How do you make the point that the iPhone has changed the world? The easy answer is “use statistics”—750 million sold, 1.5 million apps available on the iPhone App Store, 90 billion downloads…. Trouble is, those statistics get stale almost before you’ve finished typing them.
Maybe it’s better to talk about the aftermath. How since the iPhone came along, cell carriers (AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and so on) have opened up the calcified, conservative way they used to consider new cellphone designs. How every phone and its brother now have a touchscreen. How Google (Android) phones, Windows, and even BlackBerry phones all have their own app stores. How, in essence, everybody wants to be the iPhone.
Apple introduces a new iPhone model every fall. In September 2015, for example, it introduced the ninth iPhone models, the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, with more features and faster guts.
More importantly, there’s a new, free version of the iPhone’s software, called iOS 9. (Why not “iPhone OS” anymore? Because the same operating system runs on the iPad and the iPod Touch. It’s not just for iPhones anymore, and saying “the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch OS” takes too long.)
You can run iOS 9 on older iPhone models without having to buy a new phone. This book covers all the phones that can run iOS 9: the iPhone 4s, iPhone 5, iPhone 5c, iPhone 5s, iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, iPhone 6s and 6s Plus.
So what is the iPhone? Really, the better question is what isn’t the iPhone?
It’s a cellphone, obviously. But it’s also a full-blown iPod, complete with a dazzling screen for watching videos. And it’s a sensational pocket Internet viewer. It shows fully formatted email (with attachments, thank you) and displays entire web pages with fonts and design intact. It’s tricked out with a tilt sensor, a proximity sensor, a light sensor, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, a gyroscope, a barometer, and that amazing multitouch screen.
For many people, the iPhone is primarily a camera and a camcorder—one that’s getting better with every year’s new model.
Furthermore, it’s a calendar, address book, calculator, alarm clock, stopwatch, stock tracker, traffic reporter, RSS reader, and weather forecaster. It even stands in for a flashlight and, with the screen off, a pocket mirror.
And don’t forget the App Store. Thanks to the 1.5 million add-on programs that await there, the iPhone is also a fast, wicked-fun pocket computer. All those free or cheap programs can turn it into a medical reference, a musical keyboard, a time tracker, a remote control, a sleep monitor, a tip calculator, an ebook reader, and more. And thousands of games, with smooth 3D graphics and tilt control.
All of this sends the iPhone’s utility and power through the roof. Calling it a phone is practically an insult. Apple probably should have called it an “iPod,” but that name was taken.
You don’t get a printed manual when you buy an iPhone. Online, you can find an electronic PDF manual that covers the basics well, but it’s largely free of details, hacks, workarounds, tutorials, humor, and any acknowledgment of the iPhone’s flaws. You can’t easily mark your place, underline, or read it in the bathroom.
The purpose of this book, then, is to serve as the manual that should have accompanied the iPhone. (If you have an original iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, or iPhone 4, you really need one of this book’s earlier editions. If you have an iPhone 4s, 5, 5c, 5s, 6, 6 Plus, 6s, or 6s Plus, this book assumes that you’ve installed iOS 9; see Appendix A.)
Writing a book about the iPhone is a study in exasperation, because the darned thing is a moving target. Apple updates the iPhone’s software fairly often, piping in new features, bug fixes, speed-ups, and so on.
Therefore, you should think of this book the way you think of the first iPhone: as a darned good start. To keep in touch with updates we make to it as developments unfold, drop in to the book’s Errata/Changes page. (Go to www.missingmanuals.com, click this book’s name, and then click View/Submit Errata.)
Tip
This book covers the iOS 9.1 software. There will surely be a 9.1.1, a 9.2, and so on. Check this book’s page at www.missingmanuals.com to read about those updates when they occur.
iPhone: The Missing Manual is divided into five parts, each containing several chapters:
Part 1, covers everything related to phone calls: dialing, answering, voice control, voicemail, conference calling, text messaging, iMessages, MMS, and the Contacts (address book) program. It’s also where you can read about FaceTime, the iPhone’s video-calling feature; Siri, the “virtual assistant”; and the surprisingly rich array of features for people with disabilities—some of which are useful even for people without them.
