The practice of law is certainly a profession that requires one to juggle lots of different tasks, which means that you need a way to keep track of those tasks.  Those are countless ways to do this with an iPhone or an iPad.  You can use the built-in Reminders app.  You can use a complicated and sophisticated app such as OmniFocus, which California attorney David Sparks shows off in these videos.  My wife is a long-timer user of Things, a very powerful app for the iPhone, iPad and Mac.  But for me, I’ve always preferred simple solutions for managing tasks.  I’ve been practicing law for 20 years this month, and for a good number of those years, my task management tools were simply a small legal pad and a pen; I would jot down a to-do item, and then scratch it out when it was done.  But for about a year now, I’ve been using the Ita app to manage my tasks and keep track of other lists, and the system has worked well for me.  (The developers say “Ita is pronounced like ‘Item'” so I presume that the name “Ita” is a play on the idea that your lists have multiple items. [UPDATE 8/8/14: one of the two developers of Ita tweeted that ita is a Latin word that means “thus” and is a possible origin of the word item; UPDATE 8/11/14:  the other developer of Ita then tweeted: “I know Ben said otherwise, but yeah I think of Ita as being the plural of items. —Bob”.])  A few days ago, Ita was updated to version 2.0, which has a new, clean interface that matches the look of iOS 7, so I figured that it is now a good time to talk about this app.

The main screen of Ita shows you all of your lists.  You can quickly create a new list by tapping the plus sign.

As you can see, in addition to creating a list of “Work To Do” items, I also have a list of file numbers for my most common matters.  That way, if I need a file number and can’t remember it, I can easily look it up in Ita.

If you want to change the order of your lists, simply hold your finger down on a list for about a second and then you can drag it up or down.  Tap a list to see the items on the list.  In one of my lists, I jot down the tasks that I need to do in my cases.  Obviously I can’t show you my real list of the tasks I need to do for my clients, so here is a fake one to give you a sense of the types of items that I typically put on a list:

To add a new item, just tap the plus sign at the bottom right.  Then type your items and hit DONE when you are finished.

 

New items appear at the top of the list, but you can easily reorder items just by holding your finger down on an item for a second and then dragging it up or down.  An item turns red while you are dragging it.

To edit an item, just slide it to the left to expose two icons:  edit and delete.  Or, you can tap the edit icon at the bottom, middle of the screen and then tap any item to start editing it.

When an item no longer needs to appear in the list, such as a task that you are finished, you have two choices.  As shown above, you can swipe to the left and then tap the trash can icon, which will delete it completely from the list.  Or, you can tap an item and that moves it the bottom and makes it gray, useful if you want to continue to see items even after you have marked them as done.

If you are using Ita to manage your work tasks, you probably won’t see a need to keep items on a list after you are done with them.  I simply delete a task item after I do it.  But for other kinds of lists, it is useful for the item to still remain visible even after you are done with it.  For example, you can make a list of the 15 items you need to remember to pack whenever you go out of town.  As you pack your suitcase you can tap each item to mark it as done.  Once you are finished, if you tap the icon at the bottom left (the box with an arrow) one of options is “Restore Completed Items” which will reset all of the items so that you are ready to mark them as completed again when you have your next trip.  (Note that to use this particular feature, you need to go into Ita’s settings. accessible by tapping the atom icon at the top left of the main screen, and then turn on “Show Restore Action”.)

I virtually always use this app on my iPhone, but it is a universal app, so it works on your iPad too.  You can use iCloud to sync items between your devices.

The developers of Ita mentioned on the Debug podcast in May of 2013 that they were working on a version of Ita for the Mac, but I don’t believe that has been released yet.

You can use Ita with Launch Center Pro to do some sophisticated automated tasks, such as appending the contents of the clipboard to a list.  You can also email a list, and if you send the list to someone else who uses Ita, they can import the list into their Ita app.  But I suspect that most Ita users don’t do anything fancy like that.  I certainly don’t.  The beauty of Ita is that it is such a simple app.  It lacks the bells and whistles of others task manager apps, such as assigning due dates, providing push notifications, etc., but that’s because Ita isn’t really a task manager app, even though I use it that way.  It’s just a list making app. 

If keeping simple lists is the way that you like to organize your life, then I think you will like Ita as much as I do.  It is simple to use, it has a clean interface, and I can use Ita very quickly to see the items on my lists and easily add or delete items.  If a simple list manager seems like the right fit for your lifestyle, Ita is a great app.

Click here to get Ita ($2.99): 

I’ve reviewed lots of iPad stands that are useful on a desk.  For example, I really like the Stabile PRO that I reviewed a year ago, and I use it on my desk in my office every single day.  And of course, many iPad covers have the ability to also work as a stand, such as Apple’s Smart Cover.  But if you are in bed, or if you are sitting in a big comfy chair or on a couch in your living room, those stands are uneven, unsteady and will fall over.  The tablift from nbryte is new kind of iPad stand that uses four strong but flexible legs so that you can adjust your iPad in just about any position.  The company sent me a free unit to test out, and I’ve been using it at home for the last few weeks.  It has worked really well for me.

The center of the tablift has three grooves, which lets you choose among three different angles for your iPad.  In this picture taken from the side, my iPad is in the middle groove:

The center also has an elastic strap with a clip at the end.  Place the clip around your iPad, and the strap will hold the iPad steady in place — even if you choose an angle that has the iPad leaning forward, the best angle if you are lying down in bed with your head on your pillow.  The elastic band stretches enough that you can use your iPad in landscape or portrait mode.  The groves are generous enough, and the band is flexible enough, that the manufacturer says that you can use the tablift with any model of iPad, full-size or mini, or just about any other tablet from another manufacturer.  Having said that, the tablift is unlikely to work when the iPad is in just about any case.

Coming off of the center of the tablift are four flexible legs, each of which has a soft rubber foot.  Because you can bend the legs into any position, the stand works well on lots of different surfaces.  Each leg extends about 14 inches from the base.

For many folks, the main value of the tablift will be that it gives you a way to lie on your back in bed and look at the iPad screen without having to hold up the iPad with your hand — something that makes your arm hurt after just a few minutes.  For this function, the tablift worked really, really well.  I have to admit that I felt a little silly when I first set up the tablift, positioning the four legs around my body in bed.  It sort of felt like I was positioning a big metal spider around me.  But I got used to it after a few minutes, and then once I started to watch a video on my iPad, I quickly found myself ignoring the legs and just paying attention to the screen.  I recently started watching the AMC show The Walking Dead, and I watched several episodes of Season 2 on my iPad in bed using the tablift.  The experience was great.  (As for the wisdom of watching a show about scary zombies immediately before going to bed, I’ll let you decide if that is right for you.)  Rather than make you look at a picture of myself in bed, here is a picture from the tablift website of a woman enjoying the product:

Note that this model is somewhat propped up in her bed with the iPad in the middle position, but you can put also the iPad in the front position so that it leans down, which works best when your head is on your pillow.

If you are sitting on a sofa, the tablift also provides a nice stand for the iPad.  And the four legs keep your iPad steady even on an uneven, cushy surface like a sofa.  It does make the iPad sit close to your lap, which can be useful depending upon your position on the sofa, and works well for typing. 

I found that I preferred to use the tablift in my living room when sitting in a big, comfy chair with arms.  I could spread out the four legs so that they were supported by the chair’s arms, and that placed the iPad height closer to my face.  It was nice to be able to read email, annotate a deposition, review and highlight documents, etc. from the comfort of that chair without having to worry about my arm getting tired holding up my iPad for a long time.

Although the tablift itself can seem somewhat large — and indeed, being able to stretch out the 14" legs so far makes the iPad stable and is one of the best parts of the product — fortunately you can fold up the legs to make the tablift only about 6" tall by 11" wide by 4" deep, which makes it small enough to easily slide under or next to your bed or tuck it away in some corner.  You could probably even fit it in a suitcase if you wanted to travel with it; perhaps stuff some socks in the center of the tablift to make the most efficient use of space.

Finally, note that you could use the tablift on a table if you want to do so, although it is large enough that you need a decent amount of space.  I wouldn’t use it regularly on my desk at work, but I found that I was able to place my iPad at the perfect height on a table at home for a FaceTime videochat when the iPad was in the tablift.

If you want to use your iPad while lying down in bed or while sitting in your living room, I don’t know of any stand that works as well as the tablift.  It does a fantastic job holding your iPad in position, it folds up for storage, and it is versatile enough that it can work with many different size iPads (and thus, is also likely to continue to work with future generations of iPads).  You’ll have to decide whether that convenience is worth $60 to you, but the tablift works as advertised, and does so quite well.

Click here to get the tablift from Amazon ($59.95).

UPDATE 8/6/2014:  Apparently, a lot of you bought a tablift from Amazon because Amazon is now out of stock.  But you can always order one directly from the manufacturer by clicking here.

—–

This article won the BlawgWorld Pick of the Week award. The editors of BlawgWorld, a free weekly email newsletter for lawyers and law firm administrators, give this award to one article every week that they feel is a must-read for this audience.

Microsoft updated its Word, Excel and PowerPoint iPad apps yesterday.  My favorite new feature is that you can now export to PDF directly from the apps; when you email a document, the app asks whether you want to do so in the native file format (such as .docx) or as a PDF file.  The apps also have enhanced features for working with photographs in documents and better support for third party fonts.  If you use Excel for iPad, there are also lots of improvements for working with your spreadhseets.  Click here to read all about the new features in a blog post from the Office team on the Microsoft website.  And if you use Microsoft’s OneNote iPad app, it was also updated this week, as noted in this post on the Microsoft blog.  All of this reminds me of how happy I am that we now have such great Microsoft software for the iPad.  And now, the other news of note from this week:

• New York attorney Neil Squillante, publisher of TechnoLawyer, provides useful iPad tips in this post and associated video:  (1) a cool way to share web articles using the Reader button in Safari, (2) tips on creating contact entries and (3) tips on using an iPad instead of paper.
• South Carolina attorney Jenny Stevens reviews the InkFusion iPhone case on the MacLawyer website, a case that lets you use whatever picture you want on the back of an iPhone.  You can do something similar with the CaseMaker Pro, which I reviewed this past June.
• Attorneys Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell discuss the role that iPads play for lawyers in this episode of the Kennedy-Mighell Report podcast.
• AgileBits, developer of the amazing 1Password app, previewed in this post and video on the company blog how the iOS 8 version of 1Password will (1) work on other iOS apps, so you no longer have to leave an app, go to the 1Password app, copy your password, then go back to the app and (2) use Touch ID so that you can use your fingerprint as your password.  This all looks incredibly useful, and I cannot wait to try it when iOS 8 is released in the upcoming months.
• While Apple is renovating one of its stores in Switzerland, Apple moved the store into the middle of of the mall — the area where a person would typically walk from store to store.  John-Michael Bond of TUAW has some pictures of the interesting temporary store.  It reminds me somewhat of the open air feel of the Apple Store in Grand Central Terminal in New York City.
• Speaking of the Apple Store, Patty Ryan of the Tampa Bay Times explains how a criminal found a way to scam Apple Stores out of over $300,000.  This sounds like a silly scam that you might see in a B-movie, but apparently it worked … for a while at least.
• And finally, Matt Walsh (who you may know from HBO’s Veep) shows how easy it is to make your own iPad in this Conan O’Brien video:

When you are away from the office for an extended time, it is often useful to have a portable battery with you.  And nowadays, when many of us have both an iPhone and an iPad, it is even more useful to have a battery that is designed to work with either one.  Because the iPad has such a large battery, when you carry an external backup battery that works with the iPad, you always need to balance capacity versus the size and weight and cost of that battery.  The Lumsing 10400 mAh Harmonica Style Portable Power Bank strikes the right balance — large and heavy enough to get the job done, but small and sleek enough that you won’t mind carrying it with you.  Lumsing sent me a free unit to review, and I have been testing it for the last week.  I like it a lot.  This looks like a great battery to toss in your briefcase or purse when you are on the go, and it only costs $23.

Design and Features

My main concern with an external battery is simply that it work well, but since you are going to carry this thing around a lot, it is nice to have something that has a pleasing design.  I was very impressed with this device.  As the “Harmonica” in the name implies, this device is shaped like a long rectangular box which is curved on one long end and is tapered on the other. 

The Lumsing Power Bank is about 5.5 inches long, almost 2.5 inches deep, and is about .8 inches high.

The curve on one of the long sides of this device makes it feel good when you hold it in your hand.  A minor feature perhaps, but one that I liked.

The device weighs 8.35 oz.  (An iPhone 5S weighs 4 oz; an iPhone 4S weighs 4.9 oz.)  You probably won’t notice 8.35 oz. in a purse or briefcase, but you’ll definitely notice it if you slip it into the pocket of your pants.

The tapered end contains most of the inputs and controls.  First, there are two ports, one which provides 1 Amp and one that provides 2.1 Amps.  You can use either port with an iPhone, and as noted below, you will get a slightly faster charge with the 2.1 Amp output.  For an iPad Air, you’ll want to use the 2.1 Amp port.

Next there are a series of four blue lights, and then a long silver button.  If you press the button when you are not using the device, it will display 1, 2, 3 or 4 lights depending upon how much charge you have left.  When the device is almost out of power, only one light comes on and it flashes.  When you are charging the Lumsing Power Bank, you will see the lights come on in a sequence.  At first you see the first light, then two lights, then three lights, then four lights.  After 25% of charge the first light stays on and you just see the other three come on and off.  By the end, when all four lights stay on, the device is fully charged.  Finally, when you are charging an iPhone or iPad, the lights stay on to show you how much power is left in the battery.

As noted above, pressing the button when nothing is plugged in shows you the remaining power.  The button also serves to turn to device on, so to charge an iPhone or iPad you plug in a USB cord (such as the one that came with your iPhone or iPad) into one or both of the ports, plug in to your iPhone/iPad, and then press the button to start charging.

On the short side of the device, there is a Micro-USB connector.  The device comes with a Micro-USB to USB cord. 

Connect the cord to either your computer or any USB power supply.  I used the Apple 10W charger that comes with an iPad, and it took almost seven hours to charge the Lumsing Power Bank — longer than I had expected.  This is a device that you will most likely want to charge overnight.

The unit that Lumsing sent me is white, but I see that you can also get it in black or gold.

The unit comes with a carrying pouch.  I didn’t see any reason to use it.

Capacity and Charging

The Lumsing Power Bank has a battery capacity of 10400 mAh.  The iPhone 5S uses a 1560 mAh battery and the iPad Air uses a 8,827 mAh battery.  In theory, then, the Lumsing Power Bank could charge the iPhone 5S over six times and the iPad Air once with some to spare, but in reality you lose some of the charge to heat and other factors. 

In my tests this week, when I used with completely charged Lumsing Power Bank with an iPad Air that had gone down to 3%, I was able to charge it back to 80% before the Lumsing Power Bank ran out of power about four hours later.  It roughly added another 20% to the iPad every hour.

When I tested with an iPhone 5S that was at 3% or less power, the iPhone would be back to around 60% in an hour, and in just over two hours the iPhone was back to 100%.  It takes a little longer to charge at the end, so you see almost 1% of power added every minute, and then going from 98% to 99% to 100% takes longer.  Charging an iPhone with the 2.1 Amp port was slightly faster than using the 1 Amp port; a full charge took two hours with the 2.1 Amp port and about two hours and 10 minutes with the 1 Amp port.  So you get slightly better performance charging an iPhone with the 2.1 Amp port, but it doesn’t make a huge difference.  With a fully charged Lumsing Power Bank, I could charge an iPhone 5S from 3% or less to 100% four times, and then had just a small amount of charge left over.

As noted above, you can also use the Lumsing Power Bank to charge both an iPhone and an iPad at the same time.  When I did so, each device charged slower.  The iPad Air received on average an additional 13% to 15% per hour, in contrast to around 20% when it was plugged in by itself.  The iPhone 5S received anywhere from 20% to 38% of additional charge each hour, as opposed to around 57% when it was plugged in by itself.  And while I could completely charge in iPhone 5S from almost 0% to 100% in just over two hours when it was plugged in by itself, when both the iPhone and iPad were charging at the same time, two hours just brought me up to around 60% on the iPhone.

You can also charge the Power Bank while you are charging an iPhone and/or iPad.  Thus, you could plug in the Power Bank to a wall charger or computer and plug in an iPhone and iPad into the Power Bank to charge them all.  When doing so, the iPhone and iPad seemed to charge at the same rate as when the Power Bank was not plugged in to AC power.  Note, however, that at the outset when the Power Bank was close to empty, it would sometimes stop charging the iPhone and iPad for a short while so that it could charge itself, and then it would start charging the iPhone and iPad again (and I would hear them beep as if they were just plugged in).

Conclusion

There is something to be said for a smaller battery that is light and can be tossed in your pocket, like the Powerocks Super Magicstick that I reviewed a few months ago and which I see is now selling for only $19.50, $10 less than when I reviewed it.  Small external batteries are great for bringing extra life to an iPhone. 

But if you want to be able to charge an iPad, or if you want to be able to charge an iPhone over and over again, you need a larger battery.  I know that there are lots of large external batteries for sale, but after using this one extensively for the last week, I really like the Lumsing Harmonica Style Power Bank.  It is big, but not too big and heavy, and it feels nice in your hand when you carry it.  It has a large enough battery to charge your iPad or your iPhone — or both at the same time.  And best of all, it is a steal for only $23. 

Click here to get the Lumsing Harmonica Style Power Bank from Amazon ($22.99).

Most lawyers that I know give presentations from time to time, whether they be formal opening statements or closing arguments to a jury, teaching a CLE, client presentations or even just running a small meeting.  Considering this, you would think that most lawyers should be pretty good at it.  But I am amazed at the number of presentations I see in which lawyers use PowerPoint slides with almost every word of the presentation typed, typically in a small font to fit all of those words on the slide (so the audience can barely read them anyway), and then the presentation consists of little more than reading those slides.  Last week, California attorney David Sparks released his fifth book in the MacSparky Field Guide series, an ebook called Presentations.  It is a $10 book in the iBookStore that you read on an iPad.  I bought it when it was released last week so that I could write a review for iPhone J.D., and I assumed that the main value of the book would be to teach those PowerPoint-reading speakers how to do a better job with their presentations.  It certainly does that, but to my pleasant surprise, the book is packed with tips that even the most seasoned public speaker would find useful.  I learned so much reading this book, and I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I’m not sure if I would have purchased this book but for my intention of writing this review.  Thank goodness I did; I’ll be using the skills I learned in this book in all of my future presentations.  If you own an iPad or a Mac and you are an attorney or other professional who gives presentations, this book is easily worth $10 and I encourage you to get it.

The book is divided into five chapters but it has two main parts.  First, this is an excellent manual for using Keynote, Apple’s software for creating and presenting slides on either an iPad or a Mac.  (It works on an iPhone too, but that screen is too small for me to recommend using it to create presentations, although I have used my iPhone to make quick edits to a presentation when my iPad wasn’t close by.)  Second, this book gives advice on being a better public speaker.  Both parts of this book are excellent.

Keynote

For me, the best part of the book was the extensive and well-presented guide for using Keynote.  Sparks prefers to create slides on his Mac and that is the focus of this book.  I more often create slides on my iPad, in part because I use a PC in my office and thus can only use the Mac version of Keynote when I am at my house, and in part because I always use my iPad to run my presentations and it just seems more natural to me to create slides using the same hardware that I will use to present the slides to an audience.  But fortunately, almost everything that you can do in Keynote on a Mac you can also do in Keynote on the iPad, and Sparks also includes lots of iPad-specific advice in this book.  Thus, whether you use Keynote on a Mac, an iPad, or both, this book is for you.  And by the way, if you do own both an iPad and a Mac, Keynote makes it easy to go back and forth between the two when you are working on your slides.

Like all of the ebooks that Sparks has created for the iPad, this book is far more than just a book with words that you read.  Almost every time that Sparks tells you how (and why) to do something, he then includes a video that you can tap to watch a screencast.  This lets you listen to Sparks tell you what you need to do while you watch him do the task in Keynote.  It is a great way to learn the features of Keynote.

The Keynote portion of the book starts with the very basics — how to create a file, pick a template, etc. — so that even if you have never before used Keynote, this book will get you up and running.  But before long, the book shows how to do sophisticated things in Keynote such as complex animations, and includes lots of tips that were new to me.  For example, Sparks explains, in words and video, how to quickly make two objects the same size using Keynote on the iPad — a tip that I’ll now be using all of the time.

Of course Keynote lets you insert simple objects like squares, circles, etc. on a slide.  Sparks shows you how to create those, but then goes on to show you how to manipulate those objects to change and skew their characteristics, combine objects, and group them to create sophisticated graphics that not that long ago would require you to hire a graphics professional.  At one point in the book he groups together a bunch of shapes to make a lightsaber that would make Obi-Wan Kenobi proud.  It had never before occurred to me how much you can do with shapes in Keynote.

The book also includes great advice for creating a graphical representation of an object, a scene, etc.  Start with a picture or a PDF file, then place your shapes on top of that to reproduce the image using simple shapes, then remove the image so that you are left with a simple, clean graphic with perfect proportions to represent an item that is important to your presentation, whether it be the product at issue in a products liability trial or the accident scene.  What a great idea.

Here’s another simple tip I learned (on page 175).  When you are editing text in a text field using Keynote on an iPad, you can move the cursor/insertion point by swiping left or right.  That is such a simple and effective replacement for arrow keys on the iPad.  I hope that Microsoft copies this shortcut and adds it to Microsoft Word for iPad.  There are countless tips like this in the book, and even if you are like me and you already know most of them, you will appreciate learning the rest of them.  And if you are a novice Keynote user, you’ll be a pro after you learn everything in this book.

Although this book isn’t written specifically for lawyers, the fact that Sparks is a lawyer and has used Keynote in the courtroom results in his book being full of great advice for lawyers who use Keynote.  For example, he has sections that provide tips for presenting and annotating documents in a presentation, creating timelines, and zooming in on a location on a map — all of which I will be using in the future.

Public Speaking Tips

No matter how good your slides are, to be an effective public speaker you need to do a good job using those slides with your audience.  That is the other main focus of this book. 

Some of what he teaches is strictly utilitarian, such as a useful section on everything that you might want to bring to your a presentation in a toolbox.  As Sparks says, you may never need some of these items, and most of them you can just leave in the trunk of your car, but having them available eliminates any possible hiccups.  When Tampa attorney Katie Floyd, Sparks’s co-host on the Mac Power Users podcast, interviewed Sparks about this book, she suggested that he actually sell a tookbox that contains all of these items; she may have been joking but it actually isn’t a bad idea.  I already own and use most of these items that Sparks recommends, but there are a few more that I plan to pick up after reading this book.  Here is a fun graphic from two pages of the book that shows some of the items mentioned by Sparks; you can tap any plus sign for specific info on what the item is and how it can be used.

But Sparks goes further and offers specific tips on how to give your presentation, everything from what to do before your presentation, what to do with your hands during the presentation, how to handle questions from the audience, the importance of ending on time, etc.  While I happen to agree with Sparks on most of the advice that he offers in this part of the book, some of them are subject to debate.  Even so, reading this part of the book will definitely make you think about your own presentation style and what you can do to be an even better speaker.

Conclusion

While I focused above on the content, one of the best parts of this book is that the content is a joy to read because it is well-written, clear and quite often funny.  (For example, in a section providing lots of useful tips on using graphics in a presentation, I couldn’t help but smile when I read on page 206:  “Using pixelated, sad clip art in your presentation makes perfect sense so long as you live in 1993.”)  It’s also nice that the layout of this book is beautiful.  The book is over 400 pages, but I read it in just a few nights because I enjoyed reading it so much — including one night that I stayed up way too late thanks to Sparks and his interesting videos.

I frequently link to posts by David Sparks in my Friday In the news roundup, I listen to Mac Power Users, I’ve watched presentations given by Sparks at the ABA TECHSHOW conference held in Chicago every Spring, and I’ve read just about every book that he has ever written (and reviewed many of them on iPhone J.D.:  iPad at Work, Paperless, Email).  Suffice it to say that I am no stranger to his body of work.  But even considering all of it, I suspect that most iPad-using lawyers would agree with me that this is the best, most helpful publication that Sparks has ever produced.  If you ever have, or ever will, give a presentation, I strongly encourage you to get this book.  You will appreciate the videos just as much as the words, and you will learn a ton.

Click here to get Presentations ($9.99): 

—–

This article won the BlawgWorld Pick of the Week award. The editors of BlawgWorld, a free weekly email newsletter for lawyers and law firm administrators, give this award to one article every week that they feel is a must-read for this audience.

Apple recently announced a new partnership with IBM.  IBM, which knows a lot more about the enterprise them Apple, will develop over 100 industry-specific applications for the iPhone and iPad, and IBM’s more than 100,000 consultants and software developers will work with their corporate customers — companies such as Nestle, FedEx, Deutsche Bank, Johnson Controls, Luxottica, American Airlines, Barclay’s, Cisco Systems and GE — to encourage iPhone and iPad use.  IBM will even sell iPhones and iPads directly to IBM’s corporate customers.  As Apple CEO Tim Cook said, today’s Apple and IBM are a good match because “We do not compete on anything. And when you do that you end up with something better than either of you could produce yourself.”  You can get more details in this article by Arik Hasseldahl of re/code.  I remember the days when lawyers wondered whether an iPhone had a place in a law firm environment, back when BlackBerry dominated the market.  If this works as planned, I suspect that Apple will sell a ton more iPhones and iPads to companies.  And more selfishly, I hope that this increased focus on business leads to developments in iOS security, collaboration, etc. that can be used by lawyers in addition to the companies that we represent.  And now, the recent news of note:

• As I think about what kind of wearable device Apple might be working on for introduction later this year and how attorneys might make use of it, I’m interested to find out what attorneys are doing with the Android-based products that are currently on the market.  Alabama attorney Steven Sciple wrote a review for The Droid Lawyer of the LG G Watch and how he uses it in his law practice. 
• Similarly, Florida attorney Rick Georges talks about how he uses his Samsung Gear 2 smartwatch in an interview with Nicole Black for Above the Law.
• John Edwards of Law Technology News explains how to make the most of Wi-Fi on an iPhone or iPad.
• Federico Viticci of MacStories reviews Hours, a good looking app that attorneys and others can use to track billable hours.  Click here to get Hours ($4.99): 

  

• I listen to a lot of podcasts, and I’ve tried just about every podcast app, but until recently had never found one that I really liked and thus just stuck with Apple’s own app.  But Marco Arment recently released Overcast, and it quickly became my favorite app for playing podcasts.  If you listen to podcasts like I do, check out Jason Snell’s review of Overcast for Macworld; I agree with just about every word in his article.  Click here to get Overcast (free): 

  

• I sometimes hear people say that they wish that the iPad had a USB port to make it easier to transfer files from a computer.  Walt Mossberg of re/code reviews an upcoming device called iStick that looks to be the next best thing; a thumb drive that has both a USB and a Lightning connector that you can use to transfer files between a computer and an iPad without having to put the files on the cloud.  Considering the price ($80 to $250) you should look into other options too, like Transporter (a past sponsor of iPhone J.D.), but the iStick is an interesting idea.
• Marco Tabini of Macworld wrote a good article about Touch ID, the fingerprint scanner on the iPhone 5s that I suspect will also be on the iPad later this year.  His article discusses not only what Touch ID is today but also how it will be expanded in iOS 8 in a few months.
• Are you ready for some football?  In the past if you wanted to subscribe to NFL Sunday Ticket, you had to also subscribe to DirecTV.  But this year, you’ll be able to subscribe from any iOS device for $200.  Sam Oliver of AppleInsider has the details.
• Are you ready for some hiking?  Stephanie Mlot of PC Magazine reviews the GoTenna, an upcoming device that allows you to stay connected to other iPhone and Android users up to 50 miles away even when there is no cellular or Wi-Fi service.  You can also use it when traveling abroad to stay in touch with another GoTenna users without paying international cellular roaming fees.
• Do you have a suggestion for Apple?  You could also just send an email to Apple CEO Tim Cook.  As AppleInsider reports, that is what one man did when he had a complaint about the quality of the music played when on hold with Apple, and Tim Cook read the email and fixed it.
• The Joy of Tech has a funny cartoon on an iPhone game that many of us have played before.  There is also a funny take on the recent Apple-IBM collaboration.
• And finally, Jimmy Kimmel created a funny video this week on the new products that Apple might come out with this Fall:

Yesterday, Apple released the results for its 2014 fiscal third quarter (which ran from March 30, 2014 to June 28, 2014) and held a call with analysts to discuss the results.  This is typically not a big fiscal quarter for Apple; the important quarter for Apple every year is the first fiscal quarter containing the holiday sales season, and during the fiscal third quarter, most potential Apple customers wait to see what new products Apple will introduce in the Fall.  Even so, Apple reported record results for a third fiscal quarter:  revenue of $37.4 billion and net profits of $7.7 billion.  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.  Apple’s official press release is here. 

As always, I’m not as interested in the financial details as I am the statements of Apple executives during the call (Apple’s CEO Tim Cook and Apple’s new CFO Luca Maestri) that are of interest to iPhone and iPad users.  Here are the items that stood out to me as of interest to iPhone and iPad owners:

iPhone

• Apple sold 35.2 million iPhones.  That’s up from the 2013 fiscal third quarter, when Apple sold 31.2 million iPhones.  By my count, as of June 28, 2014, Apple had sold over 551 million iPhones. 
• Now that the iPhone is on China Mobile (the largest mobile phone company in the world), iPhone sales in China jumped 48% in the past quarter.  Cook stated:  “China, honestly, was surprising to us that it was — we thought it would be strong, but it well went past what we thought.”
• Maestri noted that at NASA, there are 26,000 iPhones in use, which raises an obvious question:  why isn’t there a website dedicated to astronauts who use iPhones?

iPad

• Apple sold 13.3 million iPads.  That’s down from the 2013 fiscal third quarter, when Apple sold 14.6 million iPads.  By my count, as of June 28, 2014, Apple had sold over 224 million iPads. 
• Cook noted that according to a survey by ChangeWave, there is a 98% satisfaction rate for the iPad Air, and an astonishing 100% satisfaction rate for the iPad mini. 
• Cook said that he expects to sell lots of additional iPads in the future; stating that in “a little over four years, we have now sold 225 million iPads, which is, I think, probably a larger number than anyone would have predicted at the time, including ourselves, quite frankly.  We still feel that category as a whole is in its early days, and that there is also significant innovation that can be brought to the iPad, and we plan on doing that.  When I look at the top level numbers, I get really excited when I see that more than 50% of the iPads that we’re selling are going to someone who is a first time tablet buyer.  I get excited when I see that our retail share according to the NPD in the month of June was 59% of units and over 70% in terms of dollars.  And of course, Luca has mentioned in his preamble that our education share is 85%.”
• Cook noted that while 60% of business employees use a laptop, only 20% use a tablet, so Apple sees room for growth in the enterprise market.  This is why Apple announced a new partnership with IBM last week, pursuant to which IBM will develop 100 mobile apps for businesses to use and IBM will sell iPads to companies.  Cook said:  “We’re very bullish about the future of the tablet market, and we’re confident that we can continue to bring significant innovation to this category through hardware, software and services.  We think our partnership with IBM, providing a new generation of mobile enterprise applications, designed with iPad’s legendary ease of use and backed by IBM’s cloud services and data analytics, will be one such catalyst for future iPad growth.”  As Cook reiterated later in the call, “mobile and enterprise is just an enormous opportunity. … We win if we can drive that penetration number I spoke about from 20[%] to 60[%].  That would be incredibly exciting here.  The walls would shake.  And so that’s what I hope for.”

iTunes Store / App Store

• I remember that back in the iPod days, the iTunes Store would break-even, which was okay with Apple because Apple used the iTunes Store as a way to promote iPod sales.  But the iTunes Store has started to make Apple lots of money, and Cook announced that for the first nine months of Apple’s fiscal year 2014, iTunes software and services were the fastest growing part of Apple’s business.  In the 2014 fiscal third quarter, iTunes saw $4.5 billion in revenue, a 12% increase from the 2013 fiscal third quarter.
• Apple also announced that there have been a total of 75 billion App Store downloads to date, and Apple has to date paid $20 billion to app developers.  In the January 27, 2014 call with analysts to discuss the 2014 fiscal first quarter, Peter Oppenheimer (who was then Apple’s CFO) said that there had been over 65 billion downloads and $15 billion paid to developers, so in the last six months there have been an additional 10 billion apps downloaded and another $5 billion paid to developers.  Apple keeps 30% of app revenues, so if developers got $5 billion in the last six months, that means that Apple received over $2 billion from App Store sales in the last six months.

iWatch?

• The big question on everyone’s minds seems to be what new product will be announced by Apple in the next three months.  The leading rumor seems to be some sort of wearable technology, perhaps called an “iWatch”.  Of couse, Apple isn’t spilling the beans yet, but Maestri did note, when discussing Apple’s next fiscal quarter, that “obviously in Q4, we got some transition costs because we’re expecting a very busy Fall.”  I look forward to it!

If part of your job as an attorney is to review depositions, TranscriptPad is one of the best apps you can have on your iPad.  It makes it easy to read depositions and, while you do so, identify the important parts of the deposition testimony that relate to all of the key issues in your case.  The app also makes it easy to create reports of the key portions of a specific deposition or all depositions in the case organized by topic.  For example, with just a few taps, TranscriptPad can give you a report of all of the testimony from all of the witnesses in a case that you indicated as being important to a defendant’s affirmative defense, useful when you want to draft a motion for summary judgment on that affirmative defense.  The app also makes it easy to carry around all of the transcripts from all of your cases on your iPad so you can access the testimony anytime that you want.  I reviewed the 1.0 version of the app back in January of 2012, and I also reviewed a significant update to the app in July of 2013. 

TranscriptPad currently costs $89.99, and is easily worth it because it allows you to be so much more productive with your deposition transcripts.  But I know that $90 is more expensive than most of the other apps that attorneys use, so on the rare instances when TranscriptPad goes on sale, I try to spread the word.  Ian O’Flaherty, the developer of TranscriptPad, tells me that today and tomorrow (July 16-17, 2014), the app is on sale for only $49.99.  That’s how much the app cost when it was first introduced at version 1.0 in January of 2012, back when it lacked many of the powerful features that have been added since then.

O’Flaherty also tells me that TranscriptPad will soon be updated to version 1.8, which will add a bunch of new features and will be a free update to all users.  Some of those new features include:

• Brand new look and feel, updated to match the aesthetic of iOS 7.
• When the left column displays issues codes with page/line numbers, the page/line numbers currently being displayed on the right will be shaded on the left to make it easier to tell what you are looking at and understand where you are among all of the testimony that you coded.
• You can tap the Page X/Y indicator at the top right to bring up a new “Jump to Page” option.
• Improvements to the way that the app uses flags and blue dots to indicate when you have notes associated with testimony.

Here is a screen shot that O’Flaherty allowed me to share with iPhone J.D. readers to show off some of these new features:

If you are a litigator who reads and annotates deposition transcripts and you don’t yet use TranscriptPad, I encourage you to take advantage of the sale and download this useful app.  I use the app all the time, and it is one of the most helpful apps on my iPad.

Click here to get TranscriptPad (normally $89.99, but currently $49.99): 

There is a KickStarter campaign seeking to raise $100,000 to produce a documentary called App: The Human Story that will discuss the impact of the availability of apps for mobile devices.  It’s an interesting idea, and caused me to think about the impact that Apple’s App Store — which turned six years old yesterday — has had on installing software.  Software for computers has, of course, been around for years, but most folks rarely saw the need to buy much additional software; they would buy Microsoft Office and the other basics, and then were pretty much done.  But now with the iPhone/iPad and the App Store, I see people downloading new apps all of the time, making their devices so much more powerful as they add functionality (and so much more fun as they add games).  I suspect that most iPhone J.D. readers have rarely purchased computer software but download iPhone and iPad apps all of the time.  And now, the recent news of note:

• St. Louis attorney Todd Hendrickson describes his successful use of the TrialPad iPad app during a two-week trial in a post on Lawyerist.
• You can download a free TrialPad 4 Quick Start Guide through the iBookstore by clicking here.
• Ben Stevens of The Mac Lawyer notes that the Scanner Pro app, normally $6.99, is on sale for $2.99.  Ben names it his “go to” scanner app.  I reviewed in in 2012, and it is still my favorite scanner app.
• Boston attorney Martha Sperry describes the options for reviewing transcripts on an iPad on the Solo Practice University blog.  I use, and really like, the TranscriptPad app.
• John Edwards of Law Technology News provides tips for handling notifications on the iPhone.
• Raw Ward, an appellate lawyer in the New Orleans office of my law firm (Adams and Reese), notes that the U.S. Fifth Circuit has a new website that uses dynamic design to work well on mobile devices.
• Every year in December, the ABA Journal publishes its list of the top 100 law blogs (blawgs).  The ABA is starting to decide which 100 blawgs to include in this year’s list and is asking for your help in the form of “Amici” submissions.  Click on this link if you want to tell the ABA Journal editors about one or more websites aimed at legal professionals that you enjoy, whether it be iPhone J.D. or any other blog.  The deadline for submissions is August 8, 2014.
• Looking for an external Bluetooth speaker for your iPhone?  David Pierce of The Verge looked at the market and concluded that the Logitech Ultimate Ears BOOM was the best.  You can get it on Amazon for $179.99.
• Dave Johnson of Macworld looks surveys the hardware options for adding an external lens to your iPhone.
• Transporter is a past sponsor of iPhone J.D., and I talked about the product in this post.  I use the product virtually every single day as a way to share secure files between my computers, iPhone and iPad without having to worry about the security implications of cloud services like Dropbox.  I mention it now because I see that if you buy a Transporter today from the manufacturer and use the code 500FREE when you checkout, you can get a 1TB Transporter for the 500GB price, a $50 savings.
• I’ve never before noticed that the Trapper Keepers and the Apple II computers that I used when I was younger used the same font, but look at that.
• For those keeping track at home, this is the 250th edition of In the news.  Time flies.
• And finally, Apple loves to put together nice videos, and they recently posted a good two minute video showing the thousands of Apple employees and their families who marched in the San Francisco Pride Parade on June 29, 2014.  The cards you see folks handing out were $1 iTunes cards.  The video is below, or you can click here.  The song is A Sky Full Of Stars by Coldplay (click here to buy on iTunes).

Last week, Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson announced in a press release that he was directing TSA to “implement enhanced security measures in the coming days at certain overseas airports with direct flights to the United States.”  This past Sunday, the TSA announced that one of the ways that it will do so is that TSA officers at overseas airports will require owners of mobile devices, including cellphones, to show the TSA officer that the device is powered up before being cleared through security on a flight to the U.S.  According to the TSA’s press release:  “Powerless devices will not be permitted onboard the aircraft.”

When you are traveling, there is a good chance that you will be using your iPhone and iPad extensively.  I know from my own experience and from what I have seen of others at airports that there is nothing unusual about using an iPhone or iPad all day long and then by the time you get to the airport, you are out of power.  This often results in folks scrambling to find an outlet where they can try to recharge at the airport.  But most folks wait to do that until after they pass through TSA security, when they are at the gate waiting for a flight to leave.  That approach is not going to work with this new TSA requirement.

The TSA has not announced the specific airports where it will implement this new requirement.  Ben Lovejoy at 9to5Mac says that the requirement has been implemented at London’s Heathrow airport.  NBC News reports that smartphones will be subject to “extra security checks on U.S.-bound direct flights from Europe, the Middle East and Africa.”

I’m curious whether this new requirement will actually result in better security.  As John Gruber of Daring Fireball points out, couldn’t a terrorist simply pack explosives into a laptop or other device that can still turn on the display?

Regardless, if you are traveling internationally, make sure that you save at least some charge on your iPhone and iPad (and laptop) for when you get to the airport.  This is yet another argument for carrying an external battery when you travel so that you can charge your devices.  I like the small and portable Powerocks Super Magicstick but there are tons of similar batteries on the market.  Also, a travel-sized device like the Monster Outlets to Go Power Strip might also be useful if you need to share an outlet with someone else.

I hope that the TSA doesn’t implement this requirement on domestic flights in the U.S.; I seriously doubt that it would stop a terrorist, but it would surely cause chaos for a lot of travelers.