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Yesterday, Apple announced the 2014 update to the iPad, and the newest full-size iPad is called the iPad Air 2.  This is an incremental update, not unlike the update from the iPhone 5 to the iPhone 5s, but it hits all the high notes for the iPad and looks like it will be a fantastic tablet for any attorney.  There is a 16GB model for $499 that you should NOT get, a 64GB model for $599 and a 128GB model for $699.  The 64GB model will be perfect for most attorneys, and the 128GB model is great for attorneys who want to carry around a lot of videos and pictures.  As before, an extra $130 gets you built-in cellular.

When I think of what makes the iPad great for attorneys, I think of four things: (1) it is thin and light, much lighter than a laptop, (2) it has a great screen, (3) it is powerful and (4) it is easy to use.  Those are the same four areas that Apple improved in the iPad Air 2, so the 2014 iPad has more of what makes the iPad so great to begin with.

Thinner and lighter

Before the Fall of 2013, I actually used two iPads.  I had a full-sized iPad, which was great for viewing websites and reading documents on a larger screen, and I had an iPad mini, which was great when I wanted something that was lighter and easier to hold.  But once I started using the iPad Air a year ago, it was light enough (1 pound versus the 1.4 pounds of the previous generation) and thin enough (7.5 mm versus the 9 mm of the previous generation) that I no longer felt the need to use my iPad mini.  The iPad Air was thin and light enough to hold for an extended period of time, plus it had the larger screen that I preferred over the iPad mini.

And to emphasize that which you already know, a thinner and lighter iPad is important.  When you are reading transcripts, caselaw, exhibits, pleadings, etc. you are going to be holding an iPad in your hand for a while.  If it is too heavy or awkward to hold for an extended period of time, that is a problem.

The new iPad Air 2 is 6.1 mm versus the 7.5 mm of the iPad Air 1 (or, as Apple describes it, 18% thinner).  That is really thin.  Even the new and thin iPhone 6 is 6.9 mm.  The iPad Air 2 is also slightly lighter at 0.96 pounds versus the 1 pound for the iPad Air 1 (or just a tiny bit heavier for both models if you got the versions with build-in cellular).  Based on what I read from folks who held one yesterday, the weight difference feels even more substantial because the iPad Air 2 is so much thinner than the iPad Air 1, and the thinner iPad 2 is also even easier to hold in your hand.

Suffice it to say that if you have an iPad Air 1, the iPad Air 2 will be slightly easier to hold.  But if you have any prior model of the iPad, which is true for so many attorneys, then the iPad Air 2 is going to be significantly easier to hold than whatever model iPad you have.  Indeed, you could stack two iPad Air 2s and they would still be thinner than one of the first generation iPads.  The thinness and weight will likely be the main reason that attorneys will love the iPad Air 2.

Better display

Apple has been using a great-looking retina display on the iPad since March of 2012.  The iPad Air 2 improves upon that display in two ways.

First, the iPad Air 2 display is laminated, which makes the screen look even better.  Jason Snell of Six Colors was able to try the new iPad yesterday, and here is how he described it:

But what I really liked about the iPad Air 2 was its display.  On these devices, the display is where the rubber meets the road.  The iPad Air 2’s display is laminated, eliminating the air gap between the glass and the screen – they’re attached together now.  This has the same effect it did when the iPhone switched to a laminated display – the pixels just feel that much closer to your finger when you’re touching the screen.  It’s a good thing.

The second improvement to the display is that Apple has found a way to reduce the glare.  Thus, bright overhead lights are less likely to interfere with using an iPad, and the iPad should be even more usable when you are outside.

More powerful

A faster iPad is a more powerful iPad.  You don’t see spinning circles or hourglasses on an iPad like you do on a computer, but when an iPad is faster it is more responsive, which lets you be more efficient and makes the experience of using the iPad more pleasant.  The iPad Air 2 has a new processor (the A8X), which like the processor in the new iPhone 6 (the A8) makes it faster.  Apple says that the CPU is up to 40% faster and the GPU is up to 250% faster with the iPad Air 2.  Another way to look at it is that the newest iPad has 12x the regular processor and 180x the graphics processor as compared to the original, 2010 iPad.

The iPad Air 2 (like the iPhone 6) adds support for the 802.11ac WiFi standard, which came out in 2013 but is starting to see more widespread adoption in 2014.  802.11ac can be twice as fast as the previous 802.11n standard.  It is also more powerful, so if there is a “dead zone” in your home or office in which you used to get a poor WiFi signal, you may now get a better signal when you use 802.11ac.  So if you have a newer router that supports 802.11ac, you should see better WiFi performance with the iPad Air 2.

I always get the WiFi version of the iPad, but if you pay the extra $130 for the version with built-in cellular, there is another new feature with the iPad Air 2.  Instead of coming with a SIM that works on only one carrier, you can now get the Apple SIM that can be used with AT&T, T-Mobile or Sprint.  As I understand it, you could try AT&T for one month, then switch to T-Mobile for the next month, etc.  I look forward to hearing about how this new feature works in practice.  Note that, so far, Verizon has not signed up, so you cannot use its service with the new Apple SIM (but you can get a Verizon-only SIM).

Easier to use, thanks to Touch ID

The final major change to the iPad Air 2 is support for Touch ID, Apple’s fingerprint sensor.  I’ve been waiting for this change for a year, ever since I started using Touch ID on the iPhone 5s.  I can’t even count the number of times that I unlock my iPhone and iPad every day, but this is no longer a problem on my iPhone because it recognizes my fingerprint almost instantly.  The iPad is going to get so much easier to unlock with the addition of Touch ID.  And of course, all attorneys need to be using a passcode lock on their iPads.  If you don’t have one yet, I don’t even want to hear your excuses, start doing so right now.  You don’t want someone else to pick up your iPad and have easy access to all of the confidential attorney-client communications and work product that is on every lawyer’s iPad.  But now with Touch ID, the passcode lock becomes much, much less of a burden.

And starting Monday when Apple Pay debuts, you will also be able to use Touch ID on the iPad to make secure purchases.  No, you won’t be able to walk into a store and tap your iPad on a sensor to make a purchase – which would, of course, look silly – but you will be able to use Touch ID to make secure online purchases with the iPad.

