Dallas attorney Tom Mighell wrote iPad in One Hour for Lawyers, a great introduction to the iPad that I reviewed last year. His follow-up book is iPad Apps in One Hour, a book that describes about 200 apps that are recommended for lawyers who use an iPad. Mighell gave me a free review copy of the soft cover version of the book, but I see that it is also available on the iBookstore. True to its name, you can read this entire book in about an hour, and after doing so you will have a good handle on the apps that you can use to make the most of an iPad in your law practice.
After providing some introductory information on getting and using apps, the book is divided into six sections:
Apps for getting organized and being productive
Documents: creating and organizing them
Apps for the law office
News, reading and reference apps
Utilities
the iPad on the road
In each section, Mighell provides an overview of how you can use an iPad to be more productive and then he describes apps, starting with his recommended apps for each task and then listing other good alternatives. Each app gets a one-paragraph description, and for many apps there is a screenshot to show you what the app looks like.
Although Mighell gave me the paper version of this book to review, I actually recommend that you get the version on the Apple iBookstore. That way, when Mighell describes an app and provides a link, you can just tap the link to get the app on your iPad instead of having to search for the app or type a URL. Also, the iBookstore version of this book is cheaper. The paper version costs $34.95 when you buy it through the ABA, or costs $19.95 if you are a member of the Law Practice Management section. The iBooks version of the book costs $17.99 so you save $2 and can download and can start reading the book almost instantly. Note that this is a traditional iBook; you don’t get the advanced graphics and videos that you get when someone uses the iBooks Author tool, such as the book I reviewed yesterday, Paperless by David Sparks.
iPad Apps in One Hour for Lawyers provides what the title says and is a helpful resource for a lawyer looking for an overview of useful apps.
In January of this year, Apple introduced iBooks Author, software that allows you to create beautiful and sophisticated books for the Apple iBookstore that can be read on an iPad. This powerful software lets authors integrate text, pictures, videos and more. One of the first titles that I have seen that takes advantage of this new publishing system is Paperless, a a $5 book by David Sparks. Sparks is an attorney in Orange County, CA and he is well known for his MacSparky website and the Mac Power Users podcast that he does with Florida attorney Katie Floyd. Sparks also wrote iPad at Work, a book I reviewed earlier this year.
Paperless teaches you how to use Apple technology (the Mac and the iPad) to go paperless. This is a subject that I know a lot about, and when Sparks asked me to edit an early version of the book, I assumed that all I would be doing is checking for typos and offering a few suggestions. Little did I know that reading the book would teach me so much about a topic that I thought I already knew so well. The extensive content (over 26,000 words) is incredibly informative. I don’t even use a Mac at work (I have a Mac at home but use a PC in my office) but I still learned a ton that has already made me more productive working with files on the PC at my desk and I picked up lots of useful tips on making the most of my iPad.
But the words in this book are only half of the story. This book takes advantage of the advanced features of iBooks Author, which means that the book is full of well-designed graphics and helpful videos that walk you through the steps described in the book. It is one thing to read a description of how to do something, but when you watch a video where Sparks walks you through every step of a process, you gain a deep understanding of what you need to do. It almost seems wrong to call Paperless a “book” because it is so much more than just a collection of text in chapters.
After introductory sections that provide an overview on reducing the paper in your life, Sparks gives specific recommendations on how to capture information in a digital format including suggestions on the best hardware and software to use. He then gives tips on creating a process to manage digital files. Another section provides tips on using your paperless documents.
Although Sparks is an attorney, this book is aimed at a general audience. Nevertheless, the law is definitely a field in which you can become more productive by becoming paperless, especially when you have an iPad. I suspect that virtually any lawyer would learn a lot from this book that would make them more productive in their practice.
And finally, I must mention that this book was incredibly pleasent to read. While much of the credit goes to Sparks and his writing style, credit also goes to Apple for making iBooks and the iBooks Author platform so powerful and beautiful. While reading this book, I often felt like I was seeing the future of publishing. This book is the poster child for what great iPad publishing can be — incredible design and interactivity.
By self-authoring and producing this book, Sparks cut out the publisher and thus he can make these books incredibly cheap. It is a steal at $5. The knowledge you will gain from this book will make much more of an impact on your life than the fancy cup of coffee that costs almost as much. And apparently I am not the only one to be excited about this book; Paperless has been in the Top 10 of all paid books on the iBookstore almost since the moment that it came out. It is amusing to see a book about going paperless just a few notches behind the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy that has been dominating the charts. Perhaps best of all, Paperless is just the first in what will be a series of MacSparky Field Guide books. I cannot wait to see what David Sparks publishes next.
I saw several references on the web this week (such as this one) to a letter that Apple sends new employees when they join the company. It contains a nice message that could apply to many other professions, including many law firms: “There’s work and there’s your life’s work. The kind of work that has your fingerprints all over it. The kind of work that you’d never compromise on. That you’d sacrifice a weekend for. You can do that kind of work at Apple. People don’t come here to play it safe. They come here to swim in the deep end. They want their work to add up to something. Something big. Something that couldn’t happen anywhere else. Welcome to Apple.” I hope that you find your own work that satisfying. And now, the news of the week:
New York attorney Niki Black recommends websites for lawyers who use the iPad in her latest Daily Record article.
Alan Cohen writes about what the 2012 edition of the iPad means for lawyers in this article for Law Technology News.
Dallas attorney Tom Mighell reviews VirusBarrier, an app that can scan e-mail attachments to see if they have viruses before you open them. I’m not aware of any iPad or iPhone viruses so I’m not sure how necessary this app really is. [UPDATE: Mighell notes in a comment to this post that even if you can’t get a virus on your iPhone/iPad, this app would help guard against your passing along a virus to a computer by forwarding an e-mail with a virus attached. I suppose that is something.]
Apple updated the iOS software to iOS 5.1.1 this week to fix a few bugs. You can update directly from your iPhone or iPad. Just open the Settings app and go to General -> Software Update.
If you missed the Steve Jobs patents exhibit when it was at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in Alexandria, VA last year, Glenn Künzler of MacTrast reports that the exhibit will be at the Smithsonian’s S. Dillon Ripley Center in Washington, D.C. today through July 8.
Andy Ihnatko of the Chicago Sun Times raves about iPhoto on the iPad, a very impressive app, albeit one with a learning curve.
Brian Chen of the New York Times writes that Amtrak conductors are starting to use iPhones to check train tickets.
An iPhone waked into a bar … and performed bar tricks, thanks to several apps reviewed by Bob Tedeschi of the New York Times.
And finally, Marco Tempast is a magician who has come up with a clever way to combine three iPod touches and slight of hand. This is really fun. Check it out:
Around 40,000 people are in New Orleans this week for the International CTIA Wireless convention, the largest meeting of the wireless industry in the world. Apple itself does not have an official presence at the show (although I’m sure Apple employees are here), but the convention is full of companies that are a part of the iPhone and iPad ecosystem. I spent some time on the exhibit floor yesterday and saw lots of interesting iPhone accessories. I also bumped in to the Android robot wearing a pair of Mardi Gras beads. I didn’t ask the robot what it had to do on Bourbon Street to earn them.
While some of the products I saw are available now, many were brand new with exhibitors looking for distributors. For example, a company called Perch was looking for distributors for a new product that sits between a wall outlet and your iPhone/iPad plug. The idea is that you take the device with you when you travel, and if you disconnect your iPhone and don’t disconnect the charger within a period of time, the device chirps to warn you before you forget your charger in your hotel room.
If you are looking for iPhone cases, you’ll all but trip over them at a convention like this, especially if you are looking for something sort of interesting like a skyline on an iPhone case:
And if you are looking for an iPhone case with some “bling” your options at CTIA are endless:
Over the coming weeks, I’ll talk about some of the more interesting iPhone and iPad related products that I had a chance to preview yesterday.
I’ve recently updated the tools that I use to take handwritten notes on my iPad. First, I updated my hardware; I now use the Wacom Bamboo Stylus that I reviewed two days ago. Second, I updated the software that I use on my iPad. For a long time I had been using Note Taker HD. It is a powerful app but has a confusing interface and it lacks one feature that I found in another great app Notes Plus, the ability to see your prior writings in a magnification window (I’ll explain what I mean by that in a moment), but Notes Plus lacked the speed of Note Taker HD. And then there is Noteshelf, an app that has a beautiful interface but isn’t quite as powerful as those other two. For a few weeks now I’ve been using another note-taking app called GoodNotes. GoodNotes is a $3.99 app (the developer sent me a free version to review) that includes the best of all of the features that I loved in Note Taker HD, Notes Plus and Noteshelf.
GoodNotes has a nice interface that is easy to use. You take notes in notebooks (which can contain as many pages as you want). You can create covers for notebooks if you want. You can organize notebooks into folders, and you view the notebooks in each folder on a series of shelves that mimics the iBooks interface.
Viewing a Notebook
Once you tap on a notebook, you can view the pages. Just swipe left and right to move between pages and pinch to zoom.
The button at the top right allows you to take notes on a page using, for example, the pen tool. The button at the top left shows you the different pages in the notebook and gives you a link to return to the main library.
From here you can rearrange pages, delete pages, copy and paste pages, export individual pages from a notebook, etc.
Pen, Highlighter and Eraser
You have a choice of three pens. First, you have a thick highlighter with two different pen sizes and five different colors. When you highlight text, the text underneath the highlighting stays dark — unlike some apps that make the underlying text hard to read when you add highlighting. Second, you have a pen with three different tip sizes and ten different colors. Third, you have an eraser.
Magnified Input Field
All good iPad note-taking apps include a magnified input field so that you can write in a large window at the bottom of the app and have the text appear smaller on the page itself. This is the only way to get a large number of words on an iPad page because the iPad cannot recognize input that is as small as the tip of a real pen. Apps like Note Taker HD and Notes Plus notice when you are getting to the end of the magnified input window and let you continue writing in the left portion of the window. In Note Taker HD, however, it is tough to know exactly where you need to start writing again. Notes Plus solves this by showing you the text you have already written in that left portion of the magnified window so that you can see exactly where to place the next letter. GoodNotes works the same way and it works great. Better yet, the text input is very fast even when in the magnified window mode, just like Note Taker HD, and unlike Notes Plus which I find to have a slight lag.
You can change the magnification in this input field by pinching inside of the magnification window, making it easy to add the small print that some lawyers are famous for. You can also adjust the side margin so that when you get to the end of one line, you don’t start all the way at the edge of the page. (In the pictures above, that dotted blue line represents the left margin that I created.)
Select and Move Text
Sometimes you write something, and then you realize that you want to put something else just before it. Thus, it is nice to be able to select something that you have written and move it around. GoodNotes has the best feature that I’ve seen for this. Just tap the selection tool (right next to the eraser) and circle some text. (If you select any part of a pen stroke, the entire pen stroke is selected, even parts that fall out of the circle.) Then you simply drag the text to some other location.
Add Typed Text
Sometimes you want to type something on a page instead of writing with a stylus (or your finger). You can create a text input box by tapping two fingers at the same time on the screen. Depending upon how far apart your fingers are, that is the size of the text input box. You can then type using the keyboard, or paste text that you have copied from some other app, or dictate text if you have a third generation iPad.
Import and Annotate Files
You can import files into GoodNotes a number of different ways. For example, the app lets you import a picture from your Photos library (or take a picture using the iPad’s camera) and then you can use the tools to annotate a photograph. (Read this post from a year ago to understand why this can be incredibly useful in a deposition.) In addition to using a picture as your entire page, you can also insert a picture into a page and then resize it to make it take up as much of the page as you want.
You can also use the “Open in…” menu to open a file such as a PDF file from an e-mail. Or, from within GoodNotes, you can import a file from Dropbox or Box.net. I have found this to be very handy when a colleague sends me a PDF file and I want to annotate it. Using the pen and highlighter, I can circle things, draw in the margins, highlight text and then e-mail back the annotated file when I am done.
You can also import a file and then use it as a template for future notebooks. GoodNotes comes with several notebook templates including a blank page, a page with lines on it, a page with a grid (like graph paper) and even a page with music staffs. But you can create any other background on your computer and then use it as a basis for a new template. For example, I thought it might be nice to have lined paper that also had a dotted red line on sides to create a left and right margin, so I took the built-in template with lines (called “Ruled Paper”) and then used a PDF program on my computer to draw two dotted lines. I sent that file back to GoodNotes and made it my new default template:
Conclusion
GoodNotes does not have every feature of those other apps I mentioned. For exaple, unlike Notes Plus, it cannot convert handwriting into text or create perfect circles and squares. In fact, unlike many other apps, GoodNotes cannot insert shapes at all (although the developer says that this is planned for a future release). But when it comes to the features that I find most useful in other apps when taking notes, GoodNotes has them all, and the app itself is very fast to use. And while there is always tension between ease of use and features, I find that GoodNotes strikes the right balance, packing a lot of capability into a good looking and relatively intuitive interface.
If you want to take handwritten notes on your iPad, I highly recommend that you get yourself a stylus and download a copy of GoodNotes. This is an excellent app that has quickly become one of the most-used apps on my iPad. If you want to try before you buy, there is a free version of the app that limits you to two notebooks, a limitation that can be removed with a $3.99 in-app purchase.
Click here to get GoodNotes ($3.99): [removed]
Click here to get GoodNotes Free (free): [removed]
NOTE: Those old links no longer work; here is an updated link to the GoodNotes app ($7.99):
I’ve recently been testing out two styluses that have tips different from all of the other styluses on the market. Yesterday I reviewed the Wacom Bamboo Stylus, a product that is unique for its smaller tip which allows for more precise drawing on the iPad screen. Today I’m reviewing a stylus released by BoxWave just a few weeks ago called the EverTouch Capacitive Stylus that has a unique fabric mesh tip. BoxWave sent me a free review unit of this $15 stylus, and it works great.
The stylus itself is 5" long, a good length for a stylus and about .25" longer than the Bamboo Stylus I reviewed yesterday. The aluminum barrel of the stylus is hollow, which makes the stylus slightly lighter than some other great styluses such as the Bamboo Stylus and the Kensington Virtuoso Touch Screen Stylus (which I reviewed on 3/30/11). I prefer a slightly heavier stylus, so I don’t like the fact that the EverTouch has a lighter, cheaper feel to it.
I have the silver model, but it also comes in black, orange, red and blue.
The marquee feature of this stylus is the tip, so let’s talk about that. Unlike most other styluses which have a rubber tip, the EverTouch has a tip constructed of soft but durable tightly woven conductive fibers. Boxwave calls it FiberMeshTM and says it is a “breakthrough in stylus technology” that “is precisely engineered with an extremely soft yet durable conductive woven fiber.” It feels almost like a Q-tip. This results in a tip that is much smoother than a rubber tip, making the stylus glide across the iPad screen. It is clear that a lot of thought went into this design, and I really like the way that it feels on the screen.
For writing or drawing, a rubber tip seems to me somewhat more precise — especially the Wacom Bamboo with its smaller tip. But there is something very appealing about the way that the EverTouch glides across the screen with much less drag than a stylus with a rubber tip. After you use an EverTouch for a while and then go back to a regular stylus with a rubber tip, you can really feel the difference in friction.
I mentioned yesterday that while the Bamboo Stylus is fantastic for drawing, the small tip is awkward for other tasks on the iPad such as flicking through screens or pages. On these tasks, the EverTouch excels because it feels so good against the iPad screen. And if you are taking notes with the EverTouch, although it seems less precise, the reduced drag does seem to reduce hand fatigue somewhat if you are writing for a long time.
BoxWave claims that another advantage of the woven fiber tip will last much longer than any stylus with a rubber tip. I can’t comment much on that after just a few weeks, but the tip certainly seems much more durable than soft rubber that can tear or wear down with use.
The EverTouch has a clip on the end and comes with three lanyards. First, there is a 2" lanyard that attaches to the headphone jack of the iPad (or iPhone). Second, there is a 12" lanyard with an elastic coil that also attaches to the headphone jack. Because of the elastic coil, you could actually use the stylus while it is still attached to your headphone jack, although that seems a little awkward to me. Third, there is a 2" lanyard with a ring that can attach to something like a key chain.
I’ve never really understood the appeal of these sorts of stylus attachments. Are you really going to let a stylus just dangle from your iPad? I’d rather just use a standard pen-style clip to put a stylus in a pocket of my shirt or a briefcase. Having said that, I’ve seen other lawyers use attachments like this with a stylus, so I suppose there is some demand for it.
If you are looking for an alternative to a stylus with a standard rubber tip, the EverTouch is definitely worth checking out because of the unique and appealing way that the fabric mesh glides across the screen.
I like using a stylus with an iPad to take notes when I am in a meeting or when I am monitoring a hearing or trial in court. (When I am actually trying a case or arguing a motion at a hearing, I stick with pen and paper, not only because it is faster, but also because I’m likely to be using my iPad to review pleadings or exhibits.) I’ve reviewed quite a few styluses over the years, including the BoxWave Capacitive iPad Stylus and the Ten One Design Pogo Sketch Stylus (both reviewed on 12/12/10) and the Kensington Virtuoso Touch Screen Stylus and the BoxWave Capacitive Styra (both reviewed on 3/30/11). Until recently, the Kensington Virtuoso without a pen (reviewed on 8/2/11) was my favorite, but I’ve been trying out two other styluses over the last few weeks and I really like them. Today I’ll talk about my favorite one, the Wacom Bamboo Stylus for iPad. It is $29.95 on the Wacom website, and I bought mine on Amazon for $28.25.
The Bamboo Stylus is about a half an inch shorter than the Kensington Virtuoso Touch Screen Stylus so it is not quite as long as a standard ball point pen but it is just barely long enough for my large hands to be comfortable to use. (I am not a big fan of small styluses that make you feel like you are writing with a golf pencil.) It has a nice weight to it and feels very nice in the hands. It feels like a premium stylus. It has a pen clip which you can remove if you want, but I kept it on because I often store it in my shirt pocket.
I like this stylus because it feels good in my hand, but I really love this stylus because of the tip. The tip is smaller than any other iPad stylus that I have seen. For example, here it is compared to the Kensington stylus tip, which is the standard size that I have seen on most other styluses:
That size difference results in a noticeably better writing experience when you are taking notes or when you are using a drawing app such as Paper. Because the iPad is made for a large finger and not a precise fine point, you never feel like you are using a pen tip when you write on an iPad screen. However, with the Bamboo Stylus, you really do feel like you can write more precisely than with other styluses.
As you can see, I bought a black one, but it also comes in green, blue, orange, pink and white. I see that the Wacom website calls this model the “solo” because you can now pay $10 more for a “duo” model that includes a pen. I can see why some people see 2 in 1 as an advantage, but I prefer to just use a stylus when I need a stylus and then use a regular pen when I need a pen. [UPDATE 5/30/12: Here is my review of the Bamboo Stylus duo.]
There are only three bad things that I have ever heard about or experienced with the Bamboo Stylus. First, it is more expensive that most other styluses. You can pick up the great Kensington Virtuoso Touch Screen Stylus for only about $16 on Amazon. But for the extra $12 (on Amazon), you really do get a much better stylus for writing. It’s worth it.
Second, even though it is great to have a more precise tip when you are writing notes or drawing, I sometimes like to use a stylus when I am using my iPad for normal tasks, such as flicking through screens or reading websites. I actually find the more precise tip of the Bamboo Stylus less comfortable in those situations; the standard size tip on the Kensington stylus is better for that.
Finally, I’ve seen some reports on Amazon that the tip on the Bamboo Stylus is more fragile than other tips and can tear. I’ve only had mine for a few weeks so I haven’t seen this yet, but just to test what I would have to do if this did happen, I purchased some replacement tips on the Wacom website. The Bamboo Stylus Pen Nib Set costs $4.95, and that gives you three replacement tips. You have to pay another $5 shipping and handling, so that’s $10 in total that you have to pay — which is about the cost of some other styluses. It is fairly simple to unscrew the metal end, take off the rubber tip (you need to work at it a little, but then it does come off) and replace the tip. Who knows if I will ever have to replace mine for real, but the fact that Wacom sells the replacement tips — not to mention the fact that they are often out of stock on the Wacom website — indicates to me that some people do find a need for them.
If you can get over paying almost $30 for a stylus, I think that you will really like the Bamboo Stylus. The more precise tip makes it easier and faster to take notes on an iPad, and considering that taking notes on an iPad will alway be slower than paper, anything that you can do to make that process faster is a plus. And then once your notes are on the iPad, you get all of the advantages that come with that, such as the ability to easily e-mail your notes, save them forever without taking up space in a cabinet, and having access to your notes whenever you want them in the future. The Bamboo Stylus quickly became my favorite iPad stylus. If you want an excellent, premium stylus for taking notes on your iPad, I suspect that you’ll love the Bamboo Stylus as much as I do.
I am sometimes asked how I find time to publish iPhone J.D. The best answer is that I am a big fan of the iPhone and iPad, I love trying out new apps and accessories (and learning how to make the most of existing ones), and it is always easier to write about something that really interests you. Having said that, there are times when I’m so busy at work and at home that I barely have time to post at all, and this past week was definitely one of those. Thus, while I was sad to read a post yesterday by Portland attorney Josh Barrett announcing that he was shutting down his Tablet Legal website, I definitely understand where he is coming from.
Tablet Legal became a resource for attorneys using an iPad only days after the original iPad was announced, long before any lawyers had even touched an iPad (except, perhaps, for a few who worked at Apple). Over the next two years, it grew into a fabulous resource for people like me who use the iPad in the practice of law every day. I always learned something from Josh’s posts, and I greatly enjoyed giving several iPad-themed presentations with Josh over the years and becoming friends with him in the process. Thanks, Josh, for helping so many lawyers learn to be much more productive with their iPads, and the best of luck with your new law firm — which, by the way, has a great website. And now, for the news of the week:
Josh Barrett’s final Tablet Legal post includes an interesting recommendation that lawyers not clutter their iPads with all of the latest and greatest apps and instead try to concentrate on just the apps most useful to them. It is good advice, albeit advice that I clearly do not follow given the number of apps on my iPad.
I’m a big fan of TranscriptPad, an iPad app for reviewing depositions. A recent update added some great new features, such as the ability to print a PDF of the entire deposition with all of your various annotations (highlight, issue coding, underlining, etc.) either visible or not visible, the ability to send an entire case file to another user (for collaboration), etc.
Another reason I’m proud to be a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center: the career services department created an online guide that tells you how to pronounce the names of 230 law firms. Just click on a firm name and hear the correct way to say it. And yes, it works great on an iPhone or iPad, so you can find out how to say that firm name correctly even when you are on the go.
Bob Tedeschi of the New York Times recommends several airport-related apps to use when you are traveling. GateGuru is one that I use all the time, but the others were new to me.
If you are not in New Orleans this weekend but still want to get a taste of Jazz Fest, I see that YouTube is streaming both live and recorded performances today through Sunday starting at 2:00 Central every day. Click here for the full schedule and to watch the stream. There are too many great acts in there to mention them all, but for example: on Sunday you get Kermit Ruffins live at 3:15 Central, a recording of Amanda Shaw from last weekend at 5:10 Central (I saw that performance last weekend, and she was amazing), and the Neville Brothers live at 5:45 Central, plus eight other performances (Jimmy Buffet, Preservation Hall, etc.).
Looking for a good, thin iPad case? Alexander George of The Wirecutter reviewed a huge number of them and came up with his recommendations. His top pick is the Joy Factory SmartSuite3, which looks very nice.
Horace Dediu of Asymco crunched the numbers and came to the interesting conclusion that during the first quarter of 2012, Apple obtained 73% of all of the profits in the mobile phone market. Samsung got 26% of the profit, HTC got 1% of the profit, and everyone else selling mobile phones lost money.
Alex Heath of Cult of Mac reports that at Walmart (although perhaps not all Walmarts), you can now get an iPhone 3GS for 97¢, an iPhone 4 for $34 and an iPhone 4S for $114. I think it is interesting that you can buy an iPhone for less than the cost of a 99¢ app.
The Apple humor site Scoopertino announced a new app for filing lawsuits to get rich off of Apple: LitiGATOR.
And finally, what do you do if you are a woman who wants to carry an iPhone but you don’t have pockets on your dress and don’t want to carry a purse? Mariah Gentry and Kyle Bartlow in Seattle have created an answer: the JoeyBra. The below picture probably tells you everything that you need to know about this product, but if you want to see the JoeyBra in action, click here for a video. My wife’s commentary when she saw me posting this: “Excuse me, ma’am, but I think your bra is ringing.”
Two years ago I reviewed a hardware product from Elgato called the EyeTV One. You hook it up to your computer and attach an antenna to it to watch or record over-the-air HDTV on your computer. I described how you could use the product with the $4.99 EyeTV app on an iPhone to either watch live or recorded TV on your iPhone (by streaming it from your computer) or by exporting the video to a format that works on the iPhone. I thought it was a neat and useful product.
I am writing today to update that review because as nice as that product is for the iPhone, it is amazing for the iPad, especially the new third generation iPad. Watching video on an iPhone works fine, although obviously the screen is rather small. In contrast, the iPad is great for watching video, and when you combine an iPad with EyeTV, you get something really special.
First, you get the ability to stream live (or recorded) TV on your iPad. I’ve used the EyeTV app on my iPad to watch TV in an airport (the ones that have free WiFi) when traveling. When I was in Florida for about a month last year to try a case, I used this combination to watch live Saints football games being aired in New Orleans, even when the local TV station in Florida wasn’t showing the game. Hook up your iPad to a projector, and you have a wide-screen TV that shows what you could have been watching at home, no matter where you are.
Everything that I just described works with the iPad 2. But with the new third generation iPad, I’ve found that I am loving EyeTV even more for a second reason: it provides the best viewing experience that I have ever seen on a portable device.
The third generation iPad with its retina display can show 1080p video. You can certainly purchase TV shows in 1080p from the iTunes Store, and they look very nice on the iPad. (Note that you need to go to the iTunes Preferences and then click on “Store” to tell iTunes to get the 1080p version instead of 720p; there is a difference in quality, as Iljitsch van Beijnum noted last month in this article for Ars Technica.) A 1080p show from iTunes can look amazing. But with the EyeTV, you can record raw, uncompressed, over-the-air HDTV on your computer, and then you can export that to a 1080p file that has compression but looks better than what you get from iTunes. You sync EyeTV-created videos to your iPad the same way that you would do so if you downloaded a show from iTunes, and EyeTV adds all of the info you need like show title, series title, a description of the episode in the comments, etc.
The resulting video quality on the iPad is jaw-droppingly gorgeous. My home TV is a large 57" screen, and when connected to my Blu-ray disc player, the image quality can be stunning. But when you pack all of those pixels into a smaller screen the size of the iPad and you hold that screen a normal viewing distance away from your face, the iPad screen looks even better than a 57" HDTV. If I am watching a show with others, the TV is the best option of course, but if I am just watching a show by myself, I’d rather watch an EyeTV-created 1080p video on my third generation iPad than watch the same program on my big screen TV. I never thought I’d say that when I first tried out EyeTV with just an iPhone two years ago.
Note that you pay a price in file size. On the iTunes store, a 1080p one-hour TV show doesn’t have commercials and is about 42 minutes long with a file size of about 1.7GB. So if the commercials had not been stripped out, a 60 minute show would have been around 2.4GB. When you record an over-the-air hour long TV show on your computer using the EyeTV One hardware, the file size on your computer is about 8GB. When you export that to a 1080p file using the EyeTV software (using standard H.264 compression that can be read by your iPad), the file size is about 4.5GB. All of this math means that when you download a 1080p TV show from iTunes, you get a file that doesn’t have commercials; when you instead use EyeTV to create the TV shows, you end up with a file that contains commercials (unless you take the time to use the EyeTV software to manually remove the commercials) and that is way more than twice as large. You really need to have a 32GB or a 64GB version of the iPad to have the space to carry a bunch of 4.5GB TV shows around.
But boy is it worth it. I tried to take some screen shots on my iPad to add to this post, but a still image really just doesn’t do justice to the video quality. Suffice it to say that the video just looks more amazing than anything that you have ever seen before. The video quality is so good that I sometimes find myself not paying attention to the story in the TV show because I can’t help thinking about how amazing the picture looks.
Note that the EyeTV One that I reviewed two years ago isn’t sold by Elgato anymore, but you can still buy it on Amazon for $85. Elgato is now just selling the EyeTV Hybrid, which you can get for $130 on Amazon. That model adds more features, such as the ability to view and record unscrambled cable in addition to over-the-air HDTV. I haven’t tried the Hybrid, but my guess is that the HDTV that a cable company gives you is noticeably compressed compared to a raw over-the-air HDTV signal that you pick up using antenna. The EyeTV Hybrid also (currently) includes two years of the TV Guide service, which normally costs $20 a year and is something that you definitely want so that you can easily find upcoming programs and set your EyeTV to record (much like you would using a DVR). I suppose if you take the $40 TV Guide feature into account, the two $85 EyeTV One and the $130 EyeTV Hybrid end up costing about the same.
Note that depending upon where you live, buildings around you, etc., over-the-air HDTV may not always be perfect. In my house, the EyeTV tuner can get a great NBC, FOX and ABC signal, but every once in a while I have trouble with CBS, and I can never get the PBS channel to display. When you download a show from iTunes, you know it is going to work.
I realize that EyeTV is not the best solution for everyone. First, you have to buy the hardware, which as noted is going to cost you over $100. You also need an antenna to pick up the over-the-air signal, such as this $30 model from Terk. So altogether you are spending around $150, which could have paid for around 50 $2.99 episodes on iTunes (but if you record a few full seasons with 26 episodes each on EyeTV you may come out ahead on cost.) And then there are a few more steps to get a show. On iTunes, you just click a button to download an HDTV version of a TV show. With EyeTV, you set the software to record when the program is aired, then you export it to a file to your desktop, then you drag that file to iTunes to add it to your library — not a big deal, but more than the one-step download of iTunes.
But if you do go the EyeTV route, you are gain the ability to watch a TV show on your iPad in the best quality possible. Whether you end up watching on your sofa, in your bed, or on an airplane, your eyes are in for a treat. Plus you get the ability to use the EyeTV app to stream live TV from your computer, which comes in handy at times. The EyeTV hardware is an amazing accessory to a third generation iPad, albeit an accessory that connects to your computer and not to the iPad itself. If you like to watch TV shows on your iPad, this is definitely an option to consider.
Today is the start of one of my favorite times of the year in New Orleans: Jazz Fest. The event combines great music, great food, a great art market, and lots of good times. Whether you make it to New Orleans for Jazz Fest or some other occasion, you should check out the free Ultimate Insider’s Guide iPad app from the local newspaper, the Times-Picayune, for some great tips on making the most of your time in the Big Easy, not to mention some great photography. Click here for New Orleans: The Ultimate Insider’s Guide to the Crescent City (free): And now, the news of note from the past week:
Evan Koblentz writes for Law Technology News that Lexis has introduced e-book software for law libraries. You can check out an electronic copy of a book and read it on your iPad. Interesting.
Sam Glover of Lawyerist.com provides advice regarding the ethics of storing client information on cloud services like Dropbox.
The Your ABA newsletter provides security advice for iPhone users, based on the ABA TECHSHOW presentation by attorneys Sharon D. Nelson and Tom Mighell.
Speaking of security, did your iPhone start asking you to provide security details? Lex Friedman of Macworld explains why Apple started doing this.
Attorney Jeremy Horwitz of iLounge compares the iPhoto app on an iPad to sophisticated photo editing software on a computer. The iPad does surprisingly well.
Minnesota lawyer Francis Rojas provides tips for getting the most out of your iPad in an article in Minnesota Lawyer.
Mobile Apps for Law is a website that catalogs legal apps. You have to pay $50 a year to use the website, but they asked me to announce that they just started providing a free RSS feed to recommend law-related apps.
As I noted earlier this week, Apple sold a huge number of iPhones during the past quarter. John Gruber of Daring Fireball notes that the iPhone not only accounted for 75% of all AT&T smartphones sold last quarter, but also accounted for over half of all phones sold by AT&T. Employees at AT&T stores must sometimes feel like they work for an Apple Store.
Does it seem like you are getting more spam text messages on your iPhone? It seems that way to me. Glenn Fleishman explains in TidBITS how you can easily report the spam to AT&T on your iPhone.
Allyson Kazmuch of iMore provides some interesting details on the origin of Siri from Dag Kittlaus, one of the co-founders.
PDFpen, which I reviewed last month, has been updated to add, among other things, support for folders.
If you are looking for an iPad case that contains a keyboard, Dan Frakes of Macworld has a favorable review of the $99 Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover. It looks like an interesting device, a cross between the Apple Smart Cover and a Bluetooth keyboard.
And finally, although this is technically not an iPhone or iPad story, it is a reminder of how important it is to be careful in this world of electronic communications. Rob Cooper of the UK Daily Mail reports that when the human resources department at the company Aviva Investors intended to send an e-mail to one person explaining the procedures now that the person had been fired, HR instead sent the e-mail to all 1,300 employees of the company worldwide. The error was discovered and the e-mail was “recalled” (often a useless step anyway) but even that took almost a half an hour, and you have to wonder if some folks started their day by thinking that they had been fired. Oops. This is probably as good a time as any to provide you with this important iPhone public service announcement for replying to most of your e-mails:
