I love my Apple Watch, even though the time that I spend using it every day pales in comparison to my iPhone and iPad. That is because some of its most useful features are the ones that just take a few seconds to use — such as being able to quickly look at what my next appointment is, quickly see how I am doing on my Activity circles for the day, quickly skip to the next music track, and of course glance to see the current time or date. This presents somewhat of a challenge to third party app developers, because some of the best apps will be those that don’t do very much, but do it in a great way. I was pleased to see that Iconfactory released a free app this week called Clicker because it manages to be a great app by just doing one simple task well: it counts in increments of one.
Launch the Clicker app on your iPhone and you see a number — zero, the first time that you launch the app. Tap anywhere on the screen and the large number increases by one. Tap it again to increase by one again.
The only other feature of the app is that if you force-click, you can decrease by one (useful if you tapped by accident and didn’t mean to increase the counter) and you can Reset (to clear and go back to zero).
The app also features a small complication. It serves two simple purposes. First, it displays the current number in the clicker app so that you can see the current number right next to the clock. Second, if you tap that number on the clock face, the Clicker app launches.
Clicker is a native app on the Apple Watch, so it launches quickly, plus you can use Clicker even if your iPhone is turned off, in Airplane Mode, or is not nearby.
As for why you would use the Clicker app, there are countless (ahem) reasons. The developer says that he uses Clicker to track how many days he swims laps. Watching the number increase gives him motivation to swim more often. Whatever your own personal goals are, you could tap once day every time that you achieve it for that day.
You could also use it for tasks that require tapping more frequently. How about the number of times that opposing counsel uses a certain word or phrase during opening or closing argument so that, when you stand up to give your response, you can point out that they said it too many times (or too few). Or perhaps you are figuring out how many items you have and want to avoid losing count half-way through.
The app worked great when I tested it yesterday, although I was just playing around with it and wasn’t using it to keep track of anything real. I’m not even sure what task I will use this app for first, but I love knowing it is right there on my wrist, waiting for me. And since the app is free, there’s no reason not to download it so that you have it handy the next time that you need to count.
Yesterday, Microsoft released updates to its Office suite of apps on the iPhone and iPad, including Word and Excel. (Version 1.14.) Looking forward to some new features, I updated my apps. Unfortunately, after updating the apps, Word and Excel started crashing upon launch. Hopefully, some of you did not have this problem and were able to apply the updates successfully. I’m writing today with some tips for those of you who had the same problem that I had, but not just for that audience; these same tips should help you any time that you have a problem after updating any other app in iOS.
[UPDATE 10/14/15: Last night, Microsoft released Version 1.14.1 of its Office apps for iOS. It appears to me that this update fixes this specific problem, although Microsoft’s release notes do not disclose what is different between 1.14 and 1.14.1. If you have not yet installed 1.14, you should be safe to install 1.14.1.]
The problem
The specific problem here occurred right after I updated the app and launched it for the first time. At first all seemed fine. I saw some introductory screens and scrolled through them. After those screens, I tapped a button to start using the app. From that point on, one of two things would happen. Most of the time, the app would just immediately crash after launching. Other times, right after launch the app would tell me “Updating…” but would just hang and do nothing at all.
I experienced the same problem with the Microsoft Excel app after it was updated. And the problem occurred on both my iPhone 6s and my iPad Air 2.
Solutions
Here are the steps that I try when something like this happens to me when updating an app.
First, of course, you can try to launch the app again. Always worth a try.
Second, force quit the app. You do this by double-pressing on the Home Button so that you can see your active apps, and then swipe up on the preview screen for the app in question. Then try to launch the app again. This often fixes problems for me, but it didn’t work yesterday for Word or Excel.
Third, force quit the app again and restart your iPhone or iPad. Then launch the app right after your device has restarted. I’ve had this work in the past, but again, it didn’t work yesterday.
Fourth, delete the app and reinstall it. To delete an app put your finger on the app icon for a few seconds until the icons start to jiggle. Then tap the X in the top left corner to delete the app. Then download the app again from the App Store. You won’t be charged again for an app that you already paid for.
That fourth step is what Microsoft Support recommended that I try. And it did work to a certain extent when I tried it on my iPhone; the freshly downloaded version of the app launched with no problem, and I still had access to all files stored in cloud services such as Dropbox or Microsoft OneDrive. The problem, however, was that I lost all of the Word documents that had been stored locally on my iPhone. That wasn’t really a problem for me on my iPhone because I store very few documents in Word on my iPhone and none of them are the only copy of the file; I use the app on my iPhone mostly to read and revise Word documents attached to an email.
However, my iPad was a different story. I had some documents saved locally on my iPad that I didn’t want to lose. All of them existed in some form in some other location, but it would be a pain to track them down again. Fortunately, there is a way to recover files in an iPhone or iPad app even if the app itself won’t launch. Simply use a USB cable to attach your device to a computer with iTunes, then in the iTunes program on your computer tap on the icon for the device, then tap on Apps in the sidebar. The top part of iTunes will say “Apps” and contains a list of apps on the left and each of your iOS screens on the right. Scroll down below that to a section called File Sharing. You’ll see another set of apps on the left, and if you click on an app, on the right you will see a list of documents locally saved in that app.
You can access those documents using drag-and-drop on your computer. So I created a folder on my desktop called Word Docs, then selected all of the Word documents listed in iTunes and dragged them to that folder. That created a copy of all of the documents in Word on my iPad and added them to that folder on my Mac. I then deleted the app on my iPad and reinstalled it. It worked great upon reinstall but contained no locally-saved apps. Then I connected to iTunes again, went to that same File Sharing section, and dragged all of the documents from that folder on my computer’s desktop to the Word app on my iPad. It only took a second or two for the files to be copied over, and I could even see them showing up on the screen of Word on my iPad as I did so. I did the same thing for the Excel app, and I was back in business.
Fortunately, most apps that I use on my iPhone and iPad are very stable even when frequently updated. But every once in a while, there is a bug. Hopefully these tips will come in handy if you see something like this on your own device — whether it be this recent update to Word and Excel or some other app. And if you have your own tips to share for dealing with app problems after an update, I’d love it if you posted a comment to share with me and others.
In an interview this week with NPR’s Robert Siegel on All Things Considered, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that he believes that privacy is a fundamental human right, and explained how Apple builds privacy into the iPhone and its other products. For example, while Apple must comply with the laws of the U.S. government and other governments when ordered to produce information, Apple’s approach is to not collect personal information, and to encrypt personal data kept on devices. Thus, “we design our products in such a way that privacy is designed into the product, and security is designed in.” Cook also explained that Apple resists the idea of creating a back door in its products for government use because if a back door exists, then bad guys will also find a way to access it. I appreciate this dedication to privacy, not only because I have information on my iPhone and iPad protected by the attorney-client privilege, but also because of the private information that I keep on my devices relating to my finances, health, and other personal matters. It is an interesting interview, and you can listen to the eight-minute interview or read about it here. You can also read Tim Cook’s privacy statement on Apple’s website. And now, the news of note from the past week:
Speaking of security, Apple introduced a revised two-factor authentication system to maintain security on your devices in a way that is easier to deal with. With this system, it is much harder for a bad guy to access your private information even if he has your password. I’ve started using the new system, and it works very well. Security expert Glenn Flesighman of Macworld does a good job explaining how the new two-factor authentication system works. I recommend that you start using it.
Do you sometimes find yourself trying to make or receive a call on your iPhone when you are in an area with poor cellular coverage but decent Wi-Fi? If so, a feature called Wi-Fi Calling lets your iPhone use Wi-Fi instead of cellular to make calls when the cellular connection is poor. AT&T just turned on the feature this week (for the iPhone 6 and later). Jeff Gamet of The Mac Observer explains in detail how to turn on Wi-Fi Calling. Once you set it up the first time, you can easily turn it on or off from Settings on your iPhone.
Wi-Fi Calling just came to AT&T, but it was previously available for T-Mobile and Sprint. Zac Hall of 9to5Mac reports that AT&T believes that those other carriers turned on the service prematurely, before they had FCC permission to do so.
In an article for Tom’s Guide, Jason Snell picks some of his favorite apps that take advantage of 3D Touch on the iPhone 6s and the iPhone 6s Plus. For those of you who have not yet upgraded, 3D Touch is one of those rare features that once you start using it, you want to use it all the time. It works great.
The new iPhones can also record 4K video, and according to photographer Lee Morris of Fstoppers, the iPhone 6s “appears to be a far better video camera than my $3000 DSLR when there is enough light present.” And while 4K video may seem like overkill considering that most of us don’t even have 4K televisions, Morris also explains why there are other reasons to record in 4K.
Serenity Caldwell of iMore reviews the new Philips Hue HomeKit bridge that lets you control Hue lights with Siri. I don’t have a need for colored lights in my house so the Hue lights don’t appeal to me, but I love using HomeKit to control lights in my own house using Lutron devices. In fact, I just added another dimmer switch last week so that now my porch lights can automatically come on at sunset, turn off at sunrise, and be dimmed and controlled any time that I want.
This week, Apple started to sell the Hermès versions of the Apple Watch. Prices range from $1,100 to $1,500 depending upon which type of band you get. Rene Ritchie of iMore explained some of the basic details of this product, but if you want to have a better understanding of what it means for Apple to team up with Hermès, I recommend this article by Benjamin Clymer of Hodinkee, a high-end watch website.
Fantastical, my favorite calendar app on the iPhone and iPad, now has a new Apple Watch app. Abdel Ibrahim of Watch Aware discusses the new Fantastical app. It has been working great for me, and I now use the Fantastical complication on my watch face instead of Apple’s own calendar complication.
Katie Benner of the New York Times reports that you will soon be able to use Apple Pay at Starbucks, KFC and Chili’s.
And finally, Serenity Caldwell of iMore takes only 20 seconds to show off what is new about the iPhone 6s in this very short video:
I love to share stories on iPhone J.D. about how attorneys use an iPhone or iPad in their law practice. Today’s story comes from Carolyn Elefant, a solo attorney in Washington, D.C. who focuses her practice on energy law, including emerging renewable energy development, federal siting and eminent domain, appeals, and civil rights litigation. Throughout her career, Carolyn has had an interest in using technology in her law practice. For example, she hand-coded a website for her law firm in 1995 (back when law firm websites were rare) and in 2010, she co-authored Social Media for Lawyers: The Next Frontier, with New York attorney Nicole Black. Carolyn writes about being a solo attorney on her blog My Shingle, and she recently wrote about how she used an iPad to win a six-day trial. Carolyn was gracious enough to give me permission to share that story here with iPhone J.D. readers. Take it away, Carolyn!
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Trial By iPad: 1 New Technology, 10 Days, 3 6-Figure Verdicts
As I’ve described before, I consider myself a practical technologist – I choose tech tools based on cost and what they can do to help me right now rather than paying top dollar for the latest-and-greatest gadgets that may not work for my practice. Likewise, I track technology on a “need to know” basis – keeping abreast of developments that I might need, instead of staying on top of everything that’s out there.
So two months back, when I began prepping for my first jury trial in more than a decade, not to mention my first in federal court, of course, I was aware of the iPad as an option for trial technology. But with my focus largely on appellate work (where I limit my notes, if any, to a single page of paper) or pre-historic regulatory hearings (in one case, we were assigned our own blue plastic tub to store the hundreds of pages of paper documents circulated each day), I realized that I’d fallen behind on modern trial tech and needed to get up to speed – and fast. So here are the steps that one iPad novice took to ensure a smooth and seamless maiden voyage with my iPad at trial.
Assessment – Do You Really Need the iPad at Trial?
This should be self-evident – but the most important step to using the iPad at trial is deciding whether you actually need it to begin with. That depends on two factors: your substantive case and available courtroom support.
Since my case involved eminent domain, pictures were critical. Traditionally, jurors in eminent domain proceedings often have a chance to view the property. Because my case was in federal court, a site visit wasn’t viable- but I anticipated that my clients could use photos to provide jurors with a virtual tour of the damage – felled trees, erosion and damaged pastures – that the pipeline had left in its wake. Here, the iPad would allow for seamless viewing of numerous photos that simply isn’t possible (or would be cost prohibitive) with paper copies. In addition, since the location of the pipeline is another factor that informs compensation – not surprisingly, a pipeline that bisects a property causes more harm than one located at the edge of the property – the iPad could display of aerial photos from Google maps.
The federal courthouse in Baltimore is also well equipped for iPad use, with three monitors perched on the edge of the jury box, and one on the witness stand and each counsel table. With so much courtroom technology, I figured that my big law opponents would put on an impressive show and that the jury would expect the same from all the lawyers.
Had my case been document-heavy, or held in an off-the-beaten-path courtroom lacking in technology, I probably wouldn’t have bothered with the iPad – at least as a presentation tool. In fact, I found that with some of the more complex issues in my eminent domain case – such as a review of the 30-page Right of Way specifications, or our expert’s damages calculation that it made more sense to provide the jurors with their own hard copy of the documents to follow along.