Part 2, is dedicated to the iPhone’s built-in software, with a special emphasis on its multimedia abilities: playing music, podcasts, movies, TV shows, and photos; capturing photos and videos; using the Maps app; reading ebooks; and so on. These chapters also cover some of the standard techniques that most apps share: installing, organizing, and quitting them; switching among them; and sharing material from within them using the Share sheet.
Part 3, is a detailed exploration of the iPhone’s third talent: its ability to get you onto the Internet, either over a Wi-Fi hotspot connection or via the cellular network. It’s all here: email, web browsing, and tethering (that is, letting your phone serve as a sort of Internet antenna for your laptop).
Part 4, describes the world beyond the iPhone itself—like the copy of iTunes on your Mac or PC that can fill up the iPhone with music, videos, and photos; and syncing the calendar, address book, and mail settings. These chapters also cover the iPhone’s control panel, the Settings program; Continuity (the wireless integration of iPhone and Mac); and how the iPhone syncs wirelessly with corporate networks using Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync—or with your own computers using Apple’s iCloud service.
Part 5, contains two reference chapters. Appendix A walks you through the setup process; Appendix B is a master compendium of troubleshooting, maintenance, and battery information.
Throughout this book, and throughout the Missing Manual series, you’ll find sentences like this one: Tap Settings→General→Keyboard. That’s shorthand for a much longer instruction that directs you to open three nested screens in sequence, like this: “Tap the Settings button. On the next screen, tap General. On the screen after that, tap Keyboard.” (In this book, tappable things on the screen are printed in orange to make them stand out.)
Similarly, this kind of arrow shorthand helps to simplify the business of choosing commands in menus on your Mac or PC, like File→Print.
To get the most out of this book, visit www.missingmanuals.com. Click the Missing CDs link, and then click this book’s title to reveal a neat, organized list of the shareware, freeware, and bonus articles mentioned in this book.
The website also offers corrections and updates to the book; to see them, click the book’s title, and then click View/Submit Errata. In fact, please submit corrections yourself! Each time we print more copies of this book, we’ll make any confirmed corrections you’ve suggested. We’ll also note such changes on the website, so you can mark important corrections into your own copy of the book, if you like. And we’ll keep the book current as Apple releases more iPhone updates.
Apple’s usual routine is to introduce a new iPhone shape every other year (iPhone 3G, iPhone 4, iPhone 5, iPhone 6)—and then release a follow-up, upgraded “s” model in alternate years (iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4s, iPhone 5s, iPhone 6s). The 2015–2016 models, sure enough, fit right in. They’re follow-up models that look exactly like the 6 and 6 Plus but have a few enhancements:
Speed. There’s a new processor in the iPhone 6s family; Apple says it’s “up to 70 percent” faster. Opening apps, switching apps, processing things—it all happens faster on the 6s.
The Touch ID fingerprint reader is twice as fast now, too; if you’ve set up your phone to require unlocking every time you use it, you may come to cherish this feature most of all. When you press the Home button, the screen lights up so fast, you wonder if, in fact, any authentication process took place at all. (Itd id.)
Apple also tuned both its Wi-Fi and its cellular (LTE) antennas to make them faster. Who doesn’t like faster Internet?
3D Touch shortcut menus. Until now, touchscreen phones have known only that you’ve touched the screen—not how hard. That’s Apple’s radical idea: to turn pressure into a new way of interacting with your gadget. On the iPhone 6s models, 3D Touch triggers shortcut menus—a lot like the ones that appear when you right-click on a computer.
But once you learn your way around, these shortcut menus can save you a lot of waiting, navigating, and fussing. In essence, they let you tell the app what you want to do before you even open it, and that saves you steps.
3D Touch peeking and popping. Hard to explain, but very cool: If you hard-press something in a list—your email Inbox, for example, or a link in a text message, or a photo thumbnail—you get a pop-up bubble showing you what’s inside. Peeking is, in other words, exactly like the Quick Look feature on the Mac. It lets you see what’s inside a link, icon, or list item without losing your place or changing apps.
If you find one that you do want to open fully, you can press harder yet to open the message normally. (Apple calls that “popping.”)
Pressure sensitivity. Peek and pop respond to pressure at only two thresholds. But, in fact, 3D Touch detects a continuum of pressure, like a gas pedal. You can see this effect in the Notes app, when you sketch with the pencil tool; it draws darker as you bear down more. App makers can incorporate pressure sensitivity any way they like. For example, in the game Freeblade, pressing harder zooms you into the scene more.
