Yesterday, Apple released watchOS 2, the first major software update for the Apple Watch since the watch was first released about five months ago. With watchOS 2, the Apple Watch feels more complete, with lots of features that seemed to be missing in the past. For example, you can now use the Apple Watch to reply to an email. I’ve found it very useful to reply to text messages on the watch, so I suspect that I’ll use this feature quite a bit too. You have the ability to dictate a reply, but I suspect it will be far more useful to tap one of the default replies. Apple includes some common useful replies such as “Let me get back to you” and “Got it, thanks” and “Working on this now.” You also have the ability to create your own default replies.
But I think that the big new feature in watchOS 2 will be the better support for third party apps. Because the update just came out yesterday, we’ll have to wait and see how third parties take advantage of the new features. Third party apps should be faster since they can now run natively on the watch. Also, I’m really looking forward to seeing third parties take advantage of the opportunity to add their own complications to a watch face. I’m sure that developers will come up with some creative and useful complications that provide features on the watch face that Apple doesn’t provide. And if you use your Apple Watch when you workout, third parties will be able to make their own workout apps that can use the same live health sensor data (such as your heart rate) that the built-in Workout app uses, plus you can use those third party apps and still get credit on your Activity circles.
Speaking of working out with an Apple Watch, it is now much faster to start a workout. Instead of taking the time to find the Workout app, launch it, and then press the correct buttons to start a workout, you can now use Siri both to launch the app and to start the workout. Just activate Siri on the watch (hold down the Digital Crown for a second) and say something like “Start outdoor run workout” and the workout begins, without you having to press any other buttons. It’s nice to be able to get right in to your workout without fiddling with the watch.
As someone who uses Apple’s HomeKit technology (I have Lutron Caséta Wireless Dimmers installed in some of the rooms in my house), I’m thrilled that Siri on the Apple Watch can now control HomeKit. I can just tell my watch to turn on, or dim, lights in different rooms in my house, even if my iPhone is on the other side of the house. Not only is it useful, but also it feels like magic.
I’ll warn you that the update process wasn’t as smooth for me as I would have liked. During my first attempt to update my watch, the process seemed to just hang when my iPhone was at the stage of verifying the update (before putting the new software on the watch). I had to restart my iPhone and Apple Watch and try again. Fortunately, the second time worked fine.
There’s lots that is new today in watchOS 2, but perhaps most of all, I’m really excited to see what will be new on the Apple Watch in the coming weeks and months as third party app developers come up with innovative ways to take advantage of the powerful new tools that Apple has given them in watchOS 2. If you own an Apple Watch, you should upgrade.
There are lots of great new features in the new iOS 9, and for the last few days I’ve been looking at a feature that I think will be really useful for lawyers and their clients: the new Markup feature in Mail in iOS 9. This feature gives the Mail app the built-in ability to perform simple annotations on documents, including adding a signature to a document. Thus, it is now quick and easy to circle some key parts of a document that one of your colleagues or opposing counsel needs to address. It is also easy for you to emphasize a part of a document for your client to review. And because it is simple to add a signature in a document, you can sign something that someone else sent you without leaving the Mail app.
Selecting a file to markup
I suspect that this feature will be most useful to me when someone sends me a PDF file and I want to reply with an annotated version of the document. It is now very easy to do this on an iPad or an iPhone. (The below pictures are on an iPad.) Just hold down your finger on the PDF attachment, and look at the bottom row of options. One of the options on that row is now Markup and Reply; it has an icon that looks like a toolbox. Tap that icon, and the Mail app will start a reply email (note — in my tests it started a Reply All, not just a Reply to the original sender) with the documents attached and then will open up the attachment so that you can annotate it.
Alternatively, if you already have a PDF attachment to an email that you are working on, just hold down on the document, and in the pop-up menu you will see an option called Markup. Looks like it is the fourth option.
In this post, I focus on annotating PDF files because we use them so much as lawyers, but note that the Markup feature also works with images.
Annotating the document
The next step is to annotate. The new Markup feature only includes basic annotation tools. You cannot highlight, add stamps, etc. Instead, your options are limited to freehand drawing, typing text or creating a zoom circle.
To start drawing on a document, select the pen tool at the bottom left. You can then draw anywhere on the document.
You can change the color of the ink by pressing the circle icon, third from the right at the bottom of the screen. You can change the size of the pen by tapping the icon with the three lines.
If you draw something that looks like a shape (a circle, ellipses, square, rectangle, line, triangle), after you draw you will see an option at the bottom of the screen to leave it the way that you drew it or to change it to a perfect shape. That option is shown in the prior image, and this next image shows what a corrected shape looks like:
I wish that there was an option to turn a line into an arrow by adding a triangle head to one end of it. For now, it looks like you need to draw your own arrows.
