Chapter 11
In This Chapter
Getting a handle on the different types of apps
Searching for specific apps
Getting apps onto your iPad
Managing iPad apps
Deleting and reviewing apps
One of the best things about the iPad is that you can download and install apps created by third parties, which is to say not created by Apple (the first party) or you (the second party). At the time of this writing, our best guess is that there are more than 1.2 million apps available and over 75 billion apps downloaded to date. Some apps are free, and other apps cost money; some apps are useful, and other apps are lame; some apps are perfectly well behaved, and other apps quit unexpectedly (or worse). The point is that of the many apps out there, some are better than others.
In this chapter, we take a broad look at apps that you can use with your iPad. You discover how to find apps on your computer or your iPad, and you find some basics for managing your apps. Don’t worry: We have plenty to say about specific third-party apps in Chapters 18 and 19.
Apps enable you to use your iPad as a game console, a streaming Netflix player, a recipe finder, a sketchbook, and much, much more. You can run three categories of apps on your iPad:
You can double the size of an iPhone/iPod touch app by tapping the little 2x button in the lower-right corner of the screen; to return it to its native size, tap the 1x button. Figure 11-1 shows you what an iPhone/iPod touch app looks like on an iPad screen.
Frankly, most iPhone/iPod apps look pretty good at 2x size, but we’ve seen a few that have jagged graphics and don’t look as nice. Still, with 1.2 million (or more) apps to choose from, we’re sure that you can find a few that make you happy.
You can obtain and install apps for your iPad in three ways:
To switch on automatic downloads on the iPad, tap Settings⇒iTunes & App Store. Then tap the Automatic Downloads switch for Apps so that it turns green (on). After you do so, all apps you buy with iTunes on your computer or buy on other iOS devices will automagically appear on your iPad.
To use the App Store on your iPad, it must be connected to the Internet. Also, if you obtain an app on your computer, it isn’t available on your iPad until you either sync the iPad with your computer or download the app from iCloud from the Purchased tab, covered later in this chapter. See Chapter 3 for details about syncing.
But before you can use the App Store on your iPad or your computer, you first need an iTunes Store account. If you don’t already have one, we suggest that you launch iTunes on your computer or the App Store or iTunes Store app on your iPad. Here’s how:
Okay, start by finding cool iPad apps using iTunes on your computer. Follow these steps:
You’re looking at the landing page of the iTunes App Store.
The iPad section of the iTunes App Store appears, as shown in Figure 11-2.
The default is to display all categories, which is what you see on the landing page. To look at a specific category of the App Store, press and hold All Categories (near the top-right) and select a category from the drop-down menu.
Now you’re ready to browse, search, and download apps, as we explain in the following sections.
After you have the iTunes App Store on your screen, you have a couple of options for exploring its virtual aisles. Allow us to introduce you to the various “departments” available from the main screen. The main departments are featured in the middle of the screen, and ancillary departments appear on either side of them. We start with the ones in the middle:
Only six and a half icons are visible, but the Best New Apps department has more than that. Find the See All link way over to the right of the words Best New Apps. Click that link to see all apps in this department at once. Or click and drag the scroll bar below the icons to see more.
The Best New Apps and Games sections have appeared near the top of the iTunes App store for as long as we can remember. The other departments, such as Introducing Bundles and Halloween Apps & Games in Figure 11-2, are rotated regularly. In earlier editions of this book, the screen has displayed Previous Editors’ Choices and What’s Hot. Regardless of what the department is called or its contents, all departments work the same: To see more items, click See All or drag the scroll bar.
Separating the Best New Apps and Best New Games departments from the Introducing Bundles and Halloween Apps & Games departments are two rows of advertisements (Fragment, City of Hope, Introducing Bundles, Gorgeous Games for iOS 8, and the like in Figure 11-2). Click an ad to learn more.
Two additional departments appear on the right side of the window: Top Paid Apps and one of our favorites, Top Free Apps. The number-one app in each department displays both its icon and its name; the next nine apps show text links only.
Browsing the screen is helpful, but if you know exactly what you’re looking for, searching is faster. Follow these steps to search for an app:
In Figure 11-3, we searched for photo. You see results for the entire iTunes Store, which includes music, television shows, movies, and other stuff in addition to iPad apps.
One last thing: The little triangle to the right of each item’s price (or free, download, or downloaded) button is another drop-down menu, as shown for the Adobe Photoshop Express app in Figure 11-3. This drop-down menu lets you give this app to someone as a gift, add it to your wish list, send a link to it in an email to a friend (shown selected in Figure 11-3), share this item on Facebook or Twitter, or copy the product’s link to the Clipboard so that you can paste it elsewhere.
