Around Noon Central yesterday, Apple released iOS 8.0.1, a minor update to iOS 8 that was supposed to fix some bugs. Unfortunately, if you installed the update over-the-air on an iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus, the update also killed cellular service and Touch ID (the fingerprint sensor) on your iPhone. Whoops.
Apple pulled down iOS 8.0.1 because of this bug, but if you updated your iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus yesterday while the update was available (as I did), then I suspect that your iPhone stopped working as a phone. What do you do? Apple’s website says that there are two solutions.
First, for the truly patient, you can wait for iOS 8.0.2 to come out, which Apple says will be in the next few days. [UPDATE 9/25: You didn’t have to be that patient; iOS 8.0.2 came out at 7pm Central on Sept. 25.]
Second, you can connect your iPhone to a computer running iTunes and reinstall iOS 8.0. Apple’s complete instructions for doing so are here. I followed those instructions last night and it worked just fine, didn’t take very long (under 10 minutes), and didn’t cause me to lose any data on my iPhone.
Here is what iOS 8.0.1 was supposed to do, which I imagine is what iOS 8.0.2 will also do when it comes out in a few days:
Since the iPhone 3G was released in 2008, Apple has changed the design of the iPhone every two years on the even year. The iPhone 3G in 2008 and the iPhone 3GS in 2009 were thick but had curved sides. The iPhone 4 in 2010 and iPhone 4S in 2011 had a somewhat boxy design. The iPhone 5 in 2012 and iPhone 5s in 2013 used a similar but thinner boxy design with a taller screen. Following this pattern, 2014 was the year for a new design for the iPhone, and boy did we get one. Most obviously, the iPhone 6 (and iPhone 6 Plus) are larger than ever before. They are also thinner than ever before, with curved edges. I pre-ordered an iPhone 6 from AT&T, and it arrived at my house this past Friday (so I was able to avoid waiting in line for hours to get a new iPhone on the release date). I’ve been using it extensively since then, and I really love this iPhone, although the larger size has mostly pros but a few cons. Here are my thoughts based on my own experience with the iPhone 6, which supplements my initial post on the iPhone 6.
The new design: thinner and curved sides
The most obvious difference in the iPhone 6 is the new design, and the first aspect of the new design that I really like is thin, curved side. My first iPhone, the iPhone 3G, had a curved side, and it felt great. Here are two photos of the last four iPhone designs: the iPhone 3G/3GS, then the iPhone 4/4S, then the iPhone 5/5s, and on the right the new iPhone 6:
One reason for the curved side of the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS was to make the iPhones seem thinner than they really were, but the curved side also felt nice in your hand. The iPhone 6 is thin enough that curves are not needed to create the illusion of thinness, but the curved side of the iPhone 6 still feels great. It is smooth, and dare I say almost soothing — somewhat like a worry stone. I really like it, subject to one caveat noted below.
As a result of the thinness, the iPhone 6 feels lighter to me than the iPhone 5s. I know that isn’t really true; the iPhone 5s weighs 3.95 ounces and the iPhone 6 weighs 4.55 ounces. But because the weight is distributed across a larger iPhone, whenever I use the iPhone 6 it just feels like a much lighter iPhone. And even when I hold my iPhone 5s in one hand and the iPhone 6 in the other, my mind still tells me that the iPhone 6 is lighter. You certainly don’t want an iPhone that feels too light because that would make it feel like you don’t have anything of substance in your hand, but that isn’t a problem here. The weight of the iPhone 6 just feels great. For a device that you are going to be using in your hand throughout the day every day, and perhaps even carrying in a pocket all day long, the weight, the thinness and the curves make a big difference, and I love this aspect of the new iPhone design.
The new design: larger and better screen
Of course, the most obvious design change in the iPhone 6 is that is has a 4.7-inch diagonal screen, much larger than the 4-inch screen of the iPhone 5 and iPhone 5s (and the 3.5-inch screen of the iPhone 4s and earlier models). I am of two minds on this larger screen.
When you are looking at content on the iPhone 6’s screen, the screen is amazing. In part this is due to the new Retina HD screen, which has a higher contrast so that text is sharper and blacks are deeper. But it is also because the screen is larger.
As I explained in my initial post on the iPhone 6, there are two different ways you can take advantage of the larger screen, and you select which mode you want to use in Settings -> Display & Brightness. If you select Standard View, and if you are using an app that was written take advantage of the larger screen, you see more on the screen. For example, the iPhone 5/5s home screen can display five rows of apps (plus the dock) per screen. In Standard View you see six rows of apps per screen (plus the dock). If you select Zoomed View, then you see the same screen that you would have seen with an iPhone 5 or iPhone 5s, but everything is just larger.
My eyesight is far from perfect, and on my iPhone 5s and prior iPhones, I used the Accessibility settings to make the text bold and larger. I found that this made it easier and more enjoyable to read emails and other text. With the iPhone 6, I find that I can turn off bold text and keep the text size closer to “normal” because the larger screen already makes everything bigger and easier to read. If you are like me and you found the default view of the iPhone 5 or iPhone 5s a little small and hard to read, then you are going to love using the Zoomed View on the iPhone 6. On the other hand, if you have great eyesight, you’ll probably prefer the Standard View so that you can see more at one time on the screen.
Watching a video or looking at a photo is much, much nicer on the iPhone 6 than any prior iPhone because of the larger screen. Reading emails and attached documents is also much nicer with the larger, sharper screen. I prefer virtually all of my apps at this larger size, and the larger screen is by far the #1 reason to upgrade to an iPhone 6.
Having said that, I mentioned above that I was of two minds on the larger iPhone, and there is also a drawback of a larger iPhone: the larger size is somewhat harder to hold in your hand. In fact, when I first started holding the iPhone 6, I held it the same way that I held my iPhone 5s and I found the phone starting to slip out of my hands because of the additional width. Over the course of this weekend, I’ve started to adjust my grip, and I presume that I will eventually get used to the new grip but I’m not quite there yet. Moreover, as good as those curved sides feel, the one downside is that it makes the iPhone 6 (without a case) more prone to slipping out of your hand. So if you are holding a more slippery phone on which you don’t have a good grip to begin with, that’s a recipe for a dropped iPhone — which I haven’t done (yet), but I’ve been worried about it.
Another slight downside of the larger iPhone is that it is harder to operate with just one hand — not just because it is larger in your hand, but also because your thumb has to reach higher to tap the top of the screen. I have larger hands, and perhaps for that reason this has not been a big problem for me. I haven’t really found the need to use the new feature where you can double-tap the home button to make the top of the screen move down so that you can reach it more easily, although it is nice that it is there.
Again, I’ve barely spent more than 48 hours with this new design, and I’m sure I’ll get used to the larger size in my hand. And I can already say that the advantages of the beautiful, larger screen definitely outweigh sticking with an iPhone 5s. But if you upgrade to an iPhone 6, keep in mind that there will be a transition period.