UPDATE: Another lawyer at my firm just showed me that you can create arrows. Just draw something that looks close to an arrow, in a single stroke, and then at the bottom of the screen tap the arrow option to clean it up. My error was making a line, then lifting my finger, then drawing the triangle on the end of the line with a second stroke. You instead need to keep your finger on the screen while you are making both the line and the head of the arrow.
When the pen tool is turned on (blue box around the pen icon), you can draw on the screen. When the pen tool is turned off, you can tap on any annotation that you have made and choose to delete it, edit it or duplicate it.
The second tool is a magnification loupe. It creates a circle that zooms in on a part of the document. Both the size of the circle and the magnification of the zoom are adjustable. This gives you the ability to zoom into a part of the document.
The third tool is the text tool. It works as you would expect — tap a part of a document and then write some words. You can adjust the color, and you can also adjust the font by tapping the icon at the bottom right.
Signatures
Markup also makes it fast and easy to add signatures to document. Just tap the fourth icon at the bottom. The first time you do so, you will be prompted to enter your signature.
You can then add the signature to your document. Drag the four corners of the signature to adjust the size, and drag the signature to the right location.
After you enter your signature once, it is stored and shared to your other devices. Thus, you might want to sign the first time on your iPad, taking advantage of the larger screen and perhaps even using a stylus to create a nice signature, and then you can easily use that same signature in the future on your iPad or iPhone just by tapping on it after you press the signature icon. You can create and store multiple signatures.
When you are done with all of your annotations, just tap Done. Then you can send your email with the annotated file attached.
Usefulness of Markup
The Markup feature doesn’t do anything that you cannot already do with third-party apps. And third-party apps offer more annotation features, such as highlighting. And many third party apps, such as GoodReader, let you flatten a file before you send it so that the annotations become a more permanent part of the document. Annotations that you create using the Markup feature can be deleted, edited or moved around by the person to whom you send the annotated document.
Having said that, it is nice to have an option built-in to Mail because it is so much faster to use. If you just want to quickly circle something in a document, Markup can do it well, and do it fast.
I can also see Markup being useful if you want to send a document to a client and you want them to circle something or sign the document. Plus, you can send a document to anyone else using an iPhone or iPad and ask them to sign it without needing to worry about whether they have a third party app installed that can perform that function. They do need to be running iOS 9, which is currently brand new, but eventually most people will be on iOS 9.
Have you updated your iPhone and iPad to iOS 9 yet? You should. From everything I have been reading, this is the most problem-free iOS upgrade ever. The new features are fantastic (some of which are discussed below), you’ll get more battery life, everything is more polished and advanced, and it costs you nothing to upgrade. Bravo, Apple. And now, the news of note from the past week:
watchOS 2.0 was supposed to be released this week, but Apple delayed it for a short time to fix a bug that it found at the last minute. While you wait to update your Apple Watch, you can read about all of the upcoming new features in Rene Ritchie definitive review of watchOS 2.0 on iMore.
Apple has cut the price of iCloud storage, which you can use to share documents between an iPhone, iPad and Mac. iCloud is most useful for me as a way to make all of the photos on my Mac (almost 50,000) also available on my iPhone and iPad, which is great when I want to share that one picture from 13 years ago that I remember. And of course, iCloud is also a place to store your documents. Dan Moren of Six Colors describes the new iCloud plans and shows how they compare to Dropbox and other cloud storage services.
Jeff Benjamin of iDownloadBlog says that one of his favorite features of iOS 9 on the iPad is the new folder layout, which now shows you 16 apps in a folder (up from 9). I like this change too.
David Pogue of Yahoo Tech reviews the DxO One, a $600 accessory for an iPhone that lets it take SLR-quality photographs.
Apple CEO Tim Cook was in New York this week, and John Paczkowski of BuzzFeed had the chance to ask him some questions.
And finally, the reason that Tim Cook was in New York was to be a guest on the new Late Show with Stephen Colbert. It was a great interview, with Cook and Colbert both at their best. Definitely worth watching. Here is the video:
Yesterday, Apple released iOS 9 for the iPhone and iPad. It is a solid, free upgrade that adds some great new features. The new Notes app is particularly nice, with support for inserting pictures, creating checklists (great for a packing list), etc. The split view will help me to be even more productive on my iPad.