Better camera

For most attorneys, I doubt that the camera on the iPad makes much of a difference.  Even though I can understand in theory the advantage of taking a picture with an iPad because the large screen is a huge viewfinder, in practice it just seems ridiculous.  About the only thing I do with the camera on the back of my current iPad Air is that I sometimes scan a document.

But if the iPad’s back camera is important to you, you’ll be happy to learn that the iPad Air 2 has a better camera.  It is not quite as good as the camera in the iPhone 6, and it is not even quite as good as the camera on the iPhone 5s, but it is better than the camera on prior iPads.

iPad mini 3

If you are a fan of the iPad mini, you won’t be as impressed by the new iPad mini 3.  It adds Touch ID, but otherwise is the same size, weight and speed as last year’s iPad mini 2.  The only other difference is that you can now buy a gold version of an iPad mini.  (There is also a gold iPad Air 2.)

The new range of iPads

Apple is now offering a larger range of iPads than ever before becuase along with the new iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3, Apple is continuing to sell many of the older iPads at reduced prices. 

You can now get the first generation iPad mini, the one that came out two years ago, starting at only $249.  I don’t recommend that any attorney do that because the retina screen on the iPad mini 2 and 3 is so much better, but it is interesting to see Apple selling any model of the iPad at a price that low.  Although I no longer use my iPad mini, my wife still uses it just to read books using the Amazon Kindle app.

The choice between the iPad mini 2 and the iPad mini 3 is tougher.  You pay an extra $100 for the iPad mini 3, but the only improvement (other than coming in gold) is Touch ID.  As much as I look forward to using Touch ID on an iPad, there is nothing unreasonable about saving $100 and getting the iPad 2.  You can even use that $100 savings towards a larger capacity or towards built-in cellular, two features that many will find more valuable than Touch ID.

If you want a full-size iPad, you can also save $100 by buying last year’s iPad Air 1, but I don’t recommend that you do so.  For all of the reasons that I listed above, the iPad Air 2 is easily worth an extra $100 for most any attorney.

Conclusion

If you already have an iPad Air that came out last year, there are some great new features in the iPad Air 2, but you are unlikely to upgrade unless you really want the latest and greatest and/or there is a really good home for your current iPad.  For example, my wife uses an iPad 2 and is ready to upgrade, so she has already called dibs on my iPad Air.  But if you are using an iPad 4 (which came out in the Fall of 2012) or earlier iPad, then you are going to really love the new iPad Air 2.  It has more of everything that you want in an iPad:  it is easier to hold, easier to see, more responsive thanks to the faster processor and WiFi, and easier to unlock thanks to Touch ID.

Apple is now taking online orders for the new iPad Air 2 (with delivery dates of Oct. 23-27), or you can pick one up in an Apple Store and other retailers starting some point later next week.

Today at 10 Pacific / 1 Eastern, Apple will hold an event on its campus in Cupertino, California.  This is a much smaller venue than the one used last month for the iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / Apple Watch announcement, so obviously Apple sees this as a less significant event.  Apple hasn’t said what it will announce, but for the reasons I noted last week, we will surely see a new iPad and iPad mini today, and I also expect to see a number of Mac announcements. 

Apple is providing a live video stream of the event on its website if you want to watch the announcements as they occur.  Otherwise, a few sites are providing live blogs of the event such as Jason Snell of Six Colors via Twitter, The Verge, and the folks at Macworld.

Last month, I reviewed the Maglus, an aluminum stylus created by ApplyDea that is larger than a normal stylus, flat on the sides and has built-in magnets.  I liked it.  It’s a too thick to be my preferred stylus for daily use, but it makes a nice alternative stylus for all of the reasons that I pointed out in that review.  I noted in the review that you can buy replacement tips for the stylus, not only the original rubber tip but also a microfibre tip.  The manufacturer subsequently sent me a free sample of the microfibre tip so that I could try it out, and I’ve been experimenting with it for a few weeks.  For anyone who owns a Maglus, I recommend that you spend the $11.99 to get the microfibre tip so that you have even more versatility with your Maglus stylus.

 

To replace tip on the Maglus, you pull on the silver metal band.  I find that it is easier if you first use your fingernails to separate the metal band from the aluminum body, but then once you get it out a little bit you can pull it off.  Then just push in the replacement tip.  In the following picture, the normal rubber stylus is on the left and the microfibre tip is on the right.

So how does it work?  Most styluses have a rubber tip, which provides good friction against an iPad screen.  A microfiber (or microfibre) tip typically has less friction, so it glides against the screen more quickly, although sometimes you have to press down a little harder for the iPad to sense it.  I found that unlike most microfiber styuses, I didn’t have to press down any harder with the Maglus microfibre tip to get my iPad to sense it.  Perhaps this is because the tip is larger, or perhaps this is because the Maglus is a little heavier than other styluses.  So the microfibre replacement tip gives the stylus a softer, more slippery feel.

Like the original tip, this microfibre tip is larger than the tips on many other styluses.  (See my original review for a picture of the Maglus compared to other styluses.)  And that is the main reason that the Maglus is not my preferred stylus.  I use a stylus primarily to take notes, and I prefer a smaller tip for that.  Having said that, if I am annotating or highlighting a case in PDF format that I downloaded from Westlaw, the larger tip doesn’t bother me at all and is actually sort of nice.  So I recognize that there is no one best size for an iPad stylus tip.

If I had to choose just one tip for the Maglus, overall I prefer the original one.  But it is nice that having this microfibre tip means that you can easily change the feel of the Maglus stylus whenever you are in the mood for something new, or whenever you are doing some task with the stylus for which you prefer being able to move the stylus against the screen more quickly.

Finally, I’ll note that since the time I posted my review of the Maglus last month, the company came out with new colors.  You can now get the original size in silver, black or blue on Amazon.  And if you want the smaller Maglus mini, you can now get it in silver or pink.

You can get replacement tips for the original Maglus tip on Amazon or directly from ApplyDea.  Right now it looks like you can only get the microfibre tip directly from ApplyDea, but I’m told that the following link will work on Amazon very soon if you prefer to buy from Amazon.

Click here to get Maglus Stylus Microfibre Tips from Amazon.