Moreover, as I get used to the larger iPhone 6, there is no question in my mind that the iPhone 6 was a much better choice for me than the huge iPhone 6 Plus. I can’t imagine getting used to the size of that iPhone in my hand, and while I’m sure that movies and many apps look nicer on a larger screen, if I want that much of a larger screen I’ll just use my iPad. And holding an iPhone 6 Plus up to your face to make a phone call does seem a little too much like a Maxwell Smart shoe phone to me.
Camera
Apple says that one of the best features of the iPhone 6 is the improved camera. I’ve seen some amazing things that you can do with the iPhone 6 camera, such as this post by photographer Austin Mann that I linked to this past Friday. While I haven’t yet done an in-depth comparison of the quality of the iPhone 6 camera versus the iPhone 5s, the pictures I took this weekend with my iPhone 6 came out great. For example, on Saturday I watched my 6-year-old daughter play soccer (and you’ll be pleased to learn that the Snowballers played a great game). My hand was moving quickly with the iPhone to keep up with the action, and the girls were all over the place, but the iPhone 6 did an amazing job of staying in focus and giving me sharp, vibrant pictures. I know that this is partially because the iPhone 6 has nice optics, partially because of really good camera software, and partially because of the super-fast processor in the new iPhone 6, but whatever the reason, the iPhone 6 performed like a champ. (As did my daughter, who kicked her first goal of season. Woo-hoo!)
Apple Pay
I can’t wait to try the new Apple Pay system, which lets you pay for items at a number of merchants by just tapping your iPhone, making it faster and more secure to make purchases. But it doesn’t start until next month, so for now all I can say is that I really look forward to it.
Faster
Every new iPhone is faster, which means that is even more responsive to your commands. Emails pop up faster, attachments download faster, websites load faster, etc. The iPhone 6 continues this trend.
Not only does the iPhone 6 have a faster processor, but it also has better WiFi. When I ran speed tests of my iPhone 5s and my iPhone 6 running side-by-side on the same WiFi network, my iPhone 5s would typically top out at 50 Mbps while my iPhone 6 would typically see over 70 Mbps. Of course, you get different results every time you run a speed test so I hate to read too much into individual tests, but WiFi tests on my iPhone 6 consistently had results around 50% better when tested in the Ookla Speedtest app, and subjectively, I consistently felt that large websites were loading even faster on the iPhone 6 than they did on my iPhone 5s.
Conclusion
It takes some time to get used to the larger iPhone 6 in your hand, especially if you are holding it while you are walking around. But when you are using the iPhone 6, this is really an amazing device. The screen is beautiful. The smooth, curved, thin edge feels fantastic. This is the fastest, most responsive iPhone ever. The camera takes amazing pictures, with more pictures in sharp focus. I really love using the iPhone 6, and if you have been thinking of upgrading, I encourage you to do so.
This has been a huge week for the iPhone. iOS 8 came out on Wednesday, and it has so many amazing new features that I feel like it is going to take forever to make my way through all of them. And the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus go on sale today, although to get one today you had to be one of the very first people to place an order a week ago, or you will have to be in line at a store early this morning before the initial stock runs out. (Here is what all of those iPhones looked like being loaded on a plane from China to the U.S.) Apple’s pre-order sales set a new record. (iPhone 4 preorders were 600,000; iPhone 4S preorders were 1 million; iPhone 5 preorders were 2 million; there were no iPhone 5s preorders; iPhones 6 preorders were 4 million.) Thus, there was an overwhelming amount of news this week of interest to attorneys who use iPhones and iPads. Here is some of the best:
Rocket Matter, which provides web-based practice management for law firms, came out with a native iPad app this week, and it looks great. (They also updated their logo.) Sean Doherty of Law Technology News explains how the new app works.
Tim Cook wrote a letter to Apple users about privacy and posted it on their website, along with additional information on privacy in Apple products. This is partially an attack on Google — pointing out that Apple doesn’t try to make money by selling information about its users to third parties — but is also has some interesting details about privacy. Attorneys should definitely read the “Manage Your Privacy” section for important information about keeping information on your iPhone and iPad secure.
Speaking of privacy, one of my favorite iPhone and iPad apps is 1Password, which allows me to create and store complex passwords. On my Mac and PC, 1Password has always made it easy to enter those passwords in a web browser. With the new features in iOS 8, you can now do the same thing. This blog post from 1Password explains how to enable everything. For example, I was able to access the American Express website on my iPhone, and instead of typing my long and complex password or going to the 1Password app, typing that password, searching for and copying my AmEx password, and then going back to Safari, I can now simply press two buttons in Safari, use Touch ID to read my fingerprint and authenticate that I really am me, and then 1Password gives me my username and password to automatically enter in Safari.
Apple CEO Tim Cook also made the media rounds. His two-part interview with Charlie Rose is excellent and worth watching if you have the time, and is now on the Charlie Rose website.
Lex Friedman wrote an article for Macworld about why the Apple Watch makes more sense than the other options on the market.
Andy Ihnatko of the Chicago Sun Times is a little more apprehensive about the Apple Watch. He explains why.
Rich Mogull wrote a great article for Macworld explaining Apple’s new Apple Pay system, where you can just tap an iPhone 6 to pay.
The tech being used here is a Microsoft Surface Pro, not an iPad, but I still enjoyed reading this article written by Bill Gates about his meeting with former Saints player Steve Gleason, who is suffering from ALS. With such limited motor control, it is amazing what Gleason and others can do with modern technology.
And finally, it has been over five years since I interviewed Mike Schneider, a Seattle attorney who left the practice of law to write iPhone apps. Schneider recently wrote a custom keyboard for iOS 8 that lets you create a library of text snippets that you might want to use over and over again so that you can access and automatically type them from any keyboard. It is called SnipsKey. It is still being reviewed by Apple as I type this, but here is a video that shows what it can do. I present this not only because SnipsKey looks cool, but also because it is an example of what great new things you can do with iOS 8:
At some point today — my guess is around lunchtime for folks in the Central and Eastern time zones — you will be able to update your iPhone and iPad to the new iOS 8. This is the biggest update to the iOS since Apple first allowed third party applications. Here is my post from a few months ago about the great new features, and Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal also posted a great article on iOS 8 (including a fun video). Note that if you backup your iPhone with your Mac, Caitlin McGarry of Macworld advises that you should select “Not Now” when asked if you want to update to iCloud Drive because it requires OS X Yosemite, which won’t be out until next month. But whether you upgrade right away today when iOS 8 is available or you wait a few days or weeks, eventually you are going to want to upgrade. iOS 8 is going to make your current iPhone a whole lot better.
By contrast, if you want to make your current iPhone look a whole lot worse, take a look at the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. They won’t go on sale until Friday, but last week Apple gave select reporters early access. Last night, the reviews started to come in, and they are overwhelmingly positive, the best reviews that I have ever seen for a new iPhone since I started publishing iPhone J.D in 2008.
Here are the reviews that I have seen so far, along with some quotes to give you a sense of what the reviewers thought:
John Gruber of Daring Fireball: “The Plus is a remarkable and striking device. Its 401 PPI display is the first display I’ve ever used on which, no matter how close I hold it to my eyes, I can’t perceive the pixels. Typography has rendered great on all retina displays to date; type looks perfect on the iPhone 6 Plus. I’m jealous that the 6 Plus camera has optical image stabilization. The bigger physical size makes the Plus a pleasure to thumb-type on. But I have no desire to use an iPhone 6 Plus as my personal phone. I ordered an iPhone 6 for my own use.”
Jim Dalrymple of The Loop: “There is no doubt in my mind that iPhone 6 Plus will be hugely successful, because clearly there are people out there that want a larger screen device. There are markets in the world where people like to use only one device and having a phone this large is a benefit. For me, I think the iPhone 6 will be the perfect upgrade for people in the U.S. that haven’t embraced larger screen devices yet. It’s the perfect size for almost any hand”
Jason Snell of Macworld: “Make no mistake: The most important new thing about the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus is their size. While their processors run faster and their cameras focus more exactingly, the real story is that these are larger phones with larger screens. That’s better for displaying photos and videos, of course, and often for just allowing more information to fit on the screen.”
Walt Mossberg of re/code: “The iPhone 6 is a great upgrade for current iPhone owners, or for anyone, really. It manages to provide a much larger display in a phone that’s still small enough to handle easily. It’s my recommendation for the best smartphone you can buy.”
Lauren Goode of re/code: “There are a couple of reasons why the Apple iPhone 6 Plus might also be too big for me to purchase. But I have to admit it: I’m tempted. I really like this phone. And to people who actually prefer huge smartphones: You are going to like this phone, too.”
David Pierce of The Verge: “There’s one feature that stands out, though, the one that most strongly makes the iPhone 6’s case as the best smartphone on the planet: the camera. It still shoots 8-megapixel images, but this time does so with a new sensor. It also uses what Apple calls ‘focus pixels’ to achieve phase-detect autofocus, which is just astonishingly fast on the iPhone 6. I move the phone around and it never appears to be focusing, yet everything is always crisp and ready. There’s some manual control available like exposure lock, and I still tap to focus sometimes, but it’s never been faster to just whip the phone out of my pocket and fire.”
Nilay Patel of The Verge: “I can’t see myself ever using my iPad mini again after having the 6 Plus, and it’s getting harder and harder to justify pulling out my iPad Air. With the right software changes, I could basically use an iPhone 6 Plus all day long, for everything from sending messages to editing documents to watching videos.”
Geoffrey Fowler of the Wall Street Journal: “The $199 (with contract) iPhone 6 packs a 4.7-inch screen, big enough to get down to business, into the most comfortable smartphone I’ve ever held. And while the iPhone 6 Plus feels too big for my taste, for $100 more its 5.5-inch screen offers an option for road warriors who don’t want to carry a tablet.”
David Pogue of Yahoo Tech: “The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are absolutely terrific phones. They’re fast and powerful and well designed. There’s not a single component that hasn’t been improved. These phones are a delight to behold and to be held.” Pogue also has a really fun video showing off the two phones.
Harry McCracken of Fast Company: “For current owners of Apple phones who aren’t tied up with a carrier contract, the iPhone 6 is among the most irresistible upgrades the company has ever offered. And the jumbo-sized iPhone 6, though definitely not for everybody, is a winning entry in a category that’s previously been an Apple-free zone.”
Joshua Topolsky of Bloomberg Businessweek: “The new iPhones are bigger than any previous version—their displays measure 4.7 inches for the 6 and 5.5 inches for the 6 Plus. They’re also awesome. They are beautifully engineered machines, more useful than ever. These aren’t just the best iPhones ever made—they might be the best phones ever made. Period. The only question you really have to answer is: Which one?”
Vincent Nguyen of Slash Gear: “The promise is a faster, more accurate autofocus lock, and while the technology is complex, the end result is easy to grasp: the iPhone 6’s camera is incredibly quick. There’s hardly a moment’s delay when you open the app and before the camera gets a fix, and it keeps on going too, not getting confused by moving subjects like some smartphones can. My previous pick of the smartphone cameras had been LG’s laser focusing system on the G3, but the iPhone 6 feels faster still.”
Scott Stein of CNet: “The iPhone 6 delivers a bigger screen while remaining easy to handle, with plenty of features to satisfy everyone — and the promise of Apple Pay on the horizon to potentially sweeten the deal even further.”
Tim Stevens of CNet: “The iPhone 6 Plus is too big for everyone to love it, but it’s Apple’s best phone this year. If your budget and your pocket can make room for it, give the iPhone 6 Plus serious consideration.”
Stuart Miles of Pocket-Lint: “Immaculately crafted, the iPhone 6 shows that you can create a device that blows everything else out of the water when it comes to design. That might sound like an Apple fanboy cliché, but we’ve put the iPhone 6 in the hands of ardent Android fans and they agree: the iPhone 6 sets a new standard for smartphone design.”
Matt Hill of T3: “This aluminium execution is as elegant as an iPad Air but on a sleeker, smaller scale. No faux leather, no plastic parts – it’s what a modern phone should look like. And despite all that metal, it weighs just 17g more than the last one. It’s super-light.”
Darrell Etherington of TechCrunch: “Apple has outdone itself with the iPhone 6’s design – despite gaining a significant amount of screen real estate, it doesn’t feel huge compared to its predecessor, and it’s still a very easy device to use one-handed. The new, thinner case means it weighs just over half an ounce more than the iPhone 5s, and the even weight distribution across a broader surface area means it isn’t noticeably heavier than the older phone. It manages to make the 5 and 5s feel downright chunky, in fact, which is incredible. … The iPhone 6 is the best smartphone available. It offers improvements in almost every way that matters, and it delivers those in a striking new design that balances consumer demand for larger screens with a thin, light and durable case. It’s Apple’s most attractive phone, visually, and the 4.7-inch size is going to be more generally appealing than the iPhone 6 Plus’ larger proportions”
Darrell Etherington of TechCrunch: “For most tasks, I find the iPhone 6 Plus to be a two-handed device – but I also find that I’m absolutely fine with that. The 6 Plus is closer in usage style to an iPad mini, in my experience, albeit one that’s pocketable and capable of full cellular voice communications. Part of the reason that it works so well as a tablet-style gadget is that Apple has introduced special landscape support for both the homescreen and some its first-party apps, which really add to my ability to be productive using them.”
Matthew Panzarino of Tech Crunch: “The phase detection autofocus is extremely quick, and the continuous autofocus while video recording is active is absolutely fantastic. The leap in quality over even dedicated cameras can’t be overstated. The image quality is off the charts and the (software driven) ‘Cinematic Stabilization’ is amazing.”
