Apple today kicked off it WWDC today with its opening keynote event. This is the event where Apple usually makes new product and software announcements. Today’s event was a little tepid with few big announcements that pertain to lawyers.

Apple did announce iOS 12 with various improvements, a watch iOS 5 with new features including watch to watch communications (Apple is continuing to double down on the watch as a health device), improved search capabilities for photos etc. Quite frankly, some of the new features and benefits seemed a little gadgety (tongue detection?) and not particularly relevant to lawyers and business.

But the most exciting thing for me as a lawyers was Apple’s continued commitment to AR. I wrote about this last year and talked a bit about its potential then.

This commitment can be seen with a couple of new apps Apple announced for use with iOS 12. Measure is a new app that allows accurate 3d measurement of objects. USDZ is another new app that takes that measurement capability a step further. It allows you to take a photo of an object, get its dimensions and then place that object digitally on the screen in relatively real size so you can view them as if they were actually in front of you. I could see how could use this in the courtroom to get the correct size of an object in front of the jury without bringing that object physically in. And you could also manipulate the object so that the jury could move around it so they aren’t limited to the one view from the jury box.

Lego (yes, the toy company) in combination with the new and improved ARKit2 also demonstrated the use of AR to create 3d models that you can manipulate, walk around and even go inside.  All of these open up new possibilities for demonstrative evidence.

Apple also talked about some new AR features for use with emails and texts (aka as emojis and  Animojis). It introduced some new ones and the opportunity to create a personal memoji of yourself (Android already offers this).  At first blush, these “tools” would seem to be for fun. But as we all know is difficult with text and emails to communicate the context and the actual meaning that we do when seeing a face. In fact, these silly (tongue detection?) and fun tools actually help communicate with the subtle tools similar to what our face and body language provide.

Apple also introduced group FaceTime that allows up to 32 people to participate in video group calls. The new feature also allows you to go from group chat to facetime almost immediately. Facetime uses tiles that automatically get larger when someone is speaking  And can combine with ar emojis for fun, I suppose. Of course, this big limitation to FaceTime is that it is only available for those with iPhones and ipads.

Apple also announced a new MacOS called Mojave with a new dark feature that looks nice but is not particularly relevant to lawyers. It also announced new views and search capabilities and options. One of the nicer new features is improved mark up capabilities and ease of use features for screenshots. And Apple also now has a screenshot feature for video which has a lot of capabilities I use screenshots often to provide enhancements for presentations, arguments and even documents (like this one). Anything that makes that easier is great.

And finally, Apple answered that burning question: is Apple merging iOS and macOS. (No). Although Apple is working to make the two systems more integrated at least for apps. Apple is working on this and hopes to have more abilities for iOS apps to be used with macOS next year.

All in all, while there was no blockbuster announcement, there are some things here for us to use. Should be fun working with these new features (and not, at least for now, having to buy any new Apple products).

 

Photo Attribution

 

Marcin Nowak @marcin via Unsplash

Microsoft Build 2018, Microsoft’s developer conference, kicked off today in Seattle with a keynote from its CEO, Satya Nadella. Perhaps the most amazing thing about Nadella’s keynote was that he didn’t mention Microsoft Windows, Office or Outlook until he was over an hour into the almost 2 hour speech.

Instead, Nadella talked mainly about how Microsoft is going more online and offering all sorts of different application and operating system integrations. Continue Reading Microsoft: Its Not Just About Windows Anymore

Over the past couple of weeks, I was fortunate enough to attend two well-run conferences directed toward change in the legal profession. The first was put on by the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC) and was held over four days in Las Vegas. Here’s a couple of articles I wrote on it. Continue Reading Legal Innovation: What No One Talks About

It’s fascinating to me how something designed to do one thing ends up solving an unrelated problem. Its well known that technology developed for one purpose frequently and ultimately serves different and altogether unexpected purposes and benefits: text-to-voice services come immediately to mind. These technologies were developed with those who are partially sighted in mind, but now have far broader applications, such as voice recognition technology like Siri and Amazon. Continue Reading CLOC, A2J and Mediation For All

“I am well traveled but sometimes I think I’ve landed on Mars”.

Connie Brenton, CLOC President.

The CLOC 2018 Institute kicked off yesterday in appropriately enough in Las Vegas, home of the big, the sprawling, the decadent, the atypical in the land of straight laced morals and tradition. For just as Las Vegas flaunts the traditional and the staid in the legal world, so does CLOC .

For those who don’t know, CLOC stands for Corporate Legal Operations Consortium. Continue Reading CLOC: Change Agent In a Change Resistant Business

Litera Microsystems recently announced a new publication called The Changing Lawyer. So, yawn, what’s so new about that?

Turns out there is something new. Like most vendors, Litera Microsystems (which it insists it be referred to as instead of any shortened version of its name), one of the larger document management service and technology providers with a complete range of products in this space, already has a product blog devoted to providing standard information about the products and services it offers. Continue Reading The Changing Lawyer: Litera Microsystems to Offer Its Own Content

 

I tell you, no prophet is accepted on his own land.

Assume: /ə-soom/ Verb. Making an ass out of you and me

Sometimes you find pearls right under your nose. You just miss seeing them because you make certain assumptions based on what you’ve heard or how you have been conditioned. This happened to me recently when I discovered there is a Kentucky law school on the cutting edge of teaching innovation, entrepreneurship and legal technology. Continue Reading How a Little-Known Kentucky Law School Became a High-Ranking Innovation School

A long-time law practice mentor of mine used to say after spending the day with really smart people discussing big problems and solutions, that all that thinking gave him a headache. If that’s the case then Carl would have had colossal migraine if, like me, he participated in the Building a Better Lawyer” Design Thinking Workshop at Michigan State University College of Law yesterday. (Want to see more? See  #betterlawyer). Continue Reading LegalRnD’s Workshop on Building a Better Lawyer: Can Law Schools Lead Us Out of the Wilderness?

An interesting article appeared today in Artificial Lawyer (AL), Richard Tromans’ excellent blog on the impact of artificial intelligence, data analytics, and more generally, technology on the practice of law.

The gist of the article is that UK-based insurance law firm BLM has announced a partnership with  the London School of Economics (LSE), to develop litigation prediction models as part of a wider move into legal analytics. Continue Reading Litigation Predictive Analytics: Driving a Stake in the Heart of the Billable Heart?