ISSUE 110
FROM IDG
HEAD TO HEAD:
iOS 9
+
VS
Improve your iPhone Photography skills
iOS10
GUIDE TO
iOS 10 BETA
Contents 3
Welcome…
Head to head 4
iOS 9 vs iOS 10
Features 15 20 26 33 43 50 55 67 80 86
Guide to iOS 10 beta Should you install iOS 10? 10 tips for iOS 10 iOS 10 features coming to the iPad Pro Get to know Messages in iOS 10 Get to know iOS 10’s new lock screen Make your summer photos amazing Beginner’s guide to Pokémon GO Best games coming to iOS in 2016 Ask the iTunes Guy
How To 91 93 98 101
Remove iOS 10 beta and return to iOS 9 Clean out your iPhone’s memory Update contact photos on an iPhone Reset an old iPhone or iPad or device
Opinion 109
2 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
Why new iPhone will be a must-have upgrade
Welcome... W
elcome to the latest issue of iPad & iPhone user. After all the excitement of WWDC things have calmed down a little this month, so we’ve decided to take the opportunity to look at iOS 10. First off, we compare Apple’s upcoming mobile operating system with iOS 9 (page 4) and look at the differences between the two. And if you can’t wait until the iOS 10’s official release in the autumn, why not become a beta tester? On page 15 we look at Apple’s beta, while on page 33 we reveal how iOS 10 will benefit iPad Pro users. As it’s the summer, we’ve also put together a guide to iPhone photography. On page 55, we look at how to quickly harness its cameras’ built-in features to capture the best shots. In recent weeks, you’ll probably have noticed an unusual number of people wandering around, gazing at their iPhones. They, like millions of others around the globe, are playing the latest gaming craze – Pokémon GO. If you don’t know what all the fuss is about, then we reveal all on page 67. Plus, we’ve our usual tips and tutorials, so you can get the most out of your iOS device. We hope you enjoy the issue. Feel free to send us your feedback via facebook.com/ipadiphoneuser or email rob_grant@idg.co.uk.
ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 3
Head to head: iOS 9 vs iOS 10 David Price looks at the differences between Apple’s two mobile operating systems
i
OS 10 is on its way. Having been announced at WWDC 2016, the new OS for iPhone and iPad will be rolled out to the public in the autumn, replacing the current software, iOS 9. But which is the better option for your needs? Should you update to iOS 10 when it launches – or even earlier, if you’re prepared to act as a beta tester? What are the differences between iOS 9 and 10 – what design changes have been made, what new features have been added, and which devices can run each of them? We examine Apple’s current and future mobile operating systems, and help you decide which one is right for you, and whether you should upgrade.
4 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
Design and interface Looking side by side at iOS 9 and 10 in general use, you may not be able to tell them apart – although this depends on which area of the OS you’re looking at. Apple has redesigned the lock screen, the search/notification page reached by swiping from the left of the lock screen, and the Notification Centre. Other than these, it looks the same. In landscape orientation the lock screen has the time and date set to the left instead of justified
ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 5
centrally (which we think looks nicer), and Apple has added useful large-type battery charge information to this text block as well – it sits under the time, and after a moment is replaced by the date. (Charge is still listed at top-right, but having it in the main text makes it easier to see at a glance.) You’ll also note that the text cue > slide to unlock at the bottom has been replaced by Press Home to open, and indeed the way you wake up the device has changed. (Most people with reasonably up-to-date devices will still use Touch ID, we expect.) And the small camera icon previous sited at the bottom-right has got smaller still and now sits bottom-middle. This is intended to convey the fact that you don’t need to swipe upwards from the camera icon to jump to the Camera app any more; you just swipe in from the righthand edge of the lock screen. In portrait orientation, the lock screen looks more familiar – the text is justified centrally once again – but the functional differences remain. More obvious visual differences can be detected when we swipe in from the left of the lock or Home screens, summoning the screen that, for lack of official alternatives, we’ve grown to call Proactive. We used to have suggested contacts and apps on the Proactive screen, as well as shortcuts to Maps searches for nearby business of various kinds and summaries of recent News stories. Those things remain, but they are (in our opinion) much more attractively laid out, in two columns, and accompanied by an editable array of widgets, which have been moved from the swipe-down Notifications Centre. 6 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
Notifications themselves continue to become more interactive with each generation of iOS. Most of them can be 3D Touched, if you’re using an iPhone 6s or 6s Plus, to get a quick glance at the vital information; and iOS 10 enables live updates within the notifications themselves, so you can open an iMessage notification, then carry on a conversation there and then, with live replies appearing as they’re received, without having to open the Messages app. ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 7
Bear in mind that iOS 10 is still at the developer preview beta stage, and its interface may yet evolve in ways we can’t anticipate. But right now, we’re happy.
Features When we compare generations of iOS, the features section tends to be a walk-over: the newer version of the operating system will get a bunch of new features (which in most cases you can ignore if you don’t like them) and might ditch a couple that Apple doesn’t think have worked out. If it were just a case of comparing features, iOS 10 would win this comparison at a canter. Yet there are downsides to upgrading, which you’ll find in other sections. iOS 10 brings a raft of new features: well over a hundred, by Apple’s count, although most of these are minor tweaks. In this section we’ll talk about our highlights. 1. Raise to Wake This handy and largely self-explanatory feature (which currently works on the iPhone 6s, 6s Plus and SE only, sadly – it requires an iPhone with an M9 coprocessor) means that, like the Apple Watch, an iOS 10-equipped iPhone will light up its screen and show you the lock screen when you lift it up. Which makes particular sense given Apple’s greater focus on lock-screen information and interactivity – you’ll actually see the lock screen on your iPhone now, rather than blasting through to the unlocked home screen thanks to superfast second-generation Touch ID. 8 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
There’s one other watchOS-esque feature in iOS 10 that we’d like to mention in passing: the ability to clear all notifications with one tap. It’s a tiny but crucially convenient feature – our watches used to get utterly clogged up with uncleared notifications (particularly wicket notifications if England had been batting that day) until we discovered the old hard-press-to-clear-all trick. 2. Maps destinations Maps in iOS 10 uses artificial intelligence and everything it knows about your habits to proactively suggest destinations it thinks you’re likely to visit at a given time. We love this idea. Setting out on a car journey is almost always preceded by a fiddly period of postcodesearching and route-checking on the old satnav, and a bit of smart assistance would be much appreciated – if it works well. Also, Maps will automatically remember where you’ve parked, which is a lovely bit of lateral thinking. 3. Messages Messages gets a huge overhaul, and now features a wide range of visual – often animated – effects and gimmicks. Now, we like only a small proportion of the effects (invisible ink, which scrambles messages and images you wish to render mysterious until the recipient swipes them with a finger, is one of the ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 9
nice ones), but that’s not quite the point. Most of this stuff is aimed at younger users, for one thing (particularly the emoji stuff), and Apple’s opening up of Messages to third-party apps means a wave of additional features should follow, catering for every possible taste. 4. Home Apple’s finally ready for the internet of things, and Home is the portal app that iPad and iPhone owners will use to control their array of HomeKitenabled smart-home appliances. The mere fact of having a universal HomeKit device controller app on iOS is something to celebrate, but it looks great and seems well thought out. We’ve mentioned elsewhere how much we like the execution of Scenes, an admittedly obvious but neatly designed feature that groups together settings for multiple appliances under a single button: “goodnight”, for instance, might dim the lights, lower the thermostat, close the curtains, switch on security cameras or motion detectors and so on. 10 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
5. The ability to delete preinstalled apps This is something we’ve looked at in far more detail elsewhere (How to remove, delete or hide any app on iPad or iPhone) but yep, iOS 10 will allow you to ditch Stocks and lots of other Apple-made apps if you don’t want them clogging up your Home screen. It’s not quite the concession you might think: the app isn’t deleted as such, although associated user data is deleted, ties to the app from Siri and so on are severed, and the icon is removed. And we’ve still not seen how Apple is going to resolve the ‘default app’ arrangement if you delete an app like Maps or Mail and then tap on an address or mail link on a website. But it’s a partial victory that we’ve been seeking for many years. ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 11
6. Advanced predictive typing suggestions QuickType, the predictive-text system used by iOS’s keyboard to offer words it thinks you’re in the process of typing, is getting cleverer. It can now access location or contact information held elsewhere on the system and roll this in with the rest of its suggestions, responding, for example, to messages saying, “Where are you?” or “What’s Donald’s email address?” with its best guess at the correct answer. We don’t use QuickType much – generally only when we’re typing a word that’s really long and our fingers get tired halfway through. (Oddly enough, the often annoying forced corrections of TextEdit have ended up a far more integrated aspect of our working routine.) But things like this could make it genuinely useful. 7. Third-party shenanigans: Siri, Messages apps Apple went against type and talked about ‘openness’ at the iOS 8 keynote in 2014, and iOS 10 continues the company’s increasing coolness with the user or their third-party software developer friends customising the way iOS behaves. Siri has been opened up to third-party development, which means you’ll be able to ask non-Apple apps to do their thing - Uber was one that Apple highlighted in its keynote. And Messages and Maps will also allow developers to work within the system: iMessage apps could allow users to book takeaways and play games within message threads, and you’ll be able to book a ride with Uber (and pay for the ride using Apple Pay) without leaving Maps. 12 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
Apple is always at its best when it sheds the straitjacket and allows third-party devs to (with careful supervision in order to safeguard security and privacy) mould the user experience. Apple’s huge developer community is its greatest strength.
Compatible iPads and iPhones We’ll get to our verdict on iOS 9 and iOS 10 in a moment, but you may have already detected that we feel pretty well-disposed towards the new update and its new features and interface tweaks. It’s in this section that we talk about the potential down sides. iOS 10 is Apple’s most demanding mobile OS yet. Some of you will discover that your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch isn’t rated as iOS 10-compatible, and you’ll have to either upgrade to a newer device or miss out. Potentially worse, however, is the situation faced by those who just squeeze on to the list of iOS 10-ready devices, make the update, experience noticeable slowdown and then find themselves unable to downgrade to the older OS. In the past Apple has sometimes been overgenerous in its compatibility lists, allowing updates by devices that aren’t up to it. The following devices are officially rated as capable of running iOS 10:
΄ iPad 4 ΄ iPad Air 1 and 2 ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 13
΄ 9.7in and 12.9in iPad Pro ΄ iPad mini 2, 3 and 4 ΄ iPhone 5, 5c, 5s, 6, 6 Plus, 6s, 6s Plus and SE ΄ iPod touch (sixth generation) But if you’ve got one of the older models in any of these fields – if you’re on an iPad 4, iPad mini 2, or iPhone 5 or 5c – then we’d counsel caution. Wait until launch date and don’t update until you’ve got confirmation from a trusted source – a friend, colleague or media pundit – who explicitly tells you they made the update on exactly the same model as you, and that it hasn’t caused any loss of performance.
