3. Networking and Syncing
In this chapter, you find out how to connect your iPad to your local Wi-Fi network. You also see how to sync your iPad with your Mac or Windows computer.
• Setting Up Your Wi-Fi Network Connection
• Setting Up Your 3G/4G Connection
Now that you have a new iPad, why not introduce it to your old friend—your computer? They have a lot in common. And they are both good at sharing—particularly information such as your contacts, calendar, music, video, and documents.
Syncing your iPad to your Mac or PC is something you want to do right away and continue to do on a regular basis. This way you get all your data from your computer onto your iPad, and as you add new information and media to either device, they can share it so it is always at your fingertips.
Setting Up Your Wi-Fi Network Connection
One of the first things you need to do with your iPad, even before you sync it to your computer, is to establish an Internet connection.
Chances are that you did this when you started your iPad for the first time. It should have prompted you to choose from a list of nearby Wi-Fi networks. But you do this again if you first used your iPad away from home or need to switch to use another Wi-Fi network.
To connect your iPad to a wireless network, follow these steps.
1. Tap the Settings icon on the Home screen.
2. Choose Wi-Fi from the list of settings on the left.
3. Make sure that Wi-Fi is turned on.
4. Tap the item that represents your network. (If you tap on the blue-circled right arrow next to each network, you can further customize your network settings.)
I Don’t Have a Wireless Network
If you don’t have a Wi-Fi network but do have high-speed Internet through a telephone or cable provider, you have several options. The first is to call your provider and ask for a new network modem that enables wireless connections. Some providers might upgrade your box for free or a small cost.
Another option is to keep your current box and add a wireless base station of your own, such as the Apple Airport Extreme base station.
5. If the network is protected by a password, you will be asked to enter the password. Once you enter the password, your iPad will remember it. So if you switch between two locations, like work and home, you will be asked to enter the password for each the first time you use that connection. From that point on, your iPad will automatically log on to each connection as you move around.
Setting Up Your 3G/4G Connection
If you have an iPad with 3G/4G capabilities, you can set it up to use AT&T, Verizon, or any other compatible network. You can purchase a monthly data plan or purchase service in shorter increments.
1. Tap the Settings app icon on the Home screen.
2. Tap Cellular Data on the left.
3. Turn on Cellular Data. In addition, if you have a 3rd generation iPad, turn on Enable LTE for the faster 4G connection.
4. Tap View Account.
5. Next, you are prompted to create an account with a service. The service will be either AT&T or Verizon in the U.S., depending on which iPad model you own. You’ll need to enter all your basic information and specify an email address for your account and a password.
7. Enter your credit card information. When you are done, you have to approve the service agreement and confirm your purchase. Still, it beats going to the mall and dealing with a salesperson at a mobile phone store, right?
8. Tap OK. It may take a few more minutes for your 4G service to activate.
9. After establishing 4G service you can view your usage and renew your plan at any time by following steps 1, 2, and 4 again. Then you can see your play details and status. Tap Add Data or Change Plan to renew or increase your data plan.
Working with Wi-Fi and 3G/4G
After you establish a 3G/4G plan, your iPad should still connect to your Wi-Fi networks when it is in range and use 3G when it cannot find a Wi-Fi network. You can also return to Settings and turn on or off Cellular Data to specifically prevent your iPad from using the 3G network. This is handy when you are completely out of mobile data range but have local Wi-Fi; for instance, you might be on an airplane flight. Of course, for take-off and landing, you will most likely be asked to use the Airplane Mode available in the Settings as well. That mode comes in handy when you want to quickly take your iPad “off the grid” and have it connected to absolutely nothing.
Looking at the top-left corner of your iPad’s screen, you can tell which sort of connection you are currently using. The first image shows an iPad with no 3G/4G connection at all, only Wi-Fi. The second shows an iPad with a 3G/4G connection, but currently a Wi-Fi connection is being used for data. In this case, all data is coming from Wi-Fi and you are not using your mobile data bandwidth at all. The third image shows an iPad that is using the 3G/4G connection for data at the moment.
Syncing with iTunes
Whether you are on a Mac or PC, you need iTunes to sync your iPad with your computer. If you are on a Mac, you already have iTunes. All you need to do is run Software Update to make sure you have the latest version. If you run Windows, you can get the Windows version of iTunes from Apple’s site: http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/.
There are many advantages to syncing your iPad with a computer.
• Each day you sync your iPad, iTunes stores a backup of its content. You can restore all your data from these backups if you lose your iPad.
• Syncing with a computer is the only way to get a large number of photos from your collection on your iPad.
• Syncing is how you get your music stored in iTunes onto your iPad. If you have a large collection of music, you can opt to copy only a selection of it to your iPad at any one time.
• It can be easier to arrange your app icons on the Home screen pages using iTunes, rather than doing it on your iPad.
• On a Mac in iCal, you have far greater control over setting recurring and special events, which appear on your iPad in the Calendar app, even though you cannot create them there.
You might get a message on your computer the first time you connect your iPad and open iTunes, asking if it is okay to sync your iPad to this computer. The message won’t reappear.
After connecting the first time, iTunes should automatically open when you connect your iPad. While connected, you can always resync to apply changes by clicking the Sync button in iTunes.
You can also check Sync over Wi-Fi connection in your iPad’s options in iTunes. This allows you to sync when your iPad isn’t connected by the cable. It only needs to be on the same network as your Mac or PC that is running iTunes.
After your device is in sync, you can change some general options for your iPad from the Summary screen in iTunes. Most of the options are self-explanatory, such as Open iTunes When the iPad Is Connected.
One option that dramatically changes how your iPad syncs is Manually Manage Music and Videos, which turns off automatic syncing of music and videos and enables you to simply drag and drop songs and movies from your iTunes library onto the iPad icon on the left. (You might need to scroll down the Summary page to locate this checkbox if your screen size is too small to show the entire page at once.)
As we look at some of the syncing options for the iPad, the Mac version of iTunes is used as an example. The Windows version of iTunes is similar but not exactly the same. One difference is that on a Mac, iTunes syncs data with Mac applications such as Address Book, iCal, and iPhoto. On Windows, iTunes must find this data elsewhere.
Syncing Contacts, Calendars, and Other Information
Use the Info page in iTunes to sync your contacts, calendars, and a few other things to your iPad.
1. Click the Info button in iTunes to see options for choosing how to sync your contacts. You can sync all your contacts from Address Book or sync only selected groups.
2. You can also sync with contacts you have stored with either Yahoo! or Google. You need to enter your login information so that iTunes can access the contacts on that service.
3. Choose to sync all the calendars in iCal or just selected ones. In addition, you can choose not to sync old events.
4. Next, you can sync email accounts with Apple’s Mail program, which syncs the settings between your computer and your iPad, not the mail messages. See Chapter 8, “Communicating with Email, Messaging, and Twitter,” for more on getting mail on your iPad.
5. To transfer your Mac’s bookmarks to your iPad and keep the bookmarks synced between the iPad and the Mac, check the Sync Safari bookmarks check box.
6. Check the Sync notes option to use the Notes app to exchange your iCal and Mail notes between your Mac and the iPad. This is a great way to create notes, lists, and small documents and share them between your iPad and your Mac.
7. Use the Advanced options (Contacts, Calendars, Mail Accounts, Bookmarks, and Notes) to indicate that during the next sync the information should be erased from your iPad and replaced with the corresponding information from your Mac or PC.
8. Click the Sync button to sync.
Syncing Apps
iTunes keeps your apps on your computer and your iPad in sync and helps you organize them.
Note that you cannot run apps on your computer, just store them. You can store all of the apps you have downloaded and purchased on your computer and only have a subset of those set to sync on to your iPad.
1. Click the Apps button of your iPad’s settings in iTunes.
2. Use the list on the left to check or uncheck apps to determine which ones to sync with your iPad.
3. Drag the app icons around on the representation of the Home screen page.
Go Ahead—Select More Than One
You can click more than one app icon in iTunes and then drag them around as groups. This makes it easy to rearrange your apps in iTunes and is the reason many people do it here, rather than on the iPad itself.
4. Select another Home screen page by clicking a page on the right.
5. You can drag an app from the main representation to another page on the right to move it to another page.
6. You can also drag apps in and out of the iPad’s dock area at the bottom.
7. Click the Apply button if you want to apply the changes now.
Syncing Documents
Apps sometimes have documents. For example, Pages is a word processor, so it would naturally have word-processing documents. Documents are stored on your iPad, but you might want to access them on your Mac or PC as well.
1. Click the Apps button of your iPad’s settings in iTunes.
2. Scroll down to the bottom of the Apps page.
3. In the File Sharing section, choose an app.
4. Select a document from the right.
5. Click the Save To button to save the document as a file on your computer.
6. Click the Add button to import a file from your computer to your iPad. Each app has its own document space on your iPad. So if you have two PDF readers, and you want the PDF document available to both, you need to add it to each app’s documents.
No File Sharing Section?
The File Sharing section on the Apps screen will only appear if you have at least one app that is capable of sharing files through iTunes. Examples would be Pages, Numbers, Keynote, iMovie, GarageBand, Voice Memos, and GoodReader.
Drag and Drop
You can also use drag and drop to pull documents out of, and import them into, the app’s document space.
Syncing Music
The easy way to sync music is to select Entire Music Library In iTunes on your computer. If you have more music than can fit on your iPad, though, you must make some choices. Syncing Movies, TV Shows, Podcasts, Tones (ringtones for messaging and FaceTime) iTunes U, and Books all work in a similar way to syncing music, so you can apply what you learn in these steps to those items as well.
1. Click the Music button of your iPad’s settings in iTunes.
2. Click the Selected Playlists, Artists, and Genres button.
3. Check off any playlists in the Playlists section that you want to include.
4. Check off any artists for which you want to include every song by that artist.
5. Check off any genres to include in their entirety.
6. Check off any albums you want to include.
7. Use the search box to quickly find specific artists.
8. Click the Sync button if you want to apply the changes now.
One Copy Only
Note that songs are never duplicated on your iPad. So for instance, if the same song appears in two playlists and is also by an artist that you have selected to sync, the song only has one copy on your iPad. But it appears in both of the playlists and under that artist, album, and alphabetical list of all songs.
Or Use iTunes Match
iTunes Match is a new service from Apple. For an annual fee, you can sync your music collection with Apple’s servers. Then you can access all your music on your iPad by turning iTunes Match on in the Music settings in the Settings app. When you do this, you no longer need to sync your music. Instead, you see all your music on your iPad, and it will download from Apple’s servers when you want to listen to a particular song.
Visit http://www.apple.com/itunes/itunes-match/ to find out more about Apple’s iTunes Match service.
The Kitchen Sync
In addition to Music, you can also sync your Tones, Movies, TV Shows, Podcasts, iTunes U, and Books in a similar way. Each type of media has its own way of syncing, but they are all similar to music. For instance, Tones lets you sync all tones or selected tones, and then you select them individually. There are no playlists for Tones. Movies, TV Shows, and Podcasts can be included in playlists, so syncing options there let you sync by playlist if you like. Explore each page of your syncing settings to see which options you have.
Syncing Photos
Syncing your photos actually isn’t that much different than syncing music. You can choose to have all your photos transferred to your iPad, or choose them by albums, events, or faces.
1. Click the Photos button of your iPad’s settings in iTunes.
2. Click the Sync Photos From check box. If you use iPhoto, you should choose iPhoto from the drop-down menu. Other choices for Mac users include choosing any folder or the Pictures folder.
If you use Windows, you can choose your My Pictures folder or another folder. Any subfolders are treated as albums, and you can select or deselect any of them.
You might sync photos to your iPad by selecting a photo tool, such as Photoshop Elements, as your sync companion. If you choose that program, you can use the groupings in that program as albums.
3. Choose whether to sync all photos or only selected ones.
4. If you choose selected photos, you can also choose a number of recent events or all events from a recent period of time.
5. Select any albums that you want to sync.
6. Select specific events you want to sync.
7. You can also select to sync all photos tagged for a specific person in iPhoto.
8. Click the Sync button to apply the changes.
No Duplicates
Like with music, you get only one copy of each photo, no matter how many times the photo appears in albums, events, and faces. The photos appear in all the right places but take up only one spot in memory on your iPad.
Syncing Using iCloud
If you have an iCloud account from Apple, you can sync parts of your iPad’s data wirelessly even if you are not in the same location. If you do not yet have an iCloud account, it is easy to sign up for a free one. You may have already set one up while going through the initial welcome screens when you first turned on your iPad.
1. Tap the Settings icon on the Home screen and then tap iCloud.
2. If you already have an iCloud account, enter your Apple ID and password and then tap the Sign In button. You can skip to step 10.
3. Tap the Get a Free Apple ID button to create a new Apple ID if you have never used one before. If you already have an account with iTunes, iBooks, the iOS App Store, or the Mac App Store, then you already have an Apple ID and should use that in step 2.
4. Tap to choose your location from a list.
5. Tap each of these date fields to set your birth date.
6. You can choose whether you want to use your current email address or create a new iCloud email address. You can use any email address from any service or domain for an Apple ID.
7. Enter your name.
8. Create a secure password that must be at least eight characters long.
9. Enter a security question that you can use to retrieve a lost password.
10. Choose which pieces of data you want to sync with your iCloud account.
11. If you are using an iCloud email address, you can enable Mail and the account will automatically be added to your Mail accounts.
12. Enable Photo Stream to use iCloud’s Photo Stream feature. See the sidebar “What Is Photo Stream?” in Chapter 9.
13. Turn on Documents & Data to allow some apps to store documents on the iCloud servers instead of your local iPad’s memory. This makes that data available to your other iOS devices as well. Not all apps have this functionality, however.
14. Enabling Find My iPad lets you use this feature to locate your iPad if you have lost it or it has been stolen.
No Email Please
If you do not use your iCloud email account, you can just switch off Mail in your iCloud settings. You can still sync the other data and use Find My iPad. Many people choose to use iCloud for features like bookmark and calendar syncing and don’t use their @me.com email addresses for anything.
Keeping Your iPad Up-To-Date
Apple periodically comes out with updates to iOS. And Apple and other developers come out with updates to apps all the time. Usually all these updates are free and contain useful and important new features. So, there is no reason not to keep your iPad up-to-date. In fact, updates sometimes include important security patches, so you should pay careful attention when an update is available.
1. Tap the Settings icon on the Home screen and then tap General.
2. Tap Software Update.
3. If you have the latest version of iOS, you will see a message like this one. Otherwise, follow the instructions provided to update your iPad.
4. On the Home screen, find and tap the App Store app. You may also notice a number in a red circle attached to the icon. This tells you how many apps you have that have updates available.
5. Tap the Updates button. This takes you to a screen with a list of all available app updates.
6. Tap any app’s Free button to immediately download the updated version of that app.
7. Tap Update All instead to download and install all updates.
