iPod® and iTunes® for Dummies®, 7th Edition

Chapter 3. Putting Your Finger on It

In This Chapter

• Touching and gesturing on an iPod touch or iPhone

• Typing on the iPod touch or iPhone

• Thumbing through iPod menus

The iPod is all about convenience. Apple designed the iPod classic and iPod nano models to be held in one hand so that you can perform simple operations by thumb. Even if you're all thumbs when pressing small buttons on tiny devices, you can still thumb your way to iPod heaven.

With the iPod shuffle, Apple took convenience a step further — the controls are on the earbud cord so that you can tuck the tiny device somewhere on your clothing and control it without looking at it. Its VoiceOver feature complements this arrangement by announcing each song, so you can quickly jump around.

With an iPod touch or iPhone, your fingers do the walking. You can make gestures, such as flicking a finger to scroll a list quickly, sliding your finger to scroll slowly or drag a slider (such as the volume slider), pinching with two fingers to zoom out of a Web page in Safari, or pulling apart with two fingers (also known as unpinching) to zoom in to the page to see it more clearly.

This chapter gives you a quick tour of the iPod and iPhone models, including the menus of an iPod classic or iPod nano, the iPod shuffle controls, and all the touch-and-gesture tricks to make your iPod touch or iPhone dance and sing. I also give you a complete tour of the most unique feature of the iPod touch and iPhone: the on-screen keyboard.

Tapping Your iPod touch ...