Verdict iOS 10 is stuffed to the gills with handy new features, fun little visual touches, smart interface tweaks and a couple of entirely new apps, and we’re having a great time trying it all out. Maps is about to get a lot more useful. (And if you don’t like it, you can remove it, and a bunch of other presintalled apps, from your Home screen.) Messages is more fun. Raise to Wake is a great idea. The new Home app is neatly designed and a pleasure to use. Swift Playgrounds (which we didn’t even get round to discussing) is a great way of nurturing the app developers of tomorrow. At time of writing iOS 10 is still in its earliest publicly testable form. As such, it’s too early to give a definitive verdict. Features may be added or taken away, bugs may be discovered or removed, design changes may be made or reversed. But at the moment it’s looking pretty much essential. 14 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
Feature: Guide to iOS 10 beta Susie Ochs reveals everything you need to know
N
ow, a beta is a beta. Don’t get swept up in the excitement and forget that this software isn’t final and could have bugs, so you might want to think twice about putting it on your everyday iPhone. That said, developers are on their second beta of iOS 10 and we haven’t heard about any major problems, so if you’re feeling brave, here’s how to get the beta and what you can expect when you do.
What is the iOS 10 beta? Apple has a Beta Software Program (tinyurl.com/ pkmbuxz) that started with OS X 10.10 Yosemite and is now providing betas of macOS Sierra. iOS 10 is the second version of iOS ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 15
that is available as a public beta – before last year’s launch of the iOS public beta program, you had to join the developer program for $99 (per year) to get prerelease versions of iOS. The public beta lets you avoid that expense, and will make it easier to install the beta too. Keep in mind that this is prerelease software – it’s close to being ready for release, but it still needs testing. You might see bugs, your iPhone or iPad could crash more often, and some of your apps and services might not work.
What to do before installing the beta Back up. Back up your device – I recommend a tethered backup to iTunes with the ‘Encrypt this backup’ box checked, so you won’t have to log in to all your apps and services again if you should need to restore from this backup. An encrypted backup saves all your Health data too. Again, Apple recommends you install the iOS 10 beta on a secondary device.
How to sign up You just head to the Beta Software Program page and express interest by signing in with your Apple ID and password. You also have to agree to the terms and enrol your iOS device.
How to enrol your device Once you log in to the Beta Software Program page, you’ll see a link to Enrol your iOS device. Apple will remind you to make a backup (seriously, you really, really have to back up – back up to iTunes, and Apple recommends you ‘archive’ the 16 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
backup to make sure it’s saved), and then you’re instructed to go to beta.apple.com/profile on the iOS device that you want to put the beta on, in order to download and install a configuration profile. That will make the beta available as an over-the-air software update in the Settings app.
Supported devices There’s some bad news: iOS 10 doesn’t support some of the older devices that are compatible with iOS 9. The iPhone 4s, second- and third-gen iPads, the original iPad mini, and the fifth-generation iPod touch are all being left behind. It’s kind of a bummer: my third-gen iPad, purchased just four years ago, was still hanging on until I gave it away a month ago. It had definitely slowed down, and it couldn’t take advantage of any of the iPad-related productivity features included in iOS 9. But still, four years isn’t that old, even as hardware goes.
ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 17
Take a look at our list on page 13 and 14 to see if you can even put the public on your device.
How to protect your data while running iOS 10 Back up and keep backing up. Back up your photos, and not just your Camera Roll. Someone sends you a cute photo or video in a text? Save it to your Camera Roll so you can back it up. Basically you don’t want to have any files that are stored only on your iPhone or iPad running the beta. Everything should exist in another location too. Since so much of what we do with our iPhones is cloud-based, you might not keep a ton of documents stored locally on your iPhone, and it can be easy to forget to back up. So give it some thought. Look at the apps you use – do they store things in your Dropbox, in your iCloud Drive, or in another cloud location? You should be okay. But files you create on your device – photos and videos spring to mind, but there might be more – need to be backed up often.
How to install updates to the beta Apple will update the iOS 10 public beta a few times before the final version ships. But updating it is easy – you can update over the air in the Settings app, or use iTunes. It’s always a good idea to back up before updating, of course.
Can you go back to iOS 9 if something goes wrong? Yes you can (see page 91). It requires erasing your device first, so you better believe you’ll need a 18 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
backup. You’ll just connect your iPhone or iPad to your Mac, put it in recovery mode, and restore it to the backup you made before you installed iOS 10. So yes, you really do need to do a backup to iTunes before you install iOS 10’s public beta.
When does the final version ship? In the autumn – typically it’s right around the time the new iPhones come out, which has traditionally been the second week of September. (We at iPad & iPhone User don’t know what Apple’s plans are for this year, but that’s been the pattern lately.) When the final version drops, people running the public beta will be able to upgrade to it and shouldn’t lose any data. Especially if they’ve backed everything up just in case, which I’m sure you’re sick of hearing me tell you by now. ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 19
Feature: Should you install iOS 10? There are reasons to go for it and reasons to wait. Susie Ochs looks at your options
L
et’s cut right to the chase: The people who will enjoy the iOS 10 beta the most are iPhone 6s or 6s Plus users who don’t rely heavily on the Maps app, which is now a battery hog. If you have a device without 3D Touch, or an iPad that isn’t an iPad Pro, the benefits of iOS 10 are a little less, which makes waiting for the final release (or even, say, 10.01) all the more tempting. Don’t get me wrong: The first developer beta of iOS 10 was relatively stable, and the first public beta is too. The biggest bugs I’ve personally encountered were annoying but not deal-breakers: Maps crashing during navigation, Maps not ending the navigation when I arrive, alarms that don’t want
20 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
to turn off (quite embarrassing when it happens in an open-plan office), and a weird graphical glitch where occasionally the lockscreen-accessible camera would only take up half the screen instead of the whole thing. I’ve been running the betas on an iPhone SE on loan from Apple, which I use as my daily carry phone. In my bag is an iPhone 6s that I bought on instalments, still running iOS 9, ready for me to swap in my SIM card if I run into trouble with the SE. Hasn’t happened – aside from those bugs I mentioned and generally worse battery life, iOS 10 has been great. But while I didn’t used to think the iPhone SE’s lack of 3D Touch was a big deal, iOS 10 is showing it to be a pretty significant weakness.
Just a 3D Touch iOS 10’s biggest difference over iOS 9 is how much you can do without opening apps. Some apps will be able to integrate with Siri, so you could, say, call a car without having to launch Lyft. Notifications are getting richer, letting you 3D Touch to get more information or take action. And the widgets that used to be confined to the Today view in Notification Center are now also on the Spotlight screen you see when swiping right from the lock screen or home screen. Widgets let you get information at a glance without opening apps, like the next hour’s forecast from Dark Sky, progress toward your activity goals, your next calendar appointment. Widgets are just as handy no matter what phone you have. But getting them is done differently. On ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 21
Without 3D Touch, you can still see the enhanced notifications, but swiping and tapping View is a lot clunkier than a single deep-press
an iPhone 6s or 6s Plus, you can 3D Touch app icons to get Quick Actions, which are shortcuts to various places inside the app – that feature launched with iOS 9. In iOS 10, hard-pressing app icons shows any Quick Actions plus a widget for that app, if available, and you can add the widget to your Spotlight screen from there. If you have an iPhone SE, 6, or any iPad, of course you don’t have 3D Touch. You can still see the enhanced, actionable notifications by swiping one left and tapping View, but that doesn’t feel much more convenient than just tapping the notification itself to open the app. And you can add widgets to the line-up by scrolling to the bottom of the Spotlight screen and tapping Edit for a list of available widgets, but that’s the same process as in iOS 9. 22 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
Maps looks great, but at a cost Apple redesigned its Maps app for iOS 10. The new one is good looking and easy to use. I put it through its paces on a Midwestern vacation in which we stayed in four cities over eight nights – yeah, that’s a lot of driving. Maps handled freeways and country roads alike, and never steered me wrong or couldn’t find an address I inputted. It just crashed a lot. When it wasn’t crashing, Maps made my iPhone SE very hot to the touch, and had a noticeable effect on battery life. Plus, sometimes I’d get to my destination, but the navigation session didn’t automatically end. I’d glance at my Apple Watch after being somewhere a while, and notice, oops, it’s still trying to direct me here, with the GPS running and draining battery life by the minute. I
Maps looks good, but it’ll be even better when it doesn’t crash so often or drain the battery quite so fast
ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 23
had to get in the habit of tapping End Route upon arrival if the navigation didn’t stop on its own. The Maps app itself is great. The maps are clear and easy to read. The interface isn’t cluttered at all. You see the arrival time as well as the minutes and miles to go, and from there you can swipe up for buttons to find gas stations, food, or coffee along the route, an Overview button that shows the whole route on a map, a Details button that shows a list of upcoming turns, and an Audio menu. One nice touch here is a new setting to pause spoken audio (like podcasts or audiobooks) during navigational prompts. Previously, the prompts would just dim the audio below them, which is fine for music but a bummer when it’s talking over a podcast and you need to scrub back to hear what was said. So the design is solid, the data was solid in my testing, and the bugs I encountered felt typical of beta software. I’m confident Apple can surely fix them with updates. But if you rely on the Maps app frequently, you might want to hold off on iOS 10 until the ride is a little less bumpy. We’ll have a deeper dive on Maps early next week.
Verdict If putting a beta of iOS 10 on your everyday iPhone seems too risky, slapping it on your iPad might be a safer bet. You’ll get to play with the new Messages app, the new lock screen widgets, and the redesigned Photos, News, and Music. But iOS 10 is curiously light on iPad-specific features, especially if you don’t have an iPad Pro or at least an iPad Air 2 (which can do Split View). Beta software is fun, but a little risky to put on devices you rely on 24 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
every day. If you have an iPhone 6s or 6s Plus, and you don’t mind some app crashes here and there, thin of the public beta like a training session for the new gestures and navigation shortcuts. By the time it launches to everyone else in the fall, you’ll be a 3D Touch ninja. Even the bugs I encountered in Maps in iOS 10 while navigating the wilds of Kent didn’t hamper my experience. I’m glad I put the beta on my everyday iPhone (even without 3D Touch), and I have no desire to roll back to iOS 9. But there’s no shame in waiting, especially if you don’t want to have to be hypervigilant about backing up your devices just in case of disaster. iOS 10 will be fully ready to shake up all of our lock screens soon enough.
ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 25
Feature: 10 tips for iOS 10 Lucy Hattersley’s tips and tricks will ensure you get the most out of iOS 10’s new features 1. Swipe left and right on the Home screen When you first install iOS 10, you’ll be presented with a new Home screen. We find this change the most jarring, unlocking our iPhone and iPad has mostly remained the same process: swipe right and enter your passcode. With Touch ID now firmly entrenched on all new Apple devices, Apple’s decided that the swipe to unlock gesture is no longer required. Instead, you can swipe right to access a Widgets window (similar to Notifications in iOS 9), and swipe left to access 26 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
Camera. These gestures are more intuitive than the current ones, but it’ll take a while it to become instinctive. As for unlocking the iPhone, you now press the Home button in and keep your finger held on the button for Touch ID.
2. Customise your widgets The Widgets window displays app information on your Home screen (without having to unlock your phone. By default it displays weather, time and information from Calendar, News, Music, Batteries and Reminders as well as Siri App Suggestions. Tap any option to open the associated app (you may be asked to use Touch ID or Enter Passcode). You can manage the widgets by tapping the Edit button. Here you can add, or remove items, and move Widgets between the left columns on the iPad.
ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 27
3. Remove stock apps Apple has finally bowed to the wishes of its customers and is allowing you to remove its stock apps from the Home screen. There are a few exceptions. Find iPhone and Feedback are locked, as is Playground on our iPad for some reason. But you can get rid of Apple Maps, FaceTime, Calendar and even the iTunes Store if you want. Apps you have removed can be reinstalled from the App Store. Open the App Store app and search for the app.
