It was the end of the era this week with David Letterman going off of the air. I remember Letterman using an iPad for a Top Ten list when the iPad first debuted, but until this week I did not know the back story. It turns out that Andy Ihnatko, a Boston-based technology columnist for Chicago Sun-Times, had a pre-release iPad for review from Apple, and he let Letterman use it — and lick it — on the program. His story was published this week in the Sun-Times, and it is worth reading for anyone who enjoyed watching Letterman over the years. The article also includes a video clip of Letterman with the iPad that night. And now, the news of note from the past week:
New York attorney Nicole Black interviewed me to talk about the Apple Watch in an article for the Above the Law website.
If you use, or want to use, TranscriptPad for the iPad — a fantastic app for reading and annotating transcripts — the free TranscriptPad Quick Start Guide has been updated to version 2.2. You can download it from the iBookstore by clicking here.
If you have been thinking of getting 1Password for the iPhone, iPad, Mac or PC, it is currently 30% off, as noted in this post on the developer’s blog.
Tech columnist John Moltz explains why it is great to use the Apple Watch in the kitchen. I’m a big fan of using the “Hey Siri” function to dictate tasks to my Apple Watch, and I love that you can do it hands free, whether you are in the kitchen or anywher else. I can just lift my wrist and say “Hey Siri remind me to [whatever]” and Siri will remind me at the right time or place.
Roger Fingas of AppleInsider reports that MD Anderson Cancer Center is giving patients Apple Watches as a part of its breast cancer treatment.
Do you use Emoji on your iPhone, iPad or Apple Watch? Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal wrote an article about learning to write using Emoji. Much of the article is actually written using Emoji, although an English translation is available.
Andy Faust of WatchAware recommends using the Mickey Mouse watch face with black and white mode enabled for a retro look.
Mickey Campbell of AppleInsider reports that Apple CEO Tim Cook gave the commencement address at George Washington University this past weekend. The article includes the full 20 minute video.
It’s an old joke that people claim to read Playboy just for the articles, but as Andrew Tarantola of Engadget reports, you can now download the free Playboy Now app, an app which contains Playboy articles but absolutely no nudity. I downloaded it yesterday — to perform my research for this post, of course — and it was interesting to see articles about very explicit intimate acts juxtaposed with far less titillating articles such as “How to recover an unsaved draft in Microsoft Word.”
And finally, this past Sunday, the first trailer was released for the Steve Jobs movie coming out in October. This is the movie written by Aaron Sorkin, based on the book by Walter Isaacson. Here it is:
Yesterday, Apple released the first update — I’m sure the first of many updates — for the Apple Watch, updating the software from Watch OS 1.0 to Watch OS 1.0.1. That is only a minor number change, which seems appropriate because this is only a minor update. No new features are added, and instead Apple improved the performance of Siri and several activity monitor functions such as measuring stand activity and calculations during workouts, along with some other minor improvements. If you open the Apple Watch app on your iPhone (which is what you use to update the watch) you can see all of the details of Watch OS 1.0.1:
Although this update is a minor one, it is nice to see that the Apple Watch is already starting to mature, even though it is a brand new device. And as I think back to the carefree youthfulness that was Apple Watch 1.0, I find myself thinking of the origin of my Apple Watch. How was my Apple Watch born? Well, um, when a mommy iPhone and a Daddy iPad love each other very much …
Let’s try a different question. When was my Apple Watch born? There may be a more ascertainable answer to that one. I learned from Episode 37 of the Upgrade podcast released this week, with hosts Jason Snell and Myke Hurley, about how you might be able to determine this date from the Activity app on the iPhone.
The purpose of the Activity app is to show how you are doing with your three circles measured by the Apple Watch — Move, Exercise, and Stand. The Watch wants you to stand up and move around at least once an hour for at least 12 hours, to exercise for at least 30 minutes, and to move around enough to burn a certain number of calories every day (an amount that varies based on how active you normally are). For example, last week I was able to complete all of my circles every day, and I can see that in the Activity app:
If I scroll back even further, I can see the first day on which I started to measure real activity on the circles was Friday April 24, 2015, which makes sense because that is the day that my Apple Watch first arrived:
But if I scroll back to the prior week, I see that my watch measured some activity on Tuesday, April 14 and Wednesday, April 15. That’s around ten days before my Apple Watch was first on my wrist. On April 15, my watch even measured enough activity around 5am Central to record two calories being burned:
How was my Apple Watch measuring movement before I even had the watch? It’s just a theory, but it makes sense to me that April 14 was the day that my Apple Watch was first born, the day that it was first turned on and able to measure something. It measured activity on the 14th and 15th, and was then powered down. It was then powered back on again on Thursday April 23, sent to me overnight FedEx, and then I had it on April 24. That would explain all of the movement measured by my Apple Watch.
Does learning an Apple Watch’s birthday constitute useful information? Perhaps not, but you never know, maybe one day it will be important to know that my watch was born on April 14, 2015. My own horoscope sign is Scorpio, so hopefully Aries and Scorpio are compatible.
If you have read this far into this post, I suspect that you either already have an Apple Watch or you will have one someday. When you get it, check your Activity app to see when your own Apple Watch was born. And feel free to post your watch’s birthday in the comments to this post. I’m curious to learn of the birthdays of the earliest Apple Watches to be sold.
In September of 2014, when Apple released iOS 8 for iPhone and iPad, Apple began an overhaul of the way that its products manage photographs. On April 8, 2015, Apple completed that transition by releasing an update to the Mac operating system, OS X Yosemite 10.10.3, which introduced the new Photos program, a replacement for iPhoto. You can still use iPhoto for now, but Apple doesn’t plan to update it anymore, so its days are numbered. Photos, on the other hand, is not only the supported program, but is also a much better program with great new features, such as being much faster to use, even if you have tens of thousands of pictures, plus with Photos you can make all of your pictures available on all of your devices. Thus, I recommend that anyone who uses a Mac start moving from iPhoto to Photos, especially if you also have an iPhone and/or iPad.
The problem is that Photos is new. Many of the ways that you used to do things in iPhoto are different in Photos. Indeed, the entire philosophy for how the software organizes photos is different. Knowing that I would need to learn how to make my way through this transition, I bought, and posted a review of, an ebook called Photos for Mac – A Take Control Crash Course by Jason Snell. That book is still only available in preview form, with the full content expected to be released very soon, but for now that book won’t tell you all that you need to know about Photos.
In the meantime, California attorney David Sparks recently released a 2.5 hour video called Photos Video Field Guide. It costs $9.99, and I had planned to buy a copy because I’ve always been impressed by the other videos and iBooks produced by David, but he was nice enough to send me a free copy to review. I finished it over the weekend, and I loved it.
I enjoy reading books and articles when I am trying to learn something new, but sometimes there is no substitute for having someone actually show you something. Photos Video Field Guide is a screencast, so you see David’s computer screen, iPad screen or iPhone screen while you listen to him explain exactly what he is doing. This is an excellent way to show how Photos works. Sure, I could have eventually figured out many of the features of Photos by just fiddling around with the software, but now that I’ve watched David edit and manipulate photos while explaining what he was doing, I no longer need to waste time figuring out the basics.
While I most wanted to watch this video to learn about Photos on the Mac, this video also does an excellent job of explaining how to use Photos on the iPad and iPhone. Even though I’ve been using those apps since last Fall, I learned a ton about those apps that I didn’t previously fully appreciate. One of the key advantages of Apple’s new approach to photographs is that you can now view and seamlessly work with your photos across platforms — Mac, iPad and iPhone. Thus, it makes perfect sense that this video pays attention to all three platforms.
The video also does a good job of appealing to a spectrum of user levels. David walks you through everything, so this video is perfect for a complete novice, but I found the entire video interesting and educational even though I consider myself an advanced iPhoto user and I even use Photoshop a little. I can recommend this video to you regardless of your digital photography skill level.
In addition to showing off how to use all of the features, David does an excellent job of explaining the new philosophy of Photos. I’ll admit that I had been upset that Apple got rid of Events, which was the central focus of iPhoto, and something that I felt very comfortable using. But now that I understand Apple’s new organization philosophy in Photos of using years, collections and moments, along with the new super-fast search features of Photos on the Mac, iPad and iPhone, I finally get it. There was a moment this past weekend when I was listening to David talk and I all but heard a bell ring in my head (much like Don Draper in the Mad Men finale Sunday night) and suddenly I got it. (And I’ll refrain from making further references to Mad Men for those of you who have not yet watched it on your DVR.) For me, finally understanding why Apple did what it did in Photos, as opposed to the old approach in iPhoto, was perhaps the best part of watching the Photos Video Field Guide.
