Yesterday, Apple announced its 2009 Fiscal Fourth Quarter results.  If you want to replay it, you can download it from iTunes or you can read the transcript provided by Seeking Alpha.  Here is
the significant iPhone news from the conference call, which came from Apple’s Chief Financial Officer, Peter Oppenheimer, and Apple’s Chief Operating Officer, Tim Cook.

• This was one of Apple’s best quarters ever.  The company reported revenue of $9.87 billion, its second highest quarter ever.  And this wasn’t even the first fiscal quarter, the quarter which contains Christmas and is always Apple’s best quarter.  The company is doing very, very well.
• Apple sold 7.4 million iPhones this past quarter, the most that Apple has ever sold in any quarter.  The previous record had been held by last year’s fiscal fourth quarter, which was the quarter following the introduction of the iPhone 3G and the huge increase in the number of countries selling iPhones.  As Tim Cook said, “the popularity of the iPhone 3GS has been phenomenal.  We were very surprised by the demand.” 
• Apple probably could have sold even more iPhones because demand exceeded supply.  Oppenheimer said that around the world, there were not enough iPhone 3GS units available for sale, so Apple ramped up supply in September and started to meet the demand in October.  One analyst asked Apple to predict how many iPhones Apple would
  
  have shipped if it had kept up with demand.  Tim Cook
  
  responded that there is really no way to answer that.  “You know,
  
  that’s a very tough question to answer because unfortunately
  
  we can’t run the experiment both ways. What I know is that for almost
  
  the entire quarter, until we got into September, the iPhone 3GS was
  
  short virtually everywhere. What I don’t know is how many people waited
  
  until it was available versus bought a competitive phone and there’s
  
  just—there is not a good way to tell that.”  In total, Apple sold
  
  almost 21 million iPhones in its 2009 fiscal year.
• Another analyst asked how iPhones are selling in the corporate market versus the consumer market.  Cook responded that there is a strong demand for iPhones by employees, so Apple has been upgrading the iPhone to add features that the technology departments at corporations are requiring to allow their employees to get iPhones.  Indeed, this is a reason for several of the features added in the iPhone 3GS.  As a result, over 50% of the Fortune 100 companies now deploy the iPhone or, at least, have test pilot programs in place.  Cook also noted that a number of government agencies are using the iPhone.  Similarly, in Europe, about 50% of the Financial Times 100 companies are using iPhones.
• Apple continues to say that there are over 85,000 apps in the App Store, a number that Apple first announced back in mid-September.  I was a little surprised that Apple didn’t update that number as I’m sure that the number is over 90,000 by now.  Perhaps Apple is just waiting for the number to top 100,000 before making its next announcement on the number of apps available, which I expect will happen in November.  Similarly, Oppenheimer said that there have been over 2 billion apps downloaded, the same number announced back in September.
• On October 30th, Apple will begin selling the iPhone in China, which presents the opportunity for a huge increase in international sales.  Oppenheimer wouldn’t predict how many iPhones will be sold in China, but he did say that Apple noticed that many of the older models of the iPhones have ended up in China so there is clearly demand, plus China is “a huge market, the largest market in the world in terms of total phones.”
• The iPhone 3G already sells in over 80 countries, and by the end of 2009 the iPhone 3GS will also sell in over 80 countries.  The iPhone 3GS was shipping in 64 countries as of the end of September, 2009.

[For my updated review of the Gogo service, click here.]

Last week, I took a cross-country Delta flight on a Boeing 757 that was equipped with Gogo In-flight Wi-Fi Internet.  Gogo and Delta are running a promotion through December 31, 2009 whereby first-time users can try the service for free.  I thought that this would be a good opportunity to test the service on my iPhone 3GS, so I followed the simple instructions on the card in my seatback pocket, entered “deltatrygogo” in the promo code blank when I got to the payment page, and within a minute I was on the Internet, which I used throughout my four hour flight.  The service worked great and I strongly recommend using Gogo if you want to have Internet access on your iPhone while you are flying.

The Gogo service is currently available on select domestic flights on Delta, United and American Airlines.  AirTran and Virgin America offer the service on all of their flights.  US Airways announced that it will add the service in 2010.

Access is easy.  Once your plane reaches 10,000 feet and you are told that you can use electronic devices, go to Settings and keep your iPhone in Airplane Mode but turn on Wi-Fi.  You will see gogoinflight as an available network.  Select it, and in just a few moments a screen will pop up for you to log on.  (If it doesn’t, just go to Safari and try to access any website.)  Follow the prompts to sign up, choose a plan (or use the promotional code noted above), and then you will see this screen telling you that you are connected:

 

At that point, you can use your iPhone to access the Internet to do just about anything you want.  Of course, you will want to read and send e-mails, and that works great.  Using Safari to access websites was also very fast.  Twitter and Facebook worked great, as did my RSS reader app, NetNewsWire.

The terms of service prohibit you from using VOIP to make phone calls using the Gogo service.  I briefly contemplated launching the Skype app just to see if it worked notwithstanding the terms of service, but then quickly decided against it.  The last thing I want is to be surrounded by people yakking on the phone on an airplane, so I certainly didn’t want to start any trends.  But you can easily interact with people on the ground by sending e-mail back and forth or by using instant messaging.  If your company supports VPN for extra security, VPN does work fine with Gogo.

One concern that I had was speed.  After all, we are talking about using the Internet at 30,000 feet.  But to my surprise, the speed was quite reasonable.  Gogo says that the speed varies depending on the number of people on the flight using the service.  I ran two speed test apps, at different points on the flight, and both of them consistently showed the speed as around 800 to 900 Kbps for download and almost 200 Kbps upload.  For example, here is the results screen from one of those apps:

That is not even close to the Wi-Fi speeds that I normally get on my iPhone (I get around 7000 Kbps down and about 800 Kpbs up on my home Wi-Fi), but it is very similar to what I typically see on AT&T’s 3G network.  Indeed, my subjective opinion of the Gogo service was that it felt as fast as a good 3G connection, which is plenty fast for most of what you want to do with an iPhone on a plane.

For example, I was able to download an app from the App Store quickly and easily.  I could download music and podcasts from iTunes, but it took a while to do so, depending upon the length (for example, around 10 minutes for one podcast).  YouTube worked fine.

Both as a test, and as a source of entertainment, I decided to access the NBC mobile website and watch some sitcoms I had missed last Thursday night (30 Rock, The Office and Parks and Recreation).  To do this, you go to m.nbc.com on your iPhone.  Click on the “video” tab and choose “full episodes.”  There are plenty of choices, around 17 shows that are currently on the air, and 11 classic shows (currently:  The A-Team, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Battlestar Galactica (the original series), Buck Rogers, Charles in Charge, Emergency, Knight Rider (the original series), Magnum P.I., Miami Vice, Quantum Leap and Simon & Simon).  Each show is broken into a few segments of up to around ten minutes.  When one segment ends the next segment starts to load.

By default, the iPhone waits until it has loaded enough of the segment so that it can play the video through to the end without pausing before it starts to play.  Sometimes I found that the segment would start in just a few seconds.  Other times, it would take a few minutes to buffer enough video, so I used that time to browse a magazine.  Either way, before long, I was watching the episode and the quality was excellent.  I had loaded my iPhone with video content before my flight, but it was so nice to watch something new that had aired so recently that I didn’t even bother with most of what I had loaded on my iPhone.  And as an added bonus, no commercials—although I’m sure NBC will include them at some point.

I have seen reports that Gogo uses traffic shaping to share the bandwidth on the plane, so if you are trying to do something that doesn’t use a lot of bandwidth, like check e-mail or even load web pages, your service will be given priority.  For high bandwidth uses like streaming video, you will be given a lower priority so that you don’t hog all of the bandwidth that your neighbors are trying to use.  This seems fair to me and probably explains some of the reasons that I had some delays when I was streaming television episodes.

So how much does Wi-Fi on your plane cost?  If you haven’t tried Gogo before and you fly Delta, you can use it once for free by using the promotional information I noted above.  [UPDATE 10/21/09:  Google and Virgin America are also offering free Wi-Fi on every Virgin America flight from November 10, 2009 through January 15, 2010.]  Otherwise, there are several cost plans.  For a short flight of 90 minutes or less, the cost is $5.95.  For any flight of more than 90 minutes, it costs $7.95 for a mobile device like an iPhone.  The iPhone price is cheaper than what you would pay on a laptop:  $9.95 for a flight of 90 minutes to three hours and $12.95 for a flight of more than three hours.  You can also pay $12.95 for 24-hour access on multiple flights or $49.99 for a month of access.

Is the service worth it?  I think so.  On a short flight of 90 minutes or less, I probably won’t have enough need for the Internet to spend $6 for it, but it is nice to know that it is there.  For a longer flight, $8 seems reasonable to be able to keep up with your office and be productive, and may also be worthwhile just to entertain yourself on the Internet.  Indeed, airports have already conditioned us to paying crazy high prices for food and bottled water, and you’ll probably get more out of the Gogo service than you did from the pre-flight Starbucks coffee that wasn’t much less than $8.

Apple made a major announcement to its app developers yesterday that should result in a major change to iPhone apps.  Until now, there was no way to try an app before you bought it.  Apple’s policy was that free apps should remain free, so you either had to pay full price to buy an app, or the developer could offer a free “lite” version of the app but it had to be a separate app that would always retain all of its features for free.  For the past few months, Apple has allowed developers to include in-app purchases, but developers could only include this feature in a paid app, not a free app.  As Daring Fireball, Macworld, and many other websites have reported, Apple has now changed its policy, and now free apps can now include the ability to purchase additional features within the app.  This means that a developer can let you download a free version of the full app that has some limitation but which also includes the ability to pay to add more features to the app, such as upgrading to the “full” version of the app.  Hopefully, many app developers will use this feature, and this could mean the end of separate, “lite” versions of apps.  I look forward to seeing what developers do with this.  Other notable iPhone news from the past week:

• For those of you who subscribe to Apple’s MobileMe, the service was updated on October 9, 2009.  All of the updates are minor and only two directly pertain to the iPhone, both of which are improvements to the Find My iPhone feature.  First, there is now an icon for Find My iPhone in the toolbar at me.com, which makes it easier to find the feautre.  Second, there is now a URL to go directly to this feature:  http://www.me.com/findmyiphone   Click here for Apple’s full release notes for this update.  By the way, the MobileMe service costs $99 a year, but you can get a discounted price of $72.99 through Amazon by clicking here

  

  , and if you use that link, Amazon provides a tiny amount of money back to iPhone J.D. to help pay for this website.
• This is a little “Inside Baseball,” but Daniel Eran Dilger provides a fascinating story at AppleInsider about the “Pink” project at Microsoft, an attempt to develop a competitor to the iPhone.  The article gets most interesting about halfway through when it starts to quote an anonymous former employee.  Apple may not be perfect, but it does seem to have a consistent vision for the iPhone and iPod touch, something which Dilger says is lacking at Microsoft.
• For a while, all we heard about were iPhone app developers becoming rich overnight and quitting their day jobs.  But according to this Newsweek story, many app developers struggle to make a profit.  This is an interesting contrast to another Newsweek story from last year, and also reminds me of what Cliff Maier, who develops apps for lawyers, told me in this interview last year:  “The other advice is this: don’t think you’re going
  
  to get rich.  The economics of the app store right now are that you
  
  have a tiny chance of making a lot of money, and a huge chance of
  
  making hardly any at all.   Do it because you need something you can’t
  
  get from someplace else, do it for the technical challenge or the
  
  personal satisfaction, or do it to help society.  Don’t do it for the
  
  money.  For me, the law is why I leave my house every day, but engineering is my passion.”
• John Brandon writes an interesting article for Computerworld on how the different hardware features of the iPhone work.
• JD Supra launched a free iPhone app called Legal Edge which allows you to view recent law-related articles, news, shared work product, blog posts and court filings.
• USA Today reports on an app that can be used instead of a key to unlock and start your car.
• Your iPhone can help you make a great cocktail.  Earlier this year I reviewed the excellent Cockatils+ app.  Macworld recently reviewed some similar apps, although that article indicates that Cockatils+ is still probably the best of these apps.
• It is technically possible to share your iPhone’s 3G internet connection with your computer, a feature called tethering, but AT&T has not enabled the feature.  9to5Mac reports that based on a recent statement from AT&T, we might not see this enabled before 2010.
• And finally, iPhone Alley reports on another use for the versatile iPhone:  saving your life by distracting a bear.

The Law Pod, a company started by law student Fitz Collings, is one of a few companies that sells legal reference materials for the iPhone.  The Law Pod sells the U.S. Constition for $0.99, and five other sets of rules for $1.99 each:  the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Criminal Procedure, Evidence, Appellate Procedure and Bankruptcy Procedure.  I reviewed the app sold by The Law Pod back in February of 2009, and at the time I noted that there were design differences between the Law Pod apps and the similar apps developed by Cliff Maier that might lead some to prefer one over the other, but also noted that The Law Pod apps were missing many features that were offered by the Cliff Maier apps.  Earlier this week, the Law Pod apps were updated to version 2.0, and there are some great improvements.  I’ll focus this post on the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure app, but these same improvements appear in many of the Law Pod apps and I presume that all of them will eventually receive updates to 2.0.

One design difference that has always existed between The Law Pod and legal reference apps sold by others is the way that the rules are set forth when you start the app.  In Cliff Maier’s apps, for example, you see a list of titles, which you then must tap to see a list of rules under each title.  The Law Pod has always instead given you a list of the rules.  One of the recent changes is that the list now includes the title of the rule, not just the number.  Here are the main screens of The Law Pod app (left) and the Cliff Maier app (right) to show you the difference:

    

Cliff Maier’s apps have long included a helpful JUMP button to allow you to go to a specific rule.  The Law Pod apps now include a similar GoTo button.  There seems to be a slight bug if you want to go to rules with a decimal point.  Notice how the below screen says “Example: 1.1”?  While there is no Fed. R. Civ. Pro. 1.1, there is a Rule 4.1, but you cant jump to it because the keypad lacks a period/decimal point.  You have to go to Rule 4 and then tap the NEXT button at the bottom to go to Rule 4.1.  I presume this minor bug will be fixed, and putting aside that bug, the GoTo feature works quite well.

 

A third new feature is the ability to change the font size and font
(the default Helvitica, Times or Courier).  For anyone whose eyes are
not as good as they used to be, this is a great feature.

    

    

There are other small improvements as well.  The app now saves your location in the app when you exit, so you can quickly return to the last rule you were reviewing.  Search features are improved so that the results are filtered as you type, and the search terms are highlighted in the rules.  Finally, you can view Advisory Committee Notes for each rule.

There are now several companies selling legal reference apps, but with these improvements, the apps sold by The Law Pod are excellent choices.

Click here for Fed. R. Civ. Pro. ($1.99): 

Click here for Fed. R. Crim. Pro. ($1.99): 

Click here for Fed. R. App. Pro. ($1.99): 

Click here for Fed. R. Evid. ($1.99): 

Click here for Fed. R. Bankruptcy Pro. ($1.99): 

Click here for U.S. Constitution ($0.99): 

How often has something like this happened to you.  It’s Friday and you think about how you have to do X on Monday morning.  The next thing you know, the weekend has passed, it’s the end of the day on Monday, and you realize that you forgot about X.  If only someone had poked you on Monday morning to say “psst, don’t forget about X.”  NotifyMe from PoweryBase is a fantastic $3.99 app that solves this problem.

PoweryBase is an iPhone software development company that was recently started by two guys in Europe.  Dominik Balogh has a design and marketing background and has worked with companies such as Heineken, Microsoft, Coca-Cola and Mastercard.  Pavel Serbajlo is a programmer who has worked mostly on financial/accounting software for the last eight years.  The two guys started PoweryBase in June of 2009 to work on iPhone apps, and NotifyMe was one of their first ideas.  Dominik tells me that the primary goal for NotifyMe was simplicity so that the app would be fast and easy to use.

Here is how the app works.  Simply pick a date and time and tell the app what message to send.  The process only takes a few seconds.  If you want to, you can also choose a category for the reminder.  Also, if you want to, you can choose to have the message repeat daily, weekly, every two weeks, monthly or yearly.  Then click save and your request is uploaded to the NotifyMe server.  When the time comes, no matter what you are doing on your iPhone, the message you previously typed will appear on your screen using the iPhone’s push notification capabilities.  (Indeed, NotifyMe was one of the very first iPhone apps to use push notifications, a feature added in iPhone Software 3.0.)  Note that because the alerts are pushed to your iPhone by a server, you have to have an Internet connection to get your reminder.  If you are in airplane mode, you won’t get your reminders.

The main screen of the app allows you to set a new reminder or see upcoming or past reminders.  If you choose to use categories, you can also see your upcoming and past reminders by category.

What makes the app even more useful are the various settings.  For example, you can select what happens when you start the app.  For me, every time I start the app I am doing so to set a new reminder, so I have the app automatically open to that screen upon launch.  You can also choose from nine different sounds that will be played when a notification arrives.  Or if you don’t want any sound to play when a reminder pops up, go to the main Settings app on your iPhone and choose Notifications –> NotifyMe, where you can disable the alert sound completely.

In addition to viewing your upcoming and past reminders from within the iPhone app, you can access the PoweryBase website and view all of  your reminders online.  You can modify reminders on the website just like you can on the iPhone, so if you want, you can create all of the reminders on the website using your computer and just receive reminders on your iPhone.  But for me, it is the ability to enter reminders on the iPhone that makes this app so great.  I can be anywhere, away from my computer, and when I think about my need to remember something in a few days I can jot it down right away on the iPhone app.

Even though NotifyMe’s calling card is its simplicity, additional features are planned for future upgrades.  These include custom repeating modes, custom categories, sharing reminders with others, having an alert sound in advance of a time, and alert sound looping.  I would love to see the ability to create a custom alert sound so that I could have one that is incredibly short, just a fraction of a second long.  I want something that catches my attention but is in no way annoying to anyone who may be around me.  Although the default sounds are not that obnoxious, I still opted to just turn off sounds completely rather than use one of the built-in sounds.

Of course, you don’t need to buy the NotifyMe app to have your iPhone remind you to do things.  You can instead create a calendar entry and set an alarm for that calendar entry.  But when you do that, you fill up your calendar with personal items like “get drycleaning” and “pick up milk” that are really to do items and not calendar events, items that do not really need to have a start and end time on your calendar.  Moreover, creating a reminder in NotifyMe is incredibly fast, much quicker than setting up a calendar entry and turning on an alarm.

It is always nice when developers create a free version of an app so that you can try before you buy, and the developers of NotifyMe have done just that.  NotifyMe Free includes all of the features of the full app except that (1) there is a 20 second “nag” screen very time you start it up and (2) you can only have 3 reminders at one time.  But that is enough for you to get a feel for how the app works and decide if you want to use it.  If you later upgrade to the full version of NotifyMe, the reminders you create in the free version will carry over to the paid version.

NotifyMe is a wonderful app.  It solves a specific problem and does so with a quick and easy to use interface, but also includes sophisticated features like categories and repeating items if you choose to use them.  The developers gave me a free copy of the full app so that I could
review it here, but I definitely think that it is worth $3.99 even if
it only stops you from forgetting something important once or twice.

Click here to get NotifyMe ($3.99): 

Click here to get NotifyMe Free (free): 

I’m headed to San Diego for the Fall Conference of PLAC (the Product Liability Advisory Council) at the end of this week.  It is a great organization with some wonderful members.  If you plan to attend and you want to meet up and talk about all things iPhone, let me know and I’ll see you there!

Yesterday, the Gadgetwise blog in the New York Times included a short article by Eric Taub entitled “Apple’s App Refund Policy:  No.”  The title of the article pretty much tells you the contents.  If you buy an iPhone app and it turns out that you don’t like it for any reason at all, you cannot return it.  Because most apps are free or cost only a few dollars, this is not a big deal.  However, there have always been a few expensive apps on the App Store, such as the ones that I previously mentioned here.  More recently, several companies are offering GPS apps with turn-by-turn directions for up to $100 or more, plus there is the Black’s Law Dictionary app which costs $49.99.  So there are now lots of apps that attorneys and others might think about buying for which the combination of the price tag and no return policy are a serious deterrent.

Thinking about the “no refund” policy of the App Store got my wondering about other App Store rules.  I’m sure that all of us always read the fine print before clicking “I agree,” so this may be nothing more than a refresher for you (ahem), but I thought it would be interesting to take a close look at the U.S. version of the App Store Terms and Conditions to see what else is in there.  By the way, this agreement is updated from time to time (as made explicit in Section 30), so I am only talking about the version in effect as of today, October 13, 2009.  (It says that it was last updated on September 9, 2009.)  Here are some items of interest:

1. Age requirements.  You have to be 13 years or older to use the App Store.  Moreover, if you are under 18 years old, you are supposed to read the Terms and Conditions with your parents or legal guardians before agreeing to them.  I can only imagine countless teenagers and parents across the nation reading the Terms and Conditions.  (Section 2.)

2. No use outside of the U.S.  You are only allowed to use the App Store while you are in the U.S. or its territories and possessions.  “You agree not to use or attempt to use the Service from outside of the available territory.”  (Section 3.)  I am fairly certain that I purchased DataViz’s Documents to Go app when I was in Russia a few months ago using the Wi-Fi at my hotel.  Oops.

3. It’s only a license.  You do not actually own the apps you purchase.  Apps “are licensed, not sold, to you.”  (Section 4.)

4. Transfer to other devices?  I know that if I purchase (um, I mean “license”) an app on my iPhone and then sync my iPhone to my Mac, when my wife syncs her iPhone to the same Mac, the app gets downloaded to her iPhone.  I’ve always assumed that was allowed because I know that when you purchase a song from iTunes you can transfer it to other iPods that are synced with the same Mac.  This assumption finds some support in Section 9 of the Terms and Conditions, which contains “Usage Rules” that state (1) “You shall be able to store Products from up to five different Accounts
on certain devices, including an iPod touch or iPhone, at a time” and (2) “You shall be able to store Products on five iTunes-authorized devices at any time.”  (Section 9(b)(ii) and (iii).)  That makes me think that it is okay to have an app that I buy on both my iPhone and my wife’s iPhone. 

On the other hand, I am not quite sure that I understand this paragraph and how it affects transferring apps between different devices:

You shall be able to manually sync Products from at least one
iTunes-authorized device to devices that have manual sync mode,
provided that the Product is associated with an Account on the primary
iTunes-authorized device, where the primary iTunes-authorized device is
the one that was first synced with the device, or the one that you
subsequently designate as primary using iTunes.

(Section 9(b)(vi).)  Additionally, at the end of
the Terms and Conditions, there is a separate part called “Licensed
Application End User License Agreement” which I’ll shorten to LAEULA 
It provides that the license is granted to use an app “on any iPhone or
iPod touch that you own or control” and the license “does not allow you
to use the Licensed Application on any iPod touch or iPhone that you do
not own and control ….”  (LAEULA, part a.)

Moreover, there is another provision of the Terms and Conditions that relates to the new “in app purchase” feature of iPhone Software 3.0.  This feature lets you pay for additional features for an app, whatever you purchase cannot be transferred to another device.  The Terms and Conditions seem to say that you cannot transfer these features to other iPhones:

Certain Products may include functionality that enables you to purchase
additional services, or licenses to additional functionality or content
for use within the Product (“In App Purchases”). In App Purchases that
are consumed during the use of the Product (e.g., virtual ammunition)
cannot be transferred among devices; can only be downloaded once; and
after being downloaded, they cannot be replaced. Once a consumable In
App Purchase is purchased and received by you, Apple shall be without
liability to you in the event of any loss, destruction, or damage. All
In App Purchases are deemed Products, and In App Purchases made within
Third Party Products are deemed Third Party Products, and treated as
such, for purposes of these terms and conditions.

(Section 4.)  Does that mean that if you purchase something in an app on your iPhone 3G, then you later decide to upgrade to an iPhone 3GS, you are not allowed to bring along the “virtual ammunition” and other add-ons that you purchased?  But on the other hand, the LAEULA provides that “The terms of the license will govern any upgrades provided by Licensor
that replace and/or supplement the original Product, unless such
upgrade is accompanied by a separate license in which case the terms of
that license will govern.”  (LAEULA part a.)

Thus, there seems to be a little confusion on whether you can transfer apps from one iPhone to another iPhone that syncs with the same computer.  Since I don’t offer legal advice on iPhone J.D., I won’t try to sort all of this out here, but I think that the provisions I cited above are the relevant ones on this issue.

5. Please stay in touch.  You agree to provide Apple “accurate, current, and complete information” when you register with Apple, and you also agree to “maintain and update your Registration Data as required to keep it accurate, current and complete.”  Otherwise, “Apple may terminate your rights to any or all of the Service ….”  (Section 7.)  So if you move or change your phone number, by all means let Apple know quickly!

6. Keep your password secret.  You are responsible for keeping your account and password confidential, and “Apple shall not be responsible for any losses arising out of the unauthorized use of your Account.”  (Section 8(a).)

7. Don’t hack that app.  It is a violation of the Terms and Conditions to violate the “security components,” which I presume means the digital rights management (DRM), on apps.  “You agree not to attempt to, or assist another person to, circumvent,
reverse-engineer, decompile, disassemble, or otherwise tamper with any
of the security components related to such Usage Rules for any reason
whatsoever.”  Apple reserves the right to monitor “for compliance purposes” so don’t be surprised if they figure out that you are doing something wrong.  (Section 8(b).)

8. If you lose it, you may not be able to re-download it.  You are responsible for maintaining the apps that you download.  “Solely as an accommodation to you, some Products may be re-downloaded
for use in accordance with the Usage Rules applicable to such Products” but Apple doesn’t promise that you will be able to do so, and Apple has “no liability to you in the event a previously downloaded Product becomes unavailable for re-download.”  (Section 9(a).)

9. Keep your reviews clean.  As you know, you can post reviews on the App Store of the apps that you purchase.  However, when you post, you cannot “infringe or violate the rights of any other party or violate any
laws, contribute to or encourage infringing or otherwise unlawful
conduct, or otherwise be obscene, objectionable or in poor taste ….”  (Section 9(e).)

10. Apple owns your reviews  Whatever you post when you review a prouct, Apple can use your words again.  “Moreover, you hereby grant Apple a worldwide, royalty-free,
non-exclusive license to use such materials as part of the Service, and
in relation to Products, without any compensation or obligation to you.”  (Section 9(e).)

11. No refunds.  This is the policy I mentioned above.  The general rule is that “no refunds are available.”  (Section 12(b).)  However, there are two exceptions.  First, if you purchase an app and technical problems “delay or prevent delivery of” the app, then the “sole remedy” is that Apple will replace the app or refund the price that you paid.  Apple gets to determine whether they replace the app or give you a refund.  (Section 12(b).)  Second, if you buy an app but then, prior to download, the app becomes “unavailable,” your “sole remedy in such cases is a refund of the price paid for the unavailable licensed Product.”  (Section 18.)  I know that Apple sometimes removes an app that was previously available in the App Store, and if you time your purchase incorrectly, this may happen to you.  Something similar happened to me just this past weekend.  There was an iPhone game available this weekend for free that normally costs a few dollars, so I decided to try it out.  I clicked the button to download the app, but I got an error message.  I tried again with no success.  Then I went back to the App Store 15 minutes later and saw that the app had returned to its original price.  Even though the App Store clearly said that the app was free when I clicked the button to get it, apparently the price changed during that small window before I could download it.  Thus, I suppose under Section 18 my remedy was that I got my money back—and since I paid nothing, I got nothing.

12. iTunes cards are only for iTunes.  I’ve always known that if you buy an iTunes gift card, it can be used only on iTunes, including the App Store.  You cannot use the card to buy an Apple hardware product such as a new iPod or iPhone.  What I didn’t know it that this is explicitly stated in the Terms and Conditions.  (Section 16.)

13. Be careful when playing games.  Section 20 is titled “Important Safety Information” and provides:

(1) To avoid muscle, joint or eye strain during video game play, you
should always take frequent breaks from playing, and stop and take a
longer rest if your eyes, hands, wrists or arms become tired or sore or
you feel any other discomfort. (2) A very small percentage of people
may experience seizures or blackouts when exposed to flashing lights or
patterns, including while playing video games or watching videos.
Symptoms may include dizziness, nausea, involuntary movements, loss of
awareness, altered vision, tingling, numbness, or other discomforts.
Consult a doctor before playing video games if you have ever suffered
these or other symptoms linked to seizures and/or epilepsy, and stop
playing immediately and see a doctor if these or similar symptoms occur
during game play. Parents should monitor their children’s video game
play for signs of symptoms.

I suppose these sorts of provisions are common in video games nowadays.

14. Objectionable material.  Apple is pretty famous for excluding apps from the App Store if they contain nudity or other objectionable material.  But just in case you find something that you consider offensive, you can’t blame Apple for it:

You understand that by using the Service, you may encounter material
that may be deemed offensive, indecent, or objectionable, which content
may or may not be identified as having explicit material. Nevertheless,
you agree to use the Service at your sole risk and that Apple shall
have no liability to you for content that may be found to be offensive,
indecent, or objectionable. Application types and descriptions are
provided for convenience, and you acknowledge and agree that Apple does
not guarantee their accuracy.

(Section 21.)

15. California, here I come.  California law governs the Terms and Conditions, and you “expressly agree that exclusive jurisdiction for any claim or dispute
with Apple or relating in any way to your use of the Service resides in
the courts of the State of California.”  On the plus side, it’s a wonderful state with lots to do while you are there.

16. Don’t sell your apps.  Even if you are done using the app that you purchased, you can’t sell it to someone else.  “You may not rent, lease, lend, sell, redistribute or sublicense the Licensed Application.”  (LAEULA, part a.)

17. No nukes.  You cannot use an iPhone app to design nuclear weapons, so don’t even think about it, buddy.  “You also agree that you will not use these products for any purposes
prohibited by United States law, including, without limitation, the
development, design, manufacture or production of nuclear, missiles, or
chemical or biological weapons.”  (LAEULA, part g.)

The above analysis is based only on the text of the Terms and Conditions.  It may be that Apple has, from time to time, offered some explanations of the Terms and Conditions that alter or clarify something that I noted above.  And once again, I’m not offering legal advice here, so if you want to learn more about your rights, go get a lawyer. 

Almost every day, I receive e-mails with PDF files attached that are scans of pleadings, briefs, exhibits, etc., either because someone scans something and e-mails it to me, or because someone faxes something to me.  (My law firm automatically converts all faxes to PDF files and then e-mails the file to the recipients.)  Every once in a while, someone will scan or fax a document upside down.  On a computer, this is only a minor inconvenience; I can just use the rotate command to rotate the image 180º to fix it.

On the iPhone, however, the solution is not so obvious.  When you get an upside down PDF, your natural inclination is to just rotate your iPhone, but as you do so, the image on the screen rotates with you, so it remains in the upside down position.  The result is frustrating, albeit mildly comical.

The solution is to hold a finger down on your screen and then rotate your iPhone so that it is upside down.  Do not move your finger while you are rotating.  Your finger on the screen prevents the iPhone from rotating while you turn it.  When you are finished, your iPhone will be upside down, but the PDF will appear right side up.

Yesterday, Apple released an iPhone update, iPhone Software 3.1.2.  No, you didn’t miss anything, there was no 3.1.1; the last public release was 3.1 on September 9, 2009.  3.1.2 is a minor release that fixes three bugs:  (1) a bug that would sometimes prevent an iPhone from waking from sleep mode, (2) a bug that could interrupt your cellular service until you restarted and (3) a bug that could cause a crash when streaming video.  I never experienced any of those problems, but I’m always happy to see bugs fixed before they make their way to my own iPhone.  I still hope to see iPhone Software 3.2 with new features before the end of this year.  I have no special information that it is coming; this is just my guess based on the release schedule after 2.0 came out last year.  Other interesting iPhone news from the last week:

• If your company uses Lotus Notes,  you’ll be pleased to see this MacNN report that IBM has released version 8.5.1 which now supports the iPhone, including push e-mail and contacts.
• Will AT&T limit data use by iPhone users?  PC World reports on a speech given this week by AT&T Wireless CEO Ralph de la Vega at the CTIA Conference in San Diego.  De la Vega said that just 3% of AT&T’s smartphone customers (presumably iPhone users) use 40% of all smartphone data, 13 times the usage of the average smartphone customer, but only represent 1% of AT&T’s total postpaid customer base.  To remedy this, De la Vega said:  “We have to manage the network to make sure that the few cannot crowd out the many.”  It’s not very clear what, if anything, this means, but PC World speculates rationing to limit use by heavy iPhone users.  We’ll see how this all shakes out.
• Following up on my post from Wednesday about AT&T changing its position and allowing iPhones to use VoIP, yesterday David Pogue of the New York Times provided his analysis on the development.
• There were lots of iPhone-related survey results released this week.  Let’s start with InfoWorld, which shares some of the highlights from a report on smartphones by CFI Group, a consultancy that helps businesses improve customer satisfaction.  Apple has the best customer satisfaction at 83%, followed by Android and Palm Pre at 77%, the Blackberry at 73%, the Palm Treo at 70%, and Symbian and Windows Mobile devices at 66%.  Other fun facts:  the iPhone scores highest for word-of-mouth recommendations, and people who use other smartphones are most likely to switch to an iPhone if they switch.  In the past, smartphones were mostly purchased by businesses, but today CFI says that they are mostly purchased by individuals for personal needs.
• InformationWeek reports on a J.D. Power survey of business smartphone users and concludes that iPhone owners are the most satisfied with their smartphones.  Blackberry came in second.  One interesting statistic is that more than half of the business users surveyed said that they downloaded games for their smartphone, which J.D. Power saw as evidence that “business users are also integrating their
  
  devices into their personal lives.”  Indeed, this is the reason that I encourage so many lawyers to get an iPhone.  As I told Alan Cohen who wrote this recent article for AmLaw, if the only thing you want to do with your smartphone is read and respond to e-mail, then the Blackberry does that just fine, but I discourage people from thinking that e-mail is the only reason for a smartphone because you can do so much more.  The Blackberry can’t touch the iPhone when it comes to web browsing, photos, music, games, maps, the tens of thousands of third-party apps, not to mention other important features like ease of use.  As more people, including lawyers, realize all that a smartphone can do, even more people will opt for an iPhone.
• And it’s not just the grown-ups who want an iPhone.  In a rare example of teenagers lusting after the same thing that their parents desire, Larry Dignan of ZDNet reports on Piper Jaffray’s bi-annual survey of
  
  teenagers, and the iPhone is what the kids want.  Six months ago, 8% of
  
  teens had an iPhone.  Now, 15% of teens own one, and another 22% expect
  
  to buy one soon.
• If you are still hungry for more statistics, Tammy Parker writes an interesting story for telecoms.com following the recent 360iDev Conference.  For example, statistics show that the average paid iPhone app has 9,300 downloads, while the average free iPhone app has 71,000 downloads.  Another interesting statistic:  there are more $4.99 apps sold than any other price point.  
• I’ve previously reviewed the Richard|Solo line of external batteries for the iPhone.  You can get a small 1200 mAh version for $40 that will give you almost another full charge on the iPhone, or the 1800 mAh $70 version that
  
  will bring you from 0% to 100% with even more charge left to use
  
  later.  (Disclosure:
  
  Richard|Solo gave me free units to review.)  Other companies also make iPhone batteries with similar capacities, but if you will find yourself away from an outlet for a really long time and need a lot of extra power, I see that USBFever is now selling the $60 Super Charger for iPhone.  It is larger than the Richard|Solo and similar products, but gives you a 3000 mAh battery that the company estimates will extend your talk time or online time 8.5 hours and video playback time 40 hours.  Of course, if that’s not enough, you can always get the HyperMac external batteries that I mentioned this past May and get 260 extra hours for only $500.
• And finally, some game news for those of you who remember the classic computer games of the past.  In April, I mentioned that the groundbreaking game Myst was ported to the iPhone.  It is a graphics-rich and time-intensive game and at 533 MB it may well be the largest game you can download from the App Store.  TouchArcade reports that if you want to get a feel for the $4.99 game, you can now get Myst Free for, you guessed it, free.  It weighs in at 124 MB and has all of the features of the full version, but contains only one island, omitting the five additional “Ages” in the full game.  For anyone nostalgic for the great computer games of the past, this one is a must download.  Click here to get Myst Free (free): 

  

I used to be the chair of my firm’s Ethics Committee and I currently have responsibility for approving all new file openings, so I frequently find myself analyzing legal ethics.  As is true for many areas of law, there are lots of great Internet resources that can assist with an ethics analysis, from paid services such as the ABA/BNA Lawyers’ Manual on Professional Conduct to the free but excellent Freivogel on Conflicts.  But none of these sites are optimized for the iPhone.

As a Louisiana attorney, I was thrilled to learn that Loyola (New Orleans) Law School Professor Dane Ciolino, an expert on legal ethics, recently started the website Louisiana Legal Ethics.  The site includes not only frequent blog-style updates on legal ethics but also some great resources for Louisiana attorneys.  For example, the site includes a free and updated version of the book Louisiana Professional Responsibility Law and Practice which was published by the La. State Bar Association in 2001 and updated in 2004 and 2007, but which is now out of print and out of date.  Thus, you can easily view the current text of the Louisiana Rules of Professional Conduct along with background information on the rules, related ABA resources such as the comments to the corresponding ABA Model Rule and annotations including Louisiana case law.

The iPhone angle here is that Prof. Ciolino, who bought his first iPhone just a month ago, knew from the start that he wanted his website to work well on mobile devices because he hates working with websites that are not mobile-friendly.  (Don’t we all.)  Thus, he created his site using WordPress and then worked with a free plug-in called WPtouch iPhone theme to create a version of the website specially formatted for the iPhone screen (and which apparently also looks good on other smartphones).  Ciolino tells me that it took some tweaking to get everything working, but it was fairly easy to do.  Thus, if you go to the Louisiana Legal Ethics website on an iPhone, you will automatically see a version optimized for the iPhone screen:

You can even tap the arrow at the top right of every page to get a pop-up menu that allows you to search the site and jump to other main sections:

Ciolino plans to update Louisiana Legal Ethics on a daily basis, and even though the website is new, I know it will quickly become the go-to resource for Louisiana legal ethics issues.  iPhone users will love the ability easily access the current rules, comments, etc.  I am often asked to assess a legal ethics issue when I am not at my desk or at my computer but my iPhone is with me.

Ciolino’s website will primarily be useful for Louisiana attorneys, and while I know a bunch of them who read iPhone J.D. (and I love y’all!), the other reason for my post today is to express hope that other great legal resource websites will also create iPhone-friendly versions of their websites.  iPhone apps may be all the rage, but an updated website that is optomized for the iPhone screen is often just as useful.  (For example, my favorite iPhone weather app is not an app at all: the iPhone-optimized version of Weather Underground, located at i.wund.com.)  Safari on the iPhone is better than any other mobile browser, but there are still some websites that don’t display great on the iPhone screen because they require a lot of back-and-forth scrolling.  The solution is to offer an iPhone version of the website.

By the way, I have often thought about creating an iPhone version of this website, but I haven’t done so because I actually think that iPhone J.D. looks fine on an iPhone when you double-tap the middle column to zoom to the entries.  I don’t use any fancy, wide-page formatting other than the single graphic at the top.  Having said that, I still may do this one day just to figure out how it is done.  If any of you have experience setting up an iPhone theme for a TypePad website, let me know what you did.

Thanks to Dane Ciolino for creating a great resource for Louisiana lawyers, especially those of us who use an iPhone.