Table of contents for Issue 23 in iPad User Magazine

The iPad Pro felt like it might never be released – there were so many rumours about it for so many years that we’d almost given up! But now we know all about the 12.9-inch tablet, we can see more and more that Apple really does see the iPad as the future of computing for a lot of people. Its huge Retina screen is capable of showing you two large apps side by side for real multitasking when working, and its processor is as powerful as some of Apple laptops, so it’s capable of tasks such as 4K video editing. Every year, it becomes less and less necessary to use a laptop or desktop for work if you have an iPad, and the iPad Pro is a big leap forward.…

SKILL LEVEL Could be tricky IT WILL TAKE 30 minutes YOU’LL NEED A Mac or PC, an internet connection, an iCloud account Over the years, it’s been pretty clear that Apple loves the web. However, it doesn’t want you to live in a web browser – and this is a distinction that’s quite important. An exception of sorts is icloud.com. This website is Apple’s browser-based app suite, the majority of which mirrors apps on your iPad. This means that wherever you have access to a Mac or PC with a compatible web browser (http://apple.co/1K7jWdz) a Mac or PC, you can also use web-based versions of Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Photos, Notes, Reminders, and Apple’s trio of office apps (Pages, Numbers and Keynote). There are also three additional utilities on offer: iCloud…

SKILL LEVEL Anyone can do it IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes YOU’LL NEED iPad, iOS 9 The Clock app is capable of doing much more than just telling you the time – after all, you can see that at the top of the screen in most places in iOS. The app also has stopwatch and timer functions, but it’s the alarm clock feature we’re going to talk about. Like an old-school alarm clock, the app can wake you with a blaring klaxon, yet it also lets you wake to far more soothing sounds if you prefer to start the day with a little less of a fright. New tones can be bought from the iTunes Store (which you can then use as sounds for other iPad features, such as FaceTime),…

SKILL LEVEL Anyone can do it IT WILL TAKE 30 minutes YOU’LL NEED iPad, Pixelmator The Photos app on your iPad provides a handful of useful editing tools, enabling you to make basic tweaks to your images. You can crop and rotate an image, apply a selection of preset filters, dial in brightness and saturation… and that’s about it. If you want to get creative with your imagery, Pixelmator (£3.99) is an ideal next step. This fast, easy-to-use and affordable image editor provides a raft of tools, including brushes and layers, text and shapes, retouching, distortion and more. It’s great for taking your photos to another level – or even creating an image from scratch. The app is simple to use, with all the tools accessible from a few menus.…

SKILL LEVEL Anyone can do it IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes YOU’LL NEED iOS 8 Mail on iOS has been hugely improved over the last few years, and now includes a number of features that make it easier to manage the daily barrage of emails. One of the most useful is the ability to use gestures – a simple finger swipe either left or right across an email in the list of them for options to quickly delete it, mark it as read or unread, or to perform a number of other tasks without even having to open or read the message. Those two basic gestures work well for triaging new messages, and you have the ability to customise the actions they perform. (It’s no surprise that Microsoft’s excellent iOS…