There were lots of interesting iPhone articles and news this week, so lets jump right into it, shall we…
Bennett and Diedre Braverman write “iPhone, a Love Story” on their blog Strategic Attorney.
At $49.99, Black’s Law Dictionary (my review is here) is one of the most expensive apps that an attorney would buy for his or her iPhone. Nevertheless, the company tells a reporter for the ABA Journal that West has sold several hundred copies of the app so far. But you have to wonder, how many more would they have sold if they had priced it at $19.99? Or $9.99?
Rich Mogull writes this article for TidBITS explaining that there is currently a flaw with the security on the iPhone 3GS. Although you can protect your iPhone by requiring a password to swipe-to-unlock it, someone who obtains access to your iPhone and understands how this hack works can use a computer to bypass that security. I presume that Apple will fix this in the next software update.
I recently wrote about myMCLE California, a $0.99 app for California attorneys to keep track of their CLE hours. Author Dan Friedlander now has versions for Florida, Louisiana, California, New York and Texas. I just bought the Louisiana version. Great app. Click here for a list of all of these apps on iTunes:
Another security flaw with the iPhone recently came to light, but Apple fixed this one in iPhone Software 3.0.1, which was released this past Saturday. Security expert Charlie Miller discovered a way that a hacker could shut down your iPhone and even potentially take it over just by sending text messages to your iPhone. Pretty scary stuff, although I didn’t see any reports of any bad guys actually doing this. Nevertheless, if you haven’t updated your iPhone to 3.0.1 yet, you should plug it in to your computer and do so now to be safe. The website Tom’s Hardware has this very interesting interview with Charlie Miller describing how he did it.
I have frequently written about date calculator apps for the iPhone (1, 2, 3) but as Rick Georges writes on his FutureLawyer site, you can also just use Wolfram|Alpha to calculate dates. As I wrote a few months ago, that site works well on an iPhone.
I know that some people are frustrated about Apple rejecting several iPhone apps, although as I posted yesterday, I think this is going to improve soon. One man who goes by the alias Hyperplasia07 must have missed my post yesterday because he took out his frustration with Apple by shooting an iPhone with a Beretta 9mm, several times, and then setting it on fire. And of course he captured all of this on video and uploaded it to YouTube—not that this makes me think that the whole thing was staged as a publicity stunt or anything. Click here to see the video. (Link via BuzzFeed.)
MacNewsWorld reviews the Documents to Go app, saying it is not a corner office, but a decent cubicle.
Yappler has an interesting article about how Pixar animator Jessia Abroms hired a programmer for $700 to help her create an iPhone game called M.A.P.S. So far, she has seen over $5,000 in sales.
I sometimes hear people say that they wish that the iPhone was on Verizon instead of AT&T, but as Daniel Eron Dilger writes in his article “iPhone Wars: AT&T, Verizon, and the evil of two lessors,” the iPhone on Verizon would have problems as well. As he concludes: “There’s a lot not to like about AT&T. The problem is that there’s even more to dislike about Verizon.”
Apple has learned a lot from integrating the Mail app on the iPhone with Microsoft Exchange, so much so that Apple is including improved Exchange support with the Mail program that will come with the next upgrade to the Mac operating system, Snow Leopard. In an announcement that may have been timed to detract attention from that (since Snow Leopard will be out any day now), Microsoft announced yesterday that the next version of Office on the Mac, due in late 2010, will include for the first time a version of Outlook for the Mac (to replace Microsoft’s current Mac mail program, Entourage). By the way, if you use a Mac, you can pre-order Snow Leopard through Amazon for $29 by clicking here, and by doing so you will support iPhone J.D.
The New York Times has an interesting article on how more and more media outlets like TV news shows and public radio are coming out with iPhone apps, but everyone is still trying to figure out how to make money on it.
And finally, the long wait is over … you can now play poker using playing cards that look like iPhones. The Meninos Store has previously sold fun coasters that look like iPhone app icons, and now have these playing cards for $25.00.
There are small but definite signs that Apple is taking steps to improve the iPhone App Store. The first indication of it came during Apple’s 2009 Fiscal Third Quarter earnings call that took place on July 21, 2009. The reference was so vague that I didn’t even include it in my summary of the iPhone news in that call, but I have been thinking about it ever since then and now I do think that Apple revealed something of substance. Apple COO Tim Cook received a question from Charles Wolf, an analyst with Needham & Co., about the large number of cheap $0.99 apps making it difficult to find good apps on the App Store. In Cook’s response, he indicates that change is coming. Here is the question and the answer:
Q: Okay, well, let me ask a question about the App Store then. In
terms of application prices, there appears to be a race to the bottom.
I’ve noticed that there’s an increasing number of $0.99 offerings. Do
you regard this as a concern and if so, are you taking any steps to
enable consumers to separate quality apps from the garbage?
A: Charlie,
we are always looking for ways to categorize apps differently and we do
have some ideas in this area. As you know, today we do it by type of
App and also have show popular apps and top-selling apps, etc. We realize there’s opportunity there for further improvement and are working on that.
In
terms of the price, the developer sets the price and so it’s up to the
developer what to charge and I think what they are doing is they are
doing what any good business person would do, is doing the elasticity
analysis and deciding where to best set their price. I would think as
the installed base grows more and more and more, it makes more and more
sense to have a bit lower prices and, ah—but that’s totally up to the
developers and I am sure each of them may do that in a little different
manner.
The key statement to me was Cook saying that there’s opportunity for further improvement in the ways that the App Store categorizes apps and Apple is “working on that.”
Then came the news about a week later from places like AppleInsider and Macworld that Apple is now asking developers to submit 255 characters worth of keywords, separated by commas, when an app is submitted with the keywords to be used to improve searching for that app. I don’t believe that keywords are being used on the App Store yet—there is no indication of them—but whenever implemented, this should help when you are trying to find an app. Around the same time, Apple released new tools to help developers figure out how long it might take for an app to be approved, along with a way for important app updates to be expedited.
Then about a week later, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Marketing Phil Schiller took the very unusual step of writing a prominent blogger, John Gruber, to respond to a post about problems in the app approval process. I wrote about this last Friday.
And then a few days later, suggesting that Schiller’s openness might not be that unusual after all going forward, Schiller wrote to Steven Frank, founder of Panic Software, in response to Frank’s posts on his blog on July 31 and August 8 that he had stopped using his iPhone as a way of boycotting Apple for problems with the way that it reviews and approves apps, even though this meant that he would have to use a Palm Pre or an Android phone, neither of which he liked. (He wrote on July 31: “They are both lousy in comparison to the iPhone. And Sprint’s coverage
sucks in my neighborhood. I’m going to completely hate using it. I am
voluntarily going to make my own life a bit worse because I believe in
certain principles.”) Frank wrote on August 11 about Schiller e-mailing Frank to say that Apple was listening to Frank’s suggestions about ways to improve the App Store and, while not all of them were viable, Apple was planning to improve the app store.
(Note to Phil Schiller: If you want to call me too, feel free to do so. I’m sure that Apple has my iPhone number.)
And then there is the rumor from a few days ago that Apple is planning to release a new version of iTunes (version 9) that will let you visually reorganize your iPhone apps using iTunes on your computer, something that would be very nice. I usually shy away from reporting on rumors here because they are so often just made up, but this is one that seems so logical to me that it would only be a surprise if they didn’t do it.
All of this is still very vague, but reading these many different tea leaves, it appears to me that Apple is very serious about addressing the shortcomings with
the App Store to make it a better experience for both customers and for
developers. How long before we see any improvements? Who knows, but I look forward to seeing what Apple shows us next.
I’ve written frequently about date calculators, both general date calculators and more recently Court Days, a calculator written especially for attorneys that takes into account different legal holidays in different states. Verner created an even more specialized app that calculates pretrial and posttrial deadlines in Texas civil courts, and Verner has done a great job.
I don’t practice law in Texas so I can’t say much about how dates are calculated there, but Verner, who is board certified in civil trial law, tells me that the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure are “bizarre, Byzantine [and] don’t even remotely resemble the federal rules or the rules of any other state.” This app helps you to navigate those rules. To use the app, you simply enter a starting date. It can be either a trial date (if you want to calculate pretrial deadlines) or a judgment date (if you want to calculate posttrial deadlines for either an ordinary or an accelerated appeal).
The app then tells you the date on which each of the significant events occurs. For example, if March 5, 2010 is the trial date, you can tap the “Pretrial deadlines” button and you will see a screen telling you the date of each of the significant dates, such as 120 days before trial, 45 days before trial, etc. You can tap on any date and the app tells you what is due along with a cite to the appropriate rule.
The app works the same way for posttrial deadlines. Enter a judgment date and you will see the appeal deadlines:
Like the Court Days app I previously reviewed, this app automatically excludes weekends and holidays. But unlike Court Days, this app includes a helpful information screen which, among other things, tells you exactly which legal holidays are being excluded:
This looks like a really useful iPhone app that any Texas litigator will frequently find very handy. If a similar app were available for Louisiana where I practice, I would buy it instantly.
Verner tells me that he has other good ideas for iPhone apps and that he even hired another software engineer to help him to bring the ideas to reality. I always love to hear about attorneys creating iPhone apps for other attorneys, and I look forward to seeing what Verner brings us next.
Click here to get Texas Litigation Deadlines ($19.99):
Jimmy Verner is a board certified family law attorney in Dallas, TX. He has always been interested in streamlining the practice of law, ever since he started practicing law at the tail end of the IBM Selectric era when word processors first came out and he found that typing his own pleadings and letters was much more efficient than dictation. (I’ve always felt the same way, myself.)
Verner has no formal training in programming, but he was one of the early pioneers in using the Internet in the practice of law. In the 1990s, he created a website called WillMakers on which people could make their own simple wills online. Unfortunately, he was a little ahead of his time and the T-1 line he had to lease to handle the internet traffic was too expensive to make the effort worthwhile.
After practicing for 30 years, specializing in family law since 1990,
Verner realized that he acquired enough knowledge to build an online
child support calculator, essentially reverse-engineering the Texas
Family Code’s child support provisions and turning them into algebra.
That website is available here. He was showing the online calculator to his law partners when one of them suggested he turn it into an iPhone app.
Although Verner didn’t own an iPhone, his wife did. He had some extra time, having recently completed a Ph.D. program, so he signed up with Apple as a developer and bought the book Beginning iPhone 3 Development by Dave Mark and Jeff LaMarche and then bought an iPhone. He hired a software engineer to help him get started as he was first learning the ropes, but them finished up the app by himself and released Child Support Calculator (which he calls CS Calc for short) for the iPhone last month.
I am a big fan of iPhone apps that make it very simple to do a specific task that would otherwise be complicated or hard to remember, and CS Calc is definitely one such app. CS Calc lets you calculate Texas child support payments simply and easily on the fly without having to drag out the Family Code and extrapolate or estimate. You simply enter five variables—whether self employed, gross annual income, number of children before the court, cost of health insurance for the children, and number of other children supporting—and the app instantly provides the Texas guideline child support.
These two screens are all you need to use the app, but Verner also includes a long information screen that explains to you exactly what the app is doing and why it is doing it. Here are the first two pages:
Although I don’t practice family law, I can definitely see the usefulness of an app like this. Verner tells me that he is considering similar apps for other states, but they would be more complicated. For example, Verner tells me that most states follow the “income shares” child support model which requires financial data about both parents to calculate child support whereas Texas only looks to financial data about the obligor. But even though Verner’s current target market is currently just Texas, he notes that “Texas is a huge state with millions of people paying or receiving child support” so there should be ample interest in this app from both family law practitioners and individuals who owe child support. The reviews so far on iTunes have been positive, with one reviewer calling the app “Simple, efficient and mobile. Great at mediation, courthouse or settlement conference.” If you practice this area of law, this looks like money well spent.
Thanks to Jimmy Verner for telling me about this great app. He has already released a second iPhone app, a Texas litigation deadlines calculator, which I will be take a look at later this week.
Click here to get TX Child Support Calculator ($7.99):
Since I started iPhone J.D. last Fall, I have reviewed over 100 iPhone apps and written about a number of other topics that are still relevant today. Well, maybe “100” sounds too high—sometimes I discuss several different apps at the same time instead of devoting a full post to a single app—but suffice it to say that I have written about many different apps that attorneys and others might enjoy having on their iPhones. You can always search for old posts by using the search box at the top right of every page, but I thought it would be useful to have a single index of all of the major posts on iPhone J.D. so that you can easily browse through prior posts. Moreover, in my law firm alone, I know of a large number of people who bought an iPhone very recently, and for new iPhone users who are relatively new to this site, browsing the index is a good way to catch up on what you have missed so far. There are a lot of great apps out there.
So here is a list of the more significant posts
on iPhone J.D. since I started the website on November 17, 2008,
including reviews of iPhone apps, reviews of other items and other
significant posts. I have also added a link at the top right of this website called “iPhone J.D. Index” and I will keep that index updated in the future. As of today, however, here is the full index for your browsing pleasure. And fear not, I don’t plan to have “re-runs” like this very often; tomorrow we are back to new app reviews.
Reviews of iPhone Apps
First, here are the iPhone apps that I have reviewed on iPhone J.D. (including websites that work with the iPhone):
And
finally, the following pages were popular when they were published or
I think are still worth reading today if you missed them initially, although a few of the older ones are becoming somewhat outdated. They are listed oldest to newest:
Why I Use an iPhone (the post that started this website): 11/17/08
Thanks for joining me on this trip down iPhone J.D. memory lane. Again, if you want to use the index in the future, just click the link at the top right; that index will be updated whereas this post will not.
This index allows you to browse through the more significant posts on iPhone J.D. since I started the website on November 17, 2008, including reviews of iPhone and iPad apps and accessories plus other significant posts.
For an index to episodes of the In the News podcast, click here.
iPhone tip: Fix lack of notifications from Reminders app: 10/15/24
Apple Quarterly Financial Conference Calls
Every quarter, Apple announces its financial results and answers questions from financial analysts. These announcements always contain some iPhone news, so I have a tradition of reporting on and giving my analysis of the iPhone, and now iPad, angle of the conference call. Note that Apple’s financial year begins in September, so for example Apple’s fiscal year 2017 began on September 24, 2016, and Apple’s 2017 first fiscal quarter was from September 24, 2016 to December 31, 2016; no days in the 2017 first fiscal quarter were actually in calendar year 2017. Here are my reports on those calls, oldest to newest:
Lawyers often write me to share stories of how they use their iPhone or iPad. (I encourage any of you reading this to do so right now!) I like to share these stories on iPhone J.D. from time to time, sometimes as part of a larger post, or sometimes in a dedicated post such as these:
The following pages were significant when they were published, or I think are still worth reading today if you missed them initially. They are listed oldest to newest:
Why I Use an iPhone (the post that started this website): 11/17/08
The big story in iPhone news this week was the approval policies of the App Store. John Gruber at Daring Fireball initially criticized Apple for appearing to censor a dictionary, even though the dictionary was rated 17+, but then Apple wrote back and said that isn’t exactly what happened. I believe Apple when it says that it is trying hard to do the right thing, and I understand that the app review process is difficult when you have such a crazy number of apps being submitted every day. But I still feel for developers who get caught in the cracks, and for users who lose access to good software as a result.
As a backdrop to the latest story on the App Store, recall that Apple recently rejected the Google Voice app and revoked two previously-available apps that provided the ability to use Google Voice. I wrote on this back on July 29. [UPDATE: If you want to learn more about the Google Voice service, check out this good post on the Young Lawyers Blog.] Since then, the FCC has decided to take a look at this situation, issuing letters to Apple, AT&T and Google saying essentially (cue Ricky Ricardo voice) “Lucy, you got some ‘splainin’ to do!” Futurelawyer reports on the Washington Post’s take on this story, asking “What Did Apple Know And When Did They Know It?” David Pogue of the New York Times also has a thoughtful analysis here.
With the background of many prior app rejections including the rejection of Google Voice, noted columnist John Gruber wrote this piece about Ninjawords, a dictionary that the developers claimed was censored by Apple because it contained some naughty words in it such as some four letter ones that begin with letters like F and S. Even though other dictionaries already available for the iPhone, like the New Oxford American Dictionary, contain the same words.
Gruber’s article was reported all over the Internet, resulting in something very rare—a public response from Apple. Apple’s PR department is sometimes considered one of the easiest places to work because they so often just say “no comment.” But this time, Apple’s Senior Vice President Phil Schiller wrote to John Gruber and said that there was another side to the story. As reported in a follow up post by Gruber, the app developer didn’t have to remove the dirty words, and could have instead just marked the app age 17+, but the developer chose to remove the words to speed up the approval process.
This doesn’t end the controversy; people are noting that Schiller is just a marketing guy, one who some argue sometimes stretches the truth, and we haven’t heard from someone in charge of reviewing apps. I actually take Schiller for his word on this one, but the fact remains that Apple could do more to improve the App Review process. And I believe that they are trying to do so.
At the same time that all of this is going on, the App Store also made news by banning a developer who had over 900 apps for sale. But this time, people seemed to side with Apple. The apps excluded included questionable titles like “Top Sexy Ladies” and mostly consisted of packaging up some information already available on the Internet and selling it for $4.99 and in many cases including photographs and other content that the developer had no right to resell.
And for attorneys on the road, Ernie “the Attorney” Svenson took some time to discuss a $69 GPS app from Navigon that provides turn-by-turn directions. He likes it.
And now, shifting to more general iPhone stories, for those of you with kids about to start college, Macworld writes on the reasons that your kids will be giving you as to why you really need to buy them an iPhone. Please, please, please?
Art of the iPhone wrote this great post on 11 iPhone typing tips. Even if you think you already know these, it serves as a nice refresher course, so check it out.
Michael Scalisi of PC World writes this interesting article on supporting iPhones in an Exchange environment. As he writes, it is much easier for a company to support iPhones than to support Blackberries and Apple clearly “takes the role of the iPhone in the enterprise seriously.”
And finally, for those of you who (like me) use a Mac at home or are lucky enough to use a Mac in your office, Apple is about a month away (maybe less) from releasing its next operating system, Mac OS 10.6, also known as “Snow Leopard.” The upgrade to Snow Leopard will be much cheaper than previous OS upgrades, and if want to support iPhone J.D., you can use these Amazon links to pre-order an upgrade from Mac OS 10.5 for only $29.99 or pre-order a Family Pack 5-user upgrade license for only $49.99. Amazon is also letting you pre-order a Mac Box Set Family Pack (with Snow Leopard) for $229 which, I believe, will include a full version of Snow Leopard (which doesn’t require you to already own Mac OS 10.5) and the latest versions of iLife ’09 (including iPhoto ’09, iMovie ’09, GarageBand ’09, iWeb ’09, and iDVD) and the latest version of Apple’s productivity suite iWork ’09 (including Pages ’09, Numbers ’09, and Keynote ’09).
Last week I reviewed Court Days, an iPhone app by Los Angeles attorney Dan Friedlander sold through his company Law On My iPhone. He has another series of iPhone apps called myMCLE that help you keep track of your CLE (Continuing Legal Education) hours. This is a perfect iPhone app: useful, easy to use, excellent design and inexpensive.
Right now the app is available only for one state, myMCLE California, so that is the version that I am reviewing here. And since I don’t practice in California, I must admit some ignorance on the different categories of CLE hours required by the state and I am just assuming that the app treats them appropriately. Apps for other states are coming. [UPDATE 8/14/09: You can now get apps for Florida, Louisiana, California, New York and Texas. Click here for a list of all of these apps on iTunes: ] The app gives you a space to enter the important information on the CLE including topic, provider, completion date, and the credit hours including the state-specific categories for credit hours. The interface is very clean with the standard iPhone scroll wheel used to select dates and simple sliders to enter the number of hours.
Once you have entered your hours, the main screen of the app provides you with an overview of your hours, and the details screen provides a list of information for each different CLE that you attended. On the main screen, there is a button to e-mail yourself (or anyone) a list of each CLE you attended and the hours, providing an easy way to get your data off of your iPhone.
I am looking forward to the Louisiana version of this app, and I hope that similar apps are soon available for every state. I often find myself trying to remember where I stand on annual CLE hours, and this app provides a simple and fun way to store this information on the iPhone. And if you get bored during your CLE, entering your hours into this app will give you something to do for a minute or two and will provide a feeling of accomplishment.
Adrienne Elenteny is a public defender in the San Francisco Bay area (Alameda County). In 2005, she was sitting in court, waiting for one of her cases to be called, and she found herself watching prosecutors, judges and defense attorneys scramble over and over to make sure that all the collateral consequences of a plea were stated on the record
from sentence ranges, fines, driver’s license conditions, immigration
consequences, probation eligibility, mandatory jail requirements and so
on. She has a long history with computers—she got her undergraduate degree in computer science and has been using portable technology since the original, luggable Compaq in the 1980s—and with that background, as she was watching the lawyers in the courtroom, she thought, wouldn’t it be great if you could look at a single screen of a PDA and see all the related statutes/consequences of a criminal offense? And, as Elenteny tells the story to me, that is how Crime-IQ was born.
Crime-IQ was originally available for the PC, Palm and Windows Mobile devices, and Elenteny updated it over the years. When the iPhone came out, she realized that Crime-IQ would be perfect as an iPhone web app because it is simple to use, easy to read and fast. And unlike other California Codes that are available for the iPhone (which are great if you know the specific statute you are looking for), Elenteny thought that Crime-IQ could offer something unique by essentially already doing the search for you. You tap on a particular offense and you get a single screen with links to each statute related to the offense on a single “Offense Screen” allowing a lawyer to know everything about an offense in just a few seconds.
Each
offense screen includes: sentencing ranges, custody credits, fines, DMV
consequences, probation eligibility, enhancements, registration
requirements, immigration impact and any special consequences related
to the offense. Additionally, statutes on the offense screen are linked
to the relevant statutory text. A Crime-IQ
screen consolidates information from a variety of statutes and codes
into a single view for fast, easy, accessible data.
My knowledge of criminal law and procedure is limited and somewhat rusty. Georgetown Law School is well known for its clinical programs, and when I was a third year I was in their great criminal justice clinic which gave me an opportunity to spend one semester trying cases as a prosecutor and one semester trying cases as a defense attorney. It was a great learning experience for me and one of my highlights of law school, but 15 years later, as I look at the Crime-IQ app, I find myself almost as confused as I was when I reviewed Vade Mecum earlier this year—the app in Portuguese containing Brazilian law. Thus, I cannot comment on the substance of the app, given the good feedback that Elenteny has received (take a look at the testimonials on her website), I’m sure that anyone practicing criminal law in California will want to give this one a close look.
The web app isn’t cheap. It costs $139.95 a year (or $69.95 for the rest of this year). And because this is a web app, you purchase it through the Crime-IQ website, not on the iTunes App Store. But you can click here for a free demo which includes a limited number of Offense Screens so that you can get a feel for the program.
Thanks to Elenteny for telling me about Crime-IQ, and I hope that those of you who are California criminal practitioners find it useful. It is great to see more and more attorneys creating law-related apps for the iPhone. I think that there will be an increasing demand for them because almost every day I hear of yet another lawyer getting an iPhone.
As I am sure that many of you already know, TechnoLawyer produces several great, free newsletters distributed by e-mail on all sorts of tech-related topics of interest to attorneys. Every Tuesday, TechnoLawyer distributes the TechnoFeature newsletter which contains in-depth articles written by “leading legal technology and practice management experts, many of whom have become ‘household names’ in the legal profession.” While I don’t have a “household name” in any house except my own, I was honored to be asked by TechnoLawyer to write the feature article for this week because their articles are usually well written and informative. Last week, for example, they ran a good review of the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500, a nice scanner that works with Mac or Windows, written by attorney, legal consultant and frequent CLE speaker Barron K. Henley.
At first I was going to write about the iPhone 3GS, but then the editors and I decided that it might be more helpful to prepare something in depth on the options for editing documents on an iPhone. Thus, I turned my thoughts on the iPhone 3GS into this post that you may have seen last month, and I instead worked on a comparison review of Documents to Go and Quickoffice Mobile Office Suite.
If you subscribe to the free TechnoFeature newsletter, then you will see my article show up in your inbox later today. If you don’t subscribe yet, this is a good time to do so, so click here.
[UPDATE 8/11/09: Click here for a PDF version of the TechnoFeature article.]
At $49.99, Black’s Law Dictionary (my review is here) is one of the most expensive apps that an attorney would buy for his or her iPhone. Nevertheless, the company tells a reporter for the ABA Journal that West has sold several hundred copies of the app so far. But you have to wonder, how many more would they have sold if they had priced it at $19.99? Or $9.99? 
I have frequently written about date calculator apps for the iPhone (1, 2, 3) but as Rick Georges writes on his FutureLawyer site, you can also just use Wolfram|Alpha to calculate dates. As I wrote a few months ago, that site works well on an iPhone.
With the background of many prior app rejections including the rejection of Google Voice, noted columnist John Gruber wrote 