Now that you know how to find apps in the App Store, this section delves a little deeper and shows you how to find out more about an app that interests you.
To find out more about an app, just click its icon or text link. A details screen like the one shown in Figure 11-4 appears.
This screen tells you most of what you need to know about the app, such as basic product information and a narrative description, what’s new in this version, the language it’s presented in, and its system requirements. In the following sections, you take a closer look at the various areas on the screen.
Bear in mind that the app description on this screen was written by the app’s developer and may be somewhat biased. Never fear, gentle reader: In an upcoming section, we show you how to find app reviews written by people who have used it (and, unfortunately, sometimes people who haven’t).
The SketchBook Express app is rated 4+, as you can see below the Free button in the upper-left corner of the screen shown in Figure 11-4. The rating means that the app contains no objectionable material. Here are the other possible ratings:
Last but not least, remember the three categories of apps we mention at the beginning of the chapter, in the “Tapping the Magic of Apps” section? If you look below the Information heading in Figure 11-4 (below the Description and What’s New sections), you can see the requirements for this particular app. It says Requires iOS 6 or later. Compatible with iPad. Note that it doesn’t mention the iPhone or iPod touch. That’s because this app is in the first category of apps, those made exclusively for the iPad. Another clue that it falls into the first category is that it says iPad Screenshots above the two pictures shown in Figure 11-4. Finally, the app’s name — SketchBook Express for iPad — should be a dead giveaway.
Now you’re probably wondering how you can tell whether an app falls into the second or third category. The first clue is the little gray + sign next to the price, which appears for many of the apps shown in Figure 11-3. Apps with this symbol are universal and run at full resolution on iPhones and iPads. Another clue is to look at the screen shots. If you see two tabs — iPhone and iPad — after Screenshots, the app will work at the full resolution of an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. Conversely, if you only see one tab that says iPhone Screenshots, the app will run at iPhone/iPod touch resolution on your iPad.
If you tap Ratings and Reviews below the product’s name near the top of the screen, you’ll see reviews written by users of this app. Each review includes a star rating, from zero to five. If an app is rated four stars or higher, you’re safe to assume that most users are happy with this app.
In Figure 11-4, you can see that this app has an average rating for the current version of 4.5 stars based on 107 user ratings. You can tap Ratings and Reviews to see the average rating for all versions (4 stars based on 2,129 user ratings for SketchBook Express). That means it’s probably a pretty good app.
Finally, at the top of the Customer Reviews section and near the right side is a pop-up menu displaying Most Helpful (not shown in Figure 11-4). This menu lets you sort the customer reviews by your choice of Most Helpful, Most Favorable, Most Critical, or Most Recent.
When you find an app you want to try while browsing the App Store on your computer, just click the app’s Free or Buy button. When you do so, you have to log in to your iTunes Store account, even if the app is free.
After you log in, the app begins downloading. When it’s finished, it appears in the Apps section of your iTunes library, as shown in Figure 11-5.
If an app costs money, you’ll get a receipt for it via email, usually within 24 hours.
If you want apps to download to your iPad automatically, regardless of which device you used to purchase the app, you can set that up:
Every so often, the developer of an iPad app releases an update. Sometimes these updates add new features to the app, sometimes they squash bugs, and sometimes they do both. In any event, updates are usually good things for you and your iPad, so it makes sense to check for them every so often.
To do this in iTunes: Click the Apps icon to select it, as shown in Figure 11-5. Click the Updates tab. Then, to update all the apps at once, click the Update All Apps button in the lower-right corner of the screen. To update apps one by one, click the individual Update button for each app you want to update.
Note that if you hover the pointer over the Apps icon when updates are available, you’ll see how many updates are waiting for you.
After you download an update this way, it replaces the older version in your iTunes library and on your iPad automatically the next time you sync. Or, if you’ve enabled automatic downloads for apps as described earlier in the chapter, the new app replaces the old app automatically the next time you’re connected to the Internet.
Finding apps with your iPad is almost as easy as finding them by using iTunes. The only requirement is that you have an Internet connection of some sort — Wi-Fi or wireless data network — so that you can access the iTunes App Store and browse, search, download, and install apps.
Tap Categories in the top-left corner to browse apps in categories such as Books, Education, Games, Music, News, and Productivity, to name a few. Tap a category to see the apps it contains.
The Featured section is almost the same as the section of the same name on the landing page of the iTunes App Store (refer to Figure 11-2). Scroll down and you’ll find the same ads and departments you’d see in iTunes on your computer.
The Top Charts section offers lists of the top paid and free apps, which correlate with the Top Free and Top Paid lists, respectively, on the right side of the screen in iTunes (as shown in Figure 11-2).
Finally, the Purchased section displays all your iPad apps — the ones currently installed on this iPad and any that you’ve purchased that aren’t installed. To the right of each app, you see either Installed or iCloud (as shown in the margin). To install an uninstalled app, tap its iCloud button and then type your password.
Most pages in the App Store display more apps than can fit on the screen at once. For example, the Best New Apps section in Figure 11-6 contains more than the nine apps you can see. A few tools help you navigate the multiple pages of apps:
If you know exactly what you’re looking for (or even approximately what you’re looking for), rather than simply browsing, you can tap the search field in the upper-right corner of the iPad screen and type a word or phrase; then tap the Search key on the keyboard to initiate the search.
Now that you know how to find apps in the App Store, the following sections show you how to find out more about a particular app. After tapping an app icon as you browse the store or in a search result, your iPad displays a details screen like the one shown in Figure 11-7.
The information you find on the Details tab for an app on your iPad is similar to that info on the iTunes screen on your computer. The links, rating, and requirements simply appear in slightly different places on your iPad screen. (See the section “Getting more information about an app in the iTunes Store,” earlier in this chapter, for explanations of the main on-screen items.)
To read reviews from your iPad, tap the Reviews tab. If you scroll to the bottom of the page and see a More Reviews button (not visible in Figure 11-7), tap it to see (what else?) more reviews.
To download an app to your iPad (while using your iPad), follow these steps:
In Figure 11-7, you see the download from iCloud icon instead of a price because we purchased the game previously. Once tapped, the button transforms into a green Buy button.
After you do, the App Store closes, and you see the Home screen where the new app’s icon will reside. The new app’s icon is slightly dimmed and has the word Loading beneath it, with a blue progress bar to indicate how much of the app remains to be downloaded, as shown in the margin.
The app is now on your iPad, but it isn’t copied to your iTunes library on your Mac or PC until your next sync unless you’ve enabled automatic downloads. If your iPad suddenly loses its memory (unlikely) or if you delete the app from your iPad before you sync (as we describe later in this chapter, in the section “Deleting an app”), that app is gone. That’s the bad news. The good news is that you can download it again from the Purchased tab as described earlier in the chapter. Or the app will reappear spontaneously on your iPad if you’ve enabled automatic downloads.
As we mention earlier in this chapter, every so often the developer of an iPad app releases an update. If an update awaits you, a little number in a circle appears on the Updates icon at the bottom of the iPad screen. Follow these steps to update your apps from your iPad:
If you tap the Updates icon and see (in the middle of the screen) a message that says All Apps Are Up to Date, none of the apps on your iPad requires an update at this time. If apps need updating, they appear with Update buttons next to them.
If more than one app needs updating, you can update them all at once by tapping the Update All button in the upper-right corner of the screen.
Most of what you need to know about apps involves simply installing third-party apps on your iPad. However, you might find it helpful to know how to delete and review an app.
The preinstalled apps that came on your iPad can’t be removed, but you have two ways to delete any other app: in iTunes on your computer or directly from your iPad.
To delete an app in iTunes (that is, from your computer), click the Apps icon and then do one of the following:
After taking any of the actions in this list, you see a dialog that asks whether you’re sure that you want to remove the selected app. If you click the Remove button, the app is removed from your iTunes library as well as from any iPad that syncs with your iTunes library.
Here’s how to delete an app on your iPad:
A dialog appears, informing you that deleting this app also deletes all its data, as shown in Figure 11-8.
You can’t delete any of the bundled apps that came with your iPad.
Friendly reminder: Rearranging your icons in iTunes is faster and easier than making them wiggle and move on the iPad. See Chapter 3 to find out how.
Sometimes you love or hate an app so much that you want to tell the world about it. In that case, you should write a review. You can do this in two ways: in iTunes on your computer or directly from your iPad.
To write a review using iTunes on your computer, follow these steps:
You may or may not have to type your iTunes Store password.
The Preview screen appears. If the review looks good to you, you’re done. If you want to change something, click the Edit button.
To write a review from your iPad, follow these steps:
You probably have to type your iTunes Store password.
Whichever way you submit your review, Apple reviews your submission. As long as the review doesn’t violate the (unpublished) rules of conduct for app reviews, it appears in a day or two in the App Store, in the Reviews section for the particular app.