Episode 11 of the In the News podcast is now available. In this week’s episode, Brett Burney and I discuss the recent news about the NSO Group’s Pegasus software, which can be used to hack into an iPhone. Next, we talk about Apple accessories, including accessories for the AirTag, and Apple’s new Magsafe Battery Pack.
Finally, in our In the Know segment, Brett and I both share tips for getting more out of the iPhone’s Messages app
The big technology story this week was prompted by Amnesty International, which somehow obtained information about iPhones and Android devices targeted by Pegasus software sold by NSO Group. NSO Group is a company in Israel that sells, at incredibly high prices, software that can be used to take over a smartphone. NSO Group asserts that it only sells to governments and requires governments to promise to only use the software against criminals, but it looks like some governments misused the software to target human rights activists, journalists, and others disliked by those in power. A number of news organizations around the world worked on publishing stories all throughout the week, such as this article by Craig Timberg, Reed Albergotti and Elodie Guéguen in the Washington Post. One of the surprising details in the article is that someone using the software just needed to know the phone number of a target iPhone. The software would sometimes send a text message with a link that the owner would have to tap to have the malware installed. But other times the text message would contain a malformed image that caused an iPhone to execute code and hack the iPhone even without the owner doing anything. Just having the text message received by the iPhone was enough to begin the hack. Once an iPhone or Android phone was compromised, the Pegasus software can track the phone, read contents on the phone, and even turn on the camera and microphone. This is scary stuff. In another article in the Washington Post by Elizabeth Dwoskin and Shira Rubin, one of the owners of NSO Group defends what the company does, explaining that he has received reports from governments that they have used the software to arrest very dangerous criminals. But NSO Group almost never knows whether the Pegasus software is being used properly or improperly.
The iPhone has a well-earned reputation for being the most secure smartphone on the market. But that doesn’t mean it is 100% safe. And while there are some things that iPhone owners can do to improve security, such as installing new iOS updates when they become available and not tapping on links that come from questionable sources, the smartest hackers in the world are very good at finding exploits. Of course, this issue is not unique to smartphones. If a nation-state wants to target you, it can be almost impossible to protect yourself, even if you flee to another country.
Here is Apple’s statement on this news item, as reported to 9to5Mac: “Apple unequivocally condemns cyberattacks against journalists, human rights activists, and others seeking to make the world a better place. For over a decade, Apple has led the industry in security innovation and, as a result, security researchers agree iPhone is the safest, most secure consumer mobile device on the market. Attacks like the ones described are highly sophisticated, cost millions of dollars to develop, often have a short shelf life, and are used to target specific individuals. While that means they are not a threat to the overwhelming majority of our users, we continue to work tirelessly to defend all our customers, and we are constantly adding new protections for their devices and data.”
Many years ago, the FBI tried to get courts to force Apple to develop a backdoor in the iPhone so that the government could use the backdoor against criminals. Apple resisted, pointing out that if a backdoor was created, nothing would stop the bad guys from using it too. As this NSO Group story reveals, sometimes, in some parts of the world, the government and the bad guys are the same people. And on that uplifting note, here is the rest of the news of note from the past week:
Let’s transition from the scary to the silly. When I noted in my review of Weather Strip earlier this week that developers of weather apps have an opportunity to come up with new ways to present the same weather data that all other apps present, it never occurred to me that CARROT Weather would be updated this week to add the ability to record your own weather report. Just read the on-screen script as if it were a teleprompter, and you will quickly create a funny, but accurate, weather report that you can share. This is totally silly, but the feature is so well implemented that it is a lot of fun. Illinois attorney John Voorhees of MacStories describes this feature and everything else that was added to CARROT Weather this week.
You can now buy Apple’s AirTag accessories on Amazon including the AirTag Loop (regular and leather) and the AirTag Leather Key Ring. They even come in some new colors. That’s great, but I recommend that you consider the less expensive $12.95 Key Ring or Case with Strap sold by Belkin. The Belkin products have worked really well for me for the last few months. The Key Ring case is just a simple piece of smooth plastic, but it does the job and feels really good in the hand, which is important because your keys are often in your hand.
In an article in Macworld, Moren came up with three interesting features that Apple could add to the iPhone and Apple Watch.