But I’m just as excited about all of the tiny improvements, each of which makes your day-to-day usage of the iPhone and iPad so much better. For example:
The keys on the keyboard change to uppercase or lowercase letters depending upon the mode. Thus, you no longer have to stare at the shift key and try to guess whether it is on or off. Amen.
When you hold down the home button on the iPhone to activate Siri, you no longer get an audible beep and instead just get a discreet vibration.
You can swipe from left to right on your first home screen to perform a search, but that page also gives you helpful shortcuts that Siri thinks that you might want to use, such as recent contacts, apps you are likely to want to launch, etc. It is a little thing that makes the iPhone faster and easier to use. I really like it.
Third parties can now add themselves to that Siri search screen. For example, I use 1Password to store my passwords. I can now swipe to the search screen and type “Apple ID” to see an entry for my Apple ID password in the 1Password app. When I tap it, the 1Password app launches directly to that entry so that I can quickly see my long and complicated password. Other apps can also add themselves to the search screen.
The system font on the iPhone used to be Helvetica Neue, but in iOS 9 it changes to an Apple-designed font called San Francisco, the font used on the Apple Watch. It is a subtle change, but I find it easier to read.
For more information on everything that is new, I have two sets of recommended articles. First, if you just want a nice short overview of the highlights, I liked these articles:
Today, Apple will release the latest version of the iPhone and iPad operating system, iOS 9, plus the first major upgrade to the Apple Watch operating system, watchOS 2.0.
[UPDATE: iOS 9 was released around 10 Pacific / 1 Eastern. However, Apple is delaying the release of watchOS 2.0; Rene Ritchie of iMore has more details in this article.]
I discussed the major features of iOS 9 in my post three months ago. Many iPads will get the option to run two apps at the same time, Siri is greatly improved, there is a much better Notes app, better battery life, and lots of other little improvements that will make the overall experience of using an iPhone and iPad much better.
For Apple Watch owners, today will be the first major upgrade. I think that the biggest two improvements will be native third party apps (which should be much faster and more powerful) and third party complications, so that you can better customize your watch face. The new Time Travel feature gives you the opportunity to see upcoming events by just turning the Digital Crown. And there are lots of other improvements: Siri is improved, you will be able to reply to an email on the watch, the new Nightstand mode is added, etc. If you want more details, Serenity Caldwell of iMore wrote a good post on what is new in watchOS 2.0.
It’s always nice when the device that you already own gets better. If you own an iPhone, iPad or Apple Watch, that will happen today. Apple hasn’t announced what time the updates will go live, but based on what has happened in the past my best guess is around 10 Pacific / 1 Eastern. Enjoy!
I noted yesterday that I’m curious to find out if the weight of the larger iPad Pro will be a problem. Jason Snell, the former head of Macworld who now writes at Six Colors, wrote about the weight based on his hands-on time with the iPad Pro, saying: “The thing that struck me the most about the iPad Pro was how light it feels. It weighs the same as the original iPad, but that pound-and-a-half is spread across its 12-by-8.7-inch body. During the stage presentation, they showed photos of someone casually holding the iPad Pro with one hand. It looked wrong—like a bit of marketing hype, trying to make you think that this iPad that’s so large it’s illustrated with a picture of Jupiter isn’t so huge—but it turned out to be right.” And Jim Dalrymple of The Loop wrote: “After using iPad Pro yesterday, I can tell you it’s gorgeous. The screen is outstanding, it’s fast, the battery will last 10 hours, and it’s lightweight.” That’s good news to me, because if the weight is not a problem, I see the larger size of the iPad Pro as a great feature for lawyers who need to work with documents all day long. And now, a few other news items of note from the past week:
Attorney Jeremy Horwitz of 9to5Mac points out 10 lesser-known items about Apple’s new products announced this week.
One set of the new Apple Watch bands were created by luxury-goods maker Hermès with assistance from Apple. Christina Passariello of the Wall Street Journal reports on how these bands came about.
Microsoft announced, on its Office Blog, that its iOS apps such as Word are being updated for iOS 9. For example, you will be able to use the Inking function to write handwritten edits on a document. I do that now, but I have to first convert a Word document to a PDF and open it in a PDF editor to do so. It will be handy to do it directly within Word.
Matt Apuzzo, David Sanger and Michael Schmidt of the New York Times report that when the Department of Justice asked Apple to turn over text messages of iPhone owners, Apple’s response was no — because the encryption that Apple uses makes it impossible to do so. DOJ wants Apple to figure out some way to give the government access, but the article quotes Apple’s CEO’s Tim Cook to describe the problems with this approach: “If you put a key under the mat for the cops, a burglar can find it, too. [And if criminals or countries] know there’s a key hidden somewhere, they won’t stop until they find it.”