Ed Baig of USA Today: “Are the bigger iPhones worth all this big time attention? The answer is a resounding yes, a point emphasized by consumers who’ve preordered the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 and 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus in record numbers. These are the phones Apple devotees have been waiting for: iPhones that measure up to what’s fast becoming the new normal — the large, modern smartphone display. Count me among those glad they’re here.”
Brad Molen of Engadget: “Even with a slightly larger screen, the [iPhone 6] remains comfortable to hold. With fast performance, a great display, an elegant new design and a much-needed software update, it’s one of the best smartphones you can buy right now. We wish it had the same long battery life as the iPhone 6 Plus (not to mention its optical image stabilization) but even then, the iPhone 6 is still the better choice for most people.”
Matt Warman of The Telegraph: “Apple’s iPhone is the device that revolutionised the smartphone; the iPhone 6 is not so big an innovation as that. But it’s as close as the company has come to a flawless reinvention. Easy as it is to carp about missing features or worse, it remains the best, most beautiful package on the market.”
Lance Ulanoff of Mashable: “I do miss the edges of the old iPhone design, but Apple’s iPhone 6 is, for my $200, the most elegant and effective smartphone on the market.”
Lance Ulanoff of Mashable: “With its size and weight, the iPhone 6 Plus feels more like a mini tablet than a phone and easily fills one of my pockets.”
Molly Wood of the New York Times: “The best part of the new phones is actually the new software inside, which is available for some older models, too, starting on Wednesday. The software, iOS 8, combines some of the advanced features of Android with Apple’s ease of use and reliability.”
Gareth Beavis of Tech Radar: “When I first picked up the iPhone 6, I thought this was going to be a hard review to write. Had Apple just changed the shape but kept the same inherent problems? Was there really enough new to make it a phone that really helped the company leap forward? The answer is: the iPhone 6 is a brilliant phone. It’s the first time I’d even consider using an iPhone as my daily device, thanks to the larger screen, better keyboard and most importantly upgraded battery life.”
Gareth Beavis of Tech Radar: “The iPhone 6 Plus is a handset aimed at a very particular client base. For many it’ll be too big, too expensive and quite simply not even a consideration in their smartphone buying journey. For a select audience though the iPhone 6 Plus answers the ever growing demand for a larger screened, high definition iPhone – something we’ve been waiting for, for years.”
Charles Arthur of The Guardian: “Spending a day or two using the iPhone 6 makes its predecessors feel overweight. The most noticeable thing, besides the thinness, is how smoothly the curved screen rolls over the edges – so swiping from the left edge to the right, or from the right edge to go left (which we do at many navigation points, including in Apple Mail) is a tactile pleasure. On the 5S and the 5C, that gesture finds the chamfered or plastic edge – but at least it isn’t uncomfortable. On the 6 and 6 Plus, it’s lissom.”
Charles Arthur of The Guardian: “Too big. This thing’s too big. Waaay too big. It’s… actually, that screen is pretty nice, isn’t it? Wow, you really can get a lot of content on there, can’t you? Hey, my hand’s getting used to the size. It’s quite comfortable, isn’t it? And that’s how it goes with the iPhone 6 Plus. I expected to find it far too big, and at first my expectations were met. But give it a few minutes, perhaps a couple of days, and you’ll find yourself strangely attracted to its huge-seeming screen.”
David Phelan of The Independent: “Sometimes Apple is accused of doing too little, that a new phone is just a gentle, incremental improvement on a previous one. Not this time. The glam new design, hold-it-to-believe-it thin profile, superlative feel and improved performance of the iPhone 6 make it a no-brainer upgrade even to those with the most recent model. Massively improved battery life, a better camera, bigger and still beautiful screen and faster performance, not to mention the tantalising prospect of Apple Pay and VoLTE to come, all help.”
David Phelan of The Independent: “The iPhone 6 Plus succeeds, though even a whisper bigger would make it just too big. As it is, it’s important you try it in your hand first as it won’t suit all mitts. When you do, you’ll see that the display is even richer than on the smaller handset. This is a Full HD screen, that is one with 1920 x 1080 pixels, which at this size works out at 401 pixels per inch. There are phones with higher-resolution screens, but the subtle colours, the great viewing angles and the laser-sharpness here are outstanding. I’d say this is the best screen I’ve seen on a mobile phone.”
There is a never-ending variety of styluses that aim to look like a pen, but sometimes it is nice to use something different. The Maglus stylus is unlike any other iPad stylus that I have ever tried. It is a high-quality stylus made of aluminum that has a nice weight and is somewhat rectangular in shape, with two flat sides. ApplyDea, the company that developed the stylus, sent me a free review unit to test, and I’ve been trying it as my primary stylus for several weeks now. As someone who normally prefers styluses that feel like a pen and have a fine tip, I was surprised how much I have realy enjoyed using the Maglus. This is a really nice stylus.
The Maglus website says that it has a “precision-machined aluminum body” with an “optimally balanced ergonomic form.” That’s an accurate description. The aluminum body gives the stylus a nice weight — not too heavy, but enough to feel like you have something of substance in your hand.
The Maglus has two sides that are flat. It looks sort of like a carpenter’s pencil, and its flat sides work the same way that the do on a carpenter’s pencil: they stop the stylus from rolling around on your desk. Each side has a thin rubbery area which prevents the stylus from slipping out of your hand when you use it (and which also gives it a nice, somewhat softer feel in your hand). When you combine the weight of the Maglus with the unique shape, it has a very nice feel in your hand, unlike any other stylus that I have tried.
Inside of the Maglus, there are two magnets (under the black rubber part). The combination of the magnets and a flat side mean that the Maglus sticks to the edge of an iPad or an Apple Smart Cover better than any other stylus that I have ever tried. Before I started using the Maglus, I thought that the magnets would just be a gimmick. To the contrary, this is a a fantastic feature, and one of the things that I like most about the stylus. It means that when you are using your iPad you can place the Maglus on the edge and it will not slide around. It also means that, if you use the Apple Smart Cover as I do, you can just fold the cover down and place the Maglus right on the edge, and then you can pick up the iPad and the Maglus stays in place as you are walking to your meeting.
The silicone tip of the Maglus is a little bit larger than the tips that I usually use on other styluses. The Maglus has a 7 mm tip; by comparison, the Hand Stylus has a 4 mm tip; the original Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo has about a 5 mm tip. As a result, when you use the Maglus, you do get more of the feeling that you are writing with a tip the size of a crayon as opposed to a pen/pencil. Having said that, I have no complaints about this tip. It works very well on the iPad, and my iPad never had any trouble sensing the input. The tip also feels nice against the iPad screen.
