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So I might as well begin with the topic that we are all thinking about this week.  The elephant in the room.  Or should I say, the cat in the court.  On Tuesday, Rod Ponton, an attorney representing Presidio County, Texas, appeared via Zoom for a hearing in a civil forfeiture case and had to use his secretary’s computer.  But to his surprise, a webcam filter was enabled that made him look like a cat.  Nevertheless, he soldiered on, telling Judge Roy Ferguson of the 394th Judicial District Court that he was “prepared to go forward” while emphasizing “I’m here live.  I’m not a cat.”  This video showed up in my Twitter feed countless times this week in countless variations of the video.  I recommend watching this short version from The Star because, after the now-famous clip, you then get to see and hear Rod Ponton and Judge Ferguson provide their insight on what happened.  Technology reporter Geoffrey Fowler of the Washington Post figured out that the cat filter used is one that came with Dell computers back in 2009 and is no longer available.  Although after this week, maybe Dell will bring it back.  I should note that the incident also prompted a story about Ponton’s past for which I don’t know all of the details.  But what I do know is that any of us could have been the talking cat in that viral video.  Appearing in court via a webcam may seem easy, but there are a million things that can go wrong.  All attorneys need to try hard to prevent the technology snafus that we can control to minimize the risks in the event that there are hiccups that are beyond our control.  And if something happens anyway, hopefully we will see the patience and kindness exhibited by Judge Ferguson.  And now, the other news of note from the past week:

• I enjoyed the latest episode of the Apps in Law podcast, in which Brett Burney interviews Illinois attorney Bryan Sims to discuss the TranscriptPad and Notability apps.
• Burney also posted a review this week, including a fantastic video review, of the Cardhop app that you can use to manage your contacts.
• Illinois attorney John Voorhees of MacStories reviews the new version of Home+, and HomeKit app that is much more powerful than Apple’s Home app.
• Austin Carr and Mark Gurman of Bloomberg Businessweek report on how Tim Cook has been running Apple as CEO.
• Zac Hall of 9to5Mac reports on new studies showing that an Apple Watch can detect changes in heart rate that can be indicative of early signs of COVID-19.
• If you like to use MagSafe wireless charging for your iPhone, the Elago MS1 stand, reviewed by Ed Hardy of Cult of Mac, looks interesting.
• Speaking of wireless charging, Hardy also discusses the new Satechi USB-C Watch Airpods Charger, which is $39 on Amazon.  Plug this small device into a USB-C port and it creates a tray where you can place an Apple Watch to charge it.  Flip it over, and it creates a tray where you can charge an AirPods case.  I love the design of this small device, which works on an iPad or a computer with a USB-C port.  As a practical matter, though, I have some questions.  It seems like it would only work with an iPad when it is flat on a table, and I usually keep mine propped up.  Also, the Apple Watch and AirPods case are not items that I need to charge very often during the day, so I suspect many folks wouldn’t use this very often.  Even so, there is something about the design, with different wireless charging on each side, that I find very clever.
• Michael Simon of Macworld explains how Dolly Parton can help you get five months of Apple Music for free.
• I’ve heard of people who go to sleep wearing AirPods, and that always seemed dangerous to me because it seems like you can lose an AirPod in or behind a bed during the night.  But it never occurred to me that you might wake up like Bradford Gauthier did, experiencing a sore throat and then discovering that you swallowed an AirPod while you were sleeping.  As Gaby Moreno of WWLP reports, an X-Ray confirmed that the AirPod was lodged in his esophagus, resulting in an emergency endoscopy.
• And finally, the Korean acappela group MAYTREE did a fantastic job reproducing iPhone sound effects in this video:

This past Sunday, a 10-year-old girl in New Iberia, Louisiana, was reported missing.  The Louisiana State Police issued an initial alert, saying that they believed her to be in imminent danger, but they did not have much information to go on.  After some investigation, the police learned that the girl was last seen getting into a car owned by an acquaintance of the girl’s family who was driving a gray 2012 Nissan Altima, and the police were given a license plate number.  With either of those pieces of information — a license plate or a specific vehicle description, and here they had both — police can take advantage of the AMBER alert program.  Early Monday morning, an alert was sent to cellphones throughout the State of Louisiana.  The alert was seen by two sanitation workers on a trash route who spotted that very car in a field.  They called the police and used their garbage truck to prevent the car from leaving.  One of them even started a livestream on Facebook.  The police arrived, the driver was arrested, and soon thereafter, the girl was recovered, and she is now safe.  The story was reported on multiple news outlets in Louisiana such as WWL and KATC.

Alerts like this first came to the iPhone in 2013, and I described how the system works in this post from July 16, 2013.  But that was a long time ago, and the system has changed since then, so here is an update on Wireless Emergency Alerts on the iPhone in the United States.

Title VI of PL 109-347 (Oct. 13, 2006) is titled the Warning Alert and Response Network Act, sometimes called the WARN Act.  The WARN Act, in 47 U.S.C. § 1201, gives the FCC the authority to adopt standards for cellphone companies to transmit emergency alerts.  Participation by cellphone companies is voluntary, and if they do participate, the law states that cell phone companies may not impose an additional charge for such alerts.  47 U.S.C. § 1201(b)(2)(C).

Pursuant to the WARN Act, the FCC worked with FEMA to create a program called Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA).  The system was based on the prior Emergency Alert System (EAS), which are the warnings that you have seen and heard for a long time on television and radio when there is a weather or other emergency. 

Alerts are sent to cell towers providing wireless service to a target geographical area, and then all WEA-capable phones using those cell towers receive the alert.  Thus, you will receive an alert if you are in a targeted area even if you are just visiting that area.

WEA currently delivers four types of alerts:

1. Imminent Threat Alerts.  These are alerts issued because of an imminent threat to public safety or life, such as evacuation orders or shelter in place orders due to severe weather, a terrorist threat or a chemical spill.  For example, the National Weather Service notes on this page that it issues alerts for dust storms, extreme wind, flash floods, hurricanes, typhoons, snow squalls, storm surge, tornadoes, and tsunamis.  The way it works is that a pre-authorized national, state or local government agency sends an emergency alert to FEMA, which then sends the alert to the participating cell phone companies, each of which then sends the alert to WEA capable phones in the zone of emergency.

2. Public Safety Alerts.  These alerts contain information about a threat that concerns public safety but is not imminent.  These alerts can also be issued as a follow-up to an imminent threat.

3. AMBER Alerts.  AMBER officially stands for America’s Missing: Broadcasting Emergency Response, but that is a backronym as the system was really named for Amber Hagerman, a 9-year-old girl who was abducted in 1996 while riding her bicycle in Arlington, TX and was subsequently murdered.  The killer was never identified.  The incident, and others like it, led to the AMBER Alert system, a method by which police officers may quickly publicize information when a child age 17 or younger is abducted such as the name and description of the child, a description of the suspected abductor, a description and license plate of the abductor’s vehicle, etc.  According to the U.S. Department of Justice, as of December 2020, 1,029 children were rescued specifically because of AMBER Alerts.  The original AMBER Alert system was opt-in only, and it sent a text message based on a cellphone owner’s predefined geographical location regardless of where a cellphone was actually located when the alert was issued.  That system was retired on December 31, 2012, and was replaced by WEA.

4. Presidential Alerts.  I am not aware of any official standards for when the President will issue a WEA Presidential Alert.  No president has ever issued a Presidential Alert under WEA or similar prior systems (and hopefully, no president will ever have a need to do so).  However, there was a test of the Presidential Alert system on October 3, 2018, at 2:18 Eastern. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, some state and local governments have used the WEA system to issue alerts.  For example, an alert used in Pennsylvania last November said:  “In PA, COVID-19 rates are rising, and hospitals could soon be at capacity. Stay home if possible. If you must go out, maintain social distance, wear a mask, wash your hands for 20 seconds. Stay up to date on the spread of COVID in your community so you can protect your loved ones with the COVID Alert PA app.”

According to the FCC, since WEA became operational in 2012, the system has been used nearly 56,000 times.  If that seems like too much for you, the WARN Act provides in 47 U.S.C. § 1201(b)(2)(E) that cellphone users may opt-out of all alerts except for Presidential Alerts.  Thus, if you go to the Settings app on your iPhone, then go to Notifications, and then scroll all the way to the bottom, you will see options to opt-out of the first three alerts but not Presidential Alerts.

Although WEA alerts are based on your location, you do not need to have Location Services on the iPhone turned on to receive alerts.  Your iPhone’s GPS radio is irrelevant to the WEA system.  As noted above, alerts are issued based upon your location as determined by cell towers.  When the service first launched, alerts would often issue to an entire county (or parish, if you are in Louisiana).  Starting in November 2017, the government required carriers to transmit alerts to a geographic area appropriate for the emergency, even if that was smaller than an entire county.  And starting in December 2019, alerts had to be targeted even more, with providers now required to deliver the alert to the appropriate area with no more than a tenth of a mile of overshoot.

WEA alerts look sort of like text messages, but they are not text messages, so you will receive them even if text messages are not enabled on your iPhone.  WEA capable devices are designed to reject duplicate alerts, so you should receive each alert only once.  However, subsequent alerts may be issued that contain information similar to a prior alert.  You might not receive an alert at all if you are on the phone. 

Now that you know all about the WEA system, you need to decide whether you want to opt-in or opt-out of the system.  An alert can be annoying when it doesn’t seem relevant to you.  I sometimes turn mine off when I will be in a courthouse or someplace else where it seems inappropriate to receive alerts.  (And when I am appearing before a judge, I virtually always turn my iPhone off completely.)  But I’m glad that those two sanitation workers in Louisiana had their alerts enabled Monday morning, and you never know when one of these alerts will be critical and timely for you.

Normally, I don’t talk about beta software on iPhone J.D. because you never know whether something is a real feature until software actually ships, but I’m very excited about a new feature that is currently included in the beta version of iOS 14.5 and watchOS 7.4.  As reported by Juli Clover of MacRumors, this new feature lets you use Face ID to unlock your iPhone, even if you have a mask on, as long as you are also wearing an Apple Watch.  Jason Snell of Six Colors reported that he installed the beta and tried out the feature, “and it worked flawlessly.”  My understanding of how it works is that if your iPhone recognizes just part of your face (your eyes) it then checks to see if you have an Apple Watch that has remained on your wrist since the last time that you unlocked the Apple Watch (either by entering the passcode on the Apple Watch or by using your iPhone to authenticate your Apple Watch).  If so, the iPhone will unlock your iPhone — but only if you previously enabled this function in Settings.  (And your Apple Watch gives you a notification that it was just used to unlock your iPhone.)  Even though you can use this to unlock your iPhone to see a grocery list, your Messages, your Mail, etc., if you want to use Apple Pay, buy an app, or access protected parts of the Settings app, you will need to show your whole face for Face ID or enter your passcode.  (Of course, you can also just use Apple Pay on the Apple Watch.) I’m glad that Apple is making this an optional feature that you have to consciously turn on, but it is nice to give folks the option during the pandemic to give up a small amount of security in exchange for a big increase in convenience.  Indeed, I find that throughout this pandemic, I am constantly deciding whether to accept a certain amount of risk in exchange for certain conveniences (such as shopping in a grocery store around other people versus using a delivery service, working in my office versus working from home, etc.) so I see this as just another one of those decisions to make, depending upon the circumstances.  There is no way to know for sure when we will see iOS 14.5 released, but my hope is that it will come out this month.  And now, the news of note from the past week:

• Not that many of us are traveling internationally right now, but I’ve previously written about the tricky issues that lawyers face when they travel in and out of the United States with a smartphone because of border patrol policies on searching iPhones.  Debra Cassens Weiss of ABA Journal reports on Texas immigration lawyer Adam Malik who is suing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to challenge this practice after his iPhone was confiscated at the border.  This is a complicated issue, and unfortunately, I don’t have any good answers for how attorneys should deal with this risk.
• In an article for USA Today that was trending this week, Kim Komando recommends five apps that you should delete right now.  I agree that you no longer need a special app to scan QR codes (just use the Photos app) or to use a flashlight (that function is now built-in), and it is a personal choice as to whether you want to delete Facebook and/or some of the built-in apps.  But I disagree with her suggestion to delete scanner apps and just use the Notes app instead.  It is nice that you can scan a document in Notes, but you get far more features and can get better results by using a third-party app, such as Scanner Pro.
• Apple Maps has a “Look Around” feature that is similar to Google’s Street View but produces better results.  But unfortunately, it is only available in certain cities.  Juli Clover of MacRumors reported that this week the cities of San Diego and Portland were added.  That makes the feature available in 17 U.S. cities, nine cities outside of the U.S., and Southern Canada (including all of Canada’s 35 metro areas) according to Justin O’Beirne, who also notes that Apple has been adding new cities about once every four to six weeks.
• Alex Guyot of MacStories reviews version 5 of the CARROT Weather app.
• Apple’s own Newsroom shared a story about a man who received an Apple Watch as an anniversary gift and it helped to save his life.
• I am interested in smart home technology, so I often discuss HomeKit-compatible products on iPhone J.D.  In an article for TechHive, Christopher Null wrote a good overview of Apple’s HomeKit technology.
• Jason Aten of Inc. interviews David Smith, the developer of the incredibly popular Widgetsmith app.
• And finally, in this video, Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal tries to predict features that might be coming to the iPhone based on some new features added to a Samsung phone:

A few days ago, I listened to episode 330 of the Connected podcast, and during that episode the hosts discussed the trend of apps moving to a subscription model and identified many that they consider worth paying for.  This made me think of the iPhone/iPad apps and services for which I pay for a subscription.  I’m sharing my list in today’s post.  Perhaps it will give you ideas for subscriptions that you might want to try.  And if you have any suggestions for other subscriptions worth considering, feel free to post a comment to this post or send me an email.

Subscription versus pay-one-price

Before I share my list, I want to discuss the subscription model.  When the App Store first opened in 2008, all apps were pay-one-price.  And for the most part, those prices were fairly inexpensive.  There were a few exceptions, and I discussed some of them in this post from 2009 — such as an $899 app for viewing security cameras, a $449 accounting app, and a $199 home automation app back when that market was in its infancy.  Not long after that, I discussed the first expensive law-related app:  BarMax, a $999 California bar review app.

Pay-one-price makes sense to me for certain apps, like a game.  But for many apps, I think that a subscription model makes more sense because it provides the developer with a stream of income to fund future improvements to the app.  For apps that I am likely to use for years, I want the developer to have an incentive to make his or her app better.  Of course, it is up to the developer to price the subscription appropriately; I’m not going to pay $500 a year for a weather app, especially when there are so many other options.  But I do pay $29.99 a year for the Premium Ultra tier of the CARROT Weather app because that app is fantastic, works well on all of my devices, and gets frequent, substantial improvements.  (You can also pay $6.99/year for a subscription to CARROT Weather with fewer features.)

One thing that I really like about the way that Apple handles app subscriptions is that if a subscription is no longer useful, Apple makes it easy to cancel the subscription.  Just tap one button to cancel in the App Store app.  It is the exact opposite of canceling many other services such cable TV or a newspaper, where you have to call a number, wait on hold for a long time, and answer questions from someone trained to get you to change your mind about canceling the service.  Ugh.

Here are the services that I currently consider worth paying for.

App subscriptions

If you want to see all of your app subscriptions, open the App Store app, tap on your picture/icon at the top right, and tap on Subscriptions.  You will see a list of your active and your expired subscriptions.

Here are my current subscriptions:

• Apple One.  This is the service that allows you to pay for multiple apps/services from Apple in one bundle.  There are currently three different plans.  The $14.95/month Individual plan includes Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, and 50 GB of iCloud storage for one person (a savings of $6/month versus subscribing to each service individually).  The $19.95/month Family plan gives you all of that for yourself and five other people and increases the iCloud storage to 200 GB (a savings of $8/month).  The iCloud storage is shared among all members of your family.  This means that you don’t see each other’s files, but if your spouse uses 150GB that leaves 50GB for you and any others sharing the plan.  The $29.95/month Premier plan is what I pay for.  This adds to the bundle Apple News+ and Apple Fitness+ and increases the shared iCloud storage to 2 TB.  The main reason I signed up for this plan was to get the additional iCloud storage, both for my own files and to have sufficient space for online backups of my kids’ devices … since you know it is just a matter of time before something happens to one of them.  I originally considered News+ and Fitness+ to be bonuses that I was getting for no additional cost.  But I’ve learned over the last few months that I really like both services.  News+ is a nice way to get a convenient overview of the news and to read articles from news services that I don’t pay for separately, such as the Wall Street Journal.  (See this post for tips on using the Wall Street Journal with News+)  And as I noted in my recent review of Fitness+, I’m using that service a few times a week and I really like it.
• PDF Expert.  PDF Expert is my favorite app for managing and annotating PDF files, and it is a critical part of my law practice for all of the reasons that I outlined last year in this post.  Although you can use that app for free, I pay $49.99/year for the PRO subscription which adds lots of useful bonus features, which I also described in that post.
• CARROT Weather.  I mentioned this one above, and I reviewed it in 2018.  You don’t have to pay for CARROT Weather, but you get lots of additional features if you do, and there are lots of plans available depending upon the features that you want to use, ranging from $19.99/year to $59.99/year.  I pay for the $29.99 Premium Ultra tier, which unlocks all of the features that I use and then some.  I consider $30 a lot to pay for a weather app considering that there are so many inexpensive ones available, but this app is packed with features, works great on all of my platforms (such as an amazing Apple Watch app and an amazing iPhone widget), and is updated frequently.  Just last week, it was updated to version 5, which makes the app interface almost infinitely customizable.  I used to try different weather apps mainly to see the way that different clever developers came up with to display what is essentially the same information.  But now, with the latest version of this app, I can try out an almost unlimited number of interfaces for a weather app, and there are even options to save and share templates so that over time I can see what others come up with.
• Overcast.  I love to listen to podcasts, and Overcast is my favorite app for doing so on both my iPhone and in my car using CarPlay, the two primary ways that I listen to podcasts.  I especially like the way that this app can speed up a podcast, not just by playing it at 1.5 speed but also by reducing silence between words in a way that sounds very natural, allowing me to hear more content in less time.  It has been a while since I reviewed this app in 2014, but it is still one of the most-used apps on my iPhone.  The optional premium subscription costs $9.99 and removes ads, but the main reason I pay for this subscription is to support the developer and encourage him to continue to add additional features.
• Launch Center Pro.  This app does lots of different things, but at its core I use it as a way to create shortcuts, giving me a way to tap one button and have multiple things happen.  But it does so much more.  For example, almost two years ago, I talked about how you can use this app with NFC stickers so that you tap your iPhone on a sticker and it performs some task.  Over time, as Apple’s Shortcuts app has become more powerful, I find that I need Launch Center Pro even less.  Many of the things that I still do in that app I’m sure I could also do in Shortcuts.  But the subscription is only $9.99/year, and my guess is that the developer will continue to find ways to push the boundaries on automating tasks on the iPhone, adding new features long before they show up in Apple’s Shortcuts app.
• Tweetbot.  I’ve been using Tweetbot as my Twitter client for an incredibly long time.  I find the interface far more useful and less annoying than the official Twitter app.  The company behind Twitter has had a strained relationship with third-party apps over the years, often limiting new features to Twitter’s own app.  But the company has recently started doing more with outside developers, and because those developers need to pay Twitter for access to new features, Tweetbot recently switched to a $5.99/year subscription service.  
• Deliveries.  Whenever you receive a shipping number for an item that you purchased — FedEx, UPS, USPS, DHL, etc. — copy that number and then open this app.  The app will sense the number on the clipboard and help you to select the correct service and jot down the item name.  With that information, you have a central place to keep track of all of your deliveries, with notifications from the app when an item has arrived.  Since the last time that I discussed this app in 2017, it moved to a subscription model, which costs $4.99/year.  
• Lit Suite (TrialPad, TranscriptPad, DocReviewPad).  I was almost finished writing this post when Lit Software debuted the Lit Suite, a subscription for all of the latest versions of its iPad apps designed for attorneys.  These have long been some of the very best and most valuable apps that any attorney, but especially litigators, can use on an iPad.  For many years, these apps have followed the pay-one-price model, but as of February 1, 2021, there are new versions of all three apps available with a subscription.  The regular subscription price is $399.99/year, but for a limited time there is a special price of $299.99/year, and so I subscribed right away to take advantage of the discount.  I have just started to use these new apps, but once I have had more time with them, I will have more to say about these incredibly powerful apps.

Subscriptions outside of App Store

Some services don’t use the App Store’s subscription feature.  That makes it more complicated to manage all of your subscriptions because you cannot see them all in one place, and it can be more difficult to cancel subscriptions when they are not part of the App Store.  Here are the ones that I currently use.

• 1Password.  Everyone who uses an iPhone or a computer should strongly consider using a password manager.  That is even more true if you are an attorney because many of your passwords can be used to unlock confidential and/or privileged information.  1Password has long been my password manager of choice, for the reasons I described last year in this post.  An annual subscription is $36, or you can get the family plan like I do for $60/year which works for five people and makes it easy to designate certain passwords to share between multiple family members (such as a Netflix password or the password for a utility company).
• Dropbox.  As you probably know, Dropbox is a simple way to sync documents between computers and other devices such as an iPhone or iPad.  I use it every day.  The free plan gives you 2 GB of space, but I pay for the Plus plan ($119.18/year) which provides 2 TB of space.  I wish there were other options — it would be nice to pay less for 500 GB or 1 TB of space — but I cannot imagine using an iPhone or iPad without Dropbox.
• Fantastical.  I use the Fantastical app on both my iPhone and iPad as a superior alternative to the built-in Calendar app.  I discussed the app most recently in this post from 2020.  The free version of this app is plenty powerful for most people, but you can take advantage of advanced features for $39.99/year, which is what I do.  I don’t actually use very many of the advanced features, but this is such a useful app that I mostly pay just to support the developer.
• LogMeIn.  Although I haven’t written a post about this app since 2011, I use this app frequently to get remote access to the PC in my office using my iPad (or my Mac at home).  I find this app incredibly valuable, but for individual use, it is expensive — $349/year.  My law firm pays for a bulk license for this app, which makes the price cheaper and means that the cost doesn’t come directly out of my pocket (although I suppose I am still paying for it as a partner in my law firm).  But whether you use LogMeIn or some other remote access software, this type of app is very valuable.  When there is a task that cannot be done directly on an iPad, I can bring up my PC on my iPad screen, get the task done, and then export the resulting file to my iPad.
• TripIt.  TripIt makes it easy to assemble all of your travel details in a single itinerary.  Simply forward to “plans@tripit.com” any travel emails (hotel, airplane, car rental, etc.) and the service takes care of the rest. You can access and edit your itinerary on the TripIt website, but there is also a great app for the iPhone, which is what I use when I travel.  You can use TripIt for free, but if you pay $49/year, you get access to very useful TripIt Pro features (some of which I described in this post) such as real-time flight alerts, help finding alternative flight and better seats, check-in reminders, security wait times, and more.  During the pandemic when I haven’t been traveling at all, the company hasn’t charged for renewals, which was nice.  TripIt is great even without a paid subscription, but if you travel a lot, the extra features are very nice.
• BackBlaze.  BackBlaze is a $60/year service that constantly backs up your computer and any attached hard drives so that if you have a crash, you can obtain a backup.  There have been several times over the years that it has been a lifesaver for me — either for my own computer or for a family member for whom I serve as the IT department.  I mention it here because there is also an iPhone/iPad app, which exposes another useful aspect of this service.  You can use the app to download any file that was backed up from your home computer.  Thus, if my home computer is turned off, I can use the app to access the most recent backup, navigate to the correct folder, locate the file, and then download the document to my mobile device.  
• Quicken.  Like BackBlaze, Quicken is something that I primarily pay for ($35.99/year) to use the software on my home computer.  As I’m sure you know, Quicken is an electronic checkbook.  But there is also a Quicken app for iPhone which makes it easy to add an item when I am away from home so that it syncs over to my computer.  And I can also view recent activity from Quicken accounts in the iPhone app.  Unfortunately, to get the new information into Quicken on my Mac after I added it on my iPhone, I need to remember to click a sync button at the top of the screen of the Mac software.  I wish it would just sync automatically every time that the app is opened, the way that it does on the iPhone.  (As a workaround, I use an app on my Mac called Keyboard Maestro to trigger a sync every time the Quicken software is launched on my Mac, but I wish that I didn’t need to use that hack.)
• eero Secure. As I mentioned last year, one of the most useful things that I did during the early part of the pandemic was upgrade my home Wi-Fi to an eero Pro system.  I cannot say enough good things about it.  Everywhere in my house, and my backyard, the Wi-Fi is very fast.  There are no dead spots.  The company offers an optional service called eero Secure that typically costs $29.99/year.  It adds parental controls, protection against certain unsafe sites on the Internet, and more.  I didn’t think that it was worth it for me, but the service went on sale last year for $14.99 so I figured that I would take advantage of the discount and check it out.  (This month, you can get the same discount because of Groundhog Day; use the promo code PHIL when you sign up.)  I haven’t yet decided if I will keep this service when it is time to renew after the first year, but I might.  If you want to prevent kids using an iPad or iPhone on your home network from getting access to unsafe and/or adult websites, you can use this service to do so.  Of course, if your kids have an iPhone or iPad with a cellular plan, they can bypass the parental controls in eero Secure by disabling Wi-Fi and using cellular data coverage.
• Adobe Creative Cloud.  I use Photoshop on my Mac to edit photographs and to create simple images for iPhone J.D. (like the dollar sign on the iPhone at the top of this post — I hope that you appreciate my amazing artistry), but another reason that I pay $119.88/year for Photography Plan (20 GB) is so that I can use the powerful Adobe apps on my iPad such as Lightroom and Photoshop.  The iPad apps don’t (yet) have all of the features of the desktop apps, but I often find it so much easier to work with images on an iPad with an Apple Pencil than to do so on a computer.

Video services

There are so many subscription video services nowadays that it can be difficult to keep track of them all.  Here are the ones that I currently use the most — often on my iPad, but also on my Apple TV.

• Netflix.  I seriously doubt that you need me to say anything about Netflix.  I use the $17.99/month Premium plan which provides the highest quality video on up to four screens at a time.
• Prime Video.  This is included with an Amazon Prime subscription, and there are lots of great shows.
• HBO Max.  This is part of my DirecTV package, but I think it is actually free for me because I have an unlimited AT&T cellphone plan.  I love the HBO content, but sometimes I am surprised by other things that I find.  For example, there is a show available only on HBO Max called The Flight Attendant that my wife and I recently watched, and it was really good. 
• Hulu.  We recently signed up for Hulu just to try it out for a few months, and I was surprised at how much really good content is available.  There were some shows I already knew about and that I enjoyed, such as The Handmaid’s Tale.  But my wife and I have found lots of other shows that we have enjoyed.  This past Friday night, we watched a movie — more of a recording of a stage play — called In & Of Itself.  It was unlike anything that I’ve ever seen before, and it was great.  Basic Hulu is $5.99, but I am paying for the $11.99/month plan that removes ads.  (Streaming service ads tend to be incredibly annoying and repetitive.).  My plan is to cancel/pause this service after using it for a few months, and then perhaps come back to it next year, but right now there is still so much good stuff to watch.
• Disney+.  I don’t currently subscribe to Disney+, but I have in the past and I plan to resume my subscription in the future as there is more that I want to watch.  I first subscribed for a month in mid-2020 when Hamilton came out, and of course, it was excellent.  As each season of The Mandalorian has neared completion, I’ve subscribed for a month so that my son and I could catch up on all of the episodes.  I’m not a big fan of the Marvel content, and I no longer have young kids so I don’t need access to the extensive family-friendly content.  But I love Star Wars, and if there is a time in the future when Disney+ has new and good Star Wars content throughout the year, I might find myself subscribing more frequently.  The new Pixar film called Soul is also excellent, and it was the last thing we watched on Disney+ before I most recently paused the service.
• Apple TV+.  I mentioned this one above because it is included in my Apple One bundle, but I’ll also mention it here for the sake of completeness.  If you are looking for something good to watch on Apple TV+, I recommend these:  Ted Lasso, For All Mankind, The Morning Show, Mythic Quest, Tehran, Dickinson, Home, Bruce Springsteen’s Letter to You, and the movies On the Rocks and Greyhound.

Conclusion

I suppose this is not a complete list because there are other subscriptions that I pay for that have at least some connection to the iPhone and iPad.  For example, I subscribe to several podcasts (that I listen to on my iPhone or Apple Watch) that are typically free but offer a subscription option to support the hosts and get extra content (such as Mac Power Users, Upgrade, Six Colors, and Dithering).  I also subscribe to the digital version of certain newspapers that I often read on my iPad (The New York Times, The Washington Post, my local newspaper in New Orleans called The Times-Picayune, and a local business publication that I read on my iPad called CityBusiness), and I also pay for some news-oriented websites that I typically read on an iPhone or iPad (such as The Athletic, Six Colors, and TidBITS).  

Nevertheless, if I just look at the services that I listed above, I see that I had been paying close to $1,000/year, and now I have increased that by another $300 with the addition of the Lit Suite.  That is real money, but these subscriptions allow me to do so many wonderful and powerful things on my mobile devices that, for a large number of them at least, I cannot imagine not having them.  I guess that it should not come as a surprise that there is so much for the iPhone and iPad that is worth paying for.

In a speech given at a conference yesterday, Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke out on why Apple places an emphasis on privacy and responsibility, and he took swipes at other technology companies that take a different approach.  Jason Snell of Six Colors prepared a transcript of Cook’s remarks, and it is a short and interesting read.  For example, in one part of the speech that was clearly aimed at Facebook, Cook said:  “Long hours spent cooped up at home, the challenge of keeping kids learning when schools are closed, the worry and uncertainty about what the future would hold, all of these things threw into sharp relief how technology can help — and how it can be used to harm.  Will the future belong to the innovations that make our lives better, more fulfilled, and more human?  Or will it belong to those tools that prize our attention to the exclusion of everything else, compounding our fears and aggregating extremism, to serve ever-more-invasively-targeted ads over all other ambitions?”  And now, the news of note from the past week:

• Yesterday, I discussed Apple’s most recent financial quarter in which the iPad seemed to do particularly well.  Jason Snell of Six Colors noticed the same thing and he discussed that and more in his take on Apple’s fiscal 2021 Q1 financial results.
• CARROT Weather, my favorite weather app, was updated yesterday to version 5.  Alex Guyot of MacStories describes what is new, including lots of options to customize the interface so that the app shows you exactly what you want to see in the way that you want to see it.
• A BBC News article describes how a cyclist in England was swept off of his bike into a swollen river and was carried a mile downstream before he was able to grab hold of a branch and then use his Apple Watch to call the fire department, which was able to save him.
• Danielle Moody of Fox 29 in San Antonio reports that a woman who was kidnapped used her Apple Watch to call for help.
• This week, Apple introduced a new part of Fitness+ for the Apple Watch called Time to Walk (or Time to Push for those in a wheelchair).  The idea is that you connect your Bluetooth headphones, such as AirPods, to your Apple Watch and then take a walk while an interesting person tells a story interspersed with music as your Apple Watch keeps track of the exercise you are doing while you walk.  For the first week, Apple featured stories from singer-songwriters Dolly Parton and Shawn Mendes, actor Uzo Aduba (Orange is the New Black), and NBA player Draymond Green.  I tried the one with Dolly Parton and I really enjoyed it.  She shared some stories from when she was young and then introduced three of her songs.  The only song I recognized was 9 to 5, and Parton shared some fun stories about making that movie and creating the song.  I’ll definitely try this one again.  Michael Potuck of 9to5Mac shares some more details on how the new feature works.
• Bradley Chambers of 9to5Mac recommends home security cameras that work with Apple’s HomeKit smart home technology.
• Ed Hardy of Cult of Mac reviews the EasyPencil Plus by SwitchEasy, a stylus that works with the iPad and looks somewhat similar to the second-generation Apple Pencil but costs only $37 on Amazon.
• I really enjoyed watching the TV series Tehran on Apple TV+, a fun spy thriller.  Nellie Andreeva of Deadline reports that the show has been renewed for a second season. 
• And finally, speaking of Apple TV+, Apple has a new show starting on February 5:  The Snoopy Show.  Snoopy was always my favorite of the Peanuts characters thanks to his vivid imagination, and it looks like this show focuses on that.  The official trailer for the show made me smile.  It also made me wish that my two teenagers were little kids again so that they would want to curl up on the couch with me and watch these cartoons.  (My wife and I did convince them to watch the classic Peanuts Thanksgiving and Christmas specials with us this past November and December, so maybe there is hope.)

Yesterday, Apple released the results for its 2021 fiscal first quarter (which ran from September 27, 2020, to December 26, 2020, and did not actually include any days from calendar year 2021) and held a call with analysts to discuss the results.  This is typically Apple’s best quarter of the year because it includes holiday sales.  This year, it was the best quarter in the history of the company, with revenue of $111.4 billion, up 21% from this time last year.  (And this time last year, Apple posted record results which were 9% higher than the year before.)  Has any other company ever reported revenue of over $100 billion in a single fiscal quarter?  I honestly don’t know, but I certainly couldn’t find any evidence of it when I did some Google searches on this.  But as impressive as this number is, the real reason that I report on Apple’s quarterly earnings is not to report on the numbers — let the folks at places like the Wall Street Journal focus on that — but to report on the financial call that Apple holds with analysts every quarter, during which Apple always seems to have something interesting to say about the iPhone and iPad.  If you want to get all of the nitty gritty details, you can download the audio from the announcement conference call from iTunes, or you can read a transcript of the call prepared by Seeking Alpha, or a transcript prepared by Jason Snell of Six Colors.  Apple’s official press release is here.  Here are the items that stood out to me:

iPhone

• iPhone revenue during the quarter was an all-time record $65.6 billion, compared to almost $56 billion this time last year, a 17% increase.
• The number of iPhones that are actively being used around the world is now over one billion.  This means that there are more people now using an iPhone than at any time in history.
• Apple CFO Luca Maestri said that there has been high interest in the iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max, and that supply has been limited as a result, but supply is now starting to catch up with demand for those high-end iPhones.

iPad

• iPad revenue during the quarter was $8.4 billion, compared to almost $6 billion this time last year, a 41% increase.
• Apple did not announce the number of iPads that are actively being used right now, but Maestri did say that Apple’s installed base of active devices reached all-time records “in each of our major product categories,” and the iPad is one of those categories.  So this means that there are now more people using an iPad than ever before.
• Apple CEO Tim Cook said that about half of the people buying an iPad are buying their first iPad.
• This was not a record quarter for iPad revenue because iPad sales were higher around 2013-2015.  For example, in the 2014 fiscal first quarter (i.e. the end of 2013), Apple sold 26 million iPads (which was a record) and saw iPad revenue of $11.5 billion — which I believe was an all-time record.  But for over five years, iPad revenue has been much lower.  I’m glad to see iPad sales going up again because that should encourage Apple to focus on the iPad even more.  For those of us who consider the iPad a critical part of their work life (not to mention a much-appreciated device for entertainment), I would love to see Apple do even more with the iPad.
• Cook said that the big increase in iPad (and Mac) revenue during the past quarter reflects “the continuing role these devices have played in our users’ lives during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Other

• Cook said:  “Wearables, home and accessories grew by 30% year over year, driven by significant holiday demand for the latest Apple Watch, our entire AirPods lineup including the new AirPods max, as well as the new HomePod mini.”  I know that in my own home, I bought my wife a new Apple Watch for Christmas and she bought me a new HomePod mini. 
• Cook said that if Apple’s wearables business (AirPods, Apple Watch, etc.) was a stand-alone business, it would be a Fortune 120 company.
• Cook also noted:  “The winter holiday season is always a busy time for us and our products, but this year was unique.  We had a record number of device activations during the last week of the quarter.  And as COVID-19 kept us apart, we saw the highest volume of FaceTime calls ever this Christmas.”
• If you count up all of the different ways that people can pay Apple for a subscription to something (an app, a service like Apple Music, etc.), Apple now has a record 620 million paid subscriptions, which is 140 million higher than this time last year.

Apple released an update to iOS yesterday, iOS version 14.4.  Similarly, iPadOS 14.4 was released yesterday.  The update adds some very minor new features, such as the ability to scan even smaller QR codes, and fixes a few bugs.  But what caught my eye is that Apple says that this update patches two vulnerabilities in the operating system that “may have been actively exploited.”  I cannot remember Apple ever before using that phrase with an iOS update. 

Apple has not provided any details on exactly how any hackers may be “actively exploiting” this security flaw, but I’m sure that you don’t want to be the first on your block to find out.  To be safe, I encourage you to stop using your device for about 15-20 minutes to install this update as soon as you can.  (Open up the Settings app, tap General, and then tap Software Update.)  I did so last night on both my iPhone and my iPad, and I didn’t run into any problems with the updates.

On April 1, 2020, Apple released its free COVID-19 Screening Tool, a simple app with resources to help you figure out what to do next if you think that you might have COVID-19.  Less than two months later, Apple released iOS 13.5, an update to the iPhone operating system that added support for exposure notification apps, a simple form of contact tracing.  That iOS update was only half of what was required for this system to work; additionally, each country or — in the U.S. — each state had to have its own exposure notification app that worked with the notification system first released in iOS 13.5. 

I live in New Orleans, and Louisiana has just released its exposure notification app, which Louisiana calls COVID Defense.  Zac Hall of 9to5Mac has been tracking these apps, and based on his count, similar apps are now available in Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, Wyoming, and the District of Columbia.  That makes Louisiana the 21st state (plus D.C.) to have one of these apps.  Additional states, such as Oregon, should be up-and-running soon.

I’m going to describe Louisiana’s app in this post, but all of the similar apps from other states and countries work the same way because they are all based on the same technology jointly developed by Apple and Google.  Note that some states, such as California, take advantage of a system called Exposure Notification Express that works the same way but you don’t have to download a special app; you just receive a notification asking if you want to opt-in.

The way that the app works is that it generates a unique, anonymous token associated with your iPhone but not associated with your name, location, or any other personal information.  The token changes every 10-20 minutes.  Whenever your iPhone senses (using Bluetooth) that it is somewhat close to another iPhone or Android phone running the same app, your iPhone saves the token from that other device.  And it keeps a list of all of those tokens for 14 days.

If a person tests positive for COVID-19, they will receive (or can obtain from the Louisiana Department of Health) a verification code.  That person should enter that code in the COVID Defense app on their device.  Every day, the app downloads a list of all of the tokens associated with positive COVID-19 cases and checks them against the list of tokens it has encountered in the last 14 days.  If there is a match, then your iPhone will give you a push notification alerting you of a potential exposure.  Note that, to ensure your privacy, all of the matching takes place on your individual iPhone.  The government is not notified of your possible exposure; only you are notified.

The notification will not tell you the name of the infected person or the location where you were possibly exposed because — to protect privacy — Apple and Google built the app not to store any of that information.  Thus, nobody has to worry about the app tracking their location or anything like that.  The tradeoff is that it makes the alert less useful because you don’t know much about the potential exposure, but the point is simply that it gives you a warning of a potential exposure so that, hopefully, you will get tested.  Even if you are not (yet) experiencing any symptoms, you may be an asymptomatic carrier of the virus as a result of your recent exposure.

Obviously, this app will not alert you to all exposures.  For the app to work well, you need for the people around you to be using the app.  According to an AP report from a month ago, in 16 jurisdictions in which the app was available in 2020, about one in 14 people in those jurisdictions used the app.  That same article reports that 45% of people in Finland used a similar app.  A report from Jennifer Valentino-DeVries in the New York Times last month said that 60% of the population in the District of Columbia is participating.  It would be better to see larger use everywhere, but at least there are still many millions of people taking advantage of this technology. 

Additionally, for the app to be helpful, you need for anyone who tests positive to be thoughtful enough to log their positive status into their own app.  According to that same New York Times article, a recent study in Switzerland concluded that for every 100 people who tested positive, the app correctly notified 24 contacts who had caught the virus. 

I wish that Louisiana had released their app long ago so that, by now, there might be a larger user base in my state.  Nevertheless, I guess better late than never, and by releasing an app at the end of January 2021, Louisiana is still ahead of over half of the other states in the United States.  If an app like this (or the built-in service) is available wherever you live, I encourage you to use it.  The more people who do so, the better we are all protected.

Click here to get COVID Defense (free): 

In a week with many highlights, one of the very best moments was the poetry written and performed by 22-year-old Amanda Gorman during the inauguration.  As lawyers, we write words every single day, but I have never written anything as beautiful and powerful as her poem, The Hill We Climb.  I was moved when I first saw it, and then I enjoyed it, even more, when I went back and watched it again last night.  When James Corden of The Late Late Show asked Gorman about the experience, she shared that she received so many messages afterward that — notwithstanding the cold weather — her iPhone overheated.  She also mentioned that she should ask her mother for a new iPhone.  Tim Cook, if you are reading this, please send Gorman a new iPhone 12, perhaps with a yellow case to match her coat.  And now, the news of note from the past week:

• Catherine Reach, the director of the North Carolina Bar Association’s Center for Practice Management, recently reviewed the Microsoft Lists app.  And as Nicholas Terry of 9to5Mac noted earlier this week, that app is now available for the iPhone.
• California attorney David Sparks shares some tips for cleaning AirPods and AirPods Pro.
• Megan Cerullo of CBS News reports on a new study that concludes that smartwatches like the Apple Watch can help to spot COVID-19 days before people are symptomatic.
• If you like the way that an iPad seems to float above a keyboard in Apple’s Magic Keyboard for iPad but you just want a stand, Ed Hardy of Cult of Mac reviews the Satechi Aluminum Desktop Stand for iPad, and it looks like an interesting product.
• Adam Engst of TidBITS shares some tips for using Apple’s HomeKit smart home technology.
• If you want HomeKit compatibility for a smart home device that is not made to work with HomeKit, one solution is the HOOBt, which CS Starter Kihristopher Close reviewed for iMore.
• Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac reviews the Neatmo Smart Video Doorbell, which works with HomeKit.
• Michael Potuck of 9to5Mac reviews the Logitech Circle View Doorbell, which works with HomeKit secure video.
• Ron Amadeo of Ars Technica explains the new Wi-Fi 6E standard.  The iPhone works with Wi-Fi 6, but it doesn’t currently work with 6E — something that may change later this year.
• If you purchased an iPhone in late 2019,  you received a free year of Apple TV+.  Although that was going to run out a few months ago, Apple announced in October that the free trial was extended to February.  This week, Apple announced that it is extended again, to July 2021, as Benjamin Mayo of 9to5Mac explains.  I’m sure that Apple had planned to have a lot of new things available to watch when it was time for folks to renew, but the pandemic surely delayed those plans.  I guess Apple currently thinks that as of June-July 2021, there will be lots of compelling content to convince people to renew.
• Apple shared some truly incredible photos taken with the iPhone 12.
• And finally, to return to Amanda Gorman, do yourself a favor and watch or rewatch what she said on Wednesday, and then check out the full James Corden interview:

I was thrilled and honored to be the guest on the latest episode of the Mac Power Users podcast.  California attorney David Sparks and Stephen Hackett, an expert on all of Apple’s products, host one of the very best podcasts for anyone looking to do more with their Apple technology. 

In this episode, we discussed a broad range of topics:  some of the best apps for the iPhone, tips for getting work done with your iPad, iPad apps to touch up photographs, how to be productive when you use both a PC and a Mac, home automation products that work with Apple’s HomeKit technology, and a bunch of other useful services including Apple’s new Fitness+ service and CarPlay.  If a friend was to ask me to sit down with them and describe everything cool that I’m doing with technology, the conversation that we would have would be very close to the conversation that I had with David and Stephen on this episode.  And although this podcast is called “Mac” Power Users, and we did discuss some Mac technology, we spent far more time discussing iPad and iPhone topics — so even if your primary computer is a PC instead of a Mac, you will feel right at home listening to this episode.  I think that this episode came out really well, and I encourage you to check it out.

You can listen to the podcast in a web browser by going to this page, but my favorite way to listen to a podcast is on an iPhone.  You can do so using Apple’s own Podcasts app, Overcast (my favorite podcast app), or virtually any other podcast app using these links:

Click here to listen to Mac Power Users #571 using Overcast

Click here to listen to Mac Power Users #571 using Apple Podcasts

Click here to listen to Mac Power Users #571 using Castro

Click here to listen to Mac Power Users #571 using Pocket Casts

Click here to listen to Mac Power Users #571 using an RSS feed