Tag Archives: iPhone

My favorite iOS usability feature – AssistiveTouch

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As someone who takes a LOT of screenshots – we make a mobile app – I am a fan of a set of features in iOS known as AssistiveTouch. With AssistiveTouch, you can create a virtual button on your screen. Tap the floating virtual button on your screen to accomplish one of 25 actions. For example, you can set the menu to take a Screenshot, go to Home, Pinch to zoom, Mute, or Speak Screen.

Screenshot, Home, or 23 other actions

Let’s start with my favorite usage. To take a screenshot on an iOS device, at least for a klutz like me, takes two hands. You must press the Home and Power buttons simultaneously. I must pick up the device to get the angles right to press both buttons with both hands. But when I use the AssistiveTouch virtual button then I simply use one finger to tap the virtual button, then tap Screenshot. The screenshot is snapped, and I’m on to the next screen.

Here’s what the button looks like on the screen.

iPhone Home Screen with AssistiveTouch Button
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LINK 2.0 & iOS Apps at ABA TECHSHOW 2015

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It flew by like lightning and now the carpet has literally been rolled up on the ABA TECHSHOW 2015. As always, the best part was the chance to network with lawyers who are not only tech savvy but tech enthusiasts and very generous with their knowledge. I attended the “60 iOS Apps in 60 Minutes Session”, which was deeply informative and lots of fun. A few of the top recommendations were:

TranscriptPad – Review and annotate transcripts. Per Jeff Richardson, @iPhoneJD, “at $90 worth twice the price.”
Overcast – Legal podcasts are a popular way to keep up with the latest in legal technology. Overcast is free for the basic version, but the $5 version is particularly productive. It removes the spaces between words and accelerates speed. Adriana Linares, @AdrianaL, especially likes that with Overcast you can send a colleague a link to a specific episode of a podcast.
Scannable by Evernote – An easy way to scan docs and business cards. Email docs or save to several apps including Evernote. Free. Recommended by Tom Mighell, @TomMighell.
Automatic App – This app provides data from your car, including mileage driven and service reminders. Joe Bahgat, @j0eybagodonuts, recommends it as it makes tracking business usage of your car a breeze. $99.95 for the adapter which plugs into your car’s diagnostic port.

There were 56 more apps, including Headspace, for mindfulness/meditation, and the Sonos speaker controller. Jeff Richardson will post them all this week on his blog, iPhoneJD.

LINK Email with File AttachMobile Helix made two major announcements. We released the new version of our mobile app for lawyers, LINK 2.0. LINK 2.0 integrates with WorkSite/FileSite and NetDocuments so that lawyers can securely access their docs and email them to clients and colleagues from smartphones and tablets. With LINK, when you send a colleague a doc which is stored in WorkSite she will receive a viewable .nrl attachment.

Two terrific new features, doc editing and file to WorkSite/FileSite will be released later this quarter.

NetDocuments announced their new Apps Marketplace at ABA TECHSHOW. We are thrilled to be one of their partners. Using their APIs we integrated LINK with NetDocuments so that NetDocuments users can access their docs, Outlook, SharePoint, and other apps from one secure app, LINK, without having to sign-on to each app. LINK’s efficient integration makes it easy to draft an Outlook email, attach a doc stored in NetDocuments, and send it to a client from your smartphone or tablet.

You can test drive LINK for free. Download LINK from the App Store here and follow the directions to “Take a Test Drive.” Try composing an email and attaching a file from SharePoint. If you have a NetDocuments account you can login into NetDocuments from the LINK app and access your own docs in LINK.

Take LINK for a drive. We would love to know what you think!

–Maureen

maureen at mobilehelix dot com

@mobilehelix

Apple Defies Gravity… Again

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iPhone6-34FR-SpGry_iPhone6plus-34FL-SpGry_Homescreen-PRINT

As the story goes, the young Isaac Newton was sitting in his garden when an apple fell onto his head and, in a stroke of brilliant insight, he suddenly invented the theory of gravity.1 The story is almost certainly embellished, though it has found its place in popular culture, and has been taught to generations of young receptive science students ever since.

Winding the clock forward to 2015 brings us to a whole new and different kind of Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL). On January 29th Apple became the most profitable company in history. This is an incredible achievement. Examining how Apple has achieved this milestone is even more amazing.

Apple’s sales and profitability are driven by sales of the iPhone (currently 69% of revenues), and more specifically by the new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. During the last quarter, Apple sold a staggering 74.5 million iPhones. This equates to 830,000 devices per day or 35,000 per hour for 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. This represents a 46% increase in iPhone sales year-on-year, while simultaneously increasing the iPhone average selling price by $50 to $687 per unit. For reference, average smartphone prices have declined from $440 in 2010 to an estimated $275 in 2015. Apple defies gravity… again, indeed.

To quote from Motley Fool2 “That Apple can deliver both massive sales volume and rising prices in the context of rapidly declining industry prices speaks wonders about Apple’s competitive differentiation and the booming popularity of its new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus models”. Many congratulations to Tim Cook and the whole Apple team on this achievement.

As companies get bigger, continued rapid growth gets much, much harder. It is therefore tempting to assume that Apple’s incredible performance cannot be sustained. The Economist sums the problem up well in “Apple Reigns Supreme”.3

However, Apple’s recent history suggests otherwise. Apple will launch its much awaited (and much hyped) Apple Watch in April. Will this new device completely redefine the watch and show us all the critical things that we have been missing until now, or, will it fade as a niche luxury product that only appeals to the wealthy and tech obsessed?

No one knows for sure. We will have to wait and see. However, I suspect that we will be reading similar glowing coverage later this year as Apple Defies Gravity… Again.

Stay tuned….

– Matt

Links:

1. Isaac Newton and the apple.
2. Motley Fool on Apple’s Results.
3. The Economist – “Apple Reigns Supreme When It Comes to Making Money”.