Chapter 3
In This Chapter
Getting your head around iCloud
Starting your first sync
Disconnecting during a sync
Synchronizing contacts, calendars, email accounts, and bookmarks
Synchronizing music, podcasts, videos, photos, books, and applications
Synchronizing manually
We have good news and … more good news. The good news is that you can easily set up your iPad so that your contacts, appointments, reminders, events, mail settings, bookmarks, books, music, movies, TV shows, podcasts, photos, and apps are synchronized between your computer and your iPad (or other iDevices). And the more good news is that after you set it up, your contacts, appointments, events, and everything else we just mentioned can be kept up to date automatically in multiple places — on one or more of your computers and iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch devices.
Here’s more good news: Whenever you make a change in one place, it’s reflected almost immediately in all the other places it occurs. So if you add or change an appointment, an event, or a contact on your iPad while you’re out and about, the information is automatically updated on your computers and iDevices. If no Wi-Fi or cellular network is available at the time, the update syncs the next time your iPad encounters a wireless network, all with no further effort on your part.
This communication between your iPad and computer is called syncing (short for synchronizing). Don’t worry: It’s easy, and we walk you through the entire process in this chapter.
But wait. We have even more good news. Items that you choose to manage on your computer, such as movies, TV shows, podcasts, and email account settings, are synchronized only one way — from your computer to your iPad, which is the way it should be.
The information in this chapter is based on iTunes version 12.0 and iOS version 8.0, the latest and greatest when these words were written. If your screens don’t look exactly like ours, you probably need to upgrade to iTunes 12 or higher (choose iTunes⇒Check for Updates), or iOS 8 or higher (on your iPad, tap Settings⇒General⇒Software Update), or both. Both upgrades — iTunes and iOS — are free, and offer useful new features not found in their predecessors.
In this chapter, you find out how to sync all the digital data your iPad can handle.
Apple’s iCloud service is more than just a wireless hard drive in the sky. iCloud is a complete data synchronization and wireless storage solution. In a nutshell, iCloud stores and manages your digital stuff — your music, photos, contacts, events, and more — and makes it available to all your computers and iDevices automatically.
iCloud pushes information such as email, calendars, contacts, reminders, and bookmarks to and from your computer and to and from your iPad and other iDevices, and then keeps those items updated on all devices wirelessly and without any effort on your part. iCloud also includes nonsynchronizing options, such as photo stream (see Chapter 9) and email (see Chapter 5).
Your free iCloud account includes 5GB of storage, which is all many users will need. If you have several devices (including Macs and PCs) or like saving data in the cloud, you’ll probably find yourself needing more storage; 20- and 200-gigabyte upgrades are available for $1 and $4 a month, respectively.
A nice touch is that music, apps, periodicals, movies, and TV shows purchased from the iTunes Store, as well as your photo stream and iTunes Match content (see Chapter 7), don’t count against your 5GB of free storage. iBooks don’t count against your 5GB either, but audiobooks do. You’ll find that the things that do count — such as mail, documents, photos taken with your iPad camera, account information, settings, and other app data — don’t use much space, so 5GB may last a long time.
If you plan to go PC-free but still want to have your email, calendars, contacts, and bookmarks synchronized automatically and wirelessly (and believe us, you do) between computers and other iDevices, here’s how to enable iCloud syncing on your iPad:
A list of apps appears. Tap any individual on/off switch to enable or disable iCloud sync for Mail, Contacts, Calendars, Reminders, Safari (Bookmarks), Notes, and PassBook.
In the same list are five items that don’t have switches:
You find out much more about iCloud in the rest of this chapter and several other chapters, so let’s move on to syncing your iPad.