This week, we’ve started to see initial reviews of Apple’s newest hardware product, the MagSafe Battery Pack, such as this report by Jacob Krol of CNN. It looks chunkier than I had expected after just looking at Apple’s product photos on its website, but I’ve seen lots of positive reports about how it feels. I haven’t yet seen any good reports on how much it can extend the life of your iPhone, but I presume we will start to see those reports next week after people have had more time to run tests.
Stephen Warwick of iMore points out that if you have an iPhone Lightning dock, like this model that I reviewed in 2017, you can place the Apple MagSafe Battery Pack in that dock to create a magnetic charging stand. That’s clever.
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes of ZDNet notes that Apple released iOS 14.7 this week, and in addition to a few new features, it fixes some other security flaws — I’m sure the same sort of flaws that NSO Group and others have been exploiting.
José Adorno of 9to5Mac explains the steps that you can take if your iPhone is stolen. He also points out that when iOS 15 comes out this Fall, it will add a new feature that allows you to wipe the contents of a stolen iPhone while still retaining the ability to track it, which is a great idea.
And finally, Apple released a new video this week called Hello Sunshine, which shows off some of the ways that you might be inspired to be more active with an Apple Watch. It’s a cute video.
Weather apps can be some of the most interesting apps on the iPhone. That may seem strange for me to say because they all do the same thing — show the current weather and the forecast for the next few days — often using the same sources. But as a result, a main differentiator between the apps is the interface created by the developer. A weather app is a good opportunity for a developer to show information in an interesting way. In the latest version of my favorite weather app — Carrot Weather (I reviewed the prior version in 2018) — the developer created building blocks so that you can customize the interface that works best for you, a great approach that earned the developer an Apple Design Award last month. But there is still room for other approaches.
Weather Strip is a new weather app that has a very nice interface. Virtually everything that you need to see is presented on a single timeline. Scroll the timeline to the right to see the forecast for the future, with the timeline dimming for the hours when the sun is set.
What makes Weather Strip unique is that the app uses layers in different colors along the same timeline to show different information in a concise matter. The main layer shows the chance of rain. (Or snow, but I’ll defer to folks who do not live in New Orleans to report on how well that works.). If there is a chance of thunderstorms, that appears in a darker blue layer on top of the blue rain layer. Next, there is a layer that shows how cloudy or sunny it is.
Atop all of those layers is a red line that shows the temperature. If the “feels like” temperature is significantly different than the actual temperature, then there is a shaded red area above or below the line to show the difference.
If you tap the “i” information button at the bottom right, the app also provides you with numbers to provide you with numbers giving the precise temperature, chance of rain, amount of rain, feel like temperature, etc. But I typically don’t find those numbers to be necessary. The size of the layers alone gives you a good sense of the current weather and the forecast from the shapes alone. But if you want to see those numbers, you can keep them on all of the time by tapping that i button.
Additional information is provided at the top of the app including a large number with the current temperature — or, if you have scrolled the timeline towards the future, the predicted temperature at that point in time. You can customize some of the information at the top.
Below the main timeline is a more condensed timeline showing you the upcoming week. Just looking at that timeline gives you a good sense of the forecast, but you can also tap on any part of it to bring the main timeline to that same location.
If there is a weather advisory, a banner appears above the timeline to alert you. Tap the banner to see more information.
Although the default is to show you the current temperature where you are located, you can tap on the map pin at the bottom center to choose a different location in the United States. (The current version of the app doesn’t have weather data for other countries.)
The app also works on the iPad, which I thought would be an advantage because of the larger screen. And you can see more of the timeline at one time on the iPad. But for my tastes, there isn’t enough use of the top and bottom of the screen in the iPad version of the app. I really like this app on the iPhone, but I’m not nearly as much of a fan on the iPad.
Weather Strip doesn’t have more sophisticated features found in other weather apps like the current radar. But I love that it takes all of the most important information so that you can see it on the iPhone all at once. And by using a timeline, it is quickly obvious whether the temperature, chance of rain, etc. is increasing or decreasing in the future. About six years ago, I reviewed an app called Weather Line that used a similar system, but that app is no longer available in the App Store and will stop working on April 1, 2022, because the company was acquired by an undisclosed buyer. If you liked Weather Line, you’ll probably like Weather Strip.
Best of all, it is easy to try the app to find out if you like it. The developer provides a generous full month to use the app for free to see if it is right for you. If you like it after a month, you can subscribe for only $3.99/year. I’ll be doing so.
Episode 10 of the In the News podcast is now available. In this week’s episode, Brett Burney and I discuss three main topics. First, we talk about Apple’s brand new MageSafe Battery Pack and share our own tips for providing your iPhone or iPad with extra power when you are away from home or the office. Second, we talk about improvements to AT&T’s unlimited data plan, and discuss why unlimited data is worth getting. Third, we talk about options for running Windows on an iPad, including Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 365. As a bonus, we also have a short discussion of some fun videos released by Apple this week.
Finally, in our In the Know segment, Brett shares a great tip for using your Apple Watch to quickly calculate the amount of a tip and the total you should pay after adding the tip. I discuss the funny Honest Trailers videos on YouTube, especially the one that they released this week: an “honest trailer” for Ted Lasso Season 1.
As we are all spending more time in the outside world instead of our homes, we are being reminded, once again, of what it is like to have an iPhone battery run low when you are not near a power outlet. In the past, Apple has sold a case for the iPhone which includes a battery such as this model for the iPhone 6 and this model for the iPhone 11. But this week, Apple introduced a much smaller device that simply attaches magnetically to the back of your iPhone and provides a charge. It is called the MagSafe Battery Pack, and California attorney David Sparks offers these thoughts on this $99 device, which works with all of the phones in the iPhone 12 line. Unlike a case that is made for a specific model of phone, hopefully (and presumably) this battery will work with future models of the iPhone as well. I haven’t seen any information on how many more hours it adds to your iPhone (which presumably will vary depending upon which model you are using), but it looks like this is a small and light battery that you could easily slip into a pocket when you are not using it. It only comes in white, but assuming that this product is successful, I would expect Apple to come out with more colors in the future. The MagSafe Battery Pack will be available starting a week from today, and you can pre-order it now. It wouldn’t surprise me if Apple gave review units of the new MagSafe battery back to select members of the press so that they can provide early reviews shortly before next Friday. Thus, I suspect we will learn more details about this product next week, but in the meantime, Juli Clover of MacRumors has some additional information on how it works. My guess is that this will be a popular product. And now, the other news of note from the past week:
In addition to that post discussing the MagSafe Battery Pack, California attorney David Sparks shared his thoughts on Spatial Audio for Apple Music, which I discussed last month (and I’m still enjoying).
A new post on the LitSoftware blog profiles California attorney Lisa Peck and explains how she uses TrialPad on her iPad to work with exhibits in a deposition and TranscriptPad to work with her deposition transcripts.
This article doesn’t relate to the iPhone or iPad, but one of my law partners recommended it to me, and it is a remarkable story of science and technology. Pam Belluck of the New York Times reports that scientists in San Francisco have learned how to allow a man who is paralyzed speak again by putting probes on the speech area of his brain and learning how to translate signals into words. Now, he can just think about speaking something and the computer says the sentence, with decent accuracy that is improving over time. You can click here to read the story, and I used a New York Times feature called “Gift Articles,” which means that, for 14 days, you can read the story using that link even if you don’t subscribe to the New York Times.
If you like the new remote for the Apple TV that I reviewed last month but you still find yourself misplacing the remote, Blair Altland of 9to5Toys reports that elgago released a new soft silicone case for the remote that includes a place to tuck an AirTag, giving you the ability to track the remote and have your iPhone point you in the right direction. It is only $14.99 on Amazon, although you also have to purchase an AirTag, which costs another $29, or $25 each when you purchase a four-pack.
Since the pandemic started, all of Apple’s Keynote events have been pre-recorded and streamed. And the quality has been excellent, down to the smallest details — even the background furniture and accessories. If you think that you may have seen something that you like, Michael Steeber of 9to5Mac spent I-cannot-even-imagine-how-many-hours to go through the last six online-only Apple events and came up with a list of “more than 100 chairs, sofas, tables, lamps, books, and accessories that fill the sets.” Impressive attention to detail
Apple TV+ also streams Peanuts movies and TV shows. Dave Mark of The Loop links to a new video from Apple that shows you how to use an iPad to draw yourself as a Peanuts character.
