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The focus of the Apple September announcement is always the iPod, but yesterday there was a ton of iPhone news announced by Steve Jobs.  Here are the iPhone-related news items and my thoughts on each.

The numbers.  Steve Jobs started by noting that Apple has sold over 120 million iOS devices, including the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.  Apple now activates 230,000 new iOS devices every single day.  There are over 250,000 apps in the App Store, and there have been over 6.5 billion downloads from the App Store.  200 apps are downloaded every second.  Wow.

HDR Photos.  The new iOS 4, due out next week, will give you an option for the iPhone camera to take high dynamic range photographs, allowing the iPhone to take even better pictures that don’t wash out the background.  I have some iPhone apps that do the same thing and dramatically increase the quality of pictures, but with this ability built-in to the iPhone I’m sure that it will work even better.  The iPhone 4 already has the best smartphone camera, and with HDR it will be better than many “real” cameras.  Here is an example from the Apple website of what HDR can do for an iPhone photo:

HD video upload over WiFi.  In iOS 4.0, you can take HD video but need to connect to your computer to get that video off of your iPhone in full HD quality.  With iOS 4.1, if you have a WiFi connection, you’ll be able to upload that video so that you can more easily share HD video with others when you are on the road, away from your computer.

Fix the proxmity sensor bug.  iOS 4 had the annoying tendency to turn the screen on when the iPhone was next to your face, meaning that your cheek could touch a button on the phone while you were talking.  iOS 4.1. is supposed to fix that bug.  Thank goodness.

Fix the Bluetooth bug.  I don’t use Bluetooth with my iPhone 4 very often so I had not noticed that there was a problem with Blluetooth, but if you noticed any problems with the Bluetooth connection dropping, you’ll be happy to learn that these problems supposed to be fixed in iOS 4.1.

Speed up the iPhone 3G.  If you use iOS 4.0 on an iPhone 3G, you know that it is V-E-R-Y S-L-O-W.  iOS 4.1 is supposed to speed it up.

Rent TV shows for 99¢.  You can already rent movies on your iPhone, but with iOS 4.1 you can rent TV shows for only 99¢.  That is cheap enough that you won’t feel guilty renting an episode (or two, or three) of the show that you missed last night to watch on a plane when you are traveling home from business.  In the past you had to buy TV shows, and with very rare exception I only want to watch a TV show once.  A cheap rental makes a lot more sense.

Game Center.  If you like the idea of playing multi-player games on your iPhone, Game Center in iOS 4.1 will let you connect with friends and share a game.  I’m not sure that I will ever use this feature, but I’m sure many people will like it.

Ping.  Yesterday, Steve Jobs showed off a new social network for music that lives in iTunes called Ping.  You can choose to let your friends see the music that you are buying on iTunes, your friends can allow you to see their purchases, artists can let you follow them, etc.  It looks like Facebook with a music angle.  While mostly a feature of iTunes 10, Ping will also be incorproated into the iTunes app on the iPhone.

Printing from the iPhone and iPad.  In November, iOS 4.2 will be available for both the iPhone and iPad, and one of its features will be the ability to print documents from an iOS device.  I suspect that this will be more useful for iPad owners than for iPhone owners, but it will be nice to see this addition.

AirPlay.  Apple also announced a new $99 AppleTV today (due in four weeks).  With iOS 4.2 on your iPhone or iPad, any video that you are watching on your iOS device can be viewed on your large screen TV connected to an AppleTV with just one button.  That way, if you haven’t finished watching the TV shows you rented on that plane ride home, you can finish watching on your TV once you get home.  Nilay Patel of Engadget notes that Apple will let third-parties use this technology.  “That means you’ll be able to stream music from iTunes, your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad to speaker docks, receivers and stereos from companies like Denon, Marantz, Bowers & Wilkins, JBL and iHome, complete with song, album, and artist info and album art.”  Sounds great.

New iPod touch.  I know tons of people who want an iPhone without the phone (and the monthly AT&T contract) and thus they use an iPod touch.  The new version of the iPod touch incorporates most of the great new features added to the iPhone 4 such as the retina display, the fast Apple A4 chip, the gyroscope, FaceTime with a front-facing camera, and a camera on the back that can take HD video (although the picture quality is lower than the iPhone 4).  Suffice it to say that if you like the iPhone 4 but don’t want the phone, you’ll love the new iPod touch.

New iPod nano.  I understand that the new iPod nano doesn’t use the iOS, but with the multitouch interface and the icons lifted from the iPhone, the new nano definitely copies from the iPhone.

New AppleTV. My focus here is on iPhone news, but the new AppleTV has a relationsihp to the iPhone because of the AirPlay feature I noted above.  Additionally, I understand that the new AppleTV actually runs a version of iOS, although you cannot tell that just by looking at it.  That makes some sense becuase the the AppleTV has always been essentially an iPod for your TV.  If the best selling iPod (the iPod touch) runs the iOS, then why not put it on the AppleTV.  Will we ever see third-party apps on the AppleTV?  Only time will tell.

These were interesting announcements for iPhone owners.  You can download the new iTunes 10 now, and look out for iOS 4.1 next week.

Today at at 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern will be Apple’s annual September iPod event.  There used to be a time, long ago, when Apple provided live video streams of Apple events.*  But then Apple stopped doing so, which resulted in many websites becoming experts at live blogging Apple events.

This year, we will have the best of both worlds.  Apple PR announced yesterday that there will be a live video stream of the event on Apple’s website.  Note that Apple says that you need to use Apple hardware (such as a Mac or an iPhone) to view the livestream; we’ll find out tomorrow whether the stream can be viewed with non-Apple hardware and software.  But if you prefer to read instead of watch and listen, here are links for live blogging by the experts at Engadget, Macworld and GDGT.  Be sure to tune in to iPhone J.D. on Thursday for my thoughts on the announcements.

Or, if you can’t wait and you just have to know right now what will be announced, John Moltz of Crazy Apple Rumors Site spills all the beans on the new products.

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* How long has it been since Apple streamed an event like this?  There was a period of time in the range of 2000 to 2002 when Apple did it frequently, and I found this Apple press release in which Apple bragged that 50,000 people watched a webcast of the July 17, 2002 Macworld New York keynote by Steve Jobs.  That may have been the last time that Apple did a live webcast of a Steve Jobs presentation.  I remember that those live streams would often stutter and lead to much aggravation.  I presume that Apple is providing a live stream today only after taking steps to make sure that the quality is good.  We’ll see.

Shoeboxed is a service that manages your receipts.  You scan receipts and e-mail them to Shoeboxed, or just use their iPhone app to scan receipts, or you can even mail them paper receipts if you want to, and they have real people review the receipts and organize them into categories.  If you use the service to manage all of your receipts, then by the end of the year you have all of your expenses organized and available in multiple formats including Excel, PDF, etc. 

I have had the Shoeboxed app on my iPhone for a while now and had intended to try it out, and then I read that my friend, New Orleans attorney Ernie Svenson, has incorporated this app into his daily life.  Thus, instead of me doing a review after a week or two of usage, let me refer you to Ernie’s excellent and comprehensive post.  I am already loving that with the Chase app I can just scan a check to deposit it without having to visit a bank.  Scanning receipts sounds just as easy considering that your iPhone is always with you when you get those receipts.

If you are looking to go paperless with your receipts and like the idea of having a service do the hard work for you, check out Ernie Svenson’s post on Shoeboxed.

A few days ago, I was working in my office when I picked up my iPhone to look up something.  I glanced at my home screen as I prepared to launch an app and then did a double-take.  Something wasn’t right.  The first thing I noticed was that there were only three icons at the bottom of my screen instead of the normal four, and then I saw that there was an empty spot on the first of my home screen pages, which is never the case.  I didn’t think to take a picture at the time, so here is a dramatic reenactment of what I saw:

 

It took me a few seconds to figure out what was gone, and then I realized that the Safari and the Camera icons were missing.  My first thought was that one of my kids must have gotten a hold of my iPhone and deleted an app, so I started to wonder how I could restore a missing app while I was in my office (considering that I sync my iPhone with my home computer).  But then I realized that the missing apps — Safari and Camera — are built-in apps.  You cannot delete those apps on the iPhone.  You can, however, move them around, so I started to swipe through screens to see if my kids had moved them.  But again, no luck.

Because I was trying to get work done at the time, I put down my iPhone and decided to try to resolve this issue later.  But then ten minutes later, one of my partners called me to ask me how to get her Safari icon to come back.  I asked her if her Camera app was also missing, and after she looked she confirmed that sure enough it was missing too.  So at that point I knew that the problem was not unique to my iPhone.  A quick Google search revealed that there was not some worldwide Safari and Camera outage on the iPhone affecting everyone else, but I did run across this article on the Apple website:  Knowledge Base Article HT3582"iOS: Restoring a missing Camera or Safari Application.” 

The article explains:  “If your iOS device is configured to use an Exchange account, your Exchange Server administrator may have configured your account with a policy to disallow use of Safari or the Camera.”  Bingo.  I contacted someone in my law firm’s IT department, and it turns out that a tech person was in the process of doing something to configure an iPhone when he accidentally flipped a switch that turned off the Safari and Camera apps for an entire set of users.  Ouch.  Apparently, the IT folks realized the problem and then fixed it, and within a few hours the two apps had reappeared.

I was afraid that they wouldn’t reappear without some additional intervention.  The Apple article says:  “This policy will remain in effect until you delete the Exchange account from the device. This is true even if your Exchange Server administrator later relaxes the policy to allow use of Safari or the Camera—the iOS device will not recognize the policy change. To restore use of Safari or the Camera, you will need to delete the Exchange account from the device.”  That wasn’t my experience at all.  After a few hours, the apps just reappeared again, on their own.

I don’t know how common a problem this is, but I must not be the only person to fall victim to it for Apple to see the need to draft and post a Knowledge Base article, last modified on July 19, 2010.  If you use your iPhone in a corporate environment and you ever discover that the Safari and/or Camera apps are missing, hopefully you will remember this post and know that you should blame the IT department, not the kids.

[UPDATE:  As noted by several people in the Comments to this post, another possible cause for this sort of problem is the Restrictions setting.  Go to Settings -> General -> Restrictions and make sure that they are turned off.  If they are turned on, one or more built-in apps can be made to not appear.]

We’re just a few days away from Apple announcing new products.  I’m excited to learn what Apple announces next week, and I hope that it has something to do with the iPhone.  The announcement of the upcoming announcement was one of the biggest iPhone-related stories this week, but here is other news of note from the past week:

• If you use the next generation version of Westlaw called WestlawNext, you may have already noticed that the website has a nice interface formatted for mobile devices such as the iPhone.  I’d still rather see a dedicated WestlawNext iPhone app, but the website is a nice start.  However, if you use an iPad, yesterday West released WestlawNext for the iPad.  The preview pictures on the West website look very nice, and I’m sure that this app will be a very useful tool for attorneys who use iPads.  Click here for WestlawNext for iPad (free): 

  

• If you get poor AT&T coverage in your home or office are are contemplating purchasing an MicroCell, you’ll want to read this informative review from Wall Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal.
• Vicki Steiner, a reference librarian at the UCLA Law School Law Library, created a list of iPhone apps that may be helpful to attorneys using iPhones.  (Link via Martha Sperry.)
• If you are a Netflix subscriber and you like to watch movies or TV shows on your iPhone, you are in luck.  Yesterday, Netflix debuted an iPhone app that will let you stream video.  The app is focused on that one task and (surprisingly) doesn’t even let you manage your queue on the iPhone, but in my very limited tests it seems to work quite well.  Click here for Netflix (free): 

  

• If you would rather rent a movie from iTunes, Jessee David Hollington of iLounge points out that as of right now, if you rent a movie on your iPhone, you cannot transfer it back to your computer.  However, if you rent the movie on the computer, then you can sync it to your iPhone and continue watching it there.  That seems odd.  If Apple announces an update to Apple TV next week (as some are speculating) perhaps Apple will remedy this.
• If you have a webcam or other security camera in your home, you can use the iCam app to monitor the video on your iPhone.  According to this report from Jason Whitely of WFAA-TV, a Dallas-area couple on vacation in Connecticut got an alert from iCam that there was activity in their house, and using the iPhone they could actually see the burglars.  They called the police who immediately went to the house.  The intruders were gone, but perhaps that is because the police scared them away, in which case the app was a good purchase.  Click here for iCam (Webcam Video Streaming) ($4.99): 

  

• The Quickoffice app (which I reviewed here) has finally been updated for iOS 4.  This means that you can now use fast app switching to switch back and forth to a document in Quickoffice and you can tap on an e-mail attachment and directly open it in Quickoffice.  I’ve been using Quickoffice a lot more over the last few days thanks to this update.
• California family law attorney John Harding writes about how he loves his new iPhone but notes that it took him a while to get his e-mail working correctly.
• Marco Arment writes about using AA batteries to recharge an iPhone.
• Ben Worthen of the Wall Street Journal reports on businesses adopting the iPad, including the Chicago law firm Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP.
• Debra Cassens Weiss of the ABA Journal reports on the iJuror app that allows an iPad to help a litigator during voir dire.  (Link via Des Moines attorney Megan Erickson.)  Click here for iJuror ($9.99): 

  

• And finally, I always thought that I was a pretty fast iPhone typist until I saw this video.  Wow.  According to Dave Caolo at iLounge, this is a new world record for texting, and the text typed is “The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus
  
  are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they
  
  seldom attack a human.”

Every September, Apple holds a special event attended by media and announces new iPods for the end of the year buying season.  Yesterday, Apple announced that this year’s event will take place on Tuesday, September 1.

Because one of the most popular iPods is the iPod touch — essentially just an iPhone without the phone — these iPod announcements tend to be significant even for iPhone owners.  Indeed, sales of iPod touch devices means that there are even more devices running iOS, giving software developers even more of an incentive to develop great apps, meaning more great apps for iPhone owners.

Last year on September 9, 2009, Apple announced iPhone Software 3.1, iTunes 9 and and a new model of the iPod touch.  (Click here for my rundown of last year’s event.)  I expect that we will see similar updates this year.  We’ll probably see a release (or at least an announcement of an upcoming release) of iOS 4.1, which will hopefully address the bug in iOS 4.0 that can sometimes cause the screen to activate when you are talking on the phone and the iPhone is next to your face.  John Gruber expects iOS 4.1 to debut the new Game Center for iOS, which makes sense because the iPod will be the main focus next week and the iPod touch is even more of a game device than the iPhone.  Hopefully iOS 4.1 has other great new features for the iPhone.

I’m sure that we will see a new version of the iPod touch which incorporates some of the same features new to the iPhone 4 such as the HD camera, a front camera for FaceTime and retina display.

There are also rumors that Apple will come out with a new version of the Apple TV based on iOS.  I love my Apple TV, even though I admit that I don’t use it very often, and it would be fun to see a new model, especially if it has interesting new features such as perhaps the ability to run iOS apps and has an attractive price.  There are related rumors that Apple will allow you to rent TV shows on an iPhone for only $0.99.

And of course, there is always the possibility that we will see something that nobody is expecting.

Here is the picture (courtesy of Engadget) on the invitation that Apple sent to media outlets for next week’s events, an indication that music (the iPod, iTunes, etc.) will be a focus of next week’s event:

One of the nice things about Apple products is that Apple usually makes it easy to upgrade.  If you buy a new Mac, you can just connect a Firewire cord and use the Migration Assistant to move everything over to the new computer.  Or if you have a Time Machine backup, the Migration Assistant lets you restore from that backup.  (On a PC, my experience is that when you get a new computer, it is better to just reinstall everything from scratch.)  Apple has also made the upgrade process very easy when you get a new iPhone.  Just backup your old iPhone to your computer, plug in the new one, and tell iTunes that you want to restore from the backup that you just created.

For example, after I upgraded from an iPhone 3GS to an iPhone 4, my wife took over my 3GS.  We simply backed up her iPhone 3, plugged in the iPhone 3GS, right-clicked on the device in iTunes and said that we wanted to restore from her backup, and then waited for everything to move over.  It took a while (over an hour) but was easy and the computer did all the work.

 

As I noted earlier this week, I was recently given a brand new iPhone 4 from Apple because my prior model was having problems with the SIM card.  For the most part, transferring my data to the new iPhone was easy.  I backed up my iPhone 4, brought it to the Apple Store and returned home with the replacement model, and then told iTunes to copy everything from my backup to the new model.  Again, I had to wait, but the computer did all the hard work.

But there was one very annoying difference between these two restorations from backup.  My wife’s data moved from the iPhone 3G to the iPhone 3GS flawlessly, including all of the apps being placed in the same place she had the app on her old model.  My experience was quite different.  All of the time I had spent putting apps on certain screens and in specific folders on my prior iPhone 4 was wasted on the new model.  A few apps went where they belonged, but then rest of the apps were simply restored to the new iPhone in alphabetical order.  (And no, alphabetical was NOT the order I had previously used to carefully arrange my apps!)  Indeed, iTunes didn’t even restore all of my apps — the 11th page of the Home Screen ended with apps starting with the letter R.  The other apps (such as Twitterific) were still moved to the new iPhone, but because they were past the 11th screen I couldn’t see them and instead could only launch the apps by using the Search iPhone function.

I believe that the difference between the restore on my iPhone and my wife’s iPhone was the number of apps.  The iPhone can normally display 144 apps on its 11 screens (16 per screen) plus the four apps at the bottom of each screen, for a total of 148 apps.  My wife only has a few dozen apps on her iPhone, but I have a lot more than that.  (I just counted and I currently have 240 apps on my iPhone.  Yes, I know, I have an app addiction.)  Thanks to iOS 4 and the folder feature, I can easily display all of those 240 apps on only 7 screens with plenty of room for for more apps, but it seems that iTunes has a problem with app placement when you restore from a backup and have more than 148 apps and a lot of app folders.

Because of this problem with restoring an iPhone when you have over 148 apps, it has taken me probably an hour or so of time over the last few days to move all of my apps back where they belong and to recreate all of my folders.  The one advantage is that my iPhone is now even better organized that it was before, but how I wish I had thought to take screen shots of each of my home screens before I moved over to the new iPhone.  That would made it so much faster to put everything back where it belongs.

If you have a lot of apps and use folders to organize them, I hope that you can learn from my experience if you ever need to restore an iPhone from a backup, such as when you upgrade to a new model.  Take pictures or otherwise take note of where everything is before you upgrade so that you are prepared to restore order to the location of your apps after the upgrade.

UPDATE:  Before I wrote this post, I read reports from a number of people on the Internet associating this problem with a large number of apps.  But several people have posted comments to this post saying that they have had problems with app placement after a restore from backup even when they had only have a few dozen apps.  Hmmm.  The mystery continues, but the lesson is clear — when you backup your iPhone with the knowledge that you will soon do a restore from that backup, do yourself a favor and take note of where your apps are located.  An easy way to do that is to just take a screen shot of each of your home screens (by pressing the button at the top of your iPhone and the home button at the same time).

I find it very useful to have rules and statutes on my iPhone so that I can access them whenever I need them, whether at my desk or with a client or in court.  I have several apps containing the federal rules on my iPhone and several apps created by New Orleans attorney Matt Miller containing Louisiana laws.

Six weeks ago, I wrote about a problem that I was having with my iPhone 4.  Every once in a while I was getting a “No SIM card installed” message.  At the time, I reported that removing and replacing the SIM card seemed to be a fix, and I said that I would update after a while to say how things were going.

Unfortunately, that “fix” didn’t do much good after all.  I continued to get the error message every once in a while.  Turning on airplane mode and then turning it off again was a quick way to get my signal back, but that was still a pain to have to do.  And then in late July I got the dreaded “No SIM card installed” message while I was IN THE MIDDLE OF A PHONE CALL.  The call dropped, and I thought that maybe I just lost a 3G signal — something that doesn’t happen to me very often, but at the time I was in another city and wasn’t paying attention to the strength of the 3G signal in that area.  But then I looked at the iPhone and saw the dreaded No SIM message.  Arggh!  So on Friday, July 30, I visited my local AT&T store and was told that the best fix was to replace the SIM card, which the salesperson did quickly.  All was good for about a week, but then the problem happened again, and continued to happen every once in a while after that.  Sometimes I would go a week before seeing the message again, sometimes I would see the message twice in one day.  

So I finally  made an appointment at my local Apple Store this past Saturday.  I was worried when I arrived because the store was packed with people.  (Back to school purchases?)  I was told when I checked in that the wait would be over 30 minutes, but fortunately within 2 minutes my name was at the top of the list.  I suppose the long wait was for people who hadn’t made an appointment before arriving.  As soon as I mentioned what was happening, the helpful employee asked if I had backed up my iPhone 4 before I went to the store (I had) and then within a few minutes he swapped out my phone for a new iPhone 4.

