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I usually take rumors of upcoming Apple products with a grain of salt, but every once in a while you see all of the most credible publications saying the same thing.  Yesterday, John Paczkowski of the All Things D website (an affiliate of the Wall Street Journal) wrote that Apple will introduce the next version of the iPad in the first week of March.  He reports that sources tell him that the next iPad will look similar to the iPad 2 but will have a vastly improved Retina Display, much like the iPhone 4/4S.  Then Nick Wingfield, Nick Bilton and Brian Chen of the New York Times reported the same thing based on their sources, stating that the next iPad will have a “truly amazing” screen.  Also, the often-in-the-know Jim Dalrymple of The Loop wrote about the All Things D story: “Yep.”  Now that the trinity of the most reliable sources for Apple rumors are in agreement, I think it is safe to predict that we may see a new iPad in just a few weeks — the iPad 2s?  the iPad 2HD?  The iPad 3? — and it will have a vastly improved screen.  If you are about to buy an iPad 2 but you can wait a few weeks, this seems to be a good time to wait.  And now, the rest of the news of the week:

• If you are an AT&T iPhone customer still grandfathered in to an “unlimited” plan, that plan just became a little less valuable.  Mikey Campbell of AppleInsider reports that AT&T has started to throttle users who use a lot of their “unlimited” bandwidth, including people who just use more than 2 GB a month.  Sure, you can keep on downloading files without hitting a limit and paying extra, but the downloads start happening a lot slower.  I gave up my “unlimited” plan about a year ago so that I could add tethering to my package and share my iPhone’s data with my (non-3G) iPad.  I never go over 4 GB of data a month anyway, so the “limit” hasn’t ever been a problem for me, but your mileage may vary.
• The huge Houston-based energy company Halliburton announced that it is giving up on the BlackBerry and moving to the iPhone, according to Toronto newspaper The Globe and Mail.
• The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is also shifting from the BlackBerry to the iPhone, according to Jim Dalrymple of The Loop.
• The $5 iMovie app from Apple does a great job of editing movies on the iPad or iPhone.  Now iMovie has some competition with the $5 Avid Studio app for the iPad.  Leanna Lofte of iMore compares the two apps.
• Torotono attorney Ted Tjaden writes on the Slaw website about the recent LegalTech 2012 Conference that took place in New York and mentions some great iPad apps.
• Here’s a great before and after picture of the world of cellphones before and after the iPhone, via Josh Helfferich.
• I suppose this has nothing to do with the iPhone or iPad, but watching Justice Sotomayor settle disputes among the Muppets on Sesame Street is awesome.  (via San Francisco attorney Kevin Underhill of Lowering the Bar)
• Virginia attorney Rob Dean of WalkingOffice discusses using PDF Expert to review documents.
• Richard Acellow writes for the ABA Journal about iPhone and iPad support by law firm IT departments.
• Alan Cohen of Law Technology News writes about the advantages of attorneys upgrading an iPhone or iPad to iOS 5 — a little curious since iOS 5 has been out since October of last year, but on the other hand, I know lots of attorneys at my own firm who have still not updated yet.
• New York attorney Niki Black recommends iPad apps for attorneys for The Daily Record.
• Microsoft Office on the iPad.  Sounds great, right?  You can now sort of get it with the OnLive app, but Galen Gruman of InfoWorld says that it is a “train wreck,” and California attorney David Sparks agrees.
• For reasons I’ve described before, I like having the ability to use Wi-Fi on airplanes via the GoGo service, but I think that the service is too expensive so I don’t use it very often.  Matt Hamblen of Computerworld writes about this and other reasons that the service still hasn’t caught on much.
• I was impressed when I reviewed the new TranscriptPad app last month.  Indiana attorney Bill Wilson reviews the app for his Third Apple website, and he calls it a “kick-buck iPad app.”
• This guy in China realy likes Apple products.  (via Bryan Chaffin of The Mac Observer.)
• And finally, that guy in China would probably love this video, a quick look at Apple products over the years compiled by Rob Beschizza of BoingBoing.  I used a whole bunch of these over the years; I still remember how amazed I was when I first used the Apple QuickTake 100 my law firm had purchased to take digital photographs at a then-amazing 640×480 resolution.

The Manual of Patent Examining Procedure is a publication of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that contains the laws and regulations applicable to the examination of patent applications.  Drew Smith, an IP patent agent at Bruzga & Associates in New York (he just passed the New York bar but has not yet been sworn in), tells me that he got tired of having to navigate his way through the USPTO website to find key patent documents, so he created the MPEP Plus app to collect the key documents in one location.  Smith just started programming a few months ago, and he admits that the app is not much more than a collection of PDFs and a patent searching tool, but he thought that the app might be useful to others so he released it to the App Store.  He gave me a free copy of the app so that I could check it out.

At the top left of the main screen of the app there is a link to the current version of the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (8th Edition, July 2010).  Tap to see the full index of the publication, where you can easily to jump to different sections.

The app also contains a patent finder.  Simply enter a number (done using cards just to keep it interesting) to pull a patent, or you can even tap the Random button to let serendipity guide you.  Here is an example of retrieving Apple’s patent on the iPhone “slide to unlock” feature:

The app also includes links to key legal authorities on patents such as Title 37, CFR Chapter 35, some key Supreme Court opinions, etc.

Drew Smith tells me that he is working on an update to MPEP to add some animation.  He also plans to add a tool to calculate patent term adjustments, something not currently addressed by any other app.

If patents are a part of your practice, then this inexpensive app may be worth checking out.

Click here to get MPEP Plus ($1.99): 

There are lots of apps that let you take notes on an iPad.  The Noterize app was around for a while until it was purchased by Nuance in the Fall of 2011.  Nuance subsequently changed the name to PaperPort Notes, made the app free, and incorporated its Dragon speech-to-text technology into the app.  Today, PaperPort Notes a free app that you can use to take notes on an iPad using either a keyboard, your handwriting, or your voice.

PaperPort Notes lets you create Note Sets, each of which can contain multiple pages.  You can create pages with various background such as a blank white page, a grid, or a page that looks like a white or yellow legal pad. If you are looking for an app that you can use to type notes during a meeting (I recommend using an external keyboard if you can), the app works reasonably well.  There are some limitations versus a true word processor app, such as the inability to change the style of individual words, but if you are just looking for a clean interface to type and perhaps draw something using your finger or a stylus, this app works fine for that purpose.

Now that Nuance owns this app, it includes a voice-to-text feature that sets it apart from other note-taking apps.  For the most part, it works quite well.  I did encounter one small bug: you can usually say “cap” to tell software using the Nuance’s Dragon engine (such as Siri or the Dragon Dictation app) that you want the next word to have a capital first letter, but when you say “cap” in this app, for some reason it fails to transcribe at all.  Strange, but hopefully a bug that will be fixed soon.

I expect Apple to add Siri technology to the iPad at some point, so perhaps in the future all iPad note-taking apps will have voice-to-text capabilities.  But for now, I don’t know of any other note-taking app with this feature.  This feature works best when you speak close to the iPad, so I don’t think that you could use this app to transcribe on-the-fly when someone else is speaking such as in a meeting or in class.  (Plus, you can only talk for about 30-40 seconds before the app needs to pause and translate that to text.).  Having said that, the app does give you the ability to record audio for each page, so you could record a lecture while you take notes if you just want to listen to it later.

You can also draw on the screen, but I don’t recommend using PaperPort Notes to take extensive handwritten notes because it lacks the zoom feature used by apps like Note Taker HD and Notes Plus that allows you to write larger text that is shrunk down on the page.  As a result, you cannot get as many words on the page, and the quality of your handwriting decreases substantially.

In addition to a pen, the app has a highlighter feature.  And you can do more than just annotate your own notes; you can import a PDF document, including documents in cloud services like Dropbox.  The app also lets you add a text box that looks like a sticky note, and you can adjust the rotation of that note.

Pages of notes that you create with PaperPort Notes can be exported as PDF files and sent to an e-mail, sent to another app on your iPad, or saved to a cloud service such as Dropbox.

I don’t think that this is an app that I will use very often.  For typing notes, I’m more likely to use either an app that lets me adjust styles (such as Pages), or one of the many pure-text apps if I just want to get words on a page.  For handwritten notes, I’ve explained above why I far prefer apps like Note Taker HD and Notes Plus with a zoom box.  The voice-to-text feature is neat, but it’s not something that I will use very often when taking notes.  I do sometimes dictate an e-mail on the iPad, and the free Dragon Dictation app on the iPad does that quite well, but I don’t think that I have a big need to dictate longer notes on my iPad.

Having said that, this is still a nice app, and perhaps it will fit more into your practice than it does for me — especially if dictating notes could be useful to you.  The app is free, so try it out and see what you think.

Click here to get PaperPort Notes (free): 

If you are interested in technology and want a good way to get CLE credit this year, we are approaching the Early Bird Deadline (February 17) for ABA TECHSHOW 2012, which takes place March 29 to 31 in Chicago.  I’m speaking at two sessions.  First, on March 29th, I’m on a panel called Smartphone Wars where I will be talking about using the iPhone in a law practice, Dan Pinnington will discuss Blackberry, and Jennifer Ellis will discuss Android.  It will be interesting to compare and contrasts the hottest smartphones.  Second, on March 31st, Josh Barrett and I will once again present 60 iOS Apps for Lawyers in 60 Minutes, a fast-paced look at some of the best iPad and iPhone apps.  Because Reid Trautz is the Chair of TECHSHOW 2012, this is the first year that he won’t be a part of 60 Apps, but I’m thrilled that Brett Burney will be taking his place.  Josh Barrett and I are also hosting a Taste of TECHSHOW dinner on Thursday, March 29; more details are here if you’d like to join us.  [UPDATE 2/14/12:  Our dinner is now sold out, but there are sometimes last minute cancellations, so get on the waiting list on that same page if you want to try to join us.]  And now, on to the news of note from the past week:

• Speaking of Brett Burney, the Lexblog Network interviewed Burney at the recent LegalTech New York regarding the use of iPads by lawyers.
• Horace Dediu of Asymco put together some fascinating graphs that show how Apple has risen to prominence in the mobile phone market.  The third graph is particularly interesting, showing that Apple sees 40% of mobile phone revenue, and a staggering 75% of all profits on mobile phones.
• More interesting numbers:  Matt Brian of The Next Web reports that 70% of all smartphones sold by AT&T and Verizon last quarter were iPhones.
• Jeff Gray of Toronto newspaper The Globe and Mail reports that more and more Canadian lawyers are using the iPhone over the Canadian-produced BlackBerry.
• Arizona attorney Joseph Kanefield, who is currently president of the Arizona Bar, wrote about how he uses the iPhone and iPad in his law practice in this article for Arizona Attorney magazine.
• Daniel Eran Dilger of AppleInsider offers some theories on why IT departments at large companies are embracing the iPhone more than Android.
• Similarly, Ryan Faas of Computerworld looks back at the use of Apple products in enterprise over the years.
• Here’s another story of an iPhone thief being caught by Find My iPhone.  As C.J. Hughes of the New York Times reports, this time, it was the police who thought to take advantage of the service.
• Former Apple executive Bob Borchers provided some details on the early development of the iPhone in a lecture reported on by Katie Marsal of AppleInsider.  Borchers said that Steve Jobs “wanted to create something that was so instrumental and integrated in peoples’ lives that you’d rather leave your wallet at home than your iPhone.”
• New York attorney Neil Squillante of TechnoLawyer discusses TranscriptPad, a great iPad app that I reviewed on January 18th.
• Trial presentation consultant Ted Brooks reviewed iJury, a voir dire app for the iPad.
• Virginia attorney Rob Dean of WalkingOffice reviews Tom Mighell’s book iPad in One Hour for Lawyers.  (My review of that book is here.)
• And finally, I recently reviewed the Chef Sleeve, a device to protect your iPad in a kitchen and other environment.  But for those of you who need EXTREME protection from your iPad, Traci Dauphin of Cult of Mac reviews the Grid Tablet by Watershed, a bag for the iPad that Navy Seals use so that they can use their iPads at a depth of up to 300 feet.  If you need to practice law while you are deep underwater, than You’ll want to spend $100 on this:

Your iPhone is in your shirt pocket, you lean over when you happen to be near a body of water such as, say, a toilet, and the iPhone falls in the water.  Yikes!  Fortunately, this hasn’t happened to me yet, but it does seem like it is just a matter of time.  Thus, my interest was piqued when I saw the website iMore “review” a $6.95 product called the Thirsty Bag from iFixit, a company well-known for fixing iPhones.  You place an iPhone (or camera or iPod or other electronic device) in the Thirsty Bag as soon as possible after it gets wet, and the two Molecular Sieve pouches in the bag remove all of the water from the device so that it (hopefully) works again.  You can also remove the two pouches, put them in a larger Ziploc bag, and use the product to fix a wet iPad.

I put the word “review” in quotes because iMore didn’t actually dunk an iPhone to try out this product, they simply describe how it is supposed to work, much like I am doing here.  Even though I do have some old iPhones in my house, I don’t want to risk destroying them simply to review a $7 product, so I don’t plan to review the Thirsty Bag myself either.  Hopefully, I will never be the unfortunate victim of the scenario outlined at the start of this post, but I am thinking about buying one just in case.  Obviously, to take advantage of a Thirsty Bag, you have to already have it in your possession so that it is nearby soon after your iPhone takes a swim.  I suppose it is a $7 insurance policy, albeit one that is not guaranteed to work.

What about other solutions?  A few years ago, Andy Ihnatko of the Chicago Sun Times got Verizon to give him a few phones that he could destroy, and he tried out several methods of drying them out.  His full article, and the video segment he did for the CBS Early Show, are here.  In short, he found that kitty litter or white rice can sometimes do the trick.  The iFixit website claims that the Thirsty Bag is better for these reasons:

Unfortunately, rice is not an effective desiccant for a couple of reasons. Rice has a low capacity for atmospheric absorption. It may absorb the liquid water on the case, but our real problem are the tiny drops inside. Also, as rice sits on your shelf, and the shelf at the store before you bought it, in unsealed boxes and bags it slowly sucks in water out of the atmosphere around it, reaching it’s absorption capacity. Thirsty Bag Molecular Sieve pouches are sealed at the factory where they are made, and not exposed the the atmosphere for longer than 2 minutes during packaging where they are resealed and prepared for you.

Whether you purchase a Thirsty Bag or just have a gameplan for quickly getting kitty litter or rice, it is good to spend time now thinking about what you will do if your iPhone or iPad gets wet.

Click here to get Thirsty Bag from iFixit ($6.95).

Click here to get a bag of rice from Amazon ($1.14).

When I travel, I bring with me the USB Power Adapter and the Dock Connector to USB cable that came with my iPhone or iPad so that I can charge my iPhone overnight.  It is usually easy to find an outlet on the wall of a hotel room, but you can’t always find a table that is both near the plug and at the right height.  Thus, I often have a cable running from the power adapter to the floor, and my iPhone just sits on the floor, which always makes me nervous that I might step on it at night.  The clever folks at BlueLounge created a product called the MiniDock, a stand that plugs in to your Apple USB Power Adapter so that the iPhone can rest on the adapter itself without the need for a cord.  A simple picture shows exactly what this product does:

Because the MiniDock is so tiny, it makes a great travel accessory.  Indeed, if you carry a MiniDock, you might not even need to also travel with the Dock Connector to USB cable, although I’ll probably continue to carry that cable because sometimes it is useful to have.

In addition to being useful during travel, this is a great device to use in the kitchen so that your iPhone can charge without being on the counter, which not only saves you counter space but also helps to protect the iPhone if you happen to spill something on the counter or push something else around that could knock the iPhone off of the counter.

The device works with a variety of different sized iPhones and iPods, and to allow all of these devices to rest comfortably in the MiniDock, it comes with three “Spacer Bumpers” of different sizes that stick onto the MiniDock to fill the gap between your device and the back panel of the MiniDock.  With an iPhone 4 or 4S, I find that the largest bumper works best.

Note that, like most stands, the MiniDock probably won’t work if your iPhone is in a case, unless it is a thin case with the right size opening around the connector on the bottom.  Having said that, if your case is of the right size, it would not only work with the MiniDock but you also may not need to use a Spacer Bumper.

This device it so simple that there isn’t much more to say about it, except that when I look at it it often makes me wonder why I didn’t think of it first.  The MiniDock works great, and I suspect that almost every iPhone owner would find this device useful.

Click here to get the MiniDock by BlueLounge on Amazon ($18.99).

Apple announced earlier this week that it broke records with its phenomenal sales quarter, and unsurprisingly this had an effect on others. AT&T announced that it sold a record 9.4 million smartphones during the December quarter, and 7.6 million of those — 80% — were iPhones. Verizon announced that it sold 4.2 million iPhones in the December quarter, representing 55% of its smartphone sales. We haven’t seen numbers from Sprint yet, but I’m sure that they also sold millions of iPhones last quarter. For all of the attorneys who are new iPhone owners and new to this site … welcome! Check out the Index to Prior Posts to catch up with everyone else. And now, the news of note for the past week:

• The most interesting article that I read this past week was on the cover of the Sunday edition of the New York Times.  How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work by Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher explains why consumer electronics in general, and iPhones and iPads in particular, are made in China.  Your first thought may be “cheaper labor,” and while that is a part of the explanation, it has more to do with the fact that the U.S. lacks manufacturing companies with the abilities of these Chinese companies.  Definitely worth reading.
• The default wallpaper for the iPhone’s lock screen is a beautiful picture of Earth that was released by NASA in 2002. I described the background of that picture in my Blue Marble post from March of 2010. This week, NASA posted on its Flickr page Blue Marble 2012, an even higher definition view of Earth created by combining several images taken by a NASA satellite on January 4, 2012.  I find it impossible to view pictures like this without finding myself thinking about man’s place in the universe — or, if I’m in a less philosophical mood, at least humming the Disney “It’s a small world after all” song. And now that I’ve mentioned it, the song is probably in your head too. (Sorry!)  Anyway, perhaps it is time for Apple to update the iPhone wallpaper image.
• Utah attorney Greg Hoole recommends iPad apps in an article for Law Technology News.
• MG Siegler of TechCrunch provides an interesting perspective on Apple’s record quarter earnings.
• This week, the U.S. Supreme Court released its decision in U.S. v. Jones, ruling that the Fourth Amendment applies when a police officer attaches a GPS device to a vehicle to monitor its movements. All of us with iPhones are walking around carrying a GPS unit, so this decision means that the police cannot monitor us … right? Well, maybe not. Rebecca Rosen has an interesting article in The Atlantic that explains how limited the decision really is. A fascinating read.
• Mel Martin of TUAW describes a new app from Epson that lets an iPhone or iPad wirelessly connect to certain Epson projectors.
• Vlad Savon of The Verge reports on a study by Pew which estimates that almost 20% of adults in the U.S. now own a tablet computer, such as an iPad or an e-book reader.
• Charles Starrett of iLounge reminds us that when you are typing on an iPad and you make a mistake, you can always tap the .?123 key to see an Undo button.  Great tip.
• Tony Bradley of PCWorld explains that AT&T has changed its iPhone rate plans.  Current customers are grandfathered into their their existing plans, but going forward, AT&T’s plans becoming $5 more expensive, but with that price increase you get more data.  $20 gets you 300MB (instead of $15 for 200MB), $30 gets you 3GB (instead of $25 for 2GB) and $50 gets you 5GB plus hotspot tethering (instead of $45 for 4GB plus tethering).
• St. Louis attorney Geri Dreiling has some tips on LawyerTechReview for replacing your legal pad with an iPad.
• And finally, I love the great Siri technology on my iPhone 4S, and if you also use a 4S, perhaps you do too.  But do you REALLY love Siri?  The always funny guys at Scoopertino imagined the next great product from Apple, Siri Pro for those who are, well, in love with Siri.  Click here or on the picture below to read all about it.

I just started writing a column for the TechnoLawyer BigLaw newsletter, and I encourage all iPhone J.D. readers to sign up for a free subscription so that you can keep up with the articles that I write for BigLaw.

A little background: since 1997, TechnoLawyer has distributed free e-mail newsletters for attorneys.  Today, TechnoLawyer publishes nine different newsletters.  Some of my favorites include BlawgWorld (a guide to what is new and noteworthy on the legal web), LitigationWorld (tips for litigators) and FatFriday (a weekly grab bag of of various topics such a product reviews and tips and tricks).  In 2009, TechnoLawyer started to publish BigLaw to address topics that are of particular interest to attorneys who work at midsize and large law firms.  Articles in BigLaw are written by a mix of current and former corporate counsel, attorneys at medium-to-large law firms and legal journalists.  The BigLaw e-mail newsletter is typically sent out every Tuesday.

My articles in BigLaw will come out about once a month and will cover issues that are of particular interest to attorneys at a law firm who use an iPhone or iPad.  My first article appeared in the January 17, 2012 newsletter and discussed law firm support for iPads, including whether law firms should purchase iPads for all of their attorneys.

I encourage you to click here to subscribe to BigLaw to keep up with my articles and the other great articles in that newsletter.  And while you are there, you should sign up for some of the other TechnoLawyer newsletters as well; they are free, and they are always full of useful information.  If you want to catch up on older feature articles from BigLaw, they are posted on the BigLaw Blog several weeks after they appear in the newsletter.

Yesterday, Apple released the results for its 2012 fiscal first quarter (which ran from September 25, 2011 to December 31, 2011) and held a call with analysts to discuss the results.  This is the 13th time that I have discussed an Apple quarterly earnings call on iPhone J.D., and over that time I’ve frequently remarked that Apple had a record-setting quarter, which was true this time as well.  Of course the fiscal first quarter is always Apple’s best quarter because it includes holiday sales, but this past quarter was something really special for Apple.  Not only was it the best quarter in Apple’s history, it blew away the previous best quarter.  The previous record was announced on July 19, 2011, when Apple revealed sales of $28.57 billion and profit of $7.31 billion in its 2011 fiscal third quarter.  Yesterday, Apple announced sales of $46.33 billion and profit of $13.06 billion.  This wasn’t just an amazing quarter from Apple’s perspective, it was an amazing quarter from any company’s perspective.  David Goldman of CNN reports that this was the second most profitable quarter of any U.S. company ever, behind only ExxonMobil’s record-setting $14.8 billion quarter in the Fall of 2008 when oil prices were at an all-time high.  Wow. 

If you want to hear the full call yourself, you can download it from iTunes, or you can read a rough transcript of the call prepared by Seeking Alpha.  Apple’s official press release is here.  Here are the highlights of the call that I think would be of interest to attorneys who use an iPhone or iPad:

• Apple sold a record 37 million iPhones last quarter.  That is twice what it sold the same quarter a year ago.  Take a look at the first graph in this article by Philip Michaels of Macworld to see just how incredible a quarter this was for iPhone sales.
• iPad sales were a record 15.4 million last quarter.
• What about the iPod touch, the iPhone-without-a-phone?  Apple announced that it sold 15.4 million iPods last quarter and indicated that about 10 million of those are the iPod touch. 
• To date, “combining the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, we surpassed 315 million cumulative iOS device sales, selling more than 62 million in the December quarter.”  That is a huge market for app developers.
• Speaking of app developers, there are now over 550,000 apps in the App Store, including 170,000 iPad-specific apps.  To date, app developers have made over $4 billion, including over $700 million in the last quarter alone.
• Apple announced that nearly all Fortune 500 companies now approve and support the iPhone and the iPad.  “Real estate agents at Coldwell Banker and Sotheby’s access sales presentations and use custom iPad apps in the field. Retail chains such as Bed Bath & Beyond use iPads to deliver key business metrics on the sales floor. Wineries are using iPads in their vineyards to call up weather data and soil profiles, record quality assessments and make decisions on the spot about whether to harvest their grapes. And in this past quarter, Chinese airline EVA has also deployed iPads to pilots and crew for flight manuals, documentation and training.”
• 85 million people are signed up for iCloud, Apple’s system for keeping files in the cloud and syncing them across multiple devices.  Apple CEO Tim Cook said that iCloud is “a fundamental shift, recognizing that people had numerous devices and they wanted the bulk of their content in the cloud, and easily accessible from all the devices.  And, you know, I think we’re seeing the response from that, and with 85 million customers in just 3 months, it is a very, very important part. It’s just not a product. It’s a strategy for the next decade.”
• Apple CEO Tim Cook predicts an incredible future for the iPad, noting that the iPad is “a huge opportunity for Apple over time.  And as I’ve said before, I truly believe, and many others in the company believe, that there will come a day that the tablet market and units is larger than the PC market.  In fact, it’s interesting to note that in the U.S., it’s clear from the IDC’s recent data on desktop PCs in the U.S. that tablets exceeded desktop PC sales last quarter in the U.S.  And so I think you can already see different indicators that there is significant momentum in this space.”

There are many ways to use an iPad to replace a legal pad.  Numerous apps let you type notes using the on screen keyboard, but that only works well if your iPad is on a flat, stable surface.  A good alternative is to use a stylus along with an app that lets you draw on the screen, and the most useful apps let you draw in a window that reduces the size of what you type so that you can get a large number of words on a page.  Note Taker HD is a perfect example of one of these apps, and for a long time now, that is the app that I have been using and recommending to use with a stylus.  But I have often been asked if there is a way to take handwritten notes and then convert those notes to searchable text.  Notes Plus is a $6.99 note-taking app for the iPad, and the recently-released 3.0 version of Notes Plus gives you the option of purchasing a $1.99 in-app upgrade to add handwriting recognition.  The developer of Notes Plus sent me a free copy of the app to review and I purchased the in-app upgrade.  It works farily well, but Notes Plus can be confusing to use because the app has so many features.

Writing with a stylus

If you read my review of Note Taker HD or if you use the app yourself, then you understand the concept (and advantages) of writing in one window and having what you write show up in a smaller version elsewhere on the page.  Notes Plus includes the same feature.  When you are using the pen function in the app, you hold down your stylus for a second and a window pops up in which you can write.  

(By the way, my favorite stylus right now is still the Kensington Virtuoso Stylus for Tablet that I reviewed last August.)

The biggest difference between writing in Notes Plus versus Note Taker HD is that when you near the end of the window and you pick up your stylus to continue writing in the left side of the window, Notes Plus actually shows you what you have previously written, making it very easy to place the next letter in the correct location.  In the following image, for example, you can see that I am ready to write a word after “the” but I am about to reach the end of the window, so I can instead start writing just after the “the” in the left side of the window.

Notes Plus also gives you the option of moving the handwriting window to another part of the screen, although frankly I haven’t found that to be very useful.  Unfortunately, I find that Notes Plus is a little slower than Note Taker HD; there is a fraction of a second greater delay between the time that you move your stylus and the “ink” shows up on the screen.  The difference is slight, but I mention this because even Note Taker HD on an iPad 2 feels like it is just barely keeping up with your writing, so it is unfortunate that Notes Plus is a tiny bit slower (perhaps because the app is taking the time to show you what you have already written in the left side of the window?)

Handwriting recognition

When you draw a circle around something in Notes Plus, the app selects whatever it is that you have circled, gives it an outline appearance so you understand what was selected and what was not selected, and then gives you the option to do something with the selected writing such as copy it, delete it, or recognize the handwriting.  (Or you can tell Notes Plus that you just intended to draw a circle.)  The first time that you choose to recognize handwriting, you are given the option of paying $1.99 for the in-app upgrade.  (The developer of Notes Plus pays another company for the MyScript technology that handles the handwriting recognition, so he made this an in-app upgrade for those who want the feature rather than adding $2 to the price of the app.)  Once the purchase is made, the handwriting recognition works very well.  In my tests it was often perfect and otherwise darn close.  For example, in the test shown in the next picture, the only thing it got wrong is that it thought a lowercase f was an uppercase F, and frankly the fault there is likely my sloppy handwriting, not the MyScript technology:

[UPDATE:  Indiana attorney Robert Hunt posted a comment to this post asking if the app can convert cursive handwriting to text.  Yes, it does.  And my cursive handwriting is worse than my block letters, so the handwriting recognition engine really is quite impressive.]

Why would you want to convert your handwriting into text?  First, text is easier to read, although frankly that is not enough of a reason for me.  Others may have trouble reading my handwriting, but I don’t.  Second, text is searchable.  This is the key advantage for me.  If I take several pages of handwritten notes during a meeting or a hearing, I cannot do a full-text search to find a specific term.  But if I use Notes Plus to select all of my handwriting on a page and convert it to text, then I can search for specific terms when I am later looking for something in my notes.

If you are just working with words, conversion to text is very useful.  It gets more complicated, however, if page layout makes a difference to you, for example if you are also drawing things on a page next to your text.  Unless you use the perfect size font, the text will not occupy the same space on the page as your handwriting, so if you intended to draw a picture, a star, etc. next to your text, it will not line up correctly after conversion.

Shapes

And this is a good point to mention that Notes Plus has the neat ability to create perfect shapes.  If you draw a standard shape like a line, a circle, a square, a triangle, etc., the app recognizes what you are doing and converts it to a perfect shape.  Thus, you can draw this:

And the app automatically changes it to this (although you have the option to change it back if that was not your intent):

Thus, it is easy to include a nice diagram in your notes with perfect curves and straight lines.  Or you can just draw a box around some important words and have it look perfect.

Plus much more

And that is just the tip of the iceberg of what Notes Plus can do.  You can use the microphone button at the top left to record audio along with your notes.  You can switch to a full screen mode (in landscape view) to remove all menus and maximize your space for taking notes.  There is a highlighter.  You can insert pictures.  You can select different backgrond paper, and you can even import a PDF to write on top of that.  You can scratch through something you wrote to erase it.  You can move anything that you wrote to a different location.  You can import and export files to Google Docs and Dropbox.  (Dropbox support is currently broken, but the developer says that an updated version that fixes Dropbox support has already been submitted to the App Store and should be available soon.)  And there are even more features of the app that I am just beginning to learn.

Unfortunately, there is a price to pay for all of these features:  complexity.  Even though I have spent countless hours learning how to use the app, reading help files, reading the website, etc., I often get confused on how to perform the various functions in the app.  As a result, I have some hesitation recommending Notes Plus, especially to beginner iPad users.  It reminds me of Photoshop on the computer; Photoshop can create some amazing images, but there is a very steep learning curve, and if you are someone (like me) who only uses Photoshop occasionally, you can easily get lost trying to figure out what each button does and how to get something done.  Notes Plus is not as complex as Photoshop, but there is nevertheless a steep learning curve.  I love that this app is so powerful, but I must tell you that it sometimes drives me crazy.

Conclusion

I decided to take a look at Notes Plus in the summer of 2011 because so many attorneys had told me that it was their favorite app for taking notes.  I waited to post this review because the developer has been working on version 3.0 for the last six months and I wanted to wait and see how the app would work with handwriting recognition and other features added.  I still haven’t yet decided whether this app will replace Note Taker HD as my favorite iPad app for taking notes, but it might.  I love all of the advanced features, such as handwriting recognition and shape creation, but I don’t (yet) feel as efficient when using this app and it is a minor annoyance that the app isn’t quite as fast as Note Taker HD.  Nevertheless, if you are looking for a sophisticated app for taking notes and you don’t mind putting in the time to learn how to control all of the bells and whistles, you’ll definitely want to check out Notes Plus.

Click here to get Notes Plus ($6.99):