Taking Your iPhone to the Max [1 ed.] 1590599268, 9781590599266, 9781430205173

Citation preview

Taking Your iPhone to the Max

Erica Sadun

Taking Your iPhone to the Max Copyright © 2008 by Erica Sadun All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher. ISBN-13 (pbk): 978-1-59059-926-6 ISBN-10 (pbk): 1-59059-926-8 ISBN-13 (electronic): 978-1-4302-0516-6 ISBN-10 (electronic): 1-4302-0516-4 Printed and bound in the United States of America 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Trademarked names may appear in this book. Rather than use a trademark symbol with every occurrence of a trademarked name, we use the names only in an editorial fashion and to the benefit of the trademark owner, with no intention of infringement of the trademark. Lead Editor: Jeffrey Pepper Technical Reviewer: Greg “Hap” Pearman Editorial Board: Steve Anglin, Ewan Buckingham, Tony Campbell, Gary Cornell, Jonathan Gennick, Jason Gilmore, Kevin Goff, Jonathan Hassell, Matthew Moodie, Joseph Ottinger, Jeffrey Pepper, Ben Renow-Clarke, Dominic Shakeshaft, Matt Wade, Tom Welsh Project Manager: Kylie Johnston Copy Editors: Heather Lang, Marilyn Smith Associate Production Director: Kari Brooks-Copony Production Editor: Laura Esterman Compositor: Gina Rexrode Proofreader: Gregory Teague Indexer: Julie Grady Artist: April Milne Cover Designer: Kurt Krames Manufacturing Director: Tom Debolski Distributed to the book trade worldwide by Springer-Verlag New York, Inc., 233 Spring Street, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10013. Phone 1-800-SPRINGER, fax 201-348-4505, e-mail [email protected], or visit http://www.springeronline.com. For information on translations, please contact Apress directly at 2855 Telegraph Avenue, Suite 600, Berkeley, CA 94705. Phone 510-549-5930, fax 510-549-5939, e-mail [email protected], or visit http://www.apress.com. The information in this book is distributed on an “as is” basis, without warranty. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this work, neither the author(s) nor Apress shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the information contained in this work.

This book is dedicated to my husband and children, with love. Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes . . . the ones who see things differently—they’re not fond of rules . . . You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things . . . they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world are the ones who do. Apple’s “Think Different” advertisement

Contents at a Glance About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii About the Technical Reviewer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xix

■CHAPTER 1 ■CHAPTER 2 ■CHAPTER 3 ■CHAPTER 4 ■CHAPTER 5 ■CHAPTER 6 ■CHAPTER 7 ■CHAPTER 8 ■CHAPTER 9 ■CHAPTER 10 ■APPENDIX

Selecting, Buying, and Activating Your iPhone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Interacting with Your New iPhone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Placing Calls with iPhone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 iPhone Messaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 iPhone E-mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Browsing with Safari . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 Preparing Your Media in iTunes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 It’s Also an iPod . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 iPhone Photos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Google Maps and Other Apps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 Hacking the iPhone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

■INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175

v

Contents About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii About the Technical Reviewer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xix

■CHAPTER 1

Selecting, Buying, and Activating Your iPhone . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Picking Your Phone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Considering System Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Buying Your iPhone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Returns and Exchange Policies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Bringing Your iPhone Home . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 iPhone Feature Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Preparing for Activation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Connecting Your iPhone to the Computer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Activating Your iPhone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Selecting a Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 The Activation Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Understanding the Downside of Prepaid Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Syncing Your New iPhone. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 The Hacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 The No-Contract, No-Service, Sixth Generation iPodPhone . . . . . . . 18 Using the iPhone with a Non-iPhone AT&T SIM Card . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Unlocking the iPhone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Insuring and Repairing Your iPhone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Accessorizing Your iPhone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

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■CONTENTS

■CHAPTER 2

Interacting with Your New iPhone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Interaction Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 The iPhone Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 The iPhone Sensors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 iPhone Power Tricks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Putting Your iPhone to Sleep . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Locking Your iPhone with a Passcode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Quitting Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Powering Your iPhone Off and On . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Rebooting Your iPhone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Placing Your iPhone into Recovery Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Using the iPhone Keyboard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Getting Started . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 iPhone Typing Tricks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 iPhone Typing Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Using the iPhone Stereo Headset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

■CHAPTER 3

Placing Calls with iPhone

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Checking the Cell Network Indicator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 iPhone Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Launching the Phone Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Placing Calls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Answering Calls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Managing Calls. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Managing Favorites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Using Voicemail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Setting Up Your Voicemail Passcode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Choosing Your Greeting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Managing Voicemail Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Accessing Voicemail Files. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Sending Voicemail Indirectly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Managing Ringtones and Other iPhone Alerts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Adding Custom Ringtones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Advanced Phone Preferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 iPhone Codes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Basic iPhone Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Service Shortcuts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 iPhone Call Settings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

■CONTENTS

■CHAPTER 4

iPhone Messaging

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Kinds of Chats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 SMS Costs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 Checking Your Reception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Getting Started with the Text SMS Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Creating a New Message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Conversations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Managing a Conversation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Adding a Contact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Using the Text Messages Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Enabling and Disabling SMS Alerts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Three Ways iPhone SMS Is Better Than Any Other SMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Basic Workarounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Sending Messages by E-mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Carrier SMS Gateway Addresses. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Sending Text Messages To and From a PC-Based Chat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Sending a Message from the iPhone to AIM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Subscribing to RSS Feeds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Google SMS Requests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Instant Messaging the Easy Way . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Real iPhone Instant Messaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 IRC on iPhone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

■CHAPTER 5

iPhone E-mail

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

Compatibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 POP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 SMTP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 IMAP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 Microsoft Exchange . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Adding Mail Accounts to iPhone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Adding Accounts with iTunes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Adding Accounts from Your Phone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Preferred Provider Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Other Providers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Removing Accounts from iPhone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 E-mail Checks and Other Basic Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Audible Mail Alerts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

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Getting Started with iPhone Mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Mailboxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Using Mailboxes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 Viewing and Navigating Through Mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Bottom Icons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Top Icons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Embedded Links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 Viewing Attachments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 Sending Mail. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 Addressing E-mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Entering a Subject . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 Editing the Message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 Saving a Draft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 Sending E-mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

■CHAPTER 6

Browsing with Safari

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

Getting Started with iPhone Safari . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 Safari’s Browser Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 Navigation Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Page Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 Working with Bookmarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 Selecting Bookmarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 Editing Bookmarks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 Saving Bookmarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 Using Bookmarklets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 iPhone Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 iPhone-Specific Web Sites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

■CHAPTER 7

Preparing Your Media in iTunes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Managing Your iPhone in iTunes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 The Summary Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Synchronization Choices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 The iPhone Capacity Meter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 The Music Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 The Podcasts Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 The Video Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 The Ringtones Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

■CONTENTS

Manually Synchronizing Your iPhone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 Creating Smart Playlists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 Adding New Ringtones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 Creating iPhone-Friendly Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 Ejecting Your iPhone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

■CHAPTER 8

It’s Also an iPod . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 iPod As Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Browsing Media on the iPhone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 Editing Your Browse Buttons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 Navigating the Category Screens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 Playing Audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 Album View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 Cover Flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 On-The-Go Playlists. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 Playing Video . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 Video Playback Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 Deleting Videos On the Go . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 Going Beyond the iPod App . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 Saving Energy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 Adding a Sleep Timer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 During Playback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 Shopping at the Mobile iTunes Store . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Adjusting iPod Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136

■CHAPTER 9

iPhone Photos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 One App, Two Icons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Locating (and Removing) the Camera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Camera: Shooting Pictures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 Getting Started . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 Picture-Taking Pointers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 Photos: Viewing Pictures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 Working with Photo Albums . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 Working with Slide Shows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144 Working with a Full-Screen Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 Using a Photo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 Uploading Pictures by E-mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

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Synchronizing Pictures from Your Computer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 Your iPhone As a USB Camera. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 The iPhone and Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 The Macintosh and Image Capture (and iPhoto) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 A Dozen Oddball Uses for Your iPhone Camera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152

■CHAPTER 10 Google Maps and Other Apps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 Google Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 Maps Screen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 Maps Tips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 Weather . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 Weather Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 Weather Tips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156 Stocks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 Stocks Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 Stock Tips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 Notes Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 Notes Tips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 Calculator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 Clock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 World Clock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 Alarm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162 Timer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 Stopwatch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 YouTube . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 Finding YouTube Videos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 Watching YouTube Videos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 YouTube Tips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166 iTunes Music Store . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166 Calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 Adding and Removing Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169

■APPENDIX

Hacking the iPhone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 iPhone Unlock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 File Access and Ringtones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 Skinning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 Third-Party Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174

■INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175

About the Author ■ERICA SADUN has written, coauthored, and contributed to about three dozen books about technology, particularly in the areas of programming, digital video, and digital photography. An unrepentant geek, Sadun has never met a gadget she didn’t need. Her checkered past includes run-ins with NeXT, Newton, iPhone, and a myriad of both successful and unsuccessful technologies. When not writing, she and her geek husband parent three adorable geeks-in-training, who regard their parents with restrained bemusement.

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About the Technical Reviewer ■GREG “HAP” PEARMAN is a software developer, author, and agile programming expert with more than 20 years of experience in the software development industry. A Mac enthusiast since he bought his first Mac II in 1988, Hap has dived headfirst into all things Apple. He is a registered Mac developer with a passion for creating applications that make using computers fun. When he isn’t at his MacBook Pro, you can find Hap biking in the Colorado mountains, photographing everything in sight, and seeing how many photos he can squeeze into an Aperture library. Hap is currently the CEO/CIO of Spotted Dog Software LLC in Denver, Colorado. He has worked with companies large and small, including IBM, ABC/Disney, Hertz, BT, EPA, and VeriSign.

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Acknowledgments N

o book is ever the work of one person, despite the single name on the cover. The reason this book exists and is in your hands right now is due to teamwork—all the editors, agents, and other people who contributed to its creation. Let me start by thanking Jeff Pepper, my Apress lead editor, who first imagined that I might be interested in writing a book about the iPhone, and to Neil Salkind, my agent. I am grateful to the entire Apress team, including my project manager, Kylie Johnston; my copy editors, Heather Lang and Marilyn Smith; and my production editor, Laura Esterman, who made this book a pleasure to write. Thanks also to Hap Pearman, my technical reviewer. Thank you to all my fellow iPhone enthusiasts who helped me learn and discover so much about the way the iPhone works. Thanks especially to the folks at Hackint0sh, and the various UIKit, iPhone, and iPod touch developer boards. Special thanks go out to Shaun Erickson of smxy.org, who has tirelessly and patiently helped package my iPhone applications, and Nate True of natetrue.com, who helped host them until I found a web home of my own at http://ericasadun.com. Thanks go also to my entire family, whose love and support made this book possible. A special note of appreciation and gratitude goes to my husband, Alberto.

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Introduction T

aking Your iPhone to the Max introduces you to the iPhone, Apple’s handheld marvel of a device. Starting with a guide to setting up your iPhone and activating service, Taking Your iPhone to the Max documents each of the iPhone’s built-in applications. You’ll discover how to connect to the Internet, send and receive e-mail, listen to your music, watch videos, and, of course, place phone calls. Filled with examples, how-to instructions, and complete feature coverage, this is the manual that should have shipped with your iPhone. It puts all the information you want to know into an easy-to-read reference.

Who This Book Is For This book is written for anyone with an iPhone. It doesn’t matter if you’re new to Apple products or an old hand. This book’s thorough coverage and clear step-by-step discussions allow all iPhone owners to learn about their devices and come away with both the skills and knowledge they need.

How This Book Is Structured The first chapters of this book show you how to activate your iPhone and build your basic interaction skills. The heart of the book introduces the major applications that define the iPhone’s core functionality: telephone, text messaging, e-mail, web browsing, and iPod. The last chapters cover the remaining features—smaller applications that enhance your iPhone experience. How you read this book is up to you. You can read through from cover to cover and learn everything about the iPhone, or you can skip around to jump to just the section you need. Here’s a rundown of what you’ll find in this book’s ten chapters: Selecting, Buying, and Activating Your iPhone: Chapter 1 introduces the details of iPhone activation and plan selection. Interacting with Your New iPhone: Learn the language of touch. Your iPhone responds to taps, drags, pinches, and flicks. Chapter 2 discusses different ways you can interact with your iPhone. Placing Calls with iPhone: Chapter 3 shows you how to make the most of your iPhone as a cell phone, from maximizing your signal strength to placing conference calls. iPhone Messaging: Learn how to text with your iPhone in Chapter 4. You’ll discover how to send Short Message Service (SMS) text messages, manage your conversations, and access web-based instant messaging clients. xix

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■INTRODUCTION

iPhone E-mail: Don’t settle for cramped, odd-looking e-mail. Step up to the iPhone’s full, industry-standard e-mail support. You can send and receive photos, spreadsheets, PDF documents, and Word files. Chapter 5 teaches you how to set up and manage your mail. Browsing with Safari: View web sites the way their designers intended using the iPhone’s full-power browser support. Chapter 6 introduces browsing, bookmark management, orientation support, and more. Preparing Your Media in iTunes: In Chapter 7, you’ll discover how to bring all your content together in iTunes and transfer that information to your iPhone. You’ll see how to choose which items you want to synchronize and how to keep your iPhone content fresh and upto-date. It’s Also an iPod: Learn how to use your iPhone as the iPod that’s built into it. The iPhone is a better iPod than any other unit that Apple has ever shipped. It ushers in an entirely new generation of music and video interaction, and it does so in a way that’s sleek, elegant, and workable. Chapter 8 teaches you all about the iPod technology. iPhone Photos: iPhones ship with a built-in camera and all the software you need to manage, view, and share your photos. Chapter 9 teaches you how to use your iPhone’s camera and the built-in photo software to snap, view, and enjoy your pictures. You’ll see how to e-mail photos, assign them to contacts, and even use them for wallpaper. Google Maps and Other Apps: Chapter 10 introduces those small but extremely useful utilities that occupy the rest of your iPhone’s Home screen. This chapter provides a rundown of those applications, what they are, and how to use them. You’ll also find tips on how to get the most from these utilities. If you’re interested in iPhone hacks, you’ll find an appendix at the end of the book that reviews major iPhone end-user modifications. Because this is such a fast-paced and quickly changing topic, the appendix offers a high-level overview that should remain relevant by the time this book reaches your hands. You can learn more about up-to-the-minute iPhone hacking and download many of the applications discussed in this book at my web site, http://ericasadun.com.

Prerequisites In order to make the most of this book, you need the following: • An Apple iPhone • A computer with a USB 2.0 port • An Internet connection • Windows XP (with Service Pack 2, or later), Windows Vista (Home Premium, Business, Enterprise or Ultimate), or Mac OS X 10.4.10 or later • iTunes 7.3 or later • An iTunes account

■INTRODUCTION

Contacting the Author If you have any comments or questions about this book, please drop me an e-mail message at [email protected] or stop by http://ericasadun.com. My web site hosts many of the applications discussed in this book and offers an up-to-the-minute overview of the iPhone hacking scene. Please feel free to visit, download software, read documentation, and leave your comments.

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CHAPTER

1

Selecting, Buying, and Activating Your iPhone I

f you believe everything you read, your iPhone is going to cost you thousands of dollars over a two-year period. You have to pay for the iPhone, for activation, for expensive monthly service plans (not to mention taxes and other fees), and if you decide to back out any time during that two years, you’re going to cough over more money in early cancellation penalties. Right? Well, maybe not. There’s a lot more going on in your ability to select and activate your iPhone than those glossy in-store pamphlets let on. In this chapter, you’ll discover the down and dirty secrets of iPhone activation, plan selection, and even return policies. If you’re weighing the choice of whether or not to purchase an iPhone and trying to figure out exactly how much you’re going to be paying, this chapter is for you. Here are all the basic facts you need to select, buy, and activate your iPhone.

Picking Your Phone In the world of the iPhone, the choices aren’t wide. There are, at any time, only a couple of models. For example, at launch, there was a 4-GB model and an 8-GB model. And that was pretty much it for a month or two until Steve Jobs killed the 4-GB model, slashed the price on the 8-GB one, and refurbished ones appeared at the Apple Store. So how do you choose the model that is right for you? It all comes down to memory. Do you want to pay more for a few more gigabytes of onboard memory? It’s not as if those extra gigabytes offer an inexhaustible resource. With enough videos and movies, you can easily run out of storage on an 160-GB iPod Classic, let alone a teeny flash-memory-based iPhone. So here are some questions you need to ask yourself: How big is your music library? If your library is small, no problem. If it’s large, the extra space on some iPhone models helps to store additional music and podcasts. How many videos do you want to carry around? A single two-hour movie may occupy more than a gigabyte of storage. If you travel a lot, especially on airplanes, you may want to pay more to store additional movies and TV shows with those extra gigabytes.

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CHAPTER 1 ■ SELECTING, BUYING, AND ACTIVATING YOUR IPHONE

Do you plan to carry lots of pictures? Although iPhone pictures are pretty small (a typical photo is 300 or 400 KB in size), if you carry a few thousand of them around, they do add up to some serious storage. Do you laugh at carrying that many pictures around on your phone? Apple’s built-in iPhoto support makes it simple to put years of photo archives onto your iPhone with a single synchronization option. And taking and sending pictures from the phone couldn’t be easier. Do you need to carry lots of data? You might not think of your iPhone as a data storage device, but there are ways to use it (mostly involving e-mailing documents to yourself or by using a third-party application) to bring data along with you on the road. If you think you might need to do this, maybe those extra gigabytes could be put to good use. How long do you plan to use this iPhone? If you’re an early adopter who plans to trade up at the earliest possible opportunity whenever Apple offers a new unit, you may want to save your pennies now in the hope that a better unit with more memory quickly debuts. If, instead, you want to get the most use out of the iPhone for the longest period of time, paying more up front means you won’t outgrow the memory quite as fast.

Considering System Requirements iPhones aren’t like most other cell phones. At heart, they’re really iPods. And, like iPods, in order to effectively use one, you will need a computer with a USB 2.0 port and an Internet connection running iTunes 7.3 or later. iPhones need to connect to your computer on a regular basis to synchronize music, photos, e-mail contacts, calendars, and so forth. You won’t be able to sign up for AT&T phone service until you successfully connect your iPhone to iTunes. That means you need either a Macintosh running OS X 10.4.10 or later or a Windows computer running Windows XP (with Service Pack 2 or later) or Windows Vista (Home Premium, Business, Enterprise, or Ultimate). And it means you need an iTunes Store account. Before you decide to purchase an iPhone, ask yourself whether you have a computer onhand that has all these features available. If not, you might not be able to activate and use your iPhone.

■Note If you haven’t yet put iTunes on your computer, grab your free copy from www.apple.com/itunes. Versions are available for both OS X and Windows systems and are quick and easy to install.

Buying Your iPhone After deciding among the available iPhone models, you’re probably ready to pull out your credit card and go buy that iPhone (see Figure 1-1). So where should you go? To an AT&T store? To an Apple Store? Or should you buy online? You might be surprised to learn that there are better and worse choices.

CHAPTER 1 ■ SELECTING, BUYING, AND ACTIVATING YOUR IPHONE

I recommend buying your iPhone in person at a store. You can ask questions. You can make human connections. If something goes wrong with your purchase, you have a person who’s there to help you work through it. This is not to say that calling Apple’s support line is insufficient, it’s just that being face to face with a real person makes solutions happen more readily. The sad fact of the matter is that a significant, although small, percentage of iPhone purchases do not go smoothly. Some people end up with a screen flaw, such as dead screen pixels. It’s not an uncommon problem and, if found soon after purchase, it may involve a trade out for a new unit. Others may have problems with their antennas or with activating their service. The chances of resolving these issues increase significantly when you have a real person to talk to. As for the question of Apple or AT&T, I lean slightly toward buying at an Apple Store. It’s an Apple product you’re buying, and the Apple staff members are simply more knowledgeable about that product. Buying the physical unit at an Apple Store and holding an Apple receipt in your hand means that you’re more likely to find help at the Apple Store itself than you might if you held an AT&T receipt. The return policy does not apply to iPhones with defects. Apple Stores will happily replace defective iPhones regardless of their point of purchase, and if you have problems with your phone service, you can go to any AT&T store whether you purchased your phone there or not—it’s the service you’re dealing with, not the physical iPhone unit.

■Note A few months after introducing the iPhone, Apple dropped the 4-GB model and slashed the price of the 8-GB unit from $599 to $399. It offered all early adopters a $100 store-credit rebate, regardless of whether they purchased their iPhones at an Apple Store or through AT&T.

Figure 1-1. Having an Apple receipt means you may get better service with returns and exchanges at an Apple Store. AT&T personnel will help you resolve any issues with your service, wherever you bought your phone.

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Returns and Exchange Policies Depending on your state of residence, you might be used to trying out phones and getting 30 days to cancel and return the unit. In California, you even get back the activation fee. The iPhone return policy is not so friendly. With the iPhone, you have 14 days (not 30) to return your unit. If you bought it from AT&T, it must be returned to the original point of purchase: you can’t buy at one store and return it to another. If the iPhone shrink-wrap has been opened, you’ll be charged a 10 percent open-box restocking fee. Returns must include the phone, all accessories, and all manuals that shipped with the product. If your iPhone is defective, most stores will swap it for a new one within those same first 14 days with no penalty. Assuming you sign up for a standard two-year postpaid AT&T contract (meaning you are billed at the end of each month of use), you’re entitled to a refund of the AT&T activation fee if you cancel within three days of iPhone activation. Cancel within 30 days, and you can still terminate service without paying a penalty, but you will be charged for activation. After 30 days, you must pay an early termination fee of $175. Your service switches to a month-to-month automatic renewal after fulfilling your two-year agreement. If you opt for a nonstandard, no-contract, month-by-month plan, you pay only for the months you use, and there are no early termination fees. Your credit card is charged in advance for each month of use, and you must contact AT&T before the monthly charge date when you wish to cancel. Otherwise, you will have paid for an extra month of service that you will not use. Learn more about the available plans and their trade-offs later in this chapter.

Bringing Your iPhone Home Once you buy your iPhone, it’s time to take it home, unpack, and get it set up. iPhone packaging (see Figure 1-2) is a small work of art. The iPhone ships in a box that contains the phone itself, a soft cloth for cleaning its screen, a dock, a USB connector cable, an A/C power adapter, those famous white ear buds, and a packet of documentation. Each of these items is important and will help you in your day-to-day use.

Figure 1-2. The iPhone package combines compactness with beauty. It contains your new iPhone as well as documentation, ear buds, a charging/docking cradle, and more. (Image courtesy of Apple, Inc.)

CHAPTER 1 ■ SELECTING, BUYING, AND ACTIVATING YOUR IPHONE

Cleaning cloth: Daily use of your iPhone leaves smudges. It’s an inescapable reality for a device that functions using a touch-based interface. Apple included this cloth in the packaging to help you clean your iPhone screen more effectively than you would, say, using your t-shirt. Charging/docking cradle (dock): The included dock allows you to store your iPhone in a convenient, upright, space-saving position. You can connect your cradle to your computer for docking and synchronizing data or to the included USB power adapter for charging. Cable: The USB cable attaches your docking cradle to either your computer or the A/C adapter. When you want to travel lightly, your iPhone can connect directly to this cable. This allows you to skip the dock, but your iPhone won’t be able to stand up the way it does with the cradle and will take up more desk space. USB power adapter: The A/C power adapter included with your iPhone plugs directly into the wall and allows you to charge your iPhone (or any USB device, for that matter). It offers a single USB port. To use, just connect your iPhone to the adapter using the USB cable. It supplies the 5 volts required for powering USB devices. Stereo headset (ear buds): The ear buds included with the iPhone differ slightly from those included with normal iPods. This stereo headset contains a built-in microphone and switch: the microphone allows you to take calls on your iPhone without holding the phone up to your ear, and the switch allows you to end calls as well as control music playback.

iPhone Feature Overview Once you’ve unpacked your phone, take a few minutes to discover more about your new purchase. Figure 1-3 introduces the basic features on your iPhone. The top of the iPhone houses a jack into which you can plug your earbuds, a Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) tray (where your phone’s SIM card is stored), and a sleep/wake button which is used to power on and off certain features. The bottom of your iPhone has a built-in speaker and microphone and an indented slot for connecting to your dock. The iPhone’s front has a receiver (earpiece) on top, which you use to listen to phone calls, a large touch screen, and a single Home button. You will not see this interactive screen until you have activated your iPhone through iTunes.

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Figure 1-3. iPhone feature breakdown. (Image courtesy of Apple, Inc.)

Preparing for Activation You have unpacked your iPhone but haven’t yet connected it to iTunes. Now is a good time to review data on your computer. When your iPhone first activates, it will synchronize itself to iTunes and, depending on your computer, to your e-mail accounts, your calendars, and so forth. Before you go forward, here are some items you may want to review and clean up so your iPhone starts out its life with the freshest possible data: Contacts: The iPhone can sync with Outlook or Outlook Express on Windows, Address Book or Entourage on a Macintosh, and Yahoo! Address Book on the Internet. To prepare for your first sync, review your existing contacts and make sure they’re up to date with current phone numbers and e-mail addresses. If you use another program to manage contacts, consider migrating your contacts to one of these solutions. If you’d rather not, that’s okay too. You can add contact information directly to your iPhone, although it’s not as convenient as having the information automatically loaded for you. Calendar: Your iPhone can synchronize with computer-based calendars just like it does with contacts. iPhone supports iCal and Entourage calendars on the Mac and Outlook calendars on Windows. Get your calendars into shape before your first synchronization, and you’ll be ready to immediately manage your schedule both from your computer and your iPhone.

CHAPTER 1 ■ SELECTING, BUYING, AND ACTIVATING YOUR IPHONE

E-mail: Your iPhone works with most e-mail providers including Yahoo! Mail, Google Gmail, and AOL. If your e-mail provider uses the industry-standard POP3 and IMAP services, your service will work with iPhone. You may want to establish new accounts with these providers before you activate your iPhone. That way, they’ll load onto your unit the first time you synchronize. You can always add new e-mail accounts later, but it’s nice to have them all set up and available for use right away. Music: Current iPhone models offer relatively small storage space when compared to, for example, iPod Video’s generous 80-GB hard drive. To make the most of this limited space, set up play lists for your favorite songs and podcasts. Since, in all likelihood, you won’t be able to synchronize your entire library to your new iPhone, invest time now in weeding through your media to find those items you most want to have on-hand.

■Caution Make sure you’ve authorized your computer in iTunes (Store ➤ Authorize Computer) before syncing your music. If you don’t, your music won’t get copied to your iPhone.

Software and OS: Update to iTunes 7.3 or later before you attempt to activate your iPhone. And, if you’re using a Macintosh, make sure you’ve updated your OS to at least OS X 10.4.10. You can download the latest version of iTunes from Apple at http://www.apple.com/itunes/download. iTunes Account: Apple requires a current iTunes account in order to activate your iPhone (at least when you use normal nonhacking channels to activate the phone). If you do not already have one, you must sign up for a US account with the iTunes store. This requires a US address and credit card. Here are the steps you’ll need to follow in order to create that new iTunes account: 1. Launch the iTunes application, and wait for it to load. 2. Locate iTunes Store in the column on the left side of the window. Click iTunes Store, and wait for the store window to load. You must be connected to the Internet for this to happen, because all the storefront information is stored at Apple. 3. Click the Sign In button at the top-right corner of the screen. iTunes opens the sign-in screen shown in Figure 1-4, which will allow you to either sign in with an existing account or to create a new one.

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Figure 1-4. The iTunes Sign In window allows you to sign in to iTunes with your existing account or begin the process of creating a new account. 4. Click Create New Account. The screen clears, and a message welcoming you to the iTunes store displays. 5. Review the terms of service, and click Agree. A new window appears prompting you to create your account. 6. Enter your e-mail address and a password (you must enter the password twice for verification). Also enter a question and answer that will help verify your identity and the month and day of your birth. Review the other options on the page, and adjust them as desired before clicking Continue. Again, the screen will clear, and you’ll move on to the final account creation step. 7. Enter a valid US credit card and the billing information for that credit card. These must match to finish creating your account. When you have entered the information, click Continue. After following these steps, you will receive a confirmation e-mail at the address you specified while signing up. The e-mail welcomes you to the iTunes Store and provides you with the customer service web address (http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/store).

Connecting Your iPhone to the Computer After ensuring you have an active iTunes account, you’re ready to unpack your unit and connect it to your computer. Here are the steps you need to take: 1. Remove the iPhone from the box, and extract it from its factory wrapping. Also unwrap the dock and the included USB cable. 2. Locate the two ends of the USB cable. One is thin and marked with a standard threepronged USB symbol. The other is wide and marked with a rectangle with a line in it.

CHAPTER 1 ■ SELECTING, BUYING, AND ACTIVATING YOUR IPHONE

3. Connect the wide end of the USB cable to the back of the dock. Connect the thin end to a spare USB 2.0 port on your computer. 4. Orient your iPhone. On the back of your iPhone, the Apple and the hole (actually your camera) should be at the top. The black bar is at the bottom (see Figure 1-5). 5. Locate the connection port at the bottom of your iPhone (see Figure 1-3). It is a rectangular hole, a little under an inch in width. Gently but firmly insert your iPhone into the connector on your docking cradle without twisting or forcing the connection. iTunes will launch, and your iPhone will chime softly. If your iPhone does not automatically power on and display either the white Apple or the Connect to iTunes message, press and hold the Sleep/Wake button. With the main screen facing toward you, it is found at the top right of the iPhone. After a few seconds, the iPhone should wake up and display the white Apple as it powers on. If the iPhone does not respond and display either the white Apple or the Connect to iTunes message, contact the store where you purchased the phone.

Figure 1-5. Easily orient your iPhone by locating the Apple symbol on its back. The Apple and the circle (that’s your camera) are at the top. The black bar is at the bottom. With the phone oriented facedown like this, the Wake/Sleep button is located on the left, just above the camera.

Activating Your iPhone You will not be able to use your iPhone for anything but emergency calls until you activate it. Instead, the iPhone will prompt you to connect to iTunes. Activating the iPhone involves little more than selecting a service plan and registering your phone with AT&T, but until you do so, your iPhone is no more functional than an iBrick. In theory, this process is simple. In practice, it is the most frustrating part of using an iPhone. It can take days or hours to get your iPhone up and running, especially if you are porting a number or selecting a less popular plan. And to

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top things off, the activation service sometimes goes offline for a bit, as shown in Figure 1-6. Once activated, your iPhone is a joy. Getting it activated can be a hassle.

■Tip If you run into significant delays when activating your iPhone, give AT&T customer service a call. They will usually refund the $36 activation charge as a courtesy.

Figure 1-6. When AT&T undergoes periodic system maintenance, iPhone activations may be delayed for hours.

Selecting a Plan AT&T offers quite a few of plans for the iPhone depending on the number of minutes and phones you use. There are individual plans and family plans. There are contract plans and noncontract plans. And don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Speaking to Salon’s Farhad Manjoo, AT&T spokesman Michael Balmoris confirmed that customers who don’t want to deal with contracts and early termination fees can sign up for GoPhone, AT&T’s contract-free plan. As Manjoo wrote, “AT&T does not widely advertise this option; it has not publicly pointed out, for instance, that GoPhone is available.”

