that makes voice calls and offers text messaging. So what? All cellphones do that. Things get interesting when you send and receive multimedia messages with active links to web pages or a video of the pop fly your granddaughter just caught at the softball championship. Visual voicemail displays a list of messages so you can listen to the most important ones first rather than go through them in chronological order. Add to that more ways to communicate cost-free with other iOS device owners: FaceTime lets you make audio and video calls, and iMessage, which is part of Messages, gives you multimedia message exchanges. We explain the ins and outs of phoning and messaging in Book III, Chapters 1 and 2. For those times you don’t feel like talking to anyone, there’s Do Not Disturb, which blocks incoming calls and alerts.
Figure 1-1: iPhone as phone.
Music and videos
With the great display and excellent stereophonic output, your iPhone plays music, movies, podcasts, and more with crisp, clear sound and images. From the iTunes Store, you can download music, movies, TV shows, and audiobooks. iTunes Radio lets you create a personalized radio station. Download the Trailers app to see movies that will be out in the coming months. Podcasts and iTunes U have their very own apps to enjoy podcasts and courseware. Connect your iPhone to a monitor or television with a cable or via AirPlay or Apple TV to watch everything on a big screen. All you have to do is pop the popcorn. Check out Book IV, Chapters 2, 3, and 4 to learn all about the audio and video functions.
Camera and video camcorder
The iSight camera places the iPhone 4s and later in the same class as many digital cameras. The enhanced lens, ten frames per second burst mode for capturing action shots, and dual-color LED flash of the 5s and later models may tempt even professional photographers to leave their DSLRs home sometimes. What’s more, the rear-facing camera captures 240-degree panoramic photos and high-definition video in 1,080 rows of pixels (also known as 1080p). With iOS 8, video recording has evolved even further and offers improved video stabilization, slow-motion capture, and time-lapse videos. The LED flash next to the objective lens on the back of your iPhone illuminates both still photos and videos. The Photos app organizes your photos and videos after you capture them and gives you good editing options. To create professional-looking movies and trailers, you can download the iMovie app. Go to Book IV, Chapters 1 and 4 for detailed information.
Personal digital assistant
With Siri, the voice-recognition interface that’s available on any iPhone that can run iOS 8, iPhone is your personal digital assistant (PDA for short). Just speak your commands to Siri and she – or he, if you choose a male voice – does what you ask, such as reading your messages and then typing and sending a dictated reply, finding a florist, or identifying a new song you hear on the radio. We explain how to use the Siri interface in Book I, Chapter 3, and throughout this book, we sprinkle tips for using Siri with specific apps.
Don’t overlook iPhone’s other PDA features. The resident apps complete iPhone’s PDA role. Contacts eliminates the need for a paper address book. Calendar replaces your time management system, and Notes makes all those scraps of ideas and grocery lists obsolete, while Reminders makes sure no task or appointment is forgotten. We show you how to use your iPhone’s PDA apps along with Voice Memos, Clock, and Calculator in Book IV.
Passbook manages apps that track store cards, coupons, and boarding passes so you can (almost) leave your wallet at home and never miss out on a discount or point-accumulation opportunity. See Book IV, Chapter 5 for how to use it.
If you recently purchased a new iPhone, you can download the iWork suite gratis, which includes the Pages word processing app and Keynote presentation creation app, which we explain in Book III, Chapter 5, and the Numbers spreadsheet app, which we talk about in Book III, Chapter 4.
Internet communicator
The real power of your iPhone shows up when you go online. Able to access the Internet via either your cellular network or Wi-Fi, you never have to miss another time-sensitive email or tweet. You can search the Internet with Safari as you would on any computer. For example, you can search for movie times, book airline tickets, settle bets with Wikipedia, and read the news from your favorite news outlets. Safari’s Reading List function lets you store a link to an article to read later. With iCloud, you can share tabs and bookmarks between all your devices. Book II, Chapter 3 explains Safari.
You access your email accounts through Mail. If you have multiple accounts, you can sync them all with Mail and see them individually or all together. Learn all about Mail in Book II, Chapter 4.
Tap open the Share Sheet from apps like Photos, Maps, and Safari to send information via AirDrop (iPhone 5 or later) to other iOS devices or Macs, attached to a Mail or Messages message, or upload to Facebook or Twitter. From the Share Sheet, you can also copy or print a document or image.
Your iPhone comes with some specific apps that gather information from the Internet. Weather leans on the Weather Channel to bring you the weather forecast for cities you want to know about. Stocks lets you follow international investment markets, as well as your personal investments. We take you through these apps in Book III, Chapters 3 and 4, respectively.
Personal GPS navigator
Between the Compass and Maps apps and the GPS, Wi-Fi, and cellular sensors, 99 percent of the time, your iPhone can tell you where you are and tell you how to get where you want to go. What’s more, in coordination with Yelp, Maps and Siri can give you suggestions for vendors and services, like bookstores, museums, and restaurants, based on your location. The links in Maps are active – as they are in most iPhone apps – so you just click on the suggested vendor and the website for that vendor opens in Safari. We explain how to use Maps and Compass in Book III, Chapter 3.
E-book and document reader
Your iPhone’s document-reading capabilities make reading on your iPhone easier than ever – instead of leafing through outdated tabloids in a waiting room, you have the latest news and novels at your fingertips. We talk about Newsstand, which organizes and updates your magazine and newspaper app subscriptions, in Book IV, Chapter 5. For your reading pleasure, you have iBooks, which we explain in Book IV, Chapter 2.
You can read many types of documents on your iPhone. If a colleague sends you a PowerPoint presentation or a Pages document as an email attachment, just tap the attachment and your iPhone opens it so you can review it. With the iWork productivity apps, you can edit the document (without an additional app), and even without iWork, you can print the documents if there’s an AirPrint-enabled printer on your wireless network.
Health maintenance organizer
We dedicate Book III, Chapter 6 to staying healthy. We show you how to manage your health records and statistics with the new Health app (see Figure 1-2). We also talk about the Nike+ iPod app, which tracks the distances and times of your runs or walks by receiving information from