As we are all spending more time in the outside world instead of our homes, we are being reminded, once again, of what it is like to have an iPhone battery run low when you are not near a power outlet. In the past, Apple has sold a case for the iPhone which includes a battery such as this model for the iPhone 6 and this model for the iPhone 11. But this week, Apple introduced a much smaller device that simply attaches magnetically to the back of your iPhone and provides a charge. It is called the MagSafe Battery Pack, and California attorney David Sparks offers these thoughts on this $99 device, which works with all of the phones in the iPhone 12 line. Unlike a case that is made for a specific model of phone, hopefully (and presumably) this battery will work with future models of the iPhone as well. I haven’t seen any information on how many more hours it adds to your iPhone (which presumably will vary depending upon which model you are using), but it looks like this is a small and light battery that you could easily slip into a pocket when you are not using it. It only comes in white, but assuming that this product is successful, I would expect Apple to come out with more colors in the future. The MagSafe Battery Pack will be available starting a week from today, and you can pre-order it now. It wouldn’t surprise me if Apple gave review units of the new MagSafe battery back to select members of the press so that they can provide early reviews shortly before next Friday. Thus, I suspect we will learn more details about this product next week, but in the meantime, Juli Clover of MacRumors has some additional information on how it works. My guess is that this will be a popular product. And now, the other news of note from the past week:
In addition to that post discussing the MagSafe Battery Pack, California attorney David Sparks shared his thoughts on Spatial Audio for Apple Music, which I discussed last month (and I’m still enjoying).
A new post on the LitSoftware blog profiles California attorney Lisa Peck and explains how she uses TrialPad on her iPad to work with exhibits in a deposition and TranscriptPad to work with her deposition transcripts.
This article doesn’t relate to the iPhone or iPad, but one of my law partners recommended it to me, and it is a remarkable story of science and technology. Pam Belluck of the New York Times reports that scientists in San Francisco have learned how to allow a man who is paralyzed speak again by putting probes on the speech area of his brain and learning how to translate signals into words. Now, he can just think about speaking something and the computer says the sentence, with decent accuracy that is improving over time. You can click here to read the story, and I used a New York Times feature called “Gift Articles,” which means that, for 14 days, you can read the story using that link even if you don’t subscribe to the New York Times.
If you like the new remote for the Apple TV that I reviewed last month but you still find yourself misplacing the remote, Blair Altland of 9to5Toys reports that elgago released a new soft silicone case for the remote that includes a place to tuck an AirTag, giving you the ability to track the remote and have your iPhone point you in the right direction. It is only $14.99 on Amazon, although you also have to purchase an AirTag, which costs another $29, or $25 each when you purchase a four-pack.
Since the pandemic started, all of Apple’s Keynote events have been pre-recorded and streamed. And the quality has been excellent, down to the smallest details — even the background furniture and accessories. If you think that you may have seen something that you like, Michael Steeber of 9to5Mac spent I-cannot-even-imagine-how-many-hours to go through the last six online-only Apple events and came up with a list of “more than 100 chairs, sofas, tables, lamps, books, and accessories that fill the sets.” Impressive attention to detail
Apple TV+ also streams Peanuts movies and TV shows. Dave Mark of The Loop links to a new video from Apple that shows you how to use an iPad to draw yourself as a Peanuts character.
If you use AT&T’s $50/month unlimited data plan called Unlimited Elite, it was upgraded this week to provide no throttling, 40GB of hotspot data a month (previously 30GB), and support for 4K HBO Max streaming over 4G or 5G, as reported by Michael Potuck of 9to5Mac. AT&T has two other unlimited plans: the $40/month plan (Unlimited Extra) has 15GB of hotspot data and streams SD video, and the $35/month plan (Unlimited Starter) has no hotspot data. I use Unlimited Elite, and the other members of my family use one of the other two unlimited plans.
It may surprise you, but there are lots of ways to use Windows on an iPad. I use LogMeIn to get remote access to the PC in my office, and my law firm also uses Citrix so I can get remote access to a virtual Windows environment. And Microsoft announced this week that it will soon release Windows 365, a service that lets you run a PC in the cloud that can be accessed from a computer or an iPad. As Chris Smith of BGR reports, it isn’t yet clear what monthly cost will be, and at least at first, the product will be sold to businesses instead of individual users.
If you want to go old school, Benj Edwards of How-To Geek explains how you can run Windows 3.1 (which was released in 1992) on an iPad by downloading the iDOS app (which lets you run a version of DOS on an iPad) and then using a Windows 3.1 installer — for which you are on your own to figure out how to acquire a legal copy. I find it interesting that, in the 1990s, I had no interest at all in using Windows 3.1. (My law firm used Macs until the very early 2000s.) But now that it is possible to run it on an iPad, I’m finding myself curious to play some Solitaire and Minesweeper.
And finally, here is a funny new Apple commercial called Haystack in which a farmer shows off one of the things that you can do with an Apple Watch.
If you want to use an iPhone, iPad, or computer to build your family tree, there are a number of services you can use. In the past, I have tried Ancestry.com, but I haven’t used it in a while. Another such service is MyHeritage. MyHeritage has been in the news lately because of some fun features that allow you to add color to, and otherwise improve, old photos and a more recent ability to add animation to a portrait photograph. I’m going to discuss those features in a future post. For now, I want to just discuss using the MyHeritage app for its core feature: building a family tree. MyHeritage gave me a free account for review purposes, and I’ve spent some time over the last four months trying it out. This is a sophisticated app and service that makes it easy to build your own family tree, not just based on the information that you have, but also based on additional information that the app provides you.
Creating your family tree
To use MyHeritage, start by adding the information that you know for your family: names, birthdays, and (if appropriate) dates of death for you, your parents, your grandparents, your aunts, uncles and cousins, etc. The app makes this easy to do. Enter your own information. Then tap the big plus sign at the bottom of a person’s card in your family tree to add a father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, or other partner. Then keep adding people.
The app does a good job of understanding that relationships can be somewhat complicated. Thus, it can account for multiple spouses. half-siblings, etc. The service even accounts for things such as optionally tracking both biological parents and adoptive parents, although you have to go through a few steps to accomplish this.
Growing your family tree
At some point, there will be a limit to how much information you already know. Finding additional information on your own used to require quite a bit of work. Many years ago when my grandmother was still alive, she decided to research her family history. To do so, she took a trip to France, visited with relatives, visited churches to view original records on marriages and graveyards, etc. She enjoyed it, and it was a great excuse for a vacation with her cousins in Europe, but most of us cannot justify the time and money associated with this type of original research. And of course, there is really no limit on much time and money you could spend on this type of original research.
With MyHeritage, it is considerably easier to do the research to build your family tree. Once you have some information in MyHeritage, the app and associated website help you to add additional limbs to your family tree through a feature called Discoveries.
There are three types of Discoveries: Smart Matches, Record Matches, and Instant Discoveries. Different accounts provide access to different Discoveries, unless you get the most expensive package that allows access to everything. (I discuss pricing in more detail below.)
Smart Matches occur when there is someone else using MyHeritage who has a person in their family tree that is also on your family tree. MyHeritage says that there are billions of profiles on their system, so there is a decent chance of finding these matches. A Smart Match can sometimes be quite distant, such as one that I’m currently looking at that says “Mother’s cousin’s husband’s great-great-grandfather.” But other times it is a closer connection. By definition, you will already have at least a preliminary record for this person, so the app also shows you what new information you can potentially add about the person such as more complete date of birth or death, place of birth or burial, relatives, photos, residences, etc. And when a Smart Match provides you with additional information on relatives, that means that your tree grows even more, opening up the possibility for even more Smart Matches.
When you tap to review a match, you can then see the information in your tree on the left and the information in the matching tree on the right. If it doesn’t look like the same person, you can tap reject. But in my tests, it almost always was the right person. Once you confirm a match, you can update your entry based on the match or even, if you want, contact the person managing a family tree that overlaps with your family tree.
Another type of Discoveries match is a Record Match. This is a match from MyHeritage’s large collection of billions of records. I have seen countless different sources, things like census records, immigration records, newspapers, books, yearbooks, other family tree databases that have a connection with MyHeritage, U.S. Social Security Death Index, and many other public sources. It can be fun to look at these sources, especially when you see a handwritten record from a hundred years ago or more. And it is neat to have the ability do this type of research from your iPhone or iPad instead of having to go to a library.
The final type of match in Discoveries is an Instant Discovery. An Instant Discovery is the fastest way to grow a family tree, and thus it requires one of the more expensive plans. This feature lets you add potentially dozens of people to your family tree with a single click, adding numerous people, facts, events, photos, etc. all at once. A source citation is added to your tree so that you can see where the data came from — typically the other person’s family tree on MyHeritage. I discuss privacy below, but it is worth noting that Instant Discoveries feature will never import the details of living people. Thus, this is a way to grow the older branches of your family tree and do so quickly.
Seeing the tree
Once you have added family members that you know and supplemented that with family members that MyHeritage helps you to find, it is easy for your family tree to end up with many branches and many people. After using this app, off and on, for a few months, I now have hundreds of people identified in my family tree, representing about eight generations that go back to, on some parts of the tree, the 1700s.
When you have a large family tree, it can be difficult to present the entire tree in a way that allows you to see all of the information. This is one of the biggest drawbacks of a traditional family tree on paper, such as the one that my grandmother created from her own original research. However, MyHeritage does a nice job of displaying a family tree, especially if you are using a device with a larger screen such as the iPad app or the website.
The iPad gives you three ways to view your information. A list view just lists a bunch of names, sorted by relationship, first name, last name, or date added. I find that view most useful when I am searching for a specific person in my tree.
A Pedigree View starts with your own information card and goes straight back: your parents, grandparents, great grandparents, etc. You can tap on any name to see additional information related to that person such as siblings and cousins that are not displayed on the Pedigree View.
Finally, there is a Family View, which I think is usually the most useful view. It tries to show as much information as it can at one time. When there are additional items related to a person that don’t fit, a small blue-dash-pink icon appears at the top of the card for the person, and you can tap that icon to expand the family tree information for that person. This is also a view that makes it easy to add more information about a specific person by tapping the plus sign at the bottom of the person’s card.
The app displays balloons when a person’s birthday is a few weeks away, in the past or future.
Charts and Books
While the app is great as an interactive way to explore the family tree, what if you want an easy way to share it with others or to archive it offline? The MyHeritage website has a great chart feature that can create lots of different versions of family trees, some showing more information and some showing less information, with lots of interesting templates. You can use the charts feature to create a PDF file that you can share with others, or you can order a poster if you want.
If you want a comprehensive record of all of your information, choose the option to create a book. Although called a “book” it is really just a huge, organized PDF file — although if you wanted to print it out as a book, you certainly could. The book includes detailed looked at each set of branches of your family tree, a list of each generation, a listing of all of the sources used (public records, family trees created by others, etc.), and an index of all of the places referenced in your family tree. There is also an index of dates which is particularly interesting. Pick a year and you can see who was born, died, married, moved to a new residence, etc. during that year. And finally there is a complete index to all of the individuals named. The book is seriously impressive.
Privacy
How much information on your tree do you want to share with others? For all of us, there are people out there who are complete strangers but with whom we share some family connection, however attenuated. Although I don’t believe that you can control this in the iPhone or iPad app, the MyHeritage website offers lots of different privacy options so that you can control what, if anything, strangers can see from your family tree.
The service automatically provides additional privacy protection for people who are still alive, sometimes requiring you to ask the custodian of that information for permission before adding it to your tree. For people who are deceased, you can often get more information.
Pricing
There are many different pricing tiers for MyHeritage. You can start with a free account, which allows you to create a family tree with up to 250 people on it. This is a great way to start and get a feel for how the app works. And if you just want to keep track of a relatively small family tree, this works well.
To take advantage of advanced features, including the Discoveries, you need a paid subscription. The least expensive option is the Premium Plan which costs $129/year ($89 for the first year) and gives you up to 2,500 people on your family tree and adds the Smart Matches feature along with other features. The PremiumPlus Plan is $209/year ($149 in the first year) and adds more features to the Premium Plan such as Instant Discoveries and an unlimited family tree size. For $189/year ($129 in the first year) you can get access to the Data plan with billions of historical records plus Record Matches. If you want all of the features of the PremiumPlus plan and also want the historical records in the Data plan, then you should get the Complete Plan for $299/year ($199 in the first year) that gives you everything offered in all of the other plans. When MyHeritage gave me a free account for a limited time so that I could write this review, the company gave me the Complete Plan, so that is how I’ve been able to test all of the different features.
You need a paid plan to take full advantage of all that MyHeritage offers, but even if you just pay for one year of a subscription, that would be more than enough time to do a ton of research. When you are finished, you can create some charts or books as a permanent record. If you don’t pay to renew a subscription, the site keeps your data and allows you to downgrade back to a free Basic subscription, but if you have more than 250 people on your family tree you won’t be able to add more people. You can export your family tree in GEDCOM format, an open specification for exchanging genealogical data between different genealogy software that was developed by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (You can also import in GEDCOM format.)
Support
The MyHeritage website features lots of help files including many videos to help you with every aspect of using the program. If you want to go deep on your family tree, you can get a ton of tips for doing research and managing your information. All of the paid plans also offer customer support, but I didn’t have a reason to test that.
The more that I used this service, the more that I realized how sophisticated it is. If you want to dive deep into exploring your family history, there is a ton of information that you can access in this app, and to do so you should take advantage of the extensive help files and videos.
Fun with photographs
As noted above, I’m going to write a separate post on some of the newest features in MyHeritage which allow you to do some interesting things with photographs of your ancestors. I’ll add a link here when that review is posted.
Conclusion
MyHeritage is a great service if you want to track and explore your family tree. For many of the most common features that you would use, the iPad or iPhone app is all that you need. When you want to use more advanced features, you can use the MyHeritage website. And fortunately, you can get started for free to get a sense of what the service has to offer. To grow your family tree by going beyond the information that you already know, you’ll want to purchase one of the subscription plans for at least one year, and fortunately, each plan is less expensive in the first year. And if you decide that you want to devote a lot of time to researching your family tree, MyHeritage gives you access to a ton of historical resources that you can explore.
Click here to get MyHeritage for iPad or iPhone (free):
Security is one of the most pressing technological challenges for lawyers and law firms. Even if you ensure that everything in your physical law office is safe and secure, you need to worry about avoiding risks when lawyers need remote access. I'm thrilled to welcome a new sponsor to iPhone J.D. this month that has a solution: Mobile Helix, the maker of the LINK app. LINK from Mobile Helix is a secure system that allows attorneys to use the LINK app, available on the App Store, on either an iPad or iPhone to access email, document management systems, intranet portals, and more. At your firm, you run LINK server software deployed on-premises behind your firm's firewall. I've had a chance to see how LINK works, and it is quite impressive.
How does LINK improve security? The key is that everything that an attorney does with firm resources on an iPad or iPhone is done within a secure container app. All communications between the LINK app and your law firm are encrypted. Data is encrypted at-rest with AES-256 and in-transit with TLS over HTTPS. And the encryption is built-in to the app and does not depend upon iOS security. Thus, even if an iPad or iPhone were to be jail-broken or hacked, the data in the LINK app would remain secure. LINK uses both first and second factor authentication to ensure that only authorized people have access to your firm's confidential information. And the LINK app can be remotely wiped if a device is lost or if a person leaves your firm. LINK is compatible with Mobile Device Management (MDM) software if your firm uses that. As a result, documents and information remain safe within the LINK app itself. LINK also works with Microsoft Office apps on the iPad so that you can, for example, view and edit a document using the Microsoft Word app, but the document itself is safely saved within the LINK system.
The main screen of the LINK app has tiles that correspond to the different resources that can be accessed from within the app. This is something that you configure for your particular law firm. First, there is a section devoted to Documents — your document management system. In many of the screenshots in this post, the DMS being used is iManage, but other DMS systems are supported, such as NetDocuments and OpenText eDOCS.
The next section of the home screen provides access to email. For example, you may have a tile on the home screen that can be tapped to view your Outlook email:
The third part of the home screen provides access to Intranet resources, which can be used for access to time and billing systems, expense systems, firm-specific knowledge management intranets, or any other firm software that has a browser interface.
Attorneys using LINK will commonly want to access documents from a DMS. Here is an example of looking at a list of documents in the iManage document worklist from within the LINK app:
The LINK app works well in a split-screen mode so that you can see a list of documents on one side of the screen while you view a specific document on another part of the screen. You can split the screen 50-50 or use a slider to make one part bigger or smaller.
When working with a PDF document, an attorney can annotate from within the LINK app itself.
When working with a Microsoft Office document, an attorney can view the document within LINK. LINK even has a built-in document comparison system so you can create a redline of different versions of a document. You can also use the Microsoft Office app (sold separately) to edit the document.
You can also take a file that is on your iPad or iPhone and import it into LINK to add it to your firm's document management system.
The above screenshots show LINK being used on an iPad, but it also works on the iPhone. Here are some examples of what that looks like:
The default setting is that all documents and email stay within the LINK app itself. That provides the most security. But for your particular law firm, you might decide to allow attorneys to take documents out of LINK so that documents can be used with another app on the iPhone or iPad or exported off of the iPhone or iPad. That reduces security somewhat, but you can make the decision that is right for your law firm. You can also decide whether you want to let attorneys use AirPrint or disable that feature to keep the documents safely within the LINK app.
The LINK app has been available since 2014, and the app has seen numerous updates since its original release. The LINK app is currently in use at law firms as small as 30 attorneys and as large as the Top 20 of the AmLaw 100. The pricing is per user, per year, and a free trial is available so that you can easily see how the LINK app works in your own law firm environment. The iPhone and iPad apps are available now, an Android client is in beta, and Mobile Helix also has plans to develop clients for the Mac, Windows, and Chromebook.
Thank you to Mobile Helix for sponsoring iPhone J.D. this month and for developing powerful software that lawyers can use to protect confidential information on their mobile devices.
Episode 9 of the In the News podcast is now available. In this week’s episode, Brett Burney and I begin by discussing using an app such as GoodNotes to prepare to give a presentation. We then discuss Apple’s built-in Notes app on the iPhone and iPad. Then we discuss CarPlay, including new features coming later this year, and the health aspects of the Apple Watch
Finally, in our In the Know segment, Brett and I both discuss tips for using the Keynote app on an iPad or a Mac.
Appellate practice is a big part of my law practice, which means that I often have the opportunity to present an appellate oral argument. For many years now, I’ve found that my favorite way to prepare is to use the GoodNotes app on my iPad to write an outline, adding quotes from statutes or jurisprudence, along with my notes for answers to likely questions. (I described some of what I do in this post from 2017.) As the last step, I convert my notes to PDF and print them on a color laser printer. For the last few years, I have mostly used the paper version at the podium when presenting oral arguments. (My iPad is still nearby, in case I need to look at the briefs or the record.) For example, I used the paper notes last week when I had my first in-person Louisiana state court appellate oral argument since the pandemic started. But yesterday I had a U.S. Fifth Circuit oral argument, and I found it better to present from my iPad. I was in the En Banc Courtroom in New Orleans, a beautiful courtroom with very high ceilings and lots of wood. If you were going to invite your parents to watch you give an oral argument, you would want it to be in an impressive courtroom like this. But it is also a darker courtroom, with dimmed lighting somewhat similar to a restaurant at night. While there is a light at the podium that would have illuminated most of the printed-out version of my notes, I was glad to have my iPad in the courtroom with me so that I could make the quick decision to use the GoodNotes app — tapping the button at the top right to turn off edit mode so that I didn’t accidentally change anything on the screen while I was swiping through pages. The large, backlit screen of my 12.9" iPad Pro turned to portrait orientation was perfect for giving my oral argument, making it incredibly easy to glance at my electronic notes on the podium. As it turned out, I didn’t actually consult my notes very often because it was pretty much non-stop questions, but when I wanted to quote something from a case or a statute, GoodNotes and the iPad made it incredibly fast and easy to find exactly what I wanted to quote to the court. If you use an iPad to prepare for oral argument at the trial or appellate court level, I recommend that you always have both the iPad and paper notes available so that you can use whatever makes the most sense. And so that you have a backup if your iPad isn’t working for some reason. And now, the news of note from the past week:
In the latest episode of the Apps in Law podcast, Brett Burney talks with Tara Cheever, co-founder of LitSoftware, the maker of great iPad apps for lawyers including TrialPad and TranscriptPad. Click here to listen to the podcast or watch the video version.
Here an interesting intersection between smartphones and copyright law. Zoe Schiffer and Adi Robertson of The Verge report that some police officers who are upset about bystanders taking videos of what police officers do and then posting the videos to YouTube have started to take out their own phone so that they could play a song — in one example, “Blank Space” by Taylor Swift — so that if a person’s video is posted to YouTube, YouTube would automatically take down the video as a copyright violation because of the unauthorized song playing in the video. The article doesn’t explain whether police officers utilizing this tactic have been successful, but it is interesting that some even thought to try it.
Apple’s built-in Notes app on the iPhone and iPad is excellent, and Apple continues to make it better. Michael Potuck of 9to5Mac explains how Notes in iOS 15 will support tags to make it easier to sort and organize your notes.
Apple’s Vice President of Health, Sumbul Desai, MD, is responsible for many health features in the Apple Watch and iPhone. She is the guest on the latest episode of the Second Life podcast, a podcast spotlighting successful women who have made major career changes. In the podcast, she shares with host Hillary Kerr a very dramatic life experience that led her to leave Disney and go into the medical field. She also shares interesting thoughts on working from home during the pandemic, and she talks about some of the health additions coming to iOS 15, including the ability to share health data with trusted friends and family and the ability to share health data with your physician.
When you use CarPlay in your car, your car provides the screen but the brains of the operation come from your iPhone. Thus, when there is an update to the iOS, there is often also an update to CarPlay. CarPlay Life reports on the new CarPlay features in iOS 15, including the ability to have Siri announce messages. I use this feature all the time with Siri on my AirPods, and I’m a big fan. The way it works is that when you are driving and someone sends you a text, Siri can just start speaking and let you know that so-and-so sent you a text saying such-and-such. You can turn off the feature whenever you don’t want it, but since I typically am by myself when I am driving, I love that I will no longer have to take some action when a new text arrives to hear who it is from and what they want to say.
Meredith TerHaar of ABC13 news in Michigan shares the story of Diane Feenstra. Her husband gave her an Apple Watch, and she noticed one day on her watch that her heart rate was 169 beats per minute, even though she had not been doing anything strenuous. She had noticed some other minor symptoms, such as indigestion and pain in her shoulder, but didn’t think much of them. But once she saw her elevated heart rate, she went to the hospital and learned that she had experienced a heart attack because of a blockage in the “Widow maker artery.” She had a stent procedure, she is now doing better, and she credits the Apple Watch for helping her to avoid a second heart attack that would have likely been fatal. After typing those sentences, I decided to use my own Apple Watch to check my heart rate, and I see that I have 63 BPM. Whew.
And finally, if you have the new 2021 version of the iPad Pro 12.9" or a new iPhone that can do a great job displaying HDR content — or if you are looking for something impressive to watch on an HDR television — here are two video recommendations. You can watch these videos on any device, but on a device that does a good job displaying HDR, they look outstanding. First, here is an impressive video from Sony showing glass blowing. Second, here is an amazing video from LG in which musicians play Jazz and colors pop around them. I’ve embedded below the LG video:
Episode 8 of the In the News podcast is now available. In this week’s episode, Brett Burney and I begin by discussing the 14th anniversary of the iPhone going on sale and how much the iPhone was a major change, not only for smartphones but for many other aspects of life. Next, we discuss watch bands for the Apple Watch, including the new choices for the International Collection Sport Loop that Apple released this week. Then we talk about the Apple TV 4K and the public beta of iOS 15 and iPadOS 15.
Finally, in our In the Know segment, Brett recommends the free iExit app, a great road-trip companion because it tells you what’s coming up on the next exits on U.S. Interstate Highways. I recommend the free Google Voice app as a way to have an extra phone number that you can give to a store or organization when you don’t want to give them your real phone number. By turning off notifications for that app, people can call or text you at that number and leave you messages without interrupting you.
July and August are typically slow months for iPhone and iPad news, but there are still things to note this week. For example, it was 14 years ago this past week that the iPhone first went on sale, and Parker Ortolani at 9to5Mac put together a great article looking back at what a big deal that was at the time. We also started the second half of 2021 this week, which is a little hard to fathom. And for those who practice law in federal court, I saw people on Twitter noting for the first time this week that we are now done with the Federal Reporter, Third Series which means we are starting the Fourth Series. Yes, that means that you are going to be typing “F.4th” soon, which looks very weird. Or maybe it will be “F. 4th” with a space since “th” has two letters. I don’t know if the Bluebook has weighed in yet, but I hope it is the former, without the space. I still remember when we started F.3d in 1993, when I was in law school. We don’t know yet which case will be 1 F.4th 1, but it might possibly end up being this case that seems to have the lowest Westlaw citation number: Nat’l Labor Relations Bd. v. NP Palace LLC, No. 20-1008, __ F.4th __, 2021 WL 2324983 (D.C. Cir. June 8, 2021). [UPDATE 7/15/21: I was close. That case is 1 F.4th 12. The award for the first case in the F.4th goes to Khochinsky v. Republic of Poland, 1 F.4th 1 (D.C. Cir. 2021)] And now, the rest of the news of note from the past week:
I’m a big fan of using an eero Pro system to improve the WiFi in your house. I upgraded to three eero Pro units this time last year, and my only regret is that I didn’t do it sooner so that I would have had excellent WiFi throughout my house when the pandemic started. California attorney David Sparks used to have six of the older eero units in his house, and as he describes in this post, he recently upgraded to the newest eero Pro 6 system, which can provide even faster WiFi speeds with only three units instead of his original six units. Right now you can get the eero Pro 3-pack that I use for $499 and the eero Pro 6 3-pack that David uses for $599. Both are excellent. If you are paying for Gigabit Internet at your house and/or you want to future-proof, I’d probably spend the extra $100 for the eero Pro 6 if I had to do it again now. But either system is almost certainly a major upgrade from whatever WiFi you currently have in your house.
This week, Apple released the first public beta of iOS 15 and iPadOS 15. I strongly urge you not to install beta system software on a device that you use to get your work done to avoid crashes and data loss, but if you have a spare iPhone or iPad and don’t mind living on the edge a bit, then you should be OK to check out the public beta version. Federici Viticci of MacStories wrote a good overview of what to expect if you upgrade to the public beta. For example, he notes: “If you’re installing the iOS 15 public beta today and want to show it off to your friends, know this: Live Text in the Camera and custom Focus modes make for the best demos, followed by the new Weather app and rethought multitasking controls on iPad. SharePlay is neat but can feel already dated now that more countries are rolling out vaccinations and returning to a semi-regular social life; the new Safari needs more work; Mail is surprisingly unchanged despite the rise of remote work in the past year.”
Yoni Heisler of BGR reports that one of the new features of iOS 15 is that if you ever forget your Apple ID password, you can still access your account if you have previously designated someone else as a trusted contact to help you unlock your account.
I’ve written in the past about state-sponsored apps that one can use to verify that they are fully vaccinated against COVID-19. According to an article by David Lieb of the Associated Press, in the United States, only New York, Louisiana, and California have such apps right now. “By contrast, at least 18 states led by Republican governors or legislatures prohibit the creation of so-called vaccine passports or ban public entities from requiring proof of vaccination.” Lieb reports that in Louisiana, where this function is part of a digital driver’s license app (which I reviewed in 2018) 105,000 people have activated the COVID-19 verification function of the app, which is 14% of those who use the app and less than 4% of the 3.1 million people in Louisiana with a valid driver’s license. Lieb also notes that even if states do not provide this function in an app, many vaccine providers are making digital vaccination records available to customers, and Apple will incorporate a vaccination verification feature in iOS 15 later this year. As Michael Simon of Macworld explains: “iOS 15 will let you scan a QR code from your healthcare provider and securely store your COVID-19 immunizations and test results in the Health app.”
If you are curious whether T-Mobile would be a better carrier for your iPhone Michael Potuck of 9to5Mac notes that there is a new test drive program that uses your eSim in your iPhone so that you can see what T-Mobile service would be like without having to cancel the other carrier on your iPhone. That’s a smart way to do it.
David Howley of Yahoo Finance discusses the new digital ID card system coming to watchOS 8 this Fall.
Taylor Hall of 9to5Mac discusses the new Portraits watch face coming to watchOS 8 this Fall.
Allison Smith of Fox 8 News in North Carolina reports that a man fell down and became unconscious, but fortunately, his Apple Watch called for help and he was saved. Afterward, he said: “The first thing I asked him was, ‘How did you guys know to get here?’ and he said, ‘Your watch sent us a message,’ and I said ‘What?'”
If you charge your Apple Watch on your nightstand at night, you might be interested in this review by Michael Strange of The Gadgeteer of NightWatch, which uses a solid piece of lucite to magnify the clock on the Apple Watch.
Earlier this week, I reviewed the Apple TV 4K (2nd generation). Jason Cross of Macworld explains how you can use the Channels feature of the TV app on the Apple TV, iPhone, or iPad to subscribe to dozens of premium streaming services.
If you are looking for a wall calendar for the Apple fan in your life — which might be yourself — Stephen Hackett of the Mac Power Users podcast has a Kickstarter campaign that you should check out. I pledged for one as soon as I learned about it, and it has already doubled the pledge goal so it looks like this one Kickstarter that will definitely be produced.
And finally, when the original iPhone debuted in 2007, David Pogue, who at the time wrote for the New York Times, produced a fun video in which he sang about the brand new iPhone. I’ve linked to this video in the past on iPhone J.D., but it is fun to watch again even if you have seen it before, especially if you have not seen it in a long time. It reminds me of the excitement for the original model, but it also reminds me how far we have come as we celebrate the 14th anniversary of the iPhone’s debut.
With the Summer Olympics just around the corner, Apple has introduced a new line of watch bands for the Apple Watch called the International Collection Sport Loop. The Sport Loop, which I reviewed in 2019, is one of my favorite Apple Watch bands because it is so comfortable and so easily adjustable with the hook-and-loop closure. It is also very durable and easy to clean when necessary. I own two different models of the Sport Loop just to have different color combinations. I don’t consider the Sport Loop quite formal enough to wear to work, but after hours and on the weekend, this is one of my two favorite styles of watch bands to wear. (The other one that I really like is the Solo Loop, which I reviewed earlier this year.)
The International Collection Sport Loop comes in colors that match different countries. Or, to be more specific, it matches the colors typically used by the Olympic teams for different countries. And for each different watch band, there is also a new watch face that matches the band. Here are the new designs.
Australia, Belgium, and Brazil:
Canada, China, and Denmark:
France, Germany, and Great Britain:
Greece, Italy, and Jamaica:
Japan, Mexico, and the Netherlands:
New Zealand, Russia, and South Africa:
South Korea, Spain, and Sweden:
And the United States:
Note that many countries have similar color schemes, so you might choose to get a band associated with another country to celebrate your own country. For example, if you are a fan of red, white, and blue, you could purchase the USA Sport Loop, but you could also purchase the one for France, Great Britain, or Russia. I think I actually prefer the Great Britain band with the USA face over the USA band with the USA face.
When you purchase the watch band, it uses Apple’s App Clips feature to help you to download the matching watch face. But anyone can download any of these watch faces without buying the watch band. For example, you might want to download the USA watch face right now to use it for the Fourth of July in a few days. To do so, using the iPhone that is paired with your Apple Watch, go to the Apple Watch page on the Apple website. Scroll down until you see the International Collection part of the web page and you will see a button that says “See the countries.” Tap that button.
This will bring you to a page that has circles corresponding to each country. Tap a circle for a country and then, at the bottom of the page, tap the button that says “Add Apple Watch Face.” That will download the watch face to your iPhone, install it on your Apple Watch, and make it the active watch face. (To switch back to the watch face that you had been using, just swipe your finger from the left side of the Apple Watch screen across to the right to change faces.)
In fact, you don’t even need to download one of these faces to use it. You can create one yourself. Each of these is simply a watch face created using the built-in Stripes style of watch face. For example, the USA watch face is simply a Stripes watch face in the fullscreen mode with 9 stripes. The first six stripes alternate brick red and white, and the last three stripes are all deep navy. The position is set as 150° to put it at an angle. Whether you create a watch face yourself or download it from Apple, you can adjust the face however you want, such as placing the stripes at a different angle or changing the colors. For some time now, I’ve used a purple, green, and gold watch face during Mardi Gras season in New Orleans. And I have a black-and-gold one that I often use when I’m watching a Saints football game.
You may want to create your own Stripes watch face with colors that match a school, team, season, organization, charity, etc. Note that the Stripes watch face doesn’t support complications so it is very much form over function. But that makes sense because whenever I use this watch face, my goal is to show off the colors.
Each of these bands costs $49, the same price as other Sport Loop bands sold by Apple. You can buy them on the Apple website or at your local Apple Store.
Apple has been making a box called the Apple TV since 2007. Other companies make cheaper devices that can connect to a TV and stream video, but as each new Apple TV model has come out, it has always been a high-quality device that works extremely well with other Apple devices. Thus, if you already use an iPhone, iPad, and/or Mac, I’ve always thought that it was worth the extra money to get an Apple TV instead of devices sold by other companies. On April 20, 2021, Apple introduced the latest version of the Apple TV called the Apple TV 4K (2nd generation). I’ve been using one for the last few weeks, and for me it was an upgrade from an Apple TV HD, which I reviewed in 2015 (at a time when it was called the Apple TV fourth generation). I’m very happy with the new features of this version of the Apple TV, and I recommend it — even if you, like me, don’t have a 4K television.
What I continue to love
Just in case you don’t yet have an Apple TV, let me begin by making a pitch for this device. The Apple TV is great for streaming video and works with all of the major video streaming services like Netflix. It also works seamlessly with the iCloud Photo Library, so all of the pictures on my iPhone, iPad, and Mac are also available on the Apple TV, which is a great way to show off pictures and videos to friends and family. I also use it to stream all of the video files that are on my Mac, which is on the same network at my home.
The Apple TV has an App Store, so you can download apps such as games. I don’t use apps nearly as much as I use the Apple TV to stream video or photos, but I use them sometimes.
Consistent with Apple’s commitment to privacy, the Apple TV doesn’t spy on what you are watching and sell your habits to third parties. Note that your TV itself may still try to do so when it is connected to an Apple TV, but the Apple TV doesn’t play any role in that.
An Apple TV works as an AirPlay speaker so it can play audio at the same time as other devices. For example, in my house, I have two HomePod minis and an Apple TV in different rooms on the first floor of my house. I can tell music to play simultaneously on all three devices so that the same music plays in all of the rooms.
An Apple TV can also act as a hub for your HomeKit accessories so that you can control them or check their status even if you are not in the house. For example, you can turn on the porch light before you get home.
And finally, it is incredibly easy to share the screen of an iPhone or iPad to an Apple TV. This is really nice if friends or family come over and want to share pictures from their iPhone so that we can all see them on the big screen. There are now some TVs that you can buy with built-in AirPlay functionality, but an Apple TV makes this great feature work with any TV.
The new remote
Depending upon how you count them, the new Apple TV comes with either the fourth or fifth version of an Apple TV remote. The original remote in 2007 was very small and white. In 2010, Apple introduced a thin silver model that was easier to hold. In 2015, Apple introduced the black Apple TV remote. There were some nice feature to that remote, but also had some drawbacks: the symmetrical design and flat buttons made it difficult to figure out which button you were pressing in a dark room, and worse, yet, made it hard to know if the remote was upside down in your hand. I’m honestly surprised that Apple kept that remote around for six years. Apple made one small change to the Apple remote during that time, placing a white circle around the MENU button, but that was about the smallest change that one could make to the remote to make it easier to use, so I don’t really consider that a different remote model.
With this year’s update to the Apple TV, we now have a new silver remote. It is thicker than previous models, which is a good thing because it makes it easier to hold in your hands. It also makes it harder for the remote to slip between cushions on your couch.
The new remote also features a touchpad, but it is part of a four-directional D-pad. Thus, if you want to use it as a touchpad you can, but if it is easier to just click buttons to go up/down/left/right, you can do that instead. I find that it is easier to jump 10 seconds forwards/backwards in a video by pressing the right/left D-pad arrows than it ever was to do the same thing with the old remote.
Better yet, because the D-pad is in a circular shape, you can use it as a jog dial — spin your finger around the circle to scrub through a video. That feature only works in Apple TV apps that are made to work with the feature, but I presume that most services will add this feature. To use that feature, pick up your finger from the D-pad and then place your finger along the edge of the circle for about a second or two. You will see a circle appear on screen around your current position in the video, and then you can move your finger around the circle as much as you need to get to a new position in the video, either forward or backward.
The circular D-pad is also nice because it provides an obvious physical barrier to the touch surface. With the old remote, it was easy to accidentally touch the touch pad when picking up the remote. That is far less likely with the new remote.
The new remote also moves some buttons around and adds new buttons. The Siri button is moved from the face of the remote to the side edge, which reduces the chance that you will trigger Siri accidentally. I find that it also makes Siri easier to trigger in the first place because I don’t have to look down at the remote to find the Siri button before I can press it. There is also a new power button at the top right. It turns the Apple TV itself on or off, and also turns on/off other devices that support HDMI-CEC. For me, the power button will turn on (or off) both my Apple TV and my TV, but not my audio receiver. Finally, there is a new mute button, which is something that I always missed on the prior remote.
Like prior models, the volume up/down buttons can either control the sound via HDMI, or you can teach them to use RF to work with an audio source. Thus, I can use the remote to control the volume on my audio receiver.
Like before, the circle button at the top right is the Apple TV+ button. Press it to jump directly to the Apple TV+ app. If you prefer, in Settings you can reprogram that button to go to the home screen. If you keep that as an Apple TV+ button, you can always hold down the back button for a few seconds to jump directly to the home screen. And if you hold down the top right Apple TV+ button for a few seconds, you can see the Control Center — a quick way to connect to AirPods, see the time, and perform some other functions.
The new remote is such an improvement over the prior model that Apple is selling it separately for $59 so that you can use it with any of the Apple TV models that came with the black remote. And if you already have the first generation Apple TV 4K, you may not need or want the new features in this second generation Apple TV 4K other than the remote. However, if you are currently using the Apple TV HD that was released in 2015, consider instead upgrading the new Apple TV 4K like I did. If you have an even older model of the Apple TV, then I have an even stronger recommendation that you upgrade. (Click here to see a page on the Apple website that you can use to identify which Apple TV model you have.)
The new Apple TV 4K
Here are the other features of the new Apple TV 4K that make it a worthy upgrade from a prior model, and make it a great device if this is your first Apple TV.
4K. I don’t have a 4K television. I bought the last model of the Panasonic VIERA plasma TV before Panasonic and the rest of the industry stopped making plasma televisions. This type of plasma TV looks great if you are in a room that doesn’t have windows, so I’m not in a rush to give it up, but at some point in the future I’m sure I will upgrade to a 4K TV with HDR. If you have a 4K television, especially one that supports HDR, then the reviews I have read indicate that you can make the most of your TV with this newest Apple TV because of the HDR support.
One note about HDR. Although I don’t have a TV that supports HDR, I know that it looks great on the latest models of the iPad Pro and the iPhone, so whenever I record video on my iPhone, I record it using 4K at 60 fps using Dolby Vision. This results in videos that look incredibly true to life. With my Apple TV HD, I often had trouble playing these videos on my TV, especially if I modified the videos using Final Cut Pro. I knew that I would not see the full spectrum of dark to light areas because my TV doesn’t support Dolby Vision HDR, but I still wanted to see the video on my TV. This new Apple TV 4K will display all of those videos on my TV. No, I don’t get the full effect of HDR like I do on my iPad, but this new Apple TV can still produce a nice version of the video that works on my TV.
This is important to me because the main reason I shoot in 4K HDR today is so that my home videos will look as good as possible 5, 10, 15, etc. years from now. When my kids were young, I bought a HD camcorder that recorded to tapes, and I’m glad that I did so because those videos still look very good today, whereas the home videos I took before that using a camcorder look pretty pitiful.
Speed. Unsurprisingly, this new model is much faster than the 2015 model that I had been using. It is faster in multiple ways.
First, the Apple TV HD and earlier models only supported 100 Mb/sec Ethernet. Like the first generation Apple TV 4K, this second generation model supports Gigabit Ethernet, which is 10x faster. I use the eero Pro to provide Wi-Fi in my house, and the eero Pro in my TV room has a wired Gigabit Ethernet connection to my router. I use the second Ethernet port on my eero Pro to connect to my new Apple TV, and it makes a huge and noticeable difference on downloads. When I stream video, it plays virtually instantly. With my prior Apple TV, the Speed Test app never showed speeds about 100, whereas with this new Apple TV, I get scores above 900.
Second, the new Apple TV 4K has a faster chip in it. This is probably another reason that the Photos app works so much better. This new model uses an A12, the same chip that was first used on the iPhone XS, XS Max, and XR in 2018. (The Apple TV HD uses an A8 chip, which was first used on iPhone 6 in 2014.) With this much faster chip, everything has much more zip to it. It is a noticeable and very welcome improvement.
These two changes — the faster Internet and the faster chip — result in a vastly improved experience when I use the Photos app on the Apple TV, which downloads pictures from my iCloud Photo Library. Still photos now display almost instantly, whereas with my older Apple TV, I had to wait a while for them to appear. Live Photos — the ones you take with your iPhone that have a short video associated with them — sometimes appear almost instantly, and sometimes take about a second to load, but again, that is far better than what I used to see.
A third reason that this new Apple TV is faster is, if you use Wi-Fi 6, the newest version of Wi-Fi, this is the first Apple TV model to support it. But note that if you use a wired Ethernet connection like I do, then the Internet speed will be the same on this second generation Apple TV 4K as it was on the first generation Apple TV 4K.
Other technical improvements. Finally, this new version of the Apple TV supports the latest-and-greatest standards for video, audio, and connectivity. Things like HDR10, Dolby Vision, Bluetooth 5, HDMI 2.1, 2160p, Dolby Atmos, Thread, etc. You know, all the new and fancy buzz words. To take advantage of these features, you need to make sure these features are supported by other devices that you use to watch TV, such as the TV itself and your receiver if you use one.
I use an older audio receiver that supports 5.1 surround sound and Dolby Digital but not Dolby Atmos. When I first started using this new Apple TV, I noticed that when I watched programs that use Dolby Atmos, such as shows on Apple TV+, I would only hear the left and right speakers, but not the center or rear speakers. To solve this, in the Settings app on the Apple TV, I told the Apple TV to always use 5.1 sound. With that one change, everything works for me.
I noticed a connectivity improvement when using Apple’s Fitness+ app to do a workout. On my prior Apple TV, when I was using both my Apple Watch and my AirPods Pro (so that others in the house didn’t need to listen to my workout), my watch or AirPods Pro would sometimes lose their connection with the Apple TV. That is not what you want to happen in the middle of a workout. That hasn’t happened at all with this new Apple TV. I don’t know why this is fixed: perhaps it is the Bluetooth 5 support, perhaps it is the faster processor, or perhaps it is something else. But it’s nice to not have to worry about this anymore.
Storage. You can purchase an Apple TV with either 32GB or 64GB of storage. For virtually anyone, either size should be sufficient for whatever apps you want to download. Because the price difference is only $20, I opted for the larger size because I’ve seen some reports that the Apple TV can take advantage of the extra space to store photos and videos in the cache, meaning that they come up more quickly if you go to look at them again. I don’t think that I’ve ever seen Apple confirm that the extra storage space is used this way, but hopefully that is true. Speaking of price, the official MSRP is $179 (32GB) or $199 (64GB), but I see that Amazon is currently selling both models with a $10 discount.
Conclusion
Apple doesn’t update the Apple TV very often, sometimes going two years, three years, or more between updates. Thus, on the somewhat rare occasions when a new Apple TV model is introduced, that is a good time to consider upgrading from an older model. Since I never used the first generation Apple TV 4K released in 2017, I don’t have any first-hand experience to recommend whether this is enough of an improvement to recommend an upgrade from that specific model. Here’s some advice from Chris Welch of The Verge:
If you have the original Apple TV 4K, there’s really no sensible reason to upgrade to the new one. Wi-Fi 6 is nice to have, and Thread might prove important to the smart home someday, but that time isn’t now. Otherwise, you’re getting a slightly faster experience than what the old box is capable of. Just buy the Siri Remote, and call it a day.
But if you have the Apple TV HD (originally called the Apple TV fourth generation) that was released in 2015 or an earlier model, then I think that this is an excellent time to upgrade to take advantage of all of the improvements. And if you have never used an Apple TV before, this is a great time to get one.
Episode 7 of the In the News podcast is now available. In this week’s episode, Brett Burney and I begin by discussing the HomePod mini, which I’ve been using for a few months and which is now available for sale in some new countries. Next, we discuss upcoming improvements to Apple’s Maps app, including some augmented reality features. Next, we talk about the poor fellow who recently swallowed an AirPod. We also discuss which iPhone and iPad models can take advantage of iOS 15 this Fall, and the new Apple Store Tower Theater in Los Angeles.
Finally, in our In the Know segment, Brett and I both share Apple Watch tips.