If you use AT&T’s $50/month unlimited data plan called Unlimited Elite, it was upgraded this week to provide no throttling, 40GB of hotspot data a month (previously 30GB), and support for 4K HBO Max streaming over 4G or 5G, as reported by Michael Potuck of 9to5Mac. AT&T has two other unlimited plans: the $40/month plan (Unlimited Extra) has 15GB of hotspot data and streams SD video, and the $35/month plan (Unlimited Starter) has no hotspot data. I use Unlimited Elite, and the other members of my family use one of the other two unlimited plans.
It may surprise you, but there are lots of ways to use Windows on an iPad. I use LogMeIn to get remote access to the PC in my office, and my law firm also uses Citrix so I can get remote access to a virtual Windows environment. And Microsoft announced this week that it will soon release Windows 365, a service that lets you run a PC in the cloud that can be accessed from a computer or an iPad. As Chris Smith of BGR reports, it isn’t yet clear what monthly cost will be, and at least at first, the product will be sold to businesses instead of individual users.
If you want to go old school, Benj Edwards of How-To Geek explains how you can run Windows 3.1 (which was released in 1992) on an iPad by downloading the iDOS app (which lets you run a version of DOS on an iPad) and then using a Windows 3.1 installer — for which you are on your own to figure out how to acquire a legal copy. I find it interesting that, in the 1990s, I had no interest at all in using Windows 3.1. (My law firm used Macs until the very early 2000s.) But now that it is possible to run it on an iPad, I’m finding myself curious to play some Solitaire and Minesweeper.
And finally, here is a funny new Apple commercial called Haystack in which a farmer shows off one of the things that you can do with an Apple Watch.
If you want to use an iPhone, iPad, or computer to build your family tree, there are a number of services you can use. In the past, I have tried Ancestry.com, but I haven’t used it in a while. Another such service is MyHeritage. MyHeritage has been in the news lately because of some fun features that allow you to add color to, and otherwise improve, old photos and a more recent ability to add animation to a portrait photograph. I’m going to discuss those features in a future post. For now, I want to just discuss using the MyHeritage app for its core feature: building a family tree. MyHeritage gave me a free account for review purposes, and I’ve spent some time over the last four months trying it out. This is a sophisticated app and service that makes it easy to build your own family tree, not just based on the information that you have, but also based on additional information that the app provides you.
Creating your family tree
To use MyHeritage, start by adding the information that you know for your family: names, birthdays, and (if appropriate) dates of death for you, your parents, your grandparents, your aunts, uncles and cousins, etc. The app makes this easy to do. Enter your own information. Then tap the big plus sign at the bottom of a person’s card in your family tree to add a father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, or other partner. Then keep adding people.
The app does a good job of understanding that relationships can be somewhat complicated. Thus, it can account for multiple spouses. half-siblings, etc. The service even accounts for things such as optionally tracking both biological parents and adoptive parents, although you have to go through a few steps to accomplish this.
Growing your family tree
At some point, there will be a limit to how much information you already know. Finding additional information on your own used to require quite a bit of work. Many years ago when my grandmother was still alive, she decided to research her family history. To do so, she took a trip to France, visited with relatives, visited churches to view original records on marriages and graveyards, etc. She enjoyed it, and it was a great excuse for a vacation with her cousins in Europe, but most of us cannot justify the time and money associated with this type of original research. And of course, there is really no limit on much time and money you could spend on this type of original research.
With MyHeritage, it is considerably easier to do the research to build your family tree. Once you have some information in MyHeritage, the app and associated website help you to add additional limbs to your family tree through a feature called Discoveries.
There are three types of Discoveries: Smart Matches, Record Matches, and Instant Discoveries. Different accounts provide access to different Discoveries, unless you get the most expensive package that allows access to everything. (I discuss pricing in more detail below.)
Smart Matches occur when there is someone else using MyHeritage who has a person in their family tree that is also on your family tree. MyHeritage says that there are billions of profiles on their system, so there is a decent chance of finding these matches. A Smart Match can sometimes be quite distant, such as one that I’m currently looking at that says “Mother’s cousin’s husband’s great-great-grandfather.” But other times it is a closer connection. By definition, you will already have at least a preliminary record for this person, so the app also shows you what new information you can potentially add about the person such as more complete date of birth or death, place of birth or burial, relatives, photos, residences, etc. And when a Smart Match provides you with additional information on relatives, that means that your tree grows even more, opening up the possibility for even more Smart Matches.