Synchronizing your iPad with iTunes on a Mac or PC provides three main benefits over computer-free iPad use:
Synchronizing your iPad with your computer is a lot like syncing an iPod or iPhone with your computer. If you’re an iPod or iPhone user, the process will be a piece of cake. But even if you’ve never used an iPod, an iPhone, or iTunes, the process isn’t difficult. Follow these steps:
When you connect your iPad to your computer, iTunes should launch automatically. If it doesn’t, chances are that you plugged the cable into a USB port on your keyboard, monitor, or hub. Try plugging it into one of the USB ports on your computer instead. Why? Because USB ports on your computer supply more power to a connected device than USB ports on a keyboard, monitor, or most hubs, and the iPad requires a lot of that power — even more than an iPod or an iPhone.
You may see an alert asking whether you want iTunes to open automatically when you connect this iPad. Click Yes or No, depending on your preference. You have the opportunity to change this setting later if you like, so don’t give it too much thought.
If iTunes still doesn’t launch automatically, try launching it manually.
If you use more than one iDevice with this computer and you hover the pointer over the iPad icon, you’ll see the number of devices (for example, 3 Devices). If you have multiple devices, clicking the button displays a drop-down list with all your devices.
If you don’t see the iPad icon and you’re positive that it’s connected to a USB port on your computer (not the keyboard, monitor, or hub), try restarting your computer.
The Welcome to Your New iPad screen appears.
See Chapter 16 for the scoop on restoring from iCloud or iTunes backups. For this example, we’ll tap Set Up as New.
The Sync with iTunes screen appears.
The iPad screen appears, as shown in Figure 3-1.
If you don’t see a Summary tab, make sure your iPad is still connected. If you don’t see your iPad’s name near the top-left corner of the iTunes window, as shown in Figure 3-1, go back to Step 3 and try again.
We renamed the one in Figure 3-1 Bob L’s iPad mini.
From the Summary pane, you can set any options that you want from the Options area:
Don’t worry about this setting too much right now. As usual, if you change your mind, you can always come back to the Summary pane and deselect the Open iTunes When This iPad Is Connected check box.
If you do select the Open iTunes When This iPad Is Connected check box but don’t want your iPad to sync automatically every time it’s connected, launch iTunes and choose iTunes⇒Preferences (Mac) or Edit⇒Preferences (PC). Click the Devices tab at the top of the window and select the Prevent iPods, iPhones, and iPads from Syncing Automatically check box. This method prevents your iPad from syncing automatically, even if the Open iTunes When This iPad Is Connected option is selected. If you choose this option, you can sync your iPad by clicking the Sync or Apply button that appears in the lower-right corner of the iTunes window when your iPad is selected in the sidebar. (The Apply button is shown in Figure 3-1.)
If you choose to sync wirelessly, your iPad and computer must be on the same Wi-Fi network and your iPad must be plugged into a power source for syncing to occur.
Standard-definition video files are significantly smaller than high-definition video files. You’ll hardly notice the difference when you watch the video on your iPad (unless it’s an iPad with a Retina display, in which case you’ll almost certainly notice), but you can have more video files on your iPad because they take up less space.
The conversion from HD to standard definition takes a long time, so be prepared for very long sync times when you sync new HD video and have this option selected.
If you plan to use Apple’s digital AV adapter (choose the dock version or Lightning version, as appropriate), or Apple TV ($99) to display movies on an HDTV, consider going with high definition. Although the files will be bigger and your iPad will hold fewer videos, the HD versions look spectacular on a big-screen TV. There’s more info on these accessories in Chapter 17.
A higher bit rate means that the song will have better sound quality but use a lot of storage space. Songs that you buy at the iTunes Store or on Amazon, for example, have bit rates of around 256 Kbps. So a four-minute song with a 256-Kbps bit rate is around 8MB; convert it to 128-Kbps AAC, and it’s roughly half that size (that is, around 4MB) while sounding almost as good.
