The first message you see on an iPod touch or iPhone display (besides the time of day and the date) is Slide to unlock — to get started, you have to unlock the iPod touch or iPhone by sliding your finger across the message. After the unit is unlocked, your Home screen appears in all its glory. (See Figure 3-1.)

There's no place like Home — it's the screen where you start. Everything is available from the Home screen at the touch of a finger:

After tapping an icon, a new screen appears with selections and icons. (Tapping Music on an iPod touch, for example, brings up Artists, Songs, Albums, and so on.) The multitouch interface changes for each app. Press the physical Home button below the screen at any time to go to back to the Home screen.

Apps you download from the App Store (as I describe in Chapter 7) show up as icons on your Home screen. You can also save Web "clips" (page references) to your Home screen as icons that take you directly to those Web pages (as I describe in Chapter 19). When you add enough apps and Web clips so that they no longer all fit on the first page of the Home screen, the iPod touch or iPhone automatically creates more Home screen pages to accommodate them. (See the section "Rearranging your Home screen pages," later in this chapter, to find out how to customize your icons and Home screen pages.)

Figure 3-1. The iPod touch Home screen.

The bottom row of the Home screen (refer to Figure 3-1) is called the dock. The number of dots above the dock shows the number of Home screen pages you have, and also indicates which page you're viewing. To switch to another Home screen page, flick with your finger left or right, or tap to the left or right of the row of dots.

A tiny magnifying glass icon for searching (introduced with the iPhone 3.0 software) appears to the left of the dots above the dock on the Home screen. Tap this icon, or flick with your finger to the right, to show the Search screen (see Figure 3-2). The Search function is similar to the Spotlight universal search feature available in Mac OS X. You can then type in a search term and immediately see suggestions.

Figure 3-2. The iPod touch Search screen.

Search looks through contacts, calendars, e-mail (the To, From, and Subject fields, but not the message content), the content (songs, videos, podcasts, and audio books), the text in the Notes app, and text messages on an iPhone. Tap a contact, calendar entry, e-mail, note, or text message suggestion to open it, or tap the song, video, podcast, or audio book suggestion to play it.

The iPod touch or iPhone shows its current state in the status bar at the top of the screen (refer to Figure 3-1). The icons mean the following:

You get flexible apps and a key to the Net! The iPod touch or iPhone Home screen (refer to Figure 3-1) offers the following icons:

You find one more icon for an app that you can activate in Settings, if you have the appropriate Nike shoes and the Nike+ iPod Sport Kit, sold separately. See Chapter 23 for details.

With the iPhone or iPod touch, it's touch and go. These models respond to gestures you make with your fingers:

You can rearrange your iPod touch or iPhone app icons, create additional Home screen pages, and customize these pages. Touch and hold any icon until all the icons begin to wiggle. (That's right; it looks like they're doing the Cha-cha-cha.) Then drag a wiggling icon to the right edge of the screen until a new page appears. You can flick to return to the original Home screen page and drag more wiggling icons to the new page. You can create up to nine Home screen pages.

While the wiggling icons are doing their show, you can also rearrange them. Drag the wiggling icons into new positions, and the other icons move to accommodate, creating a new arrangement.

To stop all that wiggling, press the Home button, which saves your new arrangement and pages.

To reset your Home screen to the default arrangement, thereby cleaning up any mess you may have made on your Home screens, tap Settings on the Home screen and then tap General. On the General screen, drag your finger to scroll the list to Reset and then tap Reset. On the Reset screen, tap Reset Home Screen Layout. (In the future, I make it easier for you by abbreviating instructions like these to the more manageable Settings

Shake, rattle, and roll

Your iPod touch or iPhone can sense motion using a built-in accelerometer. When you rotate it from a vertical view (portrait) to a horizontal view (landscape), the accelerometer detects the movement and changes the display accordingly. This happens so quickly that you can control a game with these movements.

For example, Pass the Pigs is a dice game in which you shake three times to roll your pigs to gain points. In the Labyrinth game, you tilt your iPod touch or iPhone to roll a ball through a wooden maze without falling through the holes. And you can shake, rattle, and roll your way around the world in Yahtzee Adventures as you rack up high scores.

And if that's too tame for you, try Chopper, a helicopter game in which you need to complete your mission and return to base while avoiding enemy fire from tanks and bazooka-wielding madmen. You tilt the iPod touch or iPhone to fly, and you touch the screen to drop bombs or fire the machine gun.

Xhake Shake lets you shake, flip, rub, and tap your iPod touch or iPhone to challenge your hand-eye responses. And for scrolling practice, try Light Bike (loosely based on the Disney movie Tron) in which you scroll to maneuver a light bike from a third-person perspective against three computer-controlled light bikes. And infants can join the fun: Silver Rattle shows a screen that changes color and rattles with every shake. Big Joe Turner would be proud.

You can practice your technique using the Notes app. Tap Notes on the Home screen and the on-screen keyboard appears, as shown in Figure 3-3. (If you've already saved notes, a list of notes appears — tap the + button in the upper-right corner to type a new note.)

Figure 3-3. The on-screen keyboard for typing.

Tap the keys, and as you type, each letter appears above your thumb or finger. If you tap the wrong key, slide your finger to the correct key. The letter isn't entered until you lift your finger from the key.