When you tap to review a match, you can then see the information in your tree on the left and the information in the matching tree on the right. If it doesn’t look like the same person, you can tap reject. But in my tests, it almost always was the right person. Once you confirm a match, you can update your entry based on the match or even, if you want, contact the person managing a family tree that overlaps with your family tree.
Another type of Discoveries match is a Record Match. This is a match from MyHeritage’s large collection of billions of records. I have seen countless different sources, things like census records, immigration records, newspapers, books, yearbooks, other family tree databases that have a connection with MyHeritage, U.S. Social Security Death Index, and many other public sources. It can be fun to look at these sources, especially when you see a handwritten record from a hundred years ago or more. And it is neat to have the ability do this type of research from your iPhone or iPad instead of having to go to a library.
The final type of match in Discoveries is an Instant Discovery. An Instant Discovery is the fastest way to grow a family tree, and thus it requires one of the more expensive plans. This feature lets you add potentially dozens of people to your family tree with a single click, adding numerous people, facts, events, photos, etc. all at once. A source citation is added to your tree so that you can see where the data came from — typically the other person’s family tree on MyHeritage. I discuss privacy below, but it is worth noting that Instant Discoveries feature will never import the details of living people. Thus, this is a way to grow the older branches of your family tree and do so quickly.
Seeing the tree
Once you have added family members that you know and supplemented that with family members that MyHeritage helps you to find, it is easy for your family tree to end up with many branches and many people. After using this app, off and on, for a few months, I now have hundreds of people identified in my family tree, representing about eight generations that go back to, on some parts of the tree, the 1700s.
When you have a large family tree, it can be difficult to present the entire tree in a way that allows you to see all of the information. This is one of the biggest drawbacks of a traditional family tree on paper, such as the one that my grandmother created from her own original research. However, MyHeritage does a nice job of displaying a family tree, especially if you are using a device with a larger screen such as the iPad app or the website.
The iPad gives you three ways to view your information. A list view just lists a bunch of names, sorted by relationship, first name, last name, or date added. I find that view most useful when I am searching for a specific person in my tree.
A Pedigree View starts with your own information card and goes straight back: your parents, grandparents, great grandparents, etc. You can tap on any name to see additional information related to that person such as siblings and cousins that are not displayed on the Pedigree View.
Finally, there is a Family View, which I think is usually the most useful view. It tries to show as much information as it can at one time. When there are additional items related to a person that don’t fit, a small blue-dash-pink icon appears at the top of the card for the person, and you can tap that icon to expand the family tree information for that person. This is also a view that makes it easy to add more information about a specific person by tapping the plus sign at the bottom of the person’s card.
The app displays balloons when a person’s birthday is a few weeks away, in the past or future.
Charts and Books
While the app is great as an interactive way to explore the family tree, what if you want an easy way to share it with others or to archive it offline? The MyHeritage website has a great chart feature that can create lots of different versions of family trees, some showing more information and some showing less information, with lots of interesting templates. You can use the charts feature to create a PDF file that you can share with others, or you can order a poster if you want.
If you want a comprehensive record of all of your information, choose the option to create a book. Although called a “book” it is really just a huge, organized PDF file — although if you wanted to print it out as a book, you certainly could. The book includes detailed looked at each set of branches of your family tree, a list of each generation, a listing of all of the sources used (public records, family trees created by others, etc.), and an index of all of the places referenced in your family tree. There is also an index of dates which is particularly interesting. Pick a year and you can see who was born, died, married, moved to a new residence, etc. during that year. And finally there is a complete index to all of the individuals named. The book is seriously impressive.
Privacy
How much information on your tree do you want to share with others? For all of us, there are people out there who are complete strangers but with whom we share some family connection, however attenuated. Although I don’t believe that you can control this in the iPhone or iPad app, the MyHeritage website offers lots of different privacy options so that you can control what, if anything, strangers can see from your family tree.
The service automatically provides additional privacy protection for people who are still alive, sometimes requiring you to ask the custodian of that information for permission before adding it to your tree. For people who are deceased, you can often get more information.
Pricing
There are many different pricing tiers for MyHeritage. You can start with a free account, which allows you to create a family tree with up to 250 people on it. This is a great way to start and get a feel for how the app works. And if you just want to keep track of a relatively small family tree, this works well.
To take advantage of advanced features, including the Discoveries, you need a paid subscription. The least expensive option is the Premium Plan which costs $129/year ($89 for the first year) and gives you up to 2,500 people on your family tree and adds the Smart Matches feature along with other features. The PremiumPlus Plan is $209/year ($149 in the first year) and adds more features to the Premium Plan such as Instant Discoveries and an unlimited family tree size. For $189/year ($129 in the first year) you can get access to the Data plan with billions of historical records plus Record Matches. If you want all of the features of the PremiumPlus plan and also want the historical records in the Data plan, then you should get the Complete Plan for $299/year ($199 in the first year) that gives you everything offered in all of the other plans. When MyHeritage gave me a free account for a limited time so that I could write this review, the company gave me the Complete Plan, so that is how I’ve been able to test all of the different features.
You need a paid plan to take full advantage of all that MyHeritage offers, but even if you just pay for one year of a subscription, that would be more than enough time to do a ton of research. When you are finished, you can create some charts or books as a permanent record. If you don’t pay to renew a subscription, the site keeps your data and allows you to downgrade back to a free Basic subscription, but if you have more than 250 people on your family tree you won’t be able to add more people. You can export your family tree in GEDCOM format, an open specification for exchanging genealogical data between different genealogy software that was developed by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (You can also import in GEDCOM format.)
Support
The MyHeritage website features lots of help files including many videos to help you with every aspect of using the program. If you want to go deep on your family tree, you can get a ton of tips for doing research and managing your information. All of the paid plans also offer customer support, but I didn’t have a reason to test that.
The more that I used this service, the more that I realized how sophisticated it is. If you want to dive deep into exploring your family history, there is a ton of information that you can access in this app, and to do so you should take advantage of the extensive help files and videos.
Fun with photographs
As noted above, I’m going to write a separate post on some of the newest features in MyHeritage which allow you to do some interesting things with photographs of your ancestors. I’ll add a link here when that review is posted.
Conclusion
MyHeritage is a great service if you want to track and explore your family tree. For many of the most common features that you would use, the iPad or iPhone app is all that you need. When you want to use more advanced features, you can use the MyHeritage website. And fortunately, you can get started for free to get a sense of what the service has to offer. To grow your family tree by going beyond the information that you already know, you’ll want to purchase one of the subscription plans for at least one year, and fortunately, each plan is less expensive in the first year. And if you decide that you want to devote a lot of time to researching your family tree, MyHeritage gives you access to a ton of historical resources that you can explore.
Click here to get MyHeritage for iPad or iPhone (free):
Security is one of the most pressing technological challenges for lawyers and law firms. Even if you ensure that everything in your physical law office is safe and secure, you need to worry about avoiding risks when lawyers need remote access. I'm thrilled to welcome a new sponsor to iPhone J.D. this month that has a solution: Mobile Helix, the maker of the LINK app. LINK from Mobile Helix is a secure system that allows attorneys to use the LINK app, available on the App Store, on either an iPad or iPhone to access email, document management systems, intranet portals, and more. At your firm, you run LINK server software deployed on-premises behind your firm's firewall. I've had a chance to see how LINK works, and it is quite impressive.
How does LINK improve security? The key is that everything that an attorney does with firm resources on an iPad or iPhone is done within a secure container app. All communications between the LINK app and your law firm are encrypted. Data is encrypted at-rest with AES-256 and in-transit with TLS over HTTPS. And the encryption is built-in to the app and does not depend upon iOS security. Thus, even if an iPad or iPhone were to be jail-broken or hacked, the data in the LINK app would remain secure. LINK uses both first and second factor authentication to ensure that only authorized people have access to your firm's confidential information. And the LINK app can be remotely wiped if a device is lost or if a person leaves your firm. LINK is compatible with Mobile Device Management (MDM) software if your firm uses that. As a result, documents and information remain safe within the LINK app itself. LINK also works with Microsoft Office apps on the iPad so that you can, for example, view and edit a document using the Microsoft Word app, but the document itself is safely saved within the LINK system.
The main screen of the LINK app has tiles that correspond to the different resources that can be accessed from within the app. This is something that you configure for your particular law firm. First, there is a section devoted to Documents — your document management system. In many of the screenshots in this post, the DMS being used is iManage, but other DMS systems are supported, such as NetDocuments and OpenText eDOCS.
The next section of the home screen provides access to email. For example, you may have a tile on the home screen that can be tapped to view your Outlook email:
The third part of the home screen provides access to Intranet resources, which can be used for access to time and billing systems, expense systems, firm-specific knowledge management intranets, or any other firm software that has a browser interface.
Attorneys using LINK will commonly want to access documents from a DMS. Here is an example of looking at a list of documents in the iManage document worklist from within the LINK app:
The LINK app works well in a split-screen mode so that you can see a list of documents on one side of the screen while you view a specific document on another part of the screen. You can split the screen 50-50 or use a slider to make one part bigger or smaller.
When working with a PDF document, an attorney can annotate from within the LINK app itself.
When working with a Microsoft Office document, an attorney can view the document within LINK. LINK even has a built-in document comparison system so you can create a redline of different versions of a document. You can also use the Microsoft Office app (sold separately) to edit the document.
You can also take a file that is on your iPad or iPhone and import it into LINK to add it to your firm's document management system.
The above screenshots show LINK being used on an iPad, but it also works on the iPhone. Here are some examples of what that looks like:
The default setting is that all documents and email stay within the LINK app itself. That provides the most security. But for your particular law firm, you might decide to allow attorneys to take documents out of LINK so that documents can be used with another app on the iPhone or iPad or exported off of the iPhone or iPad. That reduces security somewhat, but you can make the decision that is right for your law firm. You can also decide whether you want to let attorneys use AirPrint or disable that feature to keep the documents safely within the LINK app.
The LINK app has been available since 2014, and the app has seen numerous updates since its original release. The LINK app is currently in use at law firms as small as 30 attorneys and as large as the Top 20 of the AmLaw 100. The pricing is per user, per year, and a free trial is available so that you can easily see how the LINK app works in your own law firm environment. The iPhone and iPad apps are available now, an Android client is in beta, and Mobile Helix also has plans to develop clients for the Mac, Windows, and Chromebook.
Thank you to Mobile Helix for sponsoring iPhone J.D. this month and for developing powerful software that lawyers can use to protect confidential information on their mobile devices.
Episode 9 of the In the News podcast is now available. In this week’s episode, Brett Burney and I begin by discussing using an app such as GoodNotes to prepare to give a presentation. We then discuss Apple’s built-in Notes app on the iPhone and iPad. Then we discuss CarPlay, including new features coming later this year, and the health aspects of the Apple Watch
Finally, in our In the Know segment, Brett and I both discuss tips for using the Keynote app on an iPad or a Mac.
Appellate practice is a big part of my law practice, which means that I often have the opportunity to present an appellate oral argument. For many years now, I’ve found that my favorite way to prepare is to use the GoodNotes app on my iPad to write an outline, adding quotes from statutes or jurisprudence, along with my notes for answers to likely questions. (I described some of what I do in this post from 2017.) As the last step, I convert my notes to PDF and print them on a color laser printer. For the last few years, I have mostly used the paper version at the podium when presenting oral arguments. (My iPad is still nearby, in case I need to look at the briefs or the record.) For example, I used the paper notes last week when I had my first in-person Louisiana state court appellate oral argument since the pandemic started. But yesterday I had a U.S. Fifth Circuit oral argument, and I found it better to present from my iPad. I was in the En Banc Courtroom in New Orleans, a beautiful courtroom with very high ceilings and lots of wood. If you were going to invite your parents to watch you give an oral argument, you would want it to be in an impressive courtroom like this. But it is also a darker courtroom, with dimmed lighting somewhat similar to a restaurant at night. While there is a light at the podium that would have illuminated most of the printed-out version of my notes, I was glad to have my iPad in the courtroom with me so that I could make the quick decision to use the GoodNotes app — tapping the button at the top right to turn off edit mode so that I didn’t accidentally change anything on the screen while I was swiping through pages. The large, backlit screen of my 12.9" iPad Pro turned to portrait orientation was perfect for giving my oral argument, making it incredibly easy to glance at my electronic notes on the podium. As it turned out, I didn’t actually consult my notes very often because it was pretty much non-stop questions, but when I wanted to quote something from a case or a statute, GoodNotes and the iPad made it incredibly fast and easy to find exactly what I wanted to quote to the court. If you use an iPad to prepare for oral argument at the trial or appellate court level, I recommend that you always have both the iPad and paper notes available so that you can use whatever makes the most sense. And so that you have a backup if your iPad isn’t working for some reason. And now, the news of note from the past week:
In the latest episode of the Apps in Law podcast, Brett Burney talks with Tara Cheever, co-founder of LitSoftware, the maker of great iPad apps for lawyers including TrialPad and TranscriptPad. Click here to listen to the podcast or watch the video version.
Here an interesting intersection between smartphones and copyright law. Zoe Schiffer and Adi Robertson of The Verge report that some police officers who are upset about bystanders taking videos of what police officers do and then posting the videos to YouTube have started to take out their own phone so that they could play a song — in one example, “Blank Space” by Taylor Swift — so that if a person’s video is posted to YouTube, YouTube would automatically take down the video as a copyright violation because of the unauthorized song playing in the video. The article doesn’t explain whether police officers utilizing this tactic have been successful, but it is interesting that some even thought to try it.
Apple’s built-in Notes app on the iPhone and iPad is excellent, and Apple continues to make it better. Michael Potuck of 9to5Mac explains how Notes in iOS 15 will support tags to make it easier to sort and organize your notes.
Apple’s Vice President of Health, Sumbul Desai, MD, is responsible for many health features in the Apple Watch and iPhone. She is the guest on the latest episode of the Second Life podcast, a podcast spotlighting successful women who have made major career changes. In the podcast, she shares with host Hillary Kerr a very dramatic life experience that led her to leave Disney and go into the medical field. She also shares interesting thoughts on working from home during the pandemic, and she talks about some of the health additions coming to iOS 15, including the ability to share health data with trusted friends and family and the ability to share health data with your physician.
When you use CarPlay in your car, your car provides the screen but the brains of the operation come from your iPhone. Thus, when there is an update to the iOS, there is often also an update to CarPlay. CarPlay Life reports on the new CarPlay features in iOS 15, including the ability to have Siri announce messages. I use this feature all the time with Siri on my AirPods, and I’m a big fan. The way it works is that when you are driving and someone sends you a text, Siri can just start speaking and let you know that so-and-so sent you a text saying such-and-such. You can turn off the feature whenever you don’t want it, but since I typically am by myself when I am driving, I love that I will no longer have to take some action when a new text arrives to hear who it is from and what they want to say.
Meredith TerHaar of ABC13 news in Michigan shares the story of Diane Feenstra. Her husband gave her an Apple Watch, and she noticed one day on her watch that her heart rate was 169 beats per minute, even though she had not been doing anything strenuous. She had noticed some other minor symptoms, such as indigestion and pain in her shoulder, but didn’t think much of them. But once she saw her elevated heart rate, she went to the hospital and learned that she had experienced a heart attack because of a blockage in the “Widow maker artery.” She had a stent procedure, she is now doing better, and she credits the Apple Watch for helping her to avoid a second heart attack that would have likely been fatal. After typing those sentences, I decided to use my own Apple Watch to check my heart rate, and I see that I have 63 BPM. Whew.
And finally, if you have the new 2021 version of the iPad Pro 12.9" or a new iPhone that can do a great job displaying HDR content — or if you are looking for something impressive to watch on an HDR television — here are two video recommendations. You can watch these videos on any device, but on a device that does a good job displaying HDR, they look outstanding. First, here is an impressive video from Sony showing glass blowing. Second, here is an amazing video from LG in which musicians play Jazz and colors pop around them. I’ve embedded below the LG video:
Episode 8 of the In the News podcast is now available. In this week’s episode, Brett Burney and I begin by discussing the 14th anniversary of the iPhone going on sale and how much the iPhone was a major change, not only for smartphones but for many other aspects of life. Next, we discuss watch bands for the Apple Watch, including the new choices for the International Collection Sport Loop that Apple released this week. Then we talk about the Apple TV 4K and the public beta of iOS 15 and iPadOS 15.
Finally, in our In the Know segment, Brett recommends the free iExit app, a great road-trip companion because it tells you what’s coming up on the next exits on U.S. Interstate Highways. I recommend the free Google Voice app as a way to have an extra phone number that you can give to a store or organization when you don’t want to give them your real phone number. By turning off notifications for that app, people can call or text you at that number and leave you messages without interrupting you.
