The big iOS-related news of the week is that Apple starts selling the HomePod today.  A number of reviewers have had the chance to try out the product for the last week.  The consensus seems to be that the speaker sounds amazing, much better than any of the other smart speakers on the market such as the Amazon Echo, Google Home, and Sonos.  If you use Apple products like the iPhone and want an external speaker to fill your living room, kitchen, etc. with fantastic sound, the $350 HomePod is perfect for you.  The HomePod has Siri built-in, so you can tell it what to do, and reviewers noted that, thanks to some pretty amazing technology, the HomePod does a great job of hearing your voice even when loud music is playing.  The main critique of the HomePod is that while Siri works well for controlling music and some other items like your HomeKit-enabled devices such as lights, you cannot ask Siri as many things as you can ask a Google Home or an Amazon Echo.  Attorney John Voorhees of MacStories has one of the better roundups of the HomePod reviews, so read that article for more information if you are trying to decide whether or not to buy one.  And if you want to dig deep, Rene Ritchie of iMore has one of the most in-depth reviews.  And now, the other news of note from the past week:

• Teresa Matich of Clio recommends iPhone and iPad apps for lawyers.
• California attorney David Sparks discusses the 150+ new Emoji coming out later this year.
• Jesse Hollington of iLounge reviews the Koogeek Wi-Fi Enabled Smart Outlet, a power strip that works with HomeKit so you can independently control the three outlets using Siri, an iPhone, your HomePod, your Apple Watch, etc.  This is the first HomeKit power strip that I’ve seen.
• Andrew Orr of The Mac Observer lists all of the apps that support the iOS 11 Files app.
• If you backup your iPhone or iPad using iTunes on a computer instead of using iCloud, Glenn Fleishman of Macworld explains what is not made a part of the backup.
• Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac reports that a large-scale study shows that the Apple Watch can detect early signs of diabetes.
• Earlier this week, I reported on Apple’s 2018 first fiscal quarter.  Horace Dediu of Asymco prepared a fascinating annotated version of the opening comments of Apple CEO Tim Cook and Apple CFO Luca Maestri.
• And finally, there are two video reviews of the HomePod that are worth watching.  Attorney Nilay Patel of The Verge created a very polished video review of the HomePod.  And Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal, who has a knack from coming up with an amusing way to approach a video review of tech products, took the HomePod to a theater for this funny and informative video review:

[UPDATE:  GoodReader 5 was finally released on January 28, 2019.  I’m testing the app now and will post a review soon.]

One of the most important apps for any attorney using an iPad is an app to organize, view and annotate PDF files.  There are quite a few excellent choices out there, but for many years my app of choice has been GoodReader.  The last major update was GoodReader 4, released in 2014.  A lot has changed in the iPad and iOS world since then, so I’ve been eagerly looking forward to the next major update, GoodReader 5.  For example, version 4 of the app doesn’t include advanced support for the Apple Pencil like some other apps, nor does the app support multitasking features such as split screen.

The developer of the app, Yuri Selukoff, teased the version 5 release in April 2017, when he said the following on Facebook:  “It’s a huge update with a completely new design and new features, some you may not even know you’ll want until you’ve seen them!  So fear not, and get ready (or for those of you who’ve been ready, stay ready) – GoodReader 5.0 is on the way!”  Throughout 2017 and into early 2018, I saw similar comments from the developer in response to user reviews on the App Store.  For example, the developer said:  “We understand why the app appears to be abandoned.  There have been no updates for quite a while!  However, we assure you, nothing could be further from the truth.  We’re working around the clock on our biggest update ever, GoodReader 5.  It’s going to be huge, with features you didn’t even know you wanted until you’ve seen them.  We appreciate your patience!”

In response to another app review noting the lack of support for the features of the iPhone X, the developer responded:

We want to assure you that GoodReader is definitely not abandoned.  We guarantee, it is indeed being developed further.  We’re still working hard on GoodReader 5 which will be a free, automatic update from GoodReader 4, but we admit it’s taking much longer to complete than we originally estimated. … We do regret that this update is running late, but we assure you it will be a free update from GoodReader 4 to GoodReader 5.  Anyone considering purchasing GoodReader for the first time, should know that they can buy GoodReader 4 now and receive GoodReader 5 as a free update — but it’s also not a bad idea to wait until GoodReader 5 is released before deciding whether to buy it or not — that makes perfect sense to me!  We hope this clears up any concerns you may have about GoodReader’s continued development into the future.

And in yet another response from the developer, he says:  “Our main goal is to make sure it’s done right, and that it lives up to the high standards our users have come to expect from GoodReader.” 

A few days ago, I saw that there was an update to GoodReader.  At first, I thought that this was the major update we have been waiting for, but then I saw that the update was still part of version 4 — version 4.13.0 to be exact.  The developer explained that this was just a minor bug fix and that “we’re finishing our huge GoodReader 5 upgrade … [s]tay tuned for the free major upgrade that is to follow soon!”

If the developer is “finishing” version 5, hopefully that means that we will see it in weeks or months, and won’t have to wait until 2019.

Speaking of the recent update to version 4.13.0, I actually had a problem with that update, and the developer helped me to fix it.  While the release notes say that the recent update was apparently supposed to solve some sync issues, that update actually caused me to experience sync problems with Dropbox.  After the update, the app crashed for me every time I pressed the button to sync to Dropbox.  I reported the bug through the GoodReader website and within just a few hours, the developer gave me a fix.  (In case you experience the problem I did:  click the gear icon next to Dropbox in the Connect pane of GoodReader, then log out of Dropbox, then log back in again.)  I understand that hiccups happen from time to time.  I appreciate the developer’s quick response to me with a solution, and hopefully this is a good sign of the attention that the developer is giving to GoodReader as he finishes up the work on version 5.

Last week, Apple released the results for its 2018 fiscal first quarter (which ran from October 1, 2017 to December 30, 2017, and did not actually include any days from calendar year 2018) and held a call with analysts to discuss the results.  This is typically Apple’s best quarter of the year because of holiday sales.  It was actually Apple’s best quarter ever in terms of revenue, with revenue of $88.3 billion (compared to $78.4 billion a year ago, which was the previous all-time record).  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 rough transcript of the call prepared by Seeking Alpha.  Jason Snell of Six Colors also prepared a transcript.  Apple’s official press release is here. 

It is interesting that Apple has, once again, had a record quarter in revenue.  But as always, I’m not particularly interested in the financial aspects of this call.  Instead, I’m interested in the statements of Apple executives that pertain to the use of the iPhone and iPad. Here are the items that stood out to me:

iPhone

• Apple sold 77.3 million iPhones in the last fiscal quarter.  That is slightly less than it sold in the 2016 calendar year holiday quarter one year earlier, when Apple sold 78.3 million iPhones.  However, note that Apple’s fiscal quarters are usually 14 weeks long, but 2018 Q1 was only 13 weeks long.  If there had been 14 weeks in this fiscal quarter like there was in 2017 Q1, I’m sure that Apple would have sold a record number of iPhones.
• While sales were slightly down, revenue was up.  A year ago, iPhone revenue was $54.4 billion; this time it was $61.6 billion.  Why did Apple make more money selling fewer iPhones?  The explanation is that in the last fiscal quarter, Apple started selling the iPhone X, the most impressive — and most expensive — iPhone ever sold.  Apple CEO Tim Cook said that the iPhone was a “key driver”  in Apple seeing the highest-ever revenue last quarter. 
• Apple said during the call that the iPhone X was the top selling iPhone every week that it was on sale.  That makes it sound like there was more interest in the new iPhone X than the new iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus, but keep in mind that the two iPhone 8 models went on sale September 15, 2017 and the iPhone X didn’t go on sale until November 3, 2017.  Thus, a lot of folks interested in buying an iPhone 8 had six weeks to get one when it was the only brand new iPhone, and this may be part of the reason that the iPhone X was the most in-demand iPhone during the weeks that it was on sale.
• Tim Cook said that with the iPhone X, “[o]ur team has put the technology of tomorrow in our customers’ hands today, [and] set a standard for the next decade of smartphones.” 
• By my count, Apple has now sold over 1.3 billion iPhones.

iPad

• Apple sold 13.2 million iPads in the last fiscal quarter.  By my count, Apple has now sold over 394 million iPads.
• Who bought those iPads last quarter?  Apple says that just over half were sold to folks upgrading from another iPad, and just under half were sold to folks who were first-time tablet buyers or who were switching to an iPad from a different tablet.
• Four years ago, in the 2014 fiscal first quarter, Apple sold almost twice as many iPads (26 million).  But the 13.2 million number this quarter is good news for Apple in terms of iPad sales.  For three and a half years, fewer iPads were sold every quarter.  Apple started to reverse the trend in its 2017 fiscal third quarter, and sales went up again this quarter, marking three quarters in a row that Apple has seen a year-over-year increase in iPad sales.  The easiest way to see this is to look at a chart that shows the average of four quarters of iPad sales over time. In the following chart, the blue line shows the actual iPad sales each quarter (in millions), and you can see the peaks every year in Apple’s fiscal first quarter — the holiday quarter, when folks buy lots of iPads as presents. The green bars show the average of the current quarter and the prior three quarters, which gives you a better sense of iPad sales over time. As this chart shows, the iPad was introduced in 2010 and saw a sharp rise in sales until the end of calendar year 2013 (the beginning of Apple’s fiscal year 2014), followed by a decrease in iPad sales over time, and then finally a slight increase in the past three quarters.

Other

• Apple said that the App Store set a new all-time revenue record.  During the week of Christmas, folks spent $890 million at the App Store.  On New Year’s day, App Store revenue was $300 million.

Down here in New Orleans, we are preparing for the first of two big weekends of Mardi Gras, leading up to Mardi Gras day itself.  I’m looking forward to enjoying the parades with my kids, friends, and family, and I’m sure that I’ll be using my iPhone X to take lots of photos and videos.  Carey Rose of Digital Photograph Review takes photography very seriously, and wrote this review of the iPhone X as a still and video camera.  It won’t surprise you that there is a lot to like.  And now, the news of note from the past week:

• Chicago attorney and trial technology consultant Michael Ko explains in a YouTube video how to use TrialPad at trial to impeach a witness with a deposition video.
• New York attorney Nicole Black explains what she does and does not like about the iPhone X in an article for the GPSolo eReport.
• Jason Cross of Macworld tested wireless chargers that work with the iPhone X and iPhone 8 and reveals his favorites.
• I enjoyed this very short movie, shot with an iPhone, by director Peter Chan called Three Minutes.  Worth watching.
• Josh Centers reviews the CARROT Weather app for TidBITS.  This is currently my favorite weather app.
• Josh Ginter of The Sweet Setup says that Things 3 is the best task-management app for the iPhone, iPad, and Mac.  My wife uses this app to manage all of her tasks, and it works well for her.
• Christian Zibreg of iDownloadBlog notes that Apple recently announced that Siri is now in use on over a half a billion devices.
• In a stream of tweets, Bethany Bongiono, a former Apple employee who led software development as the iPad was developed, shares some interesting stories about Steve Jobs and the debut of the iPad.
• Zac Hall of 9to5Mac reviews Outcast, an Apple Watch app that lets you play podcasts that are downloaded to the watch (and thus can be played even when your iPhone is not nearby).
• Bryan Wolfe of AppAdvice discusses how he is using his iPhone and Apple Watch to beat his Type-2 diabetes.
• Apple VP Phil Schiller discusses the HomePod in an interview with Bob Ankosko of Sound & Vision.
• At this point, I’m not planning to get a HomePod for the reason illustrated in this comic by The Pixel Project.  But I might change my mind in the future.
• If you want to install a stereo in your car that supports CarPlay, Eric Evarts of Wirecutter recommends a model by Sony.
• CarPlay Life notes that WhatsApp Messenger now has a CarPlay app.
• Rachel Cericola of Wirecutter explains why the Lutron Caséta in-wall dimmer is the best one on the market.  I reviewed this product back in 2015 and it continues to work really well for me, as do other Lutron Caséta products.  If you are looking to use HomeKit to maker your home a smart home, this is the route that I recommend.
• Zac Hall of 9to5Mac reviews the Elgato Eve Button, a button that you can place anywhere in your house which people can press to cause HomeKit scenes to occur.  This allows folks in your house to use a button, instead of an iPhone, to control HomeKit devices such as lights.
• And finally, speaking of Mardi Gras, here is a fun video from Apple Brazil showing off the selfie feature of the iPhone X as used by folks enjoying Carnival in Brazil.  The people in this video are very colorful, in every sense of the word:

I do most of my brief-writing using Microsoft Word on my PC at work, or if I am working at night or on the weekends, using Word on my Mac at home.  One proofreading tip that I picked up a long time ago is to print out a brief and read it in hard copy instead of on the computer screen when editing my work.  The idea is that when you use a different medium to read something, the different perspective helps you to catch mistakes that you might miss if you had proofread using the same screen that you used when you wrote the document in the first place.  This tip has certainly helped me in my own writing, and there is some research indicating that it helps others too.  See, e.g., Patty Wharton-Michael, Print vs. Computer Screen: Effects of Medium on Proofreading Accuracy, 63 Journalism & Mass Communication Educator 28 (2008).  For many years now, instead of wasting paper, I have created a PDF version on my computer and then proofread the document on my iPad using an app such as GoodReader.  Especially with the larger screen of the 12.9" iPad Pro, this works really well.

When Microsoft Word for iPhone came out in 2014, one of the features I raved about was Reflow view.  This view mode ignores line breaks and increases the text size so that you can read a document without pinching-and-zooming and scrolling back and forth.  This feature let you focus on just the text, ignoring the formatting.  The latest update to Microsoft Word for iPad adds something similar called Mobile View.  This features lets you focus on just the text, reducing visual distractions and giving you a new perspective on your writing that is perfect for proofreading. 

To activate Mobile View, tap the new icon at the top right of the screen, right between the Search icon (magnifying glass) and the Share icon (person with plus sign).  Or, you can tap the View tab and then tap Mobile View.  Once you do so, you will switch from a Print Layout view — which shows you what the document will look like when you print it — to the Mobile View.  In the Mobile View, you won’t see page breaks.  You also won’t see footnotes.  And the text will be bigger, although you can pinch-to-zoom to change that if you want.

In the following two pictures, the first one shows the normal Print Layout view, and the second one is the same portion of the document using Mobile View.

I have always found the page breaks very distracting when reading a document in Microsoft Word on the iPad, and just that one difference alone makes Mobile View a much better way to proofread a document.

If you want to modify how things look, turn on the Learning Tools in the View tab.  This adds a new tab called Learning Tools.  Using the Column Width option, you can adjust how much white space you see to the side of your text.  (So far, the Narrow view is my favorite.)  You can also tap the Page Color tab to switch between none (black text on a white background), Sepia or Inverse (white text on black background).  I find the Inverse option to be too jarring, but I like the Sepia background; it makes everything look just a little different and is pleasing to the eyes, helping me to get that different perspective on my writing that I find so helpful when proofreading.

You can also ask Word to read your document out loud, which is sometimes a nice way to proofread.  Just close your eyes and listen.  To start, place your cursor where you want the reading to begin, and then tap Read Aloud.  You can adjust the reading speed, and there are also simple controls for jumping back or ahead one paragraph.

One nice advantage of Mobile View versus printing out and reading on paper is that if you see something to change, you can change it right there in the document. 

I’ve found Mobile View most useful when proofreading a document, but the next time that I draft a Word document on my iPad (which I do most often when I am out of the office), I’m going to write in Mobile View mode.  This way, I can just focus on the words that I am writing, and I won’t be distracted by page breaks and some other document formatting.

Microsoft has done a nice job of adding improvements to the iPad and iPhone versions of Microsoft Word over time.  Some new features are not really useful for the way that I use Word — for example, the rainbow pen function added a few months ago is fun, but highly unlikely to make it into any briefs that I write.  And I keep waiting for Word to add more sophisticated Styles capabilities to the Word for iPad app, which is probably the #1 reason that I still prefer a computer to my iPad when writing briefs.  But I appreciate the attention that Microsoft gives to its iOS app, and this new Mobile View feature is one that I’m going to be using a lot.

Click here to get Microsoft Word (free, but Office 365 subscription required): 

Apple starts taking pre-orders for its new HomePod today — Apple’s $349 smart speaker with built-in Siri — with units to arrive starting February 9, 2018.  Although the HomePod itself is ready, Apple’s AirPlay 2 software won’t come out until “later this year” according to Apple (whenever that is).  With AirPlay 2, you will be able to add a second HomePod for stereo sound, and you will also be able to put multiple HomePods in different rooms so that the music stays in sync everywhere.  I’m intrigued by the HomePod and I look forward to reading the reviews, but I’m not in a rush to get one.  Virtually all of the time that I am listening to music or podcasts, I don’t want to bother others with my audio, so AirPods make much more sense for me than a HomePod.  Having said that, it does look like a neat device.  And now, the news of note from the past week:

• This week saw the release of iOS 11.2.5, but Apple is already preparing for the next update, and posted this preview of iOS 11.3.  New features include additional information and settings on battery life and performance, the ability to download your health records into the Health app (if your hospital supports it), augmented reality improvements, and new animoji in the Messages app.
• These are not full reviews, but a few folks got early looks at the HomePod this week such as Lance Ulanoff and Madeline Buxton of Refinery29.
• The TripIt app added an interesting new feature for TripIt Pro users this week:  security line wait times, to help you figure out how long it will take you to get to your gate.  For now, the feature is only available at airports in Austin, Denver, Orlando and Phoenix.  For more information, see this post by Angela Feher on the TripIt Blog.
• Brad Ellis offers an interesting perspective on the design decisions that went into the shape of the iPhone X.
• This week, Apple announced a partnership with the Malala Fund to promote secondary education for girls.  Josh McConnell of iMore offers this report.
• And finally, if you are going to promote the feature of taking selfie pictures on an iPhone, why not go all the way and use Muhammad Ali, as Apple did in this cute video:

This week, Apple released iOS 11.2.5.  Although a minor update for the iPhone and iPad, it actually has some arguably major elements to it.  For example, it fixes a bug in which a hacker could make your iPhone crash and restart just by sending you a text message with a link — even if you don’t look at the message.  Yikes.  But today, I want to focus on a feature in iOS 11.2.5 that I really like.  You can now ask your iPhone to read you the news, and it will immediately start playing a short audio broadcast from a news source.  So if you are getting ready for work, or in the car driving home, and you want to spend a few minutes catching up on the top news, now you can quickly and easily do so.

To start, just say “Hey Siri, read me the news” or “play the news” or “give me the news” or something like that.  Siri will start playing the latest episode of the NPR News Now podcast, which is updated every hour (so it is always fresh news) and only lasts 3-5 minutes (so you quickly get the highlights).  I tried it out a few different times yesterday.  It worked great, and the news updates were interesting and timely.

You can also say “Hey Siri, switch to the Washington Post” to instead listen to the Daily 202 podcast from the Washington Post.  It looks like that podcast is updated every weekday morning, so it may be a little stale to listen to as you are driving home but would be very timely with your morning coffee.

Or you can ask Siri to switch to CNN, which gives you five things to know and, like the Daily 202, is updated in the morning.  Or you can ask Siri to switch to Fox News, which gives you the latest edition of the Fox News Radio Newscast, which like the NPR News Now podcast is updated every hour and lasts five minutes or less.  In other countries, you get news from other local sources such as the BBC.

There are also some specialty news topics.  If you ask for sports news, Siri will by default play the latest episode of the ESPN Sports Update podcast, but you can instead switch to NBC sports news.  Similarly, you can ask for music news (Apple Music Best of the Week podcast). 

The feature also works with Siri in CarPlay.  So as I was in my car leaving a deposition yesterday, I was able to press the Siri button on my steering wheel, ask for the news, and then I heard the highlights of what had gone on in the world while I was in a conference room all day.

This feature will also work with Apple’s HomePod speaker, which will be available starting February 9, and which you can pre-order starting tomorrow.

I presume that the news sources will increase over time.  But even with just the current news sources (especially the excellent NPR podcast), I’m enjoying this new feature.

Last night I decided to backup my daughter’s iPad to iTunes on my Mac, something I do from time to time.  (I don’t use iCloud Backup on my own devices because I’d rather have the backup of the confidential data on my devices live on my home computer rather than Apple’s servers, and I’ve taken the same approach for other devices in my house.)  The computer asked me if I wanted to update the iPad to the latest version of iOS, and I said yes without thinking much about it.  Everything seemed to go fine, but then at the very end I saw an error message that I had never seen before telling me to press the iPad’s home button to attempt data recovery.  What the heck?  Nervous that I had somehow lost data on my daughter’s iPad, I pressed the button as instructed and crossed my fingers.

I then waited a while while the iPad told me that it was attempting data recovery:

During the approximately 10 minutes that the iPad spent on this screen, I did some quick research on the Internet, and found lots of other folks saying that this happened to them and that everything was fine when the process finished.  Sure enough, after the iPad finished its data recovery, everything was back to normal, with the latest version of iOS installed.

I’m glad that my initial panic that I had lost data on the iPad turned out to be unjustified.  I don’t know why the update failed initially, but apparently Apple has a Plan B that swings into action when the normal update process fails.  If you ever see this error message on your iPhone or iPad, hopefully you will recall this post before you get too nervous, and then after you press the home button and let the data recovery process begin, all will be fine for you as well.

If you had to deal with the cold weather this week, I hope that it went OK for you.  It caused a lot of chaos down here in New Orleans.  Precipitation and below-freezing temperatures are so rare down here that we don’t have good ways of dealing with ice on roads, plus many of the pipes in our homes are exposed and can freeze.  As a result, schools and offices were closed much of this week, the Interstate was closed, there is a boil water advisory (meaning that we are not supposed to drink tap water in New Orleans), etc.  Ugh.  Fortunately, it was pretty easy for me to work when I was out of the office just using my iPad and iPhone.  And now, the news of note from the past week:

• South Carolina attorney Justin Kahn has a daughter who is in high school, Rebecca Kahn, who somehow managed to score an interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook, as detailed in this article.
• In the latest episode of the Mac Power Users podcast, Florida attorney Kate Floyd and California attorney David Sparks discuss apps and workflows for being more productive with an iPad.
• Virginia attorney Sharon Nelson discusses the new policies announced by Customs and Border Protection on searching your iPhone when you return to the U.S.  I discussed the impact this has on attorneys in this post.
• According to a tweet by Erik Schwiebert, a Principal Software Engineer at Microsoft, this is now the first time in 20 years that Microsoft Office is using the same codebase for all platforms (Windows, Mac, iOS and Android).  The last time that happened, Microsoft imposed the PC interface on the Mac, which I didn’t like.  But this time, I really like the way that Microsoft Word looks and works, and hopefully the shared codebase will result in even more integration.  My next request:  robust support for Styles in the iOS app!
• Apple announced this week that it will take advantage of a repatriation provision in the new tax law to bring back the vast majority of the $252 billion in cash that Apple has been keeping outside of the U.S.  It will pay about $38 billion in taxes, and then some of the remaining money will be devoted to creating 20,000 new jobs, a new campus in the U.S., and (as reported by Chaim Gartenberg of The Verge), $2,500 bonuses to every Apple employee in the form of restricted stock units.
• Thomas Fox-Brewster of Forbes wrote an interesting article on the relationship between Apple and law enforcement regarding accessing iPhones.
• Back in 2016, I reviewed an app called Parkmobile which you can use to pay for street parking using an iPhone.  It works well, and there have been times when I have been in a deposition which ran long and I was able to add more time to my parking meter just using an iPhone app, which is very cool.  Darrel Etherinton of TechCrunch reported this week that BMW acquired the Parkmobile app.  I hope that they don’t ruin the app; I’m a little concerned considering this report by Zac Estrada of The Verge that BMW is planning to make you pay an annual fee to BMW if you want to use Apple CarPlay in its cars, something that no other car maker has done.
• Speaking of CarPlay, Joe Rossignol of MacRumors reported this week that Toyota is finally adding CarPlay support to its cars, starting with some 2019 models.  The same is true for Lexus, the luxury car division of Toyota.  Toyota was one of the last major CarPlay holdouts.  I bought a Honda Accord last year, and one of the reasons that I didn’t even consider a Toyota Camry was the lack of CarPlay support.  I guess Toyota realized that there are a lot of folks like me.
• Horace Dediu of Asymco reports that Apple’s App Store will overtake global box office sales in 2018.
• And finally, I love using my iPad to take handwritten notes.  In this new commercial, Apple shows that I can do that even when in a tree:

I reported earlier this week on new rules relating to confidential and privileged data on an iPhone when you pass through customs to re-enter the U.S.  Maureen Blando of Mobile Helix discusses one alternative to dealing with Customs:  keep your data on a cloud-based service (like Mobile Helix) so that you can just remove the app before you enter customs — at which point the privileged documents won’t even be there anymore — and then re-install the app after you pass through.  1Password offers something similar called Travel Mode whereby all but a few passwords you select are removed from the device, and then you restore them after you enter customs.  If you use Microsoft Exchange with the Mail app on your iPhone, you could just turn off your email in the Settings app (Accounts & Passwords -> [select account] -> turn off Mail) until you get to a location where you feel secure again, and then turn it back on to re-download your messages.  And now, the news of note from the past week:

• Samantha Cole of Motherboard reports on a murder trial in Germany in which some of the evidence of the defendant disposing of a body in the river consists of data from the defendant’s iPhone.  After hiring a forensics company to bypass the passcode on his iPhone 6s, the investigators found data in the Health app showing that the defendant climbed stairs during the period of time that the prosecution alleges that the defendant climbed up the river embankment.
• According to Katherine Faulders of ABC News, this week White House Chief of Staff John Kelly instituted a new ban on personal cellphones in the White House.  The ban extends to smartwatches, like the Apple Watch.  I suspect that there will still be one particular iPhone in the White House not subject to the ban.
• Chance Miller of 9to5Mac reports on a recent interview by Rebecca Jarvis of ABC Radio with Angela Ahrendts, Apple VP of Retail.  The video discusses how Ahrendts got the job even though she doesn’t consider herself a “techie.”
• Paula Parisi of Variety reports that Jimmy Iovine, one of the Apple executives behind Apple Music, has denied rumors that he is planning to leave Apple this year, and says that he looks forward to further developments in online streaming.
• Apple released iOS 11.2.2 this week.  As Juli Clover of MacRumors explains, this update addresses the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities that have been in the news as of late.  I always recommend that you update your iPhone (and iPad) when there is a new iOS version to make sure that you have the latest security patches, although it does make sense to wait 24 hours before applying the update just in case Apple discovers some problem with the update, which happens occasionally.
• If you want an alternative to using your iPhone, Apple Watch or Siri to turn off your HomeKit lights, you can soon buy a big red button — or one of another color.  Zac Hall of 9to5Mac reports that Fibaro’s The Button will soon be HomeKit compatible.
• Jesse Hollington of iLounge explains how you can handoff a call from your iPhone to your Apple Watch.  I didn’t realize you could do that.
• Bradley Chambers of The Sweet Setup reviews Workouts++ and says that it is the best stand-alone workout app on the Apple Watch.
• Thuy Ong of The Verge reports that the Qi wireless standard used by Apple in the iPhone X and the iPhone 8 is becoming even more of a standard now that Powermat is giving up on the rival PMA standard.
• Chaim Gartenberg of The Verge discusses some of Belkin’s upcoming Qi chargers for the iPhone.
• Glenn Fleishman of Macworld discusses how the iPhone uses a captive page on the Apple website to determine whether a Wi-Fi hotspot has a sign-in page.
• And finally, the always funny xkcd comic predicts what future iPhone security settings might look like (original link):