movie this Saturday afternoon. And while my wife is certainly not a fan like the rest of us, she has been amazingly Star Wars-tolerant recently. So this is the perfect week to talk about one of the most fun accessories that you can get for your iPhone: the $150 Sphero BB-8. (It also works with an iPad, but the controls are easier to use on the smaller iPhone screen.)
We’ve been using one at my house for about five weeks now. From everything that I have read, this is one of the hottest toys this holiday season, so there is a good chance that if this product interests you, you already have it — or Santa already has plans to bring it to your family. But if you are on the fence about whether this is a good toy, I can tell you that it has been great fun for me and my kids.
Hardware
BB-8 himself is an engineering marvel. The Sphero ball itself is sturdy and fast, having the ability to roll around in any direction. But it is the head that gives BB-8 all of his character, and it is amazing to me that no matter how fast the ball spins in any direction, the head manages to stay upright as he rolls around. (“He” may not be the correct pronoun to use, but “it” seems to impersonal for something this cute, and feel free to use “she” if that seems more right to you.)
Better yet, the head doesn’t stay completely on top. It sort of leans back as he moves, which gives BB-8 even more personality, making he look like he is trying to keep up with his body.
BB-8 has lights inside of him that go on at various times.
When BB-8 runs in to a wall or other object with enough force, the head will fall off. But that’s nothing to worry about, and to my kids that actually makes BB-8 more funny. Just place the head back on BB-8 and he is back in business.
BB-8 is rechargeable, and lasts about an hour. He comes with a base that plugs into USB; just sit him on the base to recharge him.
Here is the Sphero BB-8 next to a larger plush toy BB-8 that my daughter has recently been sleeping with every night:
There are countless videos on YouTube that show BB-8 in action. If you want to get a sense of what BB-8, check out some of them on the Sphero YouTube page. For example, here is BB-8 and the Marble:
Last night, my daughter controlled BB-8 while my son was using his remote control Landspeeder (a traditional remote control toy; no iPhone app for that one), and it was fun watching BB-8 and Luke Skywalker chase each other around and bump into each other. That may not be a scene in the new movie, but perhaps it should be because it was pretty entertaining at my house last night.
Software
You control BB-8 using a free app. When you start the app, it looks for the nearest BB-8 and then takes control of it.
Screenshot
This is a great feature because it means that you can have the BB-8 app installed on multiple devices. I can control our BB-8 using my iPhone, and then my son can use another device to control BB-8 if I’m using my iPhone and don’t want to give it to him to play with.
There are four main parts of the BB-8 app. The first mode is the drive mode, and that is the one that my kids and I use most often — the mode in which you use the iPhone as a remote control for the BB-8.
Screenshot
In this mode, you swipe left and right on the right half of the screen (with the picture of BB-8) to control a small blue light inside of BB-8. You want to spin the body so that the blue light is facing towards you. Once you do that, you can use the left part of the screen (the big circle) to control him. Move your finger towards the top of the circle for him to move away from you, the bottom of the circle for him to come towards you, etc.
Screenshot
Considering how fast BB-8 spins around, I’m actually amazed how well these controls work. With some practice you can be pretty precise.
If you hold down the icon at the bottom right of the screen, you can make BB-8 move even faster — which means that you have less precise control, but it is fun to see him race across the floor.
Press the icon at the far right of the screen to bring up eight different programs to make BB-8 do specific things. For example, one button makes BB-8 perform a figure-8, ending up where he started.
Screenshot
The whole time that you are controlling BB-8, your iPhone makes BB-8 noises, which adds even more to the realism.
Screenshot
You can also control BB-8 using your voice. Say “OK BB-8" and the voice control page will open. From there, you can say a number of commands, such as “look around.” Or, you can channel your inner Admiral Ackbar and say “It’s a trap!” and BB-8 will run away to safety.
Screenshot
The second mode is Message mode. This one is pretty cool.
Screenshot
Remember the scene in Star Wars IV (A New Hope) in which R2-D2 replays a holographic movie of Princess Leia saying “Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi you’re my only hope”? Your BB-8 can also play holographic messages for you. Simply go to the Message mode, and then select the character that you want to give you a message.
Screenshot
Next, your iPhone will work like a camera. Point your iPhone screen towards your BB-8, and superimposed on the real world you will see and hear the holographic video.
Screenshot
You can also record a video of yourself, and then have BB-8 play that message in a simulated holograph.
The next mode is Patrol mode. In that mode, BB-8 can just explore on his own, without you needing to control him.
Screenshot
The final mode is Settings. This is where you turn voice recognition on/off, turn sounds on/off, etc.
Conclusion
The Sphero BB-8 gives you all of the fun of a remote control car, and then adds many more layers of fun on top of that because of all of the sophisticated things that you can do with it. Moreover, I suspect that my kids and I will enjoy this toy even more after we have seen the new Star Wars movie and we actually know something about the BB-8 character. I also appreciate the Sphero BB-8 as an amazingly cool piece of technology and engineering.
