Table of contents for The iPad Book 15th Edition in The iPad Book

If you own an iPad, you’re probably no stranger to some of the incredible features included in Apple’s range of tablets. Both the iPad Air and the iPad mini pack a lot of power into their slim frames, and the iPad Pro now offers unparalleled performance on the go. But the real beauty of the devices lies in their versatility and the huge range of apps to which they play host. The sheer number of possibilities can be a little overwhelming, but thankfully that’s where this new edition of The iPad Book comes in. In this bookazine, we’ll cover apps that can turn your iPad into a fully fledged media centre, a creative hub, an essential office companion, and more. We’ll break down the iPad hardware models, and to top…

The iPad Air 2 is a classic example of a product taking the best of the previous generation and making all of the practical areas even better than before. Some may see the subtle improvements in the Air 2 as displaying a lack of innovation, but those who use iPads will fully understand the benefits that the enhancements offer. The original Air was designed to make the full-size iPad more portable than ever before and at only 7.5mm thick, it truly was. The fact that Apple has shaved a further 1.4mm off the thickness does not sound that impressive, but when you pick it up and use it on a daily basis, the decreased depth and weight are very noticeable. Indeed, these subtle changes come together to offer an emotional…

You might think that the Settings app would contain a spattering of options to change specific features of the iPad, but it actually presents you with a huge list of options which contain further settings within them. The list has grown over time and can be confusing at first, but the best advice is to take a long look at what is available and to then only change what you need to. The number of options will also expand as you install new apps because many will push their individual settings to the main Settings panel, so that is something to be aware of if you are struggling to make changes in an app. Here, we will highlight the most useful settings and also show you how to navigate through…

The Messages app probably benefitted the most from the recent iOS 10 update, with a raft of cool new features made available to iPad users. Of course, you can still send text messages quickly and easily, but you can now express yourself in new and imaginative ways thanks to Digital Touch mode and downloadable emoticons. Digital Touch allows you to perform on-screen gestures to create animated effects and you can also record sequences to send to other people. And if the installed selection of emoticons isn’t quite to your liking (tap on the smiley face icon on the keyboard to access them), then you can tap on the arrow next to the message text field, tap the ‘A’ icon and then tap on ‘Store’ to shop for more. Some cost…

Siri is a brilliant invention from Apple and can be used for much more than you might expect. We will highlight some of the more popular and lesser known features, but the best advice is to just speak to Siri and see what answers you get back. Web searches are built in and Siri is also capable of interacting with many default apps including Maps, Contacts and Calendar. However, it is the way that Siri works that is most impressive: you can speak naturally and it will understand you. The more you use it, the more accurately it will recognise your voice and over time you’ll find yourself speaking to it just as you would a friend. Don’t ever feel restricted by what you believe it can or cannot do…

The iPad’s battery performance will easily get you through a busy day, but there’s still a lot you can do to increase it further. If you consider that the screen and wireless connections are the two main battery hogs and if you manage these two areas well, the benefits will become obvious immediately. We will show you how to manage these to increase power and also the areas that can be tweaked to offer even more battery life between charges. There are many tweaks you can make to increase battery life and not all of them are obvious, but when combined you have the ability to add an hour or two of use every day, which will be advantageous if you are often away from a power source. Some of…

Apple’s Mail app has got all the tools you could ever need to keep your emails neatly organised. From your initial inbox, you can sort your messages into multiple folders so that you can always access what you need, when you need it. The Mailbox feature is super-handy, too. For example, creating different mailboxes allows you to keep your emails of different topics separate. Say you’re planning a party – create a specific ‘Party’ mailbox and send all of your emails about the party to that mailbox; then, when you need to quickly and easily find some details, you can simply navigate to your Party mailbox, where all the emails will be there waiting for you! Flagging messages is also a great feature – simply tap the flag icon on…

Siri is an extremely clever personal assistant and if you take the time to use it fully, you will definitely benefit in a variety of ways. There are times, however, when Siri starts to lose the recognition of your voice and, if we are honest, the reasons for this are unclear. This will not be the end of the world though because there is an easy way to retrain Siri to understand your voice again by resetting what it has learnt so far in order to improve your usage in the future. There are many other ways to improve Siri recognition, but it is fair to say that it will improve the more you use it for the vast majority of people, and you should be able to speak naturally…

App used: Numbers Price: Free/£7.99/$9.99 The built-in apps on your Apple device work perfectly with the hardware and are optimised to take full advantage of the operating system. So while alternatives like Microsoft’s Office suite are still worth a look, Apple’s own iWork apps offer similar functionality, complete compatibility and a much nicer interface. Also, since the iWork apps are designed to work the same on Mac and iOS, you won’t be frustrated by missing features. But Apple knows that many people still use Microsoft Office, and it has therefore made it quick and easy to import and edit Microsoft files using iWork apps. You can continue to enjoy the improved interface of iWork on your iPad without having to transfer to a Mac or PC to work on a…

iTunes started life as a way to purchase and download music from your computer onto your iPad. Since then it has expanded to cover films, TV shows and audiobooks. As with apps, you can access iTunes purchases across all of your compatible devices. iTunes also comes with its own recommendation service called Genius, which uses your previous purchases to highlight music, films and shows you might like. When it comes to music on iTunes, you’ll be making an outright purchase of an album or single that you can then transfer to other devices. That doesn’t necessarily mean you have to download the music to your device since purchased music can be streamed via the Music app as long as you have an internet connection. TV shows are also purchased outright,…

The Podcasts app is Apple’s native iOS app for managing your podcast subscriptions, making it easier than ever to keep up to date with the latest episodes. The app features thousands of podcasts offering free episodes to download and listen to on your iPad. There is a huge variety of content to choose from. Whether you are into sports analysis, movie reviews or gardening tips, there is a podcast for everyone. You don’t need to subscribe to a podcast to check out its episodes: when browsing, you can stream individual episodes without having to download them to your iPad. Once you’ve subscribed to some podcasts, you can then set up your own podcast station, lining up all of your available podcasts to be listened to in the same way you…

App used: Netflix Price: £5.99/$7.99 per month The Netflix app provides an almost limitless array of movies and TV shows broken down into categories. A video-store-style interface makes Netflix perfect for browsing. If you don’t know what you want to watch, just browse a while until you find something. Netflix also makes recommendations: by monitoring what kind of movies and shows you’re watching, it will make a Top Picks digest for you. When you rate shows, it also uses this info to better work out the kind of content you like. Netflix can also connect to your Facebook account so you can recommend content to friends as well as see what they like. With the introduction of Profiles, Netflix can give you personal recommendations even if multiple people are accessing…

Capturing that special moment has never been easier than today, with the ability to take images quickly and in a few seconds be sharing them with friends via the likes of Facebook and Twitter. Once you have got to grips with the iPad’s Camera app, you will be snapping away in no time. Built into the iOS operating system, the Camera app is arguably one of the most used and most loved on the iPad and allows you to take and share personal photos and videos, all with just a few taps of the screen. The usability of the app, as with all things made by Apple, is as easy and as transparently clear as you would expect. However, despite the Camera app’s apparent simplicity, it actually packs in a…

App used: Tumblr Price: Free If you’re ready to share things online and Facebook or Twitter isn’t flexible enough for you, Tumblr may be the answer. It’s more than a simple blogging platform. It has an easy-to-use interface where you can manage your posts, follow other Tumblrs, control your blog’s appearance, and most importantly, create new blog posts. The iPad app allows you to post 6 different types of media: text, images, quotes, links, music, and videos. You can use the iPad Camera Roll directly without having to dig around in a file system, but the Tumblr app has a few more nifty features that many users overlook. For instance, you can create posts and schedule them to run at a later time. This automation can be very useful when…

There’s a lot of fun to be had with an iPad, as you’ve probably already guessed by now. Whether that’s watching movies and TV on Netflix, keeping in touch with the stories that matter to you on Flipboard or editing your favourite photos in Pixelmator, your iPad has fast been replacing your laptop as your go-to device. The iPad has also championed other skills, none more so than learning. More and more schools are using the iPad as an educational tool, so why not use it at home to teach essential skills to your children. Learning doesn’t have to mean dusting off the dull, boring black and white textbooks you learned from growing up – now you can use your tablet to keep kids engrossed in the subject matter and…

When, on the one hand, you’ve got the immense size of the iPad Pro and on the other the small compactness of the iPad mini 4, the question must surely be asked, is bigger better or does petite prevail? The truth is that there is an iPad for everyone and where the iPad Pro meets the demands of the workers head-on with its larger screen size and hike in processing power to effortlessly handle the big apps, the iPad mini 4 is perhaps better suited to more casual tablet users who crave peak performance in a small, more manageable package. Powered by the A8 second-generation 64-bit chipset, the iPad mini 4 hardly skimps on the processing power as desktop-standard performance is still assured, whether you’re checking emails or recording and…

Smart Case The Smart Case offers all of the protection you require for your precious iPad. It covers the back of the tablet, which can get scratched when moved on a flat surface, and the clever front works as a stand when rolled up to aid typing. It can also stand up to let you watch a movie without even touching the iPad, but the smartest function is the sleep/wake facility. Lift the cover and the iPad will turn on and when you shut it, the iPad turns off. It sounds simple, but it quickly becomes second nature to use and it will also save battery power over time. The slightly high price you pay for an Apple Smart Case turns out to be well worth it after a short…

FaceTime is an fantastic app in that it only offers benefits and no downsides at all that we are aware of. You can use Wi-Fi to make and receive calls and this of course will decrease your mobile call spend, and you can also use it for audio calls. Again, the audio calls can use Wi-Fi and the resultant call quality is much better than you would receive over a mobile network. It is, however, video calling that makes the experience so much fun and very personal. If you are speaking to family members who live some distance away or simply chatting to friends before a night out, there is something special about doing it face to face and standard audio calling never feels quite the same again. Even better,…

In terms of radical new features, the iOS 10 update left Safari largely alone, although enhancements elsewhere in the operating make multitasking with Safari much easier. If you are using one of the newer models of iPad then you will be able to open Safari in the main screen, swipe in from the right to reduce the size of the window and then open another app to sit next to it on the screen. This means that you can surf the web for research and jot down ideas in the Notes app, to the side, at the same time. One of the welcome new enhancements specifically to Safari is the introduction of ad-blockers, third-party applications that you can toggle on or off in Safari’s settings to ensure that your web…

You’ve always been able to use one Apple ID as the main account for multiple iPads and iPhones, and it has worked well, but it can lead to confusion and even annoyance as purchases are shared between people. Family Sharing, a great feature from Apple, is designed to take those problems away by letting you use one account for payments and so benefit from using an app or song on more than one device, but it includes a degree of separation by using different Apple IDs for family members. You will see when we explain the process that there’s not much to learn here and that it will work for you consistently without you needing to think about what is happening, and your children will be able to feel like…

If you’re in need of order in your life, Calendar is surely the app for you. It has a clean and easy-to-use interface, plus quite possibly every capability you could ever need from a diary – throw the little book of dates and scribbles out, as your iPad has your organisational needs covered. Adding events to Calendar is incredibly easy, with the ability to include as much info as you like. You can invite whole guest lists to events to keep your friends in the know, and even share your calendar with other people. The app already provides you with default ‘Home’ and ‘Work’ calendars – to share information with family and colleagues respectively. Another excellent feature is that your Calendar app will sync seamlessly over all of your Apple…

The Notes app on iOS has long been a source of frustration for Apple users. While it is a functional tool that allows you to jot down lists and things to remember, it has traditionally been a basic, bare bones app. The iOS 9 update brought great changes to Notes, giving users a raft of extra functions, such as the ability to format your notes and write in different colours. You can also add in photos and other handy memory aids, transforming your notes from bland documents to vibrant, interesting lists. Although many people will just want to use it to write down an address or a booking reference number, there are plenty of times where a range of options will prove useful to people using Notes. The addition of…

App used: Microsoft Word Price: Free A recent update to Microsoft’s Office apps enables you to create documents for free – as long as you have a Microsoft account (Xbox Live or Windows 8 login email account will do). The functionality and features share a strong resemblance to the desktop equivalent and the app has been adapted to the iPad’s multi-touch controls perfectly. It has plenty of formatting options so you can create professional-looking documents on the fly. In the tutorial we’ll show how to do this, though most of the options should be easy to work out if you’ve used the desktop version before. A good tip is to use the pre-installed templates and edit the default text and images to suit your own needs. A downside to the…

iCloud Drive is a well established feature now in iOS 10. You can think of it as a virtual hard disk where any documents saved to your default 5GB of online storage can be accessed by other devices and computers. In the tutorial we showcase how to enable iCloud Drive if you haven’t done so already and look at how files are saved to it using the core app, Pages – although the principle can also be applied to Keynote and Numbers. In addition, we show how to open and import documents from compatible third-party apps, as well as providing a tip on how to access your files via your Mac, PC or iCloud.com. What’s useful to note here is that any changes saved in one app/service will sync across…

Aside from keeping your favourite tracks at your fingertips, Apple Music is most exciting for discovering music. Apple’s latest big venture has hit the ground running, and with brand new tunes emerging all the time, this subscription service is all about delivering them straight to your Apple devices without having to wait. Fire up the new Music app from the iOS home screen and you will immediately find a dedicated New tab complete with fresh releases spanning every type of genre. Whether browsing Hot Tracks, New Music or Recent Releases, there’s no better or easier way to find popular or rising artists just waiting to be heard. The service becomes even more impressive when you factor in the exclusive releases that Apple commands. Want to listen to Dr. Dre’s Compton…

iTunes will send any video purchases or rentals straight to the Videos app for you to download and stream to your iPad. Content in the Videos app is broken down into Movies, TV Shows, Home Videos and Shared. The Home Videos tab will hold all of the videos that you have made or imported onto your iPad. Note that your iPad can only play certain video file types, so when transferring a video onto your iPad, make sure that it is in the M4V, MP4 or MOV file format. You can use the TV Shows and Movies subheadings to watch purchases made on iTunes while offline, as long as you’ve downloaded the videos to your iPad. With the Shared tool you can stream video files from other devices running iTunes.…

iBooks provides iOS users with an almost limitless library of literature, non-fiction, magazines, journals, publications and more to be accessed from your iPad. No matter what genre you are into, you’ll be able to find a great read in the iBooks Store. iBooks is connected directly to the iTunes Store and content for iBooks can be found in either app. Once you’ve found a book you want to buy, it can be purchased on your iTunes account and downloaded straight to iBooks. The beauty of iBooks is that there is a lot of free content available, especially with classic literature; in fact, in the Top Charts section of iBooks you’ll be able to browse between Free and Paid content. Any purchases made through the iBooks app will also be available…

iPad owners running iOS 8 and up are now able to take awesome time-lapse videos with the built-in Camera app. Time-lapse videos work in the opposite way to slow-motion videos, speeding up long clips in a fastforward style. This is the type of footage you’ll have seen in documentaries when clouds are racing through the sky. Rather than filming continuously, time-lapse footage takes photos at intervals, leaving you with this sped-up version of events. The Camera app enables you to create this impressive type of footage in just a few easy moves. The time-lapse feature is perfect for condensing a beautiful, burning sunset into a short but dramatic video clip, or capturing a long and winding journey into just a few seconds of footage. This innovative feature has broadened the…

App used: Facebook Price: Free Facebook and the native apps on iOS are more tightly integrated with each release. If you depend on Facebook for keeping you in touch with your friends, it’s great to be able to get to those contacts directly from the Contacts app. When your Facebook friends are in your Contacts, you can easily send them emails or messages without having to dig around in Facebook to find addresses. You may also find it useful to be able to view your Facebook events in your iPad’s Calendar app. If you like keeping track of your Facebook friends’ birthdays, you can even display those in your Calendar, too. There are even more ways that Facebook and the iPad work together. Notification Centre can give you a quick…

App used: Pinterest Price: Free Pinterest is the perfect social network for sourcing ideas and discovering new content. Focussing almost entirely on images, users browse millions of ‘pins’ that are sorted by category, pinning their favourites to their own set of virtual boards. Boards can cover any topic, whether it’s cool posters, beautiful architecture or spectacular travel photos, but they work best when organised around a theme. Many people use Pinterest for inspiration, creating boards filled with new recipes, home decorating tips or hot fashion ideas – it can even be a great help when planning a wedding or birthday party. Discovering great images is easy, as Pinterest allows you to follow friends and other users that share your interests, updating you on the most popular pins throughout your network.…

The best action and adventure games are imaginative, well-written, visually stunning and original. Thankfully the App Store is teeming with these types of games, which are invariably some of the most popular on the store. The very best get you engrossed in their stories and leave you investing hours and hours into them, forcing you to keep on playing. The iPad is the perfect platform for action and adventure games that benefit from the extra screen space – there’s more to see and gamers get to witness it in all its glory. In this mini rundown of the essential action and adventure games, we’ll guide you through multiple award-winning apps that will take away your breath with their beauty and originality. Then there are the games that thrill you with…

There have been plenty of games featured over the last few pages that offer five minutes of fun, but they might not be for someone who likes to invest heavily in a game. There’s only so much blowing up targets, or mastering of a puzzle that you can do. For those looking for more substance, the App Store is packed with some staggering simulation and strategy games. These are all about creating your own worlds to get lost in, and enthralling stories to follow to their dramatic conclusions. This used to be the realm of PC gamers, but because the iPad is now such a powerful device, game developers are jumping on the mobile bandwagon to provide gamers with more and more epic sim games. Here’s your chance to build…

When the iPad Pro was unveiled, the Internet was awash with mirth and images featuring obscenely oversized iPads being used. But, all joking aside, the iPad Pro is formidable beast featuring an expansive 12.9-inch Retina display, nearly double the CPU power of the iPad Air 2 and all-new Multi-Touch technology that allows you to work more efficiently and take your entertainment to a whole new level. So what of the Retina display? With 5.6 million pixels, the iPad Pro features the highest-resolution display of any iOS device, ever, and the expanded screen size means that you can do so much more, from editing videos to designing captivating presentations, more easily and effectively. Everything is powered by Apple’s new A9X 64-bit chip, which offers desktop-standard performance up to 1.8 times more…

Apple has made concerted efforts to make iOS 10 feel like a new experience, while continuing to concentrate on the stability and familiarity that has made it such an essential tool for so many people. Messages has received the most obvious updates, and in a world where rival messaging platforms offer stickers and a variety of personal features, this makes a lot of sense. We will detail all that is new in iOS 10, but it is fair to say that Messages now builds upon the hugely popular iMessage platform to keep kids and adults happy in equal measure. Siri, which has improved greatly in recent times, can now be leveraged by third-party apps, thus offering the potential to make it your preferred way to manage your phone when your…

You may think that keeping a contacts list is an easy thing to do and it certainly can be if all you need is an accurate listing of your friends and colleagues. However, if you want more, the standard iPad Contacts app is more than capable of providing it. You can set up as many groups as you need and separate your acquaintances into logical listings, which will speed up your people finding every single day. With groups you can still access all of your contacts with one tap if needed, which is handy, and you can even link contacts together to share data. For example, if you have accidentally created a duplicate of one person, simply use the ‘link contacts…’ option and they will magically merge into one contact.…

Although widgets have been a feature of the Android operating system for a while, they have now been introduced to your iPad as part of the iOS 10 update. Widgets allow you to use and experience key features of certain apps without launching the actual app itself. For example, you can view the latest headlines in the News app, see what’s up next in the Calendar app, see what’s nearby in the Maps app and so on. Many of your iPad’s bolt-on apps will carry their own widgets, but some third-party apps will also supply them and you have full freedom to activate whichever widgets you want and even change the order in which they appear on your Spotlight search screen. To start using your iOS 10 widgets, simply swipe…

App used: SwiftKey Keyboard Price: Free The introduction of third-party keyboard support back in iOS 8 was one of its standout features. At first it was believed this would allow for some nice new features and different-coloured keyboards, but it didn’t take long for developers to come up with a variety of clever tricks that let you do almost anything you like with your iPad when entering text. We’ll show you how to install a new keyboard and also touch upon some of the benefits they offer. You can install as many as you like, but we would suggest trying to keep the number as low as possible to ensure that you do not have to spend too much time flicking between all of the ones that are installed. Feel…

iCloud Backup is a feature that could easily be classed as essential for anyone who owns an iPad. It is exceptionally easy to set up and Apple offers 5GB of free online storage that you can utilise by simply creating an Apple ID. When a backup is performed, it will take care of every important piece of data that you need to keep safe, from messages to apps preferences to game progress. Physical apps are not backed up, but the fact that you own them is, and when you restore through iCloud to a new device, they will be automatically installed as part of the process. A restore will bring back 100 per cent of your personal information and the device will look identical to the way it was before.…

For those times when there’s just too much stuff in your brain to possibly remember to do everything at once, Apple’s Reminders app is here to save the day. The beauty of this app is in its simplicity. It does exactly as is says on the tin. You can set yourself reminders with as much or as little detail as you like. This could be a simple note to yourself to remind you to pick up eggs on your way home from work, or it could be a more complicated, repeat alert to remind you to take what medication and when. The Reminders app lets you make lists, so that you can store your reminders in handy categories. You can choose to simply make brief to-do lists to check off…

You will be hard-pushed to find a better navigational companion than Maps on your iPad. This app has everything you need in order to find your way when setting off on a trip, or to explore brand new and exciting places and discover precisely how to get there from the comfort of your own home. What’s more, thanks to enhancements made to the app through the iOS 10 update, you can plan journeys using public transport and even book your tickets in-app, saving massive amounts of time and hassle. Another new feature is the enhanced search function. You can still search for places and activities nearby, such as the best restaurants or places of interest, but after planning out a route to somewhere, you can instantly search for locations along…

When you first start up your iPad, one of the first things you’ll want to do is jump onto the App Store and download new or favourite apps to run on your iPad. The App Store lets you browse for apps by categories including games, books, education, entertainment and many more. The App Store syncs directly with your Apple account, so any purchases you’ve made on the Store across any of your Apple devices will be made available to you. From the Purchased screen in the App Store, you’ll be able to access all of your previous purchases across all devices and download apps that you’ve not yet installed on your iPad. The App Store is also where you can go to update all of your iPad apps. Whenever a…

App used: YouTube Price: Free The YouTube app brings millions of videos to your iPad for you to watch and share with friends, as well as letting you upload your own videos directly from your iPad. Upon launching the app and signing in, YouTube will be able to start registering what you’re watching to make video recommendations in the future. The main left menu is broken down into four sections; the first is based around your account, where you can get recommendations, manage your own YouTube channel and subscriptions, and check out your viewing history. Next is the Playlists section, where you can view and manage all of your created YouTube playlists. Next is the Subscriptions list, where you can view the latest content from channels that you have subscribed…

The News app was first introduced with iOS 9, but the recent iOS 10 update sees it getting a complete re-design to help you stay informed like never before. The interface has been tweaked to be a lot easier on the eye and your own personal ‘For You’ news edition is updated throughout the day as the news comes in from your trusted sources and is neatly packaged along with the date and even your local weather. Adding extra news sources is easy, just tap on the Explore tab at the bottom of the interface and browse through the various categories, tapping the ‘+’ icon in the corner of any that take your fancy. You can browse your selected sources in the Favourites section and then determine which sources notify…

Who doesn’t love to take a good selfie? You’ll have seen them shared all over Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Selfies are everywhere these days and everyone from Hollywood celebrities to your next-door neighbour’s Nan is taking them. However, if you want to take something a little different, it’s time to have a play around with Apple’s Photo Booth app. This allows you to take weird and wonderful selfies, from those that swirl your face to look like a puddle, to those that show it through a kaleidoscopic prism: Photo Booth is simple to use and has a variety of image styles that all distort your selfies in wildly interesting ways. What’s also great about Photo Booth is that there is an integrated feature that allows you to share your pictures…

App used: Twitter Price: Free If you’ve been using the web version of Twitter on your iPad, you’ve been missing out. The free Twitter app has all the features of the website but is easier to use and enables you to quickly swap between multiple Twitter accounts with a single tap. The app lets you manage your followers, view your mentions and direct messages, and respond to them. The Search facility shows your saved searches as well as trending topics. You can also control all facets of your profile, from your image to your URL and biography. The interface is easy to use, with one-tap access to mentions and messages. Push notifications when you get a new mention or message make it even more convenient. And when the Twitter app…

App used: Day One Journal Price: £3.99/$4.99 While writing a daily journal seems like an oldfashioned idea, there are lots of good reasons to try to keep one. It can help you focus, make it easier to keep track of your progress, and, if nothing else, be a safe place for you to vent your frustration. Journals let you express yourself creatively without fear of being judged. You can use your journal as a place to track the important events in your life so you can remember them and share them with your friends. Previously, you’d be faced with a pen and a blank page to document your day. Lucky for us, we can use Day One Journal, an elegant iPad app that lets you easily enter the details of…