saved to your iCloud Drive. Apple apps as well as many third-party apps know how to use it.
Sittin’ on the dock of the iPad
At the bottom of the iPad screen are the final four icons, sitting on a special shelf-like area called the dock.
By default, the dock icons are
✓ Messages: This app provides to iPads, iPhones, iPod touches, and Macs a unified messaging service dubbed iMessage. You can exchange unlimited free text or multimedia messages with any other device running iOS 5 or later (the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch) or Mac OS X Mountain Lion or later. Find out more about iMessage in Chapter 5.
✓ Mail: This app lets you send and receive email with most POP3 and IMAP email systems and, if you work for a company that grants permission, Microsoft Exchange, too. Chapter 5 helps you start emailing everyone you know from your iPad.
✓ Safari: Safari is your web browser. If you’re a Mac user, you know that already. If you’re a Windows user who hasn’t already discovered the wonderful Safari for Windows, think Internet Explorer on steroids. Chapter 4 shows you how to start using Safari on your iPad.
✓ Music: Last but not least, this icon unleashes all the power of an iPod right on your iPad so that you can listen to music or podcasts. You discover how the Music app works in Chapter 7.
Two last points:
✓ iOS 5 introduced the totally useful Notification Center, which becomes better and more useful with each new version of iOS. We wanted to mention it even though it doesn’t have an icon of its own. You hear much more about it in Chapter 13; to see it now (we know you can’t wait), swipe your iPad screen from top to bottom to make it appear. Then swipe from bottom to top to put it away again.
✓ We’d be remiss not to mention the even more useful Control Center, with controls for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, audio playback, and more, all available from any screen in any app. You discover much more about Control Center in Chapter 14, but if you just can’t stand the suspense, put your finger at the very bottom of your iPad screen and swipe upward to check out Control Center (and then swipe downward or tap the Home button to put it away).
Chapter 2
iPad Basic Training
IN THIS CHAPTER
❯❯ Mastering multitouch
❯❯ Cutting, copying, and pasting
❯❯ Multitasking with your iPad
❯❯ Spotlighting search
By now you know that the iPad you hold in your hands is very different from other computers.
You also know that these slate-style machines are rewriting the rule book for mainstream computing. How so? For starters, iPads don’t come with a mouse or any other kind of pointing device. They lack traditional computing ports or connectors, such as USB. And they have no physical or built-in keyboard, though Apple will sell you a Smart Keyboard accessory for the iPad Pro models.
iPads even differ from other so-called tablet PCs, some of which feature a pen or stylus and let you write in digital ink. As we point out (pun intended) in Chapter 1, the iPad relies on an input device that you always have with you: your finger. Okay, so the iPad Pros you meet in this book also break that longstanding iPad rule, at least if you spring for the Apple Pencil accessory.
Tablet computers of one form or another have actually been around since the last century. They just never captured the fancy of Main Street. Apple’s very own Newton, an ill-fated 1990s personal digital assistant, was among the machines that barely made a dent in the market.
What’s past is past, of course, and technology – not to mention Apple itself – has come a long way since Newton. And suffice it to say that in the future, tablets – led by the iPad brigade, of course – promise to enjoy a much rosier outlook.
If you were caught up in the initial mania surrounding the iPad, you probably plotted for weeks about how to land one. After all, the iPad, like its close cousin the iPhone, rapidly emerged as the hippest computer you could find. (We consider you hip just because you’re reading this book.) You had to plot to get subsequent versions as well.
Speaking of the iPhone, if you own one or its close relative, the Apple iPod touch, you already have a gigantic start in figuring out how to master the iPad multitouch method of navigating the interface with your fingers. If you’ve been using iOS 10 on those devices, you have an even bigger head start. You have our permission to skim the rest of this chapter, but we urge you to stick around anyway because some things on the iPad work in subtly different ways than on the iPhone or iPod touch. If you’re a total novice, don’t fret. Nothing about multitouch is painful.
Getting Started on Getting Started
We’ve always said that you needed the following four things to enjoy your new iPad, but starting with iOS 5, you don’t need a computer (and the connection to iTunes and whatever program you use to store your contacts) to use an iPad. You see, iOS 5 was the first operating system to allow you to activate, set up, and apply iOS updates to an iPad wirelessly, without having to connect it to a computer. All the ensuing versions of iOS continued the tradition. We show you how to get your iPad set up without a computer in the next section; in Chapter 3, we show you how to set up your iPad with your computer.
Because even though you don’t need a computer, we think you’ll prefer using your iPad with one rather than without one.
Now, here are those four things you need to use your iPad:
✓ A computer: As we point out, you don’t really need a computer, though it’s helpful to use your iPad with one just the same. The computer can be a Macintosh running Mac OS X version 10.5.8 or later or macOS Sierra, or a PC running Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7 (or Windows Vista or Windows XP Home or Professional Edition with Service Pack 3 or later if you still have such a machine).
The iCloud service has higher requirements: Mac OS X Mountain Lion, Lion (10.7), Mavericks, Yosemite, El Capitan, or macOS Sierra for Macs;