Most people don’t notice much (if any) difference in audio quality when listening to music on most consumer audio gear. So unless you have your iPad hooked up to a great amplifier and superb speakers or headphones, you probably won’t hear much difference, but your iPad can hold roughly twice as much music if you choose this option. Put another way, we’re picky about our audio, and we both used to select this option to allow us to carry more music around with us on our iPads before we subscribed to iTunes Match. Neither of us has noticed the lower bit-rate songs sounding much different (or worse) with the types of headphones and speakers we use with our iPads.
One more thing: If you decide to select the Prevent iPods, iPhones, and iPads from Syncing Automatically check box on the Devices tab in iTunes Preferences (that’s iTunes⇒Preferences on a Mac and Edit⇒Preferences on a PC), you can still synchronize manually by clicking the Sync or Apply button in the lower-right corner of the window.
Whether you know it or not, your iPad backs up your settings, app data, photos and videos you shoot, and other information whenever you connect to a computer and use iTunes to sync with, update, or restore your iPad.
Backups are saved automatically and stored on your computer by default, or you can choose to back up to iCloud by clicking the appropriate button in the iTunes Summary pane.
To switch to backing up to iCloud using iTunes on your computer, follow these steps:
If iTunes doesn’t launch automatically when you connect the iPad, launch it now.
If you use more than one iDevice with this computer, select the device from the drop-down list that appears when you click the iPad icon.
If you choose to back up to your computer, you can encrypt your backups with a password by selecting the Encrypt iPad Backup check box.
If anything goes wonky, or you get a new iPad, you can restore most (if not all) of your settings and files that aren’t synced with iCloud or iTunes on your computer. Or, if you’ve backed up an iPhone, an iPod touch, or another iPad, you can restore the new iPad from the older device’s backup.
If you’re using an iPad computer-free, here’s how to enable backing up to iCloud from your iPad, which we strongly suggest computer-free iPad users do without further delay:
If you are a computer-free iPad user, you don’t care because you never connect your iPad to a computer. But if you sync your iPad with your computer like many folks do, give some thought to which option suits your needs. Restoring from a computer backup requires physical or Wi-Fi access to that computer, but you don’t need Internet access. Restoring from iCloud requires Internet access — and can happen anywhere on Earth that has it.
One last thing to look at on the Backup section: If you want to password-protect your iPad backups (your iPad creates a backup of its contents automatically every time you sync), be sure to also select the Encrypt iPad Backup check box from the Backup area.
Backups are good; select one or the other and move on.
When an iPad is connected to your computer, you see the eject icon to the right of its name in the devices drop-down menu (Bob L’s iPad mini in Figure 3-2). If your iPad is connected and syncing, you’ll instead see the sync icon (Bob L’s iPad maxi in the figure).
At the same time, a message appears at the top of the iTunes window to inform you that your iPad is syncing, as shown in Figure 3-3.
When the sync is finished, the sync icon in Figure 3-2 stops spinning and morphs back into an eject icon, and the message in Figure 3-3 disappears.
To cancel a sync properly and disconnect your iPad safely from your Mac or PC, click the little x-in-a-circle to the left of the sync message in iTunes, as shown in Figure 3-3.
Your next order of business is to tell iTunes what data you want to synchronize between your iPad and your computer.
To get started, first select your iPad by clicking the iPad icon (or the devices drop-down menu, if you have more than one iDevice) just below the search field. Then click the Info tab, which is the last tab in the Settings list on the left.
If you’re using iCloud to sync contacts, calendars, bookmarks, or notes, you won’t be able to enable these items in iTunes, as we’re about to describe. Turn off iCloud syncing on your iPad (Settings⇒iCloud) for items you want to sync with your Mac.
On some displays you may see only one or two sections at any time and have to scroll up or down to see the others.
The Info pane has five sections: Sync Contacts, Sync Calendars, Sync Mail Accounts, Other, and Advanced. The following sections look at them one by one. One last thing: To use your iPad with your Google or Yahoo! account, you must first create an account on your iPad, as described in Chapter 5. After you’ve created a Yahoo! or Google account on your iPad, you can enable contact or calendar syncing with it in the Settings app’s Mail, Contacts, Calendars section.
