The Home Screen

When you first turn on your device, you’re brought to the home screen. Here, you see an assortment of icons grouped into rows,
and several more icons grouped in the silver Dock along the bottom of the screen. The home screen is where your apps live, and where you can launch them. Because only 16 apps fit on one home screen, you can have multiple home screens for organizing your apps (up to nine). Above the Dock are dots (the default number is two), with one highlighted in white; these dots signify the number of home screens you have. Swipe left or right to go from screen to screen.

The Dock

The silver translucent bar along the bottom of your home screen is called the Dock. Swipe between home screens, and you notice
that the icons in the Dock don’t change. That’s because the Dock is for the apps you use most frequently; instead of having to swipe from screen to screen to find an app, you can drop it directly into the Dock for easy access. You can store up to four apps in the Dock.
Search in Spotlight You can search for any email message, webpage, and app on your device, or search through Google or Wikipedia, by swiping right on your home screen until you reach Spotlight. To search, just type your query in the text box at the top.

Open and Close an App

Want to launch an app? To open it, all you have to do is tap its icon. Once it’s open, you can return to the home screen at any time by pressing the Home button.

Rearrange and Delete Apps

To rearrange the order of your icons, tap and hold any icon on a home screen. After a few seconds, you enter Edit  mode: All your app icons‚ including the one you’re holding‚ start to wiggle, and a small black X pops up in each icon’s top left corner. Then you can rearrange any apps on the home screen, or even drag them into or out of the Dock. If you’ve installed a third-party app you don’t want anymore, you can tap the X to delete it (you cannot delete the apps that came preinstalled on your iPhone). When you’re finished, press the Home button to make the app icons stop wiggling and stay in their new location. You can also rearrange your icons and home screens through iTunes when you connect your phone to your computer.

Use Folders

When you start amassing a collection of apps on your iPhone, organizing them can get tricky. Luckily, you can use app folders. A folder is a group of apps, represented by a single icon, on a home screen. Each folder sports miniature icons representing the apps inside, along with an overall name, such as Games or Photography. When you tap a folder, the Dock fades and slides down, making room for a view of the folder’s contents. Within the folder, you find the name and icon for each app. Tap any app to launch it, or tap anywhere outside the folder to return to the home screen.

To create a folder, start by tapping and holding any app icon to enter Edit mode; after the icons begin to wiggle, drag an app on top of another app. When you release the app, you’ll have created a folder, which will open and display both apps. By default, the folder’s name is based on the App Store category for one of the first two apps in the folder. If you want to customize this name, just tap inside the field (while still in Edit mode) and enter something new. When you’re done, press the Home button to exit Edit mode.

To add another app to the folder, reenter Edit mode and drag the desired app onto the folder icon. Repeat until you’ve added all the apps you want (up to 12 per folder), and then press the Home button to exit Edit mode.

To edit the folder itself—its name, contents, or the layout of the apps inside—you can either enter Edit mode and then tap the folder, or, while the folder is open, tap and hold any icon inside. You can then tap the folder’s name to change it, drag apps within the folder to rearrange them, drag an app out of the folder to return it to the home screen, or tap an app’s Delete button to completely delete it from your phone. Unlike apps, folders don’t have a Delete button; to delete a folder, you must remove all the apps from it.

 See also

• How To Use iPhone 4S | At A Glance
• How To Use iPhone 4S | Change Your Settings
• How To Use iPhone 4S | Gestures and Techniques
• iPhone 4S Tips and Tricks | To Force-Quit or Not to Force-Quit

It isn’t often that you can liken a Japanese TV programme to a sideways-scrolling monster truck game, but while racing the green shadow car over chaotic scenery, the obstacle course with the wrecking ball from Takeshi’s Castle comes to mind. Monster Trucks Nitro 2 takes the well worn and quite tedious premise of sideways-scrolling scenery with automatic acceleration and some obstacles to get over and turns it into a carnage-strewn, gravity-defying race against time. The aim of the game is to rotate the truck to get maximum lift on jumps and flips where possible to gain nitro boosts, and get the tyres back on the ground to keep the speed up — as shown by the green shadow car. Best of all, the trucks are a shiny 3D, and the chaos caused during the race is a visual feast.

If you’ve never before owned a Multi-Touch device from Apple, you may be unfamiliar with phrases like pinch to zoom and the difference between flick and swipe. Have no fear: Although some of these gestures may have odd names, they’re easy enough to pick up.

Tap

As clicking is to a desktop computer, so is tapping to an iOS device. Tapping is the most common and basic gesture: You tap to open apps, bring up controls, make choices from menus, and more.

Double-Tap

Tap an object twice in succession to effect a double-tap. Double-taps are primarily used for zooming in or out on text, but third-party apps also use the double-tap for various purposes.

Tap, Hold, and Drag

For some functions‚ such as highlighting text, copying and pasting, and deleting and moving apps‚ you need to tap and hold down on the screen. When you do this on a piece of text, it highlights in blue, and editing handles—vertical lines with blue dots—appear on either side of the highlighted area. You can tap, hold, and, while holding down, drag your finger to increase or decrease the selection. Dragging  also comes into play for moving objects in apps, drawing, and swiping and flicking.

Flick and Swipe

Drag your finger across the screen—up, down, left, or right—to swipe. Swiping is one of your primary navigational tools: You use a left or right swipe to move through home screens or images in the Photos app; you use an up or down swipe to read text in Safari, iBooks, Newsstand, or elsewhere. It’s one of the easiest gestures to learn. A flick is just like a swipe, only faster: Your device supports inertial scrolling, which means that the faster or slower you move your finger, the faster or slower content will move. If you want to get to the bottom of a page quickly, just flick your finger upward in a fast motion.

One note of caution: All flicking and swiping on your device is inverse, meaning that when you move your finger down (in other words, swipe down), you’re actually moving the content on the screen upward. While this makes perfect sense in the real world, it can still be a bit disorienting at first. Why make the clarification? In this book, we refer several times to “swiping right” to bring up a navigational bar from the left—which can be confusing to parse if you don’t know about inverse gestures.

Pinch

To zoom in or out, use the pinch gesture (also referred to as a pinch-to-zoom gesture). To zoom in or to open something, place your thumb and index finger, pinched together, on screen and spread them apart. To zoom out, do the reverse: Start with your thumb and index finger further apart, and then pinch them together.

Rotate

You can even rotate some elements with two or more fingers. Just place two fingers on screen and make a circular gesture‚ clockwise or counterclockwise.

See also

• How To Use iPhone 4S | At A Glance
• How To Use iPhone 4S | Change Your Settings
• How To Use iCloud | A New User Guide
• iPhone 4S Tips and Tricks | To Force-Quit or Not to Force-Quit

What are you waiting for? These games aren’t going to play themselves. Also, don’t forget to invite a few friends.

To capture an image of what’s showing on your screen—whether it’s Sid’s latest droll reply or proof of your highest Fruit Ninja score ever—simply press the Home button and the Sleep/Wake button simultaneously. Voila! The image is saved directly to your photos.

Swipe to Delete

Want a quick, easy way to delete emails or text threads? Open your Mail or Messages app and swipe your finger from left to right over the email or text thread you want to delete. Tap the red Delete button and it’s his­tory. If you accidentally swipe the wrong email or text thread, just tap the screen anywhere besides that red button (or swipe that same line from right to left) and the Delete button will disappear.

If you’d like to keep an entire text thread, but want to delete one or more individual text messages within the thread, open it up, tap Edit in the top right corner, and tap the little circle on the left of each message you want to delete. Then hit the Delete button at the bottom—no more incriminating messages visible to prying eyes!

Type Punctuation Quickly

For all you incessant texters out there, this typing tip will save you countless taps per day. Instead of tapping the 123 key, tap­ping your punctuation mark, and then tapping ABC to get back to the alphabet, simply tap and hold down the 123 key, slide your finger to whatever punctuation mark you want, and release. You’ll automatically be taken back to the alphabet keyboard. Not a huge shortcut, but definitely one that saves time if you’re texting nonstop.

Tap & Hold: Other Keyboard Options

If you’re like me and can’t bear to type phrases like “a la mode” or “Uber” without their proper accents, you’ll love this quick tip: tap and hold the vowel that requires the accent, and a slew of options will appear above the letter. Slide your finger to the cor­rect one and release. Punctuation purists, rejoice!

Similar options exist for URL endings (tap and hold the..com key in Safari), degree signs (tap and hold the 0 key), and other punctuation marks (test out the apostrophe, quotation mark, hyphen, and period keys).

Switch Apps in a Flash

Once you’ve discovered this next tip, you’ll realize what a huge pain in the derriere it is to have to go to the Home screen in between using apps, espe­cially if you’ve organized them into folders. Say you’re in the middle of a game of Sudoku and you suddenly remember that you needed to look up a recipe in Epicurious. Just double-tap the Home button and a row of your 4 most recently used apps will ap­pear. Swipe from right to left, and you’ll see apps from even further back. Once you get used to navigating this time-saving secret passageway of apps, I’m confident you’ll never look back.

Tap to Focus

A great camera feature in both the iPhone and iPad is “tap to focus:’ As you set up your shot, tap the screen wherever you want the focus of the photo to be. A small square will appear in that area, and the image will re-focus based on your selection. Then tap the Camera button or press the volume up button to take the photo.

For Everyday Users

Set a Timer to Stop the Music App (iPhone and iPod touch only)

Like to lull yourself to sleep with soothing classical tunes? A little sultry R&B, perhaps? (Or eardrum-shattering death metal, for that matter? Hey, we’re not judging.) Well, there’s no reason to keep it playing all night, draining the bat­tery, and potentially waking you up from your much-needed slumber. Problem solved: you can set a timer to stop the music anywhere from 1 minute to 24 hours later.

Open the Clock app, tap on Timer, scroll to the number of hours or minutes for which you want it to play, then tap When Timer Ends. Scroll to the bottom and tap Sleep iPod, hit Start, and then open up your Music app. When your timer runs out, the Music app will stop, leaving you to catch some z’s in peace.

Change Siri’s Default Language (iPhone only)

Did you know Siri could speak to you in French? Or with an Aussie accent? I happened upon this feature one day and had great fun fiddling with it. Open up Settings, select General, then Sin, and then tap Language. You can choose from English (U.S., UK, or Australian), French, or German. Inexplicably, Sin has a male voice in British English and French, while it remains female in the other languages.

Don’t Shake to Shuffle (iPhone and iPod touch only)

You know when you’re sprinting on the treadmill, totally in the Gaga groove, and just as the clubtastic climax starts, your phone abruptly switches songs? Avoid such ca­lamities by switching your Shake to Shuffle feature off. Then you can bop to your heart’s content, without fear of interruption. Sim­ply open your Settings, tap Music, and toggle Shake to Shuffle to the Off position.

Post on Facebook, Google+, or Twitter with Siri (iPhone only)

We briefly mentioned in our Jan/Feb issue that there’s a work­around for updating your social media profiles via Sin, since it doesn’t have a built-in method to open apps. What Siri can do, however, is send texts. Once you’ve set up each account, you can tell Sid to message Facebook, Google+, or Twitter just as you would any other contact, and the text will show up as a post on your profile. Here are specific directions for each site:

Facebook:

Text “Hello” to short code 32665 (for the U.S. and Canada) and follow the link in the reply to complete the set­up. You’ll be directed to the web version of Facebook, where you can select notification settings and whether you want your mobile number to be visible to friends. When you’re done, save that short code in your Contacts as Facebook.

Google+:

Go to your settings page in Google+ and scroll to Notification Delivery. Add your mobile number, hit Send Veri­fication Code, and Confirm. If you don’t want to receive text messages from Google+, make sure to select Don’t Notify Me. Then add the short code you see underneath (33669 for the U.S.) in your Contacts as Google Plus.

Twitter:

Text “Start” to short code 40404 (for the U.S.) and follow the necessary steps, entering your username and pass­word when prompted. Once you’re set up, save that short code in your Contacts as Twitter.

]]> http://www.tcgeeks.com/easy-ways-to-get-the-most-from-your-idevice/feed/ 3 http://www.tcgeeks.com/11-ways-to-save-your-iphone-4s-battery/ http://www.tcgeeks.com/11-ways-to-save-your-iphone-4s-battery/#comments Wed, 02 May 2012 12:48:05 +0000 George http://www.tcgeeks.com/?p=20667 We know that the iPhone 4S’s battery life leaves much to be desired. But there are several settings you can tinker with to help it last as long as possible. Sure, I’ve heard the protests: “If you turn off d the features, all you have left is a regular phone — what’s the point of having an iPhone if you don’t get all the bells and whistles along with it?” To that I say, just be judicious about it. When you’re relaxing at home, there’s no need for GPS to be on, and if you’re at yoga class for an hour, you won’t be needing your Wi-Fi anyway. Why not do what you can to keep your phone alive when it only takes two seconds to switch set­tings? If you really do need all these settings on all the time, I suggest picking up a hardy battery case such as the Mophie Juice Pack Plus ($99.95, mophie.com).

Airplane Mode

If you don’t need to to make or receive calls for a while, go to Settings and toggle Airplane Mode to the On position. Alarms will still work in Airplane Mode; Reminders will not.

Location Services/Time Zone

If you’re not using any location-based apps, go to Settings, tap Location Services, and toggle to the Off position. But since GPS is integral to so many of the iPhone’s features, a less drastic way to combat battery drain is by turning off a known iOS 5 bug: the Time Zone setting, which constantly tracks your location. From Location Services, scroll to the bottom and hit System Services. Then toggle Setting Time Zone to the Off position.

Vibrate Off

Don’t want your phone to vibrate when it rings? Go to your Settings, then Sounds, and under Ringer and Alerts, toggle Vibrate to the Off position. If you want it to vibrate in Silent mode, keep the Vibrate on under Silent; if not, toggle it to the Off position.

Push Notifications

Having notifications sent to your phone from every app you download will quickly wear out your battery. Go to Settings, tap Notifications, and then look at the apps listed In Notifica­tion Center. Don’t need updates from, say, the Stock Widget? Tap its bar and toggle Notification Center to the Off position. Do this for each app you’d prefer not to get real-time notifications from.

Wi-Fi

If you are in a 3G area and don’t need Wi­Fi enabled, go to Settings, tap Wi-Fi, and toggle it to the Off position.

Bluetooth

Not using your Bluetooth headset or any oth­er Bluetooth-enabled devices? Turn it off and your battery will thank you. Under Settings, tap General, then Bluetooth, and toggle to the Off position.

Spotlight Search

Do you ever use the search feature to the left of your Home screen? If so, what apps do you actually end up searching in    (e.q., Contacts, Music, Notes)? To choose which apps are searchable, go to Settings, tap General, Spotlight Search, and uncheck all the apps for which you i to deactivate the search function.

Brightness

Dimming the screen helps your battery last, as does activating Auto-Brightness, which adjusts your screen’s brightness according to lighting conditions. Go to Settings, tap Brightness, and drag the slider to the left to reduce brightness. Then toggle Auto-Brightness to the On position.

Fetch Emails

Set your emails to be fetched at certain inter­vals, rather than pushed immediately from the servers. Go to Settings; select Mail, Contacts, Calendars; and tap Fetch New Data. Toggle Push – to the Off position and, under the Fetch section, choose how often you want your email to be refreshed (the longer the duration, the less battery used). If you just want to check your email manually and not have it automatically refresh, tap Manually.

Siri

Yes, we love Siri. But we don’t need it to serve us at every waking moment. When you know you won’t need Sin’s assistance for a while, go to Settings, tap General, se­lect Sid, and toggle to the Off position. If you want Sin on but prefer to long-press the Home button to activate it, toggle the Raise to Speak option to the Off position.

Reduce Auto-Lock Time

Leaving your screen display on longer than necessary is a great way to waste your bat­tery. Train yourself to manually lock the phone every time you set it down, and reduce the Auto-Lock time by going into Settings, tap?ping General, scrolling down to Auto-Lock, and selecting 1 Minute as the default.

See also

• The New iPad Review
• New iPad Features | More Pixels Than HDTV
• The New Apple TV | 1080p HD Resolution and More
• How To Use iPad 2 | A New User’s Guide

If you’ve already purchased a movie at 720p movie in the iTunes Store in the past, Apple will allow re-downloading of a 1080p version. Not all the 15,000 movies and 90,000 TV shows are available in 1080p, but a significant number are.

At the same time, Apple introduced a new version of the Apple TV software that has an app-based interface more like that of the iPhone and iPad. This software is also available as a download for the earlier second-generation Apple TV (2010 model). The new Apple TV interface is more attractive, and simplifies navigation.

The New Apple TV Review is Small and Compact

Other new features of the Apple TV include Genius. Just as with iTunes and iOS, you can get recommendations for movies you might like based on movies you’ve watched in the past. And compatibility with iCloud and iTunes Match lets you listen to all your music and view your photos that are in the cloud. You simply log into your account, and the content is automatically available.

At the event, Apple also announced that you’ll now be able to store some movies in iCloud, just as you do with music. This means that the movies will be available to you via any device that can connect to your iCloud account, including an Apple TV.

If you’re not familiar with Apple TV, let’s do a quick overview. You connect the Inter­net to the device, and the device to your HDTV. The Internet connection can either be wireless or Ethernet. Included is an elegantly simple remote like the one that’s also available for the Mac.

Once you’re connected, the device shows a home screen that gives you access to a range of con­tent. This includes rental or purchase of movies and TV shows via the iTunes Store; free Internet content such as podcasts (both video and audio), YouTube, Vimeo, and Flickr; and subscription services such as Netflix, Major League Baseball, NBA basketball, and professional hockey. There are also hundreds of free streaming Internet radio sta­tions.

In addition, Apple TV lets you stream movies and TV shows from your desktop computer via your home network. And if you have an iPhone or iPad, the AirPlay feature lets you stream videos from your device to your HDTV via the Apple TV.

The New Apple TV 1080p HD Resolution And More

The Apple TV has been in the iOS lineup for a few years, but its popularity has been accelerating. Apple sold 2.8 million second-generation Apple TVs in the 2011 fiscal year, and had sold 4.2 million total by the end of 2011. Steve Jobs had once described Apple TV as a  hobby given its small contribution to Apple’s overall revenue. But it’s clear that the company intends to continue to develop it, and Apple is even rumored to be coming out with a killer TV set and a streaming TV service that will be similar to cable TV but will let you customize it according to your interests. The New Apple TV for all of your family.

Even though the WWDC Keynote focus was mostly on iPhone 4.0, we wanted to make sure you got the latest on any iPad-related news that came from the Steve Jobs WWDC 2010 Keynote.

Here is what we learned about the iPad from today’s  Keynote that Steve Jobs just finished up.

The iPad Statistics

• Steve Jobs announced “It is really changing the way we’re experiencing the web, things like photos, video, maps.”
• 2 Million sold in 10 countries, one sold every 3 seconds
• iPad will be in 19 countries by the end of July
• There have been 35 million iPad apps downloaded (average of 17 per iPad)
• Cool new apps: Pulse, WebMD, eBay, Anatomy app, IronMan, Avatar, Field Rumors, Gold…
• 15,000 apps submitted per week. 95% are approved in 7 days.
• 70% of revenue goes to developers

iBook News

• Update to iBooks app Today with new features: Make Notes that will show up in TOC. Can Now View and read PDF’s in iBook.  PDF’s have their own bookshelf.
• iPad has 22$ of total eBook Market

App Store News

• Jobs, “I want ot make something really clear. We support two platforms at Apple. The first one is HTML 5. A fully open uncontrolled platform that is forged and defined by widely respected standards bodies. We fully support html 5, a lot of the technology has come from apple, and apple’s browsers are in the lead when it comes to implementing html 5.”
• “The second platform is the App Store. A curated platform. It is the most vibrant app platform on the planet.”
• Farmville coming…just what we all need (I can hear the productivity dropping right now…THUD!)

There was also a great deal of news for the iPhone 4.0 which can be found at Engadget, TUAW or The Apple Blog.

The next question that comes to my mind is, when can we get the new iPad Update to iOS 4.0?  The update for the iPhone is out on June 21st, so perhaps we will see the iPad update at the same time.

Charadium: An Addicting Draw-and-Guess Multiplayer Game

Charadium for iPad is an addicting draw-and-guess multiplayer game for your whole family.  You play a game with other people who are also playing on an iPad, iPhone, and even an iPod Touch.

Building A Community

Everyone playing will need the app which is part of the Plus+ community that is also integrated with other games, like God Finger, and We Rule. With these games and the Plus+ community, you can keep your scores and achievements on you’re iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch too, as well as keeping in contact with you’re friends that you have met via the games.  This is a great way to build community around things you enjoy.

How Charadium for iPad Works

• When the game starts the first person to draw is randomly picked.
• Once someone is picked they get the option to draw the word given to them or skip the word.
• If they choose to skip the word then they automatically get points deducted
• If they don’t accept or decline a word they may be skipped anyway with no consequence.
• After they accept to draw the given word, then the game begins and the timer starts going down, and if you’re drawing you can choose nine colors to draw with.
• There is also an option to “undo” and a trash can.  The trash can trashes the whole drawing and lets you start over, but the timer stays where it is at and continues to go down.
• As the timer goes down so does the amount of points you are willing to get.
• The person who guesses it correctly and the person who drew get points for winning.
• If a person fails to get any correct guesses and the timer runs out, the person who drew loses points.

The End of a Charadium Round – Things You Can Do

At the end of each round you can add, warn, and star a player.  Adding a player means  you are adding them to your Plus+ community and they can accept or decline.  Warning someone is usually an indication they were cheating by spelling out words.  Starring someone is kind of like favoriting them and I like to give them out when someone correctly guesses one of my drawings.

The Bottom Line

I absolutely love this game. It is so exciting to try to draw a word that they give you, or even trying to guess at what another person is drawing.  Here are some of the other features that make this a good game for $4.99.

• You can play with people who are on the iPod Touch and the iPhone who also have the app.
• You can also great is that you can play the game in landscape or portrait mode, though in the landscape mode they tend to give you a smaller drawing space than in portrait mode, but that is understandable since the canvas has to be square for other people who may be playing in the opposite orientation.

This post was generously contributed by Kevin Tran a Graphic Design student at the Art Institute of Dallas. Kevin is getting an Associate degree in Graphic Design and is a gadget enthusiast.

The reason I sent out the tweet was due to something that happened. I am so used to using the iPhone and the iPad apps that it did not really occur to me when I thought, “I wonder if a certain application i use on my iPad could be used on my MacBook Pro?”  Of course not, because you can’t put iPhone/iPad apps on these platforms.

Now think about this for a moment though.  Mobile applications for the iPad/iPhone are fairly small in size, very functional, and easily downloaded/updated.  Does that not sound like a great idea to distribute to laptops/desktops as well?  I think it makes great sense.

Imagine an entire App store dedicated to the laptop/desktop market. It would spawn a whole new surge in development even beyond where it is today.  This surge would encourage even more innovation that would in turn benefit the iPhone/iPad apps as well and it could eventually tie the platforms closer together for a more rich computing experience.

There are reports of frustration with certain  iPad applications like Keynote, in that they can’t share data as easily with their laptop/desktop counterparts.  Would this not solve that?  Perhaps it could. And while solving the issue, it could also provide a great way to tie applications closer together for those of us with multiple products.

I’m not suggesting that full fledged software should slowly go away but I am suggesting that laptops and desktops make a great environment for mobile apps (yes, I realize the irony there) because of the ease of distribution, information sharing with the mobile version, and the lower cost.

What do you think?  Would you like to see iPad/iPhone apps for the MacBook/iMac?  Does it make sense?