Is Your Time Frame for Implementing The iPad Realistic?
Although I was an iPad trial virgin, the iPad wasn’t a complete stranger to me. I’d already been using my iPad to access large documents at hearings and for speaking engagements I was familiar with the process of getting documents onto the device, and using it to run PowerPoint and Keynote. Moreover, since I’ve relied on cloud-based storage tools like Box for at least eight years, I didn’t need any additional steps to import my files to an iPad trial app. Had I not had this infrastructure already in place, I’m not sure it would have been feasible to adapt to the iPad with so little time.
Getting Started
Once I decided on the iPad at trial, I had to figure out how to use it. This process consisted of two components: first, choosing the right trial presentation app and second, identifying a dependable set up to connect to the courtroom projection system without relying on a cable that would tether me to the counsel table. I bought a copy of Tom Mighell’s iPad for Litigators in One Hour, which offered a good overview of the range of choices. But the best guide that I found was Kevin Morris’ Trial Presentation by Apple TV and iPad published at Lawyerist because it offered a detailed, step-by-step approach to the set-up. The advantage to Apple TV is that it creates a mirror connection without the need to rely on wireless access which wouldn’t be available in the courtroom or my own wifi which has never been very dependable. Also at Morris’ recommendation and other reviews I’d seen, I settled on Trial Pad as my presentation platform.
Delegate
With my trial just around the corner, I still had additional prep as well as my regular caseload. So rather than take the time to set up my trial tools myself, I delegated the task to my two summer law clerks. They contacted the court’s technology office to determine what types of connectors we’d need to hook up Apple TV, figured out how to run the iPad using Apple TV, installed Trial Pad and mastered some of the basic features. By the time I was ready to prepare the witnesses and practice a dry-run, the device was ready to go. If like me, you’re clumsy with setting up hardware, save yourself the frustration and delegate the task to a law student or assistant.
Set Up and Practice
Just as guns don’t kill people, so too, an iPad alone won’t kill it for you at trial. I still had to plan how I’d present my evidence and how the iPad would support that goal. Many of my presentation decisions were driven by my witnesses, who felt more comfortable explaining the case to the jurors by relying on visuals.
On the other hand, I found that lengthy documents didn’t translate as well to iPad format, so these were circulated to the jurors as hard copies. For cross examination, I worked from my notes on paper, using the iPad to present impeachment material to the witnesses. For closing, I prepared summary charts of my talking point and the evidence, and because of the mobility that the Apple TV set up enabled, I could present directly to the jurors without shuffling through a legal pad.
Unfortunately, in my rush to come on board with Trial Pad, I didn’t make use of all of its features, such as its ability to mark exhibits as admitted or not. But midway through the trial, I figured out how to use the redact button and was able to black out confidential portions of a document that my opponents turned over to me that morning and then put it up on the screen to cross examine a witness.
The Verdict
Following a six-day trial, the jury returned three six-figure verdicts for my clients – all substantially higher than they’d been offered. And while ultimately, it was the strength of the prep, the evidence and fact and expert witnesses and not the iPad that produced the win, the iPad allowed me to present that evidence in a far more professional and seamless a manner than would have been possible at my last trial ten years ago. What’s more, even with the need to master a new technology just ten days before trial, my team’s prep was far quicker and cheaper with the iPad than if we’d have had to prepare courtroom sized demonstratives or compile those dreaded exhibit books that would have me up until 3 a.m. the night before court.
Today’s technology changes so, so quickly that it’s impossible for lawyers to keep up with all of it. Nor should we even try. While lawyers are criticized for an aversion to tech, truth be told, so many early versions of many products simply aren’t worth using (that includes many iPad trial pads which when launched, only synched up with Dropbox, making them much less convenient for someone using a different cloud platform). Moreover, as tech grows more user-friendly, the learning curve decreases – and the process of learning how to use a new tech tool, which once might have required a pricey consultant and a week of training can now be accomplished in a matter of hours.
Maybe you’re not an early adopter of technology. But as my experience shows, it’s never too late — even ten days before trial — to learn.
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Thank you so much, Carolyn, for sharing this great story with us!
If you are willing to share your own experiences using an iPhone or iPad in your law practice with other iPhone J.D. readers, I’d love to hear from you! And in case you missed any of them, here are stories that I previously shared from other attorneys:
Many of us now own several devices that charge via USB, such as an iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, external batteries, wireless headphones, etc. It is a pain to carry around lots of wall chargers when you travel, but if you decide to double-up — using, for example, a single iPad charger to also charge your iPhone and Apple Watch — your devices need to take turns getting back to a 100% charge. A good alternative is to use a multi-port USB hub. For the last few weeks, I’ve been using the Anker PowerPort 6, which has a list price of $99 but which I bought on Amazon in August of 2015 when it was $24. (The price fluctuates; as I write this, it is selling for $36.) The Anker PowerPort 6 works great, and I can recommend it both as a travel charger and if you want a single item on your desk in which you can plug in and charge multiple USB devices.
The back of the PowerPort 6 has a spot to plug-in a (removable) cord that connects to an outlet. The front has six USB outlets. As you can see, the model that I bought is black, but there is also a white model that costs the same. The product seems sturdy and seem to have good build quality.
The device can provide up to 12 amps across the six ports, with up to 2.4 amps per port. For example, the charger that comes with a new iPhone is a 1 amp charger, although the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s can use a 2.1 amp charger to charge faster. The iPad comes with a 2.1 amp charger. Many other USB devices take only a 0.5 amp charge. With 12 amps to work with, it is no problem to charge a combination of iPads, iPhones and other devices. Unless you regularly charge six iPads all at the same time, you should have no trouble charging all of your devices as fast as possible. (You could charge six iPads at once, but it will just take longer to get them to 100%.)
Some chargers have ports with different designations, such as a 1 amp port and a 2.1 amp port. Anker instead uses what Anker calls PowerIQ Technology to determine how much power is needed for each port, so you can just plug in to any port and the device takes care of the rest.
Anker sells lots of different PowerPort models, so the model that I picked might not be the best one for your needs. For example, in an article for the The Wirecutter, Nick Guy picks the Anker 36W 4-Port USB Wall Charger, which delivers 7.2 amps overall to four ports, as the best multiport USB wall charger, although he also likes the PowerPort 6 for those looking for something a little more powerful. There are two reasons that the PowerPort 6 was best for me.
First, I like having six USB ports. I use this device primarily when I travel, and I usually have an iPad, iPhone, Apple Watch, and one or two external batteries. It is nice to be able to charge all of those at the same time. And if I am traveling with my wife, she will usually have both an iPhone and an iPad with her. If my two kids are with us, they may have an iPhone (an old one, without a cellular connection) or an iPad to use while on the plane or in the car. So having six USB ports is nice when it is just me, and it is darn near essential when I’m traveling with others.
Second, I like that the PowerPort 6 has a five-foot long cord to connect to an outlet. More often than not, I find that I am in a hotel room in which the only available outlet is located near the floor. I can plug in the PowerPort 6 at that inconvenient location, then set the box itself (which is 3.9×2.8×1 inches) on the desk in a hotel room. The device that The Wirecutter picked is made to plug directly in to an outlet, which makes it more compact for travel, but less convenient to use — who wants to charge devices on the floor? For me, that five-foot long cord doesn’t add too much extra bulk, and makes all the difference in the world when an outlet is not in a good location.
I’ve also used this device during a deposition when I wanted to keep my iPad plugged in and charging. Having the extra ports that can be shared makes you popular with your co-counsel.
While I use this mostly when I travel, I can also understand how useful this device can be for folks who want to keep it in a single location, such as a desk in an office or a table in a room. You might even want to place one of these in a conference room or reception area so that visitors to your law office can easily recharge their devices. Keep it plugged in to an outlet, and then the box itself can sit on the flat surface and always be available for when you need to charge. According to a test done by Nick Guy at The Wirecutter, the PowerPort 6 draws virtually no power when it is plugged in to the wall but no USB devices are plugged in to it. Thus, you don’t need to worry about vampire power.
Although this is the first time that I have purchased an Anker device, the company typically gets good reviews, and now I can see why. This product has worked very well for me. If you have a need to charge multiple USB devices and you like the convenience of being able to charge them all at once, I suspect that you’ll find the Anker PowerPort 6 as useful as I do.
Apparently, a lot of folks were excited about the new iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus. As reported by Katie Benner of the New York Times this week, during the first weekend that the new iPhones were available, Apple sold 13 million of them. A year ago, Apple sold 10 million during the opening weekend of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. I’ve really enjoyed using my new iPhone 6s this week, especially the 3D Touch and the improved speed. And now, the news of note from the past week:
The folks at First Site Guide put together a list a law blogs worth reading. It’s actually a very good list, although perhaps I am biased since iPhone J.D is on the list.
If you are thinking about getting an iPhone 6s, I posted my own review earlier this week, but one of the best reviews that I have seen is the one that Jason Snell wrote for Macworld.
Apple released iOS 9.0.2 this week to fix a few bugs.
Dan Moren of Six Colors provides some great tips for using Siri in iOS 9. For example, if you have Hey Siri turned on but you want to stop Siri from listening to you for a little while, just put your iPhone face down on a desk, and Siri will cover her virtual ears.
And finally, Zach Straley claims that the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus are both somewhat waterproof. Here is his video proof. I have not tested this with my own iPhone 6s, nor should you do so, but it appears that something about the new iPhones is doing a better job standing up to water. Interesting:
There are countless companies that make styluses for the iPad, but only a few companies have been the most innovative and have come out with some of the best styluses over the years. Adonit is definitely at or near the top of that list. (Wacom has also come out with some excellent iPad styluses.) Today, I’m reviewing the latest iPad stylus from Adonit, a product called the Jot Dash. It is the first active stylus that has a body that is as thin as a pen, so it feels great in your hand. Adonit sent me a free sample to review, and I’ve been trying it out for the last few weeks. Adonit sent me the Silver model, but you can also get it in Charcoal.
Background on styluses
The best way to understand the advantages of the Adonit Jot Dash is to start with a little background on iPad styluses in general. A stylus is an incredibly useful iPad accessory if you want to take handwritten notes or draw, but there currently trade-offs associated with using them because no current iPad is designed to work with a stylus. This will change later this year, when Apple starts selling the iPad Pro which is made to work with a stylus made by Apple called the Apple Pencil. But for any other iPad, you need a stylus made by a third party, and that stylus needs a way to work with an iPad that was not designed to work with a stylus.
There are two types of styluses on the market. Traditional styluses have a tip about the same size as your finger tip, which is necessary because the iPad was designed to recognize something the size of a finger tip. Those styluses work well, but you do sometimes feel like you are drawing with a crayon or a thick marker instead of a pen. My favorite traditional stylus is the 2015 version of the Adonit Jot Pro, which I reviewed this past March. It uses a fine tip attached to a clear disc, which gives you the illusion of using a fine point pen while your iPad feels something closer to the size of a finger. I love that stylus and use it almost every day in my law practice when I am taking handwritten notes or annotating a document on my iPad.
The second type of stylus is called an active stylus. It has a fine tip which makes it look and feel much more like a pen when you are using it, a huge advantage over traditional styluses. It works by sending out radio waves that trick the iPad into thinking that something larger, about the size of a fingertip, is touching the screen. Adonit invented this category when it debuted the Adonit Jot Script in late 2013 (my review), but now many companies make active styluses. Some active styluses also have a button that can communicate, via Bluetooth, with many apps. For example, you can program the button to trigger the “undo” feature, or switch from a pen to an eraser, every time you click it. Active styluses with these buttons are much more useful than active styluses and traditional styluses that lack a button.
While the fine tip of an active stylus is amazing, active styluses have typically had three disadvantages versus a traditional stylus. First, they require power. Some models use AAA or AAAA batteries, and other models are rechargeable. Active styluses typically charge quickly, but you do need to remember to charge them. Otherwise, you might be taking notes in a meeting when your active stylus dies, and unless it is a model that uses replaceable batteries and you have those extra batteries in your pocket, you are out of luck. (Apple’s upcoming Pencil stylus has a neat way to deal with this; if it runs out of power, you can connect it to the Lightning port on the iPad, and in just 15 seconds it gets enough charge for 30 minutes of use.)
Second, active styluses are typically less precise than traditional styluses. You sometimes see a little waviness in a line as you draw — especially when you draw a diagonal line. This problem got significantly worse when Apple released the iPad Air in 2013 and it remained a problem in the iPad Air 2 introduced in 2014. Adonit figured out how to update its technology to work with the iPad Air and iPad Air 2, and released the Adonit Jot Script 2 a few months ago (my review), but the large majority of active styluses still don’t work great with the iPad Air and iPad Air 2.
Third, because of the need to include a battery and electronics, the bodies of active styluses have always needed to be a little larger than the size of a traditional pen. For example, the Adonit Jot Script 2 and the Bamboo Stylus fineline (my review) both have a diameter of about 10.5 mm. To be fair, there are certainly larger pens being used every day. My personal favorite pen right now, the Zebra Sarasa Push Clip (my review), has an 11.11 mm diameter, but it still feels smaller than both the Adonit Jot Script 2 and the Bamboo Stylus, perhaps because of the weight. Suffice it to say that with every active stylus that I have used in the past, I had no doubt that I was holding a stylus containing electronics in my hand and not a pen.
The size and shape
With that background behind us, let’s jump to the best new feature of the Adonit Jot Dash: size. The Jot Dash is the thinnest active stylus that I have ever used. The diameter is only 8.5 mm. This is the first time in my life that I have held a stylus in my hand and I felt like I was holding a pen. This makes a huge difference, substantially improving the feel of the stylus in your hand when you use it.
In the following picture, the Jot Dash is on the top, followed by two other active styluses (the Adonit Script 2 (review) and the Wacom Bamboo Stylus fineline (review)), followed by a normal pen (the Zebra Sarasa Push Clip (review)) and at the bottom is the Adonit Jot Pro (review).
Another nice feature of this stylus is that it has a clip on the side, making it easy to clip it in a pocket on your shirt or a pocket in a purse or briefcase.
The tip
Because it is an active stylus, one expects the Adonit Jot Dash to have a small tip, and it certainly does. The tip on the Adonit Jot Dash is only 1.9 mm, the same size as the tip on the Adonit Jot Script 2 and the Bamboo Stylus fineline (my review). This is a nice size for a stylus tip.
In addition to being small, the tip feels great against an iPad screen — about the same as the tip on the Adonit Script 2, which is also an excellent stylus tip. In fact, the combination of a great tip plus a thin stylus that feels good in the hand means that the Adonit Jot Dash feels better than any other active stylus that I have ever used.
Because the Jot Dash tip is hard, it makes some noise when you tap it against the iPad screen. Having said that, the noise is a little less with the Jot Pro than with the Jot Script 2. I sometimes find the Adonit Script 2 tip just a little too noisy for me to feel comfortable using it in a quiet room when others are around. With the Jot Dash, that is slightly less of an issue for me, although there is still some noise.
Power
The Jot Dash is rechargeable, and you charge it by sitting it in a small dongle that fits into a USB slot. The Jot Dash attaches by magnets, so it can hang on its side or upside down and it wont fall off of the charger. This is the same design that Adonit used on the Jot Script 2. It works great on the Jot Script 2, and I also like it on the Jot Dash. It takes about 45 minutes to fully recharge.
One thing that I don’t like about the Jot Script 2 is the way that the power button is on the side is sometimes hard to find. The Jot Dash doesn’t have this problem because the power button is on the top. Not only does this make the power button easy to find, it is also a natural location for a button — the same place that you would push down on a pen with a retractable tip. Press it once and the Jot Dash turns on and a small light on the body of the stylus glows green for about two seconds. Press it again and the light glows red for two seconds and then the stylus goes off. The Jot Dash will also turn off automatically after a period of time if you are not using it.
Other than the power button, there is no other button on the Jot Dash. Thus, it does not have a second button that can communicate with some apps using Bluetooth — a useful feature of some other styluses, such as the Bamboo Stylus fineline. (It is very handy to push a button to immediately undo whatever you last drew with the Bamboo Stylus fineline; no such feature exists on the Jot Dash.)
Diagonal lines
[UPDATE 11/17/15: In the following section, I describe troubles that I had with diagonal lines on the iPad Air and iPad Air 2. Note that on the iPad Pro, the Adonit Dash draws diagonal lines perfectly.]
My main complaint about the Adonit Jot Dash is that it has the same problem that most other active styluses have: it isn’t as precise as a traditional stylus, especially when you are drawing a diagonal line, and especially on the iPad Air and iPad Air 2. I was surprised to see this problem because Adonit solved it in the Script 2 that it released earlier this year. For whatever reason — maybe the technology wouldn’t fit in the thin Jot Dash? — the Jot Dash works the same as the original Adonit Script. This means that it is virtually impossible to draw a straight diagonal line on an iPad Air or iPad Air 2; the line always has waves in it. It also means that the digital ink is more wavy when you are writing anything other than a horizontal or vertical line. The end result is that, on the iPad Air and the iPad Air 2, your penmanship is a little worse than it is when you use a traditional stylus. Here is an example in which I use the excellent GoodNotes app on an iPad Air 2 to draw lines using the Adonit Jot Pro and the Adonit Jot Dash:
Screenshot
As you can see, the Jot Dash has obvious problems with those diagonal lines. But many letters also look less neat with the Jot Dash. For example, compare the “J” in the word Jot — it looks fine when drawn with the Jot Pro, but the Jot Dash made the letter look worse even though I believe I drew it the same way both times.
Here is the tip of the Adonit Jot Pro on the left, and the Adonit Jot Dash on the right. As you can see, if you ignore the clear disc on the end of the Jot Pro, the tip seems to be about the same size on both styluses.
Conclusion
There is a lot to like about the Adonit Jot Dash. The thin size feels great in my hand, the power button on the top works well, the clip on the side is useful, and the tip is small and feels nice against an iPad screen. If only Adonit had included the same technology that it put in the Script 2 to solve the problem with diagonal lines, this stylus would easily be my all-time favorite active stylus, and I might even pick it as my all-time favorite stylus overall.
Instead, almost every time I tried out the Jot Dash over the past few weeks, I found myself wanting to return to the Adonit Jot Pro, which I gave a rave review earlier this year. The Jot Pro is almost as thin as the Jot Dash and is certainly thin enough to feel great in your hand. And even though the Jot Pro is a traditional stylus, the creative use of the fine tip connected to a see-through disc gives you the illusion that you are using a true fine tip (just like an active stylus) without wavy diagonal lines or a decline in penmanship.
Thus, I myself would pick the Jot Pro over the Jot Dash; I think it works better, and it is also $20 cheaper. Having said that, if you are in the market for an active stylus, you’ll want to seriously consider the Jot Dash because it does have a lot going for it.
[UPDATE 11/17/15: As noted above, the Jot Dash works much better on the iPad Pro. The Apple Pencil works better as it has less lag time and excellent palm rejection when you rest your hand on the screen, plus it has the handy Lightning charger built-in so you don’t need to worry about losing the Adonit Jot Dash charger. But the Jot Dash works almost as well as the Apple Pencil on the iPad Pro at half the price.]
Ever since the iPhone 3G was released in 2008, Apple has followed a pattern in which the external design of the iPhone changes in one year, and then the following year Apple releases an “s” model with the same design but major new features under the hood. Thus, we saw the iPhone 3G in 2008 followed by the faster iPhone 3GS in 2009. The iPhone 4 was released in 2010, and in 2011 the iPhone 4S added Siri. The iPhone 5 came out in 2012, and then in 2013 the iPhone 5s added Touch ID. Last year we saw the iPhone 6, and this past Friday Apple started selling the iPhone 6s. Once again, it is the same design as the prior model plus a major new feature, and this year that new feature is 3D Touch. It’s a great feature, and for many lawyers could prove to be more useful than Siri or Touch ID. And of course there are other new features as well. Here are my thoughts on the new iPhone 6s
3D Touch
Back when the iPhone was introduced in 2007, the major new feature was the touchscreen. Instead of BlackBerry and Palm Treo smartphones that had a small square screen with half of the front devoted to a tiny keyboard, the iPhone innovation was to have a much larger screen that could be touched, and we all learned motions like tap, swipe to scroll, pinch to zoom, etc. Those features were innovative for a smartphone back in 2007, and were subsequently copied by all other smartphone manufacturers.
3D Touch is the biggest improvement to interacting with a screen since the iPhone was first introduced in 2007. And it works great. Yes, you can still tap just like you could before, such as tap an app icon to open the app. But now you can also press a little harder on the icon to perform a different function. It is very easy to know how hard to press because Apple uses haptic feedback, much like the Apple Watch, so that you feel a minor vibration which feels almost like a click. The name 3D Touch is perfect because it really is like Apple has added a third dimension, giving you the ability to press into a screen in addition to the old tap or swipe left, right, up, or down.
Right now, for the most part, two types of things can happen when you use 3D Touch. If you press on an app icon, you see a pop-up Quick Action menu with a few common actions. Instead of tapping on the Messages app icon and then tapping at the top left to see all of your sets of messages and then tapping on Bob’s name so that you can get into your message conversation with Bob, now just press on the app icon and select Bob from the Quick Action menu. Or press on the Mail icon and select New Message or Search from the Quick Action menu. Or press on the Camera icon and jump right to recording video. It’s a little thing that saves you time, and once you get used to it, you’ll really miss not having it on your iPad. It reminds me of the right click function using a mouse on a computer.
Second, in apps that have a list of items (e.g. Mail, Messages, Notes, etc.), you can now press harder on any item in the list to peek at what is in that item. This function is incredibly useful in the Mail app. I often find myself trying to find a specific message in my Inbox from a specific person. I’ll see one email that could be it, tap on that message in the list, then see that particular message take up the entire screen, realize that it isn’t the message I want, so I need to tap the back button at the top left of the screen, go to the next message, and repeat. I suspect that many of you have done these same steps. But with 3D Touch, I can instead just press on a message in the list and a floating window appears giving me a peek into the content of the message. Best of all, when I stop pressing down the preview goes away and I am still looking at the list of messages. I can then peek at the next one, the next one, etc. until I find the specific message that I want. When I can see in the preview that I have found the message, I just push down on the preview and the message pops to fill up the screen.
Another good use — if I receive an email and I want to see what it is about, but I’m not quite ready to act upon the email, I can just press on it in the list to peek. That shows me a preview of the message, but when I pick up my finger to make the preview disappear, the email status remains unread. Thus, I know to go back to it later and act upon it. Or alternatively, if the preview shows me all that I need to know about the email to act upon it, I can swipe up to see common options to apply to the message (Reply, Forward, Mark, Move, etc.).
It takes about 60 seconds to get used to using 3D Touch on a list of emails, and then you’ll want to use the function every time. It works great.
Although the major two functions of 3D Touch are the Quick Action menu on app icons and the Peek and Pop functions with a preview, that is just the beginning. 3D Touch can also be used in many other ways. For example, if you are typing on your iPhone screen and you want to go back and change something in a prior sentence, press on the keyboard to have it change into a trackpad on which you can control the cursor and place it in an exact spot in a message. Nifty and useful.
If you press on the left edge of the screen in any app, the app switch shows up (the same thing that you would see if you double-press the Home button). If you press on the left edge of the screen and then swipe all the way to the right, you switch to the prior app. It’s the iPhone’s version of Control-Tab on a PC or Command-Tab on a Mac.
Moreover, app developers can use 3D Touch in all sorts of useful ways within their apps. In Apple’s Notes app, for example, iOS 9 introduced the ability to write in a Notes message, useful if you want to quickly draw something with your finger. On the iPhone 6s, the app becomes pressure sensitive to your fingertip, so if you press lightly you get a smaller line and if you press harder you get a darker line.
3D Touch is brand new, so for now you can only use it in Apple’s own apps. But give it a little bit of time, and I’m sure that clever app developers will find all sorts of useful ways to integrate 3D Touch into the unique functions of their apps. I suspect that six months from now, I’ll be using 3D Touch in all of the main apps that I use, and as a result I will be much faster and more productive on my iPhone. (And I’m sure that game developers will have a lot of fun finding ways to take advantage of 3D Touch in games.)
3D Touch is a big deal, one of those great features, like Touch ID, that is simple to use while also providing a lot of power. And unlike Touch ID, which is just about security and verification, 3D Touch will be useful for numerous apps in countless different ways. This is the big new feature of the iPhone 6s, and like multi-touch on the original iPhone in 2007, I predict that it will become an integral part of the iPhone experience for many years to come.
Speed
3D Touch may be the biggest new feature in the iPhone 6s, but one of the most noticeable new features in the speed. The iPhone 6s uses Apple’s new A9 processor, and is the first iPhone with 2 GB of RAM. (It has been 1 GB of RAM since the iPhone 5 was released in 2012.) Those two upgrades make everything on the iPhone a lot faster. Thus, it is more responsive and it is easier to get your work done without waiting for the iPhone to catch up with you. Every new iPhone is faster than the generation before it, but the jump in speed this year is especially noticeable, and really nice.
Apple also introduced the second generation of Touch ID, which means that the iPhone reads your fingerprint even faster. Touch ID wasn’t slow on prior models, but now it is virtually instantaneous. For a silly game, see if you can wake up an iPhone that is asleep by pressing the home button but pull your finger off quickly before the iPhone has read your fingerprint and unlocks the screen. Can you even do it? It is possible, but you need to be really, really fast. And if you are unlocking your iPhone just to look at something on the lock screen, such as the time or date or a notification on the lock screen, you are better of pressing the sleep/wake button on the side of the iPhone where there is no risk of the iPhone recognizing your fingerprint.