In Figure 3-4, note that the section is named Sync Contacts because this image was captured on a Mac. Contacts (formerly known as Address Book) is the Mac application that syncs with your iPad’s Contacts app.
If you use a PC, you see a drop-down list that gives you the choices of Outlook, Google Contacts, Windows Address Book, or Yahoo! Address Book. Don’t worry — the process works the same on either platform.
The iPad syncs with the following address book programs:
You can sync contacts with multiple apps.
Here’s what each option does:
The Calendars section of the Info pane determines how synchronization is handled for your appointments, events, and reminders. You can synchronize all your calendars, as shown in Figure 3-5. Or you can synchronize any or all individual calendars you’ve created in your computer’s calendar program. Just select the appropriate check boxes.
The iPad syncs with the following calendar programs:
You can sync calendars with multiple apps.
Every so often, the contacts, calendars, mail accounts, or bookmarks on your iPad get so screwed up that the easiest way to fix things is to erase that information from your iPad and replace it with information from your computer.
If that’s the case, go to the Advanced section of the Info pane and click to select the Contacts or Calendars check boxes (or both). Then, the next time you sync, that information on your iPad will be replaced with the contacts or calendars from your computer.
One last thing: Check boxes in the Advanced section are disabled for items not selected. If you’re using iCloud and you want to replace any of these items on your iPad, you must first enable that item as discussed in the previous sections of this chapter. In other words, to replace contacts or calendars we had to disable iCloud syncing before we could enable the check boxes to replace the Contacts and Calendars on this iPad.
If you chose to let iTunes manage synchronizing your data automatically, welcome. This section looks at how you get your media — your music, podcasts, videos, and photos — from your computer to your iPad.
That said, if you buy or download any of the following items from the Apple iTunes, iBooks, or App Store on your iPad, the item will be copied back to your computer automatically when you sync:
And if you save pictures from email messages, the iPad camera, web pages (by pressing and holding down on an image and then tapping the Save Image button), or screen shots (which can be created by pressing the Home and sleep/wake buttons simultaneously), these too can be synced using your favorite photo application (as long as it’s iPhoto, Aperture, or Adobe Photoshop Elements).
You use the Apps, Music, Movies, TV Shows, Podcasts, iTunes U, Books, Audiobooks, Tones, and Photos panes to specify the media that you want to copy from your computer to your iPad. The following sections explain the options you find in each pane.
To view any of these panes, make sure that your iPad is still selected and then click the appropriate tab in the list of Settings on the left.
The following sections focus only on syncing. If you need help acquiring apps, music, movies, podcasts, or anything else for your iPad, just flip to the most applicable chapter for help.
Sharp-eyed readers may notice that we aren’t covering syncing iPad apps in this chapter. Apps are so darn cool that we’ve given them an entire chapter, namely Chapter 11. In that chapter, you discover how to find, sync, rearrange, review, and delete apps, and much, much more.
To transfer music to your iPad, select the Sync Music check box in the Music pane. You can then select the option for Entire Music Library or Selected Playlists, Artists, and Genres. If you choose the latter, select the check boxes next to particular playlists, artists, and genres you want to transfer. You also can choose to include music videos or voice memos or both by selecting the appropriate check boxes at the top of the pane (see Figure 3-6).
If none of the options just mentioned sounds just right (pun intended), you may prefer using the On This iPad tab, which is covered in some detail later in this chapter.
Finally, if you select the Automatically Fill Free Space with Songs check box, iTunes fills any free space on your iPad with music. Think long and hard about enabling this option. We recommend against it because when it’s enabled, you can easily run out of space for pictures and videos you shoot or documents you save (to name just a few of the possible consequences of filling your iPad with songs).