The video is fully bookmarked, so after you finish watching the video if you want to go back to, say, the section on Searching Photos in iOS, just click on the chapter icon in QuickTime Player (or whatever you use to watch videos) and you can jump right to 01:18:51 where that starts.
Rather than me continuing to wax poetic about this video, let me stop and simply refer you to the very generous 30 minute sample of the Field Guide provided by David. This is essentially the first 30 minutes of the screencast, so you can watch this, and if you like it, you can buy the full video to watch the other two hours and have a copy that you can save on your computer to refer to in the future.
The Photos Video Field Guide is an excellent way to learn all about Apple’s new approach to photographs and all of the powerful things that you can do in Photos on the Mac, iPad and iPhone. I really enjoyed this video, and if you enjoy taking photographs, you will too.
I only ran across a few articles this week that struck me as good candidates for In the news, so here is today’s shorter-than-normal list of articles that you should consider reading and other items that you should be aware of:
New York attorney Nicole Black discusses her first week using an Apple Watch in an article for The Daily Record. Niki and I had the opportunity to talk on the phone about the Apple Watch earlier this week, and she made the good point that the Apple Watch can be even more useful for female attorneys than for male attorneys. While men often store an iPhone in an easy-to-reach shirt pocket, women often keep the iPhone in a purse. Being able to glance at your wrist to get information is even more valuable when the alternative is having to dig through a purse to find an iPhone. As Niki writes in her article, with the Apple Watch, there is “[n]o more reaching for your phone or digging through your purse to locate it when it’s ringing. Instead, you just look at your wrist for the time, the weather, your upcoming appointments, notifications of important communications and more.”
Minneapolis attorney Sam Glover of Lawyerist wrote a 35-page PDF e-book called 4-Step Computer Security Upgrade in which he provides advice on the four best things that attorneys can do to improve their security. The e-book costs $10, and Sam gave me a free copy to review this week. I agree with all of his suggestions, and any attorney that follows his advice will be much better protected.
Tech analyst Ross Rubin discusses the future of the iPad in an article for iMore.
Apple explains on this page that you can improve the accuracy of distance and pace measurements on an Apple Watch by doing a 20 minute workout with both your iPhone and Apple Watch.
And finally, David Pogue of Yahoo Tech shows in this video why Apple’s new ResearchKit for the iPhone is a big deal. He calls it the best product that Apple has ever produced:
While my wife attended an event last night, my kids decided that the rest of us should go out to eat TexMex. The three of us had a fun evening, but at one point when my daughter was dipping a chip in salsa, she managed to spill a little salsa on my Apple Watch. It wasn’t much, and I just wiped it off with my napkin and didn’t think much about it at the time. But last night as I was using the watch on a treadmill, I noticed that the Digital Crown (the tiny dial that you can turn on the side of the watch) wasn’t spinning correctly; it felt like it was getting stuck. And after I finished exercising, when I was trying to scroll through an email on the watch, the crown wouldn’t scroll the message at all. (I could still scroll by flicking my finger up and down the screen, but not with the Digital Crown.) It occurred to me that the salsa must have somehow gotten stuck around the Digital Crown, although I couldn’t see it.
Turn off your Apple Watch and remove it from the charger.
If you have a leather band, remove it from your Apple Watch.
Hold the Digital Crown under lightly running, warm, fresh water from a faucet for 10 to 15 seconds. Soaps and other cleaning products shouldn’t be used.
Continuously turn and press the Digital Crown as water runs over the small gap between the crown and the housing.
Dry your Apple Watch with a non-abrasive, lint-free cleaning cloth.
I followed these steps, finishing up by drying my Apple Watch with an official iPhone J.D. logo MOBiLE CLOTH, left over from the ones I had been handing out at ABA TECHSHOW last month. (I presume that these steps will work for you even if you didn’t see me at TECHSHOW and you use another cloth.) Finally, after a short prayer that I had not just ruined my Apple Watch, I turned it back on.
Sure enough, the Digital Crown was once again working great. Really great. It actually now spins better than it has since the first day I started using the Apple Watch. This reminded me, I always wondered whether a tiny amount of sunscreen got caught in the Digital Crown when I used it at Jazz Fest just two days after my Apple Watch first arrived. Maybe that is what happened; that page on the Apple website talks about “substances like dust or lotion” getting caught around the Digital Crown.
Please DO NOT start sticking your iPhone or iPad under the faucet the next time that you encounter a problem. I really cannot emphasize enough that the sink is not a remedy for an iPhone app that crashes. But if you think that something might have gotten stuck in or around the Digital Crown on your Apple Watch, give it a quick warm shower as Apple suggests, and you should be up and running again.
I’ve been on the lookout for good iPhone apps that also work well on the Apple Watch, and that led me to buy an app called Deliveries. This app has been around for many years, but I had never tried it. The app costs $4.99 and gives you a central location to track any packages sent via all of the popular delivery services. This past week, I had packages coming to me via UPS, FedEx and U.S. Mail, so I figured that was a good chance to test this app. I found that the app works well for the times when you want to check status, but I had less success when I waited for the app to send me push notifications.
Entering your tracking numbers
To use the app, you need to start by providing the app with a tracking number. The easiest way to do this is to use cut-and-paste. For example, my Apple Watch has a classic leather band, but I also ordered a Sports Band to use when working out. Last week I received an email from Apple telling me that my band had shipped and would deliver by May 8. That email told me that my watch was being shipped via FedEx and gave me a tracking number. I selected that number in the email, copied it, and then launched the Deliveries app.
Deliveries automatically sensed that I had something that appeared to be a tracking number on the clipboard, and asked me to confirm that I wanted to use that number. I tapped Add.
Next, the app asks you to confirm the delivery company, which Deliveries had correctly guessed was likely a FedEx delivery, but also gave me some other choices. I tapped FedEx to confirm, and then I could type a unique name to identify this package. I entered “Band” and then tapped Save.
After those few taps the app knew about my package.
Other times I had to use a few more taps to get the information added. For example I ordered some headphones from Amazon, and although Amazon sent me an email when they shipped, I had to go to the Amazon website to get the tracking number. For this package, it turned out that Amazon was using the U.S. Postal Service.
Of course, you can also manually enter a number, but tracking numbers are typically so long that I imagine that most folks will want to use cut-and-paste whenever possible. If you have access to a barcode, you can also tap the + at the top right of the app’s main screen and then tap on the barcode icon to turn on your camera so that you can scan a barcode to enter the tracking number. I haven’t yet tested this feature myself, but I imagine that it could be useful when you are sending a package that you want to track.
There are a few other ways to enter tracking numbers, and you can get all the details here. But I imagine that copy-and-paste of a tracking number is how much folks use this app.
Tracking Packages
Once the Deliveries app knows about your package, it is easy to check the status. Simply open the app and the app checks the appropriate websites to find the latest shipping status. The main screen of the app lists each item, puts a big number to indicate how many more days you have before the delivery is coming, and even uses appropriate color coding for entries — such as brown for UPS, purple for FedEx and white for U.S. Mail.
Opening the Deliveries app on an iPhone is much, much faster than having to find the email or website to locate the tracking information and then clicking the appropriate buttons to search the current status. Just launch the app and the status of all of your pending deliveries are in one central location, no matter what store you ordered from and what service is shipping the package.
If you want more information, just tap on any entry. That brings you to a screen that shows you the additional information on the status of the package, including a map that shows where the package is and where you are located. If you want even more details, tap “View details online” to go directly to the FedEx/UPS/etc. website page for that tracking number.
Once your package is delivered, the entry remains on the app’s main screen. If you want to remove it, swipe to the left and tap Archive. You can find packages — both new ones and ones that are archived — by typing search terms in the Search box at the top. Or type a space in the search field to see every entry that has ever been tracked by the app, including archived entries.
Apple Watch
There is also a Deliveries app for the Apple Watch. You cannot enter a new tracking number on the watch (nor can I imagine wanting to do so), but when you tap the icon to launch the app you see a handy list of the packages that you are tracking on your iPhone.
Tap on any entry to get more details on the current status, similar to what you see on the iPhone (including a map, albeit a tiny one given the size of the watch screen).
For those times when you are eagerly anticipating the arrival of a package, it is nice to be able to check the status with a few taps on the watch instead of having to use the iPhone app.
Notifications
All of the features I described above work very well and make this app worth getting. Having said that, the one feature of the app that I was most looking forward to was notifications, especially notifications on my Apple Watch, and this is an area in which the app fell short for me.
