iPad All-in-One For Dummies. Nancy C. Muir

steps to set up and register your iPad:

      1. Press and hold the Sleep/Wake button on the top of your iPad until the Apple logo appears.

      In another moment, a screen appears with a cheery Hello on it.

      2. Slide your finger to the right on the screen where it says Slide to Set Up.

      3. Enter a password if you have an Apple ID, choose how other people can reach you with text messages through the Messaging app or video calls through FaceTime (choose your phone number, iCloud account, or email account), and whether to update to iCloud Drive (an online storage service).

      

Be sure to update to iCloud Drive on all your devices, such as iPhone, Mac, or Windows PC to make sure that your iCloud-stored documents continue to sync to them all.

      4. You next see a series of screens that involve settings such as language, country, Wi-Fi network, and use of iCloud.

      Follow the series of screens to respond to questions and make initial settings, all of which can be changed later in iPad Settings.

      5. After you deal with all the setup screens, a Welcome to iPad screen appears; tap Get Started to display the Home screen.

      

You can choose to have certain items transferred to your iPad from your computer when you sync, including music, videos, downloaded apps, contacts, calendars, e-books, podcasts, and browser bookmarks. You can also transfer to your computer content that you download directly to your iPad using the iTunes and App Store apps as well as content that you gather through the Newsstand, iBooks, Podcasts, and iTunes U apps. See Book II, Chapter 1 for more about these features.

       Meeting the Multi-Touch Screen

      When your Home screen appears (see Figure 2-4), you’ll see a pretty picture in the background and two sets of icons. One set appears in the Dock along the bottom of the screen. The Dock contains Messages, Mail, the Safari browser, and Music app icons by default, though you can add up to two other apps to it. The Dock appears on every Home screen. (You start with one Home screen, but adding new apps creates additional Home screens – up to 15 in all.) You can also nest apps in folders, which theoretically gives you the capability to store limitless apps on your iPad – limited, that is, only by your tablet’s memory.

      Figure 2-4: Icons for various apps live in the Dock or on a Home screen.

      Other icons representing your installed apps appear above the Dock. (I give you an overview of the functionality of all these apps in Chapter 4 of this minibook.) Different icons appear in this area on each Home screen, but this Home screen contains most of the preinstalled apps.

      

This may or may not need saying, but the screen is made of glass and will smudge when you touch it and break if you throw it at the wall, and contrary to Apple’s boasts, can also be scratched. So, be careful and treat it nicely.

       Connecting with the touchscreen

      The iPad touchscreen technology allows you to swipe your finger across the screen or tap it to provide input to the device just as you use a mouse or keyboard with your computer. You read more about using the touchscreen in the next section, but for now, go ahead and play with it for a few minutes. Just as you may have become used to with your mobile phone, you use the pads of your fingertips (not your fingernails) and do the following:

      1. Tap the Settings icon.

      The various settings (which you read more about throughout this book) appear. (See Figure 2-5.)

      Figure 2-5: Settings is your central command for all things iPad.

      2. To return to the Home screen, press the Home button.

      3. Swipe a finger or two from right to left on the screen.

      Because the iPad has a few additional Home screens available (15, to be exact) that you can fill up with all the apps you’ll be downloading, the screen shifts slightly to the left. (If you have more apps downloaded, filling additional Home screens, this action moves you to the next Home screen.)

      

With multiple Home screens in use, you get little dots at the bottom of the screen above the Dock icons, indicating which of the Home screens you’re on. You can tap to the right or left of the dots to move one screen in either direction.

      4. To experience the rotating screen feature, hold the iPad firmly and turn it sideways.

      The screen flips to a horizontal orientation. If it doesn’t, check the Side switch (above the volume rocker on the side of your iPad) to make sure that it’s not active. Though this Side switch can be set to mute the iPad rather than control orientation, by default it works with the orientation feature.

      5. To flip the screen back, just turn the device so that it’s oriented like a pad of paper again.

      6. Tap Music in the Dock.

      7. Drag your finger down from the top of the screen to reveal the Notification Center (covered in Book V, Chapter 4).

      8. Drag up from the bottom of the Home screen.

      Notification Center disappears and the Control Center (discussed later in this chapter) is displayed.

      9. Practice multitasking by double-pressing the Home button.

      All running apps appear in a display across the middle of the screen.

      1. Swipe to scroll through the apps, and tap one to jump to it without going back to the Home screen.

      

You can customize the Home screen by changing the wallpaper and brightness. Read about making these changes in Chapter 8 of this minibook.

       Goodbye, click-and-drag; hello, tap-and-swipe

      If you’re like me, you’ll fall in love with the touchscreen interface that iPad sports. It’s just so intuitive to use your finger as a pointing device – something you’re probably already doing on your iPhone, laptop, or other mobile device.

      You can use several methods for getting around and getting things done in iPad using its Multi-Touch screen, including

      ✔ Tap once. To open an application on the Home screen, choose a field such as a search field, select an item in a list, select an arrow to move back or forward one screen, or follow an online link, tap the item once with your finger.

      ✔ Tap twice. Use this method to enlarge or reduce the display of a web page (see Chapter 6 in this minibook for more about using the Safari web browser) or zoom in or out in the Maps app.

      ✔ Pinch and expand. As an alternative to the tap-twice method, you can pinch or expand (unpinch) two fingers (most people use their index finger and thumb) on the screen (see Figure 2-6) when you’re looking at photos, maps, web pages, or email messages to quickly reduce or enlarge them, respectively.