CHAPTER 1 ■ SELECTING, BUYING, AND ACTIVATING YOUR IPHONE

As a rule, all the plans except the contract-free one oblige you to a 24-month commitment. If you wish to cancel your service before that time for any reason, you will be charged a $175 early termination fee and, unlike Verizon, AT&T does not pro-rate its cancellation fees. Cancel 23 months into your contract, and you’ll still be charged $175. Still, the prices are fair, and if you don’t mind the two-year contract, the value is good for what you get, which is unlimited data and a fair number of telephone minutes that roll over from month to month. If you know in advance that you will not use the phone for 24 months, you may save money by opting for the contract-free GoPhone plan. Per-minute costs are substantially higher, more than double the price in most cases, and SMS messages are not included in the base price (normal plans all include 200 SMS messages). Instead, messages are charged at a per-message rate against the balance on your account. Each message—sent or received— costs $0.15. On the lowest rate plan, that’s equivalent to a minute of airtime per SMS message. The standard contracts are only available to customers with good credit. Fail the credit check, and you will be given the option to place a security deposit with AT&T or to sign up for the GoPhone plan, in which you pay in advance for each month of use. iPhone users with good credit who want to opt for the month-to-month plan must work around the normal activation system as detailed later in this chapter. Table 1-1 provides a quick rundown of the available plans. Table 1-1. Initial iPhone Plans and Their Costs

Plan Type

Monthly Costs

Features

Two-Year Costs

24-month individual contract

$60/$80/$100

450/900/1350 minutes. 450/Unlimited/Unlimited minutes nights and weekends. Unlimited data. 200 SMS text messages. Visual voicemail. Rollover minutes.

$1440/$1920/$2400 + $36 activation + taxes and fees. $175 early termination penalty.

24-month family contract

$80/$100/$120

700/1400/2100 minutes. Unlimited nights and weekends. Unlimited data. 200 SMS text messages. Visual voicemail. Rollover minutes.

$1920/$2400/$2880 + $36 activation + taxes and fees. $175 early termination penalty.

Replacing current phone with iPhone on an existing contract (Additional 24-month contract commitment)

$20/$30/$40

Minutes from plan. Unlimited data. 200/1500/Unlimited SMS text messages. Visual voicemail.

Plan costs + $480/$720/$960 + taxes and fees. $175 early termination penalty.

Month-to-month Pick Your Plan

$50/$60/$70/$90

200/300/400/650 minutes. 0/1000/Unlimited/Unlimited nights and weekends. Unlimited data. Each SMS text charged at $0.15 against plan balance. Visual voicemail. Rollover minutes.

$1200/$1440/$1680/ $2160 + taxes and fees if used for 24 months. Cancel anytime.

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■Tip After a first month shipping enormous and detailed bills, which ran to dozens if not hundreds of pages in length, AT&T pledged to update its billing process with shorter and more pertinent invoices. To save a tree or five, call AT&T, and sign up for their paperless billing option. This online option provides 24-hour access to your iPhone account information. Beware, though, that you may be charged a small fee to access full account call-by-call details with the paperless option. Seems kind of unfair, if you ask me, when you’re saving AT&T money and helping the environment.

The Activation Process As you’ve been warned, activating your iPhone can be frustrating. When it works, it works easily, and you’re done in just a few minutes. When it does not, you can run across many obstacles. Here are some simple steps that will guide you through iPhone activation. Be aware that these steps will vary as Apple updates its activation process: 1. Read through the Welcome to Your New iPhone screen, and click Continue. 2. If you are already an AT&T/Cingular wireless customer, choose whether to replace a phone on your existing account or to add a new line to your existing account. If you are new customer, select whether to activate one new iPhone, or two or more. Make your selection, and click Continue. 3. When transferring a number, you will need to enter the phone number you want transferred, the account number, billing Zip code, and (if needed) your account PIN number (your password). If you don’t want to transfer a number, just click Continue. 4. iTunes now prompts you to select a monthly plan. If you are an existing customer, these are the add-on data plans listed in Table 1-1. If you are activating several iPhones, you will see the family plan options. If you are activating one iPhone, iTunes presents the individual plans (see Figure 1-7). Select one of these plans. At the time of this writing, the activation screens do not allow you to select a month-to-month plan directly. You must first fail a credit check, which will occur later in these steps.

CHAPTER 1 ■ SELECTING, BUYING, AND ACTIVATING YOUR IPHONE

Figure 1-7. These are the standard plans on offer for individual iPhone users. If you’d like to add additional minutes, click More Minutes. Otherwise, scroll down the screen to view options for extra SMS messages. 5. If you want to add text SMS messages to your (standard, non-GoPhone) plan, you can add 1500 SMS messages for $10 per month or unlimited messages for $20 per month. Select one these options at the bottom of the screen.

■Note SMS stands for Short Message Service, the proper name for what normal human beings call “text messaging.”

6. Click Continue. 7. Enter your iTunes ID and password, and click Continue. The iTunes ID is usually the e-mail address you used to create your iTunes account. If you don’t have an iTunes account, just click Continue, and iTunes will walk you through the iTunes account creation process described earlier in this chapter. 8. Enter your birth date, choose which e-mails you want to receive, and click Continue.

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9. Enter your billing information. This includes your name, billing address, home phone number, and social security number. If you want to choose a GoPhone plan, enter 99999-9999 as your SSN. This number tells AT&T that you decline to provide your social security information; there are no valid SSNs that start with 999. According to the US government, you are not legally bound to provide a social security number to AT&T (http://www.ssa.gov/pubs/10002.html). Do not make up a number. Alternatively, you may call AT&T and request a number to enter that specifies the prepaid option. 10. Read through the iPhone Terms and Conditions, and check the box that indicates you agree to the terms. Click Continue. 11. Read through the AT&T Terms and Conditions. Check the box to agree, and click Continue. 12. Review the information, and click Submit. 13. Wait while AT&T processes your activation. If you’re done, you’ll receive a congratulations note and your new mobile phone number. If you get a note saying that AT&T will take more time to process your activation, you’ll have to wait. Check your e-mail for updates. If you failed your credit check—deliberately or not—proceed to the next step. 14. If you failed the credit check, iTunes will tell you to either enter an AT&T pre-approval credit check code or choose a prepaid plan (see Figure 1-8). Click “Choose prepaid plan”.

Figure 1-8. After failing the AT&T credit check—either deliberately or inadvertently—you will be presented with these options, allowing you to select AT&T’s unadvertised prepaid plan.

CHAPTER 1 ■ SELECTING, BUYING, AND ACTIVATING YOUR IPHONE

15. Select one of the four prepaid GoPhone plans, optionally adding 200 SMS messages for $5 per month or unlimited for $20 per month. Click Continue. 16. Agree to the AT&T GoPhone Service agreement, and click Continue. 17. Wait. If you receive a phone number, you’re ready to start using your iPhone. If you get a note saying that it will take more time to process your activation, go to an AT&T store. Ask them to cancel your activation and switch out your SIM card for a new one. Return home and try the process again. A SIM card (which stands for Subscriber Identity Module) is a small card that slides into the top of your iPhone (see Figure 1-3). In most experiences that have been reported to me, the “activation will take more time” message is the kiss of activation death. Your iPhone will activate with GoPhone immediately, or it never will. A fresh SIM card means your iPhone has another chance to succeed quickly or fail slowly. Don’t be afraid to return to the AT&T store and repeat as needed.

Understanding the Downside of Prepaid Service If you end up choosing GoPhone iPhone service, there are a number of issues you need to be aware of that do not affect postpaid iPhone users: Overall expense: The cheapest GoPhone plan costs just $10 less than the cheapest standard plan. You get no SMS package by default (you pay in minutes instead), and each minute of use costs more than double what it does on the standard plan. If you’re a moderate to heavy phone user, your monthly costs may grow very high. Different roaming and international policies: Make sure you check with AT&T before you attempt to roam or use your iPhone internationally. AT&T has separate GoPhone policies and pricing for these features. Constant alerts: When on a prepaid plan, AT&T notifies you after each call and text, letting you know your account balance. These constant balance updates can be annoying. Nontransferable numbers: If, for any reason, you need to replace your iPhone—if it’s stolen or damaged in an accident—you cannot bring your existing GoPhone number to the new iPhone. You’ll be able to transfer your minutes and your remaining balance but not the number itself. This is an unfortunate AT&T GoPhone policy that you need to take into account if you choose to go prepaid.

Syncing Your New iPhone Once you’ve activated service, you’re ready to synchronize your iPhone with your computer. This allows you to initialize your iPhone’s music, movies, podcasts, e-mail accounts, calendar, bookmarks, and so forth. After activation, your iPhone appears in the iTunes source list (left-hand column on the screen). If you own and use an iPod, you’re already familiar with iPhone sync. If not, here’s a quick overview.

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Click your iPhone’s name in the source list to open its preferences in the main iTunes window. The tabs along the top of the window allow you to set each of the options associated with your iPhone.

■Tip Click your iPhone’s name a second time to open a text edit field that allows you to edit the name. You can name your iPhone more creatively than “John Appleseed’s iPhone”. I call my iPhone “Bologna” just for the laugh.

The Summary tab (see Figure 1-9) displays your iPhone overview including the iPhone’s name, capacity, currently installed firmware version, serial number, and phone number. From this page, you can check for firmware updates and restore your iPhone to a pristine factoryinstalled condition. The Info tab allows you to select which contacts, calendars, mail accounts, and bookmarks are synced to your phone. Select those items you want to sync by checking check boxes, and click Apply. You can sync any POP3 or IMAP e-mail account. The Music tab specifies which songs, play lists, and music videos you want to store on your iPhone. If you own a large music library, you’ll want to select just your favorite play lists or create smart play lists (covered later in this book) to establish an ever-changing collection. The Photos tab lets you synchronize your iPhone photo collection with iPhoto. The Podcasts and Video tabs allow you to select individual shows or recent unwatched/unlistened-to items. Make your selections for these tabs, and click Apply. The Capacity bar at the bottom of the screen monitors how much space remains on your device.

■Note When you receive a phone call while syncing data, the synchronization will pause and allow you to answer the call. You can continue to sync after you hang up.

CHAPTER 1 ■ SELECTING, BUYING, AND ACTIVATING YOUR IPHONE

Figure 1-9. iTunes allows you to manage the content loaded onto and synchronized with your iPhone. Each tab offers a variety of controls, allowing you to choose what information gets loaded onto your iPhone at each sync.

The Hacks Some people want or need to take their iPhones to the next level. They may live in an area without iPhone/AT&T service. They may want to activate their iPhones without using iTunes. They may want to transfer existing AT&T accounts to their iPhones without recommitting to another 24 months of service. Here is a quick roundup of most significant iPhone activation hacks that were available during the first months after the iPhone rollout.

■Caution Use these tools at your own risk. If you’re not willing to possibly brick your iPhone (make it unusable), you’re best off not trying these hacks. Although I have tested them, these utilities are not official, not sanctioned, not entirely safe, marginally documented, and may require you to be comfortable at the Unix command line. These hacks depend on the continuing goodwill of Apple, which may or may not prevent users from accessing these via their program of regular iPhone firmware updates.

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The No-Contract, No-Service, Sixth Generation iPodPhone Many users, particularly in countries without access to iPhones, have expressed a desire to use the iPhone as a sixth generation iPod. Even without phone service, the iPhone still functions as an iPod, and the built-in WiFi technology allows you to surf the Internet with Safari around the world when you’re near an open WiFi hotspot. To make this happen, you have two choices. You can activate the iPhone in the United States as a GoPhone and immediately cancel service, or you can use one of the hacker iPhone activation tools that have sprung up on the Internet. Run a Google search for iPhone activation tool. You are looking specifically for the tools called iASign, iPhoneTool, or one of their descendents. I have activated and deactivated my iPhone many times using several of these tools.

Using the iPhone with a Non-iPhone AT&T SIM Card Taking activation hacking to the next step are tools that allow you to activate a non-iPhone account with your iPhone. This involves manually moving SIM cards between the phones and using unauthorized tools to create authorization information for your iPhone. This kind of hack is even more risky than the iPodPhone hack. If you’re determined to find out more about doing this, Google for iASign. I have personally tested this using a SIM from a disposable pay-as-you-go AT&T phone, and it does work. You can place calls, receive calls, and surf the Internet (at a very high cost per kilobyte). Visual voicemail does not work with prepaid cards, nor does the YouTube application. To add more money, just buy a card at Target or Wal-Mart, and add it to your phone account. This option works best for people who mostly want to use their iPhones offline with WiFi but need to make or receive the occasional call. Costs can be low—as little as $100 a year—but unit prices for calls and data are extremely high. Expect to pay $0.25 per minute for phone calls and $0.01 per kilobyte of data transfer. You can also use this hack to transfer a SIM from a normal (prepaid or postpaid) AT&T/Cingular account. This allows you to continue using your current account with your iPhone without changing your costs or committing to another 24 months of service. As with the prepaid card, you lose visual voicemail and access to YouTube videos. Your data plan depends on how you set up your account, and while it will probably transfer over without incident, there are reports of users having problems using their normal data plans on the iPhone.

Unlocking the iPhone Technically speaking, it is legal in the United States to unlock your own phone, allowing you to use third-party SIMs, such as those from T-Mobile. Officially, AT&T will unlock phones for international travel after the phone’s SIM has been registered for 90 days for accounts in good standing. In practice, Apple has not designed the iPhone to be unlocked. AT&T recommends you buy an inexpensive cell phone to take with you for travel, such as a Motorola disposable, and will provide the unlock code for that phone 90 days into your iPhone service. Be aware that the iPhone is SIM locked. You cannot use a third-party carrier’s SIM in your iPhone without unlocking your phone. Third-party unlocking software (namely iUnlock and AnySIM) appeared within months of the iPhone release. In September 2007, Apple responded, saying that it would not support unlocked phones and that its firmware releases might brick those phones.

CHAPTER 1 ■ SELECTING, BUYING, AND ACTIVATING YOUR IPHONE

Insuring and Repairing Your iPhone AT&T does not, at the time of this writing, offer an insurance plan for the iPhone, and it has indicated that it does not plan to offer coverage anytime soon. Instead, you’ll need to call your renter’s or home insurance carrier to see how much you’ll have to pay for an iPhone rider (a rider is placed on top of an existing policy, adding coverage for a specific item not covered under the standard plan). Allstate, Geico, and State Farm quote $5–$20 per year on top of an existing policy. Your iPhone is covered under Apple’s Limited Warranty for one year. You can add one extra year of iPhone AppleCare for $69. This extends your hardware repair coverage to two years in total. If interested, you can purchase this option online at the Apple Store (http://store.apple.com). Once the warranty expires, iPhone repairs costs $199 for 4-GB models and $249 for 8-GB models, plus $6.95 for shipping and handling. Apple will replace your iPhone battery for $79 (plus $6.95 shipping and handling) if your phone is out of warranty.

■Caution If you plan to hack your iPhone, be aware that unauthorized modifications will void your warranty. Apple also excludes coverage for damages from accidents (like dropping your iPhone onto a concrete floor), unauthorized service (like trying to replace your own battery), and misuse (like using your iPhone as a hammer).

When you bring in your iPhone for service, you can borrow a loaner iPhone from Apple for a flat $29 charge. Pop out your iPhone SIM (Apple provides a paperclip so you can poke it into the top of your iPhone and release the SIM tray) and place it in the loaner while your own unit undergoes repairs. Service phones are available at most Apple stores. If you can, make sure to back up your iPhone by syncing it to iTunes before bringing it in for service. Apple will usually restore your iPhone to factory condition, which means you’ll lose any data stored on the iPhone during the repair and service process. Whether you buy an AppleCare protection plan or not, be aware that you are entitled to two years of complimentary telephone support (1-800-MY-IPHONE) during the term of your AT&T wireless contract. You can find a complete list of ways to contact Apple Support at apple.com/support/contact.

Accessorizing Your iPhone At this time, the iPhone accessory market remains pretty limited, and Apple packages pretty much everything you need in the standard iPhone box. You may want to buy a headphone adapter cord, so you can use your personal earphones with your iPhone. The iPhone’s audio jack is too slim and too deep to accommodate normal headphone plugs. Expect to pay $10–$15 for an adapter. This lets you use your favorite headset, but you will lose access to the iPhone microphone and squeeze control that live onboard the standard earbuds. Purchasing a case is another thing you may consider. Beware of cases that fit around the iPhone unit itself. Many of these accessories block access to parts of the iPhone touch screen,

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and some may cause wear or scratching. Soft carry bags and iPhone socks are good choices for protecting your iPhone without interfering with on-board functionality. Finally, consider buying a wired remote control. This allows you to control audio playback while the iPhone remains in your pocket. Unlike previous iPod models, the iPhone offers no physical playback controls on the device itself. To pause playback or switch tracks, you must view and access virtual controls on the screen. A wired remote lets you push buttons instead.

Summary In this chapter, you’ve seen how to select and purchase your iPhone. You’ve discovered what’s involved in activating your iPhone and seen the various plans on offer, both advertised and not. To wind things up, here is a quick overview of some key points from this chapter: • Phone choices are limited, but whichever iPhone you choose, you’ll probably want to buy it at the Apple Store if you can. • Make sure your computer is compatible with iPhone before you buy. • When activating, know in advance what kind of plans are available and which one you want to use. Deciding in advance can save you many activation headaches. • If you want to hack your iPhone and avoid iTunes activation, the tools are out there. Use at your own risk, and be aware that Apple may disable those hacks at any time. • iPhones are not cheap. Protect your investment by insuring your phone. Also consider adding AppleCare for an additional year’s coverage against hardware repairs. • The iPhone technical support is free for two years. Take advantage of it at 1-800-MY-IPHONE (1-800-694-7466).

CHAPTER

2

Interacting with Your New iPhone Y

our iPhone introduces a revolutionary new way to interact. It responds to the language of your touch. Its vocabulary includes taps, drags, pinches, and flicks. With these, you control your iPhone as easily as using a mouse with your personal computer. And there’s a lot more to interaction than just drags and double-clicks. The iPhone offers multitouch technology. That means it can recognize and respond to more than one touch at a time. In this chapter, you’re about to discover all the different ways you can interact with your iPhone—from zooming into and out of maps, to using the iPhone’s on-board keyboard, to playing with its sensors. You’ll learn how all these features work and how to take advantage of some secret ways to interact with your iPhone.

Interaction Basics PCs have mice. PDAs have styluses. iPhones have your fingers. Your iPhone does not work with mice or styluses. It requires real finger contact. The iPhone does not just sense pressure points. It detects the small electrical charge transferred from your fingers. That means you can use your iPhone with your fingers, your knuckles, or even—if you’re feeling up to it—your nose but you can’t use it with pencil erasers, Q-Tips, or those PDA styluses. The electrical charges in your touch make it possible for the iPhone to detect and respond to one or more contacts at a time, that is, to use multitouch technology.

The iPhone Language How you touch your iPhone’s screen provides your communication vocabulary. Here’s a quick rundown of the basic ways you can speak to your iPhone: Pressing the Home button: The iPhone’s Home button lives below the touch screen and is marked with a white square. Press this button at any time to return to your home screen with its list of applications. Double-press the Home button to jump to your music controls, when locked, or to your phone favorites or iPod application, when not. Tapping: Tap your iPhone by touching your finger to the screen and removing it quickly. Tapping allows you to select web links, activate buttons, and launch iPhone applications. When typing text, you may want to tap with your forefinger or, if it’s more comfortable, your thumb.

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Double-tapping: Double-tapping means tapping your iPhone twice in quick succession. Double-clicking may be important on your personal computer, but double-tapping is not actually used all that much on your iPhone. You can double-tap in Safari to zoom into columns and double-tap again to zoom back out. In Photos, use double-tapping to zoom into and out from pictures. Two-fingered tap: The iPhone’s multitouch technology means you can tap the screen with more than one finger at a time. A few applications (including Google Maps) respond to two-fingered taps. To do this, separate your forefinger and middle finger and tap the screen with both fingers at once. In Google Maps, double-tapping zooms into the map and a two-fingered tap zooms out. Holding: At times, you’ll want to put your finger on the screen and leave it there until something happens. Holding brings up the magnifying glass while you’re typing. Dragging: Drag your finger by pressing it to the screen and moving it in any direction before lifting it. Use dragging to position the view in Google Maps or to scroll up and down in Mail. Some applications offer an index on the right side, like the one shown in Figure 2-1. To use this index, drag along it until the item you want comes into view.

Figure 2-1. Use dragging to move quickly through an index. In the iPod application artist screen shown here, dragging on the index allows you to jump though the alphabet to find the artist you’re searching for. You can also tap a letter to jump to it. Flicking: When you’re dealing with long lists, you can give the list a quick flick. Place your finger onto the screen and move it rapidly in one direction—up, down, left, or right. The display responds by scrolling quickly in the direction you’ve indicated. Use flicking to move quickly through your contacts list in e-mail.

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■Tip Flicking and dragging will not choose or activate items on the iPhone’s display. Try this yourself by dragging and flicking on the Home screen.

Stopping: During a scroll, press and hold your finger to the screen to stop the scroll. Apple’s legal text provides a great place to practice flicking, dragging, and stopping. To get there, select Settings ➤ General ➤ About ➤ Legal. Have fun with its endless content of legalese that you can flick, drag, and stop to your heart’s content. If you don’t want to stop a scroll, just wait. The scroll will slow and stop by itself. Swiping: To swipe your iPhone, drag a finger from the left side of the screen toward the right. Swiping is used to unlock your phone and to indicate you want to delete list items, like an e-mail item or contact (see Figure 2-2).

Figure 2-2. To swipe, drag your finger from left to right across an item you want to delete. After, the Delete button (shown here) appears for the item you swiped. To delete, tap Delete. Otherwise, tap anywhere else to hide the Delete button again. Pinching: On the iPhone, you pinch by placing your thumb and forefinger onto the screen with a space between them. Then, with the fingers touching the screen, move the two fingers together as if you’re pinching the screen. Pinching allows you to zoom out in many iPhone programs, including the photo viewer, Safari, and Google Maps. Unpinching: To unpinch, you perform the pinch in reverse. Start with your thumb and forefinger placed together on your screen and, with the fingers touching the screen, spread them apart. Unpinching allows you to zoom into those same iPhone applications that pinching zooms out of.

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Regarding the iPhone Home Screen The iPhone’s Home screen allows you to launch any application with a single tap. The Home screen, whose unofficial name is SpringBoard, provides application-launching abilities. Tap the Home button to return to the Home screen at any time. If for some reason, a program hangs and your iPhone becomes unresponsive, you can press and hold the Home button for 6–10 seconds to quit that program and return to the Home screen. A Back button appears on many iPhone screens in the upper left-hand corner. Tap this button to return to the previous screen in the application. This is different from pressing Home. A Back button moves you between screens within an application. The Home button leaves an application and returns you to the Home screen.

The iPhone Sensors In addition to its touch screen, your iPhone contains three important sensors: a tilt sensor, called an accelerometer; a proximity sensor; and a light sensor. These sensors give your iPhone some science-fiction grade features that set it apart from the crowd.

Proximity Sensor The proximity sensor is located on your iPhone right near the earpiece. Its job is to blank the screen when the iPhone is held up to your ear. This means your ear and chin won’t accidentally hang up your calls with their stray touches. And it means you’ll save some power during those phone calls. You can see the proximity sensor in action by going to Phone ➤ Voicemail. Set Speaker to off (on is a brighter blue, off a dimmer blue). With the speaker off, place a finger just above the earpiece. The screen blanks. Remove the finger, the screen returns. Test the sensor range by placing your iPhone on a flat surface and holding your finger in the air about an inch above the earpiece. Move the finger up and down slightly, and you’ll discover exactly where the range finder gets triggered. The proximity sensor works by shooting out an infrared (IR) beam, which is reflected back and picked up by the iPhone’s light sensor. If the range is short enough, the iPhone switches off the screen. You can also see the IR source for the proximity sensor—it’s just to the left of the light detector—by using a digital camera. The IR beam is visible to the camera’s CCD detector. To take the picture shown in Figure 2-3, I switched off my camera’s flash, enabled its Macro settings (because I needed the camera to be pretty close to the iPhone), and waited for the source to flash red. You can’t see it with your eyes, but you can with your camera’s IR-sensitive detectors.

Figure 2-3. You can “see” the iPhone’s IR light from its proximity sensor if you own a digital camera. Its IR beam is visible to the cameras’s detector. Make sure to cover the iPhone’s screen when you take the photograph, because it’s bright and the IR light is dim.

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Tilt Sensor The iPhone uses an accelerometer to detect when your iPhone tilts. Several applications, including Safari, update their displays when you turn the iPhone on its side. This allows you to use your iPhone in both portrait and landscape mode. If you feel like playing with the tilt sensor, try this: Go into Photos, and select a favorite picture. Hold the iPhone up normally in portrait orientation; press one finger onto the screen; and then tilt the phone into landscape orientation. The picture will not change. Now, tap the screen with the middle finger (or any other finger that’s not being held to the iPhone). Presto— the iPhone finally rotates the display. There are some bugs in the photo rotation software. You can sometimes produce odd effects by doing the following: Press down one finger. Press down a second finger. Rotate the iPhone. Remove the second finger. Remove the first finger. Flick to the right. Watch as your pictures scroll by really fast. Nifty, huh? For even more fun, let go of the finger part-way through turning the iPhone on its side.

■Tip If you’ve hacked your iPhone for third-party software access, take a look at the Butterfly.app game. It uses the iPhone’s tilt sensor to manipulate a net around the iPhone screen to catch butterflies.

Light Sensor The light sensor located right next to the infrared proximity source (see Figure 2-4) detects whether the room you’re in is bright or dark. Whenever you unlock the phone, it samples the light and adjusts the overall brightness of the display to match. To have fun with this either cover the sensor with a finger or shine a bright light at it when you unlock your phone. Your iPhone will adjust to be very dim (the finger) or very bright (the light) to compensate. You can toggle the auto brightness feature off and on by adjusting the settings in Settings ➤ Brightness. This screen also offers direct control over your iPhone’s brightness. That’s handy when you need immediate results instead of playing with unlocking, flashlights, and fingers.

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Figure 2-4. The light sensor appears directly to the right of the proximity IR source, just above the (metallic) earpiece. These sensors are below and behind the front glass of the iPhone screen. That is why the sensors in this image are in focus, and the rest of the items (including the ear piece and metallic edging) are not.

iPhone Power Tricks There are a lot of different ways to switch your iPhone on and off. Here are some of the most important that you need to know about.

Unlocking Your iPhone When your iPhone has been idle for a while, it automatically locks, and the screen goes dark. When this happens, press Home. The locked iPhone screen shown in Figure 2-5 appears. To unlock your phone, swipe the slider from the left to the right. The lock screen clears, and the Home screen springs into place. You can set how long the iPhone should wait before locking itself. Go to Settings ➤ General ➤ Auto-Lock, and choose the number of minutes you want your iPhone to wait. To disable autolocking, choose Never—and make sure you’ve got a good power source available nearby. Autolocking is a power-saving feature. Disabling it means your iPhone will run through its battery more rapidly.

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Figure 2-5. This is the iPhone lock screen with its default Earth wallpaper. To unlock your phone, swipe the slider from left to right. If you want, you can change your wallpaper in the Photos application.

■Tip Here’s a quick swipe trick. When your iPhone is locked, start to drag the slider from left to right with your forefinger. When you’re about a quarter of the way across, use your middle finger to tap the right side of the slider. Presto—unlocked iPhone.

Putting Your iPhone to Sleep For iPhones, sleep mode offers a power-saving way to use your device. Press the Sleep/Wake button once. The screen turns off, and your iPhone locks and enters its low-power mode. You can still listen to music, and you can still receive phone calls. The volume control buttons on the left of your iPhone will work, and the switch on your iPhone headset continues to control music playback and allows you to answer calls. To wake up your iPhone again, press Home, and swipe to unlock.

Locking Your iPhone with a Passcode For security, you can assign a passcode for your iPhone. A passcode is just like a password except with numbers. When locked, your iPhone cannot be used except for emergency calls. Go to Settings ➤ General, and tap Passcode Lock to establish a new passcode. Your iPhone prompts you to enter a four-number code (see Figure 2-6).

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Figure 2-6. The passcode entry screen Enter a code, or tap Cancel to quit without entering a code. After you entering the code once, the iPhone prompts you to reenter your code and then displays the Passcode Lock Settings screen, shown in Figure 2-7.

Figure 2-7. The Passcode Lock settings screen. From here, you can disable passcodes, change to a new passcode, set the delay before a passcode is required, and specify whether SMS previews are shown (less private) or not (more private) while your iPhone is locked.

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To test your passcode, click the Sleep/Wake button once (to put your iPhone to sleep) and again (to wake it back up). The passcode challenge screen shown in Figure 2-8 greets you. Enter your passcode, and your iPhone unlocks.

Figure 2-8. The passcode challenge screen allows you to make emergency calls regardless of whether you have the correct passcode. Tap the button in the lower-left corner. To remove the passcode from your iPhone, go back to the passcode setting screen. Choose Turn Passcode Off, and reenter the passcode one more time to confirm that it’s really you making this request. So what happens when you lose your passcode? Or a mean-spirited colleague adds one to your iPhone without telling you? Connect the iPhone to your home computer, and use iTunes to restore the iPhone software.

Quitting Applications Pressing the Hold button suspends the current application and returns you to the Home screen, but it does not actually terminate that application. The application may continue to consume CPU cycles in the background. To quit the active application, press and hold the Home button for 4 to 8 seconds. The application screen clears, and you return to the Home screen. Quitting applications instead of suspending them allows you to lower your CPU usage, keeps your iPhone slightly cooler, and puts a little less strain on your battery.

■Note Be aware that you cannot use this trick to completely quit out of the Mobile Phone functionality. The phone feature will automatically relaunch itself. If you’ve hacked your iPhone and have access to the Unix shell, you can confirm that you’ve quit applications by running ps –ax at the command line. Pressing and holding the Home button to quit an application causes that application to disappear from the active processes.

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Powering Your iPhone Off and On To power off your iPhone, press and hold the Sleep/Wake button for about 5 seconds. The slider shown in Figure 2-9 appears. To power down, swipe the slider to the right. To cancel, either tap Cancel or just wait about 10 seconds. The iPhone automatically returns you to the home screen if you don’t power down within that time. When your iPhone is powered off, it ceases to function. You cannot listen to music. You cannot receive phone calls. You must power your iPhone back on for it to do these things. To power on your iPhone, press and hold Sleep/Wake for 2 to 3 seconds. Release the button when you see the white Apple icon. The iPhone starts up and returns you automatically to the Home screen.

Figure 2-9. This screen appears after you hold down the Sleep/Wake and Home buttons for about 5 seconds. To power down, simply swipe the slider from left to right. Your iPhone shuts itself down and powers off. To power back on, press and hold the Sleep/Wake button for about 2 seconds until you see the white Apple icon.

Rebooting Your iPhone At times, you may need to reboot your iPhone. The most common reason for doing this is that you have installed new software using third-party hacking tools. Although you can reboot just by powering down and then powering back up, Apple provides a much easier way do this. Press and hold both the Home and Sleep/Wake buttons for 8 to 10 seconds. Ignore the poweroff indicator shown in Figure 2-4, and keep holding both buttons until the white Apple logo appears. Once it shows up, release both buttons, and let the iPhone finish its reboot. You will return automatically to the Home screen.

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Placing Your iPhone into Recovery Mode Your iPhone has a secret setting called recovery mode. It’s used to tell iTunes to restore your iPhone to its factory-fresh condition. It’s also used by a number of third-party hacking programs to gain access to your complete iPhone file system, so you can install software, ringtones, wallpaper, and so forth. Do not enter recovery mode lightly. You need to know what you’re doing. Otherwise, you will end up having to restore your iPhone firmware in iTunes and refreshing your iPhone’s contents from its most recent backup. To enter recovery mode, press and hold both the Sleep/Wake and Home buttons for about 25 seconds until you see either the yellow triangle and its Connect to iTunes message or the screen with the iTunes logo and the end of the USB connector. You may want to watch a clock so you know when 25 seconds have elapsed. It can feel a lot longer as your fingers get tired. There’s a second method for newer iPhones: release the Sleep/Wake button after about 10 seconds when your screen first goes black. Continue holding the Home button until you see one of the following: very dim horizontal lines, the yellow triangle, or the iTunes logo.

■Caution For reasons I am unable to determine, iPhones restore better on Windows and Intel Mac units than they do on Power PCs. If you have a problem restoring your iPhone’s firmware on a PowerMac, try borrowing a friend’s Windows PC or Intel Macintosh.

Using the iPhone Keyboard Let me start talking about the iPhone keyboard by quoting verbatim from one my earliest iPhone e-mails: I would like to sat that the iPhone has turned me into a tupong expert, but that would ne far far far from the truth. The fact is that I type on the iPhone like a cow, working with the iPhone keyboard is norm hard and frustrating. Foe all this Rhine is supposed to be smart and press five, I find that in actual use it is slow and mistake-prone.Will my accuracy improve as I get more experience? Probably. Will my fingers become smaller and less oqlike?almost certainly nor. I sent that e-mail within the first 24 hours of ownership, and I was feeling pretty down on the whole iPhone keyboard thing. Within a week, however, my iPhone typing developed from horrible to readable, and within another week, from readable to pretty darn good. I typed this entire paragraph on my iPhone and transferred it to this manuscript (see Figure 2-10).

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Figure 2-10. The iPhone keyboard grows easier to use with experience. Within a few weeks, you will master its quirks. Notice the shift key (arrow pointing up), to the left of the Z key and the backspace/delete key (pentagon pointing left with an x in it) to the right of M. The “ .?123” button switches to a numbers and symbols layout. The “return” button lets you add carriage returns to your text. The secret is that the keyboard is smart. So smart that it corrects for a lot of my typos and misaligned fingers. It automatically capitalizes the start of sentences. It suggests corrections for my misspelled words. It uses something called predictive zones that make it easier to hit the right keys. Here are some of the key technologies that make the iPhone keyboard work. Dictionary: The iPhone has an onboard dictionary that learns frequently used words as you type. It also picks up names and spellings from your address book. This means it gets better at guessing your intention as it builds its data. Automatic correction: As you type, the iPhone looks for words similar to what you’re typing and guesses them, placing the guess just below the word you’re typing. To accept the word, tap the space bar. (You don’t have to finish typing the word. The iPhone puts it in there for you.) To decline the correction, tap the word itself. The iPhone will not make a substitution, even when you press space. Predictive mapping: The iPhone uses its dictionary to predict which word you’re about to type. It then readjusts the keyboard response zones to make it easier for you to hit the right letters. Likely letters get bigger tap zones, unlikely letters smaller ones. Offset correction: The iPhone understands that people sometimes misalign fingers. So if you mean to type “pizza” but you press O instead of P and U instead of I (i.e., ouzza), the iPhone is smart enough to know that the typing pattern you used matches a known word in its dictionary.

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Getting Started When you’re new to the iPhone, start by typing slowly. Pay attention to those confirmation pop-ups that appear every time you tap a key. I find it easiest to use my forefingers to type. Others prefer to use their thumbs. Whatever method you use, make sure to go at a pace that allows you to keep track of what you’re typing and make corrections on the go. Automatic corrections: The iPhone displays suggested corrections just below the word you’re typing (see Figure 2-11). To accept the suggestion, tap the space bar. To disable correction for the current word, tap the word itself in the text area, and iPhone will leave the word exactly as you have entered it.

Figure 2-11. iPhone suggestions appear just below the word you type. Tap the space bar to accept the suggestion, or tap the word you’re typing to disable autocorrection for that word. Using the spyglass: While you’re typing, you can adjust the cursor by using the iPhone’s built-in spyglass feature (see Figure 2-12). Hold your finger somewhere in the text area until the spyglass appears. Then use the magnified view to drag the cursor exactly where you need it.

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Figure 2-12. iPhone’s spyglass offers a magnified view that makes it easy to position the cursor exactly where you need it to be. Summoning the keyboard: To open the keyboard, tap in any editable text area. Dismissing the keyboard: There is no standard way to dismiss the keyboard, but most programs offer a Done button that indicates you’re done typing. In Safari, press Go rather than Done.

iPhone Typing Tricks Once you get the hang of the keyboard, there remain further ways you can make typing easier. Here are a few iPhone typing tricks you can use to make your keyboard entry tasks even better.

Contractions When you want to type a contraction like “can’t” or “shouldn’t,” don’t bother putting in the apostrophe. The iPhone is smart enough to guess that cant is “can’t.” (Of course, if you’re typing about the British thieves language, make sure to tap the word itself to decline the change from the noun to the contraction.) When you’re typing in a word like “we’ll,” where the uncontracted “well” is a common word, add an extra “l”. The iPhone corrects welll to “we’ll” and shelll to “she’ll.”

■Tip Other contraction tricks include itsa, which gets corrected to “it’s” and weree, which gets corrected to “we’re.”

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Punctuation Dragging If you plan to use only one item of punctuation at a time, such as a comma or period, save time by dragging. Drag from the “.?123” button to the item you want to include. By starting the drag at “.?123”, the iPhone switches momentarily to the numbers and punctuation view. After selecting your item, the keyboard automatically bounces back to the alphabet.

■Tip Another punctuation trick for the end of sentences is to tap “.?123”, the punctuation item you want to use, and then the space bar. The iPhone is smart enough to recognize the end of a sentence and put you back in alphabet mode. Newer iPhone firmware updates introduced a new trick: double-tapping the space bar to add a period followed by a space.

Accents Tap and hold any keyboard letter to view accented versions of that letter. For example, tapping and holding N presents you with the option of adding n, n ´ , or ñ. This shortcut makes it much easier to type foreign words.

Caps Lock To enable caps lock, go to Settings ➤ General ➤ Keyboard preferences. When enabled, you can double-tap the caps button to toggle the lock on and off.

Deleting Words at a Time When you press and hold the delete key, it starts off by deleting one letter and then the next. But if you hold it for longer than about a line of text, it switches to word deletion and starts removing entire words at a time, making it easier to clear text on a system where you cannot “select all” and then cut.

Auto-Capitalization Auto-capitalization means the iPhone automatically capitalizes the start of sentences. So you can type the day has begun, and the iPhone is smart enough to capitalize “the”: “The day has begun”. This means you don’t have to worry about pressing the shift key at the beginning of every sentence or even when you type “i”. i went to the park becomes “I went to the park”.

■Tip Enable or disable auto-capitalization in Settings ➤ General ➤ Keyboard preferences.

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iPhone Typing Test Track your iPhone keyboard mastery progress with one of the iPhone typing tests available on the Internet. Google for iPhone typing tests wpm, and you’ll find any number of sites offering a words-per-minute test. Load one of these into Safari on your iPhone, and you’re ready to see how your typing has improved.

Using the iPhone Stereo Headset If you look carefully at the headset packaged with your iPhone, you’ll discover a small, thin cylinder about 6 inches below one of the two earpieces. This cylinder contains both a microphone and a switch. Go ahead and squeeze it, and you can feel the switch react. This switch has several functions: Music: When listening to music, squeeze once to pause the music; squeeze again to resume playback. Double-squeeze (two quick squeezes in a row) to skip to the next song.

■Tip You can also pause your music by pulling out the headset plug from the iPhone jack.

Phone calls: When an incoming call rings on your iPhone, squeeze once to answer the call. Squeeze again to hang up. In theory, you can double-squeeze to send the call to voicemail, but I find that really difficult to do. It’s much easier in my opinion to use the Sleep/Wake button. Press the Sleep/Wake button once to silence an incoming call and twice to send the incoming call to voicemail.

Summary This chapter has explored all the ways you can interact with your iPhone from taps to buttons to switches. You’ve read about the touch screen and how you can communicate with it as well as about other sensors built into the phone. You’ve discovered how to put your phone to sleep, how to lock it, and how to power it off completely. After finishing this chapter, you’ll have been introduced to all the basic ways you and your iPhone can communicate with each other. Here are a few key lessons for you to carry away with you: • Build up your working iPhone interaction vocabulary. You’d be surprised how often one of the rarer gestures, like the two-fingered tap, will prove useful. • Understand how the iPhone sensors are supposed to work, so you won’t be surprised when they’re doing their job. Are you wondering why the iPhone is so dim when you wake it up in a dark room? Knowing about the light sensor will put you on the path to adjusting the phone to the brightness you need.

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• Know the difference between powering your iPhone down and putting it to sleep. When it’s powered off, you can’t receive any calls, but you’ll conserve battery power. When it’s asleep, you can still listen to music and take calls. • If you forget your iPhone’s passcode, you’ll need to restore the iPhone at your computer.

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Placing Calls with iPhone T

he iPhone is a versatile device. They can surf the Web, check the latest stock prices, request a weather report, and map out directions. But the iPhone remains a cell phone and that means calling is its primary function. In this chapter, you will read about the essential things you need to know in order to maximize your iPhone use for placing and receiving calls. You’ll discover ways you can get up to speed and make the most of your iPhone as a cell phone.

Checking the Cell Network Indicator The bars at the top-left corner of your iPhone screen indicate how strong a signal you’re receiving from the local cellular network. Five bars indicate the strongest signal. No bars or the words “No Service” indicate a complete lack of signal strength: no bars means no calls. Reception problems can stem from many causes: distance to the nearest cell tower, hills and trees blocking reception, or even the wiring inside your building. When you’re not receiving a good signal, you’ll need to move. Go to a place where the signal is stronger. This can mean anything from moving around a room, getting closer to a window, stepping outside your building, or driving toward a tower. Can they hear you now? Finding good reception can be an art. AT&T offers a coverage map on their web site, indicating where you should be able to receive service. Many web sites, like cellreception.com, allow you to search your local area to locate cell towers and dead spots. Unfortunately, the quality of service varies by the area of the country you live in. A network provider that offers excellent coverage in one state might provide only spotty reception in another. Since AT&T is the exclusive iPhone provider and the iPhone is locked to the AT&T network, you’re pretty much stuck with whatever coverage AT&T provides for your area.

■Tip When attempting to place calls, make sure you haven’t enabled Airplane Mode. To see, go to Settings and check that Airplane Mode is set to OFF.

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iPhone Basics As with all Apple products, there’s never just one way to do anything. In this section, you’ll find many ways to perform the most basic iPhone tasks including answering calls, sending calls to voicemail, and even hanging up. You may be surprised to discover just how many options Apple has built into your iPhone to get the job done.

Launching the Phone Application The green phone icon appears in the lower-left corner of your iPhone’s Home screen. Tap it to launch the Phone application. This application lets you place calls, check your voicemail, review recent calls, and more. Several features appear in a shortcuts bar at the bottom of the screen: • Favorites allow you to collect your most frequent contacts together for a quick-call list. • Recents lists all your recent incoming, outgoing, and missed calls. Tap any phone number to call back. • Contacts provides your complete address book; use it to look up numbers by name. • Keypad allows you to manually call phone numbers. • Voicemail shares messages left when you missed calls. To leave the Phone application, press the Home button and return to the Home screen.

Placing Calls Tap Keypad to enter the iPhone dialing screen shown in Figure 3-1. From here, you can place a call by tapping in a number to dial.

Figure 3-1. The iPhone dialing screen

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Here is an overview of the various ways you can use the Phone application to place your calls: Dial directly: To place a call manually, tap the Keypad icon at the bottom of the Phone application. Use the number pad to enter your phone number, and tap Call to place the call. If you make a mistake while typing, tap the backspace key. You’ll find it just to the right of the Call button. It looks like a sideways-pointing pentagon with an “X” in it. Add contacts: The Add Contact button, just to the left of the Call button, allows you to create new contacts using the number you’ve just entered. Enter a number, press the button, and tap Add New Contact. A details screen opens. Enter your new contact’s details. To add the number to an existing contact rather than a new contact, choose Add to Existing Contact instead. Select a contact: To call someone in your address book, tap Contacts. The scrolling Contacts screen opens. Search down the list of names until you find the person you want to call (to speed this along, drag through the alphabet on the right side of the screen). Tap a name to display its address book entry, and then tap a phone number to place your call. Call favorites: The Favorites screen allows you to add your most frequent contacts into a quick-call list. To call, just tap any name in the list. Since the Favorites screen stores a preferred number for your contacts, you don’t have to select a phone number each time the way you do with the Contacts screen. Reply to recent calls: Tap the Recents icon to open a list of your most recent incoming, outgoing, and missed calls. Missed calls appear in red, incoming and outgoing calls in black. Tap any number to place a call back to that number.

■Note The buttons at the top of the Recents screen allow you to view All calls, only the Missed calls, and to Clear the list entirely.

Call via email and web links: The iPhone knows what a phone number looks like and will automatically add links to your e-mails wherever a phone number appears. Telephone links use a blue underlined font just like regular URL links. To call an embedded number, just tap it. Web pages can provide telephone links as well. The iPhone allows web page designers to use tel: URLs to provide one-click access to phone numbers. These HTML attributes work just like mailto: URLs but connect to the iPhone’s telephone services rather than to its built-in e-mail program. Place international calls: AT&T’s policies range widely in terms of placing international calls to and from the United States and using the iPhone while roaming. Make sure to call AT&T before leaving on a foreign trip or placing international calls. Avoid the thousanddollar-phone bill horror stories by checking your facts before you use your iPhone in unconventional ways. As a rule, you can add international calling to your iPhone plan, and you’ll need to shop the current deals to find the best rates for your package.

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Using your iPhone for international calls adds a few more features and rules that you should be aware of. Here are a few tips to keep in mind regarding international calling: • Use the plus (+) symbol to prefix international calls, for example +44 800 555 1212. To add + to a phone number, press and hold the 0 button on the iPhone keypad for about 2 seconds (note the + symbol under 0 in Figure 3-1). A tone sounds as you hold the button. Just ignore it. After a second or two, the 0 turns to a +, and you’re ready to continue entering the number. • When traveling outside the United States, add +1 to your numbers to call back home, for example, +1 (212) 555 1212. If you travel regularly, use this style for all your contacts. Calls placed with +1 work both inside and outside the United States. Calls without +1 work only inside the United States. Your iPhone is smart enough to know when you’re dialing from the United States, and you won’t be charged extra for using +1. • At the time of this writing, AT&T offers two international plans: a $5.99/month plus $0.99/minute plan and a plan without a monthly charge at $1.29/minute. • International SMS charges vary by plan. At this time, it costs $0.20 per international text if you’re texting from the United States and $0.50 per text when texting while abroad. • When using the iPhone abroad, make sure to check whether you’re using WiFi (the expanding semicircle symbol, just to the right of AT&T at the top of your iPhone screen) or EDGE (the small E symbol). WiFi is free. EDGE is not. International data costs can be high. An option in newer firmware now allows you to disable Data Roaming. • Consider buying or renting a phone abroad; until iPhone-compatible plans are launched outside the United States, you’ll probably do better financially.

Answering Calls When your iPhone receive calls, it rings, playing back whatever ringtone you have selected and, if you’ve set it up that way, vibrates. The screen updates and tells you (to the best of its ability) who is calling by showing you a contact name and picture. The screen offers you the option of answering or declining the call (see Figure 3-2).

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Figure 3-2. When you receive a call, your iPhone identifies the caller if possible with a name, a contact photo, and which number (work, home, mobile, etc.) is being used. Tap Answer to accept the call and talk. Tap Decline to send the call directly to voicemail. When two or more contacts share the same number (as shown here), your iPhone lists each possible caller. Here are the ways you can answer and manage your calls: Answering calls: Tap the green Answer button to accept the call. The iPhone connects you to the caller, and you proceed with your call. You can also answer calls by squeezing the iPhone headset control once. Sending calls to voicemail: To decline a call, sending that call to voicemail, tap Decline. Alternatively, press and hold the headset control for about two seconds, or press Sleep/Wake twice. AT&T’s automated answering service prompts your caller to leave a message, which you can check later at your convenience. Silencing the ringer: Sometimes you forget to power off your phone before meetings. When this happens to you, silence the ringer by pressing the Sleep/Wake button once. The iPhone stops ringing immediately. You can still answer the call for the normal period of time until it gets sent to voicemail. The iPhone’s Ring/Silent switch is located just above the volume controls on the top-left side of the phone. Toggle your iPhone between ring mode (all black) and silent mode (red dot) by flipping the switch. You can set whether the iPhone vibrates upon receiving a call in Settings ➤ Sounds, where you’ll find two vibrate settings: one for silent mode and another for ring mode.

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Managing Calls During conversations, your iPhone provides several ways to handle calls from muting your caller to handling call waiting (see Figure 3-3).

Figure 3-3. The midcall iPhone options allow you to mute the microphone, place a call on speaker, establish a conference call, and more. When you need control your conversation, here are the options available to you: Mute the microphone: Tap Mute to temporarily disable your microphone. You can still hear your caller, but your caller will not be able to hear you until you tap Mute a second time. When enabled, the Mute button turns blue. Use the keypad: Tap the Keypad icon to bring up the iPhone keypad during a call. The keypad lets you navigate through automated voice systems (e.g., “Press 1 for English”) or enter a PIN number. Tap Hide Keypad to return to the options shown in Figure 3-3. Use the speakerphone: Tap the Speaker icon once to switch sound output from the earpiece to the built-in iPhone speaker. Like Mute, the Speaker icon turns blue when enabled. Tap a second time to return sound to the earpiece.

■Note As described in Chapter 2, your iPhone uses its proximity sensor to determine when the phone is held up to your ear. This blanks the screen but has no effect on the speaker. If you’ve enabled the speakerphone and hold the iPhone up to your ear, it remains on speakerphone but with a black screen.

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Placing a call on hold: Tap the Hold icon to place your call on hold. While held, your caller will not be able to hear you or talk to you and the icon turns blue. To return to your call, tap Hold again. Conference calling: To add another party to your call, tap the Add Call icon. This places your current call on hold and allows you to place a new call. After establishing the new call, tap Merge Calls to add the new call to the on-hold call. If needed, repeat these hold, call, and merge actions to bring additional parties into the conference call. Accessing Contacts: Tap the Contacts icon to look up another contact during a call. Tapping a contact’s phone number is equivalent to tapping Add Call and then selecting that contact.

■Tip You can run normal iPhone applications during your calls. Click the Home button, and select an application to open. During calls, you will not be able to surf the Web using AT&T EDGE connections; you can only surf with WiFi until you’ve ended the call. To return to the call screen, tap the green bar that appears at the top each screen during an active call.

Handling Call Waiting: When receiving a new call during a conversation, the iPhone asks whether to switch to that new call. • To end your current call and answer the new one, tap the red End Call and Answer buttons. • Tap Ignore to continue with your current call. Alternatively, squeeze and hold the headset control for about 2 seconds and then release. Your iPhone beeps twice to confirm. • Tap Hold Call and Answer to place your conversation on hold and answer the incoming call. Once answered, you can merge calls into the call on hold. • Squeeze the headset control once to place the current call on hold and answer the incoming call. Squeeze again to toggle back and forth between the first call and the new one.

■Tip When using headphones, your iPhone rings through both the handset and the attached headset— very convenient when you’ve put the iPhone down with the headphones still plugged in.

Ending a call: Tap End Call to hang up. You can also end calls by squeezing the iPhone headset control once.

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■Tip Living in an age of quick-dial and disposable phone numbers, you might not always remember your iPhone’s number right off the bat. Fortunately, Apple makes it easy to look up. On the iPhone, select Settings ➤ Phone. Your number appears at the top of the settings pane: “My Number: 1 (555) 555-1212”. You can also check your iPhone’s telephone number by docking it to your computer. Select your iPhone from the Sources list (the blue column on the left side of the iTunes screen), and check the number on the Summary page. It appears toward the top of the page, just under the serial number.

Managing Favorites The Favorites screen offers one-touch access to your most often-used phone numbers. It can be a little counterintuitive to manage your favorites, because this one-tap behavior means you can’t select a contact and then edit it. When you tap a name, the iPhone immediately calls it. Instead, here are the ways you should use to keep your Favorites list in line: Adding a favorite: In the Favorites screen, tap the plus (+) button in the top-right corner. Select a contact and then a phone number from that contact. The iPhone adds the number to Favorites and returns you to the Favorites screen. Removing a favorite: Tap Edit to place Favorites into edit mode (see Figure 3-4). Red circles with minus signs appear next to each contact. To delete a contact, tap the red circle and then confirm by tapping Remove. To cancel without removing the selected favorite, tap anyplace else on the screen. Tap Done to leave edit mode. Reordering favorites: Tap Edit at the top-left corner of the Favorites screen. In addition to the red circles to the left of each name, notice the gray bars to the right of each name. Drag these handles to move names into new positions. Tap Done when finished.

■Tip Although you can edit contact information on your iPhone—as when you add a new phone number on the go—the best place to manage contacts is on your computer. Your iPhone updates its contact information every time you synchronize. In iTunes, make sure you’ve chosen to sync your contacts by checking the appropriate option in the iPhone Info tab.

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Figure 3-4. In Edit mode, tap the red buttons to delete contacts and use the gray drag handles to reorder contacts.

Using Voicemail When someone calls and you can’t or don’t answer, they’re transferred to AT&T’s voicemail system and prompted to leave a message. Your iPhone’s visual voicemail allows you to see a list of messages that have been left for you, where you can select which ones you want to hear.

Setting Up Your Voicemail Passcode The first time you enter the Voicemail screen, your iPhone prompts you to enter a new voicemail passcode (PIN). Select a number you will remember and make a note of it some place secure and private, i.e., not in your wallet or on a stick-it note attached to your computer. To change your passcode at a later date, go to Settings ➤ Phone, and tap Change Voicemail Password. The iPhone prompts you for the current passcode. Enter it, and tap Done. Then enter the new passcode, and tap Done. To confirm the new passcode, enter it one more time, and tap Done.

■Tip Advanced iPhone users should note that the Settings ➤ Phone screen also allows you to specify a SIM PIN. This number locks your SIM card, so it can’t be used in other phones. When enabled, you must enter the SIM passcode every time you power on your iPhone.

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Choosing Your Greeting To set the message that plays when AT&T transfers a call to voicemail, tap Greeting at the topleft of the Voicemail screen. Select Default to use the standard AT&T message or tap Custom to record a greeting as follows: tap Record; speak your message; tap Stop. You can review your recording by tapping Play and save it by tapping Save.

Managing Voicemail Messages The small red number that appears on the green Phone icon on your Home screen indicates the combined number of accumulated missed calls and voicemails. When you tap the icon and enter the Phone application, these numbers break down individually, as shown in Figure 3-1. Tap the Voicemail icon to open the Voicemail screen and see your message list (Figure 3-5).

Figure 3-5. The Voicemail screen lists your messages. To play back a message, select it and tap the Play button to the left of the name. From the Voicemail screen, you can perform the following functions: Toggling the speaker: By default, voicemail audio plays back through the iPhone’s earpiece. Tap the Speaker button to play back audio through the iPhone’s built-in speaker system instead. It turns a brighter, lighter blue when enabled. Tap again to redirect audio back to the earpiece. Playing messages: To listen to voicemail, select a message, and tap the Play button that appears to the left of the contact name, as shown in Figure 3-5. The button switches to a two-lined Pause indicator, which you can tap again to pause playback. You also can rewind and fast-forward by adjusting the playhead on the scrubber bar that appears just above the Call Back and Delete buttons.

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Removing voicemail: Tap Delete to remove the currently selected message. The iPhone moves that item into its Deleted Messages list. To undelete, select Deleted Messages, tap the item you want to restore, and tap Undelete. Permanently remove deleted voicemail by tapping Clear All in the Deleted Messages list. When the iPhone prompts you, confirm by tapping Clear All again. Reviewing contact information: The Disclose button at the right of each message links to the informational page for that contact. If you haven’t assigned a phone number to a contact, use this page to add the selected number to an existing contact or to create a new contact for the number. Tap the Voicemail button in the upper left corner to return to the Voicemail screen. Returning a call: Select any message from the list, and tap Call Back to return the call.

Accessing Voicemail Files If you’re an advanced user, you’ll want to know that the iPhone stores your Voicemail (and your custom greeting) in /private/var/root/Library/Voicemail. Each message uses the adaptive multirate compression (AMR) format and is numbered in order of receipt (i.e., 1.amr, 2.amr, 3.amr). If you’ve hacked your iPhone to have access to the Unix shell, you can e-mail these files to yourself using a third-party utility like sendFileByMail. It’s part of the Erica Utilities package.

Sending Voicemail Indirectly Uncover your AT&T message center phone number by opening the Phone application. Tap Keypad, enter *#61# (i.e., star, pound, 6, 1, pound), and tap Call. The iPhone responds with “Please wait”. After a few seconds, the screen updates with overlaid text. One message will read, “Setting interrogation Succeeded. Voice Call Forwarding When Unanswered Forwards to” followed by a number. This number is the AT&T voice-messaging center. When you call this number, AT&T welcomes you and asks you to enter a ten-digit phone number. By entering the phone number for your iPhone, it’s as if you’d dialed the iPhone directly. You hear the greeting you’ve set and can leave a message for your iPhone.

Managing Ringtones and Other iPhone Alerts The Sounds pane (Settings ➤ Sounds) allows you to choose how your iPhone responds to incoming calls and other events. Here, you can both set the volume of the ringtone and choose which ringtone to play when calls arrive. To switch to a new sound, tap Ringtone, and choose any of the sounds listed. The iPhone plays it back for you to hear. When you’re satisfied with your selection, tap Sounds to set the ringtone and return to the previous screen.

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■Note In addition to setting ringtones, the Sounds pane allows you to choose whether to play sounds for new voicemail, new text messages, new mail, sent mail, calendar alerts, locking your iPhone, and keyboard clicks.

The iPhone allows you to assign custom ringtones to individual contacts. This allows you to instantly know which contact is calling: a happy song for your spouse or an alarm for your boss (or vice versa, depending on how much you like your job). Choose Phone ➤ Contacts, and select a contact. Tap Edit. Scroll down the contact information page, and tap Assign Ringtone. Select a ringtone, and tap Info to select that sound, or select None to use the default ringtone for this contact. Despite the confusing name, the Info button confirms your selection and returns to the Info page.

Adding Custom Ringtones The iPhone uses m4a audio files (AAC format) as ringtones. The hard part involves transferring the data to your iPhone. Third-party applications such as Ambrosia Software’s iToner make this simple, even with recent Apple firmware.

■Tip Ringtones are stored in the /var/root/Media/iTunes_Control/Ringtones folder on your iPhone. If you’d like to use songs from your iPhone music library as ringtones, check out the SendSong application, available via Installer.app.

Advanced Phone Preferences The Phone Settings pane (Settings ➤ Phone) allows you to enable and disable several key features including call forwarding, call waiting, and caller ID (i.e., showing your caller ID information to other cell phones). Each of these preferences leads to a toggle switch, which selects whether the feature is enabled or not. In addition, the Call Forwarding setting lets you specify which number to forward calls to when the feature is in use. Choosing to hide your Caller ID means that others will not be able to see either your name or phone number when you call them or answer their calls.

■Tip The Settings ➤ Phone pane allows you enable iPhone use with a teletype machine. To use a TTY system with your iPhone, you must purchase a separate iPhone TTY adapter cable at the online Apple Store.

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iPhone Codes Every phone has a “secret” vocabulary, codes that you can type into the number pad that produce backdoor access to phone information. To use these codes, open the Phone application, and tap Keypad. Next, enter the codes exactly as stated, including any stars and pound signs. Tap Call after entering the code. The iPhone implements a large subset of the standard GSM service codes as well as a number of AT&T-specific ones. Here are is sampling of the codes you can use on your iPhone. To learn more, Google for GSM codes.

Basic iPhone Information Use these shortcuts to view information about your iPhone’s core functionality: *3001#12345#*: Enter Field mode. Field mode reveals many of the inner settings of your iPhone, specifically up-to-date network and cell information. *#06#: Displays your iPhone IMEI, the unique identifier for your cell phone hardware. (No need to tap Call.) Together with your SIM information, it identifies you to the provider network.

Service Shortcuts These shortcuts provide quick access to information about your account: *225#: Bill balance. (Postpaid service only; the acronym is BAL for balance.) *777#: Review account balance for prepaid iPhones on the GoPhone plan. *646#: Check remaining minutes. (Postpaid service only; the acronym is MIN for minutes.) *3282#: Check your data usage. (Postpaid service only; the acronym is DATA.) *729: Make a payment. (The acronym is PAY.) 611: Connect to customer service.

iPhone Call Settings The following codes use a *#number# pattern to verify the current settings for a feature. Other patterns exist for activating and deactivating features, but I do not recommend using those advanced setting patterns unless you really know what you’re doing. You can find the set/unset patterns by searching the Internet for GSM codes. *#21#: Call forward settings. You’ll see whether you have voice, data, fax, SMS, sync, async, packet access, and pad access call forwarding enabled or disabled. *#30#: Incoming caller ID settings. This option displays whether you use caller ID on incoming calls.

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*#31#: Outgoing caller ID settings. This option sets whether you send your caller ID out to others. *#76#: Incoming presentation settings. Check whether the incoming connected line presentation is enabled or not. *#77#: Outgoing presentation settings. Check whether the outgoing connected line presentation is enabled or not. *#43#: Call waiting settings. Displays the call waiting status for voice, data, fax, SMS, sync data, async data, packet access, and pad access. Each item is either enabled or disabled. *#61#: Shows the number for voice call forwarding when a call is unanswered. Also shows the options for data, fax, SMS, sync, async, packet access, and pad access. *#62#: Just like the previous, except for no-service rather than no-answer situations. *#67#: Check the number for call forwarding when the iPhone is busy. *#33#: Check all the usual suspects (voice, data, fax, SMS, etc.) to see whether barring is enabled or disabled for outgoing calls.

Summary They don’t call it an iPhone for nothing. This chapter has introduced the “phone” part of the iPhone. In it, you have read about placing calls, receiving calls, and managing your iPhone contacts. You’ve learned about some of the ways to access and control calling features, and you’ve seen a few hacks like adding ringtones and using GSM codes. Before you go away, here are a few key points that you may want to remember about making calls with the iPhone: • AT&T is the sole U.S. iPhone provider. The iPhone is locked to the AT&T service. If you don’t receive good local AT&T reception, you may want to consider other cell phone options. • It takes only a few seconds to get acquainted with many of the advanced iPhone calling features like multiway conference calling. If you’re unsure how to proceed, just look at the menus on the iPhone screen. They are clear, explicit, and indicate what you need to do next. • Although Apple’s official policy is that third-party ringtones aren’t allowed, it’s easy to purchase an inexpensive installer application and add those ringtones to your iPhone. You may have to reinstall ringtones after iPhone firmware upgrades. • Many of the iPhone code shortcuts are both safe and convenient to use. Check your balance or your minutes directly from your iPhone without fear.

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iPhone Messaging Y

our iPhone supports text messaging. That’s no surprise. Nearly every cell phone sold today supports text messaging. Even my cheap, prepaid “disposable” cell phone does. What you might not know is that you can also use your iPhone for AIM-style instant messaging and Internet chats as well—unofficially, of course. Apple doesn’t directly support these features. You might have also heard that the iPhone doesn’t support multimedia messaging, the technology that lets you send and receive photos, sound, and formatted text. You actually can send and receive this kind of data with your iPhone—although not the way you expect. In this chapter, you’re about to discover lots of creative ways to chat using your iPhone and work around Apple’s messaging limitations.