I usually have my packages delivered to my office, which means that they are given to the mail room at my law firm. The mail room is on the 44th floor of my building and my office is on the 46th floor, and so sometimes I have to wait an hour or two for a package to show up in my office. For those times when I want to get a package as soon as it arrives, it is nice to know that the package is already at my law firm. For example, this past Friday I was eager to try the sports band on my Apple Watch. My hope was that the Deliveries app would send me notifications within a few minutes of that package arriving in my office, so that I could just walk down to my mail room to get it right away.
Similarly, if you have a package being delivered to your home and if the delivery company just leaves it on your porch without ringing a doorbell, it would be nice to know, right away, that it is there.
The Deliveries app does advertise that is provides notifications, but in my experience they were sent to me very infrequently, and often too late. For example, I was handed a package from Amazon that had been sent via U.S. Mail without getting any notification that it had arrived. In this case, the fault was with the U.S. Mail, which did not even update its website to say that the package had arrived until that night. But at the same time, I was also handed my watch band, which had been sent via FedEx, without getting any notification from the Deliveries app, even though the FedEx website reflected that it had been delivered an hour earlier.
The app does seem to check in from time to time to update entries, and did occasionally send notifications of delivery updates to my iPhone/Apple Watch. But the app doesn’t seem to check very often.
When you launch the app, Deliveries updates status at that time, and then doesn’t send you notifications of that updated status because you are already looking at it. If you never launch the app, Deliveries will send you updates via push notifications, but you should not count on those being timely notifications.
Other
There is also a version of Deliveries that works on the Mac, and the app uses iCloud to sync information between the iPhone and the Mac. I didn’t test the Mac version.
Deliveries is a universal app, so it also works on the iPad, again syncing information using iCloud. Deliveries on the iPad takes advantage of the larger screen by showing both a list of packages being tracked and the details for one of the items — essentially showing on one screen what the iPhone and Apple Watch show on two screens.
The iPhone app also features a notification center widget. If you enable it, you can check your package status just by swiping down from the top of your iPhone screen, without even having to launch the app.
Conclusion
Deliveries works great for those times when you decide that you want to find out the latest status of your packages. Just launch the app on your iPhone or Apple Watch, and in a few seconds you’ll see the current status.
Deliveries didn’t work as well in my tests when I wanted to have the app to take the initiative and push a timely notification to me. Notifications did come, but not as quickly as I had hoped when I purchased the app.
Nevertheless, I can still recommend Deliveries for anyone who is interested in tracking package status and who wants a quick and easy way to do so. The app really shines when you have multiple packages in route because a simple launch of the app collects different information about different items from different delivery services and then shows you all of the information at once.
Here we go again; another week in which there is very little iPhone/iPad news but a lot of Apple Watch news. For example, I enjoyed the short article by Dave Caolo of Apple World Today in which he recommends silencing your iPhone, silencing your Apple Watch, and turning your Apple Watch haptic settings to high. This way, you get your alerts via a tap on your wrist instead of a noise or vibration from an iPhone, maximizing the utility of the Apple Watch and making you less annoying to others in meetings. The way that I do it is a little different, but he and I agree on the goal. Indeed, shifting my alerts from my iPhone/iPad to taps on my wrist is one of my favorite features of the Apple Watch, especially since you can control which notifications are important enough to tap you on the wrist. As the Macalope wisely wrote in an article criticizing a New York Times editorial, “the Watch is like an administrative assistant for your phone. It filters the things that vie for your attention.” I agree 100%. And now, the news of note from the past week:
A small administrative note: I switched my domain registration service this week, and depending upon your own internet server provider, iPhone J.D. may have been down for a period of time yesterday. Also, if you sent me email on Thursday afternoon, there is a chance that it did not come through so consider resending it. I apologize for the inconvenience, but everything should be up and running now.
Jason Snell of Six Colors was the first person I saw who figured out and posted that you can change the volume of your iPhone playing music or a podcast by using the Digital Crown on the Apple Watch. This is really useful.
Jon Fingas of Engadget reports that a Florida woman, who was held hostage and not permitted to use her phone for anything other than to order pizza, inserted a 911 message in her pizza order using the Pizza Hut app. The Pizza Hut employees saw the plea for help and called the authorities.
Apple has a new part of their website called Everything changes with iPad, showing off lots of different ways that you can use your iPad when cooking, learning, traveling, redecorating, and in business.