Dieter Bohn of The Verge reports that BlackBerry is acquiring Good Technology. That story was like a walk down memory lane for me; before the iPhone existed I used a Palm Treo running Good Technology software for email, and before that, I used a BlackBerry device for email.
Do you want to watch a movie or a TV show but don’t know the best way to stream it? In an article for Macworld, J.R. Bookwalter reviews JustWatch, a free website that shows you everywhere that you can stream or download specific titles.
Rory Appleton of The Fresno Bee reports that a college student in California was shot by a robber — but fortunately he was protected when the bullet hit his iPhone in his pocket. Who needs Wonder Woman’s bracelets when you have an iPhone.
One of the Apple employees to show off the new Apple TV at the keynote event this week was Jen Folse, a member of the Apple TV team. It was her first appearance on stage at an Apple event, and while I noticed in the video stream that her fingernails were painted blue, I didn’t notice until I saw an up-close photograph after the event that she actually had them painted with the graphic that Siri makes when you talk to it in iOS 9, as you can see here and here. Awesome and funny.
And finally, if you want to sell your current iPhone to help pay for the new iPhone 6s, Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal offers some excellent tips in this video:
Yesterday, Apple announced all of its new hardware for the Fall of 2015. The new Apple TV looks like a lot of fun, and there are new bands and colors for the Apple Watch, but today I want to focus on the new products that lawyers will use to be more productive: the iPhone 6s (and the iPhone 6s Plus) and the iPad Pro. The new iPhone looks the same as last year’s model but includes amazing new features on the inside. The new iPad Pro looks very different from prior models, mostly because it is so large, but also because of two accessories made by Apple to work with the iPad Pro: a stylus and a keyboard/case. Here is why I think that lawyers will really love the new iPhone and iPad.
IPHONE 6S AND IPHONE 6S PLUS
The new iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus cost the same as last year’s models, so there is no extra charge for the “s” in the name. You can pre-order them starting in the wee hours of Saturday September 12 at 12:01 am Pacific / 3:01 am Eastern, and they will be available starting Friday, September 25.
3D Touch
The big new feature of the iPhone 6s is 3D Touch. Apple has taken the Force Touch technology on the Apple Watch (which distinguishes between simply tapping and pushing down harder) and has brought it to the iPhone. For example, you can still tap on an app’s icon to launch the app, but 3D Touch lets you push down a little harder on the app’s icon to see a pop-up menu of options to do with that app. This saves you steps. Instead of launching the app and then selecting an option, you can just jump straight to that option. For example, instead of tapping the Messages app, you can push harder on the app and jump directly into your conversation with a specific person.
Apple is also using 3D Touch to introduce something called Peek and Pop. Peek lets you preview something, and Pop let’s you act upon it. So if you are looking at a list of emails, a light press on an email lets you Peek to preview the contents, letting you see the email without formally opening the email. If you want to actually work with the email, press harder to Pop it open. Today you might tap an email, see what it is about and decide that you want to work with it later, and then mark it as unread and go back to your list. With 3D Touch, you can quickly Peek at the email and decide whether you want to do something with it or just leave it unread.
You can also use Peek and Pop on items such as a webpage URL (peek at the website before deciding if you want to actually load it in Safari) or an address (see a map preview).
3D Touch adds a certain degree of complexity, but many folks who were able to try it yesterday at the Apple demonstration say that it quickly becomes second nature. I’m sure that it is very similar to learning the difference between a left-click and a right-click on a computer mouse; the left-click is simple to understand, but once you learn to use the right-click you have a lot more power.
Faster Wi-Fi and LTE
The Wi-Fi on the iPhone 6s adds a feature called MIMO (multiple-input and multiple output). Most new routers have this, including Apple’s own Airport Extreme, which I reviewed last year. The end result is that your Wi-Fi can be up to twice as fast.
The iPhone 6s also supports LTE Advanced. This means that cellular data can be twice as fast, but you have to be using a carrier that supports LTE Advanced, and you must be in a city where it is available. Over time, however, LTE Advanced will spread to more areas, and the iPhone 6s will be ready for it.
Speed
The brain (the CPU) of the iPhone 6s is 70% faster than the iPhone 6, and the graphics processor (the GPU) is 90% faster. This means that the iPhone is even more responsive, which is always a good thing.
It also lets the iPhone do new things such as use the “Hey Siri” function even when the iPhone isn’t plugged in to power. Your iPhone can just be sitting on your desk and you can ask Siri a question and have it respond. I look forward to trying this to see how it works in the real world. Do I have to worry about someone else standing close to me and saying “Hey Siri” and triggering some option, such as placing a phone call? So the jury’s still out for me on whether I’ll turn that feature on, but I like that the new iPhone 6s is powerful and efficient enough to allow for new features like this.
