Getting Started

Learning to use new technology can be intimidating. Don’t worry; with this book as your guide, you’ll be working with your iPhone like you’ve been using it all your life in no time at all.

There are several ways you can purchase an iPhone, such as from an Apple Store, from a provider’s store (such as AT&T or Verizon), or from a website. You may be upgrading from a previous iPhone or other type of cell phone, in which case you are using the same phone number, or you might be starting with a completely new phone and phone number. However you received your new phone, you need to turn it on, perform the basic setup (the iPhone leads you through this step-by-step), and activate the phone.

If you purchased your phone in a physical store, you probably received help with these tasks and you are ready to start learning how to use your iPhone. If you purchased your iPhone from an online store, it came with basic instructions that explain how you need to activate your phone; follow those instructions to get your iPhone ready for action.

For this book, I’ve assumed you have an iPhone in your hands, you have turned it on, followed the initial setup process it led you through, and activated it.

With your iPhone activated and initial setup complete, you are ready to learn how to use it. This book is designed for you to read and do at the same time. The tasks explained in this book contain step-by-step instructions that guide you; to get the most benefit from the information, perform the steps as you read them. This book helps you learn by doing!

As you can see, this book has quite a few chapters. However, there are only a few that you definitely should read as a group as you get started. You can read the rest of them as the topics are of interest to you. Most of the chapters are designed so that they can be read individually as you move into new areas of your iPhone.

After you’ve finished reading this front matter, I recommend you read and work through Chapter 1, “Getting Started with Your iPhone,” Chapter 2, “Using Your iPhone’s Core Features,” and Chapter 3, “Setting Up and Using an Apple ID, iCloud, and Other Online Accounts” in their entirety. These chapters give you a good overview of your iPhone and help you set up the basics you use throughout the rest of the book.

From there, read the parts of Chapter 4, “Customizing How Your iPhone Works,” and Chapter 5, “Customizing How Your iPhone Looks and Sounds,” that are of interest to you (for example, in Chapter 5, you find out how to change the wallpaper image that you see in the background of the Home and Lock screens). Tasks covering how to protect your iPhone with a passcode and how to have your iPhone recognize your fingerprints to unlock it and to make purchases from the iTunes Store (tasks that are covered in Chapter 4) should be high on your priority list. Chapters 4 and 5 are good references whenever you need to make changes to how your iPhone is configured.

After you’ve finished these core chapters, you’re ready to explore the rest of the book in any order you’d like. For example, when you want to learn how to use your iPhone’s camera and work with the photos you take, see Chapter 13, “Taking Photos and Video with Your iPhone,” and Chapter 14, “Viewing and Editing Photos and Video with the Photos App.”