style="font-size:15px;"> ❯❯ Compass: The Compass app is kind of like having a magnetic needle compass inside your iPhone, but better.
❯❯ Tips: This app provides tips for using your iPhone and iOS 10.
❯❯ Voice Memos: This handy little app turns your iPhone into a convenient handheld recording device.
❯❯ Contacts: This app stores contact information, which can be synced with iCloud, macOS Contacts, Yahoo! Address Book, Google Contacts, and many more.
❯❯ Find Friends: This app shows a map with the locations of friends who have consented to being tracked by Find My Friends.
❯❯ Find iPhone: This app displays a map with the last known locations of your family’s iPhones (assuming it’s enabled on each misplaced phone before it was misplaced).
Outside the Extras Folder
In addition to the Extras folder, you find several additional icons on the second Home screen:
❯❯ FaceTime: This app is used to make FaceTime video or voice calls to others using Apple devices.
❯❯ Calculator: The Calculator app lets you perform addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Give the phone a quarter turn, however, and you’ll find a nifty scientific calculator that does all that and much more.
❯❯ Podcasts: Podcasts used to be included in the Music app but was moved to this stand-alone app in iOS 7. Use it to manage and consume podcasts on your iPhone.
❯❯ Watch: This app is used to manage features on your Apple Watch. It’s useless unless you have an Apple Watch.
❯❯
Finally, four icons at the bottom of the Home screen are in a special area known as the dock. When you switch Home screens (see Chapter 2), all the icons above the dock change. The four items on the dock, which follow, remain available on all Home screens:
❯❯ Phone: Tap this app icon to use the iPhone as a phone. What a concept!
❯❯ 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 discovered the wonderful Safari for Windows, think Internet Explorer on steroids.
❯❯ Messages: The Messages app lets you exchange text messages (SMS) and multimedia messages (MMS) with almost any other cellphone user. The app also lets you exchange Apple-exclusive iMessages with anyone using any Apple device with iOS 5 or higher (iDevice) or a Mac running Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8) or higher, as described in Chapter 6. We’ve used a lot of mobile phones in our day, and this app is as good as it gets.
❯❯ Music: This icon unleashes all the audio power of an iPod right on your phone.
Okay, then. Now that you and your iPhone have been properly introduced, it’s time to turn it on and actually use it. Onward!
Chapter 2
iPhone Basic Training
IN THIS CHAPTER
❯❯ Mastering multitouch
❯❯ Multitasking with your iPhone
❯❯ Spotlighting search
❯❯ Keeping alert through notifications
If you were caught up in the initial iPhone frenzy of 2007, you may have plotted for months about how to land one. After all, the iPhone quickly emerged as the ultimate fashion phone. And the chic device hosted a bevy of cool features.
Owning the hippest and most-hyped handset on the planet came at a premium cost compared with rival devices. To snag the very first version, you may have saved your pennies or said, “The budget be damned.”
That’s ancient history now. Almost a decade later, the iPhone has gone mainstream and you get more bang for your buck. A lot more bang.
We can list a bunch of prices here, but pricing for the wireless industry, and accordingly the iPhone, is in a state of flux. You used to be able to buy an iPhone for a subsidized and relatively low upfront price that was tied to a two-year contract with your carrier. As of this writing, however, such contracts are no longer the norm. Instead, wireless companies are pushing installment pricing options, in which you can choose to put little or no money down but are then obligated to pay for the device over typically a two-year term. In some cases you lease the phone; in others, you buy the phone outright.
The entry-level iPhone SE (at the time of this writing) started at $399 or cost $16.63 on up with carrier financing. The highest capacity 256GB iPhone 7 Plus from a carrier such as AT&T cost $969.99 or $32.34 a month.
Of course you still must pay for cellular and data coverage and data from a wireless carrier.
For existing iPhone customers, the upgrade price for a new model may depend on how far you’re into your previous contract, how prompt you are at paying your bill, and other factors. And as they say in the fine print, taxes and fees are extra.
You may also get a nice trade-in deal on your existing phone, from Apple or other retailers.
Activating the iPhone
You will typically activate the iPhone where you bought the thing, just as you do with other cellphones. However, if you buy your iPhone from Apple’s online store, the folks there will ship it to you and you activate it through iTunes, just like the old days, or through iCloud. If you’re already a customer upgrading from an earlier iPhone or a different phone, you can convert your plan during the ordering process. You also choose your desired monthly bucket of voice minutes and SMS (Short Message Service) or text messages as well as your allotment of wireless data minutes right in the store.
As mentioned, we aren’t going to go through all the wireless options here. Suffice to say that plans vary by wireless carrier and are subject to change. At the time this book was written, ironclad two-year contracts were rapidly becoming far less, well, ironclad. Of course, you’re still obligated to pay what you owe your carrier. Indeed, the carriers all are moving away from contracts to installment pricing.
Unlimited data plans are also in a state of flux. Verizon and AT&T used to offer unlimited data but now typically charge based on usage, though those of you who
