Table of contents for Issue 22 in iPad User Magazine

Welcome

The iPad can sometimes be overlooked as a tool for productivity, but it’s actually a very powerful way to work on the go. It offers everything from creative and design tools to many advanced custom apps for certain professions – sadly, we can’t feature them all! But we are looking at the world of work in this issue of iPad User, and we’ve got tutorials for a range of common things you might want to do to become even more productive with your iPad. We’ll look at using Reminders to ensure you’re keeping up with your tasks, using apps more smartly with extensions, customising things like contacts and calendars to make them work better for you, and doing great things with Numbers and Keynote on the go! We’ll also look…

1 min

iPad User Magazine|Issue 22

Master extensions

SKILL LEVEL Anyone can do it IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes YOU’LL NEED iPad, iOS 8, an app that provides a Share or Action extension A long-standing complaint about iOS is the tight degree of control that Apple exercises over what apps are able to do. Those restrictions have been relaxed in iOS 8 to allow apps to extend the system’s capabilities in carefully defined ways. This means you aren’t reliant on Apple adding support for a particular social network to be able to share something directly to it, and kludgy workarounds such as special bookmarklets that send a web page to an online service are no longer necessary. Extensions enable photo-editing apps to make filters and tools available within the Camera and Photos apps. Information from apps can be…

4 min

iPad User Magazine|Issue 22

Automate tasks with Editorial

SKILL LEVEL Could be tricky IT WILL TAKE 1 hour YOU’LL NEED iPad, Editorial, a Dropbox account (for our example workflow) Editorial allows you to automate repetitive tasks by creating reusable workflows At its simplest, Editorial is a text editor that supports Markdown, the plain text formatting syntax that’s gained in popularity in recent years and is supported by WordPress, among others. However, there’s much more to it than that. Editorial enables you to automate repetitive tasks by creating reusable workflows. There are three ways you can add workflows in Editorial: by scripting them from scratch in Python; by putting Actions together in sequence, a bit like Automator; or by importing workflows created by others. Most of us lack the skills to take the first option, but the latter two…

5 min

iPad User Magazine|Issue 22

Archive photos to Flickr

SKILL LEVEL Anyone can do it IT WILL TAKE 30 minutes YOU’LL NEED A Flickr account, Flickr app for iPad or iPhone, iPad or iPhone, a Wi-Fi connection If you routinely sync your iPad and iPhone with your Mac and use iCloud storage, you might not be too concerned about losing your Apple device. It can cost a lot to store photos this way, though. And storing huge amounts of data slows your iPad or iPhone. Plus, it’s no fun sifting through thousands of pics when you don’t have the time to find a particular one. Flickr is free and offers a whopping 1TB of storage. You can view slideshows online as well as on your iPad or iPhone, and you have full control over whether photos are private, shared…

2 min

iPad User Magazine|Issue 22

Get alerts with Reminders

SKILL LEVEL Anyone can do it IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes YOU’LL NEED iPad, iOS 8 The Reminders app is a place for you to make note of things you need to do. That might be a list of tasks you need to complete at home, things you need to buy next time you go to a supermarket, or things that need to be done to complete a project – in fact, you can do all of these things at the same time, without things getting cluttered, because the app enables you to maintain multiple lists. Naturally, that Reminders is provided as part of iOS gives it a head start in being able to integrate with various other features of your iPad. Although the app looks very simple, don’t let…

6 min

iPad User Magazine|Issue 22

Beam Keynote to Apple TV

SKILL LEVEL Anyone can do it IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes YOU’LL NEED iPad, Keynote for iPad, Apple TV, television or projector Keynote is an app particularly well suited to iPad. The landscape screen orientation and ease with which you can enter and edit text, pictures and transitions mean it’s perfect for working on presentations even when you’re on the move. Traditionally though, you would have had to take a laptop and hook it up to a projector to show the presentation to a group of people. But with Keynote for iPad, plus an Apple TV, it’s even easier, with no compatibility issues to worry about. The Apple TV itself is very portable, much more so than a projector. The two devices need to be on the same wireless network,…

4 min

iPad User Magazine|Issue 22

Remote-control your PC

SKILL LEVEL Could be tricky IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes YOU’LL NEED iOS device running iOS 7 or higher, Google Chrome, Chrome Remote Desktop Apple is increasingly integrating OS X and iOS, enabling data, files and even half-completed emails to be passed back and forth between your Mac and iOS devices. However, one thing that’s missing from the equation is a built-in means to directly control your Mac using an iPad or iPhone. Plenty of remote desktop options exist, but Google’s is entirely free and, during our testing, proved itself to be reliable and robust – not just for Macs, but PCs, too. However, the process of getting it up and running is quite involved – but we’ll take you through it. This walkthrough assumes you’ve downloaded and installed the…

4 min

iPad User Magazine|Issue 22

GEAR

Netatmo Welcome £199 Netatmo, netatmo.com Most security cameras can detect motion and tell you when there’s someone moving around in your home, but the Welcome goes one step further by using face-recognition technology to differentiate between people that you trust – such as members of your own family – and unwelcome strangers. It stores its HD recordings on an 8GB memory card and sends you a notification with a photo snapshot whenever it detects motion or a face that it doesn’t recognise. You can then decide if you want to use the app to stream or download the video recording from the camera to your iPad. It’s easy to set up, though the app is unclear when you’re trying to set up family members’ faces. Cliff Joseph ThermalTake Contour £50…

4 min

iPad User Magazine|Issue 22

Tailor Mail, Contacts, Calendars

SKILL LEVEL Anyone can do it IT WILL TAKE 30 minutes YOU’LL NEED iPad, iOS 8 Although the apps on your iPad don’t typically provide the same level of options and flexibility you’d expect on a computer, that doesn’t mean they are bereft of such things. In the ‘Mail, Contacts, Calendars’ section of the Settings app, there are plenty of options you can use to adjust the way these three apps work. Some settings may seem trivial, but they can make a big difference to how you use an app, and also how quickly you can perform certain actions. In these walkthroughs, we explore options there that we think are the most important to your productivity, though we’ll also look a little further to show things you might overlook. HOW…

4 min

iPad User Magazine|Issue 22

Master formulas in Numbers

SKILL LEVEL Anyone can do it IT WILL TAKE 20 minutes YOU’LL NEED iPad, iOS 7, Numbers Formulas play a key role in every Numbers spreadsheet. They allow you to perform both simple (‘2+2’) and more complex calculations, such as one based on the content of specific cells that meet a certain condition. Either way, they transform Numbers into something very powerful and versatile. The key rule to entering formulas in any spreadsheet is to make sure you precede it with an equals (=) sign, so Numbers knows to interpret it as such. Tap the grey = button in the entry box and Numbers will reveal the formulas and functions keyboard, split into three sections: operators, numeric keypad and advanced options. Auto updates The step-by-step guide opposite walks you through…

5 min

iPad User Magazine|Issue 22

Borrow free library ebooks

SKILL LEVEL Anyone can do it IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes YOU’LL NEED iOS device with iOS 6.0 or higher, Mac with OS X 10.6 or higher, library card This hidden gem of an app allows you to borrow free ebooks and audiobooks from your local library OverDrive doesn’t get a lot of attention, but it’s a must-have app for pretty much anyone who has ever picked up a book. It takes a few minutes to get it set up properly, but it’s well worth the effort as this hidden gem of an app allows you to borrow free ebooks and audiobooks from your local library. OverDrive is free to download from the App Store, and there’s no charge for borrowing books – you don’t even have to worry about…

5 min