Kinds of Chats Messaging allows you to communicate instantly with colleagues and friends. It brings people closer together without relying on the immediacy of a phone call. Several big players dominate the messaging world: e-mail, SMS, MMS, IM, and IRC. If these names already sound familiar to you, feel free to skip to the next page. If not, don’t let the acronyms dampen your enthusiasm. You are probably already familiar with these technologies. Here’s a quick rundown: SMS: SMS stands for Short Message Service. It’s the feature that most people call text messaging. With it, you can send short messages from one phone to another. It lets you carry on conversations without placing a voice-based call. The iPhone fully supports SMS messaging, and it’s the most common way to conduct iPhone chats. MMS: MMS is the multimedia version of SMS; it stands for Multimedia Messaging Service. MMS messages can include audio, video, and images, and text can be formatted to include multiple fonts as well as italics and boldface. The iPhone does not support MMS, at least at this time. For most people, that’s no big deal. iPhone e-mail sends and receives pictures, documents, mixed fonts, and supports many multimedia items. The Camera and Photos applications let you snap a picture and instantly e-mail it on the go. For others, the lack of proper MMS is a deal breaker. When it comes to MMS, the iPhone provides more workarounds than it does direct solutions.

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■Note At this time, the iPhone discards any MMS messages it receives. You do not receive a warning or notification. It just gets ignored.

IM: IM means instant messaging. It’s a way to communicate in real time by typing text. If you use AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, or iChat, you’re using IM. Pretty much everyone expected Apple to include a mobile version of iChat on the iPhone. Pretty much everyone was disappointed. Apple did not include mobile iChat in its first iPhone release, but that’s OK. Read on further in this chapter for ways to get around this limitation by using IMenabling web sites and third-party applications. The news is pretty good on the iPhone IM front. IRC: Internet Relay Chat is relatively ancient (1988) messaging technology that’s still going strong. You can find IRC clients for nearly every operating system on earth. As with instant messaging, Apple did not directly include an IRC client for iPhone and, as with instant messaging, third-party developers are filling the IRC gap.

SMS Costs SMS messages are expensive. If you like to chat, SMS is probably the most expensive way to do it. The details vary by plan. Many standard iPhone plans include 200 SMS messages per month. That’s not a lot for frequent texters. When you sign up for a contract-free postpaid GoPhone plan, SMS texts are charged against your account balance, typically 1 minute per SMS. Consider how quickly that goes when your entire monthly allotment is just 200 minutes. What’s more, expect to be charged for both incoming and outgoing texts. With SMS, there are no non-AT&T freebies. You’ll be charged against your SMS message balance whether you’re texting a friend, receiving an automated SMS alert, or (if you’re into reality TV) when you text your vote to American Idol. It’s staggeringly easy to run through those 200 base messages very, very quickly. Many plans allow you to add-on text messages as a feature pack. At the time of this writing, the going rate is $5 for another 200 texts per month or $20 for unlimited monthly texting ($20 for 3,000 texts for prepaid GoPhone plans). With a family plan, you can add unlimited messaging for a flat $29.99 per month, regardless of the number of phones. As phone deals come and go, you’ll want to shop through AT&T’s plan offerings to find the best SMS deals at the time you sign up.

■Note If you’ve hacked your phone to use an AT&T non-iPhone SIM, your SMS costs may change as well. Current SMS GoPhone feature packages include $5 for 200 texts and $20 for 3,000 texts. To learn more about using AT&T SIMs in your iPhone, Google for iASign.

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Checking Your Reception Text messaging uses your local cell network. As a rule, if you can talk, you can text. That holds true even when you have no access to EDGE or WiFi network data. SMS messaging uses the same technology used to place phone calls. Check the bars at the top-left corner of your iPhone. The more bars you see, the better your coverage is. If you see no bars or the words No Service, you won’t be able to place calls, and you won’t be able to send or receive texts. Should this happen, try moving toward a window or stepping outdoors. Hills and trees may also interfere. See Chapter 3 for more information about cell phone connectivity and enhancing your reception. Keep in mind that you cannot text message while Airplane Mode is enabled. Review your current Airplane Mode setting by selecting Settings from the Home screen. Make sure Airplane Mode is set to OFF.

■Tip Airplane Mode allows you to use your iPhone without its cellular functions. Enabling Airplane Mode works as an off switch for cellular connection. It is, as its name suggests, a way to keep using your iPhone on airplanes without interfering with flight instrumentation.

Getting Started with the Text SMS Application Tap the green Text icon at the top-left of your Home screen to open the Text application. This icon contains a white text bubble labeled SMS. Sometimes it displays a red circle with a number in it (see Figure 4-1). This number indicates the number of unread text messages you have received.

Figure 4-1. The red circle sometimes found on the Text icon indicates how many text messages you have received but not yet read. Tapping the Text icon opens the SMS application and places you in the Text Messages screen where you can review existing texts and send new ones (see Figure 4-2).

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Figure 4-2. The main Text Messaging screen displays your current conversations as a list. The Text Messaging screen allows you to edit messages (using the Edit button in the topleft corner) and to create new messages (using the Compose button in the top-right corner). Blue dots indicate unread messages. The number of unread messages also appears in parentheses at the top of screen.

■Tip SMS messages are limited to 160 characters each. Your iPhone is smart enough to break longer messages up as needed.

Creating a New Message To write a new message, tap the compose message button at the top-right of the Text Messages screen. This button looks like a square with a pencil in it (see Figure 4-2). When tapped, a New Message screen appears (see Figure 4-3). This screen allows you to address, compose, and send your message.

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■Tip You can also start a new text message conversation directly from any contact’s Info page. Scroll to the bottom of the screen, and tap Text Message.

Figure 4-3. The New Message screen allows you to address, compose, and send your message. Start by tapping in the To field. You can use the keyboard to enter the phone number you want to text (e.g., 5055551212), or you can enter a few letters of a contact name (tap the plus button next to the To field to open your address book). Since text messages are specifically tied to phone numbers, the iPhone lists each contact number separately (e.g., Jane Doe home, Jane Doe work, Jane Doe mobile). After entering the To information, tap in the message field just above the keyboard. Enter the text you want to deliver, and tap Send. A progress indicator appears, tracking as your message gets sent. It may take a few seconds for the message to arrive.

■Note From the iPhone side, you receive no confirmation when messages are either delayed or received. When a recipient’s phone is off, messages get stored for later. Messages arrive when the phone powers back on. This may take hours or days to happen, depending on your recipient’s phone use habits.

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Conversations The iPhone lists organizes text messages as conversations. All your messages back and forth with Jane Doe or John Appleseed, for example, get sorted into conversation threads. Each thread depends on the contact number used (see Figure 4-4). Be aware that although this screen has a strong iChat AV look, it’s not based on iChat at all. iChat offers free peer-to-peer messaging. You pay for each SMS message you send.

Figure 4-4. The iPhone stores text messages as conversation threads, one thread per contact. View all the back and forth talk with each contact on separate screens.

Managing a Conversation Conversation screens allow you to view each discussion separately. You might carry on one conversation with, for example, John Appleseed, another with Beth Haystack. Figure 4-4 shows an ongoing conversation with Jane Doe; you can see her name at the top. The iPhone labels each screen with either the name (preferred) or contact number (when the iPhone can’t find a name). This depends on the available address book information. Use conversation screens to carry on your discussions over time. As you send and receive your messages, the conversation grows. From any conversation screen, you can perform the following actions: Reply to a message: Enter message text into the field at the bottom of your screen, and tap Send to send it to your correspondent. You need not wait for the other person to reply to you before texting again. Feel free to send several messages in a row.

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Clear out messages: Tap Clear in the top-right corner to clear the screen when your conversation gets too long for comfortable viewing and scrolling. Call your correspondent: Tap the Call button in the top-left corner to place a voice call back to your contact. This can be quicker (and cheaper) than carrying on extended SMS conversations when you’re both available at the same time. View contact information: Tap Contact Info to view your contact’s iPhone information screen. Return to the application by tapping Text Message. Go back to the Messages screen: The Messages button returns you to the main Text Messages screen. That’s the screen that lists all ongoing conversations. Tap any contact name to pop back to the current conversation. Figure 4-2 shows the Messages screen with a couple of ongoing conversations, including this one with Jane Doe.

■Tip On the Macintosh, the iPhone backs up your personal data (including SMS messages) into the ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup folder. The .mdbackup files found in these

folders are actually encoded SQLite3 databases. Third-party utilities allow you to extract your backup databases and review them from your favorite SQL browsing application. Google for mdbackup extraction.

Adding a Contact You don’t have to laboriously enter a phone number each time you start a new conversation. Contact numbers and contact names ease your texting life. Here’s a quick review on adding a contact to your address book on-the-go: 1. Press Home to return to the Home screen. 2. Tap Phone to enter the Phone application. 3. Tap the Contacts icon. 4. Tap the plus (+) button at the top-right of the All Contacts screen. 5. Tap the First Last field. 6. Enter a First name and optionally a Last name and Company name. Make sure to tap Save and not Cancel to continue. 7. Tap Add new Phone. 8. Enter a phone number. 9. The default number type is mobile. To change this, tap mobile, and select a new type (home, work, main, other, etc.) from the displayed list. Selecting a type automatically returns you to the Edit Phone screen. 10. Tap Save to continue. Again, make sure you do not tap Cancel.

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11. Tap Save a third and final time. The iPhone saves your new contact. 12. Tap Home to return to the home page, and Text to return to the SMS application.

■Note When you send messages, the person who receives your text must use an SMS-capable phone. Although that’s pretty universal these days, you might want to ask first. Since customers in the United States pay for both incoming and outgoing texts, it’s just courtesy to check in advance. Some people request that their provider disable messaging for various reasons—to avoid SMS spam, to put a rein on their teen, or to limit their monthly costs.

Using the Text Messages Screen The Text Messages screen (see Figure 4-2) provides an overview of your message threads, allowing you to review and manage ongoing conversations. Those blue dots next to contact names indicate unread text messages, and the total number of unread messages appears at the top of the screen in parentheses. Here are a few ways to conveniently manage your text messages: • Tap any name to open that contact’s conversation thread. Tap Messages to return to the Text Messages screen. • Tap the Compose button to create new conversations. After sending the first message, a new thread appears in your Text Messages list. Tap it to view and track this new discussion thread. • The Edit button enters edit mode, allowing you to organize your conversations. After tapping Edit, you can tap the red delete dot next to each name. A red Delete button appears. Tap it to confirm deletion or tap anywhere else on the screen to cancel and keep the selected message thread. Tap Done to leave Edit mode.

■Tip You don’t actually have to enter Edit mode to delete conversations. Simply swipe your finger across any contact name to make the Delete button appear. Tap Delete to confirm or tap anywhere else to cancel.

Enabling and Disabling SMS Alerts The Settings ➤Sounds screen allows you to enable or disable New Text Message alerts. When disabled, you’ll still be able to receive text messages but your iPhone will not buzz and ring at their arrival. This can prove to be a lifesaver while carrying on a back and forth conversation, keeping you safe from a thousand little annoying sounds, especially during meetings.

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Three Ways iPhone SMS Is Better Than Any Other SMS When it comes to texting, the iPhone offers several advantages over the rest of the field. First, there’s the keyboard. The iPhone keyboard is far easier to use than any other cell phone keyboard I’ve ever tried. It makes it simple to type and edit messages. For years, teenagers have been wearing their fingers to a nub texting each other. Texting on standard cell phones is hard work. Because of this, an entire language of texting shorthand has sprung up from lol (laughing out loud) to pos (parents are watching over my shoulder) to kthxbai (OK, thank you, good bye). The idea is to keep everything short and easy to type. Unfortunately, clarity is sacrificed to ease of typing. The iPhone brings simple typing back and allows you to properly say “thank you,” instead of “ty” or “thx.”

■Note If you’re new to texting and, especially, if your text partner is used to cell phone keys, you might want to acquaint yourself with keypress-saving shorthand. They’re likely to come up with experienced texters. Googling for text message abbreviations may help.

Second, the iPhone remembers conversations. You can easily see entire text conversations on a single screen. The iPhone organizes messages by sender, not by date or time. This means that messages from one person, even messages that are separated by hours or days, are grouped together into one easy-to-read presentation. Third, the iPhone makes it easy to do all the stuff connected with texting that should be connected with texting—like calling the person back directly or updating your calendar when someone mentions meeting you for dinner. Jump out of the text program (tap Home), pop over to your calendar, and then return exactly where you left off. On the down side, the iPhone does not support multiperson texting, multimedia texting, or free data-based mobile iChat. Bad Apple.

Basic Workarounds If you’re used to MMS and want to experience the same kind of full-featured multimedia sharing on the iPhone, here are a few workarounds to consider: • Instead of multiperson texting, send a group e-mail. • Instead of multimedia texting, use iPhone mail to read formatted text with attachments. • Instead of a mobile version of iChat, point Safari to http://www.meebo.com or hack your phone to use a mobile IM client like ApolloIM.

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Sending Messages by E-mail Save a few cents by using your iPhone e-mail system. You can send (free) text messages by taking advantage of SMS e-mail gateways. Most carriers now allow people without cell phones— and people who’d just rather not use their SMS allotment—to send text messages to their customers by forwarding e-mails sent to a special address. These messages arrive just like any other text, although on the iPhone at least, the From identification will look uglier than you might like. Figure 4-2 shows an SMS text sent from Gmail, complete with sender (Captain Obvious) and subject (Mom arrives Tuesday at 5:00 PM).

■Note When you receive an e-mail-originated text on your iPhone and you respond to it using SMS, your response may not get forwarded to the sender’s e-mail account.

Carrier SMS Gateway Addresses For your reference, Table 4-1 lists the e-mail gateways for several major carriers. Each message must be addressed to a phone number at a particular carrier. Substitute the real number you’ll use into the addresses (e.g., [email protected]). If you don’t see an SMS gateway listed, Google for that carrier and SMS e-mail.

■Tip Using SMS e-mail gateways allows you to text internationally, which can be handy when your recipient does not have access to cell-phone-based e-mail.

Table 4-1. Carriers and Their SMS Gateways

Carrier

SMS Gateways

Notes

AT&T and Cingular

[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

MMS messages sent to [email protected] will not arrive at iPhones. The iPhone does not support MMS messaging

Canadian

Bell Mobility

[email protected]

Bell Atlantic

[email protected]

Bell South

[email protected] [email protected]

Boost

[email protected]

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Carrier

SMS Gateways

Notes

Cellular One

[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

Some addresses vary by region of the country

Comcast

[email protected]

Midwest Wireless

[email protected]

Nextel

[email protected] [email protected]

Qwest

[email protected]

Rogers

[email protected]

Sprint

[email protected] [email protected]

T-Mobile

[email protected] [email protected]

US Cellular

[email protected] [email protected]

Verizon

[email protected]

Virgin Mobile

[email protected] [email protected]

Canadian

Sending Text Messages To and From a PC-Based Chat Most chat programs, including Skype, iChat AV, and AOL instant messenger, can be set up to forward instant messages to your iPhone when you’re away from your PC. Unfortunately, there’s no single silver bullet to make this happen; the method varies by program. With Skype, for example, you need to install third-party software like Skylook for Windows (http://skylook.biz). With AIM, you sign up at the Mobile AIM site (mymobile.aol.com) to have messages forwarded to your cell when you’re away from your computer. You specify when and how you want your messages to forward. On the Macintosh front, iChat AV allows you to initiate SMS sessions with your iPhone. Select File ➤New Chat with Person (Command+Shift+N), and enter the number you want to text to, starting with a plus sign followed by 1 (e.g., to text 212-555-1212, you’d enter +12125551212). Click OK. A new “Chat with” window opens. Enter the message you want to text, and press return. This establishes the new SMS conversation. From the iPhone, you can reply to this message, and message back and forth just as if you were both chatting in iChat AV. It still costs normal SMS rates. At about $.15 per message, that gets expensive fast.

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Sending a Message from the iPhone to AIM Starting a text message session from your iPhone to an iChat AV user involves a little more work. You need to text 265010. Include the screen name followed by a colon followed by the text message itself (e.g., johnappleseed:Hi John, how’s it doing?). This message format takes advantage of SMS/AIM integration. When you send off this message, it appears on your contact’s IM screen, just as if you’d typed it from AIM or iChat on your own computer. The message identifies itself as being sent from the number of your cell phone. So don’t expect the message to show up as from Jane Doe. It’s going to look like, for example, 2125551212. Hopefully, your correspondent will recognize the number, but it won’t hurt for you to say, “Hi John. This is Jane. I’m texting you from my iPhone.” Figure 4-5 shows SMS/AIM integration in action. This functionality allows you to access many AIM features remotely from your cell phone. Table 4-2 shows the special AIM text numbers you can use from your iPhone.

Figure 4-5. On request, AIM sends you a listing of its SMS-controlled messaging features.

Table 4-2. AIM SMS Commands

Text Number

Service

265000

Sign onto AIM. Send your screen name (no spaces) followed by a space followed by your password.

265001

Sign off from AIM.

265002

Request a buddy list, including the name and status of each buddy.

265003

Add a buddy. Include the screen name as your message.

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Text Number

Service

265004

Remove a buddy. Include the screen name as your message.

265005

Get information about a buddy. Include the screen name as your message.

265006

Request an alert when a buddy comes online. Include the screen name as your message.

265007

Block a buddy. Include the screen name as your message.

265008

Unblock a buddy. Include the screen name as your message.

265009

Send a message to a buddy using your personal screen name. Specify the name you want to send to, a colon, then the message.

265010

Send a message to a buddy using your phone number. Specify the name you want to send to, a colon, then the message.

265011

Toggle your status to or from Away.

265018

Request a list of the commands from this table. The command list arrives as a list in five separate messages.

265019

Request a welcome message about the mobile AIM service.

265020

(Incoming only) AIM uses this account to send you information.

265021

Unregister this phone number from the AIM mobile service.

265022

AIM Recycle. See http://mymobile.aol.com.

265100 and up

Assigned to your current buddy list.

265080–265089 and 265060–265069

Short codes, as specified in the Welcome message.

Subscribing to RSS Feeds RSS feeds provide up-to-date information streams from most popular web sites. When web sites update, their RSS feeds update as well. If your plan has enough SMS text messages to support it, you can subscribe to RSS information feeds on your iPhone. This lets you know whenever one of your favorite sites has updated with new articles. To sign up for a service like this, point your web browser to www.rssfwd.com. This web site allows you to send RSS feeds to any e-mail address. You can forward to your [email protected] SMS e-mail, or better yet, forward to a disposable Gmail account. That way, you can turn the forwarding on and off as desired. You’ll also find it a lot easier both to sign up for service (you’ll need to reply to the confirmation e-mail) and opt out.

Google SMS Requests Here’s another way to use SMS. As most iPhone users quickly discover, EDGE data connections are not nearly as reliable as normal cell phone service. If you regularly lose EDGE data when you’re inside restaurants and office buildings, take advantage of Google’s SMS service to retrieve information even when you can’t connect to EDGE (see Figure 4-6). Send a text to GOOGLE (466453) using one of the search types in Table 4-3.

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Table 4-3. Sample Google SMS Requests

Search Type

Example

Local yellow page search

pizza 80224

Weather

weather boynton beach

Glossary

define rambunctious

Sports

score cardinals

Movies

movies 30331

Stocks

stocks appl

Zip codes

zip code 72202

Directions

Directions houston tx to 72202

Flight information

flight aa 500

Area codes

area code 404

Products

price honda odyssey

Questions and answers

mozart birth year

Translate

translate hello in italian

General Google search

g iphone sadun

General conversions

1 us pint in liters

Currency conversions

6 GBP in USD

Help

help local

Figure 4-6. When you can’t use EDGE or WiFi, consider using Google SMS (http://google.com/sms). Receive instant search results on your iPhone using SMS text messages.

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Instant Messaging the Easy Way Meebo.com (see Figure 4-7) offers a simple, iPhone-friendly way to instant message from Safari. When you open the Meebo page from your iPhone, it automatically sends you to an iPhone-specific site. With Meebo, you can chat on AIM, MSN, Yahoo, GTalk, Jabber, and ICQ. Select the network service you want to use, enter your login name and password, and click Sign On. Meebo connects you to your buddy list and allows you to instant message your contacts. Meebo is slick, friendly, and easy to use. You can carry on several conversations at once. Tap the buddy icon, next to the message entry area, to return to your buddy screen. There, you can select a different buddy to pick up with. Meebo tracks unread messages. The count appears as a red bubble above the buddy icon. Meebo is nice enough that you’ll think twice about using SMS. In fact, just like with iChat, you can text via AIM to +1your-phone-number and carry on (free) SMS conversations with your buddies who aren’t lucky enough to own iPhones. You still use the iPhone keyboard. You view running logs of each conversation. Best of all? Free.

Figure 4-7. Meebo.com provides elegant, easy-to-use instant messaging formatted for your iPhone.

Real iPhone Instant Messaging Although Meebo.com reduces the need for native instant messaging, it doesn’t provide all the services you expect from modern IM software such as machine-to-machine file transfer. As

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with many other iPhone missing features, independent developers have stepped forward to fill this gap. At the time of this writing, Apollo IM was the first native instant messenger for the iPhone to provide file send and receive as well as other base IM features (see Figure 4-8). Inspired by iChat, it’s a simple client for the iPhone that provides both basic messaging and advanced features. Apollo IM was developed by Alex C. Schaefer of www.apolloapp.com.

■Note To install applications on your iPhone, you’ll need to use a third-party hacking or installation program such as AppTapp, iBrickr, or Breezy (just Google for them). These programs let you add items to your home screen and run them alongside Apple-supplied applications like Calculator and Stocks.

Figure 4-8. Apollo IM introduces native iPhone instant messaging along with file transfer features.

IRC on iPhone What AIM is to personal chats, IRC is to community chats. A technology that has been around since the late ’80s and still in wide use, IRC allows users to connect to live community forums. At the time of this writing, several IRC clients have been ported to the iPhone, including a mobile version of Colloquy.

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Summary Communication, whether by voice or text, is the essential motivation for any cell phone. Because of its flexible keyboard and SMS management software, the iPhone makes a particularly good texting host. Its full-fledged Safari web browser adds instant messaging to the mix and third-party developers are quickly bringing Internet chat to the table. Taken together, the iPhone provides a phenomenal text-messaging tool that you can use to connect to others. Here are a few points to take away with you from this chapter: • Of all the ways to communicate on the iPhone, SMS is probably the most expensive. If you are a habitual texter, look into the unlimited $20 options. It’s a pricey monthly fix, but it’s an economic choice if you use more than 200 or 400 texts per month and is a great deal for people with limited hearing. • The iPhone’s SMS conversations thread feature is not the same as iChat. It’s a fabulous SMS tool, but you can save a lot of money by pointing your iPhone browser to www.meebo.com and using instant messaging instead of SMS. • Most people in the United States have limited SMS allotments on their cell phone plans. Use carrier e-mail addresses to save unnecessary SMS charges, but be responsible. Don’t spam SMS accounts just because it’s free for you. • When EDGE and WiFi data cut out, so does Safari—along with Meebo and any other databased information. That’s a great time to use Google SMS to search for information.

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iPhone E-mail U

nlike many other smart phones, your iPhone can send, receive, and browse e-mail without getting weighed down with compromise. The iPhone doesn’t settle for cramped, odd presentations. Your e-mail looks the way it should, the way it would if you were reading it on your home computer. That’s because the iPhone provides an HTML-compatible rich text client. Mail looks better because the client is better. It’s made to work right. iPhone mail works with most industry-standard e-mail systems. With it, you can send and receive photos, view Excel spreadsheets and PDF and Word documents, manage your accounts, and more. This chapter will introduce you to many features of the iPhone Mail application. You’ll discover how to set up and use your iPhone with new and existing e-mail accounts. You’ll learn how to manage your mail, how to compose new mail, and how to get the most out of the iPhone’s e-mail settings. If you have questions about using mail with your iPhone, this chapter is for you.

Compatibility iPhone Mail is surprisingly compatible. It works with most major e-mail providers, including Gmail, AOL, Earthlink, and Comcast. This high level of provider support is due to the iPhone’s protocol support. The iPhone understands the most popular e-mail standards: namely POP, IMAP, SMTP, and—to a lesser extent—Microsoft Exchange. If you’re not already familiar with them, here’s a brief overview.

POP POP (a.k.a. POP3) stands for Post Office Protocol. It’s probably the most common e-mail retrieval protocol in use today. It allows mail clients to connect to a server like Gmail or AOL, retrieve messages and disconnect afterward. This usually happens on a set schedule, such as every ten minutes or every hour; you do not receive mail until your client connects to the server and requests that new mail. POP works by checking in with a server, downloading your e-mail, and optionally leaving the original copies of your e-mail on the server. This leave-on-server option works well with the iPhone, because when you’re on the go, you probably want to check your mail on the iPhone and retrieve it again, later, when you get back to the office or return home. POP also has its downsides. Unlike the newer and improved IMAP protocol, POP downloads entire messages all once, so it’s a bit of a space hog on portable devices. 71

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■Note The 3 in POP3 indicates the third version of the protocol standard; POP1 and POP2 are obsolete.

SMTP Mail clients use one protocol for receiving mail, another for sending mail. SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. Your iPhone uses SMTP to send outgoing messages. SMTP contacts a mail server and transmits whatever messages you’ve written along with any attachments including text, photos, and so forth. A common kind of SMTP, called SMTPAUTH (AUTH stands for authorization) allows you to send secure, authorized mail. You provide your account name and a password. Your mail client authenticates itself to the server and your e-mail gets sent on its way. The iPhone makes sending authenticated e-mail easy. Enter your account name and password into the Mail settings pane. Once you’ve done this, just use outgoing mail to send a note, share a web page’s URL, or pass along a photo that you’ve just snapped with the iPhone’s built-in camera. The iPhone takes care of all the protocol issues. You decide what to send and to whom to send it.

IMAP IMAP stands for Internet Message Access Protocol. Like POP3, it allows you to receive e-mail on the iPhone. It’s a newer and more flexible protocol. As the name suggests, IMAP was built around the Internet. It introduces advanced ways to connect to the mail server and use limited bandwidth (such as the iPhone’s relatively slow EDGE connections) in the most efficient way. The key to understanding IMAP is to recognize that messages are meant to live on the server rather than go through a retrieve-and-delete cycle. You manage your mail on the IMAP server. You read your mail on a client, like the iPhone. When you download mail with POP, you download entire messages. When you download mail with IMAP, you download headers instead, at least initially. Headers are the bit that tells you who the mail is from and what it’s about. You don’t download the main body of the message until you explicitly request it from the server. Since the header only occupies a fraction of the space of the message, you can download IMAP data a lot faster than you download POP. The rest of the message stays on the server until you’re ready to read it. The same thing goes for attachments. Say that someone sends you a 10MB video. It doesn’t get downloaded to your iPhone. It stays on the server until you’re ready to watch it on your home computer. If you’d downloaded the message with POP, the entire video would have transferred with the message. With IMAP, you get to read the message that came along with the video without having to download the video file itself. IMAP also offers a feature that’s called push e-mail. Geeks will tell you that technically speaking IMAP is not exactly the same thing as push e-mail. True push e-mail reaches out and tells your e-mail client whenever new mail arrives in the system. Instead, your iPhone IMAP client connects to and gently tickles the server until new mail arrives. This kind of always-on connection allows the iPhone to receive mail as soon as it arrives—or nearly as soon. In practice, there’s better intention there with push-style mail than actual results. Yahoo! offers free IMAP accounts for iPhone users. To sign up for an account, point your browser to http://mail.yahoo.com.

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■Note The Yahoo! iPhone IMAP service runs off http://imap.apple.mail.yahoo.com. You can connect with a normal web browser, but sadly, there’s nothing to see. The web site brushes you off with a “do you yahoo?” message. In other words: move along; nothing to see here if you’re not using an iPhone.

Microsoft Exchange Microsoft Exchange provides e-mail along with other enterprise-level services intended to support Outlook on the Web, personal computers, and mobile devices. The iPhone supports Exchange accounts that are configured for IMAP compatibility. If your provider hasn’t enabled IMAP for Exchange—and it is not enabled by default—you’re pretty much out of luck, at least using the Mail application. To configure Exchange, ask your mail administrator to enable the IMAP virtual server with the default ports for IMAP and to allow port access through the firewall. Some users have reported limited success setting up Virtual Private Network (VPN) accounts on their iPhones and retrieving their mail through IMAP, but this is the exception rather than the rule. iPhone and Exchange interoperability is limited at best. And that’s being kind. So what can you do to access your Exchange mail? If your Exchange provider has enabled Outlook Web Access (OWA), you can access your Exchange mail in iPhone Safari. Limitations aside, this works almost as well as running Outlook on Windows.

Adding Mail Accounts to iPhone You can add accounts to your iPhone in two ways. First, you can synchronize with iTunes. The first time you connect your iPhone to your computer and sync, iTunes searches your computer for mail accounts and adds them to your phone. Second, you can add accounts directly on your iPhone using Mail settings. It takes a few more steps than using iTunes, but it’s not at all complicated. Here are both ways to do this.

Adding Accounts with iTunes iTunes takes most of the work out of setting up your iPhone with your existing mail accounts. It looks through your computer at programs like Outlook Express and Apple Mail, finds account information, and offers to synchronize those account settings with your iPhone (see Figure 5-1). This makes it really easy to get your iPhone up to speed. A single sync puts these account details on your iPhone, and you’re pretty much ready to get going. To select which accounts to add, launch iTunes, and connect your iPhone. Select your iPhone from the source list—that’s the column at the left of the iTunes window; your iPhone appears under the DEVICES heading. The iTunes screen updates and displays a summary of your iPhone, including its name, phone number, the software version, and so forth. Locate the tabs at the top of this window, and select the Info tab. Scroll down the Info pane to Mail Accounts. The Mail Accounts settings area allows you to choose whether to synchronize your Mail accounts to your iPhone. Ensure the Sync selected Mail accounts check box is checked, and pick the accounts you want to use.

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Figure 5-1. The Mail accounts settings appear on the Info tab in iTunes. Select your iPhone device, click Info, and scroll down to find these settings. Next, scroll down further on the Info tab, below Mail Accounts and Web Browser, to the Advanced settings area (see Figure 5-2). As a rule, your iPhone won’t add new accounts until you force things. Unlike normal syncs that just update data, when you select to replace your Mail Accounts on your iPhone, iTunes updates your iPhone with all the accounts you just selected in Mail Accounts settings. Replacing mail accounts isn’t something you do all the time. You’ll want to do this account replacement with new iPhones that you want to initialize, when you’ve moved your iPhone’s home to a new computer, and after you’ve restored your iPhone’s firmware to factory settings. If you just want to add a new e-mail account, add it directly on your iPhone rather than using iTunes. It’s easier.

Figure 5-2. Use Advanced settings to replace Mail Accounts during the next sync. You can also choose to update Contacts, Calendars, and Bookmarks from this settings pane.

Adding Accounts from Your Phone It takes just a few steps to add a new account to your iPhone. It’s especially easy when you use one of the preferred providers, Yahoo! mail, Gmail, dotMac, or AOL. Here are the steps to take, whether you’re using a preferred provider or another provider who does not appear on the list: 1. From the Home screen, tap Settings, and navigate to Settings ➤ Mail. 2. Tap Add Account. 3. Select the kind of account you will use or tap Other if your provider is not listed (see Figure 5-3). If you are using Other, skip to step 6.

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Figure 5-3. When you use a preferred provider, the e-mail setup process is vastly simplified to entering a few items of information. Tap Other to set up e-mail with another provider. You’ll have to enter a little more information to get started.

Preferred Provider Setup Setting up account information for preferred providers is very easy. Your iPhone already knows how to contact the mail servers and which protocols they use. 4. Preferred providers require just four items of information, as shown in Figure 5-4. a. For Name, enter the name you want to appear in your From line, usually your full personal name. b. For Address, enter your full e-mail address (e.g., [email protected]). c. In the Password field, enter your password. Make sure to type carefully and slowly, and look at the key confirmations as you type. You will not be able to see the password itself as you type it. Try not to make mistakes. d. Finish by entering an account Description. Your iPhone uses the text you type into the Description line as a label in the Accounts list, so enter something meaningful, like Work Yahoo! Account or Home AOL. 5. Tap Save, and wait as the iPhone verifies your account information. You automatically return to the Mail settings, and you are done setting up your account.

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Other Providers Adding accounts from other providers requires a few more steps. Here’s how to customize your account information. Figure 5-4 shows the iPhone screen that allows you to add a new account from a nonstandard provider such as Comcast or Earthlink. 6. To get started, tap the button that describes the kind of e-mail account you’ll use: IMAP, POP, or Exchange.

Figure 5-4. When creating an account for a nonpreferred provider, you must enter all the account details. 7. Determine the incoming and outgoing e-mail servers for your provider. You’ll need this information to set up your account. Most providers offer web pages with this information, or you can call their technical support line. For example, my personal Earthlink account uses pop.mindspring.com for incoming mail and smtpauth.earthlink.net:587 for outgoing mail. Notice the colon and the number, which refers to the port number used by the mail server. Make sure you get a full host address, which may or may not include a port. 8. Enter the name you want to appear in your From line, usually your full personal name, into the Name field. This name appears in all your outgoing messages. For Address, enter your full e-mail address (e.g., [email protected]). Enter an account Description. Your iPhone uses the text you type into the Description line as a label in the Accounts list, so enter something meaningful, like Work Earthlink Account or Comcast from Home.

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9. In the Incoming Mail Server section, type the incoming mail server host address into Host Name. Enter your account address (e.g., [email protected]) into the User Name line. Type your password into the Password line. Make sure to type carefully and slowly, and look at the key confirmations as you type. You will not be able to see the password itself as you type it. 10. Repeat the previous step for the Outgoing Mail Server section, entering the outgoing host address for Host Name. For outgoing mail, the User Name and Password fields are optional. You’ll need them if your mail server uses authorized SMTP. 11. Tap Save, and wait as the iPhone verifies your account information. You will automatically return to Mail settings, and you are done setting up your account.

■Note By default, the iPhone will attempt to connect to a password-protected account using SSL, the secure socket layer. If this fails during the verification process, the iPhone prompts you to confirm whether it should try again without SSL. Feel free to agree.

Removing Accounts from iPhone To remove an account from your iPhone, go to Settings ➤ Mail, and tap one of the items in your Accounts list. Scroll all the way down to the bottom of the account screen, and tap Delete Account. To be safe, the iPhone prompts you to confirm account deletion. Tap Delete Account one more time to remove the account, or tap Cancel to leave the account alone. At times, you may want to disable an account without removing it from your iPhone. To do this, go to Settings ➤ Mail ➤ the name of the account. Locate the Account switch at the top of the screen. Set this from ON to OFF to disable the account, or from OFF to ON to re-enable it.

E-mail Checks and Other Basic Settings You’re ready to start using Mail, but there are just a few more steps you’ll want to take first. Navigate to Settings ➤ Mail, and scroll down to the Messages section (see Figure 5-5). Here, you’ll find preferences that control the way your iPhone checks for and displays mail. You’ll find that Mail works far more smoothly and predictably when you customize these settings before using your new accounts.

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Figure 5-5. The Mail pane contains many basic settings you’ll want to configure before using your mail accounts. Here is a rundown of the settings you’ll want to look over: Auto-Check: This setting determines how often your iPhone checks the server for new e-mail. There’s a tradeoff, of course. Checking consumes battery life, and checking less often means you might miss out on important messages—at least until the next check. Choose from Manual (no checks until you refresh your inbox in the Mail application), every 15 minutes, every 30 minutes, and every hour. Show: How many messages should the iPhone download and display at once? Choose from 25, 50, 75, 100, and 200 recent messages. Preview: Your inbox, which you can see in Figure 5-8, displays information about each message. It shows who sent the message, the time it was sent, the message subject, and a brief preview of the message itself. In addition to all this information, you choose how many lines to show. Choices are None (no message preview), 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 lines. The example in Figure 5-8 shows two lines per message.

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Minimum Font Size: My eyes are pretty bad. Perhaps yours are too. The iPhone lets you choose a minimum font size, so you can make sure text displays no smaller than what you can read. Choose from Small, Medium, Large, Extra Large, and Giant. I use Large. Show To/Cc Label: By default, your iPhone does not show the To or Cc lines from e-mail. The iPhone normally hides them to save screen space. If you want to override this behavior for your mail, switch this option from OFF to ON.

■Tip You can view the To and Cc lines even if you haven’t enabled this option. Tap Details to reveal the lines. Tap Hide to hide them again.

Ask Before Deleting: You might think that asking for confirmation before allowing the iPhone to delete a message is a great idea. When working your way through a hundred messages in your inbox, this idea quickly becomes less attractive. The iPhone allows you to delete e-mail without confirmation by default. If you want to add an extra layer of protection, switch this option on. Always Bcc Myself: Some mail services like Gmail and Yahoo always create copies of sent mail. Others do not. Enable this option to send a blind carbon copy to yourself when writing letters. The “blind” part of carbon copy means that you won’t be visibly added to the recipient list. When correspondents “reply to all,” you won’t (necessarily) receive multiple copies of those e-mails. Signature: By default, iPhones add “Sent from my iPhone” to all outgoing mail. To remove this tag, erase the text in this Signature. You can also customize this message or replace it entirely. Perhaps you might add contact information or a favorite quote. To do this, tap on the current signature. A keyboard appears and allows you to edit the text. After making your edits, tap Mail to return to the Settings ➤ Mail screen. Default Account: Choose the default account you want to use for sending mail. This applies only to non-Mail iPhone applications such as Safari or Photos. When you pass along a bookmark or a picture you’ve snapped, this option sets the account used to send that message.

Audible Mail Alerts This final pair of settings appear in Settings ➤ Sounds, not Settings ➤ Mail. New Mail: Choose whether you want to hear an audible alert (YES) or not (NO) when your iPhone receives new mail. If you’ve enabled Settings ➤ Sounds ➤ Ring ➤ Vibrate, your iPhone vibrates when it plays the new mail sound.

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Sent Mail: When enabled, this option plays a whoosh sound that indicates your e-mail has been successfully sent on its way to the server. It’s a good idea to leave this option enabled. Sometimes, it takes time for mail to get going. You won’t be able to send a new message until the first one has fully gone. By listening for the whoosh, you know when you’re ready to send the next message.

■Tip If you’ve hacked your iPhone to allow disk access, you can change the default new mail sound by replacing the mail-sent.aiff and new-mail.aiff sound samples found in /System/Library/ Frameworks/MessageUI.framework. Nothing says new mail quite like a chirpy “You’ve got mail!” Of course, nothing says new iPhone like tossing one across the room the five-hundredth time you hear that phrase.

Getting Started with iPhone Mail The iPhone Mail application is located on the Home screen on the bottom line, just to the right of the Phone application (see Figure 5-6). The icon is blue with clouds and a white envelope. Tap this icon to open the Mail application. As with the Phone and SMS applications, a red bubble appears to indicate the number of unread messages in your e-mail accounts.

Figure 5-6. A red bubble superimposed on the Mail icon indicates the count of unread messages across all your e-mail accounts. When you enter Mail for the first time (and after reboots), you’re greeted by the Accounts screen (see Figure 5-7). This screen lists every account you’ve added to your iPhone and the number of new messages for each account. Tap an account name to open any of the individual account screens. Return by tapping the Accounts back button at the top-left corner of that screen.

Mailboxes Each account screen presents one or more mailboxes, as shown in Figure 5-7. When a mailbox contains unread mail, a blue number appears to the right of that box. Tap a mailbox to open it and display the messages stored inside.

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Figure 5-7. Each mail account uses one or more mailboxes and folders. The account screen lists these, allowing you to access each with a single tap. Mailboxes types may include Inboxes, Drafts, and Trash, as well as others. Blue numbers indicate the number of unread messages in that mailbox. Unfortunately, you cannot create your own custom folders on the iPhone at this time. Each account may include some or many of the following standard mailboxes: Inbox: All new messages load into your inbox. You have an inbox for each account. Drafts: Messages that are written but not yet sent get saved to Drafts. Sent: When your mail account saves copies of outgoing mail, they’re placed in a Sent folder. Trash: The iPhone stores deleted mail in Trash folders. Use Settings ➤ Mail ➤ Account Name ➤ Advanced to decide if and when to remove deleted messages from Trash mailboxes. Other folders: Additional folders, such as the Bulk Mail folder shown in Figure 5-7, are a feature of the mail provider and not of iPhone. At this time, you cannot add new folders to an e-mail account from your phone.

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Using Mailboxes When viewing an account’s mailboxes, you can open a mailbox and view the messages stored inside by tapping the mailbox name. This links you to a new screen (see Figure 5-8) that displays the list of messages stored in that mailbox. From here, you can choose messages to display and manage your mailbox. Here are the actions you can take from this screen: View a Message: Tap an e-mail to open it for viewing. Refresh Mail: Tap the icon at the bottom-left of the screen. It looks like a semicircular arrow. When tapped, your iPhone contacts your mail provider and requests new mail. Compose new messages: Tap the icon on the bottom-right (a square with a pencil through it) to start writing a new message. Edit messages: Tap Edit to enter Edit mode. In Edit mode, you can tap the red circle next to any message to delete it. Confirm by tapping Delete, or tap anywhere else to cancel. Tap Done to leave Edit mode.

■Tip Edit mode is actually pretty useless, as you don’t need Edit mode to delete mail. Just swipe your finger through any message to instantly bring up the Delete button, or when displaying a message, tap the garbage pail at the bottom of the screen. Some people have trouble mastering the swipe at first—they open their messages instead of deleting them. Keep trying and persist. The swipe becomes second nature after a while.

Return to the mailbox list: Tap the back button at the top-left of the screen to return from this mailbox to your account screen. The button name varies, but it’s always shaped like a pentagon on its side, with the pointy bit facing left.

Figure 5-8. Blue dots indicate unread mail on this mailbox listing screen. Each message shows the recipient, the subject, and the date or time the message was sent. You control how many lines of text are shown for each message in Settings ➤ Mail ➤ Messages ➤ Preview.

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Viewing and Navigating Through Mail If you’re used to reading e-mail on a PocketPC or other portable device, the iPhone’s mailviewing capabilities comes as a welcome relief. Instead of arbitrary word wrapping, missing attachments and odd formatting, mail on the iPhone just looks . . . right. This being the iPhone, you can scroll up and down your letter—flicking if needed to move more quickly—and zoom in and out using all the standard pinching and tapping tricks described in Chapter 2. And, as with Safari, it’s not watered-down, odd-looking e-mail. It is fully leaded e-mail that behaves the way it ought. Sure, there are some missing features—you can’t add attachments at will, for example, and you can’t play back video files sent to you by mail—but iPhone mail viewing performs to a much higher standard than any other gadget I’ve used. Unfortunately, as Figure 5-9 shows, the mail-viewing screen is littered with a proliferation of buttons and unlabeled icons. Here’s a quick-and-dirty guide to your screen.

Figure 5-9. The message display screen offers many unlabeled icons for your mail management pleasure.

Bottom Icons The icons at the bottom of the message display screen, from left to right, are as follows: Refresh: The refresh button appears at the bottom-left of the screen and looks like a semicircular arrow. Tap this to request new mail from your provider.

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File This Message: The folder with a small down-arrow allows you to move messages from one mailbox to another. When tapped, the iPhone prompts you to “Move this message to a new mailbox”. Select the mailbox you want to transfer to and the iPhone rewards you with one of its most adorable animations. The message flies from one mailbox to the other. If you’d rather not transfer the message, tap Cancel instead. Garbage Can: Tap the small garbage can in the bottom center to delete the currently displayed message. The trash lid flips up; your animated message moves down into the can. It’s visually delightful. Your message moves from the Inbox (or whatever mailbox you’re displaying) to the Trash mailbox.

■Tip To undelete, navigate to Trash (Back, Back, Trash), select the deleted message, and file it back to the original mailbox.

Reply/Forward: The Reply/Forward icon appears just to the right of the Garbage Can icon. It looks like a backward-pointing arrow. Tap this, and a menu appears. Select Reply to reply to the currently displayed message, or tap Forward to pass it along to a new recipient. Compose: This right-most icon looks like a square with a pencil on it. Tap this to compose a new message.

Top Icons The icons at the top of the message display screen, from left to right, are as follows: Back button: Tap the Back button in the top-left corner to return from the message display to the mailbox screen. The button looks like a pentagon on its side, pointing left. The text inside the button varies according to the name of the mailbox. Message number display: This isn’t, strictly speaking, an icon. The iPhone displays the number of the current message at the top of the screen (e.g., 2 of 3). Next Message/Previous Message: These two buttons appear at the top-right of the screen. Tap the up triangle to move to the previous message in the current mailbox, and the down triangle to move to the next. Details/Hide: This button appears just below the Next Message arrow. Tap Display to reveal your message’s To and Cc lines. Tap Hide to hide them again.

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Mark as Unread: Appearing to the right of the date and time, the Mark as Unread button allows you to do exactly what the name implies. It restores the little blue dot to the message and updates the unread message count to include this message.

Embedded Links iPhone Mail supports embedded links that you can tap from within a message. These allow you to link to Safari and to place phone calls using the information from message text: Embedded URLs: When someone sends you an embedded URL, you can tap it to open it in Safari. Better yet, tap and hold that URL for a second or two. A bubble pops up showing a preview of where that URL leads—convenient when you don’t know (or trust) the party who sent you the message. To continue to Safari and open the URL, release your finger. To cancel, just drag your finger away until the preview bubble disappears. Phone Numbers: Mail is smart enough to recognize when someone has included phone numbers in a message. It underlines the number and displays it in blue—just like a normal URL link. To place a call, just tap the number.

Viewing Attachments iPhones support many e-mail attachment file formats including Word files (.doc, .docx), Excel spreadsheets (.xls), and PDF files. When a message arrives with an attachment, the iPhone shows you that the attachment is available (see Figure 5-10) and lets you choose whether or not to view it. If you choose to do so, tap the attachment, and wait for it to load in a new screen. After, tap Message to return to the message from the attachment viewer.

■Note Here is the full list of file formats that Apple supports at this time of writing: .c, .cpp, .diff, .doc, .docx, .h, .hpp, .htm, .html, .m, .mm, .patch, .pdf, .txt, .xls, and .xlsx. As of firmware version

1.1.1, the iPhone can now play most QuickTime audio formats. Unfortunately, for all that this feature is great and shiny and wonderful, you may encounter some problems. I find that attachments sometimes hang while opening. This is especially true of PDFs created by OS X’s Print to PDF feature. (What irony!) And I have had intermittent trouble opening and viewing .doc files. Sometimes, the formatting just gets wacky and hard to view for overly styled Word docs.

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Figure 5-10. When attachments appear in e-mail, tap to open them in a separate viewer. Newer iPhone firmware supports both landscape and portrait attachment viewing.

Sending Mail The iPhone offers many ways to send mail. Unfortunately, consistency is not a strong point here. You’d imagine Apple would have designed a single universally recognized compose e-mail button and placed it more-or-less in the same place for each application. You’d be wrong. Here’s a quick rundown of the most popular ways to ask your iPhone to create a new message across several programs: Compose button: The Compose button, which looks like a square with a pencil through it, appears at the bottom-right of many Mail screens (see Figure 5-10) and in the SMS Text application at the top-right of the screen. In the Mail application, it creates a new letter. In SMS, it creates a new message. Reply/Forward button: The Reply/Forward button appears just to the left of the Compose icon in Mail. Tap this to reply to a message or forward it on to another party. Envelope icon: In the Notes application, the envelope icon appears on the bottom of the page, to the left of the garbage can. Tap it to e-mail the current note. Use-For icon: The use-photo-for icon appears at the bottom left of the screen. It looks like a rectangle with an arrow jumping out of it—the arrow is basically a mirror of the Reply/Forward button. Tap this, and select Email Photo from the pop-up menu.

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Share button: You can share YouTube video and Safari URLs by e-mail. Tap the Share button on the Information page in YouTube and in the navigate-to-URL screen in Safari. To find this in Safari, tap the blue reveal button located to the right of the video name. In Safari, tap on the URL bar and then look up and to the left. Each of these (various, assorted, and inconsistent) methods requests Mail to open a new message, ready to be addressed, personalized, and sent.

Addressing E-mail When you reach the new message screen shown in Figure 5-11, you’re ready to address your message. Start by tapping either the To or Cc lines on the new message screen. The iPhone opens a keyboard so you can enter text. As you type, the iPhone searches its contacts list to match what you’re typing to the contacts in its list. Tap in a few letters until you see the name of the contact you want to use. Tap that contact and the iPhone automatically adds it to the field (To or Cc) you selected. You do not have to use an address from your contacts list. You can type in the full e-mail address (the iPhone helpfully provides you with the @ sign on the main keyboard for e-mail) and address your e-mail by hand. Also, it remembers the e-mail addresses you use. So the second time you type [email protected], the proper address pops up by the time you type a and l. As with normal contacts names, just tap an e-mail address to add it to your recipient list. To remove a recipient from the message, select one of the blue recipient bubbles—they’re labeled with a name or e-mail address—and tap backspace.

Figure 5-11. The New Message screen allows you to address and personalize your e-mail.

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Entering a Subject Tap the Subject line to move the cursor to that field. Use the keyboard to enter a meaningful subject for your message.

Editing the Message Tap in the message area to begin editing your message. A blinking cursor indicates this where the keyboard will enter text. Use the typing skills covered in Chapter 2 to type your message. Remember to use the spyglass trick to move the cursor if you need to back up and make corrections.

■Tip To remove an attached photo from e-mail, position the cursor right after the picture and tap backspace.

Saving a Draft At any time, you can take a break from editing a message and return to it later. To do this, tap Cancel. It’s at the top left of the message-entry screen. A pop-up menu appears. Tap Save to save the message for later, Don’t Save to abandon the message, or Cancel to return to the editing screen. When you choose Save, the iPhone creates a copy of your message in the Drafts (or sometimes Sent) mailbox for your default account. Return to that mailbox when it’s convenient to continue editing the message and/or to send it.

■Note You can set the default names for the Drafts, Sent, and Deleted mailboxes in Settings ➤ Mail ➤ the name of an account ➤ Advanced.

Sending E-mail When you are done addressing and composing your letter, you can send it on its way by tapping Send. If you haven’t disabled the feature, the iPhone alerts you with a whoosh sound to indicate that the message has been sent successfully to the outgoing mail server.

Summary iPhone’s Mail program removes many burdens associated with checking and responding to e-mail on a portable device. It provides a fully capable e-mail client that displays messages the way your senders intended you to view them. With its powerful attachment handling, the iPhone brings you one step closer to the ideal of bringing along your work or home computer

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in your pocket. Here are a few key points from this chapter that you might want to think about: • Although Mail attachments introduce occasional difficulties, the rest of the time they work really well. Make sure to use your full iPhone interaction vocabulary of touches, pinches, and so forth, to get the most out of viewing attachments. • It’s really easy to add preexisting mail accounts using iTunes, but it’s not at all difficult to add new ones using iPhone settings. • Remember and use the URL-preview trick. Make sure that e-mail links really will take you where you think you’re going. • Apple really messed up from a user interface usability perspective with its many ways to send e-mail. Make sure you know how to send messages in each application, because Apple forgot to provide a single universal solution.

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Browsing with Safari M

ore than any other application, the Safari web browser sets the iPhone apart from other PDAs. With it, you can view web pages just as their designers intended. Web sites look like web sites and not like approximations of web sites. Sure, there are still limitations; the lack of Flash support is one glaring example, as are the iPhone’s missing-in-action copy/paste and web page search functions. Yet when it comes to browsing, there’s nothing else like Safari out there in the handheld market. In this chapter, you’ll discover how to get the most from Safari with all its awesome fullbrowser powers. You’ll learn how to navigate to pages, manage bookmarks, and use both portrait and landscape orientation. You’ll also discover some great finger-tap shortcuts, useful Safari web sites, and handy bookmarklet utilities. Read on for all this and more.

Getting Started with iPhone Safari Tap the Safari application icon to launch the program. You’ll find it toward the bottom-right of the home screen, marked with a white compass on a blue background (see Figure 6-1). Once tapped, the Safari application opens a new window.

Figure 6-1. Launch Safari from the bottom bar on your Home screen.

■Note As you’ve read in earlier chapters, EDGE is the Internet service provided over cell phone lines. You cannot receive phone calls while using EDGE connections. Since Safari uses EDGE when you’re not near a WiFi hotspot, you need to keep this in mind. You can, however, receive calls when surfing the Internet with WiFi.

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Safari’s Browser Window Many elements on the Safari window may look familiar, especially to anyone experienced using web browsers. Familiar elements include the address bar, the reload button, and the history navigation arrows. Figure 6-2 shows a typical Safari browser window.

Figure 6-2. The Safari browser window displays many familiar features, including the address bar, reload button, and the history navigation buttons. Here are interactive elements you’ll find arranged around the screen and what they do: Add Bookmark button: Found just to the left of the address bar, this plus sign–shaped button adds the current page to your bookmark collection. You’ll read more about bookmark creation and management later in this chapter. Address bar: Use the address bar at the top-center of the Safari window to enter a new web address (URL). Reload button: The arrow bent in a semicircle at the top-right of the screen is the reload button. Tap it to refresh the current screen. Stop button: As a page loads, Safari replaces the reload button with a small “X” (you cannot see this in Figure 6-2). When you change your mind after navigating to a page, tap this. It stops the current page from loading any further.

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History buttons: The two triangles, facing left and right, navigate through your page history. When grayed out (as in Figure 6-2), you haven’t yet created a history. The arrows turn from gray to white once you start browsing, and you can move back and forth through your history to the previous and next page. Each page maintains its own history. You can’t use these buttons to go back to a page you were viewing in another window (use the Pages button to select another window). Bookmarks button: Tap the book-shaped icon to open your Bookmarks screen. Pages button: The button at the bottom-right that looks like two squares superimposed on one another allows you to open the page selection browser and select one of your Safari sessions. You can open up to eight browser windows at a time. With more than one session active, a number appears on this icon. It indicates how many sessions are in use.

■Note Although iPhone Safari allows you to browse the web in full resolution, some web sites detect that you’re surfing with an iPhone and (wrongly) present a lighter, mobile version of their web pages. This should change as the iPhone’s capabilities become better known and web sites become accustomed to receiving iPhone and iPod Touch visits.

Navigation Basics iPhone Safari lets you do all the normal things you expect to do in a browser. You can tap links and buttons. You can enter text into forms and so forth. In addition, Safari offers iPhonespecific features you won’t find on your home computer: tilting the iPhone on its side moves it from landscape to portrait view and back. The following how-tos guide you through Safari’s basic features.

Entering URLs Tap the address bar to open the URL-entry window (see Figure 6-3). The navigation section appears at the top of your screen, and a keyboard opens from below. Between these, the screen dims, and you can still see part of the page you were on. Tap the white URL field, and use the keyboard to enter a new URL. Apple provides both the forward slash (/) and a .com key to help you type but not a colon (:). Safari is smart enough to know about http://; you don’t have to type it each time. When you are done typing, tap Go, and Safari navigates to the address you’ve entered. To return to the browser screen without entering a new URL, tap Cancel instead. As you type, Safari matches your keystrokes to its existing collection of bookmarks. The space between the top of the keyboard and the bottom of the Google field turns white and displays a list of possible matches. To select one, just tap it. Safari automatically navigates to the selected URL. This matching ability is much more useful in portrait orientation than in landscape orientation. There’s more space to view matches.

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■Tip When you see a white “X” in a gray circle in a text entry field, you can tap it to clear the field.

Figure 6-3. The URL entry window allows you to enter the address that you want Safari to visit. The URL entry window allows you to do two more things. First, you can tap Share, found at the top-left of the screen. This creates a new Mail message and adds the URL from the address bar. Since this text field always defaults to the current page, you can easily e-mail web pages by tapping the address bar and then tapping Share.

■Note To share web pages, you must have at least one e-mail account set up on your iPhone.

For a second feature, the Google search bar appears just below the address field. It initially appears light gray, marked with a spyglass. Tap this to enter a term you wish to search for in Google. The field turns white; the address field turns gray, and the Go button switches to Google. Type in a word or two, and tap Google. Safari navigates to www.Google.com (no matter what page is currently displayed) and searches for that term. If you’d rather use Yahoo than Google, use Settings ➤ Safari to change your default search engine.

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Entering Text To edit the contents of any text entry other than the address bar, tap a text field. Safari opens a new text entry screen. Although this screen is superficially similar to Figure 6-3, it presents a few differences. These differences include a Done button, which you may tap after editing to return to the web page, and Previous and Next buttons that search for other text fields on your web page. These buttons let you fill out forms without having to go through tedious tap/edit/ Done cycles. Simply enter text, tap Next, enter more text, and so forth. To submit a form after you’ve entered all the text, tap Go or Search instead of Done. This is like pressing the Enter or Return key on a normal PC.

Following Links Hypertext links are used throughout the World Wide Web. Text links are marked with underlines and usually involve a color change from the main text. Image links are subtler, but they can also move you to a new location. Tap these links to navigate to new web pages or, for certain special links, to open a new e-mail, place a phone call, or view a map. When a link leads to an audio or video file that the iPhone understands, it will play back that file. Special links include mailto: (to create Mail messages), tel: (for phone calls), and automatic recognition of Google Maps URLs.

■Note Supported audio formats include AAC, M4A, M4B, M4P, MP3, WAV, and AIFF. Video formats include h.264 and MPEG-4. Check out www.Seeqpod.com for a great collection of iPhone-compatible audio content.

To preview a link’s address, touch and hold the link for a second or two. An address bubble appears next to the link (see Figure 6-4). To continue navigating to the link, remove your finger from the screen. To cancel, move your finger until the link bubble disappears and then remove your finger from the screen.

■Tip To detect image links on the screen, tap and hold an image. If they turn gray, they are links. If they remain at the same brightness, they’re just plain images.

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Figure 6-4. Touch and hold either an image or text link for a second or two to view the URL preview bubble shown here. This bubble reveals the link’s full URL and allows you to choose whether to continue following the link or to stop.

Changing Orientation One of the iPhone’s standout features is its flexible orientation support. When you turn your unit on its side, the iPhone flips its display to match, as you can see in Figure 6-5. A built-in sensor detects the iPhone’s tilt and adjusts the display. Tilt back to vertical, and the iPhone returns to portrait orientation. It takes just a second for the iPhone to detect the orientation change and to update the display. The iPhone’s landscape view offers a relatively wider display. This is particularly good for side-to-side tasks like reading book-width text. The wider screen allows you to use bigger fonts and view wider columns without scrolling sideways. The portrait view provides a longer presentation. This is great for reading web content with more narrow columns, like news feeds. You don’t have to keep scrolling quite as much as you do in landscape view. Whether in landscape or portrait view, Safari features work the same, including the same buttons in the same positions. In landscape view, you enter text using a wider, sideways keyboard. In portrait view, the smaller keyboard provides more space for you to view possible address completions while entering URLs.

■Tip You cannot change orientation while the keyboard is out. If needed, close the screen that is using the keyboard, flip the iPhone orientation, and bring the keyboard out again.

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Figure 6-5. Safari can display web pages using both landscape and portrait orientation.

Scrolling, Zooming, and Other Viewing Skills Safari responds to the complete vocabulary of taps, flicks, and drags discussed in Chapter 2. You can zoom into pictures, squeeze on columns, and more. Here’s a quick review of the essential ways to interact with your screen: Drag: Touch the screen and drag your finger to reposition web pages. If you think of your iPhone as a window onto a web page, dragging allows you to move the window around the web page. Flick: When dealing with long pages, you can flick the display up and down to scroll rapidly. This is especially helpful when navigating through search engine results and news sites. Double-tap: Double-tap any column or image to zoom in, autosizing it to the width of your display. Double-tap again to zoom back out. Use this option to instantly zoom into a web page’s text. The iPhone recognizes how wide the text is and perfectly matches that width. Pinch: Use pinching to manually zoom in or out. This allows you to make fine zoom adjustments as needed. Tap: Tap buttons and links to select them. Tapping allows you to move from site to site and to submit forms. Page down: When zoomed-in onto a column, double-tap toward the bottom of the screen while staying within the column. The page recenters around your tap. Make sure not to tap a link! Jump to the top: Double-tap the very top of the screen (just below the time display) to pop instantly back to the top of the page.

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Stop a scroll: After flicking a page to get it to scroll, you can tap the page at any time to stop that movement. Don’t forget, you can also manually drag the screen display to reset the part you’re viewing.

Page Management Safari allows you to open up to eight concurrent browser sessions at once. To review your open windows, tap the Pages button at the bottom-right corner of your browser. Safari’s Pages viewer opens, as shown in Figure 6-6.

Figure 6-6. The pages viewer allows you to select which browser session to display. This viewer allows you to interactively select a browser session: • To select a window, scroll horizontally from one window to the next. The brightest dot along the line of dots shows which item you’re currently viewing. In Figure 6-6, this is third of three open pages. Either tap the window or the Done button to select that window and display it full screen. • To close a window, tap the Close button—the red circle with an “X” in it at the top-left of each page. The page viewer slides the remaining pages into the gap left by the closed window. You cannot close the last remaining window; Safari insists on keeping at least one browser session open at all times.

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• To add a new page, tap New Page. Safari creates a new session and opens the new, blank page for you to work with. Add up to eight pages, after which Safari complains: “Could not open a new page because there are too many pages open.” If you see this message, tap OK to dismiss this alert. There is a secret bug that lets you get around the eight-window limit in Safari. After opening eight pages, quit Safari—press and hold the Home key for 4–8 seconds until the application shuts down entirely. Go to the Weather application, and tap the small Yahoo “Y” icon in the lower-left corner of any weather screen. Presto, Safari launches—and opens a ninth window. Repeat this Quit/Weather trick to keep opening new windows.

Working with Bookmarks One of the great things about iPhone is that it lets you take your world with you: contacts, calendars, e-mail accounts, and bookmarks. You don’t have to reenter URLs for all your favorite pages on the iPhone. It loads these bookmarks whenever it syncs. The secret to this lies in iTunes. As Figure 6-7 reveals, iTunes allows you to select the browser whose bookmarks you want to use. To find these settings, tap the Info tab and scroll toward the bottom of the screen. Choose the bookmarks you want to sync to, and let iPhone and iTunes handle the rest.

■Note As Chapter 5 discussed, use the Advanced replace information settings only when you transfer your iPhone to a new host or when you want to completely overwrite your iPhone bookmarks.

Figure 6-7. The Info tab in iTunes lets you select a browser whose bookmarks you want to use on the iPhone. Unfortunately, you cannot sync your iPhone with Firefox. Shame on Apple for that oversight.

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■Tip Your bookmarks are stored on your iPhone in /var/root/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist. You’ll find your History.plist file in the same folder.

Selecting Bookmarks My standard bookmarks collection contains hundreds and hundreds of individual URLs. That’s one reason I really appreciate the iPhone’s simple bookmarks browser (see Figure 6-8). It uses the same folders structure that I’ve set up on my personal computer. I can tap folders to open them and tap the Back button (top-left corner) to return to the parent folder. Identifying bookmarks is easy. Folders look like folders; each bookmark is marked with a small open book symbol. Tap one of these, and Safari takes you directly to the page in question.

Figure 6-8. Use iPhone Safari’s interactive Bookmarks navigation to locate and open your favorite bookmarks.

Editing Bookmarks As Figure 6-8 shows, an Edit button appears at the bottom-right of the bookmarks screen. Tap this to enter Edit mode (see Figure 6-9).

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Figure 6-9. Safari contains a built-in bookmark management system that allows you to edit and reorder your bookmarks. Edit mode allows you to manage your bookmarks on your iPhone just as you would on your personal computer: Delete bookmarks: Tap the red delete circle to the left of a bookmark to delete it. Tap Delete to confirm, or tap elsewhere on the screen to cancel. Reorder bookmarks: Use the gray grab handles (the three lines on the far right) to move folders and bookmarks into new positions. Grab, drag, and then release. Edit names: Tap the gray reveal arrow (the sideways “V” symbol to the right of each name) to open the Edit Bookmark or Edit Folder screen. Use the keyboard to make your changes, and tap the Back button to return to the bookmarks editor. Reparent items: You can move items from one folder to another by tapping the gray reveal arrow and selecting a new parent from the bookmark folder list (just below the name editing field). Select a folder, and then tap the Back button to return to the bookmarks editor. Unfortunately, you don’t get the same wild animation you do in Mail when you send an item to a new folder, but at least it works reliably. Add folders: Tap New Folder to create a folder in the currently displayed bookmarks. The iPhone automatically opens the Edit Folder screen. Here, you can edit the name and, if needed, reparent your new folder. Tap back to return to the editor. Finish: Return to the top-level Bookmarks list (tap the Back button until you reach it) and then tap Done. This closes the editor and returns to Safari.

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Saving Bookmarks To save a new bookmark, tap the add (+) button at the top-left of any Safari web page. It’s just to the left of the address field. An Add Bookmark screen opens, allowing you to customize your item. Enter a title and then optionally select a folder to save to. Tap the currently displayed folder to view a list of all available folders. The root of the bookmark tree is called Bookmarks. After making your selection, tap Save. Safari adds the new bookmark to your collection. If you want to return to Safari without saving, tap Cancel.

Using Bookmarklets Safari provides full JavaScript support for using bookmarklets. Bookmarklets are small JavaScript programs saved in the form of Safari bookmarks. You can use them to look up words in dictionaries (see Figure 6-10), check the weather, and search for words on a page. Google for 17 iPhone Bookmarklets to discover www.Lifeclever.com’s excellent collection of iPhone-specific utilities.

Figure 6-10. LifeClever’s JavaScript bookmarklet collection lets you perform useful tasks like searching for words in an online dictionary. Create, debug, and install bookmarklets on your home computer before synchronizing them to your iPhone. To run, tap the Bookmarks icon, and select the bookmarklet you want to use. Safari executes the JavaScript code and displays the results right on-screen.

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iPhone Settings Customize your Safari settings by navigating to Settings ➤ Safari. This screen, shown in Figure 6-11, allows you to control a number of features, mostly security related.

Figure 6-11. The Safari Settings window is primarily concerned with security features. Here’s a quick rundown of those features and what they mean: Search Engine: This setting determines which search engine is used for the search field you saw back in Figure 6-3. Choose from Google and Yahoo. JavaScript: JavaScript allows web pages to run programs when you visit. Disabling JavaScript means you increase overall surfing safety, but you also lose many cool and worthy web features. Most pages are safe to visit but some, sadly, are not. To disable JavaScript, switch from ON to OFF. Plug-ins: At this time, Safari plug-ins are pretty much limited to video support. Disabling this feature (setting it to OFF) means Safari will not play video. It also means that you reduce your vulnerability to certain QuickTime-specific exploits. As with JavaScript, there are trade-offs: increased security versus missed opportunity. Block Pop-ups: Many web sites use pop-up windows for advertising. It’s an annoying reality of surfing the web. By default, Safari pop-up blocking is ON. Switch this setting to OFF to allow pop-up window creation.

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Accept Cookies: Cookies refer to data stored on your iPhone by the web sites you visit. Cookies allow web sites to remember you and to store information about your visit. You can choose to Always accept cookies, Never accept cookies, or accept cookies only “From visited” web sites. Clear History: Tap and confirm to empty your page navigation history from your iPhone. This keeps your personal browsing habits private to some extent, although other people might still scan though your bookmarks.

■Caution Clearing your history does not affect Safari’s page history. You can still tap its Back button and see the sites you’ve visited.

Clear Cookies: Tap and confirm to clear all existing cookies from your iPhone. Clear Cache: Your iPhone’s browser cache stores data from many of the web sites you visit. It uses this to speed up page loading the next time you visit. As with Cookies and History, your cache may reveal personal information that you’d rather not share. Tap Clear Cache and Confirm to clear your cache.

■Tip Clearing your cache may also help correct problem pages that are having trouble loading. By clearing the cache, you remove page items that may be corrupt or only partially downloaded.

iPhone-Specific Web Sites When Steve Jobs announced the iPhone in January 2007, he made it clear that the iPhone would not be opened to third-party native development at that time. Instead, he offered developers the “sweet” solution of using iPhone Safari to deliver advanced Web 2.0 interactive applications. Many web developers took him up on that solution, producing a wealth of useful and varied web sites geared specifically for iPhone use. Google for iPhone Application List, and you’ll find hundreds if not thousands of iPhone-specific and iPhone-supporting web sites that allow you to do everything from balancing your budget to playing games to creating to-do lists. Take special note of application launchers like AppMarks and Gridgets, which provide widget-like interfaces to iPhone software collections. These launchers will put you in touch with great web applications, right at your fingertips.

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■Note The obvious downside to Jobs’s “sweet” solution is that you lose access to these applications when you’re out of range of WiFi or EDGE. I’m unable to use grocery list applets, because I cannot get Internet reception in my local Albertsons store. The Apple Software Development Kit (SDK) that was announced in October 2007 promises native applications that continue to work regardless of whether you are in WiFi and EDGE range.

Summary iPhone Safari puts the power of a real Internet browser into your pocket. There’s nothing halfcocked or watered down about it. You can browse the real web and read real sites without major compromise. Sure, this first release doesn’t support Flash—and that’s a pretty major failing—but it’s such an amazing step forward in technology that you’ll find yourself shaking your head with disdain when you have to go back to using mobile technology on your Pocket PC or Blackjack. Here are a few tips to keep in mind as you move on from this chapter: • iPhones work in more ways than just vertical. Go ahead and flip your phone on its side. Your Safari pages will adjust. • Nope, there’s no Flash support. Bad Apple! • There are no copy/paste or in-page “find” features either. Google up a JavaScript bookmarklet or two to add the functionality you need. • Lost your address bar? Use the double-tap to the top trick. • Application launchers like AppMarks and Gridgets are pretty awesome. Make sure to check them out.

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Preparing Your Media in iTunes M

usic and video content starts with iTunes. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve bought your songs and video at the iTunes Store or you’ve imported them into the program from CDs and DVDs. iTunes can synchronize your iPhone to any content in its library. iTunes determines which music and video files transfer to your iPhone. In this chapter, you’ll discover how to bring all your content together in iTunes and transfer that information to your iPhone. You’ll see how to choose which items you want to synchronize and how to keep your iPhone content fresh and up-to-date.

Managing Your iPhone in iTunes Locate your iPhone in the DEVICES section of the sources list. This light-blue column, shown in Figure 7-1, appears on the left side of the iTunes screen. Your iPhone is listed, along with any other devices you have connected, including other iPhones and iPods. Select your iPhone to open the iPhone Summary tab in the main iTunes screen.

Figure 7-1. Your iPhone appears in the DEVICES section of the iTunes sources list.

The Summary Tab The iPhone Summary tab, shown in Figure 7-2, appears each time you connect your iPhone to iTunes. This tab provides your top-level iPhone summary. It tells you important information about your iPhone and offers some basic options.

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Figure 7-2. The iPhone summary screen offers a device overview, including serial number and capacity. Here is a rundown of the items you’ll find on the screen, what they do, and why they are important: Name: Your iPhone’s name appears at the top of the Summary screen. It refers to whatever name you have given your iPhone. To rename it, click the iPhone in the sources list. This opens a text edit field around the name. Edit the name as desired, and then press Return or Enter to confirm your change. Capacity: This number indicates the actual data capacity of your iPhone. As with all data storage, the advertised capacity (4GB in this case) never quite matches the actual capacity (3.49GB).

■Note The difference between the actual data capacity and advertised capacity is due to the fact that the advertised capacity uses base 10; Apple and other manufacturers talk about a gigabyte as 1,000,000,000 bytes. In computer terms, this decimal number is worthless. Computers use base 2. To a computer, a gigabyte is 1,073,741,824 bytes, so the advertised 4,000,000,000 bytes get cut down to about 3.7 computersized gigabytes. Add in some overhead for the operating system, and boom, you’re down to those 3.49GB that your iTunes screen mentions for your 4GB iPhone. All sorts of useless lawsuits have been filed over this issue throughout the years, and this is still the way things are done in the mass-storage industry.

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Software Version: Unlike most cell phones, the iPhone regularly updates its software with bug fixes and improvements. iTunes indicates which firmware release is currently installed on your iPhone. To check whether your firmware is the latest available, click the Check for Update button. Serial Number: This unique serial number identifies your iPhone to Apple.

■Note The serial number shown on the Summary tab in iTunes should not be confused with your International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) cell phone identifier or your Integrated Circuit Card ID (ICCID) SIM number. All three identifiers appear on the back of your original iPhone box.

Phone Number: This is the phone number assigned to your iPhone and is retrieved from the SIM card inserted in your phone (see Chapter 1). When you change your SIM, you change the phone number.

Restoring Your iPhone You may experience problems with your iPhone at some point and need to restore your unit to its factory-fresh settings. To do this, click the Restore button and follow the prompts. The restore process wipes all information from your iPhone and reloads the most recent firmware. After restoring, use your backup data to reload your personal settings, contacts, bookmarks, and photos to your iPhone. The iPhone automatically backs up your data whenever you connect to iTunes. The backups are incremental; only changed items are copied. This saves space on your personal computer and makes the backup process more efficient. To check on the date and time of your most recent backup, open the iTunes preferences window (select Edit ➤Preferences in Windows or iTunes ➤Preferences on the Mac) and select the iPhone tab.

■Tip If you’re on a Macintosh, you can find your backup files in your home folder in Library/ Application Support/MobileSync/Backup.

Choosing Synchronization Options Two synchronization options appear at the bottom of the Summary tab: Automatically sync when this iPhone is connected: Select this check box to do exactly what the option says. Whenever you connect your iPhone, iTunes will start the sync process. Disabling this option means you want to manually synchronize the iPhone. This allows your iPhone to connect to your computer more quickly, but you may forget to perform your backups on a regular basis.

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Sync only checked songs and videos: This option itemizes the features you want to sync. Instead of performing an exhaustive sync with each connection, this option limits synchronization to those items you have checked in the various tabs described in the next section. Despite what the name implies, you can sync podcasts, photos, and so forth, as well as songs and videos. After choosing either option, click Apply to save your new settings.

Synchronization Choices iTunes provides several tabs that allow you to select the items you want to sync with your iPod: • Info: The Info tab offers controls for synchronizing contacts, calendars, and mail accounts, as well as bookmarks. These options are described further in Chapter 3 (contacts), Chapter 5 (mail), Chapter 6 (bookmarks), and Chapter 10 (calendars). The Info tab is longer than it first appears. Scroll down to find the Advanced settings. • Ringtones: Select which custom ringtones you wish to sync to your iPhone, as described in “The Ringtones Tab” section of this chapter. • Music: Use this tab to choose the playlists and music videos you wish to sync, as described in “The Music Tab” section of this chapter. • Photos: This tab controls which photos and albums get synchronized to your iPhone. These options are described further in Chapter 9. • Podcasts: Use these options to sync podcast episodes to your iPhone, as described in “The Podcasts Tab” section of this chapter. • Video: Choose the TV shows and movies to sync with your iPhone on this tab, as described in “The Video Tab” section of this chapter. After making changes to any of these items, click Apply to save your new settings.

The iPhone Capacity Meter How much data is on your iPhone? With only a few gigabytes onboard, managing data is essential. The capacity meter at the bottom of your iTunes screen provides an important tool for keeping on top of this information. It creates a disk-usage thermometer, indicating how much space you’ve used, as shown in see Figure 7-3. It’s color-coded: blue is audio, purple is video, yellow means pictures, and orange indicates other data (bookmarks, contacts, and so forth). The white portion is the remaining free space.

Figure 7-3. The iPhone capacity meter indicates the space used by your iPhone.

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If you would prefer to see this information in terms of item numbers, tap on the bar. The meter updates to show you the number of songs, videos, and photos loaded on your iPhone. Tap again to view the number of hours and minutes used by your audio and video. Tap one last time to view the original size information.

The Music Tab The Music tab, shown in Figure 7-4, lets you select which items to sync to your iPhone’s music library: • Choose whether to synchronize your entire music library (select All songs and playlists) or a playlists subset (select Selected playlists). In the latter case, check only those playlists you want to sync. • Decide if you want to synchronize your music videos by checking or unchecking the option at the very bottom of the Music tab. You may need to scroll down to find this option if you have many playlists. As with any video data, music videos occupy a lot more iPhone space than audio tracks. Keep in mind that iTunes does not allow you to select which music videos to sync—it’s all or nothing. • When you want to put an audiobook onto your iPhone, add its tracks to a playlist and set that playlist to synchronize with your iPhone.

Figure 7-4. Use the Music tab to select which playlists get synchronized to your iPhone.

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The Podcasts Tab Many people use iTunes to subscribe to their favorite podcasts. Podcasts are audio programs delivered over the Internet, much as TV shows are delivered over the airways. Numerous podcasts are available these days, including entertainment, advice, how-to shows, and much more. iTunes monitors your podcast subscriptions and can automatically download new shows when they become available. The Podcasts tab lets you control which shows get synchronized to your iPhone. • Check Sync episodes to include podcasts on your iPhone. • Select whether you want to synchronize all podcasts or just selected ones. If you go with selected ones, you must check each show title you want to synchronize. • Use the pop-up menu shown in Figure 7-5 to choose which episodes you want to sync. You can choose from most recent episodes, unplayed episodes, and new episodes.

Figure 7-5. iTunes lets you choose which podcasts you want to sync.

The Video Tab Choose the movies and TV shows you want to synchronize using the Video tab, shown in Figure 7-6. And while you’re choosing, keep this in mind: videos are space hogs. TV shows often run between a quarter and half a gigabyte each. A movie may occupy a gigabyte or more. Be picky about which items you select.

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• To sync either TV shows or movies, check the corresponding Sync box. • For TV shows, you can either sync your entire collection (if it is very small) or choose selected TV shows. For the latter, you must pick which shows to sync. • For TV shows, the Sync pop-up menu lets you choose whether to sync the one, three, five, or ten most recent or unwatched episodes. • You must choose each movie individually.

Figure 7-6. The Video tab allows you to exert extreme control over the most memory-intensive items you will sync to your iPhone.

The Ringtones Tab Apple introduced the Ringtones tab, shown in Figure 7-7, and iTunes ringtones support in September 2007. For an additional fee, iTunes allows you to purchase and edit a track for use as a ringtone. The ringtone option must be purchased in addition to a track, so your minimum cost is actually about twice that of a single track and slightly more for iTunes Plus tracks. • Use the check box to choose whether to synchronize ringtones. • Choose All ringtones to sync every ringtone in your library. • Choose Selected ringtones to pick individual ringtones you wish to synchronize.

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Figure 7-7. Use the Ringtones tab to select which ringtones get sent to your iPhone.

Manually Synchronizing Your iPhone Tap the Sync button at the bottom right of the iTunes screen to initiate a new sync with your iPhone. On Macintoshes, you can also Control-click or right-click your iPhone in the sources list and choose Sync from the pop-up menu.

Creating Smart Playlists iTunes offers a powerful feature called the Smart Playlist, which allows you to use rules to select content for your iPhone. When dealing with a device with limited storage space like the iPhone, Smart Playlists can make your life easier. Choose File ➤New Smart Playlist to create your Smart Playlist. A Smart Playlist dialog box opens, allowing you to define the rules for the playlist. Figure 7-8 shows a Smart Playlist that selects ten random songs that have not been played in the past week. Each time you sync this playlist to your iPhone, you get a new set of songs you haven’t listened to in a while.

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Figure 7-8. Smart Playlists use rules to create playlists. This playlist selects ten random songs that have not been played in the last seven days. Google for Smart Playlist ideas to discover more ways to create Smart Playlists for your iPhone.

Adding New Ringtones To add new ringtones to your iTunes collection, select a purchased track and tap the bell icon. The ringtone editor appears, as shown in Figure 7-9. Use this editor to select the part of the track you wish to use as a ringtone, and then adjust the looping gap. When you’re satisfied with your settings, tap Buy.

Figure 7-9. The iTunes ringtone editor allows you to create ringtones from already-purchased iTunes tracks. Tap the bell icon to create a new ringtone.

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You must reauthorize your computer before your ringtones will sync. To make this happen, simply play back your first ringtone after you buy it, and iTunes will prompt you to authorize the computer.

■Tip iTunes also allows you to transfer purchased songs and videos from your iPhone into iTunes. Rightclick or Control-click the iPhone in the sources list and choose Transfer Purchases from the pop-up menu. To play these songs back, your computer must be added to your list of authorized machines. To make this happen, sign into your iTunes account (Store ➤Sign in), and then authorize your computer (Store ➤Authorize Computer).

Creating iPhone-Friendly Content When items you’ve chosen fail to synchronize properly, it may be because they are incompatible with your iPhone. iTunes offers a built-in feature that converts audio and video files to iPod-friendly (hence iPhone-friendly) formats. Right-click (Control-click) any audio or video item in iTunes and choose Convert Selection for iPod from the pop-up menu, as shown in Figure 7-10. Be aware of the following: • You can import only QuickTime-readable media into iTunes. If QuickTime cannot read a file, neither can iTunes. The reverse is not true. Just because you can play back something in QuickTime does not mean it will necessarily work in iTunes. iTunes is limited in its ability to import and convert media. • You can expand your “QuickTime vocabulary” to use a wider variety of video formats. To do this, download and install codecs, which encode and decode digital data. Macintosh users should download Perian from http://perian.org. It installs codecs for most major formats, including Xvid, Flash Video, and so forth. If you’re using Windows, you must search for, find, and install individual QuickTime codecs on a format-by-format basis. • You cannot convert protected audio or video. By protected, I mean media that uses digital rights management (DRM) encryption. Items purchased from iTunes are already in an iPhone/iPod-friendly format, even those using DRM. • To load video from your DVDs onto your iPhone, download a copy of HandBrake from http://handbrake.m0k.org (for both Windows and Mac) and convert your DVD content to an iPod/iPhone-friendly format.

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Figure 7-10. Use the iTunes built-in format converter to convert movies and audio tracks to an iPhone-friendly format.

Ejecting Your iPhone Before disconnecting your iPhone from your computer, tap the Eject button next to the iPhone name. Alternatively, right-click (Control-click) the iPhone name and choose Eject from the pop-up menu.

Summary This chapter introduced the basics of iTunes media management. It’s important to recognize the role of iTunes in organizing and selecting the audio and video tracks you want to synchronize to your iPhone. By putting your library in order on your personal computer, you ensure that the media you want and need arrive properly on the iPhone. Here are a few tips to take away from this chapter: • You don’t need to buy special ringtones at $0.99 a pop. Use the songs you already own and have copied from your personal CD collection with a third-party ringtone installer, such as Ambrosia Software’s iToner. • If you want to sync audiobooks, make sure to add them to a playlist first. • Video files are big. Pick only the ones you want to watch right away. You just can’t fit an entire library of video on the iPhone the way you can store video on an 80-GB or 160-GB iPod Classic. • Smart Playlists offer the best way to keep your on-phone library fresh and exciting. Take the time to learn how to set up your own, so you don’t get tired of your iPhone music.

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It’s Also an iPod T

he iPhone is a better iPod than any other unit that Apple has ever shipped. It ushers in an entirely new generation of music and video interaction, and it does so in a way that’s sleek, elegant, and workable. Forget about click wheels. The iPhone is a sixth-generation iPod come to life. It delivers its new-generation technology with flair and an amazing touchable interface. This chapter introduces you to the iPhone-as-iPod and shows you how to get the most use out of it.

iPod As Application Unlike previous generations, when it comes to the iPhone, the iPod is not a device—it’s an application. It brings all the functionality and ease of use you expect from an iPod, but it delivers that functionality in a distinctive iPhone package. Figure 8-1 shows the iPod application icon. You’ll find it at the bottom right of your iPhone screen. It’s easy to spot, since it’s colored bright orange. Tapping this icon launches the iPod application on your iPhone.

Figure 8-1. Launch iPod from the bottom bar on your Home screen. If you’ve used iPods before, expect to be pleasantly surprised. If you’re new to the world of iPods, expect to be blown away. The iPhone iPod introduces the best iPod interface that ever existed. It simplifies browsing, locating, and playing music and videos. For experienced iPod users, here are just a few ways the iPhone will change your iPod experience: Touch screen: With the iPhone’s touch screen, there’s no need for scroll wheels. Flick through your lists and tap the items you want to play. Cover Flow: If you like Cover Flow in iTunes, you’ll love it on the iPhone. Alphabet index tool: The iPod application uses the same kind of alphabet index you saw in Chapter 2 (see Figure 2-1). It makes searching through long alphabetized lists a breeze. 119

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Customizable button bar: Do you prefer to search by genre and album, rather than artist or song? Just drag the items you use the most onto the configurable button bar. Widescreen video playback: There’s no need to settle for cramped video on the iPhone. Flip your iPhone to its side and view your videos using a wider, side-to-side landscape orientation. And that’s just a taste of the ways the iPhone changes the way you use your iPod. Read on for more details on how this program works.

Browsing Media on the iPhone After tapping the orange iPod icon on your Home screen, you enter the iPod application. This application gives you access to all the media files you have synchronized to your iPod, both audio and video. Locate the More button at the bottom right of the screen, and tap it to load the screen shown in Figure 8-2.

Figure 8-2. The More screen provides an excellent jumping-off point for exploring your media. The Now Playing button appears in all category screens, including this one, and instantly takes you to the track currently playing. The More screen offers the best place to start exploring your media collection. From here, you can see every kind of category used to sort your songs and videos: Playlists, Artists, Songs, Videos, Albums, Audiobooks, Compilations, Composers, Genres, and Podcasts. Some of these

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appear in the black bar at the bottom of the screen. Some appear in the list in the center of the screen. Tap any item to open that collection. For example, tap Artists to see a list of your media sorted by artists, or tap Audiobooks to view the audiobooks loaded on your system. The black bar is your shortcuts bar, or, more officially, your browse buttons bar. The difference between the items in the black bar and the items in the list above it is that these shortcuts appear universally in every category view. Your iPhone lets you select which items you want to keep handy in that bar, as described next.

Editing Your Browse Buttons From the More screen, tap the Edit button to open the Configure screen, as shown in Figure 8-3. This screen allows you to customize your browse buttons bar.

Figure 8-3. Use the Configure screen to choose which items appear in your browse buttons bar at the bottom of the screen. To replace any item on the browse buttons bar, drag an icon from the center of the screen onto the item you want to replace in the bar at the bottom. Say you listen to podcasts and audiobooks more than you watch videos. Drag those two icons onto your bar, and you’ll see them in every category view. Add whichever icons you use the most. You can also rearrange the icons in the bar by dragging them left or right within the bar. The bar must always contain four—and only four—icons. You cannot drag icons off the bar, and you cannot set the bar to contain fewer than those four icons. You cannot add more than four shortcuts, and you cannot replace the More button with another item.

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Here are the items you can choose from: Songs: Every song on your iPhone. Video: Every video on your iPhone. Audiobooks: Every audiobook on your iPhone. Albums: Every album on your iPhone. Playlists: A list of all the playlists that you’ve chosen to sync to your iPhone. Artists: A list of your media sorted by the artist who recorded them. This list includes many kinds of media: songs, podcasts, music videos, and so on. So you may see “artists” like Dora the Explorer listed next to The Beatles and Green Day. Compilations: A list of all media belonging to compilations—that is, albums that have been contributed to by various artists. Genres: A list of every genre—such as Classical, Rock, Pop, Country, and so on—that appears on your iPhone. Each genre leads to a list of media that belongs to that genre. Composers: A list of media sorted by their composers. My iPhone contains listings for Bob Dylan, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and more. Podcasts: A list of podcasts that you have chosen to sync to your iPhone. When you are finished making changes, tap Done to return to the More screen.

Navigating the Category Screens Each category screen works much the same way. It lists its members—whether podcasts, videos, artists, or songs—as an alphabetically sorted scrolling list. If the list is long, you’ll see an alphabet control on the right side of the screen, as in Figure 8-4. Tap on a letter or scroll your finger down the alphabet to move to the section you want to view.

■Tip Many category screens offer a Shuffle option as their first item. Tap it to start playing back that category in random order.

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Figure 8-4. The Albums screen lists albums in alphabetical order. When you’ve downloaded album art, it appears in the squares marked by the music notes. I avoid most album art to save space on my iPhone. When the items listed are individual songs or videos, tap any name to play your selection. When the items listed are collections, like genres or albums, tap to open a screen that displays each item of that collection. For example, you can tap an album to list its tracks, and then tap a track name to play it.

■Tip Tap Now Playing to jump to the currently playing item.

Playing Audio Figure 8-5 shows the iPhone’s Now Playing screen. You arrive at this screen whenever you start playing a song. You can also jump to this screen from any category by tapping the Now Playing button at the top-right corner (see Figure 8-4).

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Figure 8-5. The iPhone’s Now Playing audio playback screen Here are the items you’ll find on the Now Playing screen and what they do: Play indicator: The right-pointing play indicator at the top right of the screen (just left of the battery status) appears universally when you’re playing back music. This tells you at a glance that music is playing, even when you have headphones plugged in. You’ll find this especially helpful when you’ve removed your earbuds and placed the iPhone down on a table. It alerts you that your battery is gleefully emptying itself as your iPhone plays music that no one is hearing. Back button: Tap the Back button at the top-left corner (the arrow pointing left) to return to the most recent album or playlist screen. Tapping Back does not stop playback. Your song continues to play as you browse through your categories or press Home to do other things on your iPhone. Artist, song, and album: These items appear at the top middle of the screen and are for information only. Tapping them does nothing. Album View button: This button looks like a three-item bulleted list and appears at the top right of the screen, just below the battery indicator. Tap this to switch between your Now Playing screen and its Album view (discussed in the next section).

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Album art: When you’ve downloaded album art, the cover image appears just below the top bar and occupies most of your screen. (When the iPhone cannot find album art, it displays a light-gray music note on a white background instead.) • Tap the art area to open the gray playback controls that appear just below the black header in Figure 8-5. • Tap again to hide the controls. • A double-tap on the album art sends you to the Album view. • Swipe to the right to return to the most recent category screen. Loop control: This control, which looks like a pair of arrows pointing to each other in a circle, appears when you tap album art. • Tap once to loop the currently playing album or playlist. After the last song plays, the first song starts again. • Tap a second time to loop just the current song. The number 1 appears on the loop, telling you that the loop applies to just this song. • Tap once more to disable looping. • A blue loop (both the regular loop and the loop with the number 1) indicates that looping is enabled. A white loop means looping is switched off. Scrubber bar: The scrubber bar appears to the right of the loop control. Tap the album cover to make this control appear; tap again to hide it. • The number at the left of the bar shows the elapsed playback time. The number at the right shows the remaining playback time. • Drag the playhead to set the point at which your song plays back. You can do so while the song is playing, so you can hear which point you’ve reached. • Look just below the scrubber bar to see which album or playlist track is playing back. In Figure 8-5, this is track 1 of 1. Shuffle: The shuffle control looks like two arrows making a wavy X. It appears to the right of the scrubber bar, and like the loop and scrubber controls, displays only after tapping the album cover. • When the shuffle control is off (white), album and playlist songs play back in order. • When the shuffle control is selected (blue), the iPhone randomly orders songs for shuffled playback.

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Rewind: The Rewind button looks like a line followed by two left-pointing triangles. • Tap to move back to the beginning of the currently playing song. • Double-tap to move to the previous song in the album or playlist. If you are at the start of the song, tap to rewind. If you’re already at the first song, this works as if you had pressed the Back button. • Touch and hold to rewind through the current song. You’ll hear very short snippets as you move backward through the song. Play/Pause: Play looks like a right-pointing triangle. Pause looks like a pair of upright lines. Tap this button to toggle between playback and pause. Forward: The Forward button looks like the Rewind button in a mirror. The line is to the right, and both triangles point right instead of left. • Tap once to move to the next song in the album or playlist. If you’re at the last song, tapping Forward moves you back to the album or playlist. • Touch and hold to fast-forward through your song. Volume: Drag along the slider at the bottom of the screen to adjust playback volume. You can also use the physical volume buttons on the top left side of your iPhone unit to adjust volume.

■Note The Mute/Ring button has no effect on song playback volume.

Album View Tapping the Album View button at the top-right corner of the Now Playing screen switches you to an overview of the current album or playlist, as shown in Figure 8-6. This screen shows a track list with item names and durations.

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Figure 8-6. The Album view shows a list of tracks and durations for the current album or playlist. Several items on this screen overlap with the Now Playing view and work in the same way. Here’s a quick screen rundown: Return to Now Playing: The icon at the top right (it looks either like a music note or, if you have album art, like a wee version of the album cover) switches you back to the Now Playing screen. Rating stars: Use the stars control to rate the current song, from zero to five stars. Drag your finger along the stars to set your rating. Track list: Scroll up and down the track list to see all items on the current playlist or album. Tap any item to start playback.

■Tip When there’s empty space on the track list—for example, when you have only one or two tracks— double-tap the empty areas to return to the Now Playing screen. Alternatively, double-tap either side of the rating stars display.

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Cover Flow Tilt your iPhone onto its side when browsing or listening to music, and you instantly enter Cover Flow mode. Cover Flow is the iPhone feature that allows you to view your media collection as a series of interactive album covers, as shown in Figure 8-7.

Figure 8-7. Cover Flow presents your media library as a series of album covers. To use Cover Flow, simply flick your way through your collection to the left or right. The iPhone provides animated, interactive feedback. Here’s what you can do in Cover Flow mode: Album selection: Tap any album to bring it to the front. Tap again to enter Album view. Play/Pause: Tap the small Play/Pause button at the bottom left of the Cover Flow screen to pause or resume the currently playing track. Album view: To enter the Cover Flow version of Album view, tap the small i (Info) button or the album cover. The cover flips and displays a list of tracks. • Tap a track name to start playback. • Tap Play/Pause to pause or resume playback. • Tap anywhere on the screen (other than the Play/Pause button or a track name) to leave Album view. Turn your iPhone back to portrait orientation to exit Cover Flow mode.

On-The-Go Playlists On-The-Go playlists allow you to build a playlist on your iPhone when you’re away from you computer. This feature lets you select songs, add them to the playlist, and then edit the playlist to keep or remove items.

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To get started, tap Playlists, and then tap On-The-Go. The On-The-Go song list appears, as shown in Figure 8-8. Navigate through your entire collection and pick which songs you wish to add by tapping the plus sign (+) to the right of each track name. After making your selections, tap Done.

Figure 8-8. Add songs to your On-The-Go playlist with this Songs selection screen. Tap the blue button with the + to the right of each name to add a song.

■Note iTunes and the iPhone do not automatically add artist names to your songs. The “Chicks –” prefix in Figure 8-8 is part of my personal, insane categorizing scheme.

Tapping Done sends you to the On-The-Go list itself. From here, you can tap Shuffle to begin a random playback of your On-The-Go songs, tap Playlists to go back to the previous screen, or tap Edit to add or remove items from your playlist. The On-The-Go Edit mode, shown in Figure 8-9, provides all the tools you need to manage your new playlist: • Tap the plus sign (+) at the top left to add songs to your playlist. • Tap Clear Playlist to remove all songs from the playlist. A confirmation dialog box appears. Confirm by tapping the red Clear Playlist option, or tap Cancel to leave your songs unchanged.

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• Tap the minus sign (–) in the red circle to the left of any name to begin deletion. Tap Delete to confirm, or tap anywhere else to cancel. • Drag the move bars (the three parallel gray lines to the right of each track name) to reorder items within your playlist. Grab a move bar, drag it to a new position, and then release. • Tap Done to leave Edit mode and return to your playlist.

■Note Unlike other iPhone screens, the On-The-Go playlist screen does not allow you to delete items by swiping. This will most likely change in upcoming releases.

Figure 8-9. In On-The-Go Edit mode, tap – to delete a song or + to add a song. Use the grab bars to the right of each song to change its order in the playlist.

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Playing Video On the iPhone, video is a widescreen-only feature, unlike audio, which plays back both in portrait orientation and the widescreen Cover Flow mode. You must flip your iPhone on its side to view TV shows, video podcasts, movies, and music videos. Select any item in your Videos list to begin playback, then flip your iPhone on its side to watch. The Home button goes to your right.

Video Playback Controls The iPhone automatically hides your video controls. Tap the screen to reveal them. Figure 8-10 shows the controls. For technical reasons, this figure doesn’t show the video that’s actually playing behind the controls, so you’ll just have to use your imagination.

Figure 8-10. The iPhone’s video playback controls The video playback controls work as follows: Play/Pause: Tap to pause or resume video playback. Rewind: Tap to return to the start of the show, or press and hold to scan backward. Fast-forward: Press and hold to scan forward. Scrubber bar: Drag the playhead along the scrubber bar to set the current playback time. The scrubber bar is the one at the top. The volume control is the larger bar at the bottom. Zoom: Either double-tap the screen or tap the Zoom button (two arrows pointing toward or away from each other, at the top right) to switch between full-screen and original aspect ratio. When viewing in full-screen mode, the entire iPhone screen is used, but some video may be clipped from the top or sides of the video. In original aspect, you may see either letterboxing (black bars above and below) or pillarboxing (black bars to either side) to preserve the video using its native aspect.

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Volume: Drag the volume control at the bottom of the screen to adjust playback volume. Tap Done to exit video playback and return to the Videos list. Press the Home button to quit and move to your Home screen.

■Tip You can save your battery life by listening to music videos and video podcasts instead of watching them. To make this happen, skip the Videos collection and browse your categories lists to find the video you want hear. When you select a video outside the Videos screen, it plays back audio only.

Deleting Videos On the Go The iPhone allows you to recover space on the go by deleting videos after you’ve watched them. To take advantage of this feature, go to the Videos screen and swipe through the name of any video. A red Delete button appears to the right of the video name. Tap Delete to remove the video, or tap anywhere else on the screen to cancel and keep the video.

Going Beyond the iPod App Now that you’ve seen how to browse through your media and play back both audio and video, here’s a quick run-through of some ways you can work with playback that go beyond the iPod application itself.

Saving Energy “Sleep” your phone during playback to save energy. Press the Sleep/Wake button once. This locks your phone and turns off the screen, but allows your music to keep playing. To peek at the current album cover during playback, tap Sleep/Wake. When you’ve loaded album art for the track, the cover appears on your lock screen instead of your normal wallpaper, as shown in Figure 8-11. If your track has no art, you still see the current time and track name. Double-tap the Home button to view your playback controls: Play/Pause, Volume, Next Track, and Previous Track.

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Figure 8-11. During audio playback, your iPhone lock screen displays the currently playing song and, if album art is available, its album cover. The small playing icon just to the left of the battery indicates that audio is playing back.

Adding a Sleep Timer Unlike the Sleep/Wake button, which switches off your iPhone screen without interrupting music playback, the Clock application allows you to “sleep” your iPhone and tell it to end playback after a set interval. To set the sleep timer, at the Home screen, tap Clock. Then tap the Timer icon at the bottom right of the Timer screen. Scroll the hours and minutes wheels to select a period of time after which you want the iPhone to sleep. Tap When Timer Ends and choose Sleep iPod from the options list, as shown in Figure 8-12. Tap Set to set your sleep timer, and then tap the big green Start button.

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Figure 8-12. The Sleep iPod function automatically ends iPod playback and locks your iPhone. The iPhone begins a timer countdown. When it reaches zero, it automatically stops iPod playback and locks your iPhone.

During Playback During playback, you have several handy controls and can receive phone calls: Volume controls: Normally, those two physical volume controls on the top-left side of your iPhone casing control how loud your phone ringer sounds. During playback, they control audio level instead. Use them to raise and lower audio volume. Headphone playback controls: The headphone squeeze control makes it a snap to control audio playback without taking the iPhone out of your pocket. Squeeze once to pause; squeeze again to resume playback. A double-squeeze fast-forwards to the next track. Phone calls: When you receive a phone call during playback, your audio fades out and your selected ringtone plays. Use the techniques described in Chapter 3 to answer your call. After hanging up, your music fades back in.

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Shopping at the Mobile iTunes Store In September 2007, Apple announced a mobile version of its iTunes Store. This software allows you to browse iTunes on the go and make purchases directly to your iPhone. When you return to your computer, you’ll be able to transfer your purchases from the iPhone to your computer. Read more about using the mobile store application in Chapter 10.

■Tip If you’re at a participating Starbucks, your WiFi connection to the iTunes Store will be provided for free. See apple.com/itunes/starbucks/ for more details.

Adjusting iPod Settings Surprisingly, for a feature-rich application like iPod, the iPhone provides just a few settings. You’ll find these in Settings ➤ iPod, and they work as follows: Sound Check: Say you’re listening to a song that was recorded way too low. So you crank up the volume during playback. Then when the next song starts playing back, boom!— there go your eardrums. Sound Check prevents this problem. When you enable Sound Check, all your songs play back at approximately the same sound level.

■Tip You can also use Sound Check in iTunes. Choose Edit ➤ Preferences ➤ Playback ➤ Sound Check (Windows) or iTunes ➤ Preferences ➤ Playback Sound Check (Mac).

Audiobook Speed: Your iPhone allows you to slow down or speed up audiobook playback so you can choose how you want to listen. When you’re paying close attention or transcribing notes or so forth, choose Settings ➤ iPod ➤ Audiobook Speed ➤ Slower. This elongates each word and makes the speech easier to follow. When you’re impatient—like me!—and just want to hear the book a little faster, choose Audiobook Speed ➤ Faster. Audiobook Speed ➤ Normal is the default setting. EQ: The iPhone offers a number of equalizer settings that help emphasize the way different kinds of music play back. Select Settings ➤ iPod ➤ EQ and choose from Acoustic, Dance, Spoken Word, and many other presets. To disable the equalizer, choose Off. Volume Limit: Face it: personal music players bring your audio up close and very personal. So up close, in fact, that your hearing may be in peril. I strongly recommend you take advantage of the iPhone’s built-in volume limit to protect your ears. This setting affects only playback through headphones, and has no effect on speaker playback. Navigate to Settings ➤ iPod (Figure 8-13) and adjust the maximum volume using the slider. All the way to the left is mute—sure, you’ll protect your ears, but you won’t be able to hear

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anything. All the way to the right is the normal, unlimited maximum volume. If you’re super paranoid or, more typically, if children have access to your iPhone, tap Lock Volume Limit to open a screen that allows you to set a volume limit passcode. No one may override your volume settings without the correct passcode.

Figure 8-13. Set the maximum volume for your iPhone by dragging the slider in the settings pane.

Summary This chapter introduced all the ways you can browse and play back media using the iPod application. As you’ve seen, the new iPod software is a lot more flexible and intuitive than the old click-wheel approach. With the iPhone, you can flick through your entire collection and tap your way to the media you want to use. Here are a few points to think about before you move on to the next chapter. • Cover Flow makes browsing through your media a simple visual pleasure. Tip your iPhone on its side to enter Cover Flow mode. • Don’t be afraid to fill your browse button bar with the items you use the most. It’s easy to customize. It’s also easy to put it back the way it started.

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• Take the time to learn your headset controls. It’s a lot easy to squeeze or doublesqueeze your way through songs than to pull out your iPhone, double-tap Home, and tap Pause/Play. • Choose your videos wisely. Even with newer iPhones with expanded memory, videos can quickly eat up your free space. And don’t be shy about deleting your videos on the go. You can always sync them back on your home computer.

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iPhone Photos C

urrent generation iPhones ship with a built-in 2-megapixel camera and all the software you need to manage, view, and share your photos. With the iPhone, you can snap your friend’s picture, e-mail it to her, assign it to her contact information, or even use it for your wallpaper. The iPhone makes it easy to use your photos in many applications. In this chapter, you’ll discover how to use your iPhone’s camera and the built-in photo software to snap, view, and enjoy your pictures. You’ll learn how to download your photos to your computer, upload existing albums to your iPhone, and perform many basic photorelated tasks. By the time you finish reading this chapter, you’ll encounter both new and familiar ways to take advantage of your iPhone photos.

One App, Two Icons The Photos and Camera icons appear on the top row of your Home screen, as shown in Figure 9-1. The Photos icon is marked with a cheerful yellow sunflower. The Camera icon is a lens. Tap Photos to view your photo album collection. Tap Camera to snap new pictures.

Figure 9-1. The Photos and Camera icons appear on your Home screen’s top row. What these icons don’t tell you is that they’re hiding a secret. Both actually belong to the same iPhone application. MobileSlideShow.app handles all photo services, including taking pictures, managing albums, displaying slide shows, and so forth. But that’s all beneath the surface. As far as you’re concerned, you can pretty much treat the two icons as two separate applications. Use Photos for viewing pictures, and use Camera for snapping them.

Locating (and Removing) the Camera The iPhone camera is embedded onto the back of your iPhone. You can see its small, plastic circle by flipping over your iPhone and looking about an inch up and to the left of the Apple icon. It’s placed behind clear plastic for protection. 139

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If you work on a military base or at any other secure, restricted facility, you can pay to have your camera removed from your iPhone. For about $100, a service called iResQ (www.iresq.com) will send you a postage-paid, preaddressed, overnight shipping box. Place your iPhone in the box and send it off to iResQ. Your phone will be returned a day or so later, with the camera removed.

Camera: Shooting Pictures Cell phone cameras offer a great way to snap pictures on the fly, but they come with baggage. That baggage is their intrinsic limitations. Most cell phone cameras, including the iPhone, snap relatively low-resolution images riddled with grain and noise issues. They work badly in low light, and they are highly compressed to save space on portable devices. That being said, as cell phone cameras go, the iPhone camera is about par for the course. It captures 2-megapixel images, which is slightly on the low end for cell phone cameras these days. iPhone images are a bit grainy, and they are especially poor when taken in dim light. When possible, open windows, turn on lights, or even step outside to capture your photos with the best possible lighting. And when you get your pictures back to your computer, take advantage of the numerous tutorials around the Internet that show you how to enhance cell phone images with photo editors like Photoshop or GIMP.

■Note Grainy, noisy 2-megapixel images are not the first choice for capturing life-changing moments. You might want to limit your iPhone camera to casual use and bring along a quality camera for important memories like birthdays, anniversaries, graduation, and your child’s first steps.

Getting Started To launch your photo-capture software, tap Camera. As the camera starts up, the iPhone displays an animation of an iris opening before transferring you to a live display (see Figure 9-2). Frame your picture using this display, and then tap the Camera button to snap your picture.

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Figure 9-2. Tap the Camera button to snap a new photo. Tap the Camera Roll button (bottom-left, two squares overlapped) to switch to the Camera Roll in the Photos app. Continue snapping pictures as long as desired and as long as you have space available on your unit. The iPhone plays a cheerful snapshot noise each time it captures an image. When you’re finished, tap Home to return to the Home screen, or tap the button at the bottom-left corner (two squares superimposed) to switch to the current Camera Roll. Your Camera Roll contains all the digital pictures you’ve snapped on your iPhone, just like a physical film roll in a nondigital camera.

■Note When the Camera Roll is displayed, the two-squares button turns blue. Return from the Camera Roll by tapping the Camera button or by tapping the squares button again.

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Picture-Taking Pointers Here are a few pointers for taking pictures with your iPhone camera: • The iPhone is not set up for use with a tripod. However, you’ll achieve better results when you steady your hand on a wall or shoulder, rather than just holding the camera out at arm’s length. • The iPhone does not offer any zoom functionality. If you want to increase the relative size of your subject, move closer. To “zoom out,” walk away. It’s low-tech, but it works. • You can shoot your pictures in either landscape or portrait mode. The iPhone remembers the way each image was composed. • The iPhone captures photos when your finger leaves the Camera button, not when you first touch the screen. To capture better images, touch your finger to the screen, frame your shot, and then snap the photo by removing your finger from the button. This gives you greater control and simplifies the trigger movement.

Photos: Viewing Pictures The Photos app display is shown in Figure 9-3. If you’re used to iPhoto, this display will look familiar, because it uses the same terms and structure. The Camera Roll includes all the images you’ve recently shot on your iPhone, and your Photo Library includes every image synchronized to your iPhone (see the “Synchronizing Pictures from Your Computer” section later in this chapter for details).

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Figure 9-3. The Photos application lists all albums that you’ve synchronized to your iPhone, as well as the current roll you’ve been shooting on your camera. People who regularly use iPhoto will have a lot more albums than shown here.

Working with Photo Albums Photo albums are collections. They contain groups of photos you’ve saved together on your personal computer or photos all shot at around the same time. It all depends on how you’ve organized your collection and how you’ve synchronized that collection to your iPhone. Tap the name of any photo album to select and display it. As Figure 9-4 shows, album screens display their photos as rows of thumbnails. These small versions of your photos are displayed four per line. To find a particular photo, scroll up and down the library. Flick longer libraries to move quickly through your collection. From your photo album, you can view your images: • Tap any image it to display it full screen. • Tap the Play button at the bottom to start a slide show. • Tap Photo Albums to return to the albums list.

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Figure 9-4. Each photo album screen contains image thumbnails tiled four across. Scroll this screen to see your entire album. Tap an image to open it. Tap Play to start a slide show.

Working with Slide Shows As the name suggests, iPhone slide shows display the contents of a photo album one image after another. Slide shows display each slide for a set period of time. To get started with slide shows, go to your Home screen and navigate to Settings ➤ Photos. As shown in Figure 9-5, this Settings screen allows you to specify exactly how you want your slide shows to display: Play Each Slide For: Here, you can set the slide duration. Your choices are 2 seconds, 3 seconds (the default, which works really well for most people), 5 seconds, 10 seconds (which starts to get boring fast), and 20 seconds. Transition: Give your slide show a visual style by specifying how the iPhone should replace each image with the next. I stick with Dissolve, which softly fades one image into the next. Cube, Ripple, Wipe Across, and Wipe Down offer alternative transition styles. Of these four, Wipe Across and Wipe Down are the least visually annoying. Repeat: Set this to ON to make your slide show loop. Shuffle: Show your pictures in a random order by switching Shuffle from OFF to ON. When disabled, your pictures display in album order.

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Figure 9-5. Navigate to Settings ➤ Photos to customize your slide shows.

■Tip There’s no “official” way to add music to your slide shows. If you like, just start some music playing in the iPod application, and then run your slide show. You cannot synchronize a track to your slide show or have your music start playing when the slide show begins.

To end a slide show, tap Home or issue a double-fingered double-tap, followed by a single tap. This stops the slide show and places you in the full-screen photo display.

Working with a Full-Screen Image Remember all the gestures covered in Chapter 2? When viewing an image full-screen, the iPhone allows you to interact with that photo using a number of these gestures: • Pinching allows you to zoom into and out of the photo. • Double-tap to zoom into the photo. Double-tap again to zoom out. • When your image is displayed at the normal zoomed-out size, drag to the left or right to move to the previous or next image in the album. When zoomed into an image, dragging the photo pans across it.

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■Tip If you start your zoomed-in drag at the very edge of an image and drag toward the center, you can actually see bits of the next image in the sequence until you release your finger. Then your image springs back to its original position.

• Tap any image once to bring up the image overlay, as shown in Figure 9-6. The image overlay allows you to navigate between images (the left and right arrows), delete the current image (garbage can), start a slide show (the Play button), or use your photo in some way (the rectangle with the arrow), as discussed in the next section. • Flip your iPhone onto its side to have your photo reorient itself. If the photo was shot using landscape orientation, it fits itself to the wider view.

Figure 9-6. Tap any image to display this control overlay. If you do not use the controls, the overlay fades away after a few seconds. The garbage can appears only when viewing the Camera Roll.

Using a Photo As noted, the image overlay (Figure 9-6) has an option for using your photo in some way. This option, represented by a rectangle with an arrow, is found all the way to the bottom left of your screen. After tapping it, you can choose what to do with the photo:

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Use your image for wallpaper: The iPhone prompts you to move and scale your image, and then set it as wallpaper. E-mail your photo: The iPhone opens a new message screen and attaches your photo to the message. Address the message, add a note, and send it. Instantly, your photo travels across the ether to your recipient. Assign your photo to a contact: Your address book opens. Select a contact name and set the photo, or tap Cancel to return without using the photo.

Uploading Pictures by E-mail Many photo-hosting and printing services allow you to upload pictures using e-mail. Check with your host or printing service to see if it offers this option. For Flickr, visit http://flickr.com/account/uploadbyemail. Flickr will assign you a “secret” e-mail address. Mail photos from your iPhone to that address, and they automatically load into your Flickr account. For Costco, mail your images to [email protected]. You’ll receive a confirmation letter at the address you used to send the message. The confirmation includes a link to the Costco Photo Center web site, where you can order prints. Unfortunately, the iPhone automatically scales your images when you choose the Email Photo option. It does this to protect the mailbox of the recipients of your images. That’s great when you’re sharing cute pictures of the family or dog. It’s not so great when you want to print your e-mailed photos. To address this problem, I’ve written SendPics, a utility that allows you to select a photo from your iPhone and e-mail it at full resolution. You can download a copy via Installer.app (from http://iphone.NullRiver.com), or from http://ericasadun.com. You can add Installer to your iPhone using AppTapp (OS X) or iBrickr (Windows). Your iPhone must be modded for third-party applications to use this utility (see this book’s appendix for more details).

Synchronizing Pictures from Your Computer iTunes synchronizes your iPhone with pictures stored on your computer. You can bring your photo collection with you and share it through the iPhone. To make this happen, connect your iPhone to your computer and launch iTunes. Select your iPhone from the sources list (the blue column at the left side of the iTunes screen) and open the Photos tab. Your choices depend on your operating system: Windows: Select whether you want to synchronize to your My Pictures folder or to another folder or folders, as shown in Figure 9-7.

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Figure 9-7. On Windows, choose whether to synchronize photos to My Pictures or to another folder. Mac OS X: Choose whether to synchronize to iPhoto, Aperture, or a folder (such as Photos in your home directory), as shown in Figure 9-8. When synchronizing to iPhoto, you may sync your entire photo and album collection or choose just those albums you want to include.

Figure 9-8. On the Mac, choose whether to synchronize photos to iPhoto, Aperture, or a folder such as ~/Photos.

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Your iPhone As a USB Camera Your iPhone identifies itself as a standard USB digital camera when you connect it to computers. This allows you to offload your images without using iTunes. On Windows, your iPhone works like any other digital camera. You can set it up to automatically download its pictures each time it connects. On Macs, you can download photos using iPhoto, Image Capture, or any other software that communicates using the USB digital camera standard.

The iPhone and Windows Windows allows you to choose what happens when you connect your iPhone to your computer. To make that choice, follow these steps (on Windows XP): 1. Open the Control Panel, select Printers and Other Hardware ➤ Scanners and Camera ➤ Apple iPhone. 2. Right-click Apple iPhone and pick Properties from the context menu. 3. Click the Events tab and choose the Camera connected option from the Select an event pop-up list, as shown in Figure 9-9.

Figure 9-9. The Apple iPhone Properties dialog box allows you to automatically save your iPhone pictures to a folder you specify. 4. Pick one of three options for when you connect your iPhone to your computer: • Start this program: By default, this option launches the Microsoft Scanner and Camera Wizard and guides you through the process of choosing whether to download your images. • Take no action: Choose this option when you want to manage your photos through iTunes or when your iPhone is hosted on another computer. It tells Windows not to do anything automatically when you attach your iPhone.

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• Save all pictures to this folder: Select this option to automatically download your images to a folder you specify whenever you connect your iPhone. This makes photo downloads simple. Connect your iPhone; offload your pictures.

The Macintosh and Image Capture (and iPhoto) By default, iPhoto is your iPhone’s natural sync partner, but you do have a choice. If you want to just download your pictures to a folder, rather than import them into iPhoto, use Image Capture instead, as follows: 1. Launch Applications ➤ Image Capture. 2. Select Preferences ➤ General. 3. Under Camera, for the “When a camera is connected, open:” option, select Image Capture, and then click OK. Now you are set. Connecting your iPhone launches Image Capture instead of iPhoto, as shown in Figure 9-10. To download your entire photo roll, select Pictures, Movies, and Music folders for the Download To option, and then click Download All. The iPhone sends over its pictures, and the Mac stores them in your Photos folder. Your other options are as follows: Automatic Task: This pop-up menu offers several processing features. Use it to crop or scale your images (to 3 × 5 or 4 × 6, for example) as they download. Download Some: Click this button to select which pictures you want to access. Options: Click this button to select whether to keep the pictures on your iPhone after downloading them or to delete them once they arrive on your computer.

Figure 9-10. Image Capture allows you to download your iPhone photos directly to your Pictures folder.

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A Dozen Oddball Uses for Your iPhone Camera Here are some creative ways to use your iPhone camera that you might not have thought of, but which might come in handy: Record receipts: When your company permits, snap photos of your receipts rather than carrying them around stuffed into your wallet. The iPhone camera’s 2-megapixel resolution is good enough to capture most receipt details. Remember where you parked your car: Snap a photo of the aisle number and row where you parked. This can really help when you’re late for a trip and running to make that shuttle at the airport. Remember how you got to where you are: If you’re navigating your way through a strange city, snap pictures whenever you make a major turn. That way, you can keep an iPhone trail of visual bread crumbs to get you back to where you started. Record meeting notes: Sure, there may be one of those automatic copying whiteboards at a meeting you attend—but then again, there may not be. If not, whip out your iPhone and snap pictures of the whiteboard. As with receipts, 2 megapixels is enough resolution to read the photographed notes, especially if you take a series of close-up shots. Go shopping: Not sure whether you like that dress or that futon? Snap a picture with your iPhone so you can use it later for comparison shopping. Look at the back of your neck: Sometimes it’s just a relief to know what’s going on back there. Look behind furniture: Shine a flashlight down behind your furniture or under your car and let the iPhone do the work. There’s no need to force your eyeball into position when your iPhone can look for you. Open the Camera application and appreciate the easy-towatch screen. Identify people: When meeting new contacts, snap a photo as well as taking down names, e-mail addresses, and phone numbers. The iPhone makes it simple to assign pictures to your contacts list, and a photo can help you remember just who that contact is. Bring your “catalog” with you: If you’re offsite and you cannot bring everything along, snap pictures to travel with you. It doesn’t matter if you’re showing off your garden, your children, or your business equipment. A few photos can offset a lot of describing when you plan and snap in advance. Play “visual” scavenger hunt: Bored and looking for something to do with a friend? Instead of just texting back and forth, challenge your partner to a scavenger hunt, with snapped photos as proof. Take time-lapse photos: Third-party utilities like Snap2Vid (http://ericasadun.com) allow you to take time-lapse photos using your iPhone camera.

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Bring your own photo booth: Nothing says fun quite like snapping pictures of you and your friends making appalling faces. Hold your iPhone at arm’s length with your finger on the far side and the phone facing toward you. Mug it up, snap pictures like crazy, and hope that one comes out well. And then send that to all your friends by e-mail before rationality resumes.

Summary This chapter introduced the iPhone Camera and Photos applications. Despite the usual camera-phone limitations, the iPhone makes it particularly easy to snap, share, and enjoy your photos. Here are some final thoughts for this chapter: • Don’t expect more out of the iPhone’s 2 megapixels than it can practically give you, but at the same time, don’t overlook the power of those same 2 megapixels. You won’t snap archival-quality images, but they’re mighty handy for many short-term uses. • iPhone’s Camera and Photos applications offer some of the most instantly appealing ways to show off the power of your iPhone: scroll through your albums; zoom in and out with a pinch or double-tap; flip the unit on its side; and e-mail photos you’ve just snapped. These features all deliver the iPhone wow factor. • Don’t forget that the iPhone is a USB-enabled camera in its own right. You don’t need to limit yourself to iTunes to download photos to your computer. • The iPhone slide show settings are in a different place from the Photos application itself. Don’t forget that they’re available via Settings ➤ Photo. • Uploading your photos by e-mail is a really great way to integrate your iPhone with Flickr. Once you set up a Flickr contact on your iPhone using your “secret” e-mail address, you’ll be able to send your photos to Flickr with just a few taps.

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Google Maps and Other Apps A

s software goes, the iPhone heavy hitters have been covered in previous chapters. Now it’s time to turn your attention to the other applications on your iPhone—those small but extremely useful utilities that occupy the rest of your Home screen. This chapter provides a rundown of those applications, what they are, and how to use them. You’ll also find tips on how to get the most from these utilities.

Google Maps Google Maps interactively finds and displays locations using map and satellite imagery. With Google Maps, you can get directions, view traffic, and more. Launch the app by tapping the Maps icon. It looks like a small map and actually shows the location of Apple on 1 Infinite Drive in Cupertino, California. This takes you into the Google Maps application, where you can view and explore geography from around the world.

Maps Screen Figure 10-1 shows the basic Google Maps interface, which consists of the following: Search field: Marked with a spyglass, the search field allows you to enter addresses and other queries. You can type an entire address (1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC) or search for contacts (Bill Smith), landmarks (Golden Gate Bridge), or even pizza places in your local zip code (Pizza 11746). Bookmarks: The Bookmarks icon at the right side of the search field links to your saved locations. From the Bookmarks screen, you can edit your bookmarks (tap Edit), see recently viewed locations (tap Recents), or choose a location from your contacts list (tap Contacts). Tap Done to return to the main Maps screen.

■Tip To add new bookmarks, tap a pushpin on the Maps screen, tap the blue > icon, tap Add to Bookmarks, and then tap Save.

Map: The map itself appears in the center of your screen. It’s fully interactive. You can scroll by dragging your finger along the map, or zoom in and out using pinches and double-taps. (Use a single-fingered double-tap to zoom in, and a double-fingered tap to zoom out.) 153

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Red pushpins: The red pushpins indicate locations found by the application after a search. For example, Figure 10-1 shows pizza restaurants found near zip code 11746. Tap a pushpin to view a location summary, and then tap the blue > icon for more details and options. These options include directions to and from that location, bookmarking the location, and assigning the location to contacts. Directions: The double-arrow icon (one arrow pointing up and one arrow pointing down) in the bottom-left corner of the screen switches between normal mode and directions mode. Tap it to enter start and end locations for your trip or scroll through the stages of your current trip. The directions appear on the top of the screen, along with Previous and Next buttons. When viewing directions, tap the curvy arrow to switch your start and end points and get reverse directions. Map/Satellite: These buttons let you switch between the physical map and satellite imagery. List: This button shows you directions as a text list, such as “Go west for 5.4 miles.” Tap any item to view that stage of the trip. Traffic: Tap the car icon to request traffic conditions for the area you’re viewing. This feature is limited to certain regions, mostly major metropolitan areas. Green highways indicate traffic flowing at least 50 mph. Yellow ones mean that traffic is flowing between 25 and 50 mph. Red highways mean that traffic is moving below 25 mph. A gray route indicates that your iPhone could not retrieve up-to-date data for a given region.

Figure 10-1. The Maps application allows you to interactively view and search physical and satellite maps. The red pushpins show the locations found by your search.

CHAPTER 10 ■ GOOGLE MAPS AND OTHER APPS

Maps Tips Here are some tips for using Google Maps on your iPhone: • When a person or business is in your contacts list, save yourself some time. Don’t type in the entire address. Just enter a few letters of the name and select the contact. • Tap individual items on the directions list to jump to that part of your route. • The Recents screen (in Bookmarks) shows both recent locations and recent directions.

■Note Unfortunately, you can’t bookmark routes. That’s a pity because it would be nice to be able to quickly pull up traffic conditions on your favorite routes.

• URLs that link to Google Maps automatically open in the Maps application, whether they are tapped in Safari or Mail.

Weather The iPhone Weather application allows you to view the current temperature and six-day forecast for each of your favorite cities. Weather uses forecast data from Yahoo and the Weather Channel to provide up-to-the-minute data on your iPhone. To launch Weather, tap the blue icon with the sun on your Home screen.

Weather Screen Figure 10-2 shows a typical Weather screen. From here, you can flick left and right to scroll between your cities. The dots at the bottom of the screen work like the ones in Safari (see Chapter 6). The bright dot shows which item you’re viewing. The dim dots show the other cities you’ve added to the Weather app.

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Figure 10-2. The iPhone Weather application provides six-day forecasts for your favorite cities. When you’re ready to specify your cities, tap the small i at the bottom right of any Weather screen. This flips from the forecast to the city management screen. From this screen, you can customize your cities: Add a city: Tap the + button, enter the city name, tap Search, and then tap the city you want to add. You cannot find every city. Only those supported by Yahoo and the Weather Channel are available. Remove a city: Tap the red – button next to any city name, and then tap Delete. Reorder cities: Use the grab controls to the right of each name to drag your cities into a new order. Switch between Fahrenheit and Celsius: Tap °F or °C. Tap Done to return to the forecast screen.

Weather Tips Here are some tips for using the Weather application: • As Figure 10-2 shows, you can add a lot of cities. • Tap the Y! icon to visit Yahoo Weather in Safari.

CHAPTER 10 ■ GOOGLE MAPS AND OTHER APPS

• You don’t need to keep the Cupertino forecast. Although the iPhone offers Cupertino as its default forecast, feel free to add your own city and remove Cupertino from the list. Apple will never know.

Stocks The Stocks icon looks like a blue and gray stock ticker. Tap it to go to the application that monitors your favorite stocks using 20-minute delayed data from Yahoo.

Stocks Screen The Stocks screen, shown in Figure 10-3, consists of a list of stocks above a historic graph. Current prices appear to the right of each name, with the changes listed in green (positive) or red (negative). From this screen, you can view and customize stock information: View a stock: Tap any stock to load its associated graph. Choose the history length: Choose the length of time over which you want to view a stock’s history. Pick from one day (1d), one week (1w), one month (1m), three months (3m), six months (6m), one year (1y), and two years (2y). Customize: You can add or remove stocks from your list by tapping the i icon at the bottom right of your screen. This opens the customization screen. • To add a stock, tap the + button and either search for a company name or enter the stock symbol directly. • To remove a stock, tap the red – button, and then tap Delete. • Reorder stocks by using the drag controls to the right of each stock name. • The Numbers and % buttons switch between the absolute gain/loss numbers and the percentage gained or lost. • Tap Done to return to the main Stocks screen.

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Figure 10-3. Yahoo powers the iPhone Stocks application using 20-minute-delayed data.

Stock Tips Here are some tips for using the Stocks application: • Tap Yahoo! Finance at the bottom of the customization screen to jump directly to the Yahoo Finance web site. You can also tap Y! at the bottom left of the main Stocks screen to get to this web site. • Stock quotes are delayed according to the rules of the stock exchange. This provides an advantage to on-floor traders and allows vendors to charge for premium real-time quotes.

Notes The iPhone Notes application allows you to jot down quick notes on the go. This application isn’t meant to be a full-powered word processor. It just provides a simple way to create notes and bring them with you. To launch Notes, tap the yellow notepad-styled icon on your Home screen.

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Notes Screen Figure 10-4 shows the Notes screen. From this screen, you can add and manage notes: Create new notes: Tap the + button to add a new note. Enter and edit text: Tapping in the text area summons the keyboard. Type your note, make any changes, and then tap Done to dismiss the keyboard. Delete a note: Tap the garbage can, and then tap Delete Note. Navigate between notes: Use the left and right arrows to move between notes, or tap Notes and select the note you wish to view from the list. E-mail notes: Tap the envelope, enter an address, and tap Send.

■Note Your notes are stored on your iPhone in a SQL database in /var/root/Library/Notes/notes.db.

Figure 10-4. Use the Notes screen to write quick notes. You can e-mail your notes to others.

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Notes Tips Here are some tips on using the Notes application: • Although your Notes files are backed up, you cannot sync your notes to text files on your personal computer. Use e-mail to send yourself your notes if you want to move them to your computer. • You cannot use Notes to store frequently used items that you want to paste into Safari. (Perhaps Apple will address this in a future iPhone update.) • You cannot search through your notes, so keep them simple and organized.

■Note Unfortunately, there’s no easy way to change the dreadful default font for Notes. Also, currently, you cannot print your notes directly from the iPhone to a printer.

Calculator iPhone’s Calculator app provides a very basic interactive calculator with a simple memory. The icon on your Home screen looks like four calculator buttons. Tap it to open the application, as shown in Figure 10-5.

Figure 10-5. The iPhone Calculator application

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The Calculator application allows you to add, subtract, multiply, and divide. When you tap an operation button, a white circle appears around the button to let you know which operation will be carried out. Use the memory buttons to add to the stored number (M+) or subtract (M–). Tap MR/MC once to replace the number in memory. Tap MR/MC twice to clear the number from memory.

■Tip Given the limitations of the built-in iPhone Calculator, you may want to use one of the many free online tip and bill-splitter calculators instead when visiting restaurants. Google tip calculator.

Clock The iPhone Clock app is more flexible than you might first imagine. It offers a world clock, an alarm, a stopwatch, and a timer—all of which you may find handy. To launch the application, tap the clockface icon. You’ll see icons for each utility along the bottom of the screen.

■Note All Clock utilities continue in the background, even if you’re not in the Clock application itself. You can start an alarm, a timer, or the stopwatch and go off to other iPhone applications. The utility will keep ticking away as you work on other things.

World Clock Use the iPhone World Clock utility to keep track of time zones around the world. This utility is smart enough to take into account daylight saving time and other quirks, such as New Delhi being 30 minutes off the standard. As Figure 10-6 shows, white clockfaces indicate daytime, and black clockfaces indicate night. Tap + to add new cities. Tap Edit to delete and reorder them.

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Figure 10-6. The iPhone World Clock utility monitors time around the world.

Alarm The Alarm utility allows you to tell your iPhone to alert you at a specified time. Use alarms to wake up in the morning or remember business meetings. Create alarms by tapping + on the Alarm screen. This opens the Add Alarm screen, as shown in Figure 10-7. From this screen, you can set your alarm: Set a time: Spin the wheels to specify the time for the alarm to sound. Drag your finger up and down, and the wheel spins with you. Flick your finger, and the wheel continues spinning, even after your finger leaves the screen. If you like, you can also tap a number rather than spin to it. Make an alarm repeat: Alarms are day-specific. You must choose days of the week for repeating events. For a daily alarm, select every day from Monday through Sunday. I use a weekday alarm to remind me 10 minutes before I need to pick up my kids at the bus stop. Select a sound: Choose any ringtone for your sound. You can select a custom ringtone if you’ve added new ones to your iPhone ringtones library. Allow snooze: The Snooze button, as you might expect, allows you to delay an alarm and repeat it ten minutes later. To enable this, set the Snooze option to ON. To disable snooze, set it to OFF.

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Label an alarm: Give your alarm a custom label by tapping its name and entering text with the keyboard. Save an alarm: Tap Save to store your new alarm, or tap Cancel to exit the Add Alarm screen without saving.

Figure 10-7. Create custom alarms that play sounds at a given time. The main Alarm screen lists all the alarms you’ve added to your iPhone. Use the ON/OFF toggles to activate or deactivate these alarms. To remove an alarm, tap Edit, tap the red – button, and then tap Delete. This permanently removes the alarm from your iPhone.

Timer The iPhone Timer utility lets you play a sound after a set period of time. Unlike alarms, timers are not tied to a particular time of day. Use alarms for appointments; use timers for cooking eggs. On the Timer screen, set the amount of time you want to pass (3 minutes, 10 minutes, 1 hour, and so on), and then tap Start. After the timer counts down, it plays a sound you’ve selected from your ringtones.

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Stopwatch The iPhone Stopwatch utility allows you to time events. On the Stopwatch screen, tap Start to begin the timer, Tap Lap to mark the latest lap time. Tap Stop to pause. Tapping Reset returns the timer to 00:00.0.

YouTube Watch your favorite short online videos with the iPhone YouTube application. This app works very much like the standard web site, but since the iPhone does not support Flash video, YouTube and Apple made an agreement to provide access to MP4 versions of many videos. The YouTube application provides that access, albeit with a more limited video collection. To launch the application, tap the YouTube icon, which looks like a retro-styled TV set.

Finding YouTube Videos To find videos, tap any of these buttons: Featured: These include videos reviewed and recommended by YouTube staff. Most Viewed: The most popular videos of the day, week, or all time. Bookmarks: A collection of videos you’ve selected and bookmarked. To add a bookmark, tap the blue > button next to any video, and then tap Bookmark. Tap Share to send the link by e-mail instead. Search: Enter a keyword or two, and then tap Search to look through YouTube’s entire collection. More: Choose from three more viewing choices or customize the display: • Most Recent shows YouTube’s newest items. • Top Rated shows YouTube’s collection of videos that have garnered the most viewer support. • History lists recently viewed items. • Edit lets you choose which items appear on your shortcuts bar and which items appear on the More screen. Drag the categories you view the most down to the bar, and then tap Done.

■Tip Use the red Clear button at the top-right corner of the History screen to erase your YouTube viewing history. People don’t have to know you’ve been watching that skateboarding dog.

CHAPTER 10 ■ GOOGLE MAPS AND OTHER APPS

Watching YouTube Videos Tap any video listing to begin playback. YouTube videos play back exclusively in landscape orientation, as shown in Figure 10-8. Tap the screen to toggle viewing the controls on and off: Done: Tap Done to end playback and return to the YouTube video listings. Scrubber bar: Adjust the playhead to set the playback time. Aspect control: Tap the Aspect button (diagonal arrows) to toggle between full-screen and original video aspect settings. When filling the screen, parts of the video may be cropped in order to display the largest pictures possible.

■Tip As an alternative to tapping the Aspect button, you can also double-tap a video as it plays. The results are the same.

Bookmark: Tap the Bookmark button to add the current video to your bookmarks. It highlights briefly and then dims. The video continues playing without interruption. Reverse: Tap Reverse once to return to the start of the video, or tap and hold it to move backward in the video. Play/Pause: Tap Play/Pause to stop and resume playback. Forward: Tap Forward to skip to the next video in the current category, or tap and hold it to move forward in the video. Envelope: Tap the envelope icon to send an e-mail message with a URL that links to this video. Volume control: The volume control appears at the bottom of the screen and allows you to adjust playback volume. You can also use physical buttons built into your iPhone to control volume.

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Figure 10-8. The YouTube video playback controls

YouTube Tips Here are some tips for using the YouTube application: • You’ll do better watching videos over WiFi than EDGE, because they will download a lot faster. • Tap the blue > buttons to view the information screen for each video. • Scroll down on the info screen to find related videos that you may want to view. • You cannot swipe to delete bookmarks. To remove items, tap Edit, tap the red – button, and then tap Delete.

iTunes Music Store The mobile iTunes Store, shown in Figure 10-9, allows you to purchase and enjoy content while on the go. To launch the application, tap the purple icon with the downward-pointing arrow.

CHAPTER 10 ■ GOOGLE MAPS AND OTHER APPS

Figure 10-9. Browse and buy music from the mobile iTunes Store. With this application, you can browse, preview, buy, and download songs directly to your iPhone. You’ll need an iTunes account, but since you needed to create one to activate your iPhone, you should be in pretty good shape. Browse and buy as follows: Browse featured content: Tap Featured, and then choose from three categories: New Releases, What’s Hot, and Genres. Browse top-ten lists: The music store contains top-ten lists for both songs and albums. Pick a category like Rock, Hip-Hop, or Pop, and then view the top songs or albums for that category. Search for keywords: Enter a keyword or two and search through the iTunes Store’s entire collection. The search is live, so the results update as you type. Browse the Starbucks selection: This option appears only when you’re in a Starbucks outlet. Tap the Starbucks icon to discover which song is currently playing in your location. You can also browse the special Starbucks catalog. Preview songs: Tap any song to listen to a free 30-second preview. Purchase songs and albums: Tap the price of any song or album, and then tap Buy Now. You must sign into your iTunes account with your password. When you return to your computer, your new purchases sync to iTunes, which adds them to a new Purchased on iPhone playlist. To associate your account with your iPhone, you must sign into your iTunes account on your computer before you sync. The iPhone remembers the lastsynchronized account. You cannot use multiple accounts with the mobile store at the same time. Instead, you’ll need to sign in again on your computer and resync to switch accounts.

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■Note The mobile iTunes application is smart enough to know about Complete My Album. If you’ve already purchased tracks on a given album, you’ll be given the option to purchase individual tracks. Bonus content, like liner notes, will be available to you when you return to your home computer but will not download to your iPhone.

View items as they download and pause downloads: Tap Downloads to see how your purchased songs and albums are progressing with download. Tap the Pause button to temporarily stop a download.

Calendar Your iPhone Calendar application (see Figure 10-10) allows you to keep track of your iCal appointments while on the go. With it, you can view your existing events and add new ones. Launch Calendar by tapping on the white and red icon that looks like a page from an oldfashioned tear-off calendar. The day and date are current, and, unlike the old style iCal icon on Macintoshes, update every day.

Figure 10-10. Manage your appointments with Cal.

CHAPTER 10 ■ GOOGLE MAPS AND OTHER APPS

Cal offers three different views. In each, you can tap on the event to move to a detail view, where you can edit the event or return by clicking the back button: View by List: The List view shows your events listed one by one. Each event takes up a single slot. View by Day: See your appointments in a daily layout, as shown in Figure 10-10. View by Month: The Month-at-a-time view highlights all days with appointments. Click on any day that is marked to view a scrolling list of events at the bottom of the view. Clicking “Today” automatically jumps you back to the display for the current day but preserves whichever view you are using. So you’ll see the current month for month view or recenter the list in list view.

Adding and Removing Events Your iPhone allows you to add calendar events on the go. This lets you adjust and update your schedule when you are away from your computer. Tap the + button at the top-right of the screen to add an event. The event editor lets you add a title, location, start and end times, and a note. To add these, just tap a field and use the keyboard to enter the information. If your event repeats, select from the standard list that defines how often: Every Day, Every Week, Every Two Weeks, Every Month, or Every Year. You an also add an event alert that notifies you on your iPhone when the alert is coming due. You may want a 1-hour notice for a dental appointment and a 2-day notice for your anniversary. The iPhone provides a nice selection of options. To remove any event, select it and go to its edit page. Tap the red Delete Event bar at the bottom. The iPhone prompts you to confirm. Tap the red Delete Event bar again or tap Cancel to return without removing the event.

Summary As you saw in this chapter, even the “minor” applications add a lot of functionality to your day-to-day iPhone use. They are surprisingly useful and carefully chosen to enhance the way you use your device. Here are a few points to carry away from this chapter: • Build your Google Maps vocabulary. Instead of thinking about locations as street addresses, start thinking about people, businesses, and trips. Google Maps makes it easy for you to view route information with the least possible amount of work. • The Stocks and Weather applications provide great ways to keep up with real-time information using classic Apple design. • Although the iPhone-compatible YouTube collection is substantially smaller than the full web site (until the iPhone supports Flash video, that’s just a basic fact of iPhone use), you still have access to thousands of videos, and the number of videos converted to the iPhone-compatible MP4 format grows daily. • The mobile iTunes Store offers a great way to make on-demand music purchases. The mobile video store may not be far behind.

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APPENDIX

Hacking the iPhone H

acks for the iPhone are such a quick-moving and rapidly changing topic that it’s impossible to remain up-to-date with them in a published book. At the time of writing, there are many and varied ways to customize your iPhone. This appendix provides a quick rundown of the major iPhone hacks that were released in the first months after the iPhone debuted. Whether these modifications will be viable or still exist when you hold this book in your hands is hard to say.

iPhone Unlock The iPhone is Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) locked. This means it was designed for and can be used by one carrier—AT&T in the United States—and offers a limited set of iPhonecompatible voice and data plans. Within weeks of its release, a hacker named iZsh created a tool named iASign, which allowed iPhone owners to use their phones with AT&T/Cingular plans that were not designed for the iPhone, including pay-as-you-go plans. A month or two later, the iPhone Dev Team hackers (http://iphone.fiveforty.net/wiki) released the iUnlock and anySIM tools (see Figure A-1), which allowed the iPhone to be used with any Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) SIM from around the world. Within days of its release, the iPhone had been unlocked and used in dozens of countries, from Malaysia to Jamaica and from Norway to Pakistan.

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Figure A-1. anySIM provides one-touch iPhone unlocking. Reacting to the iPhone Unlock tool, Steve Jobs said, “It’s a cat-and-mouse game. We try to stay ahead. People will try to break in, and it’s our job to stop them breaking in.” In late September 2007, Apple issued the following statement in a press release: Apple has discovered that many of the unauthorized iPhone unlocking programs available on the Internet cause irreparable damage to the iPhone’s software, which will likely result in the modified iPhone becoming permanently inoperable when a future Applesupplied iPhone software update is installed. Apple plans to release the next iPhone software update, containing many new features including the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store (www.itunes.com), later this week. Apple strongly discourages users from installing unauthorized unlocking programs on their iPhones. Users who make unauthorized modifications to the software on their iPhone violate their iPhone software license agreement and void their warranty. The permanent inability to use an iPhone due to installing unlocking software is not covered under the iPhone’s warranty. After releasing firmware update 1.1.1 for iPhone, Apple refused warranty service to both unlocked phones and phones with third-party applications. Caveat emptor and hacker beware.

APPENDIX ■ HACKING THE IPHONE

File Access and Ringtones Unlike other iPods, the iPhone provides no disk access. You cannot use it to store arbitrary files. The Ecamm Network (www.ecamm.com) was the first vendor out of the gate to allow thirdparty access to the iPhone disk. Ecamm’s iPhone Drive opens the iPhone to disk storage. Ambrosia Software (www.ambrosiasw.com) makes iToner, a third-party ringtones installer.

Skinning Most iPhone visuals—buttons, wallpaper, and so on—are completely customizable. Skinning allows you to make the screens look the way you want, with your own personal visual flair, Figure A-2 shows an example.

Figure A-2. Custom themes like this Lazy Day theme by Unclear (www.modmyiphone.com/forums) allow you to personalize your iPhone with an individual touch.

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Third-Party Applications Normally, the iPhone allows access only via iTunes. Even then, it shows only part of its disk— its Media folder—to iTunes. It hides the rest of its disk and operating system from casual access. A single hack, called jailbreak, provided developers with access to the entire iPhone disk, including to the underlying operating system. Shortly after this “jailbreak” occurred, the iPhone Dev Team hackers, led by Patrick Walton, released a compilation toolchain for the iPhone’s ARM chip. (A toolchain includes the compiler and linker needed to build native software that runs on the iPhone’s hardware.) Combined, these two events—jailbreak and compiler—provided the means for third-party iPhone application development. In the weeks that followed, dozens of iPhone-native applications were released, including games, utilities, productivity aids, and more. As the number of applications grew, a developer named NullRiver (http://www.apptapp.com) introduced an installer that allowed users to add applications directly from their iPhone. With the introduction of a utility (AppTapp) that added Installer.app to the iPhone, adding and using third-party applications became extremely simple. A modification called SummerBoard (also from NullRiver) provided direct access to as many applications as the user was willing to install by allowing the icons on the Home screen to scroll. Figure A-3 shows an example of a Home screen with some third-party applications. My applications, including the Voice Notes application in the lower-right side of Figure A-3, are hosted at http://ericasadun.com. In the Fall of 2007, Apple announced that it had changed its mind and would allow thirdparty developers to build iPhone applications. The software developer kit is promised for February 2008 and will probably be opened to members of Apple’s premiere and select Apple Developer Connection program, which starts at $500/year (http://connect.apple.com).

Figure A-3. Third-party applications add value and capabilities to the iPhone.

Index A A/C power adapter, 5 accent marks, 35 accessories, 19 Accounts screen, 80 activation, 9–15 charges, 10 hacks, 17–18 plan selection, 10–12 preparing for, 6–8 process, 12–15 adaptive multirate compression (AMR) format, 49 Add Contact button, 41 address bar, in Safari, 92 Address Book calling number in, 41 syncing with, 6 advanced preferences, 50 AIM, 63–64 Airplane Mode, 39, 55 Alarm utility, 162–163 album art, 125 Album View button, 123–128 alerts, 50, 79 Ambrosia Software, 50, 173 Answer button, 43 anySIM tool, 171 Apollo IM, 68 Apple Support, 19 AppleCare protection plan, 19 applications iPod, 119–120, 126–136 quitting, 29 See also specific applications AppTapp, 174 AT&T coverage map, 39 attachments, 72, 85–86 audio files

converting to iPhone-friendly format, 116–117 playing, 123–126 storage space, 7 synching, 110–111 See also iTunes Audiobook Speed setting, 135 auto-capitalization feature, 35 auto-locking setting, 26 automated voice systems, 44 automatic corrections, 32–33

B Back button, 24, 124 back ups, 109 backspace/delete key, 32 backup databases, 59 battery life, 132 bookmarklets, 102 bookmarks adding, 92 editing, 100 Safari, 93 saving, 102 selecting, 100 working with, 99–102 browse buttons bar, 121–122 built-in speakers, 5 Butterfly.app game, 25

C cable, 5 cache, clearing, 104 Calculator application, 160–161 Calendar, 168–169 calendars, 6, Call Forwarding setting, 50 call settings, codes for, 51–52 call waiting, 45

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■INDEX

calls answering, 36, 42–43 conference, 45 ending, 45 forwarding, 50 international, 15, 41–42 launching Phone application, 40 managing, 44–46 missed, 41 outgoing, 41 placing, 40–42 placing on hold, 45 recent, 41 receiving, while listening to audio, 134 using headset, 36 camera, 139–152 creative uses for your, 151–152 locating, 139 removal of, 140 shooting photos with, 140–142 USB, 149–150 See also photos Camera icon, 139–140 Camera Roll, 141 capacity, 108 capacity meter, 110 cases, 19 category screens, navigating, 122–123 cell network indicator, 39 charging/docking cradle, 5 Chat, 61, 63–65 cleaning cloth, 5 Clock application, 133, 161–164 codes, 51–52 Compose button, 86 computer, connecting iPhone to, 8–9 ejecting iPhone from, 117 conference calls, 45 Configure screen, 121 contacts, 6 accessing, 45 adding, 41, 59–60 assigning photos to, 147 assigning ringtones to, 50 calling, 41 managing, 46–47

Contacts icon, 45 contractions, 34 contracts, 4, 10–12 conversation screens, 58 conversations managing, 58 messaging, 61 text messages, 58–59 cookies, 104 Costco Photo Center web site, 147 Cover Flow mode, 128 coverage map, 39 credit checks, 14 custom ringtones, 110

D data back ups, 109 capacity, 108–110 delete key, 35 Devices section, 107 dialing screen, 40 dictionary, 32 digital camera. See camera; photos digital rights management (DRM) encryption, 116 dock, 5 double-tapping, 22 draft e-mails, 88 dragging, 22 DVDs, downloading, 116

E e-mail adding accounts, 73–77 addressing, 87 alters, 79 attachments, 72, 85–86 calling phone number links in, 41 checking, 78 compatibility, 71–73 drafts, 88 editing messages, 88 embedded links in, 85 getting started with, 71, 80–81 mailboxes, 80–82 messaging via, 62

■INDEX

photos in, 147 push, 72 removing accounts, 77 sending, 86–88 settings, 77–80 uploading photos via, 147 viewing and navigating, 83–86 See also iPhone Mail e-mail providers, 7 e-mail servers, 76 ear buds, 5 early termination fees, 4, 10 Ecamm Network, 173 Edge connections, 42, 45, 65, 91 Eject button, 117 embedded links, in e-mail, 85 energy, saving, 132 Entourage, 6 envelope icon, 86 equalizer settings, 135 Erica Utilities package, 49 exchange policies, 4

F factory settings, restoring, 109 favorites, 41, 46–47 feature overview, 5 Field mode, 51 file access, 173 file formats, supported, 85, 116–117 flicking, 22 Flickr, 147 Forward button, 126 full-screen images, 145–146

G Global System for Mobile communications (GSM), 171 Google Maps, 153–155 Google search bar, 94 Google SMS requests, 65–66 GoPhone plans, 10–11, 15 greetings, voicemail, 48 GSM. See Global System for Mobile communications GSM service codes, 51–52

H hacks, 17–18, 171–174 headphone adapter cord, 19 listening to music with, 36 playback controls, 134 history, clearing, 104 history buttons, Safari, 93 Hold button, 29, 45 holding, 22 Home button, 5, 21, 24, 31 Home screen, 24 hypertext links, 85, 95–96

I iASign, 171 iCal, 6, 168 iChat, 54, 63–64 Image Capture, 150 images album art, 125 full-screen, 145–146 See also photos IMAP (Instant Message Access Protocol), 72 incoming calls, 41 incoming mail servers, 76 Info tab, 99, 110 infrared (IR) beam, 24 instant messaging (IM), 53–54, 63, 67–68 insurance, 19 international calls, 15, 41–42 Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP), 72 Internet Relay Chat (IRC) messaging, 54, 68 invoices, 12 iPhone activating, 9–15 buying, 1–4 connecting to computer, 8–9 ejecting from computer, 117 features overview, 5 hacks, 17–18, 171–174 insurance for, 19 locking, 27–29 managing in iTunes, 107–114 manually synchronizing, 114 media browsing on, 120–123 packaging, 4

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178

■INDEX

preparing for activation, 6–8 rebooting, 30 repairs, 19 restoring to factory settings, 109 syncing, 15–17 system requirements, 2 turning off and on, 26–30 unlocking, 18, 26–27, 172 iPhone Dev Team hackers, 171, 174 iPhone Drive, 173 iPhone IMEI, 51 iPhone keyboard, 61 iPhone language, 21–23 iPhone Mail adding accounts, 73–77 alters, 79 compatibility, 71–73 getting started with, 71, 80–81 removing accounts, 77 sending mail, 86–88 settings, 77–80 viewing and navigating mail, 83–86 viewing attachments, 85–86 See also e-mail iPhone-friendly formats, 116–117 iPhoto, 150. See also photos iPod application, 119–120 adjusting settings, 135–136 Album View button, 126–127 Cover Flow mode, 128 media browsing, 120–123 On-The-Go playlists, 128–130 playing audio, 123–126 playing video, 131–132 iPods, interaction with, 21–36 IRC (Internet Relay Chat), 54, 68 iResQ, 140 iToner, 173 iTunes, 2, 7, 135, 166–168 account creation, 7–8 adding e-mail accounts using, 73–74 adding ringtones, 115–116 bookmarks and, 99 creating iPhone-friendly formats, 116–117

managing iPhone in, 107–114 Smart Playlist, 114–115 synchronization options, 110–114 iTunes ID, 13 iUnlock tool, 171

J jailbreak, 174 JavaScript, 103

K keyboard, 31–36, 61 Keypad icon, 44

L landscape orientation, 96–97 light sensors, 25–26 links following, in Safari, 95–96 in e-mail, 85 loaner iPhone, 19 lock screen, 27 locking iPhone, 27–29 loop control, 125

M Mail Accounts settings, 73–74 mail. See e-mail mailboxes, 80–82 manual synchronization, 114 media files browsing, in iPod application, 120–123 See also audio files; video files Meebo.com, 67–68 Merge Calls button, 45 message display screen, 83–85 message headers, 72 messages/messaging adding contacts, 59–60 advantages of iPhone, 61 alerts, 60 conversations, 58–59 costs of, 54 creating, 56–57

■INDEX

from chat program, 63–65 instant, 54, 63, 67–68 IRC, 54, 68 multimedia, 53 reception for, 55–60 sending via e-mail, 62 text (SMS), 13, 53–65 types of, 53–54 voicemail, 48–49 workarounds, 61 See also e-mail microphone, 5, 44 Microsoft Exchange, 73 midcall options, 44 missed calls, 41 mobile iTunes application, 166–168 MobileSlideShow.app, 139 More screen, 120–122 multimedia messaging, 53 Multimedia Messaging Service (MSM) messaging, 53 multimedia texting, 61 multiperson texting, 61 multitouch technology, 21–22 music listening to with headset, 36 storage space, 7 syncing, 110–111 See also audio files; iTunes Music tab, 111 Mute/Ring button, 44, 126 name, iPhone, 108

N nontransferable numbers, 15 Notes application, 86, 158, 160 Now Playing button, 120, 123 Now Playing screen, 123–127 NullRiver, 174

O offset correction, 32 .?123 button, 35 On-The-Go Edit mode, 129 On-The-Go playlists, 128–130 orientation, changing, 96–97 outgoing calls, 41

outgoing mail servers, 76 Outlook, 6 Outlook Express, 6 Outlook Web Access (OWA), 73

P packaging, 4 pages button, Safari, 93 Pages viewer Safari, 98–99 passcode locking iPhone with, 27–29 voicemail, 47 penalties, for service terminations, 4 Phone application launching, 40 using to place calls, 41–42 phone calls. See calls phone numbers embedded in e-mail, 85 of iPhone, 46, 109 links to, 41 managing favorites, 46–47 nontransferable, 15 in quick-call list, 41 Phone Settings pane, 50 photo albums, 143–144 photos, 139 assigning to contacts, 147 e-mailing, 147 full-screen images, 145–146 pointers for taking, 142 shooting, 140–142 slide shows, 144–145 syncing, 110, 147–148 uploading, via e-mail, 147 uploading, via USB connection, 149–150 uses of, 146–147 viewing, 142–147 See also camera Photos icon, 139 pinching, 23 plan selection, 10–12 play indicator, 124 Play/Pause button, 126, 128 playlists, 110, 114–115, 128–130 plug-ins, 103

179

180

■INDEX

podcasts, syncing, 110–112 Podcasts tab, 112 pop-ups, blocking, 103 POP3 (Post Office Protocol), 71 portrait orientation, 96–97 power adapter, 5 power off/on, 30 power tricks, 26–31 predictive mapping, 32 predictive zones, 32 preferred providers, 75 prepaid plans, 14–15 price cuts, 3 proximity sensors, 24, 44 punctuation dragging, 35 push e-mail, 72

Q quick-call list, 41 QuickTime media, 116

R reboots, 30 Recents icon, 41 reception issues, 39 for text messaging, 55–60 recovery mode, 31 reload button, Safari, 92 repairs, 19 Reply/Forward button, 86 return policy, 3–4 Rewind button, 126 Ring/Silent switch, 43 ringtones, 49–50, 173 adding, 115–116 custom, 110 syncing, 113–114 Ringtones tab, 113–114 roaming charges, 15 RSS feeds, 65

S Safari web browser bookmarks, 99–102 browser window, 92–93

introduction to, 91–98 navigation basics, 93–98 page management, 98–99 settings, 103–104 screens interaction with, 21–24 moving between, 24 scrolling, 23, 97–98 scrubber bar, 125 search engines, 103 sendFileByMail, 49 SendPics utility, 147 sensors, 24–26 light, 25–26 proximity, 24, 44 tilt, 25 serial number, 109 service shortcuts, 51 service terminations, 4 settings advanced, 50 auto-locking, 26 Passcode Lock, 27–29 recovery mode, 31 restoring factory, 109 Safari, 103–104 Share button, 87 shift key, 32 Short Message Service (SMS). See text messaging shortcuts bar, 51, 121 shorthand, 61 shuffle control, 125 Shuffle option, 122 signal strength, 39 silent mode, 43 SIM cards, 15, 18 SIM locked, 18 Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), 72 sixth generation iPod, hack for, 18 skinning, 173 Skylook for Windows, 63 Skype, 63 sleep mode, 27, 132–133 sleep timer, 133

■INDEX

Sleep/Wake button, 30–31, 36, 43, 132 slide shows, 144–145 Smart Playlist, 114–115 SMS alerts, 60 SMS gateway addresses, 62 SMS messaging. See text messaging SMS requests, Google, 65–66 SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol), 72 software updates, 109, 172 songs, transferring purchased, 116 Sound Check, 135 Sounds pane, 49 Speaker icon, 44 speakerphone, 44 speakers, built-in, 5 spelling correction features, 32–33 spyglass feature, 33 stereo headset, 36 Stocks application, 157–158 stop button, Safari, 92 Stopwatch utility, 164 storage space, 7 stereo headset, 5 Subject line, for e-mail, 88 Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) tray, 5 Summary tab, 107–110 SummerBoard, 174 swipes, 23 swiping, 26 Sync button, 114 synchronization, 15–17, 109–114 system requirements, 2

T tapping, 21 text, entering in Safari, 95 Text icon, 55 Text Messages screen, 59–60 text messaging, 53 adding contacts, 59–60 adding to plan, 13 advantages of iPhone, 61 alerts, 60 from chat program, 63–65 conversations, 58–59

costs of, 54 creating messages, 56–57 reception for, 55–60 Text SMS application, 55 Text Messaging screen, 56 Text SMS application, 55 third-party applications, 18, 147, 174 third-party photo applications, 147 third-party unlocking software, 18 tilt sensor, 25 Timer utility, 163 toolchains, 174 two-fingered taps, 22 typing skills, 31 typing tests, 36 typing tricks, 34

U Unlock tool, 172 unlocked phones, 18 unlocking iPhone, 26–27 unpinching, 23 URLs embedded in e–mail, 85 entering, in Safari, 93–94 USB cable, 5 USB camera, using iPhone as, 149–150 USB power adapter, 5 use-photo-for icon, 86

V video files converting to iPhone-friendly format, 116–117 deleting, 132 playing, 131–132 syncing, 110–113 transferring purchased, 116 YouTube, 164–166 video playback controls, 131–132 Video tab, 112–113 Virtual Private Network (VPN) accounts, 73 Voice Notes application, 174

181

182

■INDEX

voicemail, 47–49 greetings, 48 sending calls to, 36, 43 voicemail passcode (PIN), 47 volume controls, 134 volume limit setting, 135–136

web sites, iPhone-specific, 104 WiFi, 42, 45, 91 wired remote control, 20 words, deleting, 35 workarounds, messaging, 61 World Clock utility, 161

W

Y

wallpaper, using photos for, 147 warranties, 19 Weather application, 155–157 web browsing, with Safari, 91–104 web pages changing orientation of, 96–97 management of, 98–99 viewing, 97–98

Yahoo!, e-mail accounts, 72 YouTube application, 164–166

Z zooms/zooming, 23, 97–98