Camera
The iPhone 6s also features an improved camera on the back (the iSight camera). It features a 12-megapixel camera (up from the 8-megapixel iPhone 6). Autofocus is faster and better. The iPhone 6s can record 4K video (up from 1080p on the iPhone 6).
The camera on the front (called the FaceTime camera) is also improved. It is a 5-megapixel camera (up from 1.2-megapixel) and the front of the iPhone can flash white to simulate a flash when you are taking that selfie picture in a bar late at night.
Other features
One of the things that I don’t like about the iPhone 6 is that it has slippery edges. The iPhone 6 was the first iPhone I’ve used that I feel needs to be in a case to prevent it from slipping out of my fingers. The iPhone 6s has the same design, so you’ll probably want a case for it too. But if you are not hiding your iPhone 6s in a case, then you might be interested to learn that in addition to the Silver, Space Gray and Gold colors that last year’s iPhone 6 came in, the iPhone 6s adds the color Rose Gold — sort of a shiny pink.
Touch ID is also improved, so the fingerprint sensor can read your fingerprint even faster. I suppose that is a good thing, although it is already pretty darn fast on my iPhone 6.
The iPhone 6s also features something called Live Photos — a photo that you can tap to see motion, based on a series of photos. For those of you with kids, this feature reminds me of the photographs in Harry Potter in which the individuals in photos move around as you look at them.
IPAD PRO
Apple will continue to sell the 2014 iPad Air 2 and the 2013 iPad Air, but if you want a new iPad you need to go either smaller or bigger. The new iPad mini 4 packs all of the power of last year’s iPad Air 2 into the smaller size of the mini, and starts at $269.
I know that the mini has its fans, but I’ve always considered a larger screen an advantage for getting work done with the iPad, whether I am reading documents or working with exhibits. Thus, I am particularly introduced in the brand new iPad Pro. It starts at $799 for a 32 GB version, and costs $949 for a 128 GB version. (And for another $130, you can get the 128 GB version with built-in 3G LTE.) It will be available in November, but Apple hasn’t given a specific date.
Larger Screen
The biggest feature of the iPad Pro is that it is big. The new iPad Pro features a 12.9-inch display. The iPad Air 2 has a 9.7-inch display. So whereas the iPad Air 2 is 9.4 inches high and 6.6 inches wide, the new iPad Pro is 12 inches high and 8.68 inches wide.
Another way to get a sense of the size difference it to consider pixels. The iPad Air 2 has a resolution of 2048 by 1536 (at 264 pixels per inch). The iPad Pro has the same number of pixels per inch, but has a resolution of 2732 by 2048. Note the 2048 in both resolutions. If you hold the older iPad in portrait orientation and look at how high the screen is (2048 pixels high), that is the width of the new iPad Pro.
I’m excited about this new screen size. I spend a lot of time reading documents on my iPad, whether they be Word files or scanned exhibits, and everything should be easier to read on the bigger screen.
One of the marquee features of iOS 9 is the ability to run two apps at the same time on an iPad. With the iPad Pro, you’ll be able to run one app with all of the pixels that it would have had on an iPad Air, plus you’ll have space left over to see a second app that is running at the same time. In other words, you can run two apps at once, and yet one of those apps will be the same size that it would have been on the non-Pro iPad.
Weight
My big concern about the iPad Pro is what do you sacrifice by having that larger size. Weight is the first thing that jumps to my mind. The original 2010 iPad was 1.5 pounds, which seemed heavy, but over time the iPad got thinner and lighter, down to about 1 pound for the iPad Air, and slightly under a pound for the iPad Air 2. But the iPad Pro is the heaviest iPad ever, weighing 1.57 pounds.
While the iPad Pro is essentially the same weight as the original iPad, it only .27 inches in depth, making it about half as thin as the original iPad. And that 1.5 pounds of weight is distributed over a much larger size. Does that distribution of weight over a thinner and larger device make the iPad Pro feel lighter that the original iPad? My hope is yes. Jason Snell of Six Colors got to try out the new iPad Pro yesterday, and he said last night on the Upgrade podcast that the iPad Pro feels super-light, and he had no trouble holding it with one hand. Similarly, Dana Wollman of Engadget says “it feels lighter than it looks.” On the other hand, Andrew Cunningham of Ars Technica says “The tablet is 6.9mm thick and weighs about a pound and a half, and as you’d expect you wouldn’t want to hold it in one hand for very long. You can hold it comfortably in one hand for short stretches, though—it manages to be large without feeling overly unwieldy.” I look forward to trying it myself to see what I think.
Speed
Like the new iPhone, the new iPad Pro is much faster. So much so that Apple says that it is faster than most laptop computers. Phil Schiller of Apple said yesterday that the iPad Pro is faster than 80% of PC laptops sold in the last 12 months.
The message here is that this is an iPad that can compete with a laptop computer. Much like Microsoft positions its Surface Pro as a computer that gives you many of the advantages of a tablet, the new iPad Pro is Apple’s version of a tablet that gives you many of the advantages of a laptop computer. I thought it telling that when Apple introduced the iPad in 2010, it showed off its iWork apps including its Pages word processor. But yesterday, Apple brought Microsoft executives on the stage to show off the iPad Pro running Microsoft Word. Apple clearly sees the iPad Pro as a tablet for folks looking to get work done. (Of course, the larger screen and improved speed will also be awesome for games and watching movies.)
Stylus
I’m a big fan of using a stylus with an iPad to take handwritten notes during a meeting and to annotate documents. Third-party manufacturers have done a great job of making some really good styluses, but they are not perfect. Active styluses can have small tips but are somewhat unresponsive and often do a poor job with things like diagonal lines, and traditional styluses need larger tips that make you feel like you are writing with a marker or a thick crayon instead of a pen.
Apple is introducing a $99 accessory for the iPad Pro called the Apple Pencil, and it looks amazing. Apple says that it has updated the hardware in the iPad itself to work with the Apple Pencil and be amazingly precise and responsive. The Apple Pencil is pressure sensitive, so you can push down harder for wider lines. And the iPad can sense with the Apple Pencil is at an angle, letting you create shading in apps much like you would do with a charcoal pencil.
The Apple Pencil gets 12 hours of battery life on a charge, so you can use it all day long. To charge it, you just remove the cap off of the back of the stylus and plug the stylus into the Lightning port on an iPad. Indeed, if your Apple Pencil’s battery is dead, you can simply plug it in to the iPad for only 15 seconds and you will get 30 minutes of battery life. Wow.
I am incredibly excited to try out the Apple Pencil and see how it works in real life. And while I’m sure that Apple made a high-quality stylus, I hope that third parties will be allowed to take advantage of the new technology to make their own iPad Pro styluses. I’m sure that companies like Wacom and Adonit could create some incredible styluses that built upon what Apple did with the Apple Pencil.
Keyboard
I often use an external Bluetooth keyboard with my iPad when I travel, such as when I want to write longer email messages. Yesterday, Apple introduced another accessory for the iPad Pro called the Smart Keyboard. It is a thin keyboard built into an iPad cover, and costs $169.
Putting a keyboard in an iPad cover is nothing new, and in the past I haven’t liked those keyboards because they didn’t feature full-size keys, the only way to make a keyboard small enough to fit on an iPad case. But with the larger iPad Pro screen, the case can also be larger, so the keyboard can also be larger. I’ll have to try this one out, but it looks promising.
The keyboard also has a new connector, which Apple calls the Smart Connector, which lets the Smart Keyboard talk to the iPad (without using Bluetooth) and get power (so no internal battery is required). Third parties can use this connector too, so Apple won’t be the only one offering cool new keyboards for the iPad Pro.
CONCLUSION
For those of us who use an iPhone and iPad to get work done, the new improvements to the iPhone and iPad sound great. I’m most interested in 3D Touch on the iPhone, the larger screen on the iPad Pro, and the Apple Pencil — three features that I can see myself using every day.
Today at 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern, Apple will give a keynote presentation at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco. Apple hasn’t disclosed what will be announced; the invitation merely says “Hey Siri, give us a hint.” If you actually ask Siri, you’ll get some humorous responses. But there is no doubt that today is the day that Apple will announce the 2015 version of the iPhone. If Apple follows tradition, it will add an “s” to the name, announcing the iPhone 6s and the iPhone 6s Plus today, but of course they might change that.
Apple is also expected to announced a new version of the Apple TV. The first Apple TV was introduced in 2007. It was updated in 2010, 2012 and 2013.
I’m sure that we will also hear something about iOS 9 and the Apple Watch. Some folks also believe we will see a new iPad introduced today, but I don’t expect that. In recent years, Apple has hosted a second event in October to focus on the iPad, and a new iPhone + new Apple TV + Apple Watch seems like more than enough for one presentation. Thus, I’d be surprised to see new iPads today. [UPDATE: OK, I was indeed surprised!]
If you want to watch a live video stream of today’s keynote, you can do so on an iPhone, iPad, Mac or Apple TV. You can also watch it on a PC if you are running the new Windows 10.
The International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) is a peer networking organization for people who work in the legal technology field, such as the people who work in law firm IT departments. ILTA just concluded its annual conference in Las Vegas, and at the conference, ILTA and InsideLegal released the results of their tenth annual technology purchasing survey. The survey was sent to almost 1,300 ILTA member law firms with responses from 184 law firms, about 83% of which were U.S. firms. You can download this year’s report in PDF format here. Here is what I saw in the survey results that struck me as interesting for attorneys who use iPhones and iPads.
iPhones, iPads and the Apple Watch are exciting to IT departments
Every year, ILTA asks respondents to identify the most exciting technology or trend — an open ended question. Two of the top seven answers in 2015 relate to iOS: mobility (use of tablets as desktop replacements; mobile device management; virtual mobile computing; ability for attorneys to connect remotely and perform work without issues) and the Apple Watch. The other five exciting tech or trends were cloud computing, security, virtualization, artificial intelligence, and big data.
For law firms that buy smartphones, 91% buy iPhones
This is a “technology purchasing survey” which means it asks about technology purchased by law firms. There are many categories of legal technology that are virtually always purchased by law firms and not individual lawyers, but the category of mobile technology is one that is moving away from IT purchasing departments. Many attorneys now buy their own device, a practice so prevalent in all companies that there is a common acronym for it: BYOD (bring your own device).
The ILTA survey asks about BYOD, and there has been a move towards BYOD since 2012 although it decreased somewhat this year. In 2012, 10% of firms were BYOD. That increased in 21% in 2013, then to 36% in 2014. This year the number dropped to 32%. This was somewhat surprising to me as I would have expected to see even more BYOD in 2015 among ILTA firms.
The ILTA survey also reveals that 62% of law firms have BYOD policies. I think that it is helpful for a firm to have such a policy, especially for larger law firms. (Of the 28% of law firms that reported not having BYOD policies, 53% were from smaller firms of 1-49 attorneys.)
The ILTA survey does not ask any questions about smartphones that attorneys purchase themselves (the BYOD smartphones), only the smartphones that law firms are buying. If 32% of law firms are BYOD in 2015, that means that around 68% are buying smartphones for at least some of their attorneys. What are they buying? Almost all are buying iPhones (62%), most are buying Android (43%), almost half are still buying BlackBerries (26%), and some are buying Windows smartphones (15%). Or stated differently, for those law firms that purchase smartphones for their attorneys in 2015, 91% are buying iPhones, 63% are buying Android, 38% are buying BlackBerry and 22% are buying Windows.
Here is what the last four years of survey data looks like:
What this chart doesn’t tell you is how many of each smartphone the firms are buying, just that the firm is buying at least one of that brand. On the other hand, the chart does tell us something about which smartphones are acceptable to IT departments at law firms. Back in 2012, half of the law firms were not buying iPhones, and now almost all of them buy iPhones. In 2012, very few law firms would buy any Android smartphones, and now almost two-thirds of them will do so. And while other surveys, such as the latest ABA Technology Survey that I analyzed last month, indicate that attorney BlackBerry use has plummeted over the last few years (only 5% in 2015), over a third of law firms still buy a BlackBerry for at least some of their attorneys. Sure, that is a downward trend, but it shows that BlackBerry still has a role for attorneys when it is the law firm buying the device instead of the attorney.
For law firms that buy tablets, the iPad remains popular
In the 2012 ILTA purchasing survey, only 13% of law firms purchased tablets for at least some of their attorneys. That increased substantially in the 2013 survey, when 58% of law firms purchased tablets for at least some of their attorneys. In 2014, the number dropped to 48%, but this year it is back up to 58%.
For those law firms that do purchase tablets for their attorneys, the iPad remains incredibly popular. In 2015, 81% of law firms that purchase tablets say that they purchase iPads. That’s down somewhat from prior years; it was 92% in 2014 and almost 100% in 2013. For those law firms that do purchase tablets for their attorneys, Android and Microsoft Surface tablets are also popular; about 50% purchase Microsoft tablets in 2015, and about 24% purchase Android tablets.
For the last three years, ILTA has asked “What percentage of your firm’s attorneys use tablets in their day-to-day work?” This year, the answer was 89%, compared to 91% in 2014 and 86% in 2013. I’ve always wondered about this question; does my IT department really know how many of us at my law firm are using iPads day-to-day? Having said that, it is good to know that IT departments understand that the tablet is an important tool for attorneys, and hopefully this knowledge encourages them to help their attorneys get even more value from their iPads.
