iPad: The Missing Manual, 5th Edition

Chapter 6. Keep in Touch with Email and Messaging

You’ll learn to:

• Send and receive email from all your accounts

• Set up the new VIP and Favorites mailboxes

• Send text messages with Apple’s free service

• Tweet from the slew of apps that now support Twitter

EMAIL IS PART OF your everyday life, and being able to compose, send, and receive mail on your smartphone means you can be on the go and still stay in touch, even if you have to hunch over a Lilliputian keyboard, squinting and pecking on a tiny screen.

The iPad changes all that. Now, you can lean back on your couch, flip on the tablet, and read and write mail on a spacious 8- or 10-inch screen. No more terse, abbreviated messages inspired by a cramped keypad.

This chapter gives you a tour of the iPad’s email program, from setting up your mail accounts to hitting the Send button on that first message.

And if email doesn’t give you the immediate gratification you seek for your communication needs, the iPad comes equipped with Messages, the app that works with Apple’s free iMessage service, so you can instantly send text, photos, and videos to other iOS users. The iPad also integrates Twitter, the ubiquitous microblogging service, into many apps, so you can instantly update friends on your shenanigans.

Then, when you finish this chapter and send out your screeds, you can enjoy the iPad’s other charms with just a tap—ebooks (Chapter 9), music ( ...