To enable caps lock (locking the keyboard to uppercase letters), choose Settings

To save your note, tap Done in the upper-right corner. A list of Notes appears with a date attached to each note. You can also delete a note by choosing the note and tapping the Trash icon at the bottom of the note. Notes can be synchronized back to your computer's e-mail program — see Chapter 10.

To enter numbers, symbols, or punctuation, tap the .?123 key at the lower-left corner of the keyboard (refer to Figure 3-3). This changes the keyboard layout to numbers, as shown in Figure 3-4 (left side). To return to the alphabetical keys, tap the ABC key.

To enter symbols with the keyboard, tap the .?123 key for the number layout (refer to Figure 3-3) and then tap the #+= key (refer to Figure 3-4, left side) to change the layout to symbols, as shown in Figure 3-4 (right side).

Figure 3-4. The keyboard layout for numbers (left) and for symbols (right).

Yes, you can edit your mistakes. To edit text in an entry field, touch and hold to see the circular magnifier, which magnifies portions of the text view as shown in Figure 3-5.

Before releasing your finger, slide the magnifier to the position for inserting text. You can then tap keys to insert text, or you can use the backspace key — the key sporting the X — to remove text.

The intelligent keyboard automatically suggests corrections as you type, as shown in Figure 3-6 (some languages only). You don't need to accept the suggested word — just continue typing. If you do want to accept it, tap the spacebar, a punctuation mark, or the Return key. Your iPhone or iPod touch fills in the rest of the word.

Figure 3-5. Touch and hold for the circular magnifier.

Figure 3-6. The keyboard suggests the correct word for a typo.

To reject the suggested word, finish typing the word or tap the x next to the suggestion to dismiss it. Each time you reject a suggestion for the same word, your iPod touch keeps track and eventually adds the word you've been using all along to its dictionary. The iPod touch includes dictionaries for English, English (UK), French, French (Canada), German, Japanese, Spanish, Italian, and Dutch. The appropriate dictionary is activated automatically when you select a particular international keyboard. (See Chapter 23 for details about international keyboards.)

You can turn off suggestions by choosing Settings

If you've upgraded your iPod touch or iPhone to version 3.0 of the software or newer, you can copy or cut a chunk of text and paste it into another app — for example, you can copy a paragraph from a note in Notes and paste it into an e-mail message in Mail.

Double-tap a word to select it for copying or cutting. The word appears selected with handles on either end of the selection and a Cut/Copy/Paste bubble above it, as shown in Figure 3-7 (left side). You can then tap Cut (to cut the text) or Copy (to copy the text) in preparation for pasting it elsewhere.

You can also select the nearest word, or the entire text, by touching an insertion point. The Select/Select All/Paste bubble appears (refer to Figure 3-7, center). Tap Select to select the nearest word (left or right of the insertion point) or Select All to select all the text, and the Cut/Copy/Paste bubble appears (refer to Figure 3-7, right side).

To make a more precise selection, double-tap a word as previously described and then drag one of the handles by sliding your finger. A rectangular magnifier appears, as shown in Figure 3-8 (left side), which magnifies portions of the text view so that you can drag the handle more precisely. When you remove your finger to stop dragging, the Cut/Copy/Paste bubble appears (refer to Figure 3-8, right side). You can then tap Cut or Copy.

To paste the text you just cut or copied, open a note (or create a new note) in Notes, create a new e-mail message, or open any app that lets you enter text. (For details on creating a new e-mail message, see Chapter 20.) Touch an insertion point for pasting the text. The circular magnifier appears (as shown in Figure 3-9, left side), which magnifies portions of the text view so that you can mark the insertion point precisely. When you remove your finger, the Cut/Copy/Paste bubble appears (refer to Figure 3-9, center), or if text is already in the message, the Select/Select All/Paste bubble appears. Either way, you can then tap Paste to paste the text at that point (refer to Figure 3-9, right side).

Figure 3-7. Double-tap a word to cut or copy it with the Cut/Copy/Paste bubble (left). Or, tap an insertion point and select all the text (center) to cut or copy it with the Cut/Copy/Paste bubble (right).

Figure 3-8. Drag a handle to extend the selection for cutting or copying (left) and then release your finger to complete the selection (right).

Figure 3-9. Touch an insertion point (left), release to complete the selection (center), and then tap Paste; the pasted text appears (right).

To set keyboard options, choose Settings

Figure 3-10. Change settings for the on-screen keyboard.

Tap On to turn off Auto-Correction if you don't want the keyboard to suggest typing corrections.

Auto-Capitalization automatically capitalizes the next word after you type a period, question mark, or exclamation point (punctuation that ends a sentence). It also automatically capitalizes after you tap the Return key. The assumption is that you're starting a new sentence or new line of text that should begin with a capital letter. Tap On to turn this feature off if you want; tap Off to turn it back on.

To turn on caps lock (locking the keyboard to uppercase letters), tap the Off button next to Enable Caps Lock. (Tap it again to turn it off.) You can then double-tap the Shift key to turn on caps lock (uppercase letters). The Shift key turns blue, and all letters you type are uppercase. Tap the Shift key again to turn caps lock off.

The shortcut for inserting a period is to double-tap the spacebar, which inserts a period followed by a space. The assumption is that you want to finish a sentence and start the next one. Tap On to turn this feature off if you want; tap Off to turn it back on.

To find out how to turn on and use multiple international keyboards, see Chapter 23.