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The iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c go on sale today [UPDATE: And I bought my new iPhone 5s this morning], and this past Wednesday Apple released iOS 7.  That makes this the busiest week this year in the world of iOS.  If you have not yet updated to iOS 7, I encourage you to do so.  The different appearance is startling at first, but you will get used to it, and along the way you will discover hundreds of improvements.  For example, did you know that when you swipe to unlock your iPhone or iPad, you no longer need to swipe across the bottom, and instead you can swipe anywhere on the screen?  Did you know that you can see a list view in the Calendar app by tapping the magnifying glass icon at the top of the screen?  Did you know that when you tap the tabs button in Safari not only can you scroll (in 3D) through open tabs, but your iPhone can also show you tabs that are currently open on your iPad and iPad mini?  There is a seemingly endless number of small improvements, not to mention all of the important new big improvements.  I cannot even begin to list all of the interesting articles that were published this week, but here are some of the highlights:

• California attorney David Sparks has been using a beta version of iOS 7 for six weeks and here are his observations.
• Kevin Bostic of AppleInsider reports that New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon issued a joint statement encouraging users to upgrade to iOS 7 because of the additional security features.  So if you don’t upgrade your iPhone or iPad, you are ignoring bi-coastal law enforcement advice, something that I am quite sure that I have never said before.
• Glenn Fleishmann of TidBITS explains those new security features in iOS 7.
• If you are looking for a long, comprehensive report on what is new in iOS 7, thre are quite a few good ones out there.  Rene Ritchie of iMore wrote this epic article.  Andrew Cunningham of Ars Technica wrote this one.  David Pogue of the New York Times wrote this review.
• Having trouble finding some of the features you used in iOS 6 now that you have upgraded to iOS 7?  Thorin Klosowski of Lifehacker offers this advice.  (via Houston attorney Reginald Hirsch)
• Siri is much better in iOS 7.  Steven Sande of TUAW notes some of the Siri improvements.  You can also now ask Siri to read you your recent emails.
• Chris Herbert of Macstories provides some iOS 7 tips and tricks.
• Aaron Souppouris of The Verge points out some of the best hidden features of iOS 7.
• Macworld has more articles on iOS 7 than you can shake a stick at.  Just to pick a few good ones, here is what the Macworld editors have to say on AirDrop, Siri, Notification Center, the Activation Lock, Safari and Settings.
• Marco della Cava of USA Today interviewed Jony Ive and Craig Federighi, the Apple executives responsible for the new iOS 7 and new iPhones.
• Sam Grobart of BloombergBusinessweek interviewed Ive, Federighi and Apple CEO Tim Cook.
• Joseph of Keller of iMore notes that the Quickoffice app is now free.  Quickoffice is one of the best apps for viewing and editing Microsoft Office documents on an iPhone or iPad.  Google now owns the app and has decided to make it free.  I hope that doesn’t mean that Google is ending development of the app (I keep waiting to see the app add the ability to view and edits footnotes), but now that the price is free I definitely recommend that you check it out.
• And finally, if you plan to get a new iPhone 5s, one of the decisions that you need to make is what color to get:   Space Gray (essentially the black model), Silver (essentially the white model) or the brand new Gold.  The funny folks at the Conan TV show put together this video to help you decide which is best:

At some point today — my guess is around lunchtime for folks in the Central and Eastern time zones [UPDATE: It is available as of 11:55 am Central] — you will be able to update your iPhone and iPad to the new iOS 7.  iOS 7 gives your devices an all-new look, and includes some cool new features like the Control Center and Air Drop.  Click here for my preview.  Folks interested in the latest and greatest will want to use iOS 7 right away; for others, an argument can be made to wait a little bit, but eventually you are going to want to make the upgrade.  Every report that I have heard from those who have been using the beta versions of iOS 7 is that once you start using it, you’ll never want to go back to iOS 6.

The new iPhone 5s 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 very positive.  The fingerprint sensor seems to work flawlessly and makes it much, much faster to pick up your iPhone and start using it.  The camera improvements (in both hardware and software) results in much better still photos and videos.  Plus, the new A7 processor means that the iPhone seems much zippier and more responsive, and you get a little more battery life. 

Here are all of the reviews that I have seen so far, along with some quotes to give you a sense of the new features of the iPhone 5s:

• Jim Dalrymple of The Loop:  “I’ll be honest, heading into the event, I was wondering if Apple’s
  
  implementation of the sensor would be good enough to actually make it
  
  useful. Not just for a demo to make people gasp and clap, but could I
  
  use it every day. The answer is unequivocally yes.”
• Walt Mossberg of All Things D / The Wall Street Journal:  “It sounds like a gimmick, but it’s a real advance, the biggest step ever
  
  in biometric authentication for everyday devices. After using Touch ID, I
  
  found it annoying to go back to typing in passcodes on my older iPhone.”
• David Pogue
  
  of the New York Times:  “The most heavily promoted feature is the 5S’s
  
  fingerprint sensor, which,
  
  ingeniously, is built into the Home button. You push the Home button to
  
  wake the phone, leave your finger there another half second, and boom:
  
  you’ve unlocked a phone that nobody else can unlock, without the hassle
  
  of inputting the password. (And yes, a password is a hassle; half of
  
  smartphone users never bother setting one up.) The best part is that it
  
  actually works — every single time, in my tests. … Apple says battery
  
  life is about 25 percent better than before; I’ve
  
  been getting nearly two days of moderate use on a charge.”
• Harry McCracken of Time:  “The most significant new thing in the iPhone 5s may be a security
  
  feature. The phone’s home button now doubles as a fingerprint sensor,
  
  via a feature Apple calls Touch ID. It’s optional, but I can’t imagine
  
  anyone not wanting to use it, since it makes securing your phone and
  
  entering your iTunes password not only painless, but very nearly fun.”
  
• Vincent Nguyen of Slash Gear:  “Touch ID is magical in how simple it makes using
  
  the iPhone 5s. Press the home button and you’re looking at the
  
  homescreen; it’s actually cutting down on even more taps compared to an
  
  PIN-free device, since now you don’t have to swipe the unlock bar
  
  either. We haven’t had a single occasion where someone else could unlock
  
  the phone with an unregistered finger, and nor have we had to resort to
  
  the PIN code.”
• Rich Jaroslovsky of Bloomberg:  “The Touch ID is built into the 5s home button. Once you’ve scanned your
  
  fingers — I used both thumbs — a light press of the button wakes the
  
  phone and simultaneously unlocks it. It works far better than any other
  
  biometric device I’ve used, not requiring your finger to be positioned
  
  just so. It makes security transparent and even pleasurable.”
• Scott Stein
  
  of CNet:  “Touch ID may be getting all the headlines lately, but the
  
  iPhone 5S’ improved camera is probably its biggest selling point.”
• Stuart Miles of Pocket-Lint:  “When slow-mo is selected you can record video at 120fps at 720p
  
  quality and then retrospectively slow down any part of the footage
  
  after. Reduce it to 30fps and it’ll run at quarter time, but still
  
  super-smooth. To make it look even better the audio is also slowed down
  
  automatically. Cue beach-running scenes, or near-misses with trains, or,
  
  in our case, the Burberry Spring/Summer 2014 catwalk show at London
  
  Fashion Week.
  
  As you can imagine there is plenty of fun to be had, especially with
  
  the kids, and we’ve been snapping slow-mo footage when we can of a range
  
  of different things.”
• Luke Peters of T3:  “Other iPhone 5s-specific camera features
  
  include; auto image stabilisation (steady), 3x video zoom (bit blurry),
  
  30fps panorama with varying light control (megabyte-y), burst mode at 10
  
  photos per second (cheeky) and, best of all, slo-motion video capture,
  
  which is absolutely brilliant. It’s the iPhone 5s’s Panorama moment and
  
  you can expect to see your social feeds filling up with quarter-speed
  
  120fps 720p footage very shortly. The fact that the iPhone 5s can process it all on the fly is testament
  
  to the new A7 chip. Video quality is outstanding and, even if capturing
  
  your child’s meteoric face-plant (we speak from experience), all
  
  emotional guilt is washed away as you become Spielberg for a second,
  
  seizing every last crunch in superb clarity and detail.”
• Darrell Etherington
  
  of TechCrunch:  “Also new to the iPhone 5s is image stabilization that
  
  happens automatically in-camera, using four exposures taken in rapid
  
  selection from which the best, most-stable parts are chosen. It
  
  recombines elements from each, rather than just picking the best.
  
  Similar is how the new Burst mode works, which can take full-res pics at
  
  a rate of 10 snaps per second (better than most DSLRs). The 5s then
  
  automatically picks one it deems ‘best’ based on a number of factors,
  
  like whether someone’s eyes are closed, and also makes available the
  
  entire series for you to page through and extract individual pics to
  
  your camera roll from.”
• Ed Baig of USA Today:  “One thing not seen elsewhere is the True Tone flash system in the 5s. It
  
  is based on two flashes working in tandem to automatically determine
  
  the intensity and best combination of flashes. I got generally lovely
  
  results taking flash photos, though I noticed it sometimes took an extra
  
  second or so before the camera actually took a picture.”
• John Gruber of Daring Fireball:  “Apple claims this is the biggest year-over-year improvement in computing performance in the history of the iPhone, and in both my day-to-day experience and some benchmark testing over the past week, I have no reason to doubt them. The iPhone 5S is fast. … The iPhone 5S is, in some measures, computationally superior to the top-of-the-line MacBook Pro from just five years ago.”
• Anand Lal Shimpi of AnandTech:  “The A7 SoC is seriously impressive. Apple calls it a desktop-class SoC,
  
  but I’d rather refer to it as something capable of competing with the
  
  best Intel has to offer in this market. In many cases the A7’s dual
  
  cores were competitive with Intel’s recently announced Bay Trail SoC.
  
  Web browsing is ultimately where I noticed the A7’s performance the
  
  most. As long as I was on a good internet connection, web pages just
  
  appeared after resolving DNS. The A7’s GPU performance is also insanely
  
  good – more than enough for anything you could possibly throw at the
  
  iPhone 5s today, and fast enough to help keep this device feeling quick
  
  for a while.”
• Myriam Joire of Engadget:  “The iPhone 5 may be fast enough for some, but the 5s is significantly
  
  faster. In a few tests, the 5s performed more than three times better,
  
  while in others, it was closer to a 50 percent increase. Regardless, the
  
  5s was the clear winner according to every single metric, whether it
  
  was CPU performance or JavaScript rendering.”
• Matt Warman of The Telegraph:  “This is a device that adds features that make the existing iPhone
  
  even easier to use, more powerful and turn it into a better camera, all in a
  
  package that remains the classiest on the market. It doesn’t have the most
  
  features, but those that are there are accessible in a way the no other
  
  manufacturer has yet mastered. That improved ease of use and continued
  
  elegance mean the 5s is a worthy flagship to persuade iPhone users to
  
  upgrade, and it retains all the apps that have powered Apple’s success.”

Last month I reviewed the Stable PRO by Thought Out, a high-quality iPad stand made out of solid steel.  As noted in the review, that product is well constructed and well designed, and I find that stand very useful on my office desk.  Thought Out also sent me a free review unit of a similar product for the iPhone called the PED 4 Planet CH50.  It works as advertised, letting me mount my iPhone in different positions in either landscape or portrait orientation.  My only real complaint is that I simply haven’t found it nearly as useful to have my iPhone on a stand of this nature as it is to have an iPad on a stand.

Most of the product is made of shiny, thick plastic, but it also has a steel shaft with a ball on the end.  Thus, this stand is much lighter than the Stable PRO iPad stand, but that is not a problem because you don’t need much weight to support an iPhone 5.  I use my iPhone 5 without a case, but you can expand the holders to provide the prefect grip for an iPhone that is in a case.  The ability to adjust the holders mean that it should work with any iPhone, including the upcoming iPhone 5c and iPhone 5s.

Once the iPhone is in the device, you can adjust the stand to angle your iPhone in virtually any position.  It is very easy to adjust the stand, but once you get it in a position that you like, the stand is stiff enough to stay in that position.

The base has rubber feet to keep it steady on your desk.

In addition to using the PED4 Planet CH50 on the base, you can unscrew the shaft from the base.  The bottom of the shaft has a standard 1/4"-20 female thread so you can attach it to any tripod.  If you want to take a photo or video with your iPhone and want to keep it very steady, this is a great solution.  I tried this with a JOBY GorillaPod portable tripod that I use with my Nikon SLR camera and it worked great.

Note that if you are just looking for a nice way to mount your iPhone on a tripod, you can purchase the PED4 CH50 without the Planet base and save a few bucks.

As noted above, when using this device with the base, my only real complaint is that after about two months of having this product on my desk, I haven’t found it very useful to have an iPhone mounted in this position.  Unlike an iPad which has a large screen and can function as a sort of second monitor, I rarely found it useful to have an iPhone in a fixed, mounted position on my desk.  It’s not that I don’t use my iPhone in my office — to the contrary, I use my iPhone all the time as a quick way to check an email, my calendar, my to do list, etc. — but I prefer keeping my iPhone on my shirt pocket or on my desk and just picking it up when I need it. 

The one exception was using my iPhone to make a video call using FaceTime.  Your hand can get tired holding out the iPhone for a while, and it is quite nice to mount the iPhone in a fixed position on a stable surface.  If you travel and use FaceTime on your iPhone to call home to talk with your spouse or kids, I could definitely see the PED4 Planet CH50 being worth it.  As noted above, you can unscrew the shaft to break down the unit into two pieces, so it can easily fit in your briefcase or luggage.

[UPDATE 11/19/13:  This past weekend, my son and I started to play with iStopMotion, an iPad app that you can use to create fun stop motion videos.  The app lets you use an iPhone as an external camera, which is really the best way to use the app.  The PED4 Planet CH50 stand is a perfect macth for the iStopMotion app.  You can adjust the iPhone as a camera to whatever position that you want, and then it stays in that exact position from shot to shot — exactly what you want for stop motion videos.  When I wrote this original review, my own real complaint was that I didn’t have a good use for the product, so I wanted to update the review to note that iStopMotion is a perfect use for this product.]

You know how you use your own iPhone in your office, and if you use it in a way for which it would be useful to have your iPhone mounted in a fixed position a few inches above your desk (such as my FaceTime example), then I can highly recommend the PED4 Planet CH50 because it is well-designed for that task.  But if you are like me and find it most useful to always have your iPhone in your pocket so that it is close to you when you need it, then this product is not for you.

The PED4 Planet CH50 retails for $50, but you can save $10 if you buy it on Amazon.

Click here to get PED4 Planet CH50 from Amazon ($39.99)

Click here to get PED4 CH50 [without the Planet base] from Amazon ($27.99)

Starting today, you can preorder an iPhone 5c and get it as soon as a week from today.  Kevin Bostic of AppleInsider has the details for doing so.  But unfortunately, and unlike the last few years, Apple is not allowing preorders of its new top-of-the-line iPhone, the iPhone 5s.  Thus, if you want to be one of the first to get one, you will need to find an Apple Store or a cellphone store and get in line early in the morning next Friday.  I did that back in 2010 when the iPhone 4 was released and it wasn’t too much of a hassle.  I haven’t yet decided what I am going to do this year.  And now the news of note from the past week, most of which relates to the new iPhones:

• Indiana attorney Bill Wilson explains why he thinks that attorneys will like the iPhone 5s on his Third Apple website.  His thoughts are similar to mine.
• California attorney David Sparks explains how he uses Smart Playlists in iTunes to create great mixes of songs to listen to on his iPhone.
• I am not the only one confused and annoyed by the lower case “s” in the new iPhone 5s.  Adam Engst addresses the issue in this article for TidBITS.  Amen!
• Danny Yadron and Ian Sherr of All Things D provide more information on the Touch ID fingerprint scanner on the new iPhone 5s.  For example, your iPhone doesn’t store an image of your fingerprint.
• Mary Branscombe of CITE World also discusses the Touch ID sensor, explaining that it doesn’t read the outside lawyer of your skin but instead reads a living layer of skin under the surface of your finger and therefore cannot be used with a finger that is severed from your body.  Well that make me feel better.  (via Daring Fireball)
• Neil Hughes of AppleInsider reports that the new iPhones have a slightly larger battery and get two more hours of battery life.  That’s good news, but isn’t enough to get me to stop thinking about that severed finger.  Jeesh.
• Russel Brandom of The Verge discusses the use of online services such as Gmail and Dropbox by attorneys.
• Hari Gottipati of GigaOm wrote a fascinating article on iBeacon, a technology in iOS 7 the allows objects in the vicinity of your iPhone to transmit information to your iPhone.
• David Pogue of the New York Times discusses a new book called Cockpit Confidential that provides honest answers for just about any question you have on air travel.  Even if you don’t get the book, Pogue answers many common questions in his article.  For example, he debunks the suggestion that keeping an iPad or iPhone turned poses any danger to the flight.
• If you are buying a new iPhone, should you get AppleCare?  Jonathan Seff of Macworld provides his thoughts.  I’m on the fence.  There have been times that I have purchased it and used it, but I usually don’t purchase it and those times have been lucky enough to not need it. 
• Rene Ritchie of iMore runs through all of the decisions (including whether to buy AppleCare) that you will need to make if you plan to get a new iPhone.
• In light of the recent revelations about the NSA, is it safe to use password security software such as 1Password?  There’s a great post on the 1Password blog that addresses this question.  Another post from this past June also addresses the issue.
• Scoopertino offers a humorous, alternative take on Apple’s new iPhone announcements.
• And finally, when Apple showed off the iPhone 5s earlier this week, it selected only a single app to show off the power of the new A7 processor that provides the engine for the iPhone 5s:  Infinity Blade III.  That game will be available next week and will actually work on devices as old as the iPhone 4 and the iPad 2, but of course you will need an iPhone 5s to see all of the dazzling graphics.  Here is the official trailer for the game.  It is amazing that a device as small as the iPhone can render graphics like this in real time.

There are quite a few great PDF editing apps for the iPad.  For a long time, I’ve heard people sing the praises of iAnnotate, but it wasn’t until recently that I started to use the app to prepare the review that I posted last month.  As you can tell from my review, I really like the app.  Indeed, since I posted my review, I have continued to use iAnnotate quite a bit.  I love the tabs, I love all of the powerful features, and I love how easy it is to convert a Word file into a PDF that I can easily mark-up.

The app normally costs $10, but it is on sale today only (Thursday, September 12th) for only $2.  I saw one indication that the sale ends at midnight on Thursday, and another indication that it ends at noon on Friday; suffice it to say that this is a limited time offer.  [UPDATE: The developer informs me that the sale ends at 1pm Eastern on Friday Sept. 13.]  If you were on the fence about buying the app, perhaps because you already have another app that you use for working with PDF files, I encourage you to take advantage of the one-day sale today.  The 80% discount is substantial, and the app is incredibly powerful and useful.

Click here to get iAnnotate (normally $9.99, but $1.99 today only): 

Yesterday, Apple introduced two new iPhones, the iPhone 5s and the iPhone 5c.  The iPhone 5s is the flagship model.  It will be available starting September 20, 2013, and it costs the same as the iPhone 5 that it replaces:  $199 for 16 GB, $299 for 32 GB and $399 for 64 GB.  The iPhone 5s includes some great new features, and the more I read about this device, the more I am sure that lawyers are going to love it.

Before I get to the phone itself, I have to be a technical lawyer and comment upon the typography of the name.  To my eyes, it looks wrong for the “s” to be lowercase.  Apple used an uppercase letter for the iPhone 4S and the iPhone 3GS; why is it different this year?  Back in 2009 when Apple introduced the iPhone 3GS, some parts of Apple’s website called it the “iPhone 3G S” but then Apple realized that the space before the S was silly and removed it.  The chance of a change this year seems smaller, especially since there seems to be an argument for using a lower case “s” in the Helvitica family font used by Apple, but I’m still holding out hope that the anti-e.e. cummings crowd at Apple prevails.

On to the phone itself.  For many years now, Apple has had a “tick tock” cycle in which they introduce a bold new design for the iPhone one year, and then the next year they use the same design with improvements.  Thus, we had the iPhone 3G, followed by the iPhone 3GS that used the same form factor; the iPhone 4 followed by the identical-from-the-outside iPhone 4S.  In 2012 we had the new design of the iPhone 5, and this year, the iPhone 5s looks almost exactly the same, and has the same dimensions, weight and battery life.  If the iPhone 5 was the “tick” what is the difference in this “tock”?  The changes include a speedy new processor, a fingerprint sensor, a better camera and a few more features such as new colors.

 

1. New Processor

The iPhone 5 used an A6 processor.  The iPhone 5s uses an A7 processor with a 64-bit architecture.  The A7 is twice as fast as last year’s A6 and is 40 times faster than the original iPhone introduced in 2007.  This will make the iPhone itself seem more responsive, reducing the friction between you and getting things done.  More importantly, apps can use the faster processor to include features that were previously impossible.  Yesterday, Apple showed off a game — Infinity Blade 3 — that looked incredible thanks to the A7 processor.  I’m not a big gamer (although I did play and enjoy Infinity Blade 1 and 2, so I suspect I’ll buy the sequel), but I look forward to seeing what app developers can do with this new processor to make more powerful apps.

2. Touch ID

Apple is combining the power of the A7 chip with some new hardware inside of the home button on the iPhone 5s to add a fingerprint scanner, technology that Apple calls Touch ID.  If you are an attorney using an iPhone, then I certainly hope you are using the passcode lock feature so that someone cannot simply pick up your iPhone and start reading your email and other confidential information.  But of course, it is a pain to have to type in that passcode every time you go to use your iPhone.  With the iPhone 5s, you won’t have to type in that passcode.  Simply place your finger on the home button and the iPhone will scan your finger, confirm that you are really you, and then unlock the phone.  Similarly, you can use your fingerprint instead of typing your Apple ID every time you download a new app.

Touch ID can store up to five fingerprints, so you can choose your thumb, your index finger, fingers on left and right hands, etc.  And they can be from different people, useful if you want your spouse to be able to easily unlock your iPhone while you are driving.

At first I assumed that the iPhone 5s is taking a picture of your finger, but that’s not how it works.  Security expert Rich Mogull explains in an article at Macworld that it uses a “capacitance fingerprint
reader [that] leverages a handy property of your skin: The outer layer of your
skin (your dermis), where your fingerprint is, is non-conductive, while
the subdermal layer behind it is conductive. When you touch the
iPhone’s fingerprint sensor, it measures the minuscule differences in
conductivity caused by the raised parts of your fingerprint, and it uses
those measurements to form an image.”

According to folks who tried it out yesterday, it works really well.  For example, John Gruber of Daring Fireball wrote:  “It’s fairly quick to train, and once trained, it is really fast, and in
my brief hands-on testing, very accurate. The optimal way to use it to
unlock your phone seems to be to tap the home button once to wake the
phone, and then just keep your thumb or finger on the button for just
another moment. Boom, unlocked. It’s very impressive technology. I
already feel silly tapping in my passcode to unlock my iPhone.”  David Pogue of the New York Times wrote:  “I got a few minutes with the 5S at Apple’s event introducing the phone. I
trained it to recognize my finger, then used it to unlock the phone a
couple of times. It worked perfectly, which is a welcome advance. And
the placement on the Home button is ingenious.”  By the way, I see that Pogue and the Times seem to agree with my opinion that “5S” looks better than “5s”.

For now, third party apps cannot use Touch ID, but I’m sure (or at least I hope) that will change in the future.  For example, I’d love to be able to simply use my fingerprint to unlock the 1Password app on my iPhone.

Security is incredibly important to lawyers — especially in this age of mobile devices — but it always involves a trade-off between protection and ease of use.  Using a password of “1234" is easy to remember and easy to enter, but provides horrible protection.  Complex passwords provide more protection at the cost of convenience.  Touch ID has the potential to provide both high security and high convenience at the same time, a juxtaposition that was previously impossible.  I’m very excited to try it myself and see future enhancements to Touch ID.

3. Better camera

Every year, Apple finds a way to improve the camera in the iPhone 5, and I’m incredibly glad that they do so.  Since your iPhone is always with you, it is the camera that you are most likely to use, whether you are taking pictures of your kids or photographing a document to scan it.

The iPhone 5s combines the A7 with new camera hardware — a larger sensor and an improved flash — to take even better pictures.  And the faster processor lets the camera do things like take 10 photos a second in a burst mode, provide auto image stabilization, and improve the color balance.  The camera also supports slow motion video, something that I don’t think that I’ll use in my law practice but will be fun while taking videos of the kids.

4. And that’s not all

Colors.  The iPhone 5 came in black and white.  The iPhone 5s has a white-and-silver model, a black-and-gray model (Apple calls it “space gray” whatever that means) and a new white-and-gold model.  There have been rumors of a gold iPhone for a while now and I feared that it would be tacky and gaudy, but this is Apple after all so it is no surprise that their version of gold looks tasteful and rather nice, even if it is a bit too much bling for me.

Free apps.  When you buy a new iPhone, you now get some great apps designed by Apple — Pages, Keynote, Numbers, iPhoto and iMovie — for free.  The first three cost $10 each while iPhoto and iMovie cost $5 each, so that’s $40 in free apps, all of which I use on my iPhone and recommend.  (I use them even more on my iPad, so hopefully they will also be included with the 2013 version of the iPad that I expect Apple to introduce next month.)

Motion data.  The iPhone 5s comes with a new M7 motion data processor that measures data from the accelerometer, gyroscope, and compass much more efficiently, using less power, than prior iPhones that used the main processor for that task.  As a result, the iPhone can monitor your motion all the time and react accordingly.  Apple explains on its website:  “Since M7 can tell when you’re in a moving vehicle, iPhone 5s won’t ask you to join Wi-Fi
networks you pass by. And if your phone hasn’t moved for a while, like
when you’re asleep, M7 reduces network pinging to spare your battery.”  Fitness apps such as the Nike+ Move app will be able to take advantage of the M7 to better monitor your exercise.

Improved LTE coverage.  If you travel internationally with your iPhone 5s, the improved LTE coverage will give you faster speeds on more networks around the world.  This isn’t something that I plan to use because international roaming charges are expensive, but if your job takes you around the world, you might appreciate this feature.

Conclusion

The iPhone 5s only adds a few more things to the iPhone 5, but they look like features that most any lawyer would appreciate.  The security and ease-of-use improvements of the Touch ID would be enough of a reason for me to upgrade, and when you add the faster A7 processor, the better camera and all of the other improvements, there is no doubt that I will be getting one — and that would be true even if I didn’t publish this website.  If you currently use an iPhone 5, the upgrade to an iPhone 5s is certainly not essential, but it will make your constant companion even more useful.  (If you are not eligible to pay the subsidized price because you bought an iPhone 5 within the past year, you might be able to use a subsidized upgrade available to someone else on your wireless plan such as a spouse; that’s what I did last year.)  If you currently use an iPhone 4S or older model of the iPhone, then you get all of the improvements noted above plus the improvements of the iPhone 5 such as the larger screen and the thin, light design — so you are in for a treat.  And if the iPhone 5s will be your first iPhone, then welcome to iPhone J.D., and I hope that you stick around.

A few words about the iPhone 5c

Yesterday, Apple also announced the iPhone 5c.  It is $100 cheaper than the iPhone 5s, but you lose almost all of the advantages of the iPhone 5s.  For the most part, the iPhone 5c is just last year’s iPhone 5 with some bright colors added to the back.  If you are trying to get a less expensive iPhone for your teenager who wants a cool color anyway, the iPhone 5c is a fine choice.  But I think that most attorneys would be wise to spend the extra $100 to get a much more powerful device with better security and an improved camera.

Today at 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern, Apple will introduce the 2013
version(s) of the iPhone.  I add the possible “s” to “version” because the rumor is that Apple will announce both a flagship iPhone 5S and a lower cost iPhone 5C.  I also expect to get more details on iOS 7. 

A year ago, Apple held this event at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco.  This year, Apple is holding the event at a smaller venue on its own campus — the Town Hall auditorium at 4 Infinite Loop — which may indicate a more focused event.  Or it could have no significance at all; who knows.

The event will be attended by select members of the press, many of whom will
live-blog the announcements as they occur.  Here are direct links to the live
coverage at some of the sites that have in the past provided the best live
coverage:

• Macworld.  Jason Snell and Dan Moren are perhaps the best live-bloggers in the world for Apple announcements.
• The Verge. 
  
  Joshua Topolsky typically live blogs Apple announcements for The Verge.  UPDATE: Dieter Bohn is doing the live blog, and is doing a fantastic job.
• Engadget.  I’m not sure who will do this one.  Tim Stevens recently left Engadget, and Ryan Block says he is sitting this one out. UPDATE: Brad Molen and Myriam Joire will cover.
• Ars Technica.  In past years, Jacqui Cheng has done a great job with this live blog, but she says that this year it will be handled by Andrew Cunnigham.

Sometimes Apple provides a live video stream of the event.  If one is announced, I’ll update this post and provide a link.  But whether or not a live video stream is offered, Apple always posts a video of the event later on in the day, so you
should be able to watch it on Tuesday night.

We are just a few days away from Apple’s introduction of the next model of the iPhone, plus I expect we’ll see more information and a release date (and perhaps a few surprises) on iOS 7, the next version of the iPhone and iPad operating system with a radical new interface and lots of improvements.  If you plan to upgrade to a new iPhone, Apple has a new iPhone trade-in program whereby Apple will give you some cash for your old iPhone if you get the new one at an Apple Store.  As Joseph Keller of iMore notes, you can get $250 for a 16 GB iPhone 5.  It’s a pretty exciting time of the year for iPhone lovers.  And now, the rest of the news items of note from the past week:

• Should your law firm create an iPhone app for publicity purposes?  While a few law firms have had success doing so, for the most part I don’t think that this is a good use of your time and money, and I instead encourage you to make your law firm website iPhone-friendly.  Erik Mazzonne, the director of the Center for Practice Management at the North Carolina Bar Association, feels the same way, as he explained in this article for Law Practice Magazine.
• Your iPhone (and iPad) can be made more useful with the right accessories.  John Edwards of Law Technology News identifies some of the best smartphone accessories.
• What external battery do you get if you want to get the most extra battery life?  Alan of the website Art of the iPhone explored that question and decided that the Turcom 33,600 gives you the most.  He says you can recharge an iPhone around 15 times, so I’m sure you could recharge an iPad many times over.  You can get it on Amazon for $129.99.
• Earlier this year, I reviewed ABBYY TextGrabber + Translate, an excellent iPhone app that can perform OCR on the device itself.  The app is about to be updated to version 4.0 to add support for the iPad as well, and the update may be available by the time that you read this.  You can get more info here.
• Jonah Bromwich of the New York Times reviews KeyMe, an app that lets you scan a key so that if you lose it, you can provide a blueprint to a locksmith to recreate the key.
• Marco Tabini of Macworld discusses Apple’s improvements in iOS app security.
• And finally, what do you do when it’s time to pop open an ice cold bottle of beer but you don’t have a bottle opener handy?  According to a bunch of folks including Michael Rose at TUAW, you can just use your iPad charger.  The below picture comes from Susie Ochs of TechHive.  I absolutely, positively, do not in any way condone doing this … but you have to admit, it is tempting to try.

One of the most common tasks that I do on my iPhone and iPad is review a Microsoft Word document that I receive via email.  While it is possible to tap the document once and read it using the iOS built-in document viewer, I far prefer to instead open the document in Documents to Go.  In Documents to Go I can see redline track changes, comments and footnotes, none of which appear when you use the built-in viewer, and I like being able to pinch to make the text size larger or smaller to make it easier to read the document, something that you cannot do using the built-in document viewer.  Documents to Go is also useful for editing documents, but I suspect that 90% of the time that I use Documents to Go I am using it as a superior document viewer.

This week, Documents to Go was updated to version 5.0.  I’m always happy to see any update to Documents to Go on iOS, especially a significant update, because three years ago, much of the assets of DataViz were purchased by RIM, the company that makes (and subsequently changed its name to) BlackBerry.  I’ve never seen a full explanation of the details of that transaction, and when it occurred I was worried about the future of Documents to Go on iOS, but after three years of continued updates, hopefully there is no longer any reason to be concerned.

This update does a few things.  First, it changes the interface to better match iOS 7, which I expect Apple to release this month.  It’s just a cosmetic change, but it does have a fresh new look.  Here is what the main document screen looked like in the previous version of Documents to Go on an iPad, followed by the  main document screen in version 5:

Version 5 also adds support for iCloud if you are using Documents to Go Premium.  You can now backup and save your documents to iCloud and use iCloud to sync documents between multiple devices.

The update also improves viewing of PowerPoint slides (and the editing of PowerPoint slides if you use Documents to Go Premium), but that is not a feature that I ever use so I cannot comment on the changes.

The final change is to the way that you view documents, and while it is a minor change, I like it quite a bit.  As noted above, viewing Word documents is the primary thing that I do with this app, so I always appreciate an improvement.  In the prior version of Documents to Go, you always viewed a document in an edit mode.  There was always a bar at the top with the document name and some other buttons, and there was always a bar at the bottom with formatting buttons.  Here is what it looked like:

In version 5.0, when you first open up a document, a bar briefly appears at the top with the document name but then it goes away and the app goes into a view only mode with no bars at the top or bottom.  Thus, you can see more of the document on the screen (typically 1-2 more lines) plus there are fewer distractions because essentially your entire screen is devoted to the document, except for the standard iOS bar at the top:

Not only does the initial View Only mode remove the bars, it also removes something I will call the Annoying Keyboard Problem.  You see, in the prior version of Documents to Go, sometimes when you touch the screen to scroll through a document or simply accidentally tap on the screen, the app thought that you were trying to edit the document so a cursor would appear and the keyboard would pop up, taking over the bottom half of the iPhone or iPad screen.  This always proved to be a major distraction for me.  But in the new View Only mode, the keyboard never pops up.  If you are like me and spend 90% of your time in this app viewing documents, you’ll love this one, small change.

When you are ready to edit a document, simply tap once on the screen and a blue bar will come down from the top.  Tap the pencil button at the far right and Documents to Go switches to the edit mode, which works the same way that the prior version of Documents to Go always worked — you’ll see menu bars at the top and the bottom.  Tap the three dots at the top right for more options such as word count, find and replace, save the document to your Documents to Go file list and email the document.

All of the above images show the app on an iPad, but you see the same improvements on the iPhone.  This first picture shows the old version of Documents to Go, and the second pictures is the new version in View Only mode:

 

I wish that this update offered more.  For example, it is great that Documents to Go can show you redline track changes in a document, but I wish that DataViz would add the ability to create your own redline track changes in a document.  Nevertheless, the updates in version 5 of Documents to Go are nice improvements that I will appreciate every time that I use the app. 

If you are still using the iPhone or iPad’s built-in viewer to read Microsoft Word documents, I strongly encourage you to consider purchasing Documents to Go.  For many years now, it has been one of the most useful apps on my iPhone and iPad.  The $10 standard version might be all that you need, or for $17 you can get the Premium version that adds the ability to use cloud services (Google
Docs, Box.com, DropBox, SugarSync and now iCloud) and adds more features for editing PowerPoint slides.  If you buy the standard version but then decide you want more features, you can pay $7.99 within the app to add all of the features of Documents to Go Premium.  Both versions of are universal apps, so you can buy the app once and use the app on both your iPhone and your iPad.

Click here to get Documents to Go Standard ($9.99): 

Click here to get Documents to Go Premium ($16.99): 

Yesterday,
Apple announced that it will make an announcement on September 10th. 
Apple didn’t actually say what the announcement is for — the invitation
to select journalists simply states “This should brighten everyone’s day” —  but we all
know that it will be the new iPhone.  According to Jim Dalrymple of The Loop, the invitation includes this
picture:

The pictures and/or messages that accompany invitations to new iPhone announcements typically include a clue to a new feature of the iPhone.  In September of 2011, the invitation said “Let’s talk iPhone” and the new feature of the iPhone 4S was Siri, giving us the ability to talk to an iPhone.  In September of 2012, the picture on the invitation showed the number 12 with a shadow, but the shadow was not of the number 12 but instead a 5, indicating that the next iPhone would be called the iPhone 5.

There are rumors that the next iPhone — the iPhone 5S? — will also come in gold in addition to the black and white models.  There is also a rumor that Apple will simultaneously release a lower-priced iPhone that will come in many different colors, perhaps called the iPhone 5C.  So perhaps circles with different colors are a nod to the new colors.  The message about brightening our day could also be a reference to bright colors, or it could be a reference to lower-cost iPhones, or it could be a reference to iOS 7, the new operating system that I expect to debut along with the new iPhone(s) which has a brighter appearance.

There are also rumors that the next iPhone will incorporate a fingerprint scanner for additional security.  I suspect it will also be faster and have a better camera, but we’ll see.

I also expect that Apple will announce new iPads at some point before the holiday buying season, but as to whether new iPads will be announced on September 10, I have no idea.  Many other websites predict that the new iPad announcement will be later athis year.

The announcement will be at 10 Pacific / 1 Eastern and will occur at Apple’s campus in Cupertino, CA.  Sometimes Apple provides a live video stream of events like this, or you can probably just put your ears or eyes close to any part of the Internet on September 10 and you’ll learn what Apple is announcing.