It is no exaggeration to say that I have been waiting for DataViz to release Documents to Go for the iPhone since the day that I first purchased my iPhone 3G last year.  And since February of this year, I have been waiting for the app to be released “any day now.”  DataViz has a long history of providing smartphones with excellent document management and editing abilities, and with the iPhone’s amazing screen and touch gesture interface, I’ve always thought that Documents to Go on the iPhone could be the best platform yet for DataViz.

Last week, DataViz finally released Documents to Go for iPhone and I immediately purchased it.  My high expectations and long anticipation made me somewhat afraid that no matter what the app could do, I would be disappointed.  But after using the app for several days now, I must say that DataViz has done an amazing job.  This is still a 1.0 product with lots of room to grow, but I think that it is already an essential app for almost every lawyer, especially any lawyer that uses Microsoft Exchange (Outlook) for e-mail.

It is impossible to review Documents to Go (which I will just refer to as DTG) without comparing it to its only real competitor, Quickoffice Mobile Office Suite, so I will do so throughout this review.  I love Quickoffice, but DTG is currently a better app in several ways that many attorneys will find significant.

Editing word documents

The killer feature of DTG is, of course, the ability to edit Word documents, and it does that quite well.  You can edit text and format it in many different ways, including not only adding (or removing) bold and italics, but also add or remove underlining (which Quickoffice currently lacks).  This is a key advantage because while caselaw is sometimes italicized in my documents, other times the case names are underlined in my briefs and I can see that in DTG but not Quickoffice.  Another huge advantage is the ability to see (although not add) footnotes (and comments, which are handled the same way as footnotes).  Just tap once on a footnote to see a pop-up balloon showing you what the footnote says.  In Quickoffice, the app simply ignores footnotes, and you don’t even see an indication that the footnote exists but is not being displayed.  Here is an example of a brief in DTG that has a footnote.  Tap on the footnote to see the pop-up baloon as shown on the right:

DTG also has a ton of other formatting options, made possible by the fact that the status bar at the bottom of the screen can be scrolled by simply swiping left or right.  That ingenious feature means that you can have lots of icons to tap to access features.  In Quickoffice, there are only six icons at the bottom, each of which triggers a pop-up menu for more options:

1. Character formatting (bold, italic, font type and size, text color and highlight)
2. Paragraph (allign left, center or right, add or remove indent, and bulleted list)
3. Keyboard (used to start typing)
4. Find
5. Cut, copy, paste, delete
6. Undo, redo

In DTG, there are currently 13 icons, each of which triggers a pop-up menu for more options, and DataViz has ample space to easily add many more in the future.  The current icons are:

1. Save, save as
2. Cut, copy, paste, select all
3. E-mail the current document
4. Character formatting (bold, italic, underline, text color, highlight color)
5. Paragraph (align left, center, right, full justification, or distributed across the page)
6. Bullets and numbering
7. Add or remove indent
8. Find and replace
9. Zoom (from 50% to 200%)
10. Go to the top, middle, or bottom of the document
11. Undo, redo
12. Word count
13. Document details (title, size, modification date)

I don’t see that you can change the font or font size in DTG, but other than that DTG includes all of the formatting features of Quickoffice and adds many more.  Both apps allow you to view or edit in portrait or landscape mode.  Quickoffice lets you zoom by simply pinching, whereas in DTG you have to tap the zoom menu button, but DataViz says that the 1.1 update will add pinch zoom.  Quickoffice also gives you the option to view a Word document full screen (without any menus taking up screen space) when in landscape mode.  This is currently missing from DTG but is said to be coming in the 1.1 update.

Like Quickoffice, DTG offers cut, copy and paste, but both of these apps currently only offer these features within the apps themselves.  Thus, you cannot copy text from a website and paste it into a Word document.  I presume that both Quickoffice and DTG will soon replace their proprietary cut/copy/paste features with the iPhone 3.0 built-in functions to solve this problem.  Indeed, I look forward to this because Apple’s cut/copy/paste implementation is much more elegant than the implementation in DTG, although Quickoffice’s implementation is much closer to Apple’s implementation.

DTG, like Quickoffice, also lets you create a new Word document.

Transferring documents to and from DTG

There are three ways to access files in DTG.  You can access files that are saved locally to the iPhone.  You can access files that are local on the iPhone but also synced with a computer.  And finally, you can access attachments to Exchange e-mails.

 

One of the most compelling features that DTG offers but Quickoffice lacks is the
ability to access attachments to your e-mails, assuming that you use
Microsoft Exchange.  DTG does this by essentially including a simple
e-mail app within the DTG app.  You have to first configure the e-mail app by giving it
your Exchange server information, name, password, etc.  I had some trouble
with this at first, but after I got it set up correctly it has been
working great.  You can tell DTG to access your e-mails from the last 1
day, 3 days, 1 week, 2 weeks or 1 month.  Then you tap Attachments on
the main DTG screen, tap the sync button, and the app will go through
all of your e-mails from the specified time period and show you just
the e-mails that have attachments that can be viewed by DTG.  You can
then tap an e-mail and download the attachment.  You can also save the
attachment to the Local Files on the DTG app so that you will always
have the document locally even if you don’t have e-mail access or the e-mail has been moved or deleted.
After you edit the document, you can then send a new e-mail with the
revised document as an attachment, and this all takes place within the
DTG app without even launching the normal iPhone Mail client.  The
Exchange e-mail features are awesome and a huge advantage over
Quickoffice.

The other way to get documents to and from DTG is to use Wi-Fi to sync with a computer on the same Wi-Fi network.  If you previously used DTG on a Palm device, such as a Treo 650, this will all look very familiar.  Using a program on your computer (available for either Mac or PC) you identify files or entire folders to be synced with the iPhone.  Whenever the document is changed on the computer, a sync will send the latest version to the iPhone.  Whenever the document is changed on the iPhone, a sync will send the latest version to the computer.

I really like the ability of Quickoffice to act like an external drive on your computer so that you can just drag and drop files to the iPhone.  DTG cannot do that, but Quickoffice lacks the DTG syncing feature that you can use to keep the latest version of a document on both the iPhone and the computer.  Which approach is better just depends upon your personal preferences and how you plan to use the app.

DTG also lacks the ability to access documents in your MobileMe iDisk, another feature of Quickoffice.  But I suspect that most attorneys will find the ability to download attachments from an Exchange e-mail far more useful than the ability to access files on iDisk.

Excel, PowerPoint, etc.

You can also view Excel and PowerPoint files using the iPhone’s built-in viewer capabilities, but unlike Quickoffice, DTG cannot currently edit Excel files.  DataViz says that editing of Excel files is coming and will be a free upgrade when it is available.

You can also view PDF files, iWork ’08 files, web page (.htm or .html) files or image files (BMP, JPEG, GIF, TIFF, SVG and PNG).

Documents to Go vs. Quickoffice

Although DTG for the most part has more features, there are some things that I like more about Quickoffice.  First, Quickoffice seems faster to me.  DTG seems particularly slow when typing text.  I also like that Quickoffice has an option to require a PIN when launching the app.  I have added many sensitive files to my Quickoffice app, and in the event that someone else gets access to my iPhone — whether it be a thief or even just my three year old son who likes to play with my iPhone — he cannot get into my Quickoffice files and view or change them without the four digit PIN.

Although both apps can handle pictures, Quickoffice does a nicer job with them by including a slideshow feature and the ability to advance through pictures in a folder without having to go back to the folder list to select a new picture.

I am sure that as I continue to use both apps, I will find more aspects of each that I prefer over the other.  Both apps are cheap enough that I suspect that many attorneys will want to have both Quickoffice and DTG on their iPhones.  Each app has different strengths, and as both apps are improved and add new features over the coming months and years, there may be times when you prefer to use one over the other.

I have been raving about the Exchange e-mail capabilities, but for those of you who don’t use Exchange for your e-mail, you’ll probably prefer Quickoffice.  Quickoffice can send a file to your iPhone’s Mail app, so you can attach a file to an e-mail no matter what e-mail provider you use.  With DTG, if you don’t use Exchange, than you can’t attach a file to an e-mail.

Buy it now!

DTG is a great app that will only get better as it is updated.  If your law firm or company uses Microsoft Exchange e-mail (and I suspect that most readers of iPhone J.D. use Outlook as a mail client, so this means you) then I encourage you to buy this app immediately.  Even with great apps like Quickoffice and DTG, editing files on an iPhone (or any other smart phone) is not ideal.  For any real word processing, it is always better to use a real computer.  But you never know when someone will send you an e-mail with a Word file
attached and you will have the desire to make just a few edits to the file and then e-mail the file back or to another person.  With DTG, you can do this on your iPhone even if you are far away from your desktop or laptop computer.

Even if you don’t want to edit a Word file, both DTG and Quickoffice are great apps to just view Word files.  Of course, the iPhone can already view a Word file attached to an e-mail, but by opening the attachment in DTG you can easily zoom in or out to make the text more readable without needing to pan back and forth because DTG (like Quickoffice) automatically reformats the document margins as you zoom.

I especially urge you to buy the app now because until June 30, 2009, the app costs only $9.99.  Starting July 1, the price will increase to … well, I’m not exactly sure to what, but the full version of Quickoffice currently costs $19.99 so I would expect a similar price for DTG.  There is also a $4.99 version of DTG, but it lacks the ability to work with Exchange e-mails.

Click here to get Documents to Go with Exchange (currently $9.99): 

Click here to get Document to Go without Exchange (currently $4.99): 

On June 8, 2009, Apple introduced the latest version of the iPhone during the keynote address at WWDC.  The slides used during the presentation showed an “s” in a box after iPhone 3G:

This immediately caused many of us who are Type A on details — a description that applies to most lawyers I know — to wonder how we should type this name, given that keyboards lack a button with an S in a box.  Apple first provided the answer in a press release dated June 8, 2009 titled:  “Apple Announces the New iPhone 3G S — the Fastest, Most Powerful iPhone Yet.”   Apple then updated the apple.com website and consistently typed the name as “iPhone 3G S.”

The space seemed somewhat awkward, as if Apple was asking us to pause after saying the “G” before saying the “S.”  And as this Joy of Tech comic illustrated, the term might even be considered somewhat naughty.  Nevertheless, Apple has the right to name its own products, and if Apple was telling us that the name was iPhone 3G S, then that was the name.  So last week, when the latest iPhone was released to much fanfare on Friday, the media outlets consistently referred to it as the iPhone 3G S.  (See, e.g., New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Chicago Sun Times, USA Today).  One notable exception was Gizmodo which, from the beginning, called the new iPhone the 3GS.

This past weekend, Apple sold an unprecedented number of the new iPhones — over one million.  Apple tooted its own horn by issuing a press release.  The message in the press release was compelling enough — Apple’s last blockbuster weekend was July 11 to 13, 2008, when the iPhone 3G was released, but somehow Apple sold even more from June 19 to 21, 2009.  But it was two subtle details in the press release that caught my eye.  First, there was a statement from Steve Jobs: 

“Customers are voting and the iPhone is winning,”
said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “With over 50,000 applications available
from Apple’s revolutionary App Store, iPhone momentum is stronger than
ever.”

Whether Jobs himself actually said that or an Apple spokesman just attributed the quote to him, it was nice to see some formal acknowledgment that Jobs was returning to work after his medical leave.  Second, the press release had the title “Apple Sells Over One Million iPhone 3GS Models,” for the first time omitting the space before the “S”.

At first, I wondered if this might just be a mistake.  After all, previous press releases and the Apple website still called it the iPhone 3G S.  But over the last 48 hours, Apple has gone back and changed their prior press releases and their website to replace 3G S with 3GS.  Compare, for example, the original June 8, 2009 press release as it appears on Yahoo! Finance with the updated version of the same press release that now appears on Apple’s website. 

Why the change?  Greg Joswiak, told Washington Post reporter Rob Pegoraro that “We just feel it looks better with the 3GS all together.”  Macworld UK speculates that another reason might be that 3G S is a generic term harder to protect whereas 3GS can receive greater intellectual property protection.  Whatever the reason, I like 3GS better and I’m glad that Apple made the change.

Since Apple took the liberty to update the prior references on its website, I have done the same here on iPhone J.D.

Now this just leaves the nagging question of how to refer to an iPhone 3GS in the plural.  I don’t see any reference in my trusty Strunk and White
to the correct way to pluralize a proper noun that ends in s.  My other usual source for these sort of tricky questions, the Texas Law Review Manual on Usage and Style, also doesn’t provide a clear answer.  The version that I own (the 8th ed., two versions out of print) doesn’t address the plural of a word that ends with an s, but does say that to form the plural of a compound term, such as Attorney General, you pluralize the noun or other significant term that increases in number, but if the compound term has a particular meaning unrelated to the parts of the term, then make the last term plural.  The phrase “iPhones 3GS” doesn’t seem right to me, even though many handle it this way, so I would think that the second part of the Texas Manual rule is applicable.  I suppose that means that I should say iPhone 3GSs, which looks a little strange but is better than iPhone 3GSes or iPhone 3GS’s.  [UPDATE:  Mark Cowan points out in the comments that according to teachings of Bryan Garner, 3GSs is correct.]  Apple itself sidestepped the issue in its recent press release, referring to “iPhone 3GS Models.”

Whatever one calls it, is the iPhone 3GS a worthwhile upgrade from the iPhone 3G?  I placed an order for the 32 GB iPhone 3GS at an AT&T store yesterday, so once I get my new phone and have a chance to put it through its paces, I’ll let you know.

I’ve previously posted links to the more than 100 new features in iPhone Software 3.0.  The obvious new features are, of course, some of the best.  Copy and paste and search, for example, are stand out new features.  But you have probably already read about those new features, so here are a few tips regarding the new iPhone operating system that might not be so obvious.  [UPDATE: Click here for a newer post with even more tips and shortcuts.]

Battery drain solution.  I noticed after upgrading to 3.0 that my iPhone battery life became horrible.  I also noticed that my iPhone was warm to the touch, a sign that there was constant activity on the device.  After searching through Apple’s support forums, I discovered that many others who used push e-mail on the iPhone (Microsoft Exchange or Yahoo! Mail) had the same problem.  The solution was simple:  Go to Settings –> Mail, Contacts, Calendars and then select your push e-mail account, which for me was my law firm’s Exchange account.  Then tap the red button at the bottom that says “Delete Account.”  After a few minutes, the account will be deleted.  Then choose “Add Account…” and setup the account again from scratch.  It only takes a few minutes to download the e-mails, contacts, etc. and once this is done, the iPhone works normally with no battery life problem.  Apparently, when upgrading to 3.0, something wrong happens on some iPhones to cause the iPhone to constantly think that new information is being pushed to it, which wears down the battery life.  But once the account is deleted and then restored, the problem goes away.  Whew!

Turn off the shake.  By default, when you are listening to music on the iPod app, a shake of the iPhone will cause the app to go into shuffle mode.  This is a neat party trick, but frankly not something I plan to use a lot.  And to the contrary, I don’t want my iPhone to start shuffle mode just because I accidentally flicked my wrist.  You can turn off the feature by going to Settings –> iPod and then turn off Shake to Shuffle.

Sort your search results.  You have probably already noticed that if you swipe the first page of your home screen, there is a search screen to the left that allows you to search across multiple apps on the iPhone.  What you might not know is that you can choose the order of the search.  If you commonly use this feature to search your e-mails, you might want to have e-mail searches come up first.  For me, I commonly use this feature to search by app name and then jump to a specific app, so I want app names to appear first.  To change the sort order, go to Settings –> General –> Home –> Search Results and then use the icons on the right side to move the results up or down.  You can also uncheck categories if you don’t want search to take the time to look through one of them.

Find my iPhone.  If you subscribe to Apple’s MobileMe service — which normally costs $99 a year but if you click here
you can get it for only $74.99 through Amazon — you can find your iPhone if it is lost.  But you can’t use this feature unless you first turn it on.  Go to Settings –> Mail, Contacts, Calendars –> MobileMe [or whatever you have called your MobileMe account] and then turn on Find My iPhone.  Speaking of which, I encourage you to click here for a thrilling story about a man who tracked down his iPhone from a thief.  I don’t encourage you to put yourself in harm’s way by taking justice into your own hands, but it is a good story, and as Jason Snell notes on Twitter, it is probably the first of many such stories that will come out of the new Find My iPhone feature.

30 second rewind.  I often listen to podcasts on my iPhone.  Sometimes I am doing something else at the same time and my attention is not on the podcast when suddenly I hear something interesting being discussed.  With the new 30 second repeat option, you can just tap the button near the top of the screen and instantly rewind the last 30 seconds.  It is a fantastic feature that now seems so obvious in retrospect.  And speaking of podcasts, the new ability to change the FF and RW speeds by moving your finger up and down the screen is very useful.

Force quit.  You used to be able to force quit an app by holding down the Home button for about 10 seconds.  That doesn’t work any more (because the home button is used to trigger voice controls on the new iPhone 3GS) and the new shortcut is to hold down the sleep/wake button until the slider appears, and then hold down the home button for about 10 seconds.

I’ll post more about 3.0 as I have more time to use it.  In the meantime, if you want more of the nitty gritty details of iPhone Software 3.0, check out this great article from Macworld’s Dan Moren which details many new features that Dan came acorss while preparing Macworld’s review of 3.0, and check out this post on the MacRumors forums.  Also, I would love to get an e-mail from you or see your comment on this post if you want to share some of the 3.0 features that you find the most useful.

It was a busy time for me to be out of the country last week, with the iPhone Software 3.0 release and the new iPhone 3GS.  But another product released while I was gone was Documents to Go for iPhone by DataViz.  I downloaded it while I was out of town, but I am having trouble getting it to work with my Exchange server.

In theory, the app is supposed to directly connect to an Exchange server to be able to access attachments to e-mail messages, making this the first app to allow you to get an attachment from an e-mail, edit it on your iPhone, and then e-mail the edited document to someone else.  But so far I have not been able to connect to my mail server.  If anyone out there has found that there is some trick to get this running with your law firm’s (or your company’s) MS Exchange server, please send me an e-mail at jeff@iphonejd.com
to let me know how you got it working.  Perhaps there is something minor I just need to tweak on my firm’s server to get this working.  (DataViz does have this support page for common problems.)

UPDATE:  Thanks for your many e-mails offering advice.  I was finally able to get Exchange sync to work for this app.  First, I made sure that I had all of the Exchange settings set the same way that I have for Mail on my iPhone, which includes, for example, not having the “.com” on my domain.  Second — and thanks to Rachel Lunsford for this tip — I turned off SSL, even though I normally have SSL turned on for the iPhone Mail app.  Third, I turned off Wi-Fi.  I find that, for me at least, Exchange support only works if am using 3G / Edge, not when I am on Wi-Fi at my office.  (I’ll see what happens using Wi-Fi elsewhere, such as my house.)    [UPDATE 6/23/09:  My Wi-Fi problems are not related to DataViz’s app.  Something in the iPhone Software 3.0 update has caused the Wi-Fi in my office to not provide connections to the Internet.  I’m still researching this bug (and it is one that some others are seeing too, according to Apple’s discussion forums), but I don’t want to give the impression that the Wi-Fi problem was a DataViz issue.]  After these steps, I was able to successfully download an MS Word attachment from an e-mail, edit the file on my iPhone, and then e-mail the file.

If you want to check out this product, for a limited time you can buy it at a discount.  You can buy a version that doesn’t include the Exchange feature for only $4.99, and the version that includes Exchange support is only $9.99.  After June 30, 2009, these prices go up — I believe that they double, but I don’t see this confirmed on the DataViz website.  I hope to get this app fully running on my iPhone before June 30 so I can give you my full thoughts before the price increases.

Click here to get Documents to Go ($4.99): 

Click here to get Documents to Go with Exchange ($9.99): 

Today, Apple will make iPhone Software 3.0 available for download.  After you install the new software, one of the first things that you are going to want to figure out is — what is new?  When Apple first previewed the new iPhone operating system earlier this year, it said that there were over 100 new features.  So what are they?

Click here and here for my posts from this past March on the 29 new features that lawyers will love the most.  Click here for a post from March in which Harry McCracken identified 81 new features.  And click here for a post on the everythingiCafe forum from May which lists 114 new features.

I’m out of the country right now, so I won’t be able to install and try the new software for a few more days, but once you update your iPhone I would love to hear from you, via e-mail or the comments, on what new features you like the most.

I will be out of the country this week with limited internet access, so it will be pretty quiet here on iPhone J.D. until Monday, June 22.  I don’t want you to be bored in my absence, so I have asked Apple to let you download the new iPhone Software 3.0 on Wednesday and to start selling the new iPhone 3GS this Friday.

Have a great week!

-Jeff

With WWDC and the related announcements of the iPhone 3GS and iPhone Software 3.0 this week, the Internet has been abuzz about the iPhone, especially the upcoming iPhone 3GS.  Here are some of the iPhone stories that I enjoyed reading this week, so if you missed any of them I encourage you to take a look.

• Jimmy Fallon shows us what a bad opening act comic at WWDC’s keynote address might look like.
• Behold the app wall — a very cool display at WWDC with thousands of app icons pulsating as purchases are made.
• The new iPhone 3GS reportedly has an oleophobic coating on it, meaning that it is more resistant to smudging.  Interesting.
• Should you upgrade from an iPhone 3G to a 3GS?  Sebastian Page at iPhone Download Blog writes about why it may not be worth it — and yet he still plans to upgrade.  Sebastian forgot to mention the oleophobic coating; I wonder if that additional feature is enough for him to recommend that everyone upgrade?
• If you are getting an iPhone 3GS, Ars Technica gives advice on how to get your hands on an iPhone 3GS as early as possible.
• Attorney Adam Greivell writes about using the Palm Pre on his website EsquireMac.  He owns an iPod Touch, so he can compare the iPhone interface with the Pre.  His conclusion is that he is “a little disappointed in the Pre” although “it’s not a bad phone, it does a lot, and it has a completely unbeatable rate plan.”  He is still trying to decide whether to keep the Pre or get an iPhone.  (He wrote this post before Apple announced the iPhone 3GS.)  Also, Andy Ihnatko of the Chicago Sun Times reviews the Pre, and while he thinks it has promise for the future, he concludes that the iPhone is much better.
•  Jason Snell of Macworld has an interesting article on Apple’s reluctance to advertise the technical specifications of the iPhone.  They don’t want to talk about processor speeds, but instead talk in general terms like “faster.”  This makes perfect sense to me.  I often see people try to compare a Mac to a PC by comparing the processor speed and RAM, which makes little sense because each system uses processor speed and RAM in such different ways.  Plus, focusing on technical numbers distracts from the features that really matter, such as the user interface.  Prince McLean (which I believe is the pseudonym used by Daniel Eran Dilger) also writes extensively on this and related topics for AppleInsider.
• AppleInsider notes that three companies will provide turn-by-turn direction apps for the iPhone:  TomTom, Navigon and TeleNav.  Garmin has no plans to do so.  SlashGear has more information on the Navigon app in this article.
• And finally, if you want to get really technical and learn the nitty gritty details of the processors inside of the iPhone 3GS, check out this AnandTech article and this article by Daniel Eran Dilger.  For example, did you know that the iPhone uses an upgraded version of the ARM processor that used to be in the Apple Newton?

Just how fast is the 3G connection on an iPhone, and how much faster will it be with the iPhone 3GS?  Wireless data speed can be a confusing topic, but I don’t know of anyone who is better at explaining it than Glenn Fleishman.  I mentioned Fleishman a few months ago when I discussed Apple’s Airport Extreme base station.  Fleishman’s Take Control of Your 802.11n AirPort Network — an e-book that you can download in PDF format instantly for only $15 — is a great resource for understanding Wi-Fi.

Yesterday, Fleishman wrote a comprehensive and interesting article for Macworld’s iPhone Central titled “iPhone 3G S features 7.2 Mbps, AT&T’s network doesn’t.”  The article discusses the iPhone 3GS’s ability to use a faster 7.2 Mbps HSDPA 3G network and the ins and outs of 3G and its planned successors.  AT&T is still in the process of rolling out 7.2 Mbps, but when it is finished, we should see greatly increased speed when using 3G on an iPhone.

If you are at all interested in data speed on your iPhone, check out Fleishman’s article.  It is packed with technical info, but presented in a fashion that is easy to understand.

When people ask me about my favorite apps for the iPhone, it occurs to me that while a few are legal-specific apps such as copies of rules and statutes and Black’s Law Dictionary, many of the apps most useful to lawyers are the same apps that are useful to others — Mail, Contacts, Maps, Quickoffice, Twitterific, Facebook, various weather apps, etc.  In other words, while lawyers have lots of great iPhone apps to use, not many of them are lawyer-specific.

With WWDC going on this week, a lot of smart iPhone developers are thinking about new apps to create for which there is a demand.  This has got me thinking — what additional apps would it be nice to see in the legal arena?  I’m not the only one having these thoughts.  I recently received an e-mail from Jeff Nosanov, a new lawyer who recently got his J.D. from New York Law School and his LL.M. in Space and Telecommunications Law from the University of Nebraska.  (What an interesting LL.M. to get!)  Although Jeff is a new lawyer, he is also an iPhone programmer, and he told me that he was also wondering about the unmet app needs of iPhone-using attorneys.

I would love to see iPhone apps from some of the major developers of software used by law firms, such as a Westlaw app, an Interwoven Worksite (document management) app…

UPDATE: Just a few hours after this post went up, I see that Interwoven, recently purchased by Autonomy, is releasing an iPhone app for iManage Worksite.  I really look forward to checking this out.  Here is a press release and a demo.  And now, I return you to this regularly scheduled post…

…a client for Elite (time entry and bill mangement), etc., but these are not the sort of apps to be created by developers outside of those companies, unless they are retained by the companies themselves.  What would be a great app for lawyers that an independent developer could create?

Nothing is coming to my mind right now.  For example, I can’t think of any lawyer-specific apps that I used to use on my old Treo 650, and I’ve searched the Internet for lawyer-specific apps for the Blackberry and haven’t found anything that isn’t already available for the iPhone.  But I have the nagging feeling that I am just not thinking of something obvious.  Thus, I’m asking the readers of iPhone J.D. to help me crowdsource this question.  Do you have a good idea for an iPhone app for lawyers?  If so, I would love to hear about it in an e-mail, or better yet post a comment so that others can also see your ideas.  Maybe an enterprising developer will see your request and create an app that can benefit all of us.

Yesterday was Apple’s big keynote at the WWDC conference.  Apple has posted a streaming video here, and the highlights and my thoughts are as follows.

A few numbers

Starting with some of the general iPhone statistics that were announced yesterday, there are now 50,000 iPhone apps in the App Store and over 40 million iPhone and iPod Touch units have been sold.  Over 1 billion apps were downloaded as of April 23, 2009; Apple hasn’t updated the number since then.

iPhone Software 3.0

Many of the details we already knew, but there were a few new tidbits, including the release date — Wednesday, June 17.  You will be able to purchase and download movies, TV shows and audiobooks directly on the iPhone, making it possible to grab a copy of a movie while you are waiting for your plane to board.  You can use tethering to share your iPhone’s 3G data connection with your computer, but AT&T support for tethering isn’t coming until later.  And Safari on the iPhone is faster and better with new features such as autofill.

One nice new feature is Find My iPhone.  If you have Apple’s $100 a year MobileMe (only $68.99 from Amazon) and if you lose your iPhone, you can go to the MobileMe website and see on a map exactly where your iPhone is located.  You can even send a message to your iPhone and have it play a sound, which not only helps the waiter in the restaurant to find your iPhone, it can also help you locate the lost iPhone in your own house by just tracking down the beeps.  And if the iPhone is stolen, you can send a remote wipe to delete all of your data.  Previously, this feature was only available if you were using Exchange; now, anyone with MobileMe can use remote wipe.

Apple also showed off various new third party apps for the iPhone, including a TomTom GPS app with turn-by-turn directions that looks very slick — but no price was announced.

iPhone 3GS

But the big new news was the introduction of the iPhone 3GS, which will be available Friday, June 19.  The new iPhone 3GS looks the same as the prior iPhone, so rather than post a picture of the iPhone 3GS, let’s take a look at the Apple IIgs introduced back in 1986:

The big news about the iPhone 3GS is not the look, but instead the speed.  The “S” stands for speed.  It is way faster than the Apple IIgs, and several times faster than the iPhone 3G when lauching messages, viewing attachments, loading apps, viewing web pages, etc., overall an average of twice as fast.  The new iPhone 3GS will also work on AT&T’s upcoming 7.2 Mbps 3G network.  There is also a much better, 3 megapixel camera with autofocus, manual focus, better low light sensitivity, and macro photo capabilities.  The camera can also be used to capture video, 30 frames per second VGA with auto focus.

The iPhone 3GS also includes slick voice control features.  Just hold down the home button for a second and a voice control interface launches which can be used to not only control the phone (hands free dialing) but also control the iPod.

The iPhone 3GS’s compass can be used to orient a map to the direction that you are facing.  I’ve often used the iPhone map to figure out where I was only to then be confused as to which way I was facing when trying to orient myself on the map.  The compass is a minor, but still useful, addition.

Another new iPhone 3GS feature is hardware encryption of data on the iPhone.  I look forward to learning more about this one, but with more and more sensitive information on your iPhone, better security is always welcome.

And finally, even with all of these new features, the iPhone also features better battery life.  Click here for a video from Apple on the new iPhone 3GS features.

Pricing is a little complicated.  If you are new to AT&T or if your AT&T contract is over, then the price is $199 for a 16 GB version and $299 for a 32 GB version, plus you can get the 2008-09 generation iPhone 8GB for $99 and, while supplies last, the 2008-09 generation iPhone 16 GB for $149.

But if you currently have an iPhone 3G and want a 3GS — which means that, pretty much by definition, you are under a year into your 2 year contract — then the price is more expensive.  If AT&T deems you to be eligible, then you can take advantage of the $199/$299 prices, but I have heard mixed reports about how far you need to be in your contract.  Some are saying 1 year from when you purchased your iPhone 3G (which for earlier adopters is late July), some are saying 18 months.  If you don’t want to wait that long, iPTIB and AppleInsider report that current iPhone 3G customers can still get a 3GS but then have to tack $200 on those prices — $399 for the 16 GB and $499 for the 32 GB version.  Or you can get contract-free versions for $599/$699.

UPDATE:  The pricing is still confusing to me.  An AT&T telephone representative just told me that he had just gotten an update from the company and that there is no $399/$499 price, that the $199/$299 price will not be available to me until I am 23 months into my 24 month contract, and that my only option to upgrade before then is the $599/$699 price.  Other websites have different reports on the upgrade prices, such as these:  1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.  I suspect it will be June 19, if not later, before we really know the cost for upgrades.  (Apple has a webpage to help you decide your eligibility to upgrade on AT&T, but for some reason it isn’t working for me.)  [UPDATE 6/23/09:  My local AT&T store told me today that if you bought an iPhone 3G in July, August or September of 2008 and you spend over $99 a month on your bill, then you can upgrade to a new model for $199/$299.  My bill is over $99, but I have a basic plan and no text messages; it is only more than $99 because both my wife and I are on the same plan.  But that was enough, so I just bought the 32 GB model for $299.]

Thoughts

I am excited about the iPhone 3GS.  The increased speed will be very nice, and after hearing the news today, my current iPhone 3G already seems slower.  The better camera will be incredibly useful for those in-the-moment pictures. 

I am very interested in the video capabilities.  I have always thought that it might be nice to have one of those tiny video cameras like the Flip just in case my son does something funny that I want to quickly capture on video, but even the Flip is one more thing I have to carry.  Having decent quality video built into my iPhone is something that I suspect that I will use frequently because my iPhone is almost always in my pocket.  Indeed, as Chris Breen points out in this thoughtful piece on Macworld, the iPhone is slowly starting to replace other devices such as a Flip video camera, a GPS with turn-by-turn, etc.:  “How many iPhone owners would buy a pocket calculator, portable player, PIM, pocket recorder, VOIP handset, handheld gaming device, and, soon, universal remote, handheld GPS, or pocket camcorder?”  In a few years, I suspect that there will be many categories of gadgets that are made unnecessary as the iPhone becomes a jack of many more trades.

The iPhone 3G was already the best smartphone, and between the reduced price for the 3G model and the new features in the 3GS—combined with the new features of the iPhone Software 3.0—Apple has really blown away the competition.  There should be no mystery why Palm wanted to hurry to introduce the Pre and have at least a few days in the limelight before WWDC.

To me, the big question is whether current iPhone owners should upgrade.  If you have a first-generation iPhone, you will likely be able to take advantage of the $199/$299 prices, and the upgrade seems like an easy decision.  For iPhone 3G owners, is it worth paying $200 more?  That’s a tougher question.  For one thing, until AT&T figures out the upgrade prices, it may not even be a $200 premium.  If that is the price, my current thinking for heavy iPhone users is that the upgrade may be worth it — the speed will make the iPhone more enjoyable to use, the video will be very useful, and the improved battery life is always welcome — but we have two weeks to let the new features sink in and think about this.

With the $99 price for the low-end iPhone, the already popular iPhone will gain even more new customers.  With the new features in the iPhone 3GS and iPhone Software 3.0, Apple is making the iPhone more powerful and magical.  And I love knowing that thousands of developers are at WWDC this week, learning even more about creating amazing apps and accessories for the iPhone.  It is a great time for the iPhone.