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Recently, Apple held its annual World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC), which is geared toward people who make software applications (apps) for Apple devices.
At WWDC, Apple highlights what can be done in the newest versions of its operating systems across Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV and VisionOS.
For lawyers who use iPhones, there is a lot to look forward to with this newest edition of iOS, not the least of which is Apple’s version of artificial intelligence, Apple Intelligence, which seems to touch on almost every part of the operating system now.
Messages
Text messaging is a big part of our days. Even courts are sending reminders via text message now.
iOS 18 has improvements to text effects (animating a letter, word, phrase or emoji), formatting (bold, underline, italics and strikethrough) and improved tapbacks. You know, that thing when you hold on a message and send a little thumbs up. Well, now you can send any emoji or sticker.
While these features may not be as useful as they are fun, one feature that will be handy is “send later.” Messages will allow you to compose and schedule a message to send at a later time.
Also, Apple will now support Rich Communication Services as a messaging protocol, which should improve group messaging between green bubble and blue bubble friends.
Why is the blue bubble important you ask? Because of privacy. iMessages (blue bubble conversations) are encrypted. In addition, now you can send messages via satellite for times when cellular and Wi-Fi connections aren’t available.
Mail improvements
Another frequently used app on the iPhone is Mail. In iOS 18, Mail will now include on-device categorization, which sorts and organizes your incoming mail into Primary (personal and time-sensitive emails), Transactions (receipts, etc.), Updates (news and social notifications), and Promotions (marketing emails/coupons). Plenty of third party applications have done this for a while, but it’s nice to see this feature coming to the iPhone.
Passwords
In today’s connected world, a password manager is essential. iOS 18 is bringing a new Passwords app to your iPhone. The goal of the app is to make it easy for you to access passwords, passkeys (this could be a whole article), Wi-Fi passwords and verification codes. The app will also monitor for weak passwords or for passwords in known data leaks. Nice!
Privacy features
iOS 18 will bring some other privacy features that will be helpful for lawyers. You can now lock or hide apps, protecting them via Face ID or passcodes. If you have a child who often uses your iPhone, this can be a great way to lock them out of your apps while still letting them play their favorite game.
There are additional protections built in for sharing contacts with apps. This allows you to choose which contacts get shared with different applications.
This is very helpful if you keep your client contacts on your phone. You can now avoid accidentally sharing that list with a suspect app.
Apple Intelligence
iOS 18 will bring Apple Intelligence to your device. This is Apple’s version of AI, focused on privacy. The tools are built to help you enhance your writing and communication skills using system-wide Writing Tools. The “tool” can rewrite, proofread and summarize text from almost everywhere.
Where this AI gets interesting for lawyers is Siri. The idea is that interacting with your iPhone via Siri is “more natural, contextually relevant and personal.” You can now type to Siri in addition to talking to Siri to get information from across your device. The hope is you can ask your iPhone to summarize information from across email, text and calendar without having to go find that information yourself.
Private cloud compute
This probably deserves its own article, but suffice it to say that Apple is working on building an AI system that combines on-device processing with secure servers through the “cloud.” This combination should be a powerful tool in the hands of lawyers who need privacy for their practices and the power of AI in the palm of their hand.
Other additions
There are a number of other updates to iOS 18 that will make it helpful for lawyers. One such feature is Math Notes in the Notes app. You can add formulas and equations and they will be solved by the app. If you have an iPad with an Apple Pencil, you can handwrite math problems and it will solve them for you. Might be a neat thing to try at mediation.•
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Seth R. Wilson is an attorney with Adler Attorneys in Noblesville. In addition to practicing law, he helps manage the day-to-day technology operations of the firm. He writes about legal technology at sethrwilson.com and is a frequent speaker on the subject.
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