4. Sketch in Messages The ability to sketch out messages was first introduced on the App Watch. It’s a fun feature, but bound to find many more fans now that Apple is 28 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
bringing it to the iPad and iPhone. Open Messages and tap the Sketch icon (shaped as a heart with two fingers). Draw on the black rectangle and it’ll be sent to the other person. It’s sent as an animation, so they see your finger sketching it out as it goes.
5. Bedtime in Clock The Clock app has a new feature, called Bedtime. Bedtime sets a recurring wake-up alarm, and a gentle reminder when it’s time to go to bed. Open Clock and tap Bedtime > Get Started. Bedtime asks what time you want to wake up, tap next and deselect the days the alarm should not go off.
6. Split Safari windows One of the most welcome new features is the ability to open two Safari windows side-by-side on an iPad. ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 29
If you have multiple tabs open, drag one down from the Tab bar and to the right of the screen, it’ll slot into place in Split View. Drag its tab back to the left to return to a single tabbed view. You can also tap, and hold, on a link and choose Open In Split View.
7. Memories in Photos Few apps have had as big a shot in the arm in iOS 10 as Photos. Open Photos and you’ll see a new option called Memories. This automatically creates Photo albums. You’ll see the Best of Last Month, and Best of Last Three Months. Below that will be albums of places or events.
8. Better Maps app Maps has had another refresh in iOS 10, as Apple continues to create an app that truly rivals Google 30 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
Maps. It has a new, much cleaner, interface that makes options easier to access. There’s a lot of new features too. It now features traffic information on route, and displays alternative routes as you drive. A new Dynamic View mode shows what traffic conditions look like. There’s also an option to find things along the way, like supermarkets or petrol stations. One handy feature is that Apple Maps automatically remembers where you parked your car. Another interesting touch is that Search now pulls in places you’ve looked for in Google and Google Maps. So it feels a lot more integrated with your search history. Cunning.
9. Control Centre The Control Centre has been split into two windows, making it less baffling to the eyes. Slide ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 31
up from the bottom of the screen and you’ll see options, screen brightness, AirPlay and AirDrop (as well as shortcuts to Camera and Clock). Swipe to the left and you’ll move over to media controls, volume controls, and an AirPlay list.
10. Playgrounds and Home Two new apps were installed by default on our iPad running iOS 10. The first is Home, which allows you to interact with smart connected devices on your network. Nothing seems ready for it yet, but we’ll keep an eye on it as the Beta rolls out. The second is Playgrounds, which is an interactive code learning environment. We were surprised to find this automatically installed, but it’s great fun and a good game (even if you don’t code). Be sure to look at both of them.
32 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
Feature: iOS 10 features coming to the iPad Pro Minor but necessary tweaks are coming to the iPad Pro this September. Caitlin McGarry gives us a sneak preview
T
he iPad Pro is a productivity powerhouse – or at least, that’s what Apple wants it to be. The 12.9in Pro was released last November, and the 9.7in model debuted in March, so we weren’t expecting to see any new hardware at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June. But we were hoping Apple would add some iPad-only features in iOS 10 that would fix a few problems and make the Pros even more awesome, or at least show off some new partner apps that take advantage of all that screen real estate. ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 33
Alas, the iPad was a footnote in iOS 10’s parade of features. The device gets most of the good stuff, like the revamped Messages app, a new lock screen with rich notifications, and smarter Photos, but the iPad-only tweaks are just that: minor changes. Of course, it’s entirely possible that Apple will add more functionality for the iPad in future beta releases, because beta software is a work in progress. Apple has until September to listen to feedback from developers and the public. I put the iOS 10 developer beta on a 12.9in iPad Pro to see the tablet-specific features in action.
1. Mail and Notes get three-pane interface I really dig the giant iPad Pro, but not a lot of apps make good use of that massive display. iOS 10 brings a three-pane interface to Mail and Notes on the 12.9in model, and it’s so useful that I hope Apple will open up that functionality to developers so I can have the same multitasking abilities in Outlook.
34 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
To view all three panes, turn your big Pro from portrait to landscape mode and tap a new multi-pane icon on the top left of your screen and watch the app expand. You’ll only see this icon in Notes and Mail, and only on the 12.9in Pro. If you have a lot of email to wrangle or a slew of notes in various folders (as you can see below, I clearly don’t), the new view will go a long way toward helping you stay organised.
2. Split View finally comes to Safari tabs Multitasking on the iPad Pro is supposed to be easy. But one way I multitask on my Mac is by having a few web browser windows open at once so I can compare notes without toggling between tabs. Now I can easily do that on the iPad with Split View for Safari tabs, new in iOS 10. Press and hold the tab you want to put in its own window, then drag it to the left or right side of the screen. The original window will shrink and a grey ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 35
space will appear next to it. Drop the tab into the grey space and it’ll expand to fill half the screen.
When you’re done with Split View, grab the bar and move it back to a tab in the main window.
36 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
3. Split View When I first discovered the new Split View support in the iPad version of the Music app, I thought: Who needs this? Well, if you love music and are constantly researching new artists, albums, and songs, being able to search for tunes in the Music app while reading reviews or music reviews on Safari is incredibly useful. For example, I was browsing through NPR’s list of best albums of 2016 (so far, at least) with Apple Music open in Split View. Tapping on each album’s Apple Music link would pull up the album right next to the Safari article, so I could easily save records I hadn’t listened to yet to my library or play them on the spot.
4. Everything is big in Music and News Apple redesigned the Music and News apps for iOS 10 with an emphasis on interface simplicity and bigger, bolder images and fonts. As you can see, bigger is definitely better. ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 37
The iPad Music app puts the navigation bar on the bottom left and your Now Playing bar on the bottom left, so you can easily toggle between your library, recommended playlists, and new
38 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
music while still seeing the song that’s currently on. Tapping on the Now Playing bar will bring up the Now Playing window as a transparent overlay on the right third of the app, so you don’t have to navigate away from the main window to view more information about the song, save it to a playlist, or see what’s coming up next. News looks dramatically different in iOS 10, too. I prefer to browse through publications like the New York Times on my iPad instead of my iPhone, and the new navigation tabs and super-sized images look amazing on the 12.9in Pro.
5. Landscape lock screen changes When you wake your iPad in landscape mode, you’ll notice it looks a little funny. All the text has been forced to the left, as you see. Why is that? Well with iOS 10, your iPad lock screen will display rich notifications to the left and any media you’re playing on the right. It’s an easy ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 39
way to see all the information you need without even touching your iPad.
6. Swift Playgrounds is iPad-only We’re doing a deep dive with Swift Playgrounds soon, but this iPad-specific app coming in iOS 10 is designed to teach kids or beginners how to code
40 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
in Apple’s Swift programming language. The app even has a specific coding keyboard for shortcuts and Swift characters. The code you write in Swift Playgrounds can be exported as Xcode and turn into a real iOS app. Stay tuned as we put this app through its paces in an upcoming piece.
7. iPad becomes HomeKit hub iOS 10 finally makes your iPhones and iPad integral to controlling your HomeKit accessories with the launch of a new Home app. It works across iOS, tvOS, and watchOS, so you can control your connected home from anywhere. If you have an iPad that never leaves your house, it can serve as the central HomeKit hub for your family with iOS 10. Open your iPad Settings and make sure iCloud keychain is turned on, then stay in Settings and tap on Home. There you’ll see the option to use the iPad as a Home hub. Toggle it on.
ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 41
Then you can add HomeKit accessories and arrange them by room. We’ll do a deep dive into how this works in a future piece. Now you don’t have to buy an Apple TV or a third-party hub with iOS 10 on the iPad.
8. New Smart Keyboard tricks There are two new minor shortcuts for iPad Pro users with Smart Keyboards that will make life a tiny bit easier. Now when you tap Cmd+Tab on the keyboard to pull up the app switcher overlay, there’s a new home screen option on the far right to navigate back to the main screen. The second is a feature that lets the Pro mimic the Mac: Press Cmd-Shift-3 on the keyboard to take a screenshot on your iPad. It’s likely the iPad, particularly the Pro models, will see improvements in dot releases of iOS 10, if not the first version that rolls out in September.
42 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
Feature: Get to know Messages in iOS 10 Emoji, visual effects and third-party integrations make Messages more than a texting app. Oscar Raymundo reports
A
pple worked for a year on a new file system, but according to Craig Federighi, “every time we’d add a couple new emoji, it would be the biggest thing.” So, in iOS 10 emojis are three times bigger. Not only that, but Apple added a handful of visual tricks to Messages, and transformed iMessage into a platform for third-party apps. Needless to say, there’s a lot you can do in the new Message, so let’s get started. These features have been made available via the iOS 10 public beta, but we expect them to get refined before the final iOS release this autumn. In addition, the recipient will also need to have installed iOS 10 in order to view most of these messages in all their eye-popping glory. Otherwise they show up as regular text with a description of what the visual should have been, like (sent with fireworks). Not nearly as captivating. And Android users won’t be able to experience these visual effects at all. ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 43
Emoji nation When Apple announced that emojis in iOS 10 would be three times bigger during WWDC, the crowd cheered. In order to get the super-sized versions, however, you have to send an message containing only emojis. Adding text shows regular-sized emojis. On top of that, Messages has a new emoji replacement tool for converting keywords into corresponding emojis. For example, the text “I love monkeys” turns into “I ” – all you have to do is compose your message and then tap on the emoji button. Then tap on the highlighted keywords to choose from the corresponding emojis.
Bubble and full-screen effects If sending an emojified message is not enough to grab your friend’s attention, you can rely on all-new 44 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
bubble effects and full-screen visuals. After typing your message, press down on the blue up-arrow on the right of the input field. That will take you a ‘send with effect’ page where you can slide up to select your text to appear as ‘Gentle’ like a whisper, ‘Loud’ as if you’re yelling, or ‘Slam’ down on the screen. Here, you can also choose ‘Invisible Ink”’ to send a hidden message or photo that the recipient can reveal by swiping away the particles. Toggle from these bubble effects to screen effects to send your message with a full-screen animation. Swipe between sending with balloons, confetti, lasers, fireworks or shooting star. The effects appear for a few seconds when the recipient opens the message. Lasers, fireworks, and shooting star also come with sound. After you’ve selected an effect, you can press the blue up-arrow again to send or the ‘x’ to cancel.
Digital Touch A feature that originated on the Apple Watch has come to iOS 10. Tap on the icon with the heart and the two fingers that sits on the right of the input ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 45
field to access Digital Touch. Here, you can doodle and insert animations on either a black canvas or on a photo or video. Select from seven colours on the right of the canvas and you can use one finger to sketch, hold two fingers to create a beating heart, tap gently to create a vanishing circle made out of particles, tap with two fingers to create lips, drag down with two fingers to create a broken heart, and press down to create a glowing burst. You can tap on the camera icon on the left to add all these animations to a selfie, too. Just be aware that as soon as you let go of your fingers on the black canvas, the animation will be sent to the recipient, so make sure you have a clear vision of what you want to create before putting pen to paper, or finger to screen in this case. These animated cards show up on the Apple Watch, as well, as long as it’s running the latest watchOS 3. They show up as still attachments on iOS 9. 46 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
Handwriting Digital Touch is not the only way you can use your finger to express yourself in the new Messages. Turn your iPhone horizontally to landscape mode, and you’ll be able to use handwriting. Here, you can select from seven pre-populated handwritten messages like ‘happy birthday’ and ‘thinking of you’. Or you can just keep the font and create your own message by tapping ‘Clear’ towards the top. If the recipient has installed iOS 10 as well, these messages are displayed stroke by stroke, as if they had been handwritten in real-time. The ink also has a drying effect for an authentic pen-on-paper feel. If the recipient has iOS 9, these handwritten messages show up as still attachments.
App Store and third-party integrations Perhaps the most profound change iOS 10 brings to Message is the integration of third-party integrations, turning iMessage into a platform. Access your iMessage app drawer by tapping on the icon right next to the input field on the ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 47
left. The launch iMessage apps include Recents, Music, and Images. As with iOS apps, you can press down on them to make them wiggle and rearrange them or delete them. Recents displays your recently-sent messages, whether it’s a Digital Touch creation or a handwritten message. Music lets you share your most recently played song from Apple Music that will play in-line (more on that in the next section). Images lets you search the web for photos, videos, and GIFs. The image search results are powered by Bing, and they seemed pretty comparable to the GIF searches in Google’s Gboard iOS keyboard. When introducing iMessage apps at WWDC, Apple showed off integrations from DoorDash to create a group food order and Disney to send Donald Duck stickers. But in the public beta, the launch integrations are underwhelming. You can tap on the Store to get four more integrations – Smileys, Classic Mac, Hearts, and Hands – but these are all apps for even more stickers. There is 48 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
no Venmo app, no Dropbox app, and no bots... yet. But that is the promise of iMessage as a platform. There’s an option to automatically add iMessage integrations from iOS apps you install, which could come in handy as more third-party services create messaging extensions in the future. We can also see iMessage apps replacing some third-party keyboards for iOS, especially keyboards whose sole function is sending GIFs or special emoji, such as Kimoji.
Media and visual links Lastly, Messages in iOS 10 has redesigned the way you attach media, whether it’s a photo in your camera roll or a video you’ve recorded in-app on the spot. Tap on the camera icon and the keyboard becomes a media hub with a viewfinder for taking photos or video right there and then. You can continue browsing your camera roll by swiping left, or launch the Camera app or Photo Library by swiping right. Also, when you send a URL to an article on the Web, Messages automatically turns it into a preview with a headline and image pulled from the link. Similarly, you can send a link to YouTube or Vimeo and have the recipients watch the video in-line. You can also play tracks from Apple Music without leaving Messages. There’s actually an iMessage app for sharing songs from Apple Music. In fact, every URL we sent showed up as a visual link, even Spotify tracks, although much to no one’s surprise, you’re not able to play those in-line. ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 49
Feature: Get to know iOS 10’s new lock screen You can now interact with your iPhone or iPad without even unlocking it, reveals Caitlin McGarry
T
here are tons of changes coming in iOS 10, but the most dramatic, immediately visible change is happening on your lock screen. Nothing works the way it did before. Things are about to get weird, but we’ll get through it together.
Raise to Wake If you have a new iPhone – 6s, 6s Plus or SE – the changes will appear instantly. When you pick up your phone, your screen will wake to display the time. It’s a small change, one already in use on the Apple Watch (and on Android phones), but it eliminates the pain point of having to press a button just to see the time.
Relearning how to swipe The launch of Touch ID made Slide to Unlock, a now-quaint feature that delighted audiences when the iPhone debuted, a little unnecessary. Slide to Unlock was still essential in rare cases when Touch ID failed (if your hands 50 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
The Spotlight screen in iOS 9 (left) versus the overhauled screen in iOS 10 (right)
were damp or you were wearing gloves), but now it’s gone. In iOS 10, you press the Home button to unlock your device with a passcode if Touch ID doesn’t work. It’s a little awkward to unlearn this ingrained behaviour. Now when you swipe right, you’ll see a completely overhauled Spotlight section with customisable widgets where Siri’s suggested apps and contacts, nearby locales, and news headlines once lived. The smarter Spotlight section we were promised in iOS 9 comes to life in iOS 10. But more on that in a second. You’ll also notice there’s no more Camera icon on the lock screen. Instead of swiping up from that icon to jump into the Camera, your new shortcut is a swipe left on the lock screen. It’s just as easy, but again, it’s a new behaviour to learn. Swiping down on the lock screen is still the way to jump into your Notification Center, but you can ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 51
access the Spotlight screen of widgets from that view, too (it’s the Today tab in Notification Center, just no longer labelled Today). Anywhere you go, the Spotlight screen will be there. And that’s where the widgets are.
Widgets, widgets everywhere iOS already had widgets, but iOS 10 takes them to the next level. Apple took the same widgets from the Today tab when you swipe down to view your Notification Center and put them on the Spotlight screen. Now those widgets are accessible anywhere you are – from the lock screen, from the home screen, or from the Notification Center. Like before, third-party apps make their own widgets, so you don’t have to install anything extra. Just tap ‘Edit’ at the bottom of the Spotlight screen to add, remove, and rearrange widgets instead of doing that from the Today tray in the Notification Center.
You can easily add, remove, and reorder widgets
52 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
Rich notifications bring the action Apple has been working to make notifications more actionable since iOS 8, and in iOS 9, you could finally reply to a text message directly inside a notification, or mark a Reminders task as completed. With iOS 10, notifications are even more interactive. Apple is calling the redesigned notification banners that pop up on your lock screen rich notifications, because you don’t have to open an app to interact with them. Third-party developers are experimenting with rich notification interactions now, and we saw a hint of what’s to come during Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference keynote with a sample Uber notification, which shows you the map of your driver’s route and allows you to call your driver or cancel the request without ever jumping into the Uber app. Apple has already added the functionality to its built-in apps. For instance, when you receive a Calendar invite, you can view all the details and accept or decline the event directly inside the notification right on your lock screen. Messages were interactive on the lock screen starting in iOS 9, so you could quick reply to a text directly from a notification. But now you can view an entire message thread directly inside a notification banner. Rich notifications are most powerful on 3D Touch-enabled devices – the 6s, 6s Plus, and whatever iPhone is released in September – because notifications become interactive when you deep press on them. But Apple is beta testing how rich notifications can work on older devices. ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 53
3D Touch a notification (or swipe left and tap View if you don’t have 3D Touch) to see the whole thread and even reply, without having to fully launch the Messages app
Currently, you can interact with a rich notification by swiping left on it to see additional options, like Close and View, which gives you the expanded view that 3D Touch users would see by deeppressing. To be honest, having to swipe and tap is lame compared with the 3D Touch functionality built into notifications, but I guess that’s just Apple nudging us to buy new devices.
Still in beta iOS 10 makes your iPhone and iPad useful directly from the lock screen, no passcode required. That brings up its own set of privacy issues, though you can prevent people from seeing notifications on your locked device by toggling off Notifications View under Settings > Touch ID & Passcode > Allow access when locked. Or just head to Settings > Notifications, and tweak the settings to prevent sensitive apps from sending notifications to the lock screen at all, while still letting other notifications through. 54 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
Feature: Make your summer photos amazing Jackie Dove’s tips will help you capture the great outdoors with your iPhone this summer
S
potting great photo opportunities is a talent in itself, but knowing how to quickly harness your iPhone camera’s built-in features to capture the best shots is an entirely different skill. Your iPhone is the camera you always have in your hand, but sometimes inspiration fails around the same old point-and-shoot methods. Sure, there are plenty of ways to enhance your camera with specialized iPhone lenses or tripods, but you don’t need extra hardware to get great shots. Just sticking with the built-in camera and assorted photo apps can give you some uniquely standout memories. Here are some hints on how to achieve them.
1. Shoot in 360 degrees With the rise of 360-degree cameras, interactive spherical shots are becoming increasingly popular both to view and to create – without spending hundreds of pounds on a dedicated camera. To capture a 360-degree landscape that you can view on the desktop, via a mobile device, or through a VR viewer, just fire up your Camera app or one of the several 360-degree apps available in the App Store. Facebook’s new 360-degree ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 55
An interactive 360-degree shot uploaded from the Panorama app and viewed on the desktop in Google+
photo feature automatically converts a conventional panorama shot with the iPhone’s native Camera app into a 360-degree image that viewers can explore directly in their Facebook timeline. With Google Street View for iOS, you get stepby-step instructions on how to create and post a
Google Street View, 360 Panorama, and DMD Panorama are among several apps available that facilitate mobile 360-degree immersive images
56 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
360-degree image, which you can then upload to Google Maps, your Facebook page, or Google+. Just launch the app and follow the prompts to fill in the required number of panels. The app will stitch a pleasing photo sphere image that you can manipulate with a mouse or finger. You don’t have to stick with the iPhone Camera or Google’s app. DMD Panorama (£1.99), 360 Panorama (£1.49) and others offer detailed instructions on how to shoot and post 360-degree images.
2. Shoot panoramas Panoramas are an excellent way to capture extreme wide-angle shots with your iPhone. Just launch the Camera app and hold the phone upright in portrait orientation. When you hit the button, hold the phone with both hands and steadily move it in one direction, following the arrow prompt. Note any messages on the screen and beware of moving too quickly. Try to lock the exposure at a medium brightness in the landscape where the light is optimal before you tap the shutter button, otherwise you risk combining different exposures as the camera app adjusts to various points in the scene. Panoramas can be vertical too, and are shot the same easy way, except that you hold the
ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 57
phone in landscape orientation as you move. To finish shooting the scene, just tap the start button again or move the phone slightly in the opposite direction.
3. Make your landscapes compelling Wide vista landscapes are a perennial favorite of both photographers and viewers, but they are often a photographic challenge. Here are some simple composition tips to make your scenic image pop. Always pick a main subject to focus on. A picture of a lake surrounded by trees and shimmering water can be an awesome sight to behold, but all too often it fails to come across in a photo because the camera’s lens does not take in all the majesty that your brain does. To compensate, focus on something – a bird, a person, a boat – some object that contrasts with the scene, generates interest, and guides the viewer’s eye around the tableau. Try using the iPhone’s built-in grid guide (Settings > Photos & Camera > Grid) that lets you apply the Rule of Thirds to help you convey the scenic beauty you’re after. Another technique, called leading lines, lets you use the natural landscape to cut a visual path through your composition, making the main vista both dynamic and easy to follow. 58 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
For gorgeous landscapes, apps such as ProCamera (£3.99) and Manual both offer highly customisable and precise controls for ISO, shutter speed, white balance, focus, exposure, and more.
4. Dramatise your skies Clouds are your photographic friends. Every landscape is enhanced by cloud formations because they provide unique points of interest and contrast. You don’t have to wait for bad weather to get great-looking clouds. Just start with a cloud pattern that has some potential. Make the most of cloud patterns by employing the Rule of thirds, giving your sky the top two-thirds of the action. Then, tap the HDR (High Dynamic Range) setting on the Camera app screen. That lets you capture more detail in the shadows and highlights than using the default setting. Slight tweaks in either the ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 59
mobile or desktop Photos app can easily enhance a sky after the fact too, but you can even take the drama a step further with dedicated photo apps such as JixiPix’s Simply HDR iPhone app (£1.49). That’s not to put down clear blue skies, not at all. While they may not seem inherently dramatic to look at, a pure, unadulterated cerulean hue, the kind that really brings out your subject, can be heart-stopping.
5. Be at one with wildlife If you love the great outdoors, photographing wildlife is just part of the scenery. While getting a bird to sit still for a pose will take some effort, try your luck with Canada geese, ducks, alligators, peacocks, deer, and farm animals. You may be tempted to use your iPhone’s digital zoom to close in on feathers or fur, but you will likely be disappointed with the results. Instead of zooming in, get up as close and personal to your animal subject as possible without putting 60 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
yourself in harm’s way, of course. (Beware of geese, alligators, and elk especially, but any animal you don’t know can react badly to close human proximity.) Then, when you are at a good distance, circle the creature in order to capture a variety of angles. Use the camera’s burst mode so you don’t miss a shot. Make sure to use your exposure and focus lock and try to zone in on the animal’s eyes for depth and realism, if possible.
6. Explore colours, shapes, and patterns Phone cameras may not be the best choice for capturing expansive landscapes, but they are hard to beat for exploring colour and detail. Not all images have to be about something or of a specific object. The best part of the outdoors is the seasonal colours, so consider capturing nature’s natural charm – beautiful foliage, flowers, leaf patterns or shadows – for its own abstract sake. Get up close to your subject and shoot from different angles to capture intriguing natural patterns. For darker environments, a judicious use of flash may come in handy. ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 61
7. Use silhouettes Silhouettes can dramatise just about any animate or inanimate subject, and they’re super-easy to accomplish. To create one, just look for the light source and position your subject in front of it. You can shoot silhouettes at any time of day, but the most dramatic time for outdoor silhouettes is when the sun is low in the sky, around sunrise or sunset (often referred to as the golden hour). Most of the time, you can rely on the iPhone’s auto exposure for great silhouettes, however to make sure that you get the image you’re looking for – a blackened subject and a nicely exposed sky – tap on the brightest part of the image – the sky – and a silhouette will naturally form, provided the light source is behind the subject. If you need to darken the subject more, swipe down 62 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
on the screen to further reduce exposure. Need more help with getting the best silhouette-friendly exposures? Try shooting with an app such as Camera+ (£2.29), which lets you separate focus and exposure controls.
8. Buildings are landscapes You may wish you were going to some wild place on your summer jaunt, but maybe you can’t get away. No problem. The city is the great outdoors too, and that means streetscapes and sidewalks filled with people and buildings. Architecture shots are just a different kind of landscape, and they can be equally challenging. For building and street shots, the concept of leading lines will give you naturally dynamic images, while crazy camera angles, contrasting ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 63
colours, reflections, and mirrored windows can yield unique and fascinating looks. Just remember to look up, move around, and have fun snapping from different vantage points.
9. Shoot in the best light Timing is everything in photography. Time translates directly into available light, and light governs how your image will look. When shooting outdoors, the most unflattering light for just about any scene, person, or object is bright, mid-day, high-in-the-sky sun. It robs subjects of colour and depth, often bathing them in harsh light and deep shadows. The best times to shoot are early morning or twilight – the so-called golden hours – just after sunrise or before sunset when the light is mellow, though mid-morning or later afternoon may be more realistically convenient. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out when the best shooting time will be. Not surprisingly, there’s more than one app to 64 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
help out. Rizon (£1.49), for example, lets you dial in optimal times and will notify you ahead of time to get ready for your shot.
10. Stormy weather It’s not always possible to shoot when the weather is optimal. In some places, a perpetual fog or constant rain can last for months. Does that mean you should retreat indoors with your iPhone’s camera? Certainly not. For the most dramatic atmosphere, compose your shot so that the stormy sky takes up a large proportion of the frame. Use leading lines, which draw the eye directly into the scene, to create powerful images. Moody skies and silhouettes also work well together for bad-weather drama. Shooting through a window, car windshield, or from under an awning can produce distinctive shots. Darkened clouds create dramatic skies, while a little bit of rain can inspire unique and abstract compositions, even an accidental rainbow. ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 65
Try shooting with the HDR option turned on to boost vibrance.
What you see is what you get If you’re posting photos directly from your phone, feel free to do some quick tweaks in the Photos app. If you’re really ambitious about sprucing up a special shot, transfer images to your desktop for editing in Apple Photos and its various extensions, or call on reinforcements such as Pixelmator, Adobe Photoshop Elements or Lightroom. Starting off with a good shot is always optimal, but don’t be afraid to give a good photo a little boost. In the end, it’s what the viewer sees that counts. 66 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
Feature: Beginner’s guide to Pokémon GO Don’t know the difference between a regular Poké Ball and a Great Ball? Sarah Jacobsson Purewal’s guide will help
B
y now, you must be familiar with Pokémon GO, the latest Pokémon game that uses VR and real-world locations to send players on an IRL quest to catch Pokémon. But considering it’s a global phenomenon, Pokémon GO is lacking in beginner instruction. This may be on purpose – it has a huge social element, and fewer instructions means more people turning to each other for help. But if you’d rather not ask your 10-year-old neighbour for the basics, we’ve put together a beginner’s guide that will answer all your questions ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 67
about hunting down Pokémon, nabbing items, and sating your desire for world domination by controlling all of your neighbourhood gyms.
Pokémon, Pokémon, and more Pokémon How to find Pokémon When you first start the game, you will see three starter Pokémon spawn/appear in your area: Bulbasaur, Charmander and Squirtle. You can pick one of these Pokémon to catch, and once you catch it, the other two Pokémon will disappear. But finding your next Pokémon isn’t quite so easy – you’ll need to venture outside to find more Pokémon. They tend to spawn in areas that are well-populated, like parks, tourist attractions, and shopping centres. You’ll also find different Pokémon in different areas – water-type Pokémon will only show up near bodies of water, for example, while grass-type Pokémon can be found in parks. In the lower-right corner of your screen, you will see a small white bar with silhouettes of Pokémon that are close to your current location. Tap this bar to see all nearby Pokémon; tap a single Pokémon to track it. These Pokémon will have paw prints underneath them denoting how close (or far) they are from you: One paw print means close, while three paw prints mean further away. These 68 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
paw prints will decrease/increase as you get closer/ further from the Pokémon. How to catch Pokémon To catch a Pokémon, you’ll need to hit it with Poké Balls. This is easy – tap the Poké Ball and flick it toward the Pokémon. Each Pokémon will have a circle that is green, yellow, or red: Green means the Pokémon is easier to catch, while red means it’s difficult. As soon as you put your finger on the Poké Ball, the circle will start shrinking; if you hit the Pokémon while the circle is larger, it will be easier to catch. You can increase your chances of catching Pokémon with higher level Poké Balls (you’ll get access to Great Balls at level 12) and by using Razz Berries, a treat that entices a Pokémon to stay. You can also get a 100-point Experience Point (XP) bonus by spinning the Poké Ball when you toss it. How to run from Pokémon You can run away from a Pokémon instead of catching it by tapping the run icon in the upper left corner of the screen. What is Stardust and where to get it Stardust is used to power up your Pokémon’s Combat Power (CP) level. You can get Stardust ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 69
by catching Pokémon, hatching Pokémon from an egg, or by controlling a Gym. What are Candies and where to get them Candies are used to power up your Pokémon’s CP and to evolve Pokémon into stronger, more advanced creatures. You can get Candies by catching Pokémon, by transferring Pokémon to Professor Willow (your in-game guide who helps you learn how to catch Pokémon), or by hatching Pokémon from an egg. Candies are specific to the Pokémon you receive them from, but evolved forms of Pokémon take their unevolved forms’ Candies. For example, Pikachu Candies can only be used to power up and evolve Pikachu, but Pidgey Candies can be used to power up and evolve Pidgey, Pidgeotto and Pidgeot. To transfer a Pokémon to Professor Willow, tap the one you want to trade, go to the bottom of the screen, and tap Transfer. You will lose this Pokémon forever (so you should try to transfer Pokémon with lower CP), but you will get one Candy. Should you level up a Pokémon or evolve it first? Levelling up your Pokémon usually takes one or two Candies and some Stardust, while evolving 70 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
your Pokémon takes anywhere from 12 to 400 Candies. But you’ll get better results if you evolve your Pokémon before levelling them up (this takes some holding out – it’s tempting to spend that Stardust), because evolved forms of Pokémon take their unevolved forms’ Candy and have higher all-around stats. How high can a Pokémon’s CP get? You can see your Pokémon’s CP by opening its profile screen. The arc above your Pokémon shows how high its CP can potentially get – further along on the arc means your Pokémon is nearing its maximum CP level. Pokémon’s maximum CP depends on their type (some Pokémon are just naturally stronger) and on your level as a trainer. As you level up, your Pokémon’s maximum CP will increase. How to rename a Pokémon Open your Pokémon’s profile screen and tap its name to rename it. How to get eggs, hatch an egg and why you can’t hatch an egg while driving You can get eggs from PokéStops, which are realworld locations that let players grab items. Eggs come in three varieties: two-, five- and 10km. To find your eggs, open the Pokémon screen and tap ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 71
the Eggs tab at the top of the screen. To hatch an egg, you will need to put it in an incubator (do this by tapping the egg you want to incubate and tapping Start Incubation) and then walk two-, five- or 10km. In order for your steps to count, you must have the app open while you are walking. Step-counting stops working over certain speeds, so travelling in a car will not count toward your egg-hatching. Catching Pokémon in a car Yes. But you should not play Pokémon GO while driving. If you’re in a moving vehicle and you spot a Pokémon on your map and you tap it, the Pokémon will remain in your view long enough for you to catch it (even if you’re travelling at freeway speeds). You can also grab items from PokéStops in a car, if you tap them and start spinning them before you reach them (you’ll have to be quick). You can’t battle a gym while moving, though.
PokéStops, items, and lures Where to get different items You can get Poké Balls, eggs, potions, super potions, revives, Razz Berries, Great Balls, Ultra Balls, and Master Balls (powerful types of Poké Balls) from PokéStops. You will get some incense, lucky eggs, lure modules, and egg incubators as 72 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
you level up, but these “premium” items can also be purchased in the shop. Here’s a quick rundown of what these items do: Poké Ball: Used for catching Pokémon. Just toss these at Pokémon you meet in the wild. Egg: These contain Pokémon. You will need to put an egg in an incubator and walk a certain distance (each egg will tell you how long you’ll need to walk) for it to hatch. You will also receive Stardust and Candies upon hatching. Potion: Restore 20 Hit Points (HP) to Pokémon injured in gym battles. Will only work if Pokémon have not fainted. Super Potion: Restore 50HP to Pokémon injured in gym battles. Will only work if Pokémon have not fainted. Revive: Revives a fainted Pokémon and restores half of its HP. Great Ball: Unlocks at level 12. Used for catching Pokémon. These special balls have a higher rate of capture, so you should use them on hard-to-get Pokémon. Ultra Ball: Unlocks at level 20. Used for catching Pokémon. Has a higher rate of capture than a Great Ball. Master Ball: Unlocks at a higher (currently unknown) level. Captures Pokémon every time. Incense: Attracts Pokémon to your location for 30 minutes. Works best if you are moving. Lucky Egg: Doubles your XP for 30 minutes. To rack up XP quickly, use a Lucky Egg in an area where you are likely to meet a lot of Pokémon (near a lure module or while using incense), or right ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 73
before you are about to evolve several Pokémon (evolving nets you 500XP). Lure Module: Can be pinned to a PokéStop to attract Pokémon to that location for 30 minutes. Works for everyone near the PokéStop. Incubators: Can be used to incubate and hatch eggs. You can use multiple incubators at once to incubate and hatch multiple eggs. How often do PokéStops refresh? PokéStops refresh (and will give you more items) every five minutes. The pink stuff around a PokéStop If you see a PokéStop that’s shooting off pink petals, someone has placed a lure module there. Lure modules attract Pokémon for 30 minutes, and everyone who is near the PokéStop will benefit (unlike incense, which only attracts Pokémon to one person). If you head over to a lure module, you’re likely to find a bunch of other friendly Pokémon GO players hanging about. To place a lure module on a PokéStop, tap the PokéStop and tap the white bar underneath the PokéStop’s name. If you have a lure module in your inventory, you can place this module in the module slot. 74 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
Beware of following lure modules to shady parts of town in the middle of the night, though – there may be armed robbers waiting for you. Why are there no Pokémon/ PokéStops/Gyms near me? Pokémon GO is, unfortunately, a little biased toward cities, because it relies on landmarks and points of interest. If you live in a small town, or out in the country, you may not see a lot of Pokémon, PokéStops, or Gyms near you.
Gyms What is a Gym? In addition to PokéStops, you’ll also see Pokémon Gyms – usually larger landmarks – around your city. Gyms are where you can battle other players’ Pokémon for control, pride, and free PokéCoins. You can’t visit gyms until you are level 5 and have chosen a team. What is a team, and why you need to join one? When you get to level 5, you’ll be asked to choose a team. There are three teams: Team Instinct (yellow), Team Mystic (blue) and Team Valor (red). Once you pick a team, your job is to fight for control of the Pokémon Gyms around your city – if an opposing team controls a gym, you can battle them for dominance; if your team controls a gym, you can train at the gym or place one of your Pokémon at the gym to defend it from opposing teams. If you control a gym – or if you have a Pokémon defending a gym (you don’t necessarily have to be the gym leader) – you will get a ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 75
defender reward of PokéCoins and Stardust once a day. The main incentive to control gyms is pride, naturally, but PokéCoins can be used to purchase items in the Shop. Which team should you pick? It doesn’t really matter which team you pick, but if you have friends playing the game you’ll probably want to get on the same team so you can take over gyms together. The best team, in my unbiased opinion, is Team Instinct. How to claim a gym You can claim an empty gym by assigning one of your Pokémon to defend it. To do this, tap the gym on your map and tap the assign button in the lower left corner. If a gym is currently occupied by an opposing team, you can claim it by battling its current defenders. You can take six Pokémon with you into battle. Each time you win a battle, the gym’s prestige will lower – when the gym’s prestige is at 0, the gym will open up and you can assign a Pokémon to defend it. Gym prestige Gym power is determined by prestige – the higher a gym’s prestige level, the harder it is for an opposing team to conquer it. Every time the gym’s defenders win a battle against an opposing team, the gym’s prestige level gets higher. And every time the gym’s defenders lose a battle against an opposing team, the gym’s prestige level lowers. If the gym’s prestige level is lowered to 0 (by 76 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
multiple lost battles), the gym opens up and can be claimed by any team. Gym prestige can be increased if friendly team members train their Pokémon at the gym (more on training below). As the gym’s prestige increases, more defence slots will open up, allowing more friendly team members to assign their Pokémon to defend the gym. (You can only assign one Pokémon to a gym.) Higher-level gyms have more slots – a Level 6 gym can have six defending Pokémon, while a Level 10 gym can have 10 defending Pokémon. With each gym level increase, the maximum prestige level also increases. So a Level 1 gym has a maximum prestige level of 2,000, but a Level 3 gym has a maximum prestige level of 8,000. How battling works To battle an unfriendly gym, walk up to the gym, tap it, and tap the battle button in the lower right corner. You will see six of your Pokémon pop up – you can swap Pokémon out by tapping them. You may not always want to take your strongest Pokémon into battle – some Pokémon types have advantages against others. Once you’ve picked your team, tap Go to enter the battle. You have three moves at your disposal: Standard attack, special attack, and dodge. You’ll want to start off with standard attacks, which you can perform by tapping your enemy. You’ll also want to liberally use dodge, which you can do by swiping to the right or the left. Once you’ve performed enough standard attacks to power up your special attack (you can check this by looking ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 77
at the blue bars underneath your name), tap and hold to perform your special attack. If you have multiple blue bars, you can perform this attack multiple times. Why is this enemy Pokémon impossible to beat? You may encounter a known bug where an enemy Pokémon has 1HP but refuses to die. If you encounter this bug, shut down the app and reopen it. You will have to restart the fight, but all of your Pokémon will be restored to full health. What happens when a Pokémon get injured or faint If your Pokémon get injured, you can restore their HP with Potions and Super Potions, which you can pick up from PokéStops. If your Pokémon faints, you will need to revive them with a Revive, which can also be found at PokéStops. You cannot use items during a battle. How to train a Pokémon at a friendly gym You can ‘train’ your Pokémon at a friendly gym (a gym owned by your team) by fighting against the Pokémon defending it. To do this, walk up to the gym, tap it, and tap the train icon in the lower right corner. You can only take one Pokémon into battle when you train. Every time you win a battle 78 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
against a friendly gym, that gym’s prestige raises. If you lose a battle at a friendly gym, its prestige is not affected. How to drop a Pokémon at a friendly gym? If you encounter a friendly gym with an empty slot, you can drop one of your Pokémon there to help defend it. Walk up to the gym, tap it and tap the assign button in the lower left corner. When you drop a Pokémon at a defending gym, you will lose the ability to level it up or evolve it until it’s defeated and comes back to you. You will not get a notification if your Pokémon faints or is injured in battle and the gym is taken over by another team, but it will show up in your roster to be healed. If the friendly gym does not have an empty slot, you will need to train (win against the gym) until its level raises and a slot opens up. What you get for being a gym leader Gym leaders and gym defenders get Stardust and PokéCoins every 21 hours. If you are controlling or helping to defend a gym at the 21st hour, you will get these benefits by going to the Shop and tapping the shield icon in the upper right corner. The highest CP Pokémon defending a gym determines the gym leader. ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 79
Feature: Best games coming to iOS in 2016 This year is shaping up to be a brilliant one for iOS gamers. Here are the games David Price is most looking forward to XCOM: Enemy Within This is one of the very best games on the iPad: a superbly tense and tactical turn-based strategy masterpiece. Which makes us almost indecently keen for XCOM 2. It took about eight months for XCOM: Enemy Unknown, the first modern incarnation of the franchise, to launch on iOS after its PC launch. The PC edition of XCOM 2 hit the shops in February 2016, so we’re hopeful that it might come to iPad in autumn.
80 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
Super Meat Boy Super Meat Boy is a wildly popular but murderously difficult platform game in which you control a cube of animated meat; it started as a cult indie hit on Xbox but blew up and ended up migrating to most of the main console and desktop platforms, but not to iPad or iPhone… so far. Yet Team Meat has talked about a new game, Super Meat Boy Forever, which will appear on mobile. At one stage this was believed to be an endless runner, but the makers have since stated that there will be endless stages – hence the name – within a game that overall has a similar structure to the original Super Meat Boy. Beyond that, details are thin on the ground, but this video showing snatches of gameplay is enough to get us excited about the launch – whenever it finally happens.
ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 81
Banner Saga 2 The Banner Saga is a unique and beautifully made tactical RPG/adventure game, and its mobile and desktop versions feature prominently in our Best iOS games and Best Mac games articles. So the prospect of a sequel is fantastic. The PC version of Banner Saga 2 is scheduled to launch on 19th April 2016, and you can watch a video trailer here. But when will the game come to iPad? The iOS version of the original game appeared nine months after the PC launch, so our best guess is that BS2 will come to the App Store in early 2017, but we’re optimistic that Stoic might get it out there early and give iOS gamers a treat for Christmas 2016.
82 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
Legend of Grimrock 2 This is our favourite roleplaying game on the iOS platform. It is simply wonderful: cruel, compelling, sometimes very difficult; a love letter to the gridbased first-person RPGs of the 1990s with the addition of modern graphical polish. And if by some quirk of circumstances you haven’t played it yet, you should go and download it, then close down your browser and not come back until it’s finished. LoG 2 came out on PC back in late 2014, and Rock Paper Shotgun, whose recommendation led us to try Grimrock in the first place, described their experience with the sequel as being “like a pig in a lifetime’s supply of the very finest quality shit”. So come on, Almost Human, let the iPad gamers have their turn. The first game came to the App Store last May, so we can only hope that the developers have been too busy counting their money to bother porting the sequel. ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 83
Don’t Starve: Together/ Shipwrecked Don’t Starve is a survival game, dropping you into a hostile wilderness with almost no instructions to see how long you can last – and when you do get dropped by wild animal, starvation or mental collapse, you stay dropped, thanks to its cruel implementation of permadeath. It’s all a bit Minecrafty, but has a whimsical, gothy, Tim Burtonesque flavour and humour all of its own. Having played this masterpiece within an inch of its life we’re particularly keen to get our hands on two expansions that the makers have already rolled out in early access form for PC gamers. Don’t Starve Together, which comes out of early access any day now, makes the game multiplayer; and Shipwrecked adds a variety of seaborne and tropical hazards. Both have been received favourably, but at this point, anything which brings more Don’t Starve to our iPads is a good thing. 84 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
Walking Dead Season Three Telltale’s trademark adventure-game style – tense conversations, dialogue choices with a timer and potentially lethal consequences if you say the wrong thing, ominous warnings that ‘Character X will remember that’ – works particularly well in the violent, high-stakes world of The Walking Dead. And it foregrounds a sometimes overlooked strength of the series, particularly in comic book form: that interaction between humans is more compelling than fights with zombies. The company has maintained high standards for two series now, and the upcoming third season – scheduled for some time in 2016 – is already pencilled in as one of the highlights of our calendar.
ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 85
86 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
Feature: Ask the iTunes Guy Kirk McElhearn answers your iTunes questions
W
hen is shuffle not shuffle? When it shuffles things you don’t want shuffled. iTunes’ shuffle feature is great, but not when you want to listen to audiobooks. I explain how to use shuffle and how to keep books in order. I also mention the secret command to turn off iTunes’ hideous algorithm-generated colour scheme, and give a bit more detail about how Apple Lossless files can be smaller than the original music on CD.
Shuffle or not Q: I have a mix of songs, albums and audiobooks, all in playlists in my iTunes library. I would like to have the playlists that contain music shuffle all their songs, and the audiobooks play in chapter order. However, when I switch shuffle on it affects all playlists, which obviously plays audiobooks out of order. It there anyway to set up iTunes so shuffle is on for some playlists and off for others? A: The iTunes shuffle feature is great for music, but, as you point out, not for audiobooks. There are several ways you can control shuffle in iTunes, and it’s good to know about these. To turn shuffle on globally for your library, choose Controls > Shuffle > On, and start playing a track. ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 87
Shuffle just the contents of a playlist by clicking its shuffle icon
Or double-click an item to start playing it, and then click the shuffle icon in the iTunes LCD (that’s the display at the top of the window). You can shuffle a playlist by clicking the crossed-arrows icon in the playlist header. And you can start shuffling any item in the sidebar – music library view, playlist, and so on, by right-clicking and choosing Shuffle. In your situation, there’s an easy solution to prevent your audiobooks from shuffling. Select all the tracks of one of your audiobooks, press Cmd-I, and then click the Options tab. Check Skip when Shuffling, and iTunes will ignore the tracks when you’re playing all your content in shuffle mode. So you could do this for all your audiobooks (you can select them all and make the change with a single click), and still leave shuffle on for your music.
Colour unbalance Q: Recent iTunes versions have a black background on the top portion of the window, so the song titles are impossible to read. Is there some way to change that? 88 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
This is an extreme example of how this colour algorithm goes wrong, but it’s not that uncommon
A: This has been an iTunes ‘feature’ for quite a while (since iTunes 11), and it was enhanced a bit when iTunes 12 was released last year. An algorithm in iTunes uses the dominant colours from the album artwork of the selected album, or of the tracks in a playlist, to choose a colour scheme. Unfortunately, this algorithm seems like it was designed by an intern, and doesn’t take into account the lack of contrast between pale coloured fonts and dark backgrounds. It also ignores the fact that many people are colour-blind, and have even more trouble viewing content like this. Fortunately, you can turn this ‘feature’ off in iTunes’ General preferences. Uncheck the Views setting of Use custom colours for open albums, movies, and so on, and you’ll have white text on a black background. You won’t see it change immediately on the selected album or playlist; click another item for the change to show up.
Is Apple Lossless truly lossless? Q: Can you explain how a CD track that’s 1,411kb/s ends up with only 767kb/s as an Apple Lossless? ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 89
A: The reader who sent in this question asks something that a lot of people wonder about. CDs contain PCM (pulse code modulation) audio at 1,411kb/s, so it seems counter-intuitive that a compressed file could still retain the same quality. Lossless compression for audio files allows you to take an original music file – on a CD, for example – and shrink it to save space, yet retain the same quality. It’s not as small as a lossy compressed file, but when you play it back, the file is decompressed on the fly, and the resulting data is exactly the same as the original. This is similar to the way a Zip file of a Word document containing the text of Moby Dick has all the same words when it’s uncompressed. Note that the final bit rate of an Apple Lossless file (or any other lossless file) is an average of an entire track, and that bit rate can vary greatly. Here are some examples of Apple Lossless file bit rates in my iTunes library.
All these files are in Apple Lossless format, but you can see that the bit rate varies greatly according to the density and volume of the music
90 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
How To: Remove iOS 10 beta and return to iOS 9 If you regret installing the iOS 10 public beta, David Price reveals how to go back to iOS 9
I
f you’ve taken the plunge and installed the iOS 10 public beta, and then regretted it, you’re probably wondering how to delete iOS 10 and go back to the comforting embrace of iOS 9. This is easy, if a little long-winded. We explain how.
Downgrade from iOS 10 Let’s deal with the early birds first – the ones who have installed iOS early, be it via the public beta or developer preview. You’re the lucky ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 91
ones when it comes to downgrading, because iOS 9.3.2 is still the newest and current officially supported operating system and will therefore be the software your iPhone or iPad will be restored to if you select the iTunes option to Restore and Update. But we’ll get into that in a moment. The only issue is that you’ll have to restore from a pre-iOS 10 backup, so any data or preferences you’ve saved since then will be lost – and if you haven’t got an archived backup from your iOS 9 days, you won’t be able to restore your data at all. In that case all your data will be lost and you’ll have to go back to a factory-default ‘new iPhone’ or ‘new iPad’ setup. Something to consider. Removing the iOS 10 public beta is simple:
΄ Enter Recovery mode by turning off your iPhone or iPad, then holding its Home button. ΄ When it says ‘Connect to iTunes’, do exactly that – plug it into your Mac or PC and open up iTunes. ΄ iTunes will tell you that it’s detected an iPhone or iPad in Recovery Mode, and that this needs to be restored - click OK to agree to this, and then Restore iPhone or Restore iPad (as appropriate). ΄ Finally, choose the option to Restore and Update. iTunes will download the latest version of iOS 9 and install it on your Apple device. Once iTunes has reinstalled a fresh version of iOS 9, you have a choice of either restoring from an old backup (remember, your iOS 10 back up won’t work) or setting it up as a brand new iPhone. Simply select your preferred option, follow the on-screen prompts and viola! You’re back on good old iOS 9. 92 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
How To: Clean out your iPhone’s memory Lucy Hattersley shows how to remove unwanted junk from iPhone and give your handset a speed boost
T
he iPhone and iPad are pretty user-friendly devices, but iOS still gets clogged up over time with unwanted file and memory hogs. This can slow your iPhone down. In this article, we’re going to look at how to clean iOS junk files and get the iPhone to run a little faster. Giving your iPhone (or iPad) a spring clean and removing unwanted files will improve its performance: especially if it is an older model. But spring-cleaning also helps you get more out of iOS by enabling you to focus on the things you do need ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 93
and use. Apple iOS devices may not need the same level of maintenance as Mac OS X), but they still need some attention to run at optimum speed.
Delete the Safari cache We’re going to start by cleaning out the caches on our iPhone. Note that this will mean you’re logged out of any websites you’ve signed into, though. Follow these steps to clear out the Safari cache:
΄ Press Settings > Safari. ΄ Scroll down and tap Clear History and Website Data.
΄ Tap Clear History and Data. Remove file data Data stored by other apps can be cleaned using the Usage option in settings. Follow these steps to clean out unwanted data from iOS:
΄ Tap Settings > General > Storage & iCloud Usage. ΄ Tap Manage Storage. ΄ Tap an item in Documents and Data. ΄ Slide unwanted items to the left and tap Delete. ΄ Tap Edit > Delete All to remove all the app’s data. Clean iOS junk using PhoneClean PhoneClean (imobie.com) can be used to remove junk files from iOS. Follow these steps:
΄ Attach the iPhone to your Mac using the USB cable. ΄ Open Phone Clean and click Scan. ΄ Once the scan is complete, click Clean. 94 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
Some PhoneClean features are only available in the Pro version, including Photo Caches, which costs from $19.99 per year.
Clean iOS junk using iMyFone Umate Much like PhoneClean by iMobie, iMyFone Umate for Windows and Mac can be used to remove temporary and junk files from your iOS device quickly and easily.
΄ Connect your iPhone to your PC or Mac using the supplied Lightning cable. ΄ Open iMyFone Umate and click Scan on the Home tab. ΄ Clear Junk files and Temporary files to clear up a lot of space on your iPhone. ΄ You can also clear out any large files (videos, and so on) and see, at a glance, apps that take up a ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 95
lot of space on your iOS device. These can also be deleted easy using iMyFone Umate. There’s a free version of iMyFone Umate (imyfone.com) available for Windows and Mac along with a paid version which sets you back $19.99 (around £15), allowing access to the more advanced features of the app.
Recover memory Apple iOS should manage your memory effectively. And apps that are running in the background should not take up memory. Having said that, we do find that restarting an iPhone clears all the memory and ensures that the apps we need have enough to use. Here is how to restart your iPhone: 96 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
΄ Hold down the Sleep/Wake button until ‘slide to power off’ appears. ΄ Slide the power off switch and turn off the iPhone. ΄ Wait until it has fully powered down then press the Sleep/Wake button to turn on the iPhone. Doing this on a regular basis used to be vital on an iPhone, and it’s still useful on older models.
Clear iOS files and memory using Battery Doctor There are several apps on the App Store that enable you to clean out junk files. One popular option is Battery Doctor (tinyurl.com/La3o6bd), which provides information about your battery but also clears out junk files. Follow these steps:
΄ Open Battery Doctor and select the Junk tab. ΄ Tap Clean Up Cache, then Clean. ΄ Wait for Battery Doctor to scan your files. ΄ Tap Memory and then Boost. Battery Doctor will show you how much memory has been released.
ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 97
How To: Update contact photos on an iPhone Miriam Harris explains how to update photos manually or through you Facebook or Twitter accounts
C
hanging a contact photo on your iPhone is a simple task – here we show you how to do this manually with pictures stored on your phone or connecting your Facebook and Twitter apps with the Contacts app on your iPhone. Facebook and Twitter are able to synchronise with your iPhone, and are one of the few social networks you can sign in to from the Settings menu of your device. This gives the apps access to update your contacts with information from the social media
98 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
profiles, including photos. But this won’t be for everyone; people may want more control over their privacy within iOS. Make sure you’re okay with the app accessing your personal information before you choose to update contacts – you can see what we to say on how to protect your privacy and how to set up the best privacy settings in iOS 8.
Manually Here’s how to change a contact photo on your iPhone manually by choosing an existing photo or to taking one yourself.
΄ Open up Contacts and choose the contact you wish to update.
΄ Tap Edit in the righthand corner. ΄ Tap Edit under the photo icon in the lefthand corner. ΄ A menu will pop-up where you can choose to Take Photo, Choose Photo, Edit Photo or Delete Photo. ΄ Choose one of these to update the contact photo.
Facebook To update your contacts’ usernames and photos automatically through syncing Facebook head to your phone settings. Bear in mind this will only update the friends in your contacts list who you also have on Facebook. ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 99
΄ Scroll down to the list of your social media apps and tap Facebook. ΄ Allow the app to use your account. Make sure the toggle is turned on. ΄ Scroll down and tap Update All Contacts. ΄ Photos and usernames will automatically be updated. ΄ Allowing the app to update your contacts will temporarily provide the app with email addresses and phone numbers from your contacts to update photos and usernames for all matching contacts. ΄ You can choose to not allow apps access to your contacts by finding Facebook under your phone settings, and tapping on the Facebook Settings. Slide the toggle to off.
Twitter To update your contacts’ usernames and photos automatically through syncing Twitter to your contacts list, head to your iPhone Settings.
΄ Open Twitter. ΄ Tap Update Contacts. You can also stop Twitter accessing your account by turning the toggle off at the bottom at any time.
100 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
How To: Reset an old iPhone or iPad or device Martyn Casserly reveals how to reset a frozen iPhone or iPad and restore it from a backup
I
n this tutorial we will show you how to reset an iPhone or iPad – perfect if you need to wipe an iPhone or wipe an iPad because you are selling it. Alternatively, if your iPhone or iPad has frozen we can show you how to reset it and restore it from a back up. Here’s how to reset, restore and reboot your iPhone or iPad the next time it hangs. Read on to find out how to erase your iPhone or iPad, and restore everything again afterwards. ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 101
Fix a frozen iPhone or iPad If you’ve ever watched the IT Crowd, you’ll be well versed in the mantra “Have you tried turning it off and on again?”, which is the stock response used by Denholm Industries’ IT department to solve all computer-related ills. In real life… well, strangely enough it’s often the way to fix problems that occur on your iPhone, iPad or even Mac. Modern electronic devices are very complicated, and can get themselves into a bit of a confused state from time to time. Resetting can clear out random problems that cause the device to get stuck in a loop, appear sluggish or otherwise impair their performance. It’s not a guarantee, but you’d be surprised how often it works. For bigger issues though, you might find that a trip to the Apple Store is in order, and this often results in a fixed device but with all the data wiped clean. To solve this it’s vitally important that you backup your iPhone either with iCloud or iTunes. With that safety net in place you can restore your iPhone when it starts to have problems. Read on to find out how to restart your iPhone if it’s completely unresponsive, backup your iPhone before resetting it and more.
What to do if your iPhone has crashed If your iPhone or iPad has become unresponsive, or you’ve shut it down and it won’t turn on again, all is not lost. There is a feature on iOS devices that can be used when the normal modes of operation aren’t working. Thankfully they are very easy to do, and require no tools or specialist knowledge. In fact you just need two fingers and about 20 seconds. 102 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
To restart your iPhone or iPad hold down the Home button (the one on the front of the iPhone or iPad) and at the same time hold down the power button (aka the lock switch) until you see the Apple logo appear on the screen. Now you can let go of the buttons and let your device complete its start sequence. This is called a hard reset, and should hopefully fix any issues you were having. If things are still not as they should be, then it might be a good idea to restore an old backup, as some of your files could be corrupted and causing the issue. Read on to find out more.
Back up your iPhone or iPad before you wipe it If you want to start with a clean slate, then there are a few steps to take. First, make sure that you have a backup ready. You can use either iCloud or iTunes to backup your iOS device. For iCloud go to Settings > iCloud > Backup and ensure that the feature is enabled. To see when the last backup was run look under the Back Up Now option where the date and time should be displayed. If you haven’t done a backup before you can tap the Back Up Now button and follow the instructions. To use iTunes you’ll need to plug your iPhone or iPad into your ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 103
PC or Mac using the charging cable. Click on the iPhone or iPad icon in the top left corner of iTunes, under the Play button.
Reset your iPhone or iPad Once you’re confident that you’ve backed up your iPad or iPhone, you’re ready to perform a factory reset. This will completely wipe your device which is why having a backup is so important. A factory reset can help resolve issues with your iPhone or iPad if it’s crashing or freezing, but it is also what you’ll want to do if you need to wipe your iPhone or iPad before selling it, or passing it on to a family member or friend. When selling an iPhone or iPad, it’s absolutely vital that you delete all the sensitive data stored on it. If not, an unscrupulous buyer could gain access to your social media profiles, your financial
104 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
information and even your personal photos and videos, enabling them to browse through your private moments or steal your identity. Luckily it’s very easy to completely wipe an iPad or iPhone. Simply follow the steps in this tutorial and your data security will be assured:
΄ Go to Settings > General > Reset and then select Erase All Content and Settings.
΄ After typing in your passcode if you’ve set one, you’ll get a warning box appear, with the option to Erase iPhone (or iPad) in red. Tap this. ΄ You’ll need to enter your Apple ID password to confirm the action, then the iPad or iPhone will wipe everything off its storage and go back to the initial setup screen you saw when you first used the device. ΄ You can also fully reset your iPhone or iPad through iTunes. When you plug in your iOS device, you should be able to see a ‘Restore iPhone’ button, which will fully reset the device.
Deleting apps and other items individually That’s the quick method, but if you just want to free up some space a full wipe clearly isn’t the best option. To look at the biggest culprits filling up your storage allocation, go to Settings > General > Usage. iOS will tell you firstly how much space you’re using and how much is available, and will then list the apps taking up the most space. Remember that these listings include associated documents and files as well as the app itself, so Photos and Music are likely to be up near the top. ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 105
Instead of deleting the app (which you wouldn’t be able to do anyway, with Apple’s preinstalled apps) you could go into the app in question and clear out some old photos or songs, for example. To delete an app you’re finished with, click it in this list, then Delete App and confirm. Alternatively, from the Home screen you can tap and hold any icon, then tap the X at the top left of an app to delete the app. (If it hasn’t got an X, you can’t delete it.)
iCloud backup If having erased the content of the phone you intend to keep using it, you can restore the content to your phone from your backup. With the factory reset completed you’ll need to go through the setup of your iPhone again from the beginning; entering your details, Wi-Fi password and a few other things until you reach the page where you’re asked how you want to ‘Set Up iPhone’. You have the three options – Set Up as a New iPhone, Restore from iCloud Backup or Restore from iTunes backup – so select the iCloud option and you’ll be prompted to enter your iCloud account details. Once you’ve done this, and agreed to the terms and conditions, your iPhone will begin restoring all of your data. 106 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
Obviously this could take a while if you have large backups or a slow internet connection, so don’t attempt this if you’re in a hurry. When the backup is completed your iPhone will reboot, and then it will start the larger job of downloading all of your apps.
iTunes backup As with the iCloud instructions we’ve already outlined, follow the steps up to the ‘Set Up iPhone’ screen, then select Restore from iTunes. You’ll be prompted to Connect to iTunes, so plug in your iPhone and you’ll see a screen on iTunes that gives you the option to restore a backup. Click continue and your iPhone will be set up automatically, with the apps being restored from the iTunes backup. When it’s finished, you’ll have a freshly cleaned system and hopefully any problems that you were encountering before will be a thing of the past.
ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 107
What to do if your iOS device isn’t backed up If you’re worried that your iPhone or iPad wasn’t backed up, chances are that there is a backup that you were unaware of. To find out if you are backing up to iCloud (you get free 5GB of space) go to Settings > iCloud and tap on Storage. Wait a few seconds for Manage Storage to show up and tap on that. Here you will see your various backups for your iOS devices (there might be one for an old iPhone you could delete if you need more space). One of the backups should say that it is This iPhone or This iPad. Tap on that and you can see what is, and isn’t being backed up. You can basically turn things on and off so that they don’t take up your full 5GB, or you can pay a few pounds a month for more storage. You may think that some of those apps don’t need to be backed up, after all, you will be able to download them again from the App Store as you already own them. But note that the data may include saved data for games, and other settings and preferences that you would prefer not to lose. To check when your iPhone last backed up, go to Settings > iCloud > Backup and look at the date and time of the last back up. It will have happened the last time you plugged your iPhone in to charge and had Wi-Fi access available. If you find that you aren’t backing up this way, we recommend you go to Settings > iCloud > Back up and turn iCloud Backup On as this is the simplest way to back up and means that you always recover the data on your phone no matter where you are, all you will need is a connection to the web. 108 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
Opinion: Why new iPhone will be a must-have upgrade Sure, OLED probably isn’t coming until next year, but Michael Simon believes this year’s iPhone could be a sleeper hit.
I
f you’ve happened to peruse an Apple rumour site lately, you might have noticed a distinct lack of enthusiasm surrounding the next iPhone. It’s not the sort of thing we’re not used to seeing; this being an even year (or tick, if you prefer), early summer is normally the time when speculation starts heating up, when 9to5Mac or KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo drops a juicy tidbit for everyone to salivate over. ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 109
But it’s looking more and more like that’s not going to happen. Reports are saying that the iPhone 7 (if that’s even what it’s called) will break the cycle and offer up another S-type model, with most of the major improvements happening on the inside rather than a flashy case change. It’s a risk for sure – whole-number iPhone models have always been judged on their physical attributes, and another year of the iPhone 6 will cause some people to immediately write it off. But that needn’t be the case. While this year’s iPhone might not have the usual buzz leading up to its announcement, there should be more than enough reasons to get entice iPhone 6 (and even some 6s) users to upgrade.
Intelligence inside Even if it’s true that the new iPhone is virtually indistinguishable from the model it succeeds, that doesn’t mean it won’t be a major step forward. While we can certainly count on the requisite improvements to the camera and chip, there almost certainly will be one or two major internal enhancements that not only make it attractive to upgraders but also chart a new course for Apple’s mobile strategy. There are already some clues out there. The iPad Pro introduced the Smart Connector for quick keyboard hookups, and there has been speculation that the iPhone Plus (or a new iPhone Pro) will adopt it, as well as the True Tone display, which would be right at home on the iPhone. But the killer feature will likely be something we haven’t seen yet. The S models have actually meant more to the 110 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
evolution of the iPhone than the case redesigns – bringing major features such as Siri, Touch ID and 3D Touch that have dramatically changed the way we use our phones – and the new iPhone is sure to introduce something entirely new.
Out with a bang Even if the new iPhone looks like the one it replaces, make no mistake: the iPhone’s reboot starts this year. By breaking the two-year cycle, ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 111
Apple is making it clear that the iPhone is in the middle of an unprecedented transition period, one much more significant than the usual biennial one. But while Apple may be prepping for a massive overhaul next year, that doesn’t mean this year’s iPhone is going to be a throwaway. Quite the contrary in fact–in all likelihood the 2016 model represents the last of the button-central iPhone, and Apple isn’t about to let it go out with a whimper. Delaying the redesign doesn’t just align it with the 10th anniversary, it also gives Apple an opportunity to give the “classic” model a proper send-off, and that could include a new 256GB Pro model, a Smart Connector, or even Apple Pencil support. The reliance on an old design liberates Apple to innovate from the inside, and with another year to tweak and refine the iPhone 6, the new iPhone could very well be its most flawless release.
The power of 10 We may have only gotten small preview of iOS 10, but from what we’ve seen, it’s set to implement some of the most exciting changes since the launch of the App Store. It’s not just about extra features and apps (though there are plenty of those). iOS 10 introduces some exciting new ways to interact with apps that rely on 3D Touch, which just so happens to only available on the 6s. Apple has said that rich notifications with be available for devices without 3D Touch, but the experience is inferior on devices without it, even the new iPhone SE. With an increased reliance on peeking and popping, Apple will surely improve how it operates, much like it has with each generation of Touch ID. 112 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
iOS 10 makes 3D Touch such an essential gesture that owners of the iPhone 6 and SE might be tempted to upgrade
And even though Apple optimises iOS for older hardware, the newest phones always run it best. With iOS 10, the performance gap will likely be greater, with a heavy dose of Siri and subtle animations. Plus, there’s a rumour circulating about a touch-sensitive home button that would turn it into more of a tiny track pad with Force Touch-style haptic feedback, a feature that would further enhance iOS 10’s streamlined navigation.
Hit the road Even if the rumours are correct about another S model, there looks to be two important changes to the design of this year’s iPhone that will have implications down the road: the moving of the ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 113
unsightly antenna bands to the sides of the device and the removal of the headphone jack. While no one is going to complain about a clean, uniform back plate, people are already up in arms over the removal of the iPhone’s universal music port. But if history is any indicator, the result will be addition by subtraction. There may be short-term pain, but every time Apple has retired a piece of legacy tech it has been to fast-forward the support a superior standard (USB, Wi-Fi, and so on). In this instance, it’s likely Bluetooth, and there is sure to be some exciting advancements in this space, whether it’s a new audio codec, faster charging, or instant pairing. Let’s not forget that Apple owns one of the most popular headphone companies on the planet, so a whole new listening experience could be on the way.
Up, upgrade and away When Apple announced the iPhone Upgrade Program alongside the 6s last year, it effectively ended the carrier lock-in. No longer were users limited to the model on the cycle they originally bought; after just 12 payments (about half the price of the phone) you can choose to slide into a new model without having to pay the remainder of the balance on the old one. It’s a pretty nice deal if you want to be on the cutting edge of tech, but with the two-year cycle about to change, it offers even greater protection to whole-number upgraders. Even if the 2016 model carries the S banner for another 12 months, the iPhone Upgrade Program ensures would-be iPhone 6 upgraders won’t have to skip the iPhone 7 of 114 iPAD & iPHONE USER ΄ ISSUE 109
fear of missing out on the next big thing next year. So while rumours sites might be lacking in juicy details now, the reports of the next iPhone being a disappointment have been greatly exaggerated. You might as well start scoping out your place in line at your nearest Apple Store now, because you’re going to want one.
ISSUE 109 ΄ iPAD & iPHONE USER 115