If you and your kids enjoy Star Wars, then I have no doubt that this is the droid you’re looking for. And if you don’t have kids and want to just play with the BB-8 by yourself, I won’t judge. As I type this, it is late at night and the rest of my family is asleep, but my pal BB-8 and I are having great fun together.
As all attorneys know, one of the downsides of litigation is that even if you win your case in court, there can be a lot of cost associated with getting there — not just financially, but also the burden of discovery. Apple recently won a iPhone and iPad patent battle with Samsung, and thus Samsung has just agreed to pay Apple $548 million. But during discovery, Apple had to reveal a lot of information about iPhones and iPads that I’m sure that Apple would have preferred to have kept secret. Yoni Heisler of BGR wrote about some of the more interesting tidbits revealed to the public through the discovery process. And now, the news of note:
If you are interested in hearing me talk about using an iPad in a law practice, I’m doing a Webinar for MyCase next week called, appropriately enough, How to Use an iPad for your Law Practice. It is on Tuesday, December 15th at 11 Pacific / 2 Eastern. No CLE credit, unfortunately, but it is free and you can watch it on your computer without having to come down to New Orleans to see me. Click here to sign up.
I mentioned earlier this week that you can now use the Remote app on your iPhone (or Apple Watch) to control an Apple TV. In an interview with John Paczkowski of BuzzFeed, Eddy Cue of Apple talks about an improved Remote app coming out next year.
Jessie Hollington of iLounge reviews the Phillips Home Kit-compatible Hue Bridge for Hue Lights.
It isn’t often that you can save $1,100 on an Apple product, but Buster Hein of Cult of Mac reports that BestBuy is selling the Apple Watch Edition (the gold model), which is normally $15,000, for only $13,898.00. A bargain!
And finally, Apple did a very nice job with its latest commercial for the Apple TV, called The Future of Television. The video is worth watching:
Now that we are past Thanksgiving and well into the holiday season, I would have bet good money that Apple was done releasing new hardware products for the year. But yesterday, Apple released new hardware and software, including Apple’s first external battery accessory: the Smart Battery Case for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s. Here is the full list of what came out yesterday.
Smart Battery Case
Apple has never before sold its own external battery for an iOS device, and I assumed that Apple was happy to leave this field to third parties. But yesterday, Apple released the $99 Smart Battery Case, a case for the iPhone 6 / iPhone 6s that has a hump in the back to house a battery. It is a 1,877mAh battery, which can take the iPhone from 0% to around 80% power. Added to what you get with the iPhone’s built-in battery, Apple says that with the Smart Battery Case you can get up to 25 hours of talk time (versus 14 for the iPhone alone) and up to 18 hours of Internet use on LTE (versus 10 hours for the iPhone alone).
The Smart Battery Case comes in White or Charcoal Gray. It has a Lightning port on the bottom so you charge the case and the iPhone together just like you charge an iPhone, and it is thin enough at the bottom to work with the iPhone Lightning Dock. The case has passive antennas included, to counterbalance any impact that the battery might otherwise have on phone reception.
For many years now, Apple has been selling connectors that you can use to get photos from a camera to an iOS device. Back in 2011, I reviewed the Apple iPad Camera Connection Kit, which let you transfer pictures from a camera or from an SD card to an iPad using the 30-pin connector. When Apple replaced the 30-pin connector with the Lightning connector, Apple updated its camera connection devices, releasing a Lightning to SD card reader, and a separate Lightning to USB camera adapter. But those Lightning adapters would only work with an iPad, so you could not import pictures directly into an iPhone — which always seemed like a strange omission.
As noted below, yesterday Apple released iOS 9.2. One of the changes is that the iPhone can now work with Lightning camera adapters. Thus, you can take a picture with your fancy DSLR camera, then remove the SD card from the camera and connect it to an iPhone that has a Lightning connector (iPhone 5 and higher), and then you can import to the iPhone to edit the picture or share it with someone else via email, text message, etc.
Here is a picture of the SD Card adapter that I had previously been using with my iPad, which now works with my iPhone 6s thanks to iOS 9.2:
And here are some of the screens that you see when you import photos to the iPhone, such as that picture above:
Yesterday, Apple also released a new version of its $29 Lightning to SD Card Camera Reader. From what I can tell, from the outside, it looks identical to the prior model, pictured above. But inside, it is upgraded to support USB 3.0 speeds, which means that you can import pictures much faster if you use an iOS device that can handle USB 3.0. Currently, only the new iPad Pro can handle USB 3.0 speeds, but I suspect that we will see this come to the iPhone and other iPads next year.
