style="font-size:15px;"> I won’t kid you: You have a slight learning curve ahead of you if you’re coming from a more basic cellphone (but if you own another smartphone, you’ve got a head start). For example, your previous phone might not have had a Multi-Touch screen and onscreen keyboard.
The good news is that getting anything done on the iPhone is simple, when you know the ropes. In fact, using your fingers to do things is a very intuitive way to communicate with your computing device, which is just what iPhone is.
In this chapter, you turn on your iPhone, register it, and then take your first look at the Home screen. You also practice using the onscreen keyboard, see how to interact with the touchscreen in various ways, get pointers on working with cameras, and get an overview of built-in applications (apps).
See What You Need to Use iPhone
You need to be able, at a minimum, to connect to the Internet to take advantage of most iPhone features, which you can do using a Wi-Fi network (a network that you set up in your own home or access in a public place such as a library) or a 3G/4G connection from your cellular provider. You might want to have a computer so that you can connect your iPhone to it to download photos, videos, music, or applications and transfer them to or from your iPhone through a process called syncing (see Chapter 4 for more about syncing). An Apple service called iCloud syncs content from all your Apple iOS devices (such as the iPhone or iPad), so anything you buy on your iPad that can be run on an iPhone, for example, will automatically be pushed to your iPhone. In addition, you can sync without connecting a cable to a computer using a wireless Wi-Fi connection to your computer.
Your iPhone will probably arrive registered and activated, or if you buy it in a store, the person helping you can handle that procedure.
For an iPhone 7 or 7 Plus, Apple recommends that you have
❯❯ A Mac or PC with a USB 2.0 or 3.0 port and one of these operating systems:
● macOS version 10.9 (Mavericks) or later
● Windows 7 or newer
❯❯ iTunes 12.5 or later, available at www.apple.com/itunes/download
❯❯ An Apple ID
❯❯ Internet access
Turn On iPhone for the First Time
The first time you turn on your iPhone, it will probably have been activated and registered by your phone carrier or Apple, depending on whom you’ve bought it from. Follow these steps:
1. Press and hold the Sleep/Wake button a little bit below the top of the upper-right side of your iPhone until the Apple logo appears. In another moment, a series of screens appears, asking you to enter a password if you have an Apple ID.
2. Enter your Apple ID. If you don’t have an Apple ID, you can follow the instructions to create one.
3. Follow the series of prompts to set up initial options for your iPhone. You can make choices about your language and location, using iCloud (Apple’s online sharing service), whether to use a passcode, connecting with a network, and so on.
Meet the Multi-Touch Screen
When the iPhone Home screen appears (see Figure 2-1), you see a pretty background and two sets of icons.
One set of icons appears in the Dock, along the bottom of the screen. The Dock contains the Phone, Safari, Mail, and Music app icons by default, though you can swap out one app for another. You can add new apps to populate as many as 10 additional Home screens for a total of 11 Home screens. The Dock appears on every Home screen.
Other icons appear above the Dock and are closer to the top of the screen. (I cover all these icons in the “Take Inventory of Preinstalled Apps” task, in Chapter 3.) Different icons appear in this area on each Home screen. You can also nest apps in folders, which almost gives you the possibility of storing limitless apps on your iPhone. You are, in fact, limited – but only by your phone’s memory.
The iPhone uses touchscreen technology: When you swipe your finger across the screen or tap it, you’re providing input to the device just as you do to a computer using a mouse or keyboard. You hear more about the touchscreen in the next task, but for now, go ahead and play with it for a few minutes – really, you can’t hurt anything. Use the pads of your fingertips (not your fingernails) and try these tasks:
❯❯ Tap the Settings icon. The various settings (which you read more about throughout this book) appear, as shown in Figure 2-2.
❯❯ Swipe a finger from right to left on the Home screen. This action moves you to the next Home screen.
❯❯ To experience the screen rotation feature, hold the iPhone firmly while turning it sideways. The screen flips to the horizontal orientation, if the app you’re in supports it.
To flip the screen back, just turn the device so that it’s oriented like a pad of paper again. (Some apps force iPhone to stay in one orientation or the other.)
❯❯ Drag your finger down from the very top edge of the screen to reveal the Notification Center items, such as reminders and calendar entries. (Notification Center is covered in Chapter 24). Drag up from the very bottom edge of the Home screen to hide Notification Center,