The Maglus comes with an extra tip, handy if the original one wears down. That extra tip also comes in cool aluminum case, the neatest case that I’ve ever seen for a second tip. The tip attaches the the Maglus magnetically, so you can just pull one off and replace it with the spare. I see that you can also buy a microfibre tip for the Maglus if you want something that has less drag on the screen. [UPDATE 10/14/14: Here is my review of the microfibre replacement tip.]
The Maglus also comes with a thin metal strip with sticky tape on the back; the idea is that you attach the metal strip to some object, and then you can always magnetically attach the Maglus to that strip. It’s a neat idea, although not one that I’ve used because I can’t figure out where to attach it.
I generally find myself using two types of styluses nowadays. Sometimes I like the extra precise tip of an active stylus, one that requires batteries or must be charged, such as the Adonit Jot Script. Other times, I don’t want to be bothered with worrying about making sure that the stylus has power, and I prefer some of the other advantages of a traditional stylus such as the fact that it always makes a straight line even when writing diagonal on the screen (something that can be a problem with active styluses). For the times that I want a traditional stylus, I don’t think that I can say that the Maglus is my favorite stylus — I still really like the original Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo and the Hand Stylus, and it still seems more natural to me to write with something the shape of a pen — but nevertheless the Maglus is a fantastic stylus. And even though the Maglus may not be my overall favorite non-active stylus, I still love the change of pace of using it instead of a more traditional stylus. Here is the Maglus along with some other popular styluses. From top to bottom, this is the Adonit Jot Script, the original Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo, the Hand Stylus, the Maglus, and the 2014 version of the Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo (which will be subject of an upcoming review on iPhone J.D.):
If you are in the market for a non-active stylus, the Maglus should definitely be on your list as one to consider. It feels great in your hand, and the strong magnets give it an advantage over every other stylus when you are carrying an iPad and a stylus together or you want your stylus to stay in a convenient location so that it is there when you need it. Even if you already have a non-active stylus that you like, if you want to splurge and get a second non-active stylus just to have something different to use from time to time, the unique shape of the Maglus has lots of advantages and makes this a fantastic second stylus.
[UPDATE 10/14/14: You can now buy the Maglus, or the smaller Maglus mini, in a variety of 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.]
Thank you to GoodCase Apps for sponsoring iPhone J.D. to let iPhone J.D. readers know about its CaseManager apps for the iPad and iPhone. CaseManager was created by New York civil rights attorney John Upton as a fast and inexpensive solution for sole practitioners and attorneys with small firms who want to use mobile devices to manage their law practice. The app debuted in 2011, and I discussed the app in August of 2012 and January of 2014. However, the app recently received a major update to version 6.0, when the interface was revised to match the aesthetic of iOS 7 and the upcoming iOS 8. CaseManager is a beautifully designed and useful app for keeping track of all of the key information in your cases: events, tasks, contacts, time and expenses, plus the facts, notes and documents unique to each case.
The basic organization of the app is the same as before, but now in version 6, when you launch the app the first thing you see is the calendar entries for today, so you know immediately what is ahead of you. This Calendar screen shows a traditional monthly calendar with today’s date selected. Each date on the calendar with associated events or tasks has a gray box with the number of those items indicated at the top right. Tap any day to see a list of the events for that day. The current date on the monthly calendar remains highlighted in yellow, making it stand out as a point of reference when you are looking at tasks and events associated with another day.
Note that the calendar entries in CaseManager are separate from the iPhone’s built-in Calendar app and have additional features not found in the built-in app, such as the ability to associate a calendar entry with a case name.
If you want to see all of events for the month in a list, tap the Month List button at the bottom. This removes the month calendar at the top of the screen and instead shows a full screen list of items that you can scroll to browse. Or you can tap the Week View to see each day of the week in a list with events and tasks displayed under each day of the week.
You can quickly add an event or a task from any of the calendar screens by tapping the + at the top right corner. You then title the item in the “Name” field and you can add a location, description, provide date and time that the item starts, associate the event with one of your cases, and even add a handwritten note.
You can tap the CaseManager icon at the top left of most screens to cause the Global Menu to slide the main screen to the right so that you can see seven options. (If you are syncing with Dropbox, an eighth item “Sync Dropbox” appears as an option.)
Tap Cases from the Global Menu to view your cases or add a new one.
Tap any case to see the case dashboard from that case, a central location for information relating to that case.
The Calendar option is similar to the main Calendar view except that this one only shows the events and tasks for this specific case.
You can also view a list of all contacts, notes, events, documents, tasks, time and expenses or facts associated with a case by tapping the appropriate item on the case dashboard.
As indicated above, CaseManager can keep track of your time and expenses associated with each of your cases. There are several ways to do this. If you are recording time that is already finished, then select a case, on the dashboard select Time & Expenses, then tap the plus at the top right of the screen to add time (or an expense). Or better yet, if you already have an event or task on your calendar, simply tap on the item and select “Send to Time & Expenses,” enter the billing rate and the amount of work done, and then you are done.
If you are starting the work right now and you want to use a timer to track how long you work on it, create either an event or a task and save it. Then select that task and you will see a Timer option that you can start. You can then hide the timer and continue to use other parts of the CaseManager app if you want. When you are done, return to that event or task and stop the timer, and there is an option to send the time slip to Time & Expenses.
There are versions of CaseManager for the iPhone, iPad, a Windows computer and Android. You can use Dropbox to share data among the different versions of CaseManager. Once you authorize the app to access a CaseManager folder in your Dropbox, when you launch the app, the app will ask if you want to sync with Dropbox. Also, it is quick and easy to sync manually whenever you want simply by tapping Sync Dropbox at the bottom of the Global Menu. For example, you can add a bunch of items on your iPad (perhaps using an external keyboard if you will be doing a lot of typing) or your computer, then sync with Dropbox, then go to your iPhone and tap Sync Dropbox and all of your latest information will be on your iPhone.
Dropbox sync is also a useful way to share your case info with your secretary. Your secretary can use CaseManager on a computer (running Windows) or even on an iPhone or iPad, sync with your CaseManager file on Dropbox, and from there can add items to your calendar, review your Time and Expenses, etc.
Speaking of the iPad, the above screenshots were also taken with an iPhone 5s, but the app works just as well on the iPad, and perhaps even looks better because the app takes advantage of the additional space on the iPad screen. The following screens show you the app on an iPad:
If you are looking for way to store and keep track of all of the information associated with a case on your iPhone or iPad, and if you don’t need complicated and expensive software that comes with other features such as sharing events and tasks with a group of people, you should check out the CaseManager app. Only $20 for an app that can help you manage all of your case-related materials is a great bargain.