I suspect that this was just a construction defect with my particular iPhone, not a flaw in the iPhone 4 series, so Apple is just guessing that another unit won’t have the same flaw.  Indeed, as I noted in my prior post, others have experienced this problem with prior models of the iPhone.

So now I have a shiny new iPhone 4 (although frankly the other one looked pretty shiny and new) and my fingers are crossed that I won’t see this problem again.  I’ll update this post in the future to let you know.

[UPDATE 1/11/11:  It has now been several months and the problem has not come back.  Apparently, getting a new iPhone was the solution.  I’m glad that I live in a city with an Apple Store, which made that very easy to do.]

One of the biggest iPhone stories this week took place just yesterday, when Facebook debuted a new feature called Facebook Places for the iPhone, a location-based social network.  Simply tap one button in the Facebook app to see a list of nearby places, tap the one that corresponds to where you are (a restaurant, a bar, a park, a zoo, etc.) and a Facebook status update announces where you are to your friends.  It is similar to other location-based social networks such as Foursquare and Gowalla (although it lacks the extra features of those services such as the game aspects).  Of course, if you are like most attorneys who I know, you have no desire to let other people know where you are and indeed may consider that an invasion of your privacy.  If so, you’ll still want to pay attention to Facebook Places because if you are one of the 500 million people with a Facebook account, even if you don’t use the feature, any of your Facebook friends can use it for you and check you in at a location.  So if a friend joins you at a restaurant, or even just sees you across the room at the restaurant, he can indicate on Facebook that both of you are at the restaurant — or, for that matter, at a bar or other location.  If you want to prevent others on Facebook from doing this, you’ll have to change your Facebook privacy settings.  Thus, for some people Facebook Places will be a cool new feature, but for others it will be an annoying invasion of privacy that forces them to change privacy settings to opt out.  For more information, including advice on protecting your privacy, check out these articles by Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal, Miguel Helft and Jenna Wortham of the New York Times and Adrian Chen of Valleywag.  By the way, the new version of the Facebook app for the iPhone also lets you upload pictures and video in the background.  Other news of the week that might be of interest to you:

• If you practice bankruptcy law, you’ll be interested to learn that West has released the Norton Bankruptcy Dictionary as an iPhone app.  Click here for Norton Bankruptcy Dictionary ($4.99): 

  

• Oxford, Mississippi attorney Tom Freeland writes about Pano, an iPhone app that lets you take panorama photographs.
• Nick Spense of Macworld UK writes about updates to LogMeIn Ignition, an iPhone app that I use all the time.  (My review is here.)
• Steven Sande of TUAW reports that Apple was awarded patents for two iPhone features: slide to unlock and keyboard letter pop.  I use both features every day, and I bet you do too.
• David Pogue of the New York Times describes three iPhone 4 tips.
• David Kravets of Wired reports on a federal Second Circuit ruling that using an iPhone to secretly record a conversation does not violate the federal Wiretap App if used for legitimate purposes.  (Keep in mind, though, that you also need to be aware of state laws on recording conversations, and if it is an attorney recording the conversation, the state rules of professional conduct may also limit or prohibit the practice.)
• Brian Chen of Wired writes that the director of Apple’s App Store also has apps that he wrote in the app store, including a fart app.  No word on whether Apple will soon release an official, Apple-sanctioned fart app.
• One of the reasons that Apple has resisted putting Adobe Flash on the iPhone is that, until recently, there was no software that allowed one to run Flash on a mobile device.  There is now a Flash app for Android, and according to Avram Piltch of Laptop magazine, it has serious flaws, suggesting that it is probably a very good thing that we don’t have Flash on the iPhone.  (Link via Daring Fireball.)
• I recently wrote about a backdoor method to use the volume buttons to take pictures with the Camera+ app.  Apparently Apple wasn’t too happy about that undocumented feature because the app was pulled from the App Store. Lex Friedman of Macworld argues that Apple should let developers access the volume button.  I agree and I hope that Apple reconsiders.
• And finally, Rene and Georgia at TiPb tested two skins for the iPad — the Invisible Shield (which I reviewed here) and BodyGuardz — against a severe scratch test.  If you have the stomach for it, you can watch the brutal test below.  (Spoiler alert:  both held up quite well and the iPad was protected.  Whew!)