Better camera. The new camera takes 12-megapixel photos, up from 8. And it can capture 4K video (that is, four times the resolution of high definition). Resolution, by itself, doesn’t improve a photo or a video, but you may occasionally see improvements in image quality.
Selfie flash. The new iPhones now offer a “flash” for taking selfies. At the moment you take the shot, the screen lights up to illuminate your face. Better yet: It samples the ambient room light and adjusts the color of the screen’s “flash” to give your face the best flesh tones.
Of course, the iPhone screen is too tiny to supply much light, even at full brightness. So for the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, Apple developed a custom chip with a single purpose: to overclock the screen. In selfie situations, the screen blasts at three times its usual full brightness, just for a fraction of a second. It’s crazy-bright and works fantastically well.
Tougher screen and body. For the first time since the original iPhone came out in 2007, Apple now admits that it buys the glass for its screens from Corning, which developed the famously strong Gorilla Glass.
Apple still will not say that it’s using Gorilla Glass, though—because it’s not. According to Apple, its iPhone 6s screens use a formulation that’s superior even to Corning’s current brand-name glass. Apple engineers collaborated with Corning to develop a proprietary glass that isn’t available to its rivals. That explains Apple’s claim that the iPhone 6s’s new glass is stronger and more durable than any other phone’s—and that it is not, in fact, Gorilla Glass.
The aluminum alloy of the body is also stronger. Apple says it’s now “7000 series aluminum.” That’s got to be better than 6800 series aluminum, or whatever the iPhone had before.
Live Photos. These are still photos that, when hard-pressed on the iPhone, play back as 3 seconds of video, with sound. What you’re getting is 1.5 seconds before the moment you snapped the photo, plus 1.5 seconds after.
If it’s a device or software program that doesn’t know about Live Photos—you send it as a text message, for example, or open it in Photoshop—then only the JPEG image arrives at the other end.
In 2013, Apple freaked out the world by introducing a radical iPhone-software redesign in iOS 7: clean, white, almost barren, with a razor-thin font (Helvetica Neue) and bright, light colors. The design was controversial and polarizing.
The design for iOS 9 is the same—by now, people have gotten used to it—and the improvements are focused on features and flexibility.
Tip
If the fonts are too thin for your taste, you can fatten them up just enough by turning on Settings→Display & Brightness→Bold Text. While you’re there, you can make text larger in most apps, too; tap the Larger Type control.
Tiny tweaks are everywhere in iOS 9, but here’s a quick rundown.
Speed. Apple put a lot of work into making things feel faster and more fluid—especially opening and moving between email, messages, web pages, and PDF files.
Redesigned app-switching screen. The “cards” that represent your open apps now overlap, so that more of them fit on a single screen. If you have an iPhone 6s or 6s Plus, you don’t have to double-press the Home button to switch apps; you can just hard-drag inward from the left edge of the screen (that is, bear down as you swipe). The pressure-sensitive screen opens up the app switcher automatically.
A Back button! Whenever you’ve hopped into one app (say, Safari) by tapping a notification or a link in another (say, Mail), you can then hop back into the first app with one tap. A new button in the top-left corner, in a typeface about the right size for ants, says “Back to Mail,” “Back to Messages,” or whatever. Tap to return to the app you were just using, skipping the intermediate step of opening the app switcher. It’s especially handy when you’ve just followed a link in Facebook or Twitter. It’s a little cluttery, but you’ll use it constantly.
Longer battery life. On average, Apple says, every iPhone will get a full hour more of life from every battery charge, which is completely awesome.
It eked out this extra juice by making a long list of tiny tweaks. One example: If your phone is facedown on the table, the screen no longer lights up when you get incoming notifications.
Low Power mode. In Low Power mode, the phone stops fetching new mail and updating apps in the background. Most of the cute little animations are eliminated. The processor slows down, meaning that it’ll take longer to, for example, switch between apps. And the battery indicator turns yellow, so you don’t think your phone has suddenly gotten slow just to annoy you. Apple says that in Low Power mode your phone or tablet can hobble along for another three hours, which can be a lifesaver.
You can turn this on at any time, in Settings→Battery—but you’ll be invited to turn it on when your battery sinks to 20 percent and again when there’s 10 percent left.
Battery-use screen. The same Settings→Battery screen offers detailed information about which of your apps are scarfing down your battery power.
Smaller upgrade footprint. The upgrading process has been upgraded, too. Now you need only 1.3 free gigabytes on your phone to perform the OS surgery—not 4.6 gigabytes, as before. If necessary, the phone will even ask if it can delete some of your apps to make temporary room for the upgrade process. It promises to put them back at the end.
And the “Upgrade now?” screen offers more choices for the timing—like “Tonight” or “When I use my phone least.”
Continuity over Cellular. Continuity, introduced in iOS 8, lets you make and take calls on your Mac or iPad, which acts as a speakerphone extension for your iPhone. (The phone, which must be in the same Wi-Fi hotspot, acts as a sort of remote antenna.) But now there’s Continuity over Cellular—so far available only from T-Mobile—which lets you take calls on your Mac or iPad even if your iPhone is somewhere else in the world! Yes, even if you left it at the office or at your buddy’s house.
More elaborate Siri commands. You can now give Siri spoken commands, like “Show me photos from Utah last June” or “Show me videos I took at Mom’s birthday party.” If you’re looking at a web page or a text message on your phone, you can even say, “Remind me about this when I get home” or “Remind me about this later today.” When you get home, your iPhone, iPad, or Mac will offer a link to the page or the message you were reading, so you can get right back into it.
Once you get the hang of it, you’ll wind up using this one all the time.
Apple Pay improvements. Apple Pay, which transmits your credit card info wirelessly in shops, is now accepted at more stores and can be linked to more credit and debit cards. It tracks your reward cards now, too.
And there’s a second way to trigger Apple Pay. If you double-press the Home button on a sleeping phone, the Apple Pay screen appears, so that you can get it ready before you approach the wireless terminal—and just fly by once you get there. Apple notes that this technique is handy when you’re rushing through places like the London Underground subway turnstiles, which now accept Apple Pay.
Revamped Search screen. The Spotlight screen starts out full of icons for the people, apps, places, and news it thinks you might be interested in right now. You can also search for things beyond what’s on your phone now, like sports scores, weather, stocks, calculations, unit and currency conversions, and documents on your iCloud Drive.
A new Notes app. There’s always been a Notes app, but this ancient, text-only notepad has had a huge upgrade, making it more Evernote-ish in scope. A Notes page can now include a checklist of to-dos, a photo, a map, a web link, or a sketch you drew with your finger. (The sketch tools are very cool: a marker, a highlighter, a pencil, and a straightedge that you can turn on the screen with two fingers, and then “draw against” for perfect straight lines.)
As before, any changes you make in Notes are automatically synchronized to all your other Apple gadgets and Macs.
A new News app. A new app called News “collects all the stories you want to read, from top news sources, based on topics you’re most interested in.” In other words, Apple has written its own version of Flipboard.
New Maps features. The Maps app remains a whimpering also-ran compared with the mighty Google Maps app. But in iOS 9, this app takes a timid step toward Google Maps’ superiority by adding public-transportation directions—for a handful of big cities, at least. (Only seven of the cities are in the U.S. and Canada.)
Oh, and when you search for something in the Maps app, you’re now shown a list of business categories like Food, Drinks, Shopping, and Fun that list places near you. You can explore within each category to see what’s around you and find just what you’re looking for.
Move to iOS. This new app brings nearly all your stuff from an Android phone or tablet over to your new iOS gadget, wirelessly and automatically. Afterward, you’ll find your iOS gadget fully stocked with your contacts, email accounts, calendars, wallpapers, text messages, photos and videos, and web bookmarks. It will also transfer your songs and books—at least the ones that aren’t copy protected.
Uppercase keys. The letters on the onscreen keyboard now change from uppercase to lowercase when you engage the Shift key. (In the old days, they were always capitals.) You can turn off this option.
Hidden key bubbles. In the bad old days, evildoers could learn your passwords by watching the little pop-up balloons that appeared above your fingertips when you tapped the onscreen keys. Not anymore. You can turn those balloons off in Settings.
Notifications by group. Usually, notifications appear in chronological order on your Notifications screens. But now, in Settings, you can turn on Group By App, which clusters the alerts by app.
That’s a lot of tweaks, polishing, and finesse—and a lot to learn. Fortunately, 600 pages of instructions now await you.
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