To transfer movies to your iPad, select the Sync Movies check box and then choose an option for movies you want to include automatically from the pop-up menu, as shown in Figure 3-7. If you choose an option other than All, you can optionally select individual movies and playlists by selecting the boxes in appropriate sections.
The procedure for syncing TV shows is slightly different from the procedure for syncing movies. First, select the Sync TV Shows check box to enable TV show syncing. Then choose how many episodes to include and whether you want all shows or only selected shows from the two pop-up menus, as shown in Figure 3-8. If you want to also include individual episodes or episodes on playlists, select the appropriate check boxes in the Shows, Episodes, and Include Episodes from Playlists sections of the TV Shows pane.
You can also sync podcasts, educational content from iTunes U, two types of books — e-books for reading and audiobooks for listening — and photos.
To transfer podcasts to your iPad, select the Sync Podcasts check box in the Podcasts pane. Then you can automatically include however many podcasts you want by making selections from the two pop-up menus, the same way you did for TV Shows. If you have podcast episodes on playlists, you can include them by selecting the appropriate check box in the Include Episodes from Playlists section.
To sync educational content from iTunes U, first select the Sync iTunes U check box to enable iTunes U syncing. Then choose how many episodes to include and whether you want all collections or only selected collections from the two pop-up menus. If you want to also include individual items or items on playlists, select the appropriate check boxes in the Items section and Include Items from Playlists section of the iTunes U pane.
By now we’re sure you know the drill: You can sync all your e-books and audiobooks as well as just sync selected titles by choosing the appropriate buttons and check boxes in the Books pane.
If you have custom ringtones in your iTunes library, select the Sync Ringtones check box in the Tones pane. Then you can choose either all ringtones or individual ringtones by selecting their check boxes. Ringtones can be used also as text tones and alarms.
Syncing photos is a little different from syncing other media because your iPad has a built-in camera — two cameras, actually — and you may want to copy pictures or videos you take with the iPad to your computer, as well as copy pictures stored on your computer to your iPad.
The iPad syncs photos and videos with the following programs:
You can also sync photos with any folder on your computer that contains images.
In the Photos pane, select the Sync Photos From check box, and then choose an application or folder from the pop-up menu (which says iPhoto in Figure 3-9).
If you choose an application that supports photo albums (such as Photoshop Elements, Aperture, or iPhoto), projects (Aperture), events (iPhoto), facial recognition and places (Aperture or iPhoto), or any combination thereof, you can automatically include recent projects (Aperture), events (iPhoto), or faces (Aperture and iPhoto) by making a selection from the same pop-up menu.
Note that although Photoshop Elements includes features called Places and Faces, those features are not supported by your iPad.
If you choose a folder full of images, you can create subfolders inside it that will appear as albums on your iPad. But if you choose an application that doesn’t support albums or events, or a single folder full of images with no subfolders, you have to transfer all or nothing.
Because we selected iPhoto in the Sync Photos From menu, and iPhoto 9.6 (the version installed on our Mac) supports projects and faces in addition to albums and photos, we have the option of syncing any combination of photos, projects, albums, and faces.
If you’ve taken any photos with your iPad or saved images from a web page, an email, an MMS message, or an iMessage since the last time you synced, the appropriate program launches (or the appropriate folder is selected), and you have the option of uploading the pictures to your computer.
This chapter has focused on automatic syncing thus far. Automatic syncing is great; it selects items to sync based on criteria you’ve specified, such as genre, artist, playlist, and album. But it’s not efficient for transferring a few items — songs, movies, podcasts, or other files — to your iPad.
The solution? Manual syncing. With automatic syncing, iTunes updates your iPad automatically to match your criteria. Changes to your iTunes library since your last sync are synced automatically to your iPad. With manual syncing, you merely drag individual items to your iPad.
You can manually sync music, movies, TV shows, podcasts, and iTunes U lessons but not photos and info such as contacts, calendars, and bookmarks.
To configure your iPad for manual syncing:
If iTunes doesