1. Getting Started
In this chapter, you learn how to perform specific tasks on your iPad to become familiar with the interface.
• The iPad Buttons and Switches
Before you learn how to perform specific tasks on your iPad, you should become familiar with the interface. If you have used an iPhone or iPod touch, you already know the basics. But if the iPad is your first touch-screen device, you need to take time to become accustomed to interacting with it.
Generations of iPads
The first thing you may want to do is identify which iPad you have and understand which features are available to you. There have been several versions of the iPad: the iPad, the iPad 2, the 3rd generation iPad, the 4th generation iPad and also the iPad mini.
Identifying Your iPad
The following table shows the major differences between these iPads:
iPad Comparison Chart
The 3rd and 4th generation iPad use a very different display than the previous versions. It is the same size, but a higher resolution. Instead of 768 pixels across and 1024 vertically, it contains 1536 and 2048, giving you four times as many pixels. This means photographs and text are crisper and clearer. In fact, you can’t even distinguish the individual pixels with your eye unless you hold the iPad very close.
Another difference between iPads is the cameras. The original iPad had no camera at all. The 2nd and 3rd generations had cameras, but the more recent iPads have a rear-facing camera is capable of much higher resolution for both still photos and video.
Each iPad has also become a little more powerful with a faster processor at its heart. The latest iPad has the quad-core A6X processor, which gives it the capability to handle voice dictation and render beautiful graphics for games.
iOS 6
The primary piece of software on the iPad is the operating system, known as iOS. This is what you see when you flip through the screens of icons on your iPad and access the various default apps such as Mail, Safari, Photos, and iTunes.
This book covers iOS 6.0, the version released in September 2012. There have been six generations of the software that runs iPhones and iPads. The original iPhone OS was developed for the first iPhone. The third version, iOS 3, worked on iPhones and the iPad. This latest version, iOS 6, works on the iPad 2 and the 3rd generation iPad. If you have an original iPad, you can only use up to iOS 5. Many of the features and tasks in this book work the same in iOS 5, but you will not be able to use the latest features such as the new Maps app or Siri. To find out which version you are using and to learn how to update, see “Keeping Your iPad Up-To-Date” in Chapter 3.
The iPad Buttons and Switches
The iPad features a Home button, a Wake/Sleep button, a volume control, and side switch.
The Home Button
The Home button is probably the most important physical control on the iPad and the one that you will use the most often. Pressing the Home button returns you to the Home screen of the iPad when you are inside an application, such as Safari or Mail, and you want to get back to your Home screen to launch another app. You can also double press the Home button to see icons for your other applications and controls for audio or video playback, without leaving the current application.
Few, if any, apps on the iPad have a way to quit. Instead, think of the Home button as the Quit button. It closes out the current app and returns you to your Home screen. The app is actually still running, but paused, in the background. To completely quit an app, see “Quitting Apps,” in Chapter 15.
The Wake/Sleep Button
The primary function of the Wake/Sleep button (sometimes called the On/Off button) at the top of your iPad is to quickly put it to sleep. Sleeping is different than shutting down. When your iPad is in sleep mode, you can instantly wake it to use it. You can wake up from sleep by pressing the Wake/Sleep button again or pressing the Home button.
If you are using the Apple iPad Smart Cover (see Chapter 18), your iPad will go to sleep when you close it and wake up when you open it, as long as you use the default settings.
The Wake/Sleep button can also be used to shut down your iPad, which you might want to do if you leave your iPad for a long time and want to preserve the battery life. Press and hold the Wake/Sleep button for a few seconds, and the iPad begins to shut down and turn off. Confirm your decision to shut down your iPad using the Slide to Power Off button on the screen.
To start up your iPad, press and hold the Wake/Sleep button for a few seconds until you see something appear on the screen.
When Should I Turn Off My iPad?
It is normal to never turn off your iPad. In sleep mode, with the screen off, it uses little power. If you plug it in to power at night or during longer periods when you aren’t carrying it with you, you don’t need to ever shut it down.
The Volume Control
The volume control on the side of your iPad is actually two buttons: one to turn the volume up, and the other to turn it down.
Your iPad keeps two separate volume settings in memory: one for headphones and one for the internal speakers. If you turn down the volume when using headphones and then unplug the headphones, the volume changes to reflect the last settings used when headphones were not plugged in and vice versa. A Speaker icon and a series of rectangles display on the screen to indicate the level of volume.
The Side Switch
The switch on the side of your iPad can do one of two things: It can be set as a mute switch or an orientation lock. You can decide which function this button performs in your iPad’s settings. See “Setting Side Switch Functionality” in Chapter 2.
If you choose to use this switch as a mute switch, it will mute all sound if switched to the off position. You will see a speaker icon appear briefly in the middle of the screen when you do this. A line through the icon means you just muted the sound; otherwise, you just unmuted your iPad. By default, the iPad 2 comes with the switch configured to mute.
If you choose to use this switch as an orientation lock, it will do something else entirely. Your iPad has two primary screen modes: vertical and horizontal. You can use almost every default app in either orientation. For example, if you find that a web page is too wide to fit on the screen in vertical orientation, you can turn the iPad sideways and the view changes to a horizontal orientation.
When you don’t want your iPad to react to its orientation, slide the iPad side switch so that you can see the orange dot, which prevents the orientation from changing. When you need to unlock it, just slide the lock off.
This comes in handy in many situations. For instance, if you are reading an ebook in bed or on a sofa while lying on your side, then you may want vertical orientation even though the iPad is lying sideways.
Orientation and Movement
I know I said there were only four physical switches on your iPad, but there is another one: the entire iPad.
Your iPad knows which way it is oriented, and it knows if it is being moved. The simplest indication of this is that it knows whether you hold it vertically with the Home button at the bottom or horizontally with the Home button to one of the sides. Some apps, especially games, use the exact screen orientation of the iPad to guide screen elements and views.
One interesting physical gesture you might perform is the “shake.” Because your iPad can sense movement, it can sense when you shake it. Many apps take advantage of this feature and use it to set off an action, such as shuffling songs in the Music app or erasing a drawing canvas.
Screen Gestures
Who knew just a few years ago that we’d be controlling computing devices with taps, pinches, and flicks rather than drags, key presses, and clicks? Multitouch devices such as the iPhone, iPod Touch, and the iPad have added a new vocabulary to human-computer interaction.
Tapping and Touching
Since there is no mouse, a touch screen has no cursor. When your finger is not on the screen, there is no arrow pointing to anything.
A single, quick touch on the screen is usually called a “tap” or a “touch.” You usually tap an object on the screen to perform an action.
Occasionally you need to double-tap—two quick taps in the same location. For instance, double-tapping an image on a web page zooms in to the image. Another double-tap zooms back out.
Pinching
The screen on the iPad is a multitouch screen, which means it can detect more than one touch at the same time. This capability is used all the time with the pinch gesture.
A pinch (or a pinch in) is when you touch the screen with both your thumb and index finger and move them toward each other in a pinching motion. You can also pinch in reverse, which is sometimes called an “unpinch” or “pinch out.”
An example of when you would use a pinch would be to zoom in and out on a web page or photograph.
Dragging and Flicking
If you touch the screen and hold your finger down, you can drag it in any direction along the screen. This action often has the effect of moving the content on the screen.
For instance, if you are viewing a long web page and drag up or down, the page will scroll. Sometimes an app will let you drag content left and right as well.
What if you have a long web page or a list of items inside an app? Instead of dragging the length of the screen, lifting your finger up, and moving it to the bottom to drag again, you can “flick.” Flicking is like dragging, but you move quickly and lift your finger off the screen at the last moment so that the content continues to scroll after you have lifted your finger. You can wait for it to stop scrolling or touch the screen to make it stop.
Pull Down and Release Update
A common gesture is to tap in a list of items, drag down, and release. For instance, you would do this in Mail to get new messages. You would also do this in Twitter to get new tweets. Many Apple and third-party apps use this gesture to let you signal that you want to update the list of items. So if you don’t see an obvious “update now” button, try this gesture.
Four-Finger Gestures
You can perform one of three special functions by using four or five fingers at a time on the screen. If you put four or five fingers on the screen and pinch them all together, you will be taken out of your current app and back to the Home screen, similar to just pressing the Home button.
You can swipe left or right using four or more fingers to quickly page between running apps without going to the Home screen first. Swiping up with four fingers will bring you to the multitask switcher. See “Viewing Currently Running Apps” in Chapter 15.
iPad Screens
Unlike a computer, the iPad screen does only one thing at a time. Let’s go through some of the typical screens you see while getting to know your iPad.
The Lock Screen
The default state of your iPad when you are not using it is the lock screen. This is just a picture with the time at the top and a large slider at the bottom with the words “slide to unlock” and single button to the right of the slider for launching a picture frame photo slideshow (see Chapter 9).
By default, you see the lock screen when you wake up your iPad. Sliding the unlock slider takes you to the Home screen or to whichever app you were using when you put the iPad to sleep.
The Home Screen
Think of the Home screen as a single screen but with multiple pages that each features different app icons. At the bottom of the Home screen are app icons that do not change from page to page. The area resembles the Mac OS X Dock.
The number of pages on your Home screen depends on how many apps you have. The number of pages you have is indicated by the white dots near the bottom of the screen, just above the bottom icons. The brightest dot represents the page you are currently viewing. You can move between pages on your Home screen by dragging or flicking left or right.
To the left of the dots is a small magnifying glass that represents the search screen. We talk about that in a minute.
An App Screen
When you tap on an app icon on the Home screen, you run that app just like you would run an application on your computer. The app takes over the entire screen.
At this point, your screen can look like anything. If you run Safari, for instance, a web page displays. If you run Mail, you see a list of your new email or a single incoming email message.
The Search Screen
If you are on your Home screen, looking at page one of your app icons, you can drag to the right to get to the Search screen, which has a Search iPad field at the top and a keyboard at the bottom.
You can type in anything to search for a contact, app, email message, photo, and so on. You don’t have to define what type of thing you want to search for.
1. From the Home screen, drag left to right to go to the Search screen.
2. Type a search term using the on-screen keyboard.
3. You see a list of items on your iPad that match the search term. Tap the Search button on the keyboard to dismiss the keyboard and complete the search.
4. Tap the X in the search field to clear the search and start again.
5. Tap any of the items to go to the appropriate app and view the content.
The Settings Screen
One of the apps that you have on your iPad by default is the Settings app. With the Settings app, you can control several basic preferences for your iPad. (See Chapter 2 for more on customizing settings.)
This is really just another app screen, but it is worth singling out as you’ll need it to customize most aspects of your iPad.
Interacting with Your iPad
Now let’s examine the different types of on-screen interface elements, the on-screen keyboard and how to use it, and specialized interactions such as text editing and copy and paste.
Common Interface Elements
Several interface elements are more complex than a simple button. In typical Apple style, these elements are often self-explanatory, but if you have never used an iPhone or iPod touch before, you might find some that give you pause.
Sliders
A slider is really just a button. But instead of tapping it, you need to tap and drag to the right to indicate that you want to perform the action, which makes it harder to accidentally trigger the action.
The most obvious example is the slider at the bottom of the Lock screen. If there were a button there, it might be too easy to unlock your iPad without realizing it.
Switches
A switch is also like a simple button, but you need to tap only the switch to activate it. A switch gives you feedback about which state it is in.
For example, switches indicate whether the Sound Check and Lyrics & Podcast Info features of the Music app are on or off. Tapping on either switch changes the position of the switch.
Toolbars
Some apps have a set of buttons in a toolbar at the top of the screen that are general controls. The toolbar might disappear or the buttons might vary depending on the mode of the app. An example of a toolbar is in the iTunes app.
Menus
Often tapping a single button in a toolbar brings up more buttons or a list of choices, which are like menus on your Mac or PC. The choices in the list are usually related. For example, a button in Safari gives you many different ways to share a web page.
Tab Bars
Sometimes you see a row of buttons at the bottom of the screen that function similarly to toolbars, but each button represents a different mode for the app. For instance, at the bottom of the App Store app, you see a Tab bar that you use to switch between various lists of apps: Featured, Top Charts, Genius, Purchased, and Updates.
Using the On-Screen Keyboard
The interface element you might interact with the most is the on-screen keyboard. It pops up from the bottom of the screen automatically whenever you need to enter some text.
The default keyboard has only letters and the most basic punctuation available. There are two shift keys that enable you to enter uppercase letters. You also have a Backspace key and a Return key.
Is There a Quicker Way to Capitalize?
So to capitalize a word, you tap the Shift key and then type the letter, right? You can. But a faster way is to tap the Shift key; then, without letting your finger off the screen, drag it to the letter and release in a single tap, slide, release action.
You can do the same with numbers and punctuation by tapping the .?123 key and sliding and releasing over the key you want.
To enter numbers and some other punctuation, tap the .?123 key to switch your keyboard into a second mode for numbers and punctuation.
To return to the letters, just tap the ABC key, or tap the #+= key to go to a third keyboard that includes less frequently used punctuation and symbols.
There are other keyboard variations. For instance, if you type in a location that needs a web address, a keyboard that doesn’t have a spacebar appears that instead has commonly used symbols such as colons, slashes, underscores, and even a .com button. Instead of a Return key, you might see an action word like “Search” written on that key—tapping it will perform an action like searching the web. All keyboards include a button at the bottom right that enables you to hide the keyboard if you want to dismiss it.
You can also split the keyboard and/or move it up away from the bottom of the screen. Just tap and hold the keyboard button at the bottom-right corner of the keyboard. It has a little keyboard icon on it. Then select Undock or Split. The first will simply move the keyboard to the middle of the screen. The second will do that as well, but will also split the keyboard into two halves. You can then drag the keyboard up and down by tapping, holding, and dragging on that same keyboard button. Drag it all the way back down to the bottom to dock it to the bottom again. You can also split the keyboard by placing two fingers on the keyboard and dragging them apart, and then rejoin it by dragging the fingers together.
Dictating Text
If you have a 3rd generation iPad you can also dictate text using your voice rather than typing on the keyboard. Almost any time you see a keyboard you should also see a small microphone button to the left of the spacebar. Tap that and you will be prompted to speak to your iPad.
1. Any time you see the default keyboard, you will see the microphone button to the left
of the spacebar. Tap it to begin dictating.
2. A larger button will spring from the smaller dictation button. The purple color filling the microphone will measure the volume of your voice. When you are done dictating, tap this larger button to end the dictation.
3. After you tap the larger button it will disappear and three dots will appear in place of your text cursor and pulse while your iPad transcribes the audio to text. Simply wait for the transcription to complete.
Talk somewhat slowly and clearly, and in segments about the length of a sentence for best results. Of course this feature isn’t perfect. Pay careful attention to what is transcribed and correct any mistakes using the keyboard. Over time you will get better at speaking in a way that minimizes mistakes.
Editing Text
Editing text has its challenges on a touch-screen device. Even though you can just touch any portion of your text on screen, your finger tip is too large for the level of precision you usually get with a computer mouse and cursor. To compensate, Apple developed an editing technique using a magnifying glass area of the screen that you get when you touch and hold over a piece of text.
For example, if you want to enter some text into a field in Safari, touch and hold on the field. A circle of magnification appears with a cursor placed at the exact location you selected.
When you find the exact location that you want to indicate, release your finger from the screen. Then a variety of options display, depending on what kind of text you selected, such as Select, Select All, and Paste. You can ignore the options presented and start typing again to insert text at this location.
Copy and Paste
You can copy and paste text inside an app, and between apps, on your iPad. Here’s how you might copy a piece of text from one document to another in the Notes app.
1. Launch Notes. If you don’t have any notes yet, create one by typing some sample text.
2. Touch and hold over a word in your note. The Select/Select All pop-up menu appears.
3. Choose Select.
4. Some text appears highlighted surrounded by dots connected to lines. Tap and drag the dots so the highlighted area is exactly what you want.
5. Tap Copy.
6. Tap the + button to create a new note.
7. Tap the empty document area once to bring up a pop-up menu with the Paste command.
8. Tap Paste to insert the copied text.
Using Siri
Siri is a voice-activated assistant that was first introduced in 2011 on the iPhone 4S. You can use your voice and speak commands to your iPhone and Siri will respond. It will either give you information or take action using one of the apps on the iPhone.
With iOS 6 and the 3rd generation iPad, you can use Siri on your iPad. First, you need to make sure you have Siri turned on. Then, you use the Home button to activate Siri.
1. In your Settings app, tap the General settings.
2. Then tap Siri.
3. Slide the switch to ON to enable Siri.
4. Press the Home button to exit Settings.
5. Press and hold the Home button for about a second. The Siri interface will pop up, showing a microphone button with a purple light that changes as you speak.
6. Speak clearly at a normal pace and say “How’s the weather outside?” After a short delay, the words you spoke will appear and Siri will attempt to perform an action based on those words.
7. In this case, a short weather forecast will appear.
8. Siri also responds with a statement and will speak it audibly. The text of the response will typically appear above the response.
Siri TipsTo use Siri, you must have a connection to the Internet. It can be a Wi-Fi connection or a mobile connection. When you speak text, the audio is transmitted to Apple’s servers to convert it to text and interpret the command. The results are sent back to your iPad.
It is best to speak clearly and to limit background noise. Using Siri in a quiet room works better than in a crowded outdoor space or in a car with the radio on, for instance.
Because Apple’s servers control Siri, they can update Siri’s capabilities at any time. So right now Siri may not understand your request for local sports scores, but in the future you might try it and find out it works.
You can use Siri to perform many tasks on your iPad without typing. For example, you can search the Web, set reminders, send messages, and play music. Throughout the rest of this book, look for the Siri icon for tips on how to use Siri to perform a task related to that section of the book.