When you buy an iPhone from AT&T for $200, that is not the “real” cost of the iPhone.  I’ve read that AT&T pays Apple around $550 for the iPhone, so they lose $350 on the sale.  Of course, AT&T makes that up because you have to agree to a two year contract and AT&T collects far more than $350 from you over two years.

If you want to get out of your AT&T contract before the 24 months are over, you need to pay an early termination fee (ETF).  Right now, the ETF for all AT&T phones is $175, but AT&T announced this past Friday that starting June 1, AT&T is raising the ETF for smartphones like the iPhone to $325.  That amount decreases by $10 every month that you are on your two year contract (it used to be $5 a month), so if you want to leave AT&T in month 23 without waiting that extra month, the ETF drops to $95.  AT&T explains the reasons for these changes in this open letter to its customers. (Note that Verizon currently has a $350 ETF, so even the increased AT&T rate is lower than Verizon.)

I presume the next iPhone will be out in June or July, so if you plan to get the next iPhone, either by becoming a first-time AT&T customer or by extending your current contract, then the new ETF will apply to you.

Frankly, I don’t see the ETF as a big deal.  Right now in the U.S., you can only use an iPhone with AT&T, so as long as you plan to use your iPhone for two years, you are going to need to stick with AT&T anyway.  And even if Apple starts selling an iPhone through Verizon, the iPhone you buy to work with AT&T won’t work with Verizon anyway.  At least, not this year; in the future, when AT&T and Verizon both have a 4G network and a future iPhone works with that network, then the same unit could work on both carriers so it might be important to you to be able to switch from one to another.  But for now, if you buy an AT&T iPhone, you’re going to want to stay on AT&T as long as you continue to use that iPhone.

The only real impact I see is that if you buy a new iPhone this June, and then in say June of 2011 there is an iPhone on Verizon and you want to switch to Verizon, at that point you will need to pay an ETF to switch.  Twelve months into a contract, with the new ETF, you will need to pay AT&T $205 to jump over to Verizon.

Whether you ever switch networks or not, it is always good to know what you are agreeing to in a contract.  Thus, if you plan to get a new iPhone this summer when Apple releases the next model, keep in mind that you will be agreeing to the new ETF.

Today, I will be appearing live on This Week in Law, the great podcast hosted by Denise Howell on Leo Laporte’s TWiT Network.  I am huge fan of TWiT podcasts such as TWiL, MacBreak Weekly, net@night and of course the flagship show This Week in Tech, so I am really honored to be on the program today.  In addition to Denise Howell and me, the show will feature TWiL regular and Chicago technology lawyer Evan Brown of the Internet Cases website and Fred von Logmann, Senior Staff Attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), an accomplished IP lawyer and a crusader for free speech and privacy in the digital age who has appeared on CNN, CNBC, ABC’s Good Morning America, and Fox News O’Reilly Factor.  If you want to listen live today, the show airs at 11 am Pacific / 1 pm Central / 2 pm Eastern at http://live.twit.tv and usually lasts about two hours.  For those of you who actually need to work today, in a few days you will be able to download the video or audio podcast on iTunes.  Here is the iPhone news of note for this week:

• Foxconn Technology Group, which manufactures Apple’s iPhone, has been in the news lately because of number of its workers have committed suicide.  This led the Chinese weekly newspaper Southern Weekend to send one of its reporters to work undercover at Foxconn for a month.  Engadget has posted a full translation of his report on the inner workings at Foxconn, plus has an editorial on the subject by Laura June.
• Robyn Weisman writes for TidBITS about some of the major iPhone game developers.
• The Wall Street Journal reports that AT&T President Ralph de la Vega laughed off the notion that AT&T will be in trouble if (when?) the iPhone become available on another carrier:  “Mr. de la Vega just laughs when asked to give the date that AT&T’s
  
  deal with Apple runs out.  He downplays the effect AT&T will see when the iPhone becomes
  
  available to other carriers.  He says about 80% of AT&T’s customers
  
  are on family-talk plans or business-discount plans, which are very ‘sticky.’ Customers are reluctant to move away from those plans, so even
  
  if the iPhone is available elsewhere, AT&T believes it can hold on
  
  to those users.”
• Yardena Arar of Macworld reviews the AT&T MicroCell, the $150 device that uses your Internet connection to give you a bubble of 3G coverage in an area that is otherwise a 3G dead zone.
• Charles Jefferies of Brighthand reviews Documents to Go by DataViz for the iPhone.
• Apple continues to make inroads into the enterprise smartphone market.  AppleInsider reports that “Standard Chartered, a British bank with nearly 75,000 employees
  
  in more than 70 countries, has switched its standard corporate
  
  communications device from RIM’s BlackBerry to Apple’s iPhone.”
• Shane Lord, an HP employee in Australia, switched from an iPhone to an HTC Desire running Android, but recently switched back.  He writes in great detail on his Shasam.net blog that the problem is that the Android operating system has too many inherent flaws for any device running Android to match the advantages of the iPhone.
• Analyst guesses are often wrong so don’t trust these numbers, but
  
  Donald Melanson of Engadget reports
  
  on a prediction by analyst Mike Abramsky of RBC Capital Markets that
  
  Apple is currently selling more iPad than Macs.  He predicts that Apple
  
  is selling about 200,000 iPads per week, compared to 110,000 Macs and
  
  246,000 iPhones per week.
• Speaking of analysts, Eric Slivka of MacRumors reports that Gartner believes that Apple sells 2.7% of all cellphones in the world and 15.4% of all smartphones.
• Looking for good iPad apps?  Macworld published lists of its editors’ 11 favorite paid apps, 9 favorite free apps and 10 favorite games.
• Looking for even more good iPad apps?  Just wait.  Andy Ihnatko writes for Macworld that a second wave of even better iPad apps is coming soon.
• If you want to use an iPad to make presentations in court, at CLEs, etc., check out Joe Kissell’s article in Macworld on tips for presenting with the iPad.
• And finally, I’m sure that anyone who loves their iPhone would love to have this iPhone-inspired art in their home or office:  (Electroboutique via Gizmodo.)

There are lots of apps, both free and paid, that provide you with federal rules and other statutes on your iPhone, but LawStack is notable because it is a free and powerful app that contains in a single app all of the federal rules you are likely to need:  the federal rules of civil procedure, criminal procedure, appellate procedure, evidence and bankruptcy plus the U.S. Constitution.  LawStack was developed by Tekk

Innovations, a small technology firm in Massachusetts.  Last year I reviewed some of their CFR apps (some of which are free and some of which are paid), apps originally developed because Kasim Te at Tekk was an aviation consultant and helicopter instructor with a frequent need to review the applicable CFR regulations. 

Upon starting LawStack for the first time you see the bodies of law loaded into the app.  Subsequent launches bring you to whatever you were last viewing, which is helpful.  Tap on a body of law to see the titles, then tap on a title to see the rules, then tap on a rule to read the text.  One feature that I really like is that a date is located underneath each body of law so you know when the text was last updated.  I wish all of the legal reference iPhone apps had this feature; nobody wants to rely on outdated law.

   
 

You can tap once on the text of the rule to make the header and footer disappear to maximize the screen real estate for the text of the rule itself.

  
 

You can search for rules by searching for words either in the body of the rule itself or in the header.  Your search terms are highlighted in yellow in the text of the rule.  You can also pull up your search history to run a prior search again, a nice feature.

  
 

You can use the iPhone’s built-in copy feature to copy text, or you can e-mail the full text of a rule by tapping the button at the top right.  The app also allows you to change the font size if you prefer larger or smaller type when reading rules; tap the info button at top right of many screens to do so.

In addition to the free bodies of law that are included, the app also contains a built-in store at which you can download additional free or paid bodies of law such as notable bills, most any title of the CFR or US Code (the developer is working to add them all), and state statutes from (as of now) California, Florida, Texas or Washington.  Right now, many of these bodies of law are on sale.  You can rearrange your list of bodies of law on the main page or delete any compilations that you no longer want to have.

  
 

I like the model of this app:  you get a lot of great content for free, and as you grow to love the app you can choose to pay to add even more content. But even if you never pay for additional content, LawStack is a useful, free compilation of rules and laws that I encourage all lawyers using iPhones to check out. 

Click here to get LawStack (free): 

Today, John Gruber posted details on the top 10 operating systems used by visitors to Daring Fireball over the
past month as reported by Google Analytics.  He was impressed to see 5.85% of visits from people using an iPad, considering that the device has only been shipping for six weeks and still isn’t available outside the U.S.  It was also interesting to see the low percentage of Android visitors (0.21%) and even lower percentage of BlackBerry visitors (0.05%).  Gruber speculates that most BlackBerry users do not use the web very much because the screen size is so small and the browser on the BlackBerry is so poor.  I agree with that assessment.  But isn’t the Android supposed to have a nice screen and a superior web browser?

Gruber admitted that his site has a focus that encourages users of
Apple products to visit the site, but I still thought it was
interesting to see statistics from a site that gets well over 3 million
visitors a month.  Moreover, Gruber compares the traffic sources on Daring Fireball to other popular websites that have a different focus.  For all of those sites, traffic for the iPad was far more than the Android even though the iPad has not been out very long.

To provide one more point of comparison, here are the similar numbers for iPhone J.D.  Keep in mind that my traffic is far smaller than Daring Fireball and this site is far more focused on a
particular interest (um, that would be the iPhone) than Daring Fireball, but
with those caveats in mind, here are the operating systems
that I saw on iPhone J.D. from April 18 to May 18:

OS	Percentage
Windows	55.98
Macintosh	26.30
iPhone	13.17
iPad	2.55
iPod	0.76
Linux	0.62
Android	0.29
(not set)	0.20
BlackBerry	0.08
SunOS	0.01

If you find it easier to comprehend a picture than a table, here is the same info in a pie chart.  Windows is blue, Mac is green, iPhone is orange and iPad is the larger  yellow slice:

 

Because of the iPhone focus here, you would not expect to see much traffic from other smartphones, but note that the ranking of operating systems here is very similar to what Gruber (and others) saw on their websites, with the obvious exception that most iPhone J.D. visitors use Windows computers —no surprise considering that most lawyers use Windows, at least in their offices.

[UPDATE:  I had hoped to see other sites follow Gruber’s lead, and now I see that Josh Barrett at Tablet Legal has done so.  It comes as no surprise that iPad traffic there is almost 20%.]

I’ve always considered the excellent ability to access the web to be a major advantage of the iPhone, and now the iPad.  The numbers cited by Daring Fireball, much like mine, seem to provide some anecdotal support to the notion that accessing the Internet is such a good experience on the iPhone / iPad and thus folks using an iPhone / iPad access the web far more often than users of other smartphones and other mobile devices.

And no, I still don’t have an iPad myself, but I did get another chance to play with one this past weekend.  I have not yet decided how an iPad would fit into my life, but I cannot deny how cool the device is.

I want to follow up on two of my posts from last week because of interesting articles I ran across last night.  First, last Tuesday I reviewed the EyeTV app.  Steven Sande of TUAW posted an extensive review of the EyeTV app and the associated hardware that you need to watch TV on your iPhone, and even discusses some of the alternatives.

Second, last Wednesday I wrote about the free U.S. Code app by Law Professor Shawn
Bayern.  Josh Barrett of Tablet Legal interviewed Prof. Bayern on his app, and you can read the interview here.

As reported by sites such as Engadget and Electronista, AT&T announced this past Friday that while it is still working on next generation LTE 4G technology for some point in the future, in the interim it plans to give a speed bump to its current 3G service by rolling out something called HSPA+ to 250 million Americans by the end of 2010.  AT&T currently supports HSPA in many markets which can theoretically give you speeds of up to 7.2 Mbps.  HSPA+ will double that to a theoretical maximum of 14.4Mbps.

Theoretical maximums are interesting but somewhat irrelevant for end users who rarely see anything close to that.  But Gizmodo reported earlier this year that HSPA+ is deployed by T-Mobile in Philadelphia, and tests show real world speeds of up to 6Mbps, which is pretty darn fast for 3G.  The iPhone 3GS supports HSPA, so perhaps the next iPhone will support HSPA+ and see much better 3G performance.  (Indeed, this past March, Electronista reported that Apple was looking to higher people with HSPA+ experience.)

HSPA+ could help current iPhones too.  A PC Magazine article on the T-Mobile HSPA+ network in Philadelphia reported this past February:  “HSPA+ improves ordinary 3G
devices, too. I saw speeds on a T-Mobile MyTouch 3G triple when I entered the HSPA+ area (from around 600
kbps to 1.8 mbps). A T-Mobile WebConnect modem rated for HSPA 7.2 got
2.57 megabits down in the HSPA+ zone, but only 431 kilobits down in the
rest of Philadelphia.”

I don’t pretend to understand all of the ins and outs of 3G technology, but I’m happy to learn about AT&T working to improve the speed of its 3G network.  I look forward to seeing what this all means for the iPhones of today and tomorrow.

Here are some of the iPhone-related stories that I ran across this week that I thought might be of interest to readers of iPhone J.D.

• John Gruber wrote an excellent article for Macworld about how Apple starts out with modest products and then slowly but steadily builds upon them over the years to turn them into outstanding products.  I certainly feel that way about the iPhone.  The first generation was a cool gadget but not quite ready for business professionals, but the iPhone 3G fixed that, the 3GS improved upon that, and I cannot wait to see what the next version is this Summer.  I don’t have an iPad yet even though it is unquestionably an amazingly cool gadget, but over time as iPad-specific apps are released and Apple improves the product through software and hardware updates, I can’t even imagine how amazing the iPad will be years from now.
• I know that a lot of lawyers still use a BlackBerry instead of an iPhone, but Tom Kaneshige writes for CIO.com that BlackBerry’s days are numbered and that the iPhone is the future.
• The saga of the “lost” iPhone continues.  MacNN reports that today, a judge will hear a request from media outlets such as CNET, Bloomberg and the Associated Press to unseal the records related to the police raid on the house of Jason Chen of Gizmodo. [UPDATE:  The court granted the media’s request to unseal the records.  Unless reversed on appeal, I’m sure that this means that we will soon see news stories with more names, dates and information gained during the police investigation.]
• People oftern ask me whether the iPhone will come to Verizon, and just the other day I was talking with a Verizon employee convinced that it was happening in just a few months.  Attorney and Engadget editor Nilay Patel discovered from court documents that Apple’s initial deal with AT&T in 2007 was for five years.  Of course, that doesn’t tell us if or when we will see a Verizon iPhone.  Apple and AT&T could have changed the contract several times since that initial deal.
• Dan Moren of Macworld reviews the iHome iA5, a $100 bedside alarm clock and speaker system for your iPhone.
• Can you leave your laptop at home and use an iPad instead?  Michael Gartenberg did just that for two weeks of travel, and he lives to tell the tale.  (Spoiler alert:  the iPad does a good job, but we really need apps like Quickoffice or Documents to Go.)
• Harry McCracken reports on President Obama’s recent mention of the iPad.
• And finally, a few weeks ago in my Friday post I described a fun product called iRetrophone Base being sold on Etsy
  
  for $195.00 that combines your iPhone with a retro phone handset.  For more information on this cool design, check out this interview with the creator by the folks at iPhone Savior.

One of the very first items that I reviewed on iPhone J.D. was the RichardSolo 1800, an external battery for the iPhone.  The company sent me a review unit for free, and 18 months later it is still working great for me.  I cannot even begin to count the number of times that I have been out of the office all day in a deposition, in court, on a plane or in a CLE and that battery has allowed me to get through the day without running out of power on my iPhone.

The full retail price of the battery is $69.95, although you can get it on Amazon for only $40.99.  But now through Monday, you can buy the unit on the RichardSolo website for 50% off, only $34.98.  Or if you buy two or more units, they only cost $29.73.  I believe that you have to pay for shipping, so if you have Amazon Prime it might still cost about the same to get it on Amazon, but whether you pay $35 or $40 for this battery, it will be well worth it for you.

If you don’t currently have an external battery for your iPhone, I encourage you to get something like the RichardSolo 1800.  Toss it in your briefcase or purse and you’ll never have to worry about running out of battery power on your iPhone before the end of the day — unless you are REALLY going to be using your iPhone all day long, in which case you might want to carry two of these with you.

Three months ago, I reviewed U.S. Code, a free app from Law Professor Shawn

Bayern that contains the
entire text of the U.S. Code.  Because the app relies upon the most recent official electronic version of the U.S. Code — which does not include the very latest statutes adopted by Congress — if you use this app you need to be sure that you are always looking at the very latest version of the law.  Nevertheless, it is very useful to have the entire text of the U.S. Code in a single iPhone app.  Considering that this app is free, it is an app that I encourage every lawyer to download to his or her iPhone.

Prof. Bayern wrote me last night to tell me that the app has been updated to version 1.0.1.  From the number alone, that doesn’t sound like much of an update, but the latest version brings full iPad support.  If you use an iPad in court, even if you don’t have Wi-Fi or 3G Internet access, with this app you can still have the entire U.S. Code at your fingertips.  And whether you are using this app on an iPhone or an iPad, the latest version of the app also updates some of the content.  (Be warned, however, that the app is 200 MB, so it takes a while to download from the App Store and transfer to your iPhone.  This is currently the second largest app on my iPhone, behind Dragon’s Lair, an app that is full of video.)

Click here to get U.S. Code by Shawn Bayern (free): 

Elgato has been giving people the ability to watch and record TV on their computers for as long as I can remember, and now the company has an app that brings TV to your iPhone.  You’ll have to have a hardware device attached to your Mac or PC for it to work, but once you have that, you can stream live or recorded TV to your iPhone.  I’ve been testing this hardware and software combination for a few months now, and while I have encountered some hiccups, once you get the product working you can view great quality TV on your iPhone.

The Hardware Requirement

My focus here is on the iPhone app, but since you can’t use the iPhone app without having Elgato hardware on your computer, I’ll start by addressing that.  The company sent me (free for review purposes) its EyeTV One device, which you can get for just over $100 on Amazon.  The EyeTV One has a USB connector on one side and a coaxial connection on the other side to which you must attach your own antenna.  I use a “Silver Sensor” antenna similar to this one.  The device then works with the EyeTV software on your computer to give you free, over-the-air high definition television on your computer.  The quality of the image is excellent.  For a good sense of how the product works, here is a recent review by Macworld’s Jonathan Seff of a similar product clled EyeTV Hybrid ($134 on Amazon) which gives you not only over-the-air high definition plus also works with unencrypted cable television.

Unfortunately, I have had some trouble with the hardware.  The first unit I was sent would only get a signal for a minute or two and then would stop working.  After trying every software fix I could think of, Elgato sent me a replacement unit that solved the problem instantly.  The company’s service department was excellent, although I wish I had not wasted so much time trying to fix a problem that turned out to be a hardware issue.

Even with the replacement unit, I still sometimes have trouble with the TV signal, but here I am fairly certain that the fault is mine in that it is inherent with over-the-air television.  You have to have a decent over-the-air signal for it to work, and I don’t always get that in the study in my house where my computer is located.  This problem brings back memories for me; I was an early HD adopter back in 2002, back in the days when you needed to use an antenna to get HD local stations.  Because of where my house is located and the buildings between me and the transmitters in New Orleans, I sometimes had problems getting an HD signal with an indoor antenna.  Nowadays, cable and satellite companies provide HD local stations so it has been a long time since I needed to use an indoor antenna to get HD local channels, but with the EyeTV I sometimes find myself having the same problems again.  And there is nothing worse than recording an episode of a show like Lost and syncing it to your iPhone via iTunes only to discover while you are on a plane and ready to watch the episode that the recording is poor.  Yes, that happened to me, and yes, it was annoying.  I hate to dwell on this too much because you might get excellent reception where you live.  For example, Seff noted in his Macworld review that he had “a small antenna on my desk at work with a clear view of San Francisco’s Sutro Tower, from which I could
pick up nearly 40 channels.” 

When it works, however, EyeTV hardware and software on the computer is really nice.  I don’t have a TV in my study, but with EyeTV I can now work on my computer at home and have a tiny window in the corner showing live TV.   Or I can expand the window to full screen, turning my iMac into a 27" high definition TV with an awesome image.

[UPDATE 5/24/10:  Elgato has now released the $200 EyeTV HD that hooks up to your cable or satellite box.  If this setup works in your home, this looks a great way to use the EyeTV to record from EVERY channel that you get, plus this solution isn’t subject to the problems of over-the-air HD reception.]

The EyeTV app

As I said, however, my real focus here is not the EyeTV hardware but instead the EyeTV app on the iPhone.  Once you get the EyeTV hardware and software working on your computer, the $5 EyeTV iPhone app works quite well.  Using either Wi-Fi or 3G (the ability to use 3G was added only recently), you can stream video from your computer to your iPhone, no matter where in the world you are.  Thus, whatever live TV your computer is able to pick up, thanks to the hardware product such as the EyeTV One, is streamed from your computer to your iPhone.  I noticed about a 12 second delay from live TV over Wi-Fi, and about a 20 second delay using 3G.  If you are watching a live sporting event the delay might be annoying, but for most uses I had no way of noticing the delay at all.

Setting up the EyeTV app to find your computer is surprisingly easy.  If your iPhone is on the same Wi-Fi network as your computer, it happens instantly.  For 3G or Wi-Fi connections to a remote computer, a locator utility running on your computer lets your iPhone find your computer.  It works well.

After you set up the app to find your computer, it does so easily and quickly over either Wi-Fi or 3G.  From the main menu your choices include watch live TV or watch something that you recorded on your computer using the EyeTV software that comes with a device like the EyeTV One. 

 

If you select Live TV, you will get a list of the channels that your computer can receive and a description of what is currently playing  The information comes from TV Guide, which is free for the first year that you have the EyeTV hardware on your computer and $20 a year after that. 

   

If you can use Wi-Fi to watch TV, the quality is excellent.  Over 3G, the image is much more pixelated.  It is difficult to convey this using pictures instead of video, but these two frames will give you a sense of the difference.  The first one is Wi-Fi, the second one is 3G.  To be fair, however, both of these still frames look worse than the video looks.  Capturing just a single frame is not a good way to show off video.

 

 

If you select to watch a recording, you will get a list of everything recorded on
your computer, and if you select an episode you are given more
information from TV Guide about the episode.

 

Start to watch either live TV or a recorded program and the show will stream from your computer to your iPhone.

 

Note that while the app lets you stream something you previously recorded, the EyeTV software on your computer can be set to automatically create an iPhone-compatible version of a show after it records it.  Thus, you can transfer the show to your iPhone using iTunes and watch it on your iPhone just like you would watch a TV show that you purchase from Apple via iTunes.  As a result, it will often not be necessary to stream a recorded show unless you have not yet had a chance to sync it to your iPhone using iTunes.

Watching TV on your iPhone is very neat and can be very useful.  If you are out of town and want to watch your local news, sports, etc. back home instead of whatever is showing on the TV in your hotel room, you can now watch whatever you want on your iPhone using the EyeTV app — assuming that you left your computer on at home.  Or if you are in your office or in some other location that doesn’t have a TV and you want to watch something, such as breaking news on an important event, your iPhone can now function like a portable TV.

Should you get the EyeTV app?  The app itself is easily worth $5, but of course to use the app you also have to spend $100+ for the hardware.  If live TV on your iPhone is not that important, and you would just like to watch the occasional TV episode, it may be cheaper to just buy episodes as you want to watch them from iTunes.  You won’t encounter any commercials and the quality will be excellent.  On the other hand, if you find that you often travel and/or often find yourself in situations where you would like to be able to watch TV when you don’t have access to a “real” TV, the
$100+ might be worth it to you.  One thing that cannot be disputed is that watching live TV on an iPhone is a neat trick, and EyeTV does that job well.

Click here to get EyeTV iPhone app ($4.99): 

Click here to get EyeTV One (the hardware) from Amazon ($104.26).