If you don’t have an Apple Watch and you are wondering what folks use it for, or if you do own one and you want to see how your own usage compares to others, then you should check out the results of iMore’s first survey of Apple Watch users. Over 8,000 folks responded (including me), making this the largest survey of its kind so far. Respondents said that the best features of the Apple Watch are notifications, timekeeping, health and communications — which are also the four functions that are most useful to me. The most popular faces are the Utility and the Modular. (I myself use the Modular face because it has space for lots of complications, such as an indication of my next appointment, the date, and my activity circles.) And the most used apps are Dark Sky, Overcast, 1Password, Fantastical and Twitter. (I use the first four quite a bit; I use Twitterific instead of Twitter.) When watchOS 2.0 comes out — and it will be out soon, probably this month — the Apple Watch will be even more useful, with native apps and third-party complication support. I hope that iMore does a similar survey next year because it will be interesting to see what changes over time. There are not many apps that I’m still using today that I used with my first iPhone, although there are a few as I noted in this post last year, so I’m sure that Apple Watch usage will also change in future years. And now, the news of note from the past week:
Florida attorney Katie Floyd reviews the Ring doorbell, an Internet-connected doorbell that lets you use your iPhone to see who is at the front door.
Katie Floyd also checked out the Spigen Apple Watch Night Stand that I reviewed a few weeks ago. She likes it too, and she was able to test the pad that makes the stand work with the 38mm version of the Apple Watch, which works well for her.
New York attorney Neil Squillante of TechnoLawyer reviews Adobe Acrobat DC, a service that stores your PDFs in the cloud so that you can access them on both your computer and iPad.
Bellefield makes iTimeKeep, an app that you can use to track your billable hours. This week, Bellefield announced that you will soon be able to enter your time using an Apple Watch, which could be useful when you are on-the-go and want to quickly dictate time to your Apple Watch before you forget it. Here is a YouTube video showing how it will work.
The Expert Institute nominated iPhone J.D. for its list of best legal blogs, and is now running a contest to see which blogs get the most votes. If you want to vote for iPhone J.D., click here and then click the Vote button. It only takes about a second to do so; there is no registration required.
Mike Murphy reports, in an article for Quartz, on the most-downloaded apps of all time, according to App Annie. The top app is Facebook; the top game is Candy Crush Saga.
As noted above, one of the products that Apple is expected to update next week is the Apple TV. Luke Dormehl of Cult of Mac takes a walk down memory land to look at Apple’s prior TV-related devices. He actually left out one that I would have put on that list: the Apple Pippin, sold in the mid-1990s.
Apple is also expected to introduce a new iPhone next week. Should you change your carrier when you get a new phone? Brian Chen of the New York Times has advice on choosing the best smartphone plan.
Jason Snell of Six Colors reports that you can now use the Amazon Instant Video app to download certain movies and TV shows, which means that you can watching streaming video even when you cannot stream — such as when you are on a plane. I wish that Netflix would offer this feature.
Geoffery Fowler of the Wall Street Journal reviews the DxO, an external camera for the iPhone that has amazing quality, but is expensive.
If you want a link bracelet for the Apple Watch but don’t want to spend $449 to get the Apple version, you might be interested in third party link bracelets. Abdel Ibrahim of WatchAware reviews the HappyCell link bracelet which you can buy on Amazon for only $80. At this point, however, I encourage you to wait on buying third-party bands. Apple will soon be certifying third-party bands, giving the manufacturers Apple-made parts to connect those bands to the watch, so I would wait a little longer to see what the Apple-approved third party market looks like before spending money on another band.
This is not related to the iPhone or iPad, but it is tech-related and something fun to do with your kids this Labor day weekend. Next year, the InSight lander will be sent to Mars, and if you sign up by September 8, your name can be etched on a silicon chip that will be affixed to the lander. Click here to sign up.
And finally, starting today, you can pre-order from Sphero (the manufacturer) and places like Amazon a $150 iPhone/iPad accessory that just may be the hottest toy this holiday season: the BB-8 Droid. It is a miniature version of the droid that will star in the next Star Wars movie this December, and it looks really fun. It’s like a remote control car with personality. Select members of the press were given review units, and the embargo lifted on their reviews yesterday, so there are lots of great videos showing the BB-8 in action, including this one from Geoffrey Fowler of the Wall Street Journal, this one from Daniel Howley of Yahoo Tech, and even this one from Tina Nguyen who put the cute BB-8 in a room full of even cuter puppies. But my favorite video is the one from Sphero itself:
