Table of contents for Issue 26 in iPad User Magazine

Right at the heart of what makes the iPad great is its flexibility. It can become a tool to help you do almost anything, from something passive like watching videos to taking on whole projects. That’s what we’re focusing on in this issue of iPad User: tackling cool projects with your iPad, as well as keeping them organised. This ranges from just staying up to date with better use of the Calendar app, to using the app Outline+ to lay out detailed plans for what you want to do, to using the advanced tools of iBooks to research and make notes, to printing out any pages or documents you might need. On the creative side, we’ll show you how you can personlise your iPhone and iPad by making your own…

IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes YOU WILL LEARN Use GarageBand’s virtual instruments to create a ringtone you can apply to contacts YOU’LL NEED GarageBand for iOS, an iPad, and (optionally) an iPhone By creating your own ringtone, you’ll have your own personal slice of sound If you’ve never bothered to change your device’s ringtone, you know how it goes… A phone goes off in a packed place. Everyone fishes their iPhone out of a pocket before all but one person sheepishly realises it wasn’t their device screaming for attention. Rinse and repeat. By creating your own ringtone — which you can do with GarageBand on your iPad, a few spare minutes, and no musical skill — you won’t find yourself in this situation again. You’ll have your own personal slice…

IT WILL TAKE 40 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to use Book Creator for iPad’s layout and text tools YOU’LL NEED Book Creator Free; your own text, images and video clips Combine your prose with images, audio and video clips to produce the ultimate digital book These days, it’s easy for anyone to write, design and publish their own book online. Book Creator Free can’t help you come up with a brilliant story, but it will help you present your finished work. You can combine your prose with images, audio and video clips to produce the ultimate digital book. The free version lets you create your first ebook for no cost, and you can pay £3.99 to unlock unlimited books as well as access the app’s comic book templates. Once…

IT WILL TAKE 30 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to manage your backups, photos and documents so that you stay within the free 5GB iCloud allowance YOU’LL NEED An iPad, an iCloud account and files in iCloud Drive Before you micro-manage your files, you’re better off thinking about getting rid of a big feature Is your iCloud storage running out of space? Apple only offers a parsimonious 5GB of free storage, and if you stick with the regular amount you’ll soon come across the dreaded “Not Enough Storage” alert. It’s a shame because Apple’s iCloud service is incredibly useful. As well as providing Contacts, Calendar, Notes, and Safari syncing, it provides an online home for Photos and backs up all of your iOS devices. Not only that, the new iCloud…

IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to use iOS’s Location Services Settings pane YOU’LL NEED iPhone or iPad, iOS 8 or later Your iphone or iPad use multiple sensors to track your location. By combining data from GPS, Wi-Fi and mobile phone cell towers (though the non-cellular iPad is limited to Wi-Fi), it can create a pretty accurate picture of where you are. But, very reasonably, there may be occasions when you want to keep your location data private. Fortunately, the latest iOS release makes it very easy to give and revoke permission for apps to access location data – and it makes it very clear when your location is being shared, with which apps. The first thing to note is that newly installed apps must ask…

IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes YOU WILL LEARN Integrate the Calendar app with Facebook and use its advanced features YOU’LL NEED iPad, iOS 9 With Facebook integration, you can call or email contacts from an event on your calendar The iPad’s built-in Calendar app is a complete digital assistant that will sync with your online calendar services, keeping you on top of your life no matter where you are. Once you link your Facebook account (see below), events and birthdays can be synced from that social network to the Calendar app, which means that your business commitments and personal events will all be viewable in the same place. With luck, this should mean that you never have to miss a birthday, a party or an important meeting ever again. In…

IT WILL TAKE 30 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to use VideoGrade’s editing tools to boost viceos YOU’LL NEED An iOS device running iOS 9 or later, VideoGrade 4.0.3 or later, some video clips You capture a moment, only to discover it looks like it was filmed in a cave One problem with shooting videos is that the world can be uncooperative. You might capture a perfect moment, only to later discover it looks like your video was filmed in a cave, or that a serene living-room scene was set on the surface of the sun. VideoGrade (£4.49) is a colour editor for HD video, for applying colour grading that can radically alter your clips. But along with going all “Hollywood”, you can use the app for subtler changes: brightness,…

IT WILL TAKE An hour YOU WILL LEARN How to make the most of the latest features now included with the iBooks app YOU’LL NEED An iPad running iOS 9.0 or later (iBooks is pre-installed) and some digital books. The latest iBooks release is packed with excellent features Apple’s iBooks was one of the first iPad apps, released alongside the original iPad back in 2010. Since then, the iPad has become about much more than just digital book reading, so iBooks has kind of slipped back under the radar. It’s a mistake to think iBooks is boring and forget about it though; Apple hasn’t rested on its laurels. Every iBooks update has included new features designed to attract students, children (and parents) and regular readers looking for something more than…

IT WILL TAKE 20 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to take control of a number of different projects or assignments that require compiling various elements YOU’LL NEED iPad, iOS 9 or later, Outline+ (£7.99), at least one project to organise You can adapt Outline+ to just about any project you like Your iPad is the perfect platform for creating, managing and sharing notes, and you’ll find that Outline+ (£7.99) offers a very handy one-stop shop for all your digital notebook needs. It’s similar to Microsoft’s OneNote tool (and your notes can be synced to and from OneNote via OneDrive), which makes it incredibly flexible. You can adapt it to just about anything you like: project manage your next work assignment, for example, plan your next holiday itinerary or simply use…