Click here to get Maglus Stylus Microfibre Tips from ApplyDea ($11.99).

I have a tip today that can help you avoid getting sanctioned by a judge when your iPhone rings in court, even though you flipped the switch to mute it, because it is ringing through your iPad.  But first, some background.

A neat feature in iOS 8 for folks who own both an iPhone and an iPad is Continuity, technology that lets you use an iPhone and iPad (and a Mac) almost interchangeably.  For example, one part of Continuity is Handoff, a technology that lets you pass documents from one device to another.  As I noted in my post on email improvements in iOS 8, you can start an email on your iPhone but then decide to finish it up on the iPad where you might have a Bluetooth keyboard attached.  Or you can start reading a webpage on your iPhone, but then decide to continue reading it on your iPad’s larger screen.  You can use Handoff with Mail, Safari, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Maps, Messages, Reminders Calendar, Contacts and even some third party apps.

Another cool Continuity feature is that you can answer your iPhone from an iPad or a Mac.  Imagine that you are on your couch using your iPad while your iPhone is in a different room and a call comes in to your iPhone.  In iOS 8, you can answer the call on the iPad that is in your hand, without having to get that iPhone.  And once the next version of the Mac OS is released — and I’m sure we will learn that date this Thursday — you will also be able to answer calls on your Mac.  I’ve used this feature on my iPad a few times, and it is very useful.  You can even make a call from your iPad; just tap the phone icon next to a phone number in the Contacts app, and your iPad will work as an extension of your iPhone.  To use this feature, your iPhone and iPad must be using the same Apple ID account.

But the point of this post is not to praise the virtues of Continuity, but instead to provide a warning so that you don’t have the same problem that I did this past Friday.  I was in a meeting and my iPhone was in my pocket, but before the meeting started I had flipped the switch on the side to mute the iPhone.  During the meeting, I received a phone call, and because my iPhone was on mute it just vibrated in my pocket, without bothering anyone else in the meeting.  But then a second later, my iPad also started ringing, which caught me by surprise.  It was just a meeting at my law firm with other partners, so it wasn’t too embarrassing, but all I could think of was what if this had happened when I was in court?

Here are two ways to stop this from happening to you.  First, you can turn off this feature of Continuity completely, although it is not very obvious how you do so.  Go to the Settings app on your iPhone, but don’t go to Phone, where you might expect this to be located, but instead go to FaceTime.  Then turn off iPhone Cellular Calls.

 

Alternatively, you can keep the feature enabled on your iPhone, but go to the Settings app on your iPad, tap FaceTime, and turn off iPhone Cellular Calls just on your iPad.  That way, you can use the feature with your iPhone and your Mac, but not with that iPad.

A second solution is to keep the feature enabled, but remember to mute your iPad at the same time that you mute your iPhone.  You may be able to mute your iPad simply by flipping the switch on the side of your iPad, just like you can on the iPhone.  But note that you can control in settings whether the switch on the iPad acts as a mute switch or locks the rotation.  I keep my switch set on Lock Rotation, so I cannot use the switch to mute my iPad.

But there is another way to mute, even if the switch is used to lock rotation.  If you swipe up from the bottom of your screen to bring up the Control Center, there is a row of five icons in the middle, starting with Airplane Mode.  If the physical switch on your iPad is being used for the lock rotation function, then the last of those five icons will let you quickly turn mute on or off.  (If your physical switch is being used for mute, then that fifth icon toggles the lock rotation function.)  Note that you can mute your iPad from the lock screen; you don’t have to be actually using your iPad to mute it.

Two final notes.  First, note that Continuity only works for phone calls if your iPhone and iPad are on the same WiFi network.  If you are in a meeting, court, etc. and your devices are not connected to WiFi, then you won’t have to worry about your iPad ringing unexpectedly, even if you forgot to mute it.  But remember that iOS devices remember WiFi networks, so after you connect to WiFi the first time in a location, your iPad might do it automatically in the future without you even realizing that it happened.

Second, be aware that if you have an older iPad in your house that you are no longer using yourself — perhaps it has become an iPad for your kids — and if that iPad is also using your same Apple ID, that iPad will ring as well unless you go to the Settings app and disable iPhone Cellular Calls on that iPad.  Last thing that you want is for your six-year-old to answer a call that was intended for you.

Using Continuity for phone calls is useful enough that I’ll probably keep it turned on.  But hopefully after my experience this past Friday, I’ll remember that I now have two devices to mute when silence is required, not just one.  And hopefully you can learn from my mistake.

[UPDATE 10/20/14:  Utah attorney Peter Summerill points out another good solution: turn on Do Not Disturb.]

Have you been waiting to update your iPhone (or iPad) to iOS 8 because you don’t have 5 GB free, which is required for an over-the-air update?  Remember that you can always plug your device into a computer running iTunes and update that way, even if you don’t have 5 GB free.  Apple provides info for doing so on this page.  And if you feel like your device doesn’t have as much free space as it should, there was an interesting article by John Moltz that I linked to in August in which he describes how he was able to get a lot more space on an iPhone by restoring it.  I encourage you to update to iOS 8; there are tons of cool new features, and many apps are starting to require iOS 8.  And now, the news of note from the past week:

• For attorneys trying to decide between the big iPhone 6 and the bigger iPhone 6 Plus, I think that the iPhone 6 is the best size for most folks, especially folks who are upgrading from a prior iPhone.  California attorney David Sparks opted for the iPhone 6 Plus anyway just to experience the large size, but as he writes on his MacSparky blog, after about a week he returned to the Apple Store to exchange it for an iPhone 6.
• Oklahoma City attorney Jeff Taylor of The Droid Lawyer talks about built-in encryption on both iPhones and Android phones.
• South Carolina attorney Bill Latham of The Hytech Lawyer recommends some cool apps that have nothing to do with the practice of law.
• The 1Password app for iPhone became vastly easier to use under iOS 8 becasue you could use your fingerprint to open the app instead of typing your (hopefully long!) master password every time you start the app.  This week, the app was updated to version 5.1 to reduce even more the number of times you need to type your master password — now just after a device restart or when Touch ID authentication fails.  This post on the 1Password blog provides more details.  Hopefully we will soon have an iPad with TouchID so that 1Password will be just as convenient on that device.  One other security improvement in version 5.1 is that third party keyboards can no longer be used within 1Password unless you specifically enable them in the Advanced Settings.  I’m not (yet) aware of any third party keyboard being guilty of key logging, but better safe than sorry.
• Yoni Heisler of TUAW wrote an excllent article on the Apple Pay system that will start working later this month.
• If you type a word and then quickly want to capitalize the first letter or capitalize all of the letters, John-Michael Bond of TUAW offers a quick tip for doing so using the new iOS 8 predictive text feature.  Note that for the all caps feature to work, you need to have Enable Caps Lock turned on in Settings -> General -> Keyboard.  (I only rarely type words in all caps, so I typically keep that turned off.)
• Transporter, a prior sponsor of iPhone J.D., provided a great free upgrade this week.  The device now automatically saves prior versions of your documents so if something gets messed up, you can turn back the clock.  And it saves virtually unlimited prior versions, limited only by the size of your Transporter hard drive.  Click here for more information.  I haven’t had to use it yet, but going forward I feel even safer working with documents on my Transporter knowing that the feature now exists.
• Jony Ive of Apple was interviewed yesterday at a Vanity Fair event.  Steve Kovach of Business Insider was there, and wrote this article.  One of the things that Ive talked about was designing the iPhone.  For example, Ive said:  “Years ago we made prototypes with bigger screens. They were interesting features having a bigger screen, but the end result was a lousy product because they were clunky like a lot of competitors’ phones are still. Years ago we realized this is going to be important that we have larger screens but we need to do a lot of things to make it a compelling product.”
• Do you want to get a new Lightning cable for your iPhone or iPad, either a 1 m length like the one that came with it or a shorter or longer version?  Nick Guy of The Wirecutter looked at all the options and recommends the best ones to get.
• And finally, I had a fun app on my iPhone 5 and 5s called Cycloramic.  You set your iPhone on its edge on a flat table, and it uses the iPhone’s vibration motor to spin your iPhone automatically and create a panorama.  It’s a one-trick pony, but it’s a fun trick so I used it occasionally with friends and it always got a laugh, in addition to creating an interesting picture or video.  Soon after I got my iPhone 6, it occurred to me that with the curved edges, there was no way that the app would work.  And yet the very clever folks behind the app figured out a way to use it with the iPhone 6, just using one of the items that comes in the box with a new iPhone.  (It reminds me of the famous scene from the movie Apollo 13:  “We got to find a way to make this, fit into the hole for this, using nothing but that.“)  I couldn’t help but reward the developer’s ingenuity, so I bought new $1.99 iPhone 6-version of the app.  And I can confirm that it does work.  Here is a video that shows how:

Yesterday, Apple announced to select members of the press that Apple is hosting a special event on its campus in Cupertino, CA on October 16th.  The invitation doesn’t state what Apple will announce, but I’m sure we will see a new iPad.  Apple typically comes out with at least one new iPad model a year and they have yet to release a 2014 model.  And in both 2012 and 2013, Apple announced new iPad models in October:  the fourth generation iPad and the iPad mini on October 23, 2012, and the iPad Air and iPad mini with Retina display on October 23, 2013.  So I feel quite certain that we will see something new on the iPad front a week from today.  I hope that Apple also announces new Macs because I’m ready to replace the iMac I use at home, and I’ve been waiting for a new model to be released before doing so.

Apple tries to be cryptic (and sometimes even clever) when it teases new product announcements.  When it sent invitations for the iPhone 6 announcement last month it simply said “Wish we could say more.”  The invitation for last year’s announcement of the iPad Air simply said “We still have a lot to cover.”  The invitation for next week’s event says “It’s been way too long.”  Who knows what that might mean.  Jason Snell of Six Colors says:  “Let the Kremlinology begin! Is it a winking admission that the press was just in Cupertino for an Apple event last month?  Is it a promise of updates to the Mac mini, which hasn’t been touched since 2012?  Is it a high-school reunion?”  

My one prediction that I do feel quite sure of is that Apple will announce an iPad that supports Touch ID (the fingerprint sensor).  After using Touch ID on my iPhone for so many months now, I can’t even count the number of times I have placed my finger on my iPad’s home button waiting for it to use my fingerprint to unlock, only to sigh at myself once I realize that I need to enter a passcode.  I suspect that the smart engineers at Apple have made the same mistake, making them want to add this feature to the iPad.

I doubt that it is possible to count all of the different styluses available for the iPad, but broadly speaking, they can be divided into two categories.  First, you have the newer, active styluses that have a very fine tip, such as the Adonit Jot Script with its 1.9 mm tip, but require a battery.  Second, you have the more traditional styluses that have a larger tip, typically around 6 mm but anywhere from 4 to 8 mm.  Active styluses have awesome tips that resemble a pen but have drawbacks:  you need to keep them powered, which means replacing batteries or charging them; they are thicker and thus feel more like holding a Sharpie than holding a pen; and they often have trouble drawing a straight diagonal line, instead producing something that is more wavy or even jagged.  I still love and use active styluses all of the time, but I am just as likely to opt for a non-active stylus so that I don’t have to worry about those drawbacks.  And when I do reach for a traditional stylus, one of the all-time best is the first generation version of the Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo.  I gave it a favorable review in 2012, I have been happy using it for years, and I cannot even count the number of attorneys and others I have told me over the years that it is their favorite stylus.  You can still buy it on Amazon; the part number is CS110K (where the “K” indicates the color — K for black, B for blue, etc.).

Wacom came out with a second generation Bamboo Stylus duo in 2013 (part number CS150K, with the last letter again indicating a color), which you can still get on Amazon.  I did not try that version myself, but I heard that it was lighter and had a smaller tip.  The original Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo weighs 0.85 oz and had a 6 mm tip.  I understand that the second generation weighed 0.6 ounces and had a 5 mm tip.

Last month, Wacom came out with the third generation of the Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo:

All three generations have a similar look, are approximately the same length, and all have the same feature of a cap on the end that you can remove to reveal a normal pen.  You can place the cap on the pen end while you are using the stylus, and vice versa.  Here are promotional pictures of the first generation (top), second generation (middle) and the new third generation (bottom):

Wacom sent me a free sample of the new third generation model soon after it was released, and I have been trying it out for the last few weeks.  Here are my thoughts.

Size and Weight

What do you want first, the good news or the bad news?  Let’s start with the bad news.  The one thing that I like the least about this third generation of the stylus is that I think it is too light.  The original Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo that I have been using for years weighs 0.85 oz., and as noted above the 2013 second generation weighed 0.6 oz.  This third generation weighs only 0.49 oz, and it really feels substantially lighter.  For many items — such as iPhones and iPads — it is a good thing to have new generations that are lighter.  But at some point, a product simply gets too light and can even feel cheap because of its low weight.  When I go back and forth between my first generation and this third generation, I always prefer the weight of the first generation.  The lightweight third generation feels more hollow, more like a cheap pen instead of a quality writing instrument.

Here is the first generation (top) and third generation (bottom):

It occurs to me that perhaps I am being unfair in preferring a slightly heavier stylus.  After all, my current favorite pen — the Zebra Sarasa Push Clip Gel Ink Pen 0.7 mm (available at Amazon or JetPen) — weighs far less at almost 0.4 oz, and I’ve never felt that it was too light.  I suppose that I have a different expectation for a plastic pen than I do for an iPad stylus. 

As for the other dimensions of the third generation stylus, it has essentially the same great length as the previous generations and the size and aluminum barrel feels good in your hand, very much like a pen.  I’ve also grown to really like the hexagonal barrel and the knurled collar on the Hand Stylus, but the Bamboo Stylus duo also feels nice, and the one that I prefer changes from day to day. 

If the weight difference was the only difference, then I wouldn’t be a fan of the new version of the Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo.  However…

Tip

After starting with the negative, let me move on to the best part of this stylus:  the tip (or to use the more technical term, the nib).  The size remains at the same 6 mm as the first generation Bamboo Stylus duo, and slightly larger than the second generation’s 5 mm tip. 

In general, a smaller stylus tip is better.  A lot of cheap styluses have an 8 mm tip, and I’ve long thought that the original Wacom Bamboo Stylus 6 mm tip worked better.  Having said that, I didn’t notice much of a size advantage when I compared the Hand Stylus with a 4 mm tip to the original Bamboo Stylus duo (although I do really like the Hand Stylus).  But to the extent that a 6 mm tip could possibly be a disadvantage compared to a 5 mm or 4 mm tip, Wacom more than makes up for it with the improvements to this tip.

Unlike the previous generations of the Bamboo Stylus which had a rubber tip, this third generation has a carbon fiber covering on a rubber tip.  The carbon fiber makes a huge difference.  Here is the first generation tip (left) and third generation tip (right), and if you look closely at the third generation tip (click the picture to enlarge it) you can sort of see that the tip has a carbon fiber covering on it:

I’ve previously used styluses with tightly woven conductive fibers on the tip, such as the BoxWave EverTouch Capacitive Stylus.  Those tips provide less friction, meaning that they are smoother against the surface of your iPad, which feels nice, but you typically have to press harder for the iPad to sense the stylus.  Somehow, Wacom has managed to get the best of both worlds with the tip — it feels better against the screen than the rubber styluses used on so many other styluses, including the previous generations of the Bamboo Stylus, and yet I don’t find that I have to press down any harder to use it.  The Wacom website calls this a “unique and responsive carbon fiber nib” and I agree with that description.

I cannot yet comment on how the carbon fiber tip holds up over time.  I used the tip on my original Bamboo Stylus for about two years before I needed to replace it, which I thought was excellent considering how much I used it, and I didn’t mind replacing it because replacements are cheap (three nibs for under $5).  I’ve seen other folks suggest that mesh-style tips need to be replaced more often, and I’ll just have to see how this carbon fiber tip does, but even if I need to replace it once a year, that wouldn’t bother me since the new nibs are cheap.

Etc.

Other than the difference in weight and the improved tip, the other changes are quite minor.  You cannot remove the clip on the third generation Bamboo Stylus duo like you could on the first generation (and I believe the second generation) models, but that doesn’t bother me in the least because I don’t see a good reason to remove the clip.  Not only does the clip make it easier to put the stylus in a shirt pocket or other compartment, the clip stops the stylus from rolling around on a desk. 

The third generation comes in different colors — blue, gray, green, orange, pink, silver — but no longer comes in black. 

The pen side of the stylus works the same as the pen on my first generation Bamboo Stylus duo.  It’s nothing special, especially for someone like me who prefers the larger, darker ink that you get from a gel pen, but it means that you can just carry your stylus with you but you also have a pen in case you need it.  Even if you don’t think that you need a pen, I’ve always told folks to get the duo version of the Wacom Bamboo Stylus because it is a little longer (130 mm) than the two other versions of the Bamboo stylus that don’t have a pen — the Bamboo Stylus alpha is 122 mm and the Bamboo Stylus solo is 126.8 mm — and I think it is better to have a stylus that is over 5 inches (over 127 mm) because it feels better in your hand and more like a real pen.

Conclusion

I wish that this stylus was heavier to give it a more substantial feel in your hand.  But other than that, this is a fantastic stylus.  The carbon fiber tip works and feels better than any other non-active stylus that I’ve ever used, but otherwise the stylus keeps the same length, circumference, clip and ballpoint pen that made the prior generations of the Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo such a big hit.  And after several weeks of going back and forth between my first generation with a weight that I prefer and this third generation with the tip that I prefer, I’m going to stick with this third generation of the Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo going forward because I like the tip so much.  I’ve used this stylus to take notes in meetings, to jot things down in a deposition, to navigate my iPad screen when I felt like a change of pace from using my finger, and to highlight and annotate cases that I downloaded from Westlaw, and it has always worked really well.

Of course, one of the reasons that there are so many styluses on the market is that lots of folks have different preferences.  I generally like the reviews on The Wirecutter, and I see that they recently concluded that the Pogo Stylus (which I reviewed earlier this year) is their favorite, with two models of the Wacom Bamboo Stylus in second and third place.  Note, however, that it appears that The Wirecutter was looking at the second generation version, so we’ll have to see if they update their review after trying out the third generation with the improved tip. 

If you are in the market for an iPad stylus, the third generation Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo should definitely be on your list to consider.  It is a really great stylus, even if it is not as heavy as I would like.

Click here to get the Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo on Amazon ($29.95)

This past week, many people have asked me about the Apple Watch and whether lawyers will want to get one.  I think it is premature to talk about that because we don’t yet know all that the Apple Watch will do.  We will have to at least wait until the Spring of 2015 when version 1.0 of the Apple Watch is introduced.  I remember that when the iPad came out in early 2010, many lawyers were not sure if it would be useful, and there were certainly no legal-specific apps.  Obviously, a lot has changed since then in the world of iPad.  While it is far too early to know everything that the Apple Watch will do, here is a scenario I’ve been thinking about.  Imagine being in a trial wearing an Apple Watch.  Your associate is sitting in the back of the room and is also wearing one.  Suddenly, he needs to send you a message — perhaps your opponent is about to put up a demonstrative that you need to object to before the jury sees it.  The associate taps out a pattern on his Apple Watch, and without anyone else in the courtroom realizing it, you feel the taps on your arm and understand what it means.  You object in time, the judge sustains your objection, and the jury isn’t prejudiced by the improper demonstrative.  With possibilities like this, I’m definitely intrigued.  And now, the news of note from the past week:

• Indiana University health law professor Nicolas Terry sent me a tip this week on integrating the Wunderlist app into Safari in iOS 8 to save links, and gave me permission to share it with iPhone J.D. readers.  He explains:  “I blog, I tweet, I write boring law review articles. For all I use links. Many of these I discover while on my iPad or iPhone. For years I have emailed these to myself. Then, when back at a Mac I add to a blog draft or to a folder, etc., and delete the email. Sometimes I accidentally erase the email or let it sink down my inbox… And it’s cumbersome.  Enter iOS 8. I already use a great list/reminder app called Wunderlist (which I recommend highly even without the following tweak). It syncs between all my iOS and Mac devices and has a really nice interface. Open Safari, find a link you want to keep and click on the Send To (arrow in a box) command. You’ll see the usual array of cloud, print, mail, etc. Click on More…, and you will see a list of other apps that could be used. Click the Wunderlist slider to green (this is the only time you will need to). Now, create some list buckets in Wunderlist, like Blog later, Tweet later, potential wife gifts, etc. Now from your browser you can simply add a reference to the bucket of your choice.” 
• Dallas attorney Tom Mighell discusses the new Rocket Matter app for iPad in a post on the Attorney at Work blog.
• If you are still trying to decide whether to upgrade to an iPhone 6, Rene Ritchie of iMore wrote a great, comprehensive review.
• Derek Walter of Macworld provides some tips for using Safari on the iPhone and iPad.
• Robert Sullivan wrote a profile of Apple’s Jony Ive for Vogue. 
• 1Password is one of my favorite apps, and it is especially useful for attorneys because it provides a secure way to keep private information on your devices.  Ellis Hamburger of The Verge interviewed two of 1Password’s developers, Jeff Shiner and David Chartier.
• Glenn Flesihman of TidBITS wrote a comprehensive review of the new features 1Password that take advantage of iOS 8.
• Joanna Stern has been the personal technology columnist at the Wall Street Journal since December of 2013, and I find myself enjoying her reviews more and more.  Her articles are well-written, and they are frequently accompanied by a clever video.  This week, Stern reviewed some of the new software keyboards for the iPhone, and it is an informative and entertaining review.
• Josh Centers wrote an even more in-depth look at third party keyboards in an article for TidBITS.
• Apple’s iconic flagship store on Fifth Avenue in New York opened on May 19, 2006.  I was in New York at the time so I was there that day.  And I can prove it; I appear in this photo taken by one of Apple’s cameras, photographing the crowd every minute.  I also took this picture of the crowd inside the store that day.  I take this trip down memory lane because Vicky Ward wrote an interesting article in New York magazine about how the store came to be, with lots of details that I had net heard before.
• Dave Mark of The Loop explains why predictive text in iOS 8 is so useful.  I really like this new feature.
• Dan Provost of Studio Neat wrote an interesting article explaining iOS 8’s new time-lapse video feature.
• And finally, here is a really fun music video by Brunettes Shoot Blonds of their song Knock Knock which uses a whole bunch of iPhones and iPads in a fascinating way.  Worth watching.  (via David Sparks)

For a large number of attorneys and others who use an iPhone, the most-used app is the Mail app.  The Mail app is the primary way that I work with email when I am out of the office, and even when I am in the office, I often prefer to read and manage my email using the Mail app on my iPhone or iPad rather than use my computer.  iOS 8 has been out for about two weeks now (and has since been updated to iOS 8.0.1, and then iOS 8.0.2).  Many of you have probably already upgraded to iOS 8, and if you have been waiting to do so, I recommend that you do so now.  One of the things that I love most about iOS 8 is all of the enhancements that make it easier to work with your email, both new features in the Mail app itself and other general improvements in iOS 8 that are particularly useful when working with emails.  Here are my favorite new features in Mail in iOS 8.  In this post, I focus on Mail on the iPhone, but these features work on the iPad as well.

Enhanced swipe features

When looking at a list of emails in the Mail app, you have always been able to swipe your finger across to quickly delete a message.  In iOS 8, the swipe features are enhanced.  First, if you swipe half-way from left to right, you are given a new option to Mark as Unread.  Simply tap the blue Mark as Unread button and the app does so.  But there is a better way to do it:  instead of swiping half-way from left to right, start by placing your finger not at the very left edge of the screen but just a little over from there (about where I have the red circle in the picture below) and then swipe all the way to the right edge of the screen.  This will quickly mark the message as unread, without needing to tap a button to confirm your desire to do so.  If the message is already marked as unread, the same swipe will toggle it to mark as read.

 

If you swipe the other direction, from right to left, you are now given three choices:  More, Flag and Trash.  The Flag option is self-explanatory.  Unlike in Outlook where you have a choice of different flag colors, in Mail you only have an orange flag.  Nevertheless, it is a quick and easy way to remind yourself to go back to a message later. The Trash option is also self-explanatory, but note that there is an even faster way to delete a message.  Much like a full left-to-right swipe which will instantly mark a message as unread, a full right-to-left swipe will instantly send a message to the Trash.

The third of the three options is More.  If you select More, you are then given a large number of choices for acting upon the email without the need to open the email itself including Reply, Forward, Flag, Mark as Unread, Move to Junk, Move to a folder in your mailbox, and Notify Me…

 

The first two options — Reply and Forward — simply do what they say.  The next two options — Flag and Mark as Unread — are often unnecessary because as noted above it is faster to swipe from left to right to mark as unread, and you can select the option to flag a message by simply tapping Flag instead of More.  The next option is Move Message…, which lets you move a message into another folder in your mailbox. 

Finally, the new Notify Me… option lets you choose to receive a notification whenever someone responds to the email thread.  This works the same way as the VIP option of iOS 7, but instead of getting notifications when a specific person sends you an email, you get the notification when there is a response to the email, no matter who sends it.  For example, on my iPhone, my default setting is to turn off Mail notifications because I get too many emails every day for my iPhone to beep or vibrate every time a new one comes in.  But I have a very small set of people, including my wife, set as a VIP so that when one of them sends me an email, my iPhone vibrates and I know about it instantly.  With iOS 8, now I also can be sure to know just as soon as a reply comes in to an important email chain, even if my iPhone isn’t otherwise making noise or vibrating when I get new emails.

I said above that the Flag and Mark as Unread options, which appear in the list after you tap More, are typically unnecessary because there are other ways to invoke those commands.  The reason that they are there in the More menu is that you can actually change or turn off the typical ways that I noted above for invoking those commands.  In the Settings app, if you tap on Mail, Contacts, Calendars and then tap on Swipe Options, you are given the option to configure the middle button that appears when you swipe from right to left.  By default it is set to Flag, but you can change it to None (which means only two options, More and Trash, will appear when you swipe) or you change it to Mark as Read.  Similarly, you can change the swipe from left to right function to None, Flag or Archive (which is useful for email services such as Gmail that include Archive as an action).

 

Composing emails:  predictive text

One of the best new features of iOS 8 is that predictive text now appears right above the keyboard in most apps.  This happens just about anywhere you enter text on an iPhone, including the Messages app, but I find it most useful when I am typing an email on iPhone in the Mail app.

As you type on the keyboard, three choices of words or phrases that you are likely to want to type next appear just above the keyboard.  The suggested words or phrases are of course based upon the letters that you have already typed, but that’s not all.  They are also based upon other factors such the person you are communicating with and the app that you are using — with more formal words suggested in Mail and more casual words suggested in Messages.  And it is also based on what you have already typed in your email.  When the word or phrase that you were going to type appears, simply tap it and the iPhone writes it for you, saving you a whole bunch of taps.  By default a space is placed after the word, but if you next tap twice for a period or tap punctuation such as a comma, the iPhone is smart enough to delete that space after the word and enter the punctuation mark instead.

I’m amazed at how smart this predictive text feature is.  I often find that I can enter almost an entire sentence just by tapping the word that the iPhone guesses that I was about to use next.  iOS 8 even seems to know a thing or two about the law, because the other day I was typing an email and typed sum and not only did the iPhone offer to enter “summary” for me, but it also offered to enter “summary judgment,” which was exactly what I was going to type.  So by tapping the letters S-U-M and then tapping “summary judgment”, just four taps, I entered a phrase that otherwise would have required 16 taps.  Amazing.

Best of all, the predictive text feature learns from you as you type, so as good as the feature has worked for me during my first two weeks with iOS 8, it should get even better in the coming weeks and months as my iPhone learns from what I type.  And everything that the iPhone learns about my typing is kept on the iPhone itself and is not shared with Apple, which is nice for privacy.

If you want to temporarily turn off the predictive text feature, simply place your finger on one of the suggested words and then swipe down.  This collapses the predictive text field.  To bring it back, place your finger on the predictive text area and swipe up.  You can also permanently turn it off in Settings or by holding down on the globe icon on the keyboard and then flipping the switch.  But I have found predictive text to be very helpful, so this is a feature that I am going to keep on and use a lot.

Composing emails:  Siri dictation

In the past, you could tap the microphone that is next to the space bar and simply dictate an email.  Sometimes you are in public and it isn’t appropriate for you to talk out loud, but if you are in the right environment, it is almost always faster to dictate an email then to type it. 

Dictation works even better in iOS 8.  First, you no longer need to finish talking before you can see what Siri thinks that you said.  Instead, words start to appear on the screen shortly after you said them, even as you are continuing to speak.  Second, in my tests, dictation (and Siri in general) works much better in iOS 8.  The accuracy, which was already quite good, is now even better.  And in iOS 8, I almost never get a message saying that Siri was unable to work for some reason, which would happen from time to time in iOS 7.

Composing emails:  third party keyboards

Another new feature of iOS 8 is the ability to use keyboards created by third parties.  You may find it much faster to enter text using these keyboards.  Popular third party keyboards include Swype, SwiftKey and Fleksy, but other third party keyboards let you do everything from enter animated GIFs, change the color of the keyboard, etc.  For example, if you use TextExpander, you can now use its custom keyboard to quickly enter long strings of text.  You access custom keyboards that you have installed either by tapping the globe icon at the bottom of the keyboard to switch to the next keyboard, or you can hold down on the globe icon to see a list of installed keyboards.

For now, I am still testing out these third party keyboards, so I am not ready to make any specific recommendations.  If you want to check them out yourself, you might want to start with SwiftKey because it is free (although the developer plans to offer additional features in the future for a fee).  SwiftKey became popular on Android by offering predictive text, but of course Apple now offers that feature in the built-in keyboard, and time will tell whether Apple or SwiftKey offer better predictive text.  SwiftKey also offers SwiftKey Flow, a feature that lets you use one finger to swipe between keys instead of tapping on individual keys using one finger or two thumbs, which can make it much faster to enter words.  I was a little concerned when I first configured the keyboard and saw a warning that giving SwiftKey full access will mean that the keyboard could transmit every word that I type to the developer.  SwiftKey has since explained on its blog that the app only uploads what you type if you also turn on the SwiftKey Cloud feature, which is used to synchronize your language predictions among multiple devices.

It is great to see the new keyboard features that Apple offers in iOS 8, and I’m even more excited to see the cool new features that innovative third party developers come up with.

Manage email using interactive notifications

When I am working on my PC in my office, I like the Outlook feature that shows a small pop-up window when I get a new email, not only because it gives a notification of what the email is and who it is from, but also because I often can quickly act on the email, such as deleting it, without having to first open the Outlook app.  iOS 8 adds a similar feature to the iPhone because the notifications that you receive when you receive a new email are now interactive.

When you receive a banner notification at the top of the screen telling you that you have a new email, you have always been able to tap the notification to take you to that new message in Mail.  But now, if you instead swipe down on that banner notification, you are given the option to Mark as Read or to send the message to the Trash.

 

The new interactive notification feature is not unique to Mail.  You can also interact with other types of notifications such as text messages, calendar invitations, reminders, and message from third party apps such as Facebook.  So far, however, I’ve found this feature most useful for email messages.

Saving drafts

I often find that I am in the middle of typing an email when I realize that I need go look up some information in another email.  In iOS 7, you could do so by tapping Cancel, and then tapping save Save Draft, and then after you look up what you need you could go back to the draft by holding down on the compose email icon to see a list of saved messages.

This feature is improved in iOS 8.  You can now move a draft email out of your way by placing your finger near the top of the message and swiping down.  This moves the draft to the bottom of you screen, just below your list of email messages.  When you are ready to go back to your draft, simply tap that draft message that is waiting for you at the bottom of your screen.

 

What if you have more than one draft message at a time?  No problem.  iOS 8 simply displays a 3D interface of all of your draft messages, similar to how Safari displays multiple tabs.

The new drafts feature is also handy if you are in middle of typing a message and a new email comes in.  When you see the notification banner at the top of your screen, you can tap it and read the new email, and the draft that you are working on automatically goes down to the bottom of your screen, ready for you to bring it up again when you are ready to do so.

Handoff emails from iPhone to iPad, and vice versa

One of the new features of iOS 8 is something that Apple calls Continuity, a system that lets your iPhone, iPad and Mac all work better together.  One part of Continuity is Handoff, a feature that lets an app running on one device move what you are doing to the same app on another device.  Let’s say that you are starting to write an email on your iPhone, and then you realize that this email is going to require some additional thought so you would prefer to continue working on the email on your iPad, which has a larger screen and keyboard (and perhaps even has an external Bluetooth keyboard attached). 

To do so, while your draft email is still open on your iPhone, look at the lock screen on your iPad.  Similar to the tiny camera icon in the bottom right that you could swipe up to start taking a picture, you will now see a tiny Mail icon in the bottom left of the lock screen.  Swipe that up (and enter your passcode if necessary) and the draft email will appear on your iPad screen and will be removed from your iPhone screen.  You can then continue to work on the email, just as if you had started on your iPad in the first place.  And the same process works both ways, so you could start typing a message on your iPad and then hand it off to your iPhone.  When OS X Yosemite for Mac comes out in the very near future (my guess is October), you’ll also be able to use Handoff to start an email on an iPhone or iPad and then pick it up on your Mac, and vice versa.  Just what I need — yet another reason to wish that my law firm was still using Macs!  (My firm switched from Macs to PCs in the early 2000s, although I still use a Mac at home.)

Add info to contacts

We often receive emails that have the sender’s contact information at the bottom.  iOS 8 Mail is smart enough to see that information, and Mail now offers to add data to a contact entry for that person.  Here is an example from the Apple website that sees an address in a message and offers to add it to a contact.  This is a quick and easy way to automatically add robust information to your Contacts database without having to type anything additional yourself.

Conclusion

No prior update to iOS has added as many new features for managing email as iOS 8.  It is now easier and faster to compose, review and manage emails on your iPhone and iPad, plus you can now do many things that were previously not possible.  All of these changes let you be more productive when you are working with emails.

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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 has sold a record number of iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus phones, and I have heard very positive reviews from the folks who have used them.  And based on my utterly unscientific study, there is a lot of interest in the new iPhones — I was traveling earlier this week for a deposition, and in airports and on one plane, quite a few strangers saw me using an iPhone 6 and asked to check it out, telling me that they are ready to upgrade.  And in my own office, where people know that I am the iPhone guy, many of my partners have stopped by my office to check out the new iPhone.  I’m also happy to see that after just a week, I’m used to the larger size of the iPhone 6, and I prefer it over the previous iPhones.  Indeed, last night, I was using my previous iPhone, an iPhone 5s, and it felt too thick, too boxy, and a little small in my hand.  And I’m really loving how everything looks bigger and better on the beautiful, larger screen.  That transition didn’t take me long.  And now, the news of note from the past week:

• Dallas attorney Jason Steed offers tips for writing a brief that will look good to a judge who reads them on a tablet in a post for Lawyerist.
• As I noted yesterday, Apple’s iOS 8.0.1 update had a bug in it.  Last night, Apple released iOS 8.0.2.  That was quick.  And according to Mike Isaac of the New York Times, Apple says that fewer than 40,000 people were affected by the problems in iOS 8.0.1.  I updated to iOS 8.0.2 last night, and the update worked fine for me on both my iPhone 6 and my iPad Air.
• Daisuke Wakabayashi of the Wall Street Journal reports that according to Apple, it is extremely rare for any iPhone 6 Plus to bend in normal use, with only nine complaints to date.
• John Moltz of It’s A Very Nice Web Site wrote a short and funny review of the iPhone 6.
• Photographer Lisa Bettany did another one of her fantastic posts that compares in a concise fashion pictures taken with every model of iPhone, from the original to the iPhone 6.  The post does a good job of showing off the strengths of the new iPhone, but also shows how very, very far we have come since the first iPhone in 2007. 
• Jim Hammer, an attorney who no longer practices law and instead concentrates on photography, provided his views on the strengths and weaknesses of the camera on the iPhone 6 Plus.
• How much does it cost to charge an iPhone 6?  According to Barry Fischer of Outlier, only $0.47 per year.  A nickel more if you have the iPhone 6 Plus.
• You may be excited about the new Apple Watch, but just wait to you see what Apple is planning next, according to Scoopertino.
• And finally, if you love your iPhone almost as much as you love taking pictures of yourself, and you always want your hair to look its best, then for only $19.99 Amazon has the perfect iPhone 5/5s case for you:  the Selfie Brush. (via The Gadgeteer)