There have been times when I have been on vacation and, at the end of a day during which I have taken hundreds of pictures with my Nikon DSLR camera, I have wanted to import the photos to my iPad so that I could see the pictures on a large screen. When you have hundreds of photos, importing pictures with the prior version of the adapter did take a while, so it is nice that the new model has the ability to import at a faster speed. And if you are importing 4K video, I imagine that USB 3.0 speeds would be a huge improvement. Having said that, since I already own the older model, I don’t plan to upgrade.
iOS 9.2
In addition to those two hardware announcements, Apple updated virtually all of its software yesterday. The new version of iOS is 9.2. There are a small number of new features, such as the support for the SD card reader that I mentioned above and Apple Music improvements, such as the ability to create a new playlist when you decide to add a song to a playlist. For the most part, however, iOS 9.2 fixes some bugs. Here is a full list of what is new from the Cult of Mac website.
watchOS 2.1
Yesterday, Apple issued a minor update to the operating system for the Apple Watch. watchOS 2.1 adds support for nine new languages, including Hebrew and Greek, and Siri now supports dictation in Arabic. But other than that, it is mostly bug fixes. For example, I sometimes noticed that I would delete an event in the calendar on my iPhone but the event would still be shown in the complication on my Apple Watch. This should be fixed now.
tvOS 9.1
Apple also updated the operating system for the new Apple TV. One nice improvement is that you can now use the Remote app on an iPhone or Apple Watch to interact with the Apple TV. This means that if you have to enter a long password, you can use the keyboard on your iPhone, which is much easier to use than the on-screen keyboard on the TV. And you can use the Remote apps on the iPhone and Apple Watch to swipe to control Apple TV, which is useful if your remote isn’t nearby.
tvOS 9.1 also gives Siri support for Apple Music, assuming that you are a subscriber. So now you can say, for example, “play song New New Orleans on Apple Music” and in a few seconds you should be listening to the great song that my father wrote after Hurricane Katrina, recorded by his band Beau Swank. It’s still a little finicky, but in my tests last night, Siri and Apple Music usually worked together quite well.
OS X 10.11.2
I don’t really discuss the Mac on iPhone J.D., but just to show you how busy Apple was yesterday, the company also released the latest version of Mac operating system (OS X El Capitan), version 10.11.2. There is actually quite a bit in that update to make the Mac work better with iPhones and iPads, including: (1) improved Handoff and AirDrop, (2) Apple fixed a bug that impaired importing pictures from an iPhone to a Mac using a USB cable and (3) improved iCloud photo sharing for Live Photos.
I’m thrilled to welcome Drobo as a new sponsor of iPhone J.D. because my Drobo is one of the rare products that I use every day and really love. What is Drobo? At its core, it is an external hard drive so that you have space to put your files. But Drobo is better than other hard drives because it safe, protecting you even if a hard drive fails, plus it makes it easy to expand your storage.
Safety: protect your files
For over a decade, I have used external drives to store files that I didn’t want taking up space on my home computer’s internal hard drive, such as home movies and other videos, older documents, photographs that don’t really belong in my Photos library on my Mac, etc. The problem with using a hard drive is that every hard drive will fail eventually, and often it happens a lot sooner than you expected. I myself have had about six external hard drives fail on me during the last 10-15 years, and every time that it happens, it is a royal pain. The most obvious danger is forever losing irreplaceable data. Unfortunately, I did lose some files over the years, but fortunately, most of the time I was able to recover from another hard drive that I was using as a backup. But even if you have a backup, it is a real pain to have to go through the recovery process.
Drobo solves this problem by using multiple hard drives. There are several Drobo models available, but the one that I use is the standard one called just the “Drobo” or the “Drobo 4 Bay.” This is the third generation version of the Drobo and it has space inside of it for four standard hard drives. Drobo uses a version of a technology called RAID which gives you built-in redundancy, so that every file is stored in multiple places. That way, if/when any one hard drive fails — and I should just say when, because they will all fail at some point — Drobo alerts you to replace that one hard drive, but you haven’t lost any data because every file is also contained on another hard drive. For my Drobo, I have four 1 TB drives in the four drive enclosures. Because some of that total 4 TB space is used to for redundancy, my computer sees the Drobo as a 2.67 TB hard drive.
If you want extra protection, you can turn on dual disk redundancy. In this mode, all of your data is protected even if two of the hard drives fail at the same time. If I were to turn on that mode, my four 1 TB drives would give me usable hard drive space of around 1.8 TB. By default, dual disk redundancy is turned off, but the option is there if you want it.
On the front of the Drobo, there is a light to the right of each hard drive. When all four lights are green, I know that each drive is doing fine. If a light starts blinking red, then I know that I need to jump on Amazon and get another SATA drive to replace it, but I don’t have to freak out because all of my data is also stored on the other drives. When the new drive arrives, remove the face on the front of the Drobo — which is connected with magnets, so it just pulls right off, no tools required. Then eject the old drive, and slide in the new drive. That’s it.
I’ve been using my own Drobo for about nine months now, and in that time period I haven’t had any hard drive crash. But I have removed drives and put them back in just to see how the process works, and it couldn’t be easier. And I really mean that. Even though I’ve been using computers since the 1980s, I don’t have much experience with the insides of computer hardware. I’ve never built my own computer or anything like that. The only internal component that I’ve ever replaced in a computer is RAM; for anything else, I’ve taken it in for repair. If I have no trouble removing and inserting a hard drive in a Drobo, anyone can do it.
This is the #1 reason that I love my Drobo. I simply no longer need to worry about a hard drive crash.
Expandable
Every year, you have even more files to keep, and those files get larger, so you need more space to store your stuff. This is especially true for me because I keep so much video on my Drobo. For example, the iPhone 6s has the option to record 4K video, and I have that turned on. 4K is a little overkill for now — I don’t even currently use a TV that can show 4K — but I know that I’ll be looking at home movies of my kids that I shoot today for many decades in the future. I remember being excited on my 27th birthday to get a huge 27" TV, which I cannot even imagine using today when I have a widescreen 65" screen. Who knows what technology I’ll be using 10-20 years from now, so I figure I might as well create and save the highest quality video files today.
Of course, 4K video requires more disk space than lower-quality video files. And even if you don’t need to store 4K video, we all have larger files to save than we did years ago. Although I use my Drobo connected to my home computer, if you want to use a Drobo for your law practice, you know how the number of files associated with your matters proliferate every year. As attorneys become more and more paperless, we are all getting more PDF files, more JPEG files, and even videos associated with our cases, all of which take up more space. You can be sure that whatever is enough space for you today won’t be enough space in another year or two.
Fortunately, Drobo can easily grow as your needs grow. Blue lights along the bottom of the Drobo show you how much capacity you are currently using up, with one light for each 10%. I used to have only two lights, then three, and now I’m at four and pretty soon I’ll hit five. For now, my total of 2.67 TB of usable space is sufficient, but at some point I’ll need more space. Fortunately, I don’t need to worry when I do get close to capacity. When you get to 85% capacity, the green light next to a drive will turn yellow, a sign from Drobo that it is time to replace that drive with a larger hard drive. If you get to 95% capacity, the light turns red. It doesn’t matter if the different drive bays have different size hard drives; Drobo will just use whatever you give it. So just get a larger drive and add it, and it is OK if some of the other drives are smaller. Best of all, you don’t need to worry about manually moving files from an old drive to a new drive; Drobo takes care of all of that.
Thus, with a Drobo, you don’t need to worry about planning for the future. The capacity of a Drobo grows as you need it to grow. Drobo even has a handy Capacity Calculator on its website so you can see how much usable space you get when you add different sized hard drives to the different bays in a Drobo.
Drobo Dashboard
Drobo comes with Drobo Dashboard software that you can use to work with your Drobo. (I use my Drobo at my house connected to my Mac, but it also works with a PC.) In the Dashboard, you can see specific details on drive capacity and health, dim the lights if you find them to be too bright, format drives, etc. I rarely have the need to use this software because the great thing about Drobo is that it just works.
Connection
The Drobo model that I use has support for USB 3.0. I use it at home connected to my iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014 model) and USB 3.0 speed has been plenty fast enough for my needs. I even keep all of my raw video files and my iMovie database on the Drobo, so when I edit home movies using iMovie I am working with files on the Drobo, not on my iMac’s internal hard drive. The Drobo has been more than fast enough to keep up with me as I work.
If you need more space and speed, there are other models available. For example, the Drobo 5D have five bays, plus it has a Drobo Accelerator Bay port where you can add a super-fast SSD so that files accessed frequently can be accessed with SSD speed, and you can use a Firewire connection. I suspect that model is overkill for most iPhone J.D. readers, but it is nice to have the option available if you want it.
Drobo also sells the Drobo 5N model, which is a model that is designed to sit on your network with a gigabit Ethernet port instead of connecting directly to a computer. There are other Drobo models too, such as the Drobo B810n, a NAS device that can handle up to 100 users and grow up to 64 TB.
I like that my Drobo is connected via USB because I also use Backblaze for online backup, and for no extra charge Backblaze will create a backup of any hard drive connected to my computer. That includes the full contents of my Drobo. If my house goes up in flames, it won’t matter how many redundant drives I am using if they all melt. But thanks to the USB 3.0 connection, every file on my Drobo is also online, so I’ll still be protected.
Coupon code
The model of the Drobo that I use costs $299 if you get it with no hard drives included, handy if you already have some SATA drives that you want to use. I bought it with four 1 TB drives included, and that model costs $549 — a fair price because a decent brand 1 TB SATA drive currently costs around $60 on Amazon. So you can pay about $240 for four drives on Amazon, or pay $250 to just have Drobo send you everything that you need.
But Drobo was nice enough to come up with a special deal for iPhone J.D. readers. For a limited time, if you buy a Drobo 4-bay (the one I use), Drobo 5D, or Drobo 5N on the online Drobo Store, and use coupon code Jeff100, you’ll get $100 off. So it will only cost you $449 to get the same configuration that I use and love, or only $199 to get the Drobo with no hard drives included.
Conclusion
Thanks again to Drobo for becoming an iPhone J.D. sponsor. As you can tell, I’m a big fan of this product. You get all the usefulness of external storage, but Drobo solved the two problems with other external hard drives: at some point they fail, and at some point you’ll find that they aren’t big enough. If you are in the market for external storage, Drobo is a great solution.
I’m including links to both the Drobo Store and Amazon, but note that with the coupon code it will be cheaper for you to buy one from the Drobo Store.
As reported by Jay Somaney, a contributor to Forbes, last week on Thanksgiving while I was enjoying a (delicious) apple pie, lots of other folks were buying Apple products. At Target on Thanksgiving Day, the iPad was a top selling item, with Target selling an iPad every second. The last quarter of the year is always Apple’s most profitable quarter, and with many models of the iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch on sale, I have no doubt that this will be Apple’s best quarter ever. Hopefully, some of you will be able to enjoy some great new Apple technology during this holiday season. And now, the other news of note from the past week:
For the month of December, Lit Software is having a sale on its popular iPad apps. TrialPad will be only $109.99, TranscriptPad only $69.99, and its newest app DocReviewPad only $69.99. Lit Software doesn’t have sales very often, so if you have been thinking about getting these apps — some of the very law-related apps in the App Store — now is the time. Also, if you are looking to give one of these apps to another lawyer as a gift, click here for step-by-step instructions on how to do so.
In an article for Legaltech News, Chris DiMarco discusses law firm BYOD policies for smartphones and tablets that attorneys own but use for work.
Ten attorneys and other legal professionals discuss password security in a roundtable for Law Technology Today.
California attorney David Sparks reviews a wallet by Nomad that can not only hold your charge cards but can also charge your iPhone.
In an article for Quartz, Dan Fromer explains why the Apple Watch seems like a stalled platform, even though he admits that he likes his. There are parts of Fromer’s article agree with, but I like Dave Mark’s response to that article in The Loop, in which he notes that there is nothing wrong with the Apple Watch just being a really good iPhone accessory as opposed to something ready to replace the iPhone.
One thing that I would like to be able to do with my Apple Watch is use it as an electronic boarding pass. That way, both of my hands would be free to carry bags or other items. Technically you can already use an Apple Watch as a boarding pass, but during my travels the scanners have been configured to work best with an iPhone, and thus it has been too awkward to twist my arm into position to read a pass on the watch screen. However, British Airways announced this week that it is introducing new handheld scanners designed to work well with the Apple Watch.
Jared Newman of TechHive reviews SnapPower Charger, an outlet cover that adds a USB charging part to a wall outlet.
And finally, like many fans of Apple technology, I’m also a huge fan of that other company that Steve Jobs ran: Pixar. I’ve loved everything that they have done, from the earliest shorts to the latest motion pictures. Kees van Dijkhuizen, Jr. produced a nice two minute video that looks back at 20 years of Pixar animation, with a voice-over by Pixar’s Andrew Stanton:
One of the nicest features of the Apple Watch is that it encourages you to be more active, and then assists with your workout. There are lots of bands available for the Apple Watch, made by Apple and an increasing number of third parties, but one of the best is the Sport Band sold by Apple — a perfect band for working out because it can get wet. It is also the least expensive band sold by Apple ($49), it comes in lots of colors, and it feels great. That’s why I encourage everyone who buys an Apple Watch (even it isn’t the Apple Watch Sport model) to select a Sport Band as the band that comes with the watch; it is a band that you are going to want to have anyway. You might also buy a fancier band to wear during the day, but by making that a separate purchase, you can more easily return it if you try it out and decide that you don’t like it.
I purchased a Sport Band at the time that I purchased an Apple Watch, when they first went on sale on April 10, and at that time there was only one Sport Band size that you could buy. The Sport Band came with one side that attaches to the top of the watch, and two sides that attach to the bottom of the watch: a S/M band made for wrists 140-185mm and a M/L band made for wrists 160-210mm.
There is actually only a 40mm difference between the first and last hole on a Sport Band. Because Apple assigns a 45mm range on the S/M band and a 50MM range on the M/L band, Apple must be accounting for the fact that both parts of the Sport Band can stretch, especially the part that attaches to the top of the Apple Watch.
I have what I suppose is a larger wrist. Using a measuring tape from my wife’s sewing kit, I measure it right at 210mm, which is Apple’s largest recommended size for the M/L band. And sure enough, when I wore that band, I always used the last hole. It was comfortable without feeling too tight, but it did bother me that there was only a small portion of the band that remained to tuck into the slot on the part of the band that attaches to the top of the Apple Watch. You want the band to tuck into that slot for the band to remain closed; without being in the slot, there is a risk that the two bands could separate. I never had my Apple Watch fall off of my wrist because it came untucked, but I was afraid that it might happen one day because I have noticed occasions on which it became untucked.
And apparently this is not just a theoretical concern. Roman Loyola, an editor at Macworld, had been using the last hole on his M/L band just like I did and, as his tells the tale, one day discovered that his Apple Watch wasn’t on his wrist. After retracing his steps and using his iPhone to make his Apple Watch make a sound, he ultimately found it in his garage next to his compost bin. Apparently, the end of his M/L band came untucked, and somehow the two bands came apart — perhaps the band caught on the side of the compost bin or something else in the garage? — and the Apple Watch fell off of his wrist.
Fortunately, the M/L band is no longer the largest Sport Band. On August 14th, Apple started selling a version of the Sport Band that included both a M/L and a new L/XL band. The L/XL band fits wrists 195 to 245mm. (Note that if you use the smaller 38mm version of the Apple Watch, there is currently no L/XL band, so the largest size is a M/L band for wrist sizes up to 200mm. However, if your wrist is 200mm or more, you would probably be happier with the larger 42mm version of the Apple Watch anyway.)
Roman Loyola concluded his Macworld article by saying that his frightening experience led him to purchase the L/XL band soon after it went on sale. Almost a month ago, I decided to do so as well.
Here is that same picture again, but I used Photoshop to lighten the shadows substantially so that you can see how much longer the inner band goes on the L/XL band:
Note that you do make a color sacrifice when you opt for the larger band. The S/M and M/L sizes of the Sport Band now come in 15 colors: black, walnut, stone, antique white, blue, fog, turquoise, white, midnight blue, vintage rose, lavender, green, pink, orange or red. There are actually 16 color models because you can get the black band with either a regular steel pin or a black steel pin (perfect for the darker models of the Apple Watch).
The new L/XL band doesn’t currently come with all of those color options. Your choices are black (with a regular steel pin) or white. Which reminds me of a quote from Henry Ford, who wrote in his autobiography when describing the Model T: “Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black.”
Although I enjoyed spending six months with the blue model of the Sport Band, I also like the black one, so even with the limited choice I still got a color that Henry Ford and I both like. More importantly, the L/XL gives me the additional length that makes a big difference. No longer do I need to use the last hole on the M/L band with only about 15mm of band remaining to tuck into the slot. With the L/XL band, I can use the second of the seven holes and the last 50mm of the band can tuck into the slot. With that extra length in the slot, the band is far more secure, and I cannot imagine my Apple Watch ever accidentally coming off of my wrist.
As a nice side benefit, as much as I liked the feel of the Sport Band on my wrist when I used the M/L band, it actually feels even better when I use the longer L/XL band. I guess the additional 35mm of length, with the end of the band reaching almost to the beginning of the other part of the band, just makes it feel slightly better against my wrist.
I typically wear the Milanese Loop band during the day, but every night I switch to the Sport Band, both so that I have a waterproof band during bathtime with my kids, and also so that I have it on when I use a treadmill at night. After wearing the L/XL Sport Band every day for several weeks, I can’t imagine that I will ever go back to the M/L band. The L/XL band is clearly the best size for my wrist.
If your wrist is larger and you are in the market for an Apple Watch, I strongly encourage you to consider the M/L and L/XL combination, even though it limits your color choices. And if you are already using the last hole, or maybe even the second-to-last hole, on the M/L band — perhaps because it was the largest size available when you bought your band — consider spending the $50 for the new larger size of the band. I’m certainly glad that I did.
There’s only one thing that gives me pause, and you can do the math yourself if you read my August review of three other watch bands: I need to come to terms with the fact that I now own four different watch bands. There has never before been a time in my life when I owned more than two watches at a time, and I certainly never before had multiple bands for each watch. So if any of you catch me on Amazon buying the Alpha-x 7 Color Watch Replacement Bands, which comes with seven different bands so you have a new color for each day of the week, it will be time to get me admitted to a 12-step program.
I’m a fan of Apple’s HomeKit technology, which lets you monitor and control various aspects of your home using an iPhone, iPad or Apple Watch — and even using Siri. Elgato has been making high-quality Apple-compatible products for a very long time, so I was interested earlier this year when I heard that Elgato released its Eve line of devices. There are currently four Eve devices. Eve Room monitors the temperature, humidity and air quality of a room inside of your house. Eve Weather monitors the temperature, humidity and air pressure outside of your house. Eve Energy monitors energy consumption of a device and can turn a device on or off. Eve Door & Window can tell whether a door or window is open or closed. Elgato recently sent me free review samples of its Eve Weather and Eve Room products, and I’ve been testing them for a few weeks now. If you are interested in monitoring and tracking the weather inside or outside of your house, these Eve devices work well. My only real complaints, explained more fully below, are that they do not download data automatically, and they are slow to use if you are outside of Bluetooth range from the devices.
Eve Weather retails for $49.95 and is made to go outdoors. The device is rated IPX3, so it is OK if it gets wet from rain, although it shouldn’t go underwater or be sprayed with a jet of water. You can mount it on the side of a wall or just sit it outside on a table, which is what I did. The device is a white square with rounded corners, 3.1 by 3.1 inches, and is 1.3 inches deep.
The back of the device has a hole that can be used to hang the device on a nail or screw, and also contains the unique code that you will need when you first connect to the device.
The device is powered by two AA batteries. Because Eve Weather uses the more power efficient Bluetooth 4.0 technology, Elgato says that it can go over three months before the batteries need to be replaced.
Like other HomeKit devices, you assign each Eve unit to a room. Or in the case of Eve Weather, you can assign it to an outside location such as Backyard.
Eve Weather monitors three things. First, it monitors the weather, accurate to within 0.54° Fahrenheit. Second, it monitors the humidity, accurate to within 3%. Finally, it monitors the air pressure, accurate to within 2 mbar / 0.06 inHg. It logs each of these results every 10 minutes.
To determine the current temperature, humidity and air pressure, open the Eve app on your iPhone and select the Eve Weather device from the main screen. You will next see a screen with the three Eve Weather readings.
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If you tap on any of the readings, you see a graph with historical information. For temperature, there is a red and a green dot that shows you the highest and lowest recorded temperatures from the last 24 hours.
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Historical information is downloaded to your iPhone when you use the Eve app, but is not pushed to the app unless the app is running. Eve devices store 14 days of historical data, so you will want to open the app at least twice a month to maintain a full historical log.
Underneath the graph, there are three dots on the right. Tap those dots to see even more graphs for which you can control the focus: hour, day, week or month. The week and month graphs show you both the high and low temperature over a period of time. As you can see, the temperature in New Orleans was certainly up and down in November:
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Finally, if you want to see the data, you can tap Measurements and see every one of the 144 recorded measurements for each day (one for every 10 minutes). You can also delete individual measurements, useful if you know that the Eve Weather wasn’t being accurate for some reason — for example, if you had the unit inside of your house for a period of time so you know that it wasn’t monitoring the outside temperature and you don’t want those inside temperature readings skewing your charts of the outside temperature.
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I have more to say about Eve Weather, but it also applies to Eve Room so let’s talk about it next.
Eve Room
Eve Room looks virtually identical to Eve Weather. It is the same size and shape, although it doesn’t have a hole on the back to hang it up on a wall.
Eve Room is powered by three AA batteries. Elgato says that they will also last over three months.
Like Eve Weather, Eve Room monitors temperature and humidity. But instead of monitoring air pressure, Eve Room measures air quality, and for that reason Eve Room costs $30 more than Eve Weather.
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Elgato says that the air quality measurement is based on volatile organic compounds, which includes not only CO2 but also other substances that can cause eye irritation, headaches, tiredness and dizziness such as emissions from carpet, paint, furniture, printers, perfumes, cleaning products, tobacco smoke and many other substances that in large quantities can be harmful. These compounds contribute to what is sometimes called Sick Building Syndrome. In my tests over the last few weeks, my Eve Room air quality measurements were mostly excellent and occasionally good, but I see that they did go up to poor for about 20 minutes last night when my wife was using a wok to make Chinese food in our kitchen — one room over from where the Eve Room was located — and there was some smoke in the air.
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Note that while Eve Room classified it as poor air quality, it smelled really good in my house while my wife was cooking. For whatever that is worth.
HomeKit Integration
One of the best features of Eve Room and Eve Weather is that they integrate with HomeKit. That means a couple of things.
First, it means that you can use Siri. If I ask Siri “What is the temperature outside” I get a normal Siri response using The Weather Channel and my location. But if I ask Siri “What is the temperature in my backyard” — with “Back Yard” as a designated zone in my HomeKit — I get the current reading from my Eve Weather. Similarly, I can ask Siri “What is the temperature in my house” and I can get the current temperature in both my backyard and my home theater room, the room where my Siri Room is located.
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Although there is not an Eve app on the Apple Watch, you can use Siri on the Apple Watch to ask for information from an Eve device, such as the temperature.
A second implication of HomeKit is support is that Eve devices can work with other HomeKit devices. A perfect example of this is the Eve app. That app is powerful enough to show me not only the readings from the Eve Room and Weather, but also other HomeKit devices in my house — which currently includes Lutron light switches on my front porch, my dining room, and my home theater room.
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It is nice to have a single app that can handle all of my HomeKit needs. Indeed, I can tap “At a Glance” at the top of the Eve app to see all of my current readings on one page.
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Or if I select the entry for my TV room, I can not only see the temperature in that room (thanks to the Eve Room) but also I can see whether the lights are on or off and, if on, the brightness, and I can control those lights.
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In theory, there is no reason why my Lutron app couldn’t also get temperature and humidity information from my Eve devices because those two functions are HomeKit standards, but the Lutron app doesn’t currently do so. (Air quality and air pressure are not currently part of HomeKit, so only the Eve app can read that data from Eve devices.)
Because the Eve app handles other HomeKit devices, I haven’t seen much need to use my Lutron app. Everything that I need for both my Lutron and Eve devices is right there in the Eve app.
A third advantage of HomeKit support is security. HomeKit devices use end-to-end encryption to prevent unauthorized access. Thus, someone else cannot park outside of your house and get your temperature or air quality readings (or, in the case of my Lutron devices, turn my lights on or off). Who knows if anyone would actually do that, but you do get some peace of mind when a home automation device advertises that it is HomeKit compatible.
A fourth (future) advantage of HomeKit support is the ability to automate using what Apple calls triggers. Currently, Eve Weather and Eve Room can only be used to report readings to you. However, Elgato is planning a future firmware update that will allow you to automate activities based upon readings from an Eve device. Perhaps in the future you’ll be able to turn on a red light when it is getting hotter outside or a blue light when it is getting colder outside, or perhaps integrate Eve into your HomeKit-compatible thermostat.
Finally, because Eve Room and Eve Weather support HomeKit, they can work with an Apple TV so that they can be accessed from anywhere, which leads me to the next topic…
Speed
Eve Room and Eve Weather work best when your iPhone is relatively close to an Eve unit. When you are within Bluetooth range and you ask for the temperature or other reading, using either the app or Siri, you get an answer pretty quickly. Sometimes it works immediately. Sometimes you need to wait a few seconds. For example, you might ask Siri the temperature and be told “Sorry, I wasn’t able to do that.” But if you ask again a few seconds later, you’ll get an answer. Loading historical data to the Eve app takes a little longer when you are within Bluetooth range — sometimes 15 seconds, sometimes 30 seconds — but is quick enough that it never really bothered me.
But if you are not within Bluetooth range of an Eve device, things slow down substantially. If you own an Apple TV and your Eve device is within Bluetooth range of your Apple TV, then the Apple TV acts as a bridge and allows you to get information from the Eve device from anywhere in your house, or anywhere in the world. That’s why I placed my Eve Room in my TV room (where my Apple TV is located) and I placed my Eve Weather on my back porch (close enough to my TV room for Bluetooth 4.0 to work, even through an exterior wall). It’s nice that the Apple TV can act as a bridge so that you can access your devices from anywhere on the Internet, but the problem is that it is very, very slow to do so.
How slow? It would often take me about a minute or two before I could get the current temperature, but sometimes even longer. The worst example was a few days ago, when I was in my office at 11:34 and I loaded the Eve app to see the current temperature in my backyard at my house. The app told me that the most recent data was two days old. I pulled down the screen to ask it to load more recent data, and it did so, but not until twelve minutes later when it finally told me, at 11:42, that the current temperature was 68°.
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But even then, the Eve app was missing the historical data for the last 48 hours, so I left the app open and running so that it could continue to get that data. It started to pull in data about 15 minutes later, and then it finally finished downloading the historical data at 12:05, about 30 minutes after I first started reading data from the Eve Weather.
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I am not a networking expert, but 30 minutes seems like a ridiculous amount of time to read a few numbers. I’m not saying that this is the fault of the Eve Weather. It might be that there is something about Apple’s HomeKit technology, or the Apple TV itself that makes it crazy slow in these situations. (I’m using the latest model of the Apple TV, and it has a wired connection to the Internet with speeds of around 100 Mbps down and about 20Mbps up — plenty fast enough.) Note also that, while I am in my office away from home, I can use the Lutron app on my iPhone to turn off a light at my house, and the light turns off within seconds. If Lutron remote HomeKit technology is so fast, why is Eve so slow?
While you currently need to be within Bluetooth range of an Eve device to get readings quickly, Elgato says that this should change when companies start to sell Bluetooth range extenders. The Elgago website says that with these “upcoming tunneling devices” you will be able to “access Eve away from home and extend the range of Eve.” No company is currently selling Bluetooth range extenders. I don’t know how long it will be before we see these on the market, nor do I know how they will compare to using an Apple TV; maybe they will be faster?
Conclusion
I know that some folks have an outdoor thermometer located outside and within viewing distance of a window so you can look outside and see the current temperature. Eve Weather is the same idea. You need to be somewhat close to that window to get the fast Bluetooth connection, but you don’t need to squint to read the thermometer, nor do you need to worry about it being too dark outside to see it. Of course, if you are just curious what the weather is outside, you can also use one of a million iPhone weather apps or even just ask Siri. Results from those apps may not be 100% accurate for your precise location, but it is probably pretty close, especially if you live in a city like I do. But the Eve app also gives you historical weather, which is a neat way to see how the weather at your house has changed over time, and is a feature that I don’t remember seeing in other weather apps. It is also nice — albeit often very slow — to get the precise weather at my home even if I am away from home. You can’t do that with an analog thermometer hanging on the outside of your garage, unless you have some sort of security camera aimed at it.
I think all of that makes Eve Weather worth $50 — currently $47.99 on Amazon. I’ve certainly enjoyed using Eve Weather for the last few weeks at my house, especially because of the historical data feature. And it is especially nice that the Eve app can monitor and control other HomeKit devices. It is unfortunate that you have to be so close to Eve Weather to get quick results, and it sure would be nice if this could improve in the future, by either Apple or Elgato. But even with its current limitations, I like Eve Weather.
Eve Room has seemed like more of a novelty to me. I suppose it is interesting to see the temperature in a room of my house, and see how that temperature has changed over time, but I cannot say that I find that information all that useful, nor do I find it worth $80. I suspect that Eve Room will be more valuable to folks who have a need to monitor air quality — perhaps for themselves, perhaps for someone with health issues, or perhaps for a child or a pet. If air quality is important to you, then the air quality readings and the log of prior readings could be an important tool for you to learn what is having a negative impact on your air quality so that you can change behavior accordingly. Indoor temperature, humidity and air quality just isn’t that important to me, so I’m not the target audience for Eve Room. But if you consider yourself in that target audience, Eve Room does do the job and it does it well.