And finally, as we get ready for Mother’s Day, what would it be like if Siri was your mom? The Daily Dot explores this in a funny video — which works because it stars Susan Bennett, whose voice was the basis for the first version of Siri. Very much worth watching:
A few weeks ago, LynkTec sent me a free review unit of its 360 Tablet Kickstand. I received it just a few days before I headed to Chicago for ABA TECHSHOW, and I have kept it on my iPad for the last three weeks, except to periodically remove it just to make sure that it is still just as easy to put on and off. This is a really useful device that I can recommend for two reasons: it is a great stand, plus it is also makes it much easier to hold an iPad in your hand.
Microsuction adhesion
When I first saw this device, I assumed that it had some sort of a sticky paste as an adhesion, which made me nervous that if I stuck it to my iPad, it wouldn’t easily come off again. But to my surprise, it actually uses nothing glue-like at all, so there is no residue that could be left on the back of your iPad. The device instead uses microsuction technology, which is like having thousands of tiny suction cups gripping the smooth back of the iPad. I cannot see them, but they are there.
To apply the device, just push it firmly down on the back of your iPad. To remove it, put your fingers around the curved part and slowly and gently pull it off. I applied and removed the device many times, and had no trouble attaching it or removing it.
Once attached, it is a very, very strong connection. I have no concern that it will come unattached by mistake. And I have never noticed even a hint of a problem with the connection in the three weeks that I have been using the product.
When the device is removed, you can apply an included plastic pad over the microsuction end so that you can store it in a briefcase or purse and it won’t stick to anything else.
Stand
The primary purpose of the product is to serve as a kickstand. Once attached, the hinge on the leg of the device can be adjusted to any angle. Once in an angle, it is very firm and stays in that angle until you move it. Even if you type or push down rather hard on the iPad, the leg stays in place at that angle.
The number 360 is in the name because you can also spin the leg. It snaps into any of eight positions. Frankly, it could have just snapped into four positions — I cannot think of any reason that you would want the stand at a diagonal position. If you think of the stand as normally being pointed down at the 6 o’clock position, by turning it to either the 3 o’clock or the 9 o’clock position, the stand will hold an iPad in a portrait position. I use my iPad in a landscape position far more than the portrait position, but it is nice that this stand can adjust to portrait when you need it.
Holder
The device makes a nice kickstand, but what I liked even more is that it works so well as a holder or handle for the iPad. I frequently find myself leaning back in a chair and reading documents, transcripts, etc. on my iPad. I found that holding the leg in my hand was much more comfortable than holding the edges of the iPad. (Indeed, this is a reason that I used to love to use the FreeOneHand, but unfortunately that product has not been updated for the iPad Air / iPad Air 2.)
Although the leg is made of aluminum, it has soft curved edges on the side, so it doesn’t hurt to hold it i your hand for a long period of time. The openings in the leg give you lots of spots to place your fingers so that you can find a position that feels best. And the leg is tapered near the bottom, which also gives you another place to comfortably grip the leg.
For example, during my plane ride to Chicago for TECHSHOW, I had some transcripts to review. I launched the TranscriptPad app, held my iPad by gripping the 360 Tablet Kickstand in my left hand and annotated using my right hand, and it was a much more comfortable way to hold my iPad during a long flight than just gripping the edges. I also felt that the iPad was much more secure, far less likely to slip out of my hand than if had been holding it at the edge.
Limitations
Because this product attaches to the back of your iPad, you cannot use it if you have a case that covers the back. I use an Apple Smart Cover, which just protects the front of my iPad, so that wasn’t a problem for me.
The device does protrude somewhat from the back of your iPad, even when you fold the leg all of the way down. I typically carry my iPad in Tom Bihn Ristretto bag, and the sleeve where the iPad goes is big enough to accommodate this device. But if you use some sort of very slim sleeve to cover your iPad, it may or may not work with this device attached.
Conclusion
The best thing that I can say about the Lynktec 360 Tablet Kickstand is that when I first received it, I had planned to remove it after my review was posted. But instead, I plan to keep using it for a long time. It is incredibly useful, it feels good in your hands, and it adds almost nothing to the size and weight of your iPad. This is a great product for anyone looking for an effective way to prop up an iPad on a desk, plus a way to more easily hold it in their hands.
The world of iPhone and iPad this week was pretty much all focused on the Apple Watch. I’ve now been using mine for a week, and I continue to really like it because it is so convenient to use. Sure, almost everything that you can do on an Apple Watch you can do on an iPhone, but it is just as true that just about everything that you can do on an iPhone, you could do on a computer. Of course, carrying around a computer — while possible, especially with a small laptop — is not convenient, and that is why we all have iPhones in our pockets. Similarly, it is a lot more convenient to glance at your wrist than to fumble for an iPhone in your pocket every time you need to look at a notification or get some other quick information. At the risk of needing to change the name of this website from iPhoneJD.com to something like WatchJD.com, here is the news of note from the past week, with a heavy emphasis on the Apple Watch:
One of the presentations that I gave at ABA TECHSHOW in Chicago a few weeks ago was called 60 Apps in 60 Minutes. When I got home from Chicago, I posted a list of all of the 60+ apps that we discussed. But while I was still in Chicago, right after the session ended, I was interviewed by Laurence Colletti of the Legal Talk Network and I explained the reasons for including some of the apps in our list. That interview is now part of a podcast, so if you want to hear what I had to say, you can listen to the podcast here on the Legal Talk Network website, or you can download the podcast on iTunes here. That podcast also includes a discussion of Android and Windows apps, but the iPhone/iPad part of the podcast is at the very beginning.
Sparks also says that when it comes to organizing the icons on your Apple Watch, X marks the spot. [UPDATE 5/5/2015: After trying this for a while, I went back to the normal clustering. For me, I find that it takes too long to move up and down and around the legs of a large X to find an app that I want. Still, it is an interesting idea that some might like.]
Kathryn Rubino of Above the Law tells the tale of U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss who lost an iPhone on a ski slope. And for the record, the tale has nothing to do with the Apple Watch.
New York attorney Nicole Black talks about how lawyers might use an Apple Watch in this post for The Daily Record.
Ochsner Hospital in New Orleans is using the Apple Watch to monitor patients, as noted by Meg Farris with WWL-TV. I’m sure that we will see more of this in the future.
When Siri first came out on the iPhone 5s, people frequently shared examples of some of the funny things that Siri said. It’s been a while since I’ve seen one of these articles, but J.R. Bookwalter wrote an update for Macworld that shows that Siri hasn’t lost her sense of humor.
And finally, if you really need to get more information on torturing an Apple Watch (specifically, the Sport model), this video from CNET made me wince, especially when she took out the cheese grater:
Earlier this week, I encountered my first problem with the Apple Watch, but fortunately I discovered a quick fix for it. The problem was that my Apple Watch didn’t see my iPhone. The solution was to reset Bluetooth. Here are the details in case this happens to you.
The Apple Watch works best when it is in constant communication with your iPhone — preferably via Bluetooth, but if your iPhone and Apple Watch are too far away for Bluetooth (e.g., your iPhone is upstairs in your bedroom, but you are downstairs), they can also communicate if they are on the same Wi-Fi network. If your Apple Watch doesn’t have that Bluetooth or Wi-Fi connection to your iPhone, there are some things that it can still do all on its own, such as:
Operate as a watch
Use the alarm, timer, stopwatch
Play music, if you have previously synced a playlist (up to 1 GB of music) to your Apple Watch
Track your activity (stand, move, exercise) with the Activity app
Track workouts (e.g., you can go for a run with your Apple Watch and leave your iPhone at home)
Display photos that you previously synced to the Apple Watch
Use Apple Pay to make purchases
But for most of the rest of the features of the Apple Watch — such as work with apps on your iPhone, display your text messages and emails — you need to have that connection to your iPhone.
The problem that I experienced was that I wasn’t getting emails on my Apple Watch, and I looked at the display and saw that there was a red icon at the top center of the watch showing an iPhone with a line through it:
Here’s a close up view of that icon:
This icon was an indication that my Apple Watch lost its connection with my iPhone. And similarly, when I swiped up on my Apple Watch to get to the Glances view and looked at the Settings Glance, I saw an indication at the top that the iPhone was disconnected:
I knew that this should not be happening because my iPhone was in my shirt pocket — just a few feet from the Apple Watch on my wrist. They were more than close enough for a Bluetooth connection. But on my iPhone, when I looked at the Bluetooth settings, I similarly saw that my Apple Watch was not connected, even if I tapped on the entry for the Apple Watch to try to force a connection:
Fortunately, there was an easy fix. I flipped the switch at the top of the screen shown above to turn off Bluetooth, then I waited a few seconds, then I turned Bluetooth back on again. Suddenly, my Apple Watch and my iPhone found each other again.
All of this happened on Monday morning, and in the several days since then, it has not happened again. Hopefully that was just a one-time bizarre problem for me, but if it happens to you too, now you know what to do.