Apple also improved Wi-Fi and LTE on the iPhone 6s. For example, my cable modem typically provides download speeds of around 100 Mbps to my computer, connected to my router via an Ethernet cord. If I’m in the same room as my Airport Base Station, my iPhone 6 will typically get top download speeds of around 70-75 Mbps. My iPhone 6s can get over 100 Mbps — wireless Internet that is just as fast as wired. As I walk farther away in my house the speed decreases, but it remains noticeably faster on the iPhone 6s.
Hey Siri
The iPhone previously had the ability to use the Hey Siri function when it was plugged in to power. Thus, if you were charging your iPhone, even when the screen was black because it was asleep, you could say “Hey Siri” followed by a command and the iPhone would respond. Say “Hey Siri what time is it” and the iPhone will speak the current time. With the iPhone 6s, Apple has moved the Hey Siri function onto the integrated M9 coprocessor, which means that Hey Siri can be turned on all the time — even when your iPhone is not charging — without draining the battery.
When I first heard of the improvement to Hey Siri, my thought was that it was interesting but that I would turn it off immediately. After all, I don’t want my iPhone performing commands just because someone next to me says “Hey Siri.” But on the iPhone 6s, the iPhone lets Siri learn your voice before Hey Siri is activated, which means the risk of someone else activating Siri is much lower.
As a test one night, I put my iPhone 6s in the middle of the table, when the screen was dark and it was asleep, and I said “Hey Siri what time is it.” Siri instantly recognized my voice and told me the time. Then I asked my wife, my son, and my daughter (who were sitting around the same table) to say the same thing. Sure enough, Siri ignored them. My son and daughter then attempted to imitate my voice, again with no success. Mind you we are talking about a 7 year old girl and a 9 year old boy, so their attempts to imitate my deeper voice were fairly unconvincing, even though they did provide me and my wife with lots of comedy. Nevertheless, this initial test — unscientific as it may be — led me to decide to keep the Hey Siri function on for a while and see how it works in real life. It is pretty useful to be able to ask Siri a question without having to first hold down on the home button — especially if my hands are on my computer keyboard because I am writing a brief or typing an email.
Camera
There are four new features when it comes to taking pictures with an iPhone 6s. First, the front-facing camera is a much better 5-megapixel camera (up from 1.2-megapixel) and the screen of the iPhone can flash to simulate a flash. I don’t take many selfie pictures, so this doesn’t mean much to me, but I won’t judge if high-quality selfie pictures are important to you.
Second, the new Live Photos feature automatically captures the 1.5 seconds of video before and after you take a picture and saves that as a movie along with the picture itself. The result is a picture that takes up twice as much space, but you have the ability to 3D Touch in a picture to see what happened just before and just after the picture. If you have kids or pets, this could be a fun feature — and the feature is especially amusing to my kids since we just finished reading all of the Harry Potter books.
Third, the back camera features a 12-megapixel camera (up from the 8-megapixel iPhone 6). This can result in slightly better pictures, although in my limited tests so far it hasn’t proven to be a major improvement over the iPhone 6. Even so, it is nice for the camera to get better every year with every new iPhone.
Fourth, you can now choose to capture video in 4K. I haven’t decided if I will use this feature. On the one hand, TVs are so much better today than they were 20 years ago that I’m sure they will be even better 20 years from now, so part of me wants to preserve the highest quality video of my kids so that the quality looks good even in the future when the technology is much improved. On the other hand, 4K video takes up a lot of space, although I do have the largest iPhone model (128 GB) so I suppose I have room for it.
I’m glad to have these four new features, especially since I take a lot more pictures and video with my iPhone than with my Nikon DSLR camera, which takes beautiful pictures but is big and heavy and a pain to carry around. The camera on the iPhone 6 was already pretty darn good, but it is nice to be better.
Other changes
Those are the big changes, but there are some other improvements. The iPhone body is stronger as a result is the use of a new aluminum casing. The glass on the face of the iPhone is stronger. There is a new Rose Gold color, which is like a metallic pink. (I got the Space Gray model.)
The iPhone 6s is also sightly heavier than the iPhone 6 (143 g/5.0 oz versus 129 g/4.6 oz). It’s not something I notice unless I put one phone in each hand and actually try to feel the difference; in every day use the weight feels about the same. Note, however, that I have heard that the weight difference is more noticeable on the iPhone 6s Plus, which is 192 g/6.8 oz versus 172 g/6.1 oz for the iPhone 6 Plus.
The iPhone 6 was the first iPhone that I ever used every day with a case, because the curved sides made it somewhat slippery and I was afraid that I would drop it without a case. The iPhone 6s feels just as slippery to me, so I guess I’ll be using that case again for another year.
Upgrade experience
This is the seventh year that I have upgraded to a new iPhone. Some upgrades have been better than others, but this upgrade did not go smoothly for me.
My typical advice for an iPhone upgrade is to connect your old iPhone to a computer running iTunes and do an encrypted backup. That way, even your passwords and settings are stored in the backup file. Then connect the new iPhone to the computer and restore from that same backup file. This system has worked very well for me in the past.
I knew that this year would be different because I use an Apple Watch, which is designed to work with only a specific iPhone. I would also have to move it to the new iPhone.
Based on what did and did not work for me, here is what I recommend that you do if you own an Apple Watch and you are upgrading:
Launch the Apple Watch app on your old iPhone, tap the first option “Apple Watch,” and select Unpair Apple Watch. That will backup the contents of your Apple Watch to your old iPhone, and then remove the connection.
Connect the old iPhone to a computer and do an encrypted backup.
In iTunes on that computer, click on the App section, then click the Updates tab, and click Upgrade All Apps in the bottom right corner.
Connect the new iPhone to the computer and follow the instructions to restore from that backup that you just made.
Launch the Apple Watch app on your new iPhone, pair it to your Apple Watch, and select to restore the Apple Watch from the backup that you made in Step #1.
Unfortunately, I didn’t do Step #3, and it caused me a lot of problems because some apps were not correctly updated on my new iPhone. Instead, I saw many apps on the iPhone 6s with dark icons and the word “Waiting…” under each app, as shown here:
I never could figure out how to force those apps to finish updating. After trying lots of other steps (re-syncing to the computer, signing out of the App Store and signing back in again, tapping on the icon, screaming at the icons, etc.) I ultimately had to delete each affected app from my iPhone and download a fresh new copy from the App Store. For some apps, that was actually no big deal because the app contained no unique data for me. For other apps that had some data associated with them, I lost that data when I deleted the app and downloaded a new copy. (For example, I lost my workflows in the Workflow app and my actions in the Launch Center Pro app, and I had to recreate them. Fortunately I could consult my old iPhone 6 to to do so.)
Hopefully you won’t have any of these problems when you upgrade. Perhaps my advice will help.
Conclusion
Apple is now on its ninth iPhone model, and it is still managing to come up with great new features. The iPhone 6s is a true joy to use. 3D Touch is fantastic, making it faster to get things done on an iPhone, and this feature will become even more useful when third parties embrace it. Also, the increased speed and the other new features all contribute to the overall experience. The iPhone 6s is a nice upgrade from last year’s iPhone 6, but if you are using an older model of the iPhone then this will be a huge upgrade for you.
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This article won the BlawgWorld Pick of the Week award. The editors of BlawgWorld, a free weekly email newsletter for lawyers and law firm administrators, give this award to one article every week that they feel is a must-read for this audience.
Apple announced on September 21 that iOS 9 had the fastest adoption rate ever of any version of iOS, with more than 50 percent of devices updated only five days after iOS 9 became available for download. When you think about how many iPhones and iPads are in use, that is a very impressive number. On September 23, Apple released a minor update to iOS 9, version 9.0.1, to fix a few minor bugs. Earlier this week, the iPad mini 4 went on sale, and today, the new iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus go on sale. Suffice it to say that there is a lot going on right now in the world of iOS. And now, the other news of note from the past week:
Do you enjoy reading this In the news post every week, and wish that you could have more of something similar? Florida attorney Katie Floyd has started posting a Week in Review post on Sundays (9/20, 9/13, 9/6). The format is similar, although her focus is on iOS and Mac, as opposed to the focus here on iOS and attorneys. The first three installments have been excellent, and I think that most iPhone J.D. readers would enjoy reading them as much as I do. Check out her KatieFloyd.com website to read them every week.
Do you want to vote for iPhone J.D. in a contest? The Expert Institute nominated iPhone J.D. for its list of best legal blogs, and is running a contest to see which blogs get the most votes. You can click here and then click the Vote button to vote for iPhone J.D. But for an opposing viewpoint, the 3 Geeks and a Law Blog makes its best — and funniest — argument that you should vote against iPhone J.D. and vote for that blog instead. Whoever you decide to vote for, no registration is required, so this will take you like two seconds to do.
North Carolina attorney Brian Focht of The Cyber Advocate interviewed New York attorney Nicole Black to discuss the role that wearable technology, such as the Apple Watch, will have for attorneys.
Attorney Jeremy Horwitz of 9to5 Mac notes that, based on the early reviews, the new iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus cameras give high-end DSLR cameras a run for the money.
For a contrary view, Geoffrey Fowler of the Wall Street Journal opines that while the iPhone 6s Plus camera is the best all-around smartphone camera on the market today, it is not as big an improvement over last year’s iPhone 6 Plus as he would have liked.
Speaking of that camera, one of the reasons to get the larger iPhone 6s Plus over the iPhone 6s is that the Plus model has optical image stabilization, which can make a big difference when shooting video. John Gruber of Daring Fireball linked to this video by Giga Tech which shows side-by-side video taken by both new iPhones, and it is easy to see what a difference optical image stabilization makes. I hope that Apple eventually brings this technology to the small model of the iPhone.
Microsoft announced on its Office Blog that it introduced a new app called Invite that makes it easier to determine the best time for a meeting that work for all of the attendees.
Aly Keves of The Daily Dot reports that you can now use the Starbucks app to place an order before you even get to the store, and then skip the line when you get there.
Rene Ritchie of iMore explains 3D Touch, the new technology in the iPhone 6s that has been getting rave reviews.
Rene Ritchie also reviews the new iPad mini 4. It is basically everything that you like about the iPad Air 2, but in a smaller and lighter size.
Dan Moren of Six Colors discusses how he uses his Apple Watch after five months. My experience is similar to his.
Federico Viticci of MacStories reviews Just Press Record, a simple voice recorder for the iPhone that you can be used to record and play audio on the Apple Watch.
T-Mobile announced this week that it will start selling the Apple Watch, and will let you pay for the Apple Watch Sport in 24 monthly installments with no interest — so only about $15 or $16 a month.
A high school football player says that his Apple Watch recently saved his life when the heart rate monitor readings prompted him to go to the hospital and discover that he had a life-threatening condition. Chance Miller of 9to5Mac reports that Apple CEO Tim Cook heard about this, talked to the guy, and then offered the guy an Apple internship, which is a great stepping stone to getting a job at Apple — sort of like Apple’s version of a summer associate at a law firm.
Sandy Stachowiak of AppAdvice reviews iTranslate, an app that can translate between languages on the Apple Watch.
If you use your Apple Watch when you workout and find that you sometimes accidentally tap the screen — it has never happened to me, but I guess it does happen for others — Serenity Caldwell of iMore reports that there is a new option in watchOS 2 that you can use to lock the screen during a workout.
Roman Loyola of Macworld reports that he temporarily lost his Apple Watch because he uses the last notch on the Sport Band to fit his wrist. But as he notes, Apple recently started selling a L/XL version of the Sport Band (although only in black or white, not the 16 colors available in the other sizes) which is perfect for larger wrists. I myself have a larger wrist and use the last notch on my M/L Sport Band, and Loyola’s experience is making me wonder if I should get the larger size band.
If you watch the Netflix show Orange is the New Black, then you should watch this video produced by Netflix to announce that you can now pay for Netflix via iTunes. Funny stuff.
And finally, there is now a two-minute long trailer for the upcoming Steve Jobs movie, which will be in theaters next month. This is the movie written by Aaron Sorkin and based on the popular book by Walter Isaacson. The early reviews have been very positive, so my hope is that this will be a good movie. Here is the new trailer:
The iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus go on sale this Friday. Apple gave review units to a small number of people two weeks ago, and they were allowed to post their reviews starting yesterday. Thus, if you want to learn more about the 2015 models of the iPhone from folks who have had a chance to try them out, now you can do so. Some reviews are more interesting than others, and here are the ones that I recommend if you want to read more:
John Gruber of Daring Fireball explains why the iPhone 6s is a bigger advancement than last year’s iPhone 6 was.
Christina Warren of Mashable believes that 3D Touch is a game changer, likes the new Live Photos feature, and also likes the new pink color (which Apple calls Rose Gold).
Attorney Nilay Patel of The Verge prefers the iPhone 6s Plus, and likes 3D Touch but thinks that third party developers need to start implementing 3D Touch before it will live up to its potential.
David Pogue of Yahoo Tech says that the biggest improvements are speed and 3D Touch.
Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal is disappointed that Apple didn’t improve the battery life, and thinks that Live Photos is the best new feature.
