I have heard from several people who read this site but don’t yet have an iPhone. And I can’t even count the number of times that I have used an iPhone in public and someone has asked me about getting one — something that I am sure happens to all of you, too. If you or someone you know is looking to buy an iPhone now, there is a useful post on Art of the iPhone entitled Where is the Best Place to Buy an iPhone? There are currently five places to buy an iPhone in the U.S.: an Apple store, an AT&T store, Best Buy, Wal-Mart or Sam’s Club. Wal-Mart is cheaper than the others, but only $2.00 cheaper. The article explains that if saving money is critical, you can save $50 by buying a refurbished iPhone, and if you do so your best bet is to buy from Apple or Best Buy where you get a 1 year warranty. [UPDATE on 2/18/09: AT&T is now offering a $100 rebate on a refurbished iPhone.]
One thing not discussed in that article that I will add is that if you have a complicated data plan such as a split billing arrangement where your employer pays the data portion of your bill, a combined billing plan, etc., then you may be required to buy from an AT&T store. Other stores, including Apple, may not be able to add an iPhone to one of those plans.
If you are looking to buy an iPhone, should you buy one now or wait? I wrote about this last month, and I continue to believe that a new iPhone will be released by Apple this year, probably in June or July. Remember that Apple increased the memory on iPhones in February of 2008, so it is possible that they will do so again before a new model is released later this year.
Last year, the inventory of first generation iPhones started to dry up in April, two months before the iPhone 3G was announced on June 9, 2008. We might see a similar inventory decrease at some point this year, and if so, that will be a sign that a major new model of iPhone is coming and a reason to hold off on purchasing if you can. But we are not there now, so if you are looking to buy your iPhone now, check out the article.
It was just last week that I discussed updates to Cliff Maier’s legal reference apps such as FRCP (Federal Rules of Civil Procedure) and FRAP (Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure), but now they have been updated again. When comparing his apps to similar offerings from The Law Pod, I pointed out that two advantages of The Law Pod apps over Cliff’s apps were that (1) The Law Pod apps list the rules by number (instead of Title) on the home screen, making it easier to jump to a specific rule if you already know the number and (2) The Law Pod apps list the entire rule on one screen, whereas in Cliff’s apps you had to read each subsection on its own screen.
Cliff is a long-time reader of iPhone J.D. In fact, Cliff often answers questions about his apps in the Comments to posts — which I mention because I know that many of the regular readers of this site read it in an RSS reader and might not normally see the Comments. Cliff is now adding updates to many of his apps to address both of these issues, making his already useful apps even more functional.
Bookmarks. The first new feature is bookmarks. If you are like me, your paper copy of your rules has pages that are dog-eared or affixed with Post-It Flags to bookmark the rules that you turn to time and time again. Cliff is now adding a bookmarks feature to his apps. For example, let’s say that you frequently turn to FRAP 28 when you are drafting an appeal brief. Notice that in the bottom left corner there is now an open star. Tap once on that star and it becomes a closed star to indicate that you have now added a bookmark to that rule:
The Home Screen of Cliff’s apps still lists the rules by title, not by number, but there is a new bookmarks button at the top left of the Home Screen. Tap it once and you will see a list of the rules that you bookmarked:
This makes it quick and easy to jump right to the rules that you use most frequently — even faster than using the Jump button on the Home Page that was recently added to Cliff’s apps. The apps still list the Titles in on the Home Screen, useful when you are not exactly sure what rule you want. But if you know the rule number and it is one that you bookmarked, you are now just a tap away from a list of your favorite rules. Bookmarks is a great new feature that I will use all the time.
Flattening. The other issue that I mentioned last week is that in Cliff’s apps, you sometimes don’t see the entire rule on a single screen. Cliff addressed this by adding a new button to the bottom right of many of his apps that turns on and off flattening. The best way to describe this is with pictures, and I’ll do so using the FRCP app — in part because the FRAP app doesn’t yet have flattening, although this feature is coming soon. On the left is a picture of Rule 11 as it normally appears. On the right is a picture of Rule 11 once you tap the flattening button at the bottom right. Note that the icon on the flattening button even changes to indicate which view you are in:
I find it very useful to have the option to either (1) view an outline of the rule to get an overview of the rule and quickly go to the subpart you need or (2) view the entire rule on a single page when you just want to scroll through it all.
Apps to be Updated. Cliff plans to eventually add bookmarks to almost all of his legal reference apps. Flattening is really only necessary for the more complicated sets of rules that have lots of subparts; many apps just have the rules flattened by default. Here are the apps that now have these new features or will very soon:
Note also that Cliff maintains a page on his website that lists the apps available now, the apps coming soon, the apps that attorneys have requested and are under consideration, and information on what has been submitted to Apple and is just awaiting approval.
If you have other ideas for improving these apps, please post them in the Comments. I’m sure that Cliff will see them, and others can comment on your comments to perhaps improve on your idea. It wasn’t long ago that I considered legal reference apps on the iPhone just a nice way to view a rule when I was away from my desk. But with all of the new features being added, I’m increasingly finding that the iPhone version of the rules is the version that I turn to first, even if I am at my desk with a paper copy of the rules within reach.
On my prior phone, a Treo 650, I was a big fan of a product from DataViz called Documents to Go which allows one to view and edit Microsoft Office files on a portable device. Documents to Go is available for many brands of cell phones, and it is no surprise that DataViz would want to port the product to the iPhone. You can click here for a YouTube video interview of DataViz’s president from March of 2008, just after Apple announced that third parties would be able to sell apps for the iPhone, in which he says that DataViz had plans to do so. More recently, DataViz spokeswoman Jenn Figueroa said that Documents to Go for the iPhone was their top customer request. And for many months now, DataViz has had this teaser page on their website which says nothing more than this:
Thus, it has been clear for a while that something was coming, and now it finally sounds like we will learn more about this product in just a few days. A number of websites such as this one are reporting that DataViz sent out a press release a few days ago stating that the company would announce Documents to Go for the iPhone at the Mobile World Congress which begins next week on February 16, 2009.
Of course, the iPhone already includes the ability to view Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. I suspect and hope that DataViz’s iPhone app will add at least the following two features. First, I expect DataViz to give us the ability to always sync the latest version of a file on your desktop with your iPhone. You can already manually do something similar with apps like DataCase, but some sort of automatic sync would be welcome. Second, it would be nice to have the ability to edit those documents on your iPhone and then sync the changes back to a computer — although without cut-and-paste on the iPhone, DataViz’s ability to include editing will likely be limited.
DataViz has a very long history of working with Apple. I used DataViz software to translate documents created on a PC to and from the Mac back when I was in college in the 1980s. Hopefully, DataViz has used the past 11 months to work with their contacts at Apple and come up with a great product for the iPhone. We’ll find out next week.
I often find myself amazed at what the iPhone can do. For example, just the other day my wife and I heard a somewhat familiar song that we couldn’t identify during the closing credits of HBO’s Big Love. My wife suggested that we hold an iPhone up to the speaker on our TV and use the free Shazam app, just like it shows you in that iPhone commercial. I did so, and sure enough, in just a few seconds, it identified the song as “Forever Young” by Alphaville. Then I fired up the free Wikipanion app and typed in “Forever Young” and I leaned that this song was released in 1984 (so my wife and I must have remembered the song from when we were in high school), that it is now considered a staple of the 1980s pop music scene, and that it has been used in a ton of TV shows and movies. The article even lists the uses of the song, including in the very TV show that we were watching. Knowing the answer to our trivia question was neat, but having the ability to get that answer on the iPhone in less than a minute was amazing.
Arthur C. Clarke famously said in 1973 that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” That accurately describes how I often feel about my iPhone. What other word but “magic” can describe the iPhone taking just a few seconds to give me tons of details about the song I am listening to? Well, one other word is “brain” — I often find myself thinking of my iPhone an extra brain that I carry around with me.
So is it “magic” or a “brain”? How do we settle the debate? Simple: we take a look inside of the iPhone. Thanks to iPhone Alley for providing a link to Radiology Art, a site that shows you what different objects look like in a CT scan. The doll and the TV dinner scans are interesting. One of the objects that they scanned is an iPhone. Click here to go to that website and see a larger picture of the scan, but here is a preview of what the CT scan shows us:
Does anyone see a brain in there? No? Well that settles it once and for all. It must be magic.
Following up once again on using your iPhone to enter your time, New Orleans attorney Al Robert — who runs the great Louisiana law blawg Naked Ownership — reminded me that there is yet another part of the ecosystem that you should consider if you want to use your iPhone to enter time: online services with web-based or standalone apps. Al uses an online service called Harvest to track his time and invoice his clients. He does all of the setup on his computer, and then he can use the iPhone to enter time using a web app that includes a start/stop timer and uses simple drop-down menus. The web app can also be used to enter expenses and associate the expenses with clients and matters when you are on the road.
Of course, you need to have some sort of Internet access to use a web app. I’m currently acutely aware that this is not always available. I am serving jury duty this month in Orleans Parish Criminal District Court, which means that on Tuesdays and Thursdays in February, I have to spend almost a full day in the basement of the courthouse where AT&T 3G and Edge service is nonexistent and a weak WiFi signal is just barely available if you find a seat in the corner of the room and only then if you are lucky. Perhaps some sort of voodoo ritual would help. But back on topic … if you do have Internet access, the nice thing about a web app is that when you enter your time on your iPhone, it is simultaneously entered with the online service. No need to export data from your iPhone to your computer.
There are many other online services that track time, and some of them offer a standalone iPhone app that acts as a front end and interfaces directly with the website. The advantage of these, of course, is that whether or not you have Internet access, you can still use the app on your iPhone. Also, because these iPhone apps are closely integrated with the online service, you don’t have to worry about exporting your data to an e-mail and then importing to a different time entry system. You still need to sync, but at least you know that no data reformatting is necessary. In my original post on time tracking apps I mentioned one of these: Bill4Time Mobile by Broadway Billing Systems. FreshBooks is a similar online service that also offers an iPhone app. You can use the app to track time for projects and tasks and write notes for each time entry. The FreshBooks app automatically stores pending submissions when you are offline and then syncs with you once again have an Internet connection.
I’ve been getting a lot of feedback from iPhone J.D. readers on these different options for using your iPhone to track your time, which leads me to believe that there are quite a few of you out there using these, or at least thinking about using them. As I mentioned in my original post, right now, I am not using one, but the next time I find myself on the road, I may consider doing so. I still can’t decide which is my favorite.
Eternity Time Log was not created for attorneys and was not even specifically designed to be a business time keeping app, but Marcin tells me that many people use Eternity Time Log to keep track of their work. The title certainly fits — I’ve had many a day at the office when I felt like I worked for an eternity! [insert rimshot here]
The app offers many of the good features contained in the other time tracking apps I discussed such as a timer, the ability to add notes for each time entry, and the ability to modify a time entry after it is entered. The app allows you to create an activity, and then if you want, you can nest additional sub-activities. I can imagine an attorney having a different activity for each client, and a different sub-activity for each matter for the client. Or you could just ignore the sub-activities completely and create a new activity for each matter.
To start recording time, you tap on an activity / sub-activity, and this brings up a start/stop timer and the ability to add notes. The app allows you to subsequently edit the start or stop time if you need to make an adjustment, plus you can edit your notes. To review your time, tap “Logs” to see each time entry including your notes. You can also tap “Reports” which shows the amount of time you spent for each activity (including all sub-activities). It would be nice if there was an option to round to the nearest minute and not display seconds, but in this version you get the precise time.
The screen shots I am showing here are from the free version, Eternity Time Log Lite, which only allows up to seven activities and doesn’t allow you to export your time. The full version allows you to e-mail your time as a .csv attachment.
Eternity Time Log looks like another nice entry in this product category, and if you are shopping for the time entry app that is right for you, this one deserves a look, especially since you can try out the Lite version for free.
Click here for the free Eternity Time Log Lite:
Click here for the full version of Eternity Time Log for $7.99:
I suspect that everyone knows about the basic fields of an entry in the Contacts app: first name, last name, phone number, address, etc. But did you know that you can add lots of other useful information to a Contact entry by adding advanced fields?
Alan at Art of the iPhone has a great series of posts he calls iPhone Basics. He recently posted a helpful entry called “How to Add Prefixes, Suffixes, Middle Names, Etc, to iPhone Contacts.” The post is full of great tidbits. For example, he points out that in addition to adding a first and last name to an entry, you can add a field for a phonetic spelling of the first or last name to remind yourself how a name is pronounced. You can also add a field for a person’s nickname, birthday, etc. The post includes pictures showing you step by step what to do. It is worth a look.
If you like that post, you might like some of the other posts in Art of the iPhone’s iPhone Basics series. They include:
How to change your iPhone wallpaper
How to send a call to voicemail
How to give a contact a unique ringtone
How to delete the Safari browser history
How to make an on-the-go playlist
…and many others. And if you want even more, Alan also has a series of posts that he calls iPhone Tips. Whether or not you consider yourself a basic user or an iPhone pro, you are sure to learn something new.
Fitz Collings is a first year law student at William and Mary Law School. He got his undergraduate degree in Biology at Cornell, his masters in biotechnology at Harvard, and he plans to practice IP law when he graduates.
In August of 2008, Fitz wrote some web apps (websites specially formatted for the iPhone) containing various federal rules. He recently converted them to iPhone apps so that you can access the rules even when you don’t have an Internet connection. Fitz calls his company The Law Pod and he currently has four apps: the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure and the Federal Rules of Bankruptcy.
The apps are straightforward. Start the app and you will see a list of rules, listed by number. Tap on a rule number to see the title and full text of the rule. When you are looking at a rule, you can tap a “Previous” or “Next” button to browse through the rules.
The apps also contain a search box at the top of each page. On the app’s home page, you can enter a term and the app will show you a list of the rules that contain your search term. You can then tap on one of the rules in the list to see the full text of the rule. To find a term within a rule, you tap the search area at the top of the screen of a rule, and then as you start to type your term you will see the instances of the word highlighted.
Yesterday, I discussed the similar legal reference apps sold by Cliff Maier. How do Fitz’s Law Pod apps compare? Each has different strengths.
One major difference is the layout of the home screen of each app. In Cliff’s apps, the home screen is a list of titles. You need to click on a title to see the rules within that title. In Fitz’s apps, you see a full list of the rules, by number only, on the home screen of the app. Cliff’s layout is better if you don’t know the specific rule you want and want to browse by subject. Fitz’s layout is better if you know the number you want and just want to go straight there. As I noted yesterday, Cliff’s app now features a “Jump” button that lets you jump straight to a rule or statute, but you might find it easier to just see a full list of all of the rules so you can scroll and then tap on what you want.
Another major difference is that Fitz lists the entire rule on a single page while Cliff has each subpart of a rule on a different page. For example, if you want to see Fed. R. Civ. Pro 26(a)(1)(A), in Cliff’s App you need to tap Title V –> Rule 26 –> (a) Required Disclosures –> (1) Initial Disclosure –> (A) In General. That’s five taps to get there, and you are only seeing that one part of the rule. Compare that to Fitz’s app, in which you just tap on Rule 26 and you are looking at the whole rule, including that first part. In Cliff’s apps, you can browse through subsections using arrows, but you might prefer Fitz’s layout in which the whole rule is in front of you at once, reducing the risk that you will read Rule 26(a)(1)(A) but forget about something in Rule 26(a)(1)(B).
Those two differences I just noted are largely issues of personal preference, and depending upon what I am doing I sometimes prefer Fitz’s apps and sometimes prefer Cliff’s apps. When it comes to search, on the other hand, Cliff’s apps are superior. As noted above, when you search in a Law Pod app you just see a list of rules, and when you first tap on a rule the search term is not highlighted unless you do a second search within that one rule. In Cliff’s apps, when you do a search, you see a both the title of the rule and a contextual excerpt with the search term highlighted. Moreover, search itself is more sophisticated in Cliff’s apps because you can search for a phrase or do a search for both terms or either terms (AND and OR searches); in Fitz’s Law Pod apps, there is only a single term or phrase search. (Look at yesterday’s post to see pictures of these search functions.)
Other advantages of Cliff’s apps: Cliff’s apps allow you to e-mail the text of a rule to yourself or someone else. Cliff’s apps include the “Jump” feature noted above. Cliff has many more apps, and allows for inter-linking between apps. When you restart Cliff’s apps, you return to the rule you were last viewing.
Cliff’s apps clearly have more features, but be aware that Fitz tells me that he has updates planned for his apps which will add better search capabilities, virtual tabbing/bookmarking of
frequently used rules or sections, cross-linked rules, the addition of
notes, and stored user preferences. Also note that you pay a little more for Cliff’s apps: Cliff charges $2.99 for the federal civil, appellate and bankruptcy rules and $8.99 for Title 18 (which includes both criminal law and procedure). Fitz charges only $0.99 for his Law Pod federal rules apps.
So which should you get? I think the choice is easy. GET BOTH. This is not just me being glib; I prefer to have both sets of apps on my iPhone. Sometimes I want to take advantage of the advanced features in Cliff’s apps. But for just a single buck more, I can also access one of Fitz’s apps for those times when I know the rule number and just want to quickly browse through the entire rule. I recommend that you do the same — no matter what your billing rate, you’ll spend more than a dollar of your time trying to choose just one!
You can download each of the Law Pod apps from iTunes using these links:
Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure – $0.99 –
Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure – $0.99 –
Federal Rules of Civil Procedure – $0.99 –
Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure – $0.99 –
Or just click here for a page in iTunes listing all of Fitz’s Law Pod apps:
I’ve previously mentioned the numerous legal reference apps (Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Patent Rules, etc.) sold by Cliff Maier, and even posted an interview with Cliff. Over the last few weeks, Cliff has updated most of his apps to add some great new features. If you already have one or more of his legal reference apps, here is what you should look for. And if you are a lawyer who hasn’t purchased any of them yet, with these new features you should give them another look.
My favorite new feature is the “jump” button. The home screen on Cliff’s apps lists the names of the titles, and you click on a title to see the rules. For example, here is the first screen in the FRCP app, and then when you click on Title V, you can see a list of the rules in that title:
This is great if you are browsing and don’t know the number that you want, but what if you start up the app and just want to jump straight to Rule 26? Now you can. On the Home screen of the app, tap the “Jump” button in the top right, and then a dial will come up where you can enter each digit of the number that you want:
You can only jump from the Home screen, but you can quickly get to the Home screen by tapping the “Home” button at the top right of most screens. Note that the “Jump” feature is available in most of Cliff’s apps, but Cliff tells me that a few won’t have “Jump” for technical reasons.
My second favorite new feature is vastly improved search. By default, if you type in two words the app will search for that phrase, but you can instead choose to search for the first term AND the second term, or the first term OR the second term. The app starts to search even while you are typing, so you often only need to type the first part of a word to get the result you want. After you have typed your terms, you can click the blue “Search” button at the bottom right to go to a full-screen mode where each hit is listed (and color coded white or gray to make it easy to see each hit) with your search terms highlighted.
Another nice new feature is inter-linking between the apps. For example, if you are using the FRCP app and a rule has a reference to a statute that is in Title 28 of the U.S. Code, you will find a link at the bottom of the rule that you can tap to launch the Title 28 app (assuming you have it on your iPhone) and display that statute.
Inter-linking works especially well because of another new feature: when you leave an app and then return to it later, the app automatically takes you to the rule you were previously viewing. So you can look at a rule, link to a statute, then go back to the FRCP app and see the rule again. And even if you are not using inter-linking, it is nice to be able to use an app, then use some other apps on your iPhone, and then go back to the legal reference app and pick up right where you were.
There are also some user interface improvements to the apps, such as different font sizes based upon the indentation level, more use of bold and italics, arrows at the bottom of each screen that make it easy to browse forward or backward, plus a new color scheme (brown instead of the standard iPhone blue-gray). And there are a few content improvements as well, such as indications of history and effective dates for many rules and statutes.
Not every one of Cliff’s apps has all of the new features I described in this post yet, but the new features are being rolled out in updates to almost all of Cliff’s apps. Click here to see a page in iTunes listing all of Cliff’s apps, or here is the full list of his legal reference apps as of today, along with the price and a link to download in iTunes:
Federal Laws (except for IP):
Bailout (the Economic Stabilization Act of 2008) – $1.99 – link
Securities (Securities Act of 1933, Securities Exchange Act of 1934, Investment Company Act of 1940, Investment Advisors Act of 1940, Sorbanes-Oxley) – $4.99 – link
I love having the rules and statutes that I frequently use at my fingertips, and with these new improvements, Cliff’s apps are sophisticated and polished.
Apple has been using a lowercase “i” to begin many of its product names ever since Steve Jobs introduced the first iMac computer on May 7, 1998. His explanation for the “i” at the time was as follows:
iMac comes from the marriage of the excitement of the Internet with the simplicity of Macintosh. Even though this is a full-blooded Macintosh, we are targeting this for the #1 use that consumers tell us they want a computer for, which is to get on the Internet — simply, and fast. And that is what this product is targeted for.
“i” also means some other things to us. We are a personal computer company, and although this product is born to network, it also is a beautiful stand-alone product. We are targeting it also for education. They want to buy these. And it is perfect for most of the things they do in instruction. It is perfect for finding tremendous sources of information over the Internet. And we hope as you see the product it will inspire us all to make even better products in the future.
Internet. Individual. Instruct. Inform. Inspire. Steve Jobs may have originally used those words to describe the iMac, but they sure do apply quite nicely to the iPhone, don’t they?
Of course, there was a long road from the “i” in iMac to the “i” in iPhone. In July of 1999, Apple announced the iBook, Apple’s consumer laptop (which evolved into the current MacBook). In October of 1999, Apple announced the iMac DV and introduced iMovie, Apple’s consumer video software. On January 5, 2000, Apple released iTools (which evolved into the current MobileMe), iCards (now defunct) and iDisk. On January 9, 2001, Apple released iTunes and iDVD.
Later that year, on October 23, 2001, Apple introduced the iPod. In Steven Levy’s book about the history of the iPod The Perfect Thing — a great book that you should buy immediately if you would enjoy a behind the scenes look at Apple — he discussed the origin of the term “iPod” as follows:
It was Jobs who told everyone what the device would be called. “He just came in and went ‘iPod,'” says one team member. “We all looked around the room, and that was it. iPod. And we’re like, ‘Where did that come from?'” (Excellent question, and one that proved increasingly elusive the more I pressed people at Apple about it. Finally, I was able to corner Jobs on it and he said that to the best of his knowledge the name sort of emerged, not exactly in a form of immaculate conception but in a lengthy back and forth among him, his marketing people, and Chiat\Day. “The ad agency loved it,” he told me. But I got the distinct impression that the iPod moniker won out not because of its brilliance but because Jobs had had enough of the naming process and the hour was getting late.) [pp. 46-47]
[UPDATE 11/29/11: In the biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, there is a single sentence describing the origin of the name: “One of the copywriters suggested they call it a ‘Pod.’ Jobs was the one who, borrowing from the iMac and iTunes names, modified that to iPod.”]
After the iPod, other Apple “i” software products followed such as iPhoto and iChat in 2002, iLife in 2003, and iWeb in 2006.
Considering Apple’s long history of “i” products, it may now seem that it was obvious what Apple would call its phone. But it wasn’t always clear that the iPhone would be the iPhone. Before January of 2007, there were rumors that Apple was working on a phone and speculation over what Apple might call it. At the time, “iPhone” seemed like the logical front runner, but other names were rumored such as “iChat Mobile.” (Yuck!)
Even after Apple announced in January of 2007 that it would ship the iPhone later that year, there was still some uncertainty about the name because Cisco insisted that it acquired the trademark to “iPhone” in 2000 when Cisco bought a company called Infogear Technology. Just after Apple announced the iPhone, Cisco sued Apple. Apple responded that other companies besides Cisco were using the term “iPhone” and that Apple was the first to use “iPhone” to refer to a cellphone. (I doubt that Apple would still take the position today that anyone can use “iPhone” for a product.) At the time, there was even recent precedent for Apple changing a product name to drop the “i” — on September 12, 2006, Apple announced a product that it called “iTV,” but then at the same Macworld Expo at which the iPhone was announced, Apple said that it would call the product Apple TV (presumably because Elgato was already selling a product called EyeTV.) With all of this uncertainty, the first (and unfortunately, now gone) iPhone podcast called itself the “Apple Phone Show” instead of the “iPhone Show” in part because the show’s creator, Scott Bourne, wasn’t sure that Apple would use the name “iPhone” when the product shipped.
Eventually, of course, the uncertainty ended. The Cisco-Apple lawsuit settled on February 21, 2007. The terms were confidential, but Apple announced that the companies agreed that both companies could use “iPhone” and that they would explore opportunities to work together on issues like security and enterprise communications. (And sure enough, there is a Cisco VPN client on the iPhone.) By the time the iPhone was released on June 28, 2007, uncertainty about the name had already entered the history books.
So there you have it, a short history of the letter i. If you want to return to those halcyon days of youth when Apple first announced the “i,” you can still watch a YouTube clip of Steve Jobs introducing the first iMac. This was soon after Steve Jobs returned to Apple, and he had not yet started exclusively wearing his now trademark black turtleneck and jeans for his announcements. But it was still vintage Steve Jobs, full of quips such as this one: the back of the iMac looks better than the front of everyone else’s computers. Here is the clip, which runs seven minutes:
Of course, there was a long road from the “i” in iMac to the “i” in iPhone. In July of 1999, Apple announced the iBook, Apple’s consumer laptop (which evolved into the current MacBook). In October of 1999, Apple announced the iMac DV and introduced iMovie, Apple’s consumer video software. On January 5, 2000, Apple released iTools (which evolved into the current 
Even after Apple announced in January of 2007 that it would ship the iPhone later that year, there was still some uncertainty about the name because Cisco insisted that it