Click here to get CaseManager for iPhone ($19.99):
Early this morning, Apple and the carriers started to take online pre-orders for the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. (You’ll be able to buy them in stores starting one week from today, September 19th.) I have a business plan with AT&T so I cannot buy an iPhone through Apple, but I went to the AT&T website at 2:01 am Central time and purchased an iPhone 6 (128 GB, space gray). I hope that some of my friends buy an iPhone 6 Plus because I’m very curious to see what it is like to use an iPhone with a screen that large, but I’m pretty confident that the iPhone 6 is the best size for me. I’m not yet sure when I will receive the iPhone that I ordered — hopefully it will be on September 19 or very soon after that (the website currently says that that my estimated shipping date is 9/17 to 9/18) — but once I have kicked the tires on it, I’ll post my review here on iPhone J.D. And now, the news of note from the past week:
There were a huge number of articles posted this week about the upcoming Apple Watch. If you want to read a good one, I recommend this one by David Pogue of Yahoo Tech, which is based on his personal experience with a prototype and an interview with Apple.
I had assumed that Apple’s new wearable device would be called the iWatch, not the Apple Watch. Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac notes that in an interview with ABC, Apple Tim Cook actually called it the “iWatch” at one point. Was that just a slip of the tongue because he was thinking of the iPhone, or is that a hint that Apple had at one point planned to call the device the iWatch and that name was still in Cook’s mind? I suspect that at some point the future, someone will write about the history of the Apple Watch and we’ll find out.
By the way, if you are curious about the origin of the “i” in iPhone, I wrote about that in this post back in 2009.
The iPhone 6 comes with a new default wallpaper showing a picture of the Milky Way over some mountains. I just assumed that it was a complete fake created in Photoshop, but it is a real photograph taken by Norwegian photographer Espen Haagensen (although Apple did modify it for the iPhone). Michael Steeber of 9to5Mac talked to Haagensen and provides details on how the photo was taken and how it ended up on the new iPhones.
Whitson Gordon of LifeHacker reports that it appears that 5 million Gmail usernames and passwords may have been leaked on a Russian Bitcoin forum. Lovely.
Nathaniel Popper of the New York Times wrote an interesting article about how Apple worked with banks when developing the new Apple Pay system.
This week, Pete Souza, the official White House photographer, tweeted a photo of President Obama’s desk. I suppose it isn’t that different from my own desk — some papers at the back, and an iPad right at the front. I just don’t have that fancy presidential coaster. Or the nuclear codes. But otherwise it’s basically the same.
And finally, after watching Apple’s Jonathan Ive in a video introducing the Apple Watch, I enjoyed watching IKEA’s parody of an Ive video in this video for the enw IKEA catalogue:
iCloud is Apple’s cloud storage solution. You can use iCloud to back up your entire iPhone or iPad, although I prefer to back up my devices to my home computer. You can also use iCloud to store your documents created in Pages, Numbers and Keynote, and you can use iCloud to store movies and photos. Also, many third party apps include the option to store files using iCloud, which is a helpful way to share the file between versions of the app on your iPhone and your iPad.
Three months ago, Apple announced that it would make iCloud cheaper in connection with iOS 8. iOS 8 will be released on September 17, 2014, and it looks like the new iCloud prices are now in effect. Just a few days ago, when I tapped Settings -> iCloud -> Storage & Backup -> Buy More Storage on my iPhone, I saw these options:
But last night when I went there again, I saw this:
Everyone still gets 5 GB for free, and that has (just barely) been enough for me, but if you backup your iPhone or iPad to iCloud, it is easy to go over 5 GB. The old price was $40 a year for 20 GB, but you can now get 20 GB for only $0.99 a month, which is $11.88 a year. The old prices topped out at 50 GB for $100 a year, but you can now get 10x that much space, 500 GB, for around the same price: $9.99 a month, which is $119.88 a year. And if you really need a lot of space, you can get a full 1 TB for $19.99 a month, which is $239.88 a year.
Dropbox recently reduced its prices too, and the Dropbox Pro account now gives you 1 TB for $100 a year. While many third party apps can use Dropbox, Dropbox is not tightly integrated into the iOS experience like iCloud is. For example, you cannot automatically backup your iPhone to Dropbox, nor can you use Dropbox with Keynote, Pages and Numbers (at least, not directly).
Early next year, Apple will introduce a new program for the Mac called Photos which will let you share your full photo library with all of your iOS devices using iCloud. For those of us with large photo libraries — I see that my current iPhoto library on my Mac is at 300 GB — the reduced iCloud prices will be much appreciated when the new Photos for Mac is released in 2015.
Yesterday, Apple introduced the 2014 version of the iPhone. The new iPhone 6 is larger (although thinner) than the iPhone 5/5s, and for those looking for a huge screen, the iPhone 6 Plus is even larger.
Before talking about the iPhone 6, a brief word about Apple’s even bigger announcement yesterday: the Apple Watch. It will be released in early 2015, and there will be many different models, starting at $350. While the beautiful screen on the Apple Watch will remind many of the iPhone, it runs a new operating system (not just a version of iOS) and includes brand new features and input methods, with a user interface that is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. This has the potential to be the next big thing for Apple, and there is so much to learn about — including so many details that Apple has yet to reveal — that I am only beginning to understand this new product. I’ll talk about this product more in the future as I learn more and as more information is revealed. Having said that, yes, I will absolutely be getting one just as soon as they go on sale.
But back to the iPhone 6, which is something that you can buy actually buy this month, with pre-orders starting on September 12 and sales in retail stores beginning at 8am on September 19. After watching the video in which Apple announced the new iPhones and reading everything that I could get my hands on last night, I have no doubt that the new iPhones include a lot of features that lawyers are going to love.
Bigger Display
The most obvious new feature of the new iPhones is that they are larger. The 2012 and 2013 models — the iPhone 5 and 5s — had a 4-inch diagonal screen. In 2014, the iPhone 6 has a 4.7-inch diagonal screen, and the iPhone 6 Plus has a 5.5-inch diagonal screen. The screens are larger because the devices themselves are larger. The iPhone 6 is 5.44 inches tall and 2.64 inches wide. The iPhone 6 Plus is 6.22 inches tall and 3.06 inches wide. (By comparison, the iPhone 5s is 4.87 inches tall and 2.31 inches wide.)
What does the new iPhone do with the extra space? Older apps that have not been updated will simply zoom to fill the screen, so everything will just be larger. And as I understand it, you can select a mode on the new iPhones called Zoom View that will show, even with new apps, the same screen that you would have seen on an iPhone 5/5s, but just a larger version of it.
Alternatively, you can select the Standard View, and then apps can be written to take advantage of the larger screen size. For example, the iPhone 5/5s home screen can display four columns and five rows of apps (plus the dock) per screen. In Zoom View, you see the same layout on the new iPhones, but the icons and text are just larger. But in Standard View on the new iPhones, the home screen can show six rows of apps per screen — an additional row. You still get four columns, but there is just more space between each column. The following images show the Standard View on the left and the Zoom View on the right:
I can see both modes being particularly useful for lawyers. The ability to have larger text may mean that you don’t need to reach for your iPad or a computer when you need to read a brief on your iPhone or read the fine print in a document. The ability to have more options on the screen means that you can be even more productive when you are trying to use your iPhone to get work done. And from what I have read from people who have actually held the iPhone 6, while it is certainly bigger than an iPhone 5/5s, it doesn’t feel so much bigger that it feels wrong in any way. When I switched from an iPhone 4S to and iPhone 5, I immediately noticed the taller screen, but after about a week or so the taller screen seemed normal and the iPhone 4S seemed tiny and wrong. I suspect that the transition to the larger iPhone 6 will be similar. [UPDATE 9/12/14: David Pogue of Yahoo Tech said today: “The iPhone 6 (not PLUS) does NOT strike most people as bigger! Unless you have the iPhone for comparison, it doesn’t hit you as bigger at all, which was a surprise to me.”]
As for the even larger iPhone 6 Plus, I address that below.
Better Display
Apple calls the iPhone 5s screen a Retina screen. The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus have what Apple calls a Retina HD screen. It has a higher contrast so that text is sharper and blacks are deeper. This will make pictures and videos look better, but it will also make it easier to read email and documents on an iPhone screen.
The Retina HD screen also has a winder viewing angle. Thus, if you need to show a client or a colleague something on an iPhone, they will find it easier to see what is on the screen of the iPhone in your hand.
Thinner
The new iPhones are thinner than ever. The original iPhone was .46 inches thick. The iPhone 3G and 3Gs were slightly thicker, at .48 inches. The iPhone 4 and 4S were noticeably thinner at .37 inches. The iPhone 5 and 5s were thinner still at .30 inches. The new iPhone 6 is only .27 inches, and the iPhone 6 Plus is only slighly thicker at .28 inches. In my experience with prior generations of iPhones, as the devices get thinner, they become easier and more pleasant to hold in your hand, and they become easier to store in a shirt pocket because they bulge out less. Thus, I suspect that I will appreciate the even thinner iPhones this year.
Note that while the new iPhones are thinner, because they are also larger, the new iPhones weigh more than the iPhone 5/5s did. The iPhone 5s weighs 3.95 ounces; the iPhone 6 weighs in at 4.55 ounces, and the iPhone 6 Plus is 6.07 ounces. Fortunately, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they will feel heavier in your hands, thanks to the thinner design and the better distribution of weight — especially for the iPhone 6. For example, Brian Barrett of Gizmodo got a chance to hold the new iPhone 6 after Apple’s announcement yesterday and wrote: “The iPhone 6 is also light as hell. Yes, it’s about half an ounce heavier than the iPhone 5S, but with the weight distributed over larger area it ends up, oddly, feeling even lighter than the previous generation.” I suspect that the extra weight will be more obvious with the iPhone 6 Plus.
Curves
The new iPhones have curved edges. Apple says on its website: “The first thing you notice when you hold iPhone 6 is how great it feels in your hand. The cover glass curves down around the sides to meet the anodized aluminum enclosure in a remarkable, simplified design. There are no distinct edges. No gaps. Just a smooth, seamless bond of metal and glass that feels like one continuous surface.” Virtually every article that I have read about the new iPhones written by folks who held them yesterday notes that the new iPhones feel really great in your hand thanks to the curved sides.
Faster
Of course, a new iPhone model is going to have better processors and thus be faster. In the announcement yesterday, Apple VP Phil Schiller said that the new iPhones have up to a 25% faster CPU, and up to 50% faster GPU (graphics), compared to last year’s iPhone 5s. The new iPhones are also up to 50x faster than the original iPhone on CPU tasks, and up to 84% faster on graphics. In real world use, this typically means that the device can do more and feels more responsive, which is always a good thing.
Camera
Apple knows that more and more folks are relying on an iPhone to be their primary camera, and thus Apple improves the camera every year. The new iPhones have a better sensor that takes better pictures with better, faster auto-focus for both photos and videos. The new iPhones also do a better job with handling colors, and do a better job with noise reduction when you are taking a photograph in low light.
So in short, the camera is better.
Apple Pay
Apple spent a lot of time yesterday describing the new Apple Pay system. At a large number of merchants, you will soon be able to pay for items just by tapping your iPhone 6 or 6 Plus — and soon your Apple Watch — on a device at the store. The whole process is much faster, and much more secure, than using a credit card. This has the potential to be one of the best, and most convenient, features of the new iPhones and I look forward to learning more about it and using it myself.
Other new features
Those are the highlights, but there is a lot more that is new in the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. For example, for carriers that support it, the new phones have better LTE support for faster data. Many carriers will also soon support Voice over LTE, which lets you talk using the better 4G LTE network instead of the 3G network for better sounding calls.
If you have a relatively new router that supports 802.11ac, the new iPhones also support this as well, which can result in up to 3x faster Wi-Fi. On T-Mobile, and hopefully other U.S. carriers in the future, you will even be able to take advantage of the superior bandwidth of Wi-Fi to make better quality phone calls, and then the call will seamlessly switch to the cellular network when you leave the Wi-Fi area.
The new iPhones can even tell how high you are — i.e., they have a barometer. Thus, the health-related apps can keep track of (and give you credit for) walking up stairs.
The new iPhones come in the same colors as before — silver, gold and space gray. Just like before, the entry model comes with 16 GB, but for an extra $100, you now jump up to 64 GB, and an extra $200 will get you 128 GB. For most attorneys, the 64 GB model will be the sweet spot.
Which size to get?
So you have decided to get a new iPhone. Which size should you get? As California attorney David Sparks tweeted yesterday: “I will probably spend more time considering iPhone 6 vs. 6 plus than most people spend choosing a tattoo.” I’ve been thinking about it a lot. On the plus side of the iPhone 6 Plus (ahem), I see four advantages to paying an additional $100 for an iPhone 6 Plus over an iPhone 6.
First, bigger is often better when it comes to looking at things on a mobile device. Video and photographs will virtually always look better when then can be made larger on a larger screen. And for those of us with aging eyes, having larger text in emails, web pages, etc. is better. There are actually two ways that the iPhone 6 Plus screen can be better. First and most obviously, the screen itself is physically larger, as noted above. But in addition to being a larger screen, it should be a better screen because the iPhone 6 Plus has pixels that are packed more tightly together, making it all the more impossible to see individual pixels. The iPhone 6, like the iPhone 5s, has 326 pixels per inch. The iPhone 6 Plus has 401 pixels per inch. To be sure, 326 pixels per inch is awesome, and at some point the dots become so small that your eyes can’t distinguish the difference anyway, but I imagine that the iPhone 6 Plus screen could look better in addiiton to being larger.
Second, as noted above, apps can be written to take advantage of the larger screen of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. But on the iPhone 6 Plus, the screen is so much larger that many apps will include features that we previously saw only on an iPad. For example, in the built-in Mail app, when you turn to landscape mode on an iPhone 6 Plus, you have the option to see a list of messages on the left and the message itself on the right, similar to what you can see on an iPad:
Thus, app developers can take advantage of the larger screen of the iPhone 6 Plus to display all of the same text and graphics, at the same size, that they appear on the iPhone 6, but then add some additional information in the extra space. This has the potential to make you more productive with an iPhone 6 Plus than with an iPhone 6.
Third, the iPhone 6 Plus has a larger battery, and while you need some of that extra battery to power the larger screen, the larger iPhone also lasts longer. For example, Apple says that an iPhone 5s can use the Internet for up to 8 hours on 3G, whereas an iPhone 6 can go up to 10 hours and the iPhone 6 Plus can go up to 12 hours. Video playback is up to 10 hours on the iPhone 5s, up to 11 hours on the iPhone 6, and up to 14 hours on the iPhone 6 Plus.
Fourth, the iPhone 6 Plus is the first and only iPhone to feature optical image stabilization, which helps to correct for your hand shaking when you take a picture with the iPhone.
All of those advantages seem pretty nice. Nevertheless, I still think I am going to get the iPhone 6 for myself, not the iPhone 6 Plus, because my sense is that the Plus will just be too big to be comfortable to me.
Until I hold one myself, it is difficult to know how big and awkward the Plus will feel in my hand. But there are ways to get a sense of it. First, you can look at this page on Apple’s website and scroll down to the part that says “Select your current iPhone and compare it to iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.” You can select a picture of your current iPhone on the left and the iPhone 6 or 6 Plus on the right so that you can see the releative sizes. And if you use your browser to adjust the magnification settings just right, you can get the iPhone on the left to be the exact same size on your monitor as it is in real life, which then shows you the true size of the iPhone 6 or 6 Plus on the right.
Second, Aurich Lawson of Ars Technica took the exact dimensions provided by Apple and drew wireframe drawings to scale. At the end of this post you can download the PDF. Print it out on your printer (make sure you do so without letting your computer shrink or expand the size of the image), cut out the wireframes, and you can see for yourself what the height and width looks like — although of course not the depth or the weight. I did so, and I’ve been looking at my iPhone 5s as compared to the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus:
As I mentioned above, it seems to me that the iPhone 6 is bigger but not dramatically so, just enough to be good without being too extreme. But the iPhone 6 Plus just seems far too large. When I place my iPhone 5s in a a shirt pocket, you cannot even see the top of the phone. With the iPhone 6 cutout, you can see just a little of the phone sticking out. But when I place that iPhone 6 Plus cutout in my shirt pocket, the pocket is more than wide enough for the phone, but the top of the phone sticks out quite a bit, so much so that it doesn’t seem right. And when I hold the cutout iPhone 6 Plus in my hand, it just seems wrong, almost like the way that it just doesn’t look right when you look at yourself in a fun house mirror.
Having said that, based on the reports that I read from folks who got a chance to hold the new iPhones yesterday, many — perhaps even most? — of them really liked the larger iPhone 6 Plus. More than one were happy that the iPhone 6 Plus is almost like a small version of the iPad mini — an iPad mini mini, if you will. I’m not sure that I agree with that; if I want a larger screen, I’ll just use my iPad, although to be fair my iPad is not always with me.
Apple does include a new mode with the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus to help with the larger size: if you tap (not press) the home button twice, the top of the screen slides down so that you can reach items on the top of the screen that are too far up for your thumb to normally reach on a larger device. Here is a short video by Joshua Topolsky of Bloomberg Digital that shows this in action.
If you don’t plan to buy an iPhone 6 immediately, you can wait until you can hold the two new phones for yourself in an Apple Store, AT&T store, Verizon store, etc. But if you are like me and you plan to get one on Day 1, you’ll need to make a choice now. I’m fairly sure that I have decided to get the iPhone 6, not the 6 Plus, but I want to think about it some more.
[UPDATE 1:15 pm: Over lunch today, I went to my local AT&T store and spent some time with the LG G3 phone to try to get a sense of what the iPhone 6 Plus will feel like. As noted by CNet, there are some similarities. Both phones have a 5.5-inch diagonal screen, but the LG G3 is not as tall (5.76" vs. 6.2") and not as wide (2.94" vs. 3.1"), although the LG G3 is thicker (.35" vs. .28"). The LG G3 is also lighter (5.26 oz. vs. 6.1 oz.) I didn’t much care for the size, and as noted this phone is somewhat smaller in height and width and weight, which makes me even more suspicious of the larger iPhone 6 Plus. It just didn’t feel like a phone to me, but instead felt like a miniature tablet. To be fair, a miniature tablet is a cool idea, but it’s just not what I want to carry around in my pocket all day long and hold up to my face to make calls. And I didn’t like the fact that it is impossible for my thumb to reach across the device with one hand. I see that California attorney David Sparks posted that he is leaning towards the iPhone 6 Plus specifically becuase it seems like a different device: “I’ve been leaning toward the larger phone because I’m really curious about how a bigger screen would change my relationship to my iPhone.” That’s a fair point, but I’m not sure that I’m ready for such a drastic change in my relationship with my iPhone. Bottom line, though, is that if you are also on the fence, until you can touch an iPhone 6 Plus yourself, consider checking out some of the similar Android phones that are currently in stores such as the LG G3.]
Conclusion
While most of my work gets done on my computer and my iPad, I can be mighty productive on an iPhone reading and responding to emails, reading and making quick edits to documents, keeping track of my contacts and calendar appointments, etc. With the larger, better screen, and a thinner, curvier design that makes it more pleasant to hold in the hand, the new iPhone 6 looks like it will be much better in performing all of these tasks. I still think that the iPhone 6 Plus will be too large for me, but who knows, maybe I will change my mind on that and opt for the jumbo size when the 2015 version of the iPhone comes out next year. But whatever size you prefer, the two new iPhones look like clear winners, and I have no doubt that they will be incredibly popular. I can’t wait to have one in my hands.
Today at 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern, Apple will introduce the 2014 version(s) of the iPhone, which I presume will be called the iPhone 6. I add the possible “s” to “version” because the rumor is that Apple will announce two models, one with a larger 4.7 inch screen and another with an even larger 5.5 inch screen. Additionally, Apple is rumored to announce a new wearable device that could be called the iWatch. For a good take on what Apple is expected to announce today, read this article by John Gruber.
You can watch a live stream of the announcements at this link on an iPad, iPhone or Mac, or you can watch on an Apple TV. If you want to also (or instead) read a live blog of the event, I recommend that you look at this one on Macworld; Jason Snell and Dan Moren are Apple live blog pros. If you can’t watch the live video during the day, Apple usually posts it on their website a few hours later, so you should be able to watch it tonight.
And of course, come back to iPhone J.D. tomorrow and I’ll give you my initial thoughts on the announcements.
