Chapter 1

Unveiling the iPad

IN THIS CHAPTER

Looking at the big iPad picture

Examining the outside of the iPad

Checking out the Home screen and dock

Are you familiar with the old proverb that says, “Well begun is half done”? Some say it comes from Aristotle, so if you mumbled to yourself that the phrase is “Greek to me,” you’d be spot on! The proverb’s meaning is straightforward enough: If you start a project well, the rest of it will proceed so swimmingly that it’ll feel like you need to expend only half the effort to get it done.

This chapter is your chance to get your relationship with your iPad off to such a good start. Sure, you can dive right in and start tapping and scrolling stuff willy-nilly. If that’s your style, go for it; I won’t judge. However, one thing I’ve learned over the years is that if you approach a new piece of technology slowly and curiously, you’ll end up with a solid grounding in the basics that will pay back your initial time investment manyfold.

To that end, in this chapter, I offer a gentle introduction to all the pieces that make up your iPad, plus an overview of its most useful hardware features and a few software features that come with iPadOS.

iPadOS is the software that runs behind the scenes to control just about everything that happens on your iPad. The OS part of iPadOS is short for operating system, which tells you that iPadOS is the iPad equivalent of macOS on a Mac or even Windows on a PC.

In this book, I cover all iPad models that can run iPadOS 17:

• iPad sixth generation (2018) and later
• iPad Pro 11-inch first generation (2018) and later; iPad Pro 12.9-inch second generation (2017) and later
• iPad Air third generation (2019) and later
• iPad mini fifth generation (2019) and later

To figure out which generation iPad you have, open the Settings app, tap General, tap About, and then read the model name, which will be something like iPad (10th generation).

The iPad: A Bird’s-Eye View

The iPad has many interesting and useful features, but perhaps its most notable feature is something that it doesn’t have: a physical keyboard or mouse. Instead, every iPad is designed so that you can control it with a device that you’re intimately familiar with: your finger.

The iPad also ships with a boatload of built-in sensors. It has an accelerometer that detects when you rotate the device from portrait to landscape mode — and instantly adjusts what’s on the display. A light sensor adjusts the display’s brightness in response to the current ambient lighting conditions. Then there’s a three-axis gyro that works with the accelerometer and built-in compass. And all iPadOS-capable models also include Apple’s Touch ID sensor or Face ID. These features let you unlock your iPad with your fingerprint (Touch ID) or just by looking at it (Face ID)! I talk about both in detail later.

Last, but definitely not least, all iPads include Siri, a voice-controlled personal assistant happy to do almost anything you ask.

In the following sections, it’s time to take a brief look at the rest of the iPad’s features, broken down by product category.

The iPad as a media player

The iPad’s built-in speakers and sharp, clear display mean you can enjoy all your favorite media — music, audiobooks, audio and video podcasts, music videos, YouTube cat videos, television shows, and movies — from the comfort of your favorite armchair.

If you can get a media file — be it video, audio, or whatever — on your iPad, you can watch or listen to it on your iPad. And, of course, you can always buy or rent content on your iPad in the iTunes Store. You can also watch streaming content from Netflix, Hulu, Apple’s own Apple TV+ streaming service, and a host of others through apps.

An app (it’s short for application) is a program you can run on your iPad. For example, you browse the web with the Safari app, exchange email with the Mail app, and customize your iPad with the Settings app.

The iPad as an internet device

The iPad is a full-featured internet device. For example, your iPad comes with the Safari app, which is a no-compromise web browser that makes navigating web pages intuitive and even fun. Check out Chapter 4 to learn how to surf the web using Safari.

Many other iPad web browsers are available, including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Edge, but I don’t talk about them in this book. If you use the desktop equivalent of one of these browsers, you might want to try out the iPadOS version.

The iPad also comes with an email app (called, somewhat boringly, Mail) that’s compatible with most mail services. For more on using your iPad for email, see Chapter 5.

If you’re more into text messaging, your iPad has you covered with the Messages app. The details are in Chapter 6.

Another major internet feature is Maps, a mapping app that not only lets you see where things are located but also can provide directions to get from here to there. For the full scoop on Maps, see Chapter 13.

The iPad as an e-book reader

Open your iPad’s free Books app or install any of the excellent (and also free) third-party e-book readers such as the Kindle app from Amazon, and you’ll discover a new way of finding and reading books. The Apple Book Store and News app (covered in Chapter 7) are chock-full of good reading at prices that are lower than what you’d pay for a printed copy.

Sure, you and I both know that there’s nothing better than reading a printed book. Still, when you read an e-book, at least you can say you’re helping the environment and saving trees. Interestingly, some titles include audio, video, or graphical content that’s not available in the printed edition. Plus, tons of e-books are free; sure, the quality of most of these is suspect, at best, but there are all kinds of classic reads available for zero dollars. And it’s kind of cool to know that you can carry an entire library in one hand.

The iPad as a multimedia powerhouse

Your iPad has built-in speakers and support for connecting external headphones or speakers (directly or via Bluetooth), so if you want to listen to some tunes, your iPad is happy to help, as I show in Chapter 7.

All iPads also come with a couple of cameras, so you can use your tablet as a (slightly bulky) video camera (see Chapter 8) or still camera (see Chapter 9).

The Retina display on all iPads since the third generation makes the experience of watching video a pleasure. You can use AirPlay to send your video out to Apple TV, too, and your iPad turns into a superb device for watching video on a TV, with support for output resolutions up to 4K. Chapter 8 talks about watching video on your iPad.

You can also use the iPad cameras and the FaceTime app to video-chat with family and friends. Chapter 8 gets you started with FaceTime.

The iPad as a platform for third-party apps

Your iPad comes with quite a few apps, but you can always get more from the App Store. How many more? Lots: Literally millions of apps are available in the App Store, in categories such as games, business, education, entertainment, healthcare and fitness, music, photography, productivity, travel, and sports. The cool thing is that most of them, even ones designed for the iPhone, also run on the iPad (although, it must be said, they look a tad weird on the larger screen). And more than a million are designed specifically for the iPad’s larger screen. Chapter 10 helps you fill your iPad with all the cool apps your heart desires.

The iPad as a multitasking content production device

Apple has made the iPad more and more of a device for creating content as opposed to only consuming it. Writing, taking and editing photos, recording and editing music or videos, and even putting together full-scale presentations — all these tasks are doable with iPadOS, especially on the iPad Pro. Split-screen views, support for the Files app, and a fast processor give the iPad more than enough power to handle most tasks you throw at it. I talk more about multitasking in Chapter 2.

What do you need to use an iPad?

To use your iPad, only a few simple things are required. Here’s a list of everything you need:

• An iPad (duh)
• An Apple ID (assuming that you want to acquire content such as apps, TV shows and movies, music, books, and podcasts, which you almost certainly do)
• Internet access — broadband wireless internet access is recommended

Several years ago, you needed a computer with iTunes to sync your iPad. That’s no longer true; these days you can activate, set up, update, back up, and restore an iPad wirelessly without ever introducing it to a computer.

If you do decide to introduce your iPad to your computer (and I think you should), you need one of the following for syncing (which I discuss at length in Chapter 3):

• A Mac with a USB 2.0, 3.0, or USB-C port, macOS version 10.8.5 or later, and iTunes 12.7 or later (for macOS Mojave and earlier) or Finder (macOS Catalina...