Paul McFedries - iPad and iPad Pro For Dummies

The iPad has many interesting and useful features, but perhaps its most notable feature is that it doesn't come with a physical keyboard or stylus. You can get them as options (Apple’s first-generation $99 Apple Pencil, the second-generation $129 Apple Pencil, and the Smart Keyboard, which starts at $159), but they aren’t required to use your iPad. Instead, every iPad is designed to be controlled with a pointing device that you’re intimately familiar with: your finger.

And I love the iPad’s plethora 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’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 — all 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.

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 4to 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.

Download the free Books app if you don’t already have it, or any of the excellent (and 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.

Better still, when you read an e-book, you’re helping the environment and saving trees. Furthermore, some (if not many) titles include audio, video, or graphical content not available in the printed editions. Plus, a great number of good books are free. And best of all, you can carry your entire library in one hand. If you’ve never read a book on your iPad, give it a try. I think you’ll like (or love) it.

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 8talks 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 8gets you started with FaceTime.

At the time of this writing, there were more than 4 million apps in the App Store, with hundreds of billions of downloads to date 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 10helps you fill your iPad with all the cool apps your heart desires.

Apple has made the iPad more and more of a device for creating content as opposed to only consuming it. Writing, taking and editing pictures, 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.

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 or later)

A PC with a USB 2.0 or 3.0 port, Windows 7 or later, and iTunes 12.7 or later

iTunes is a free download, available at www.itunes.com/download .

The iPad is a harmonious combination of hardware and software. In the following sections, you take a brief look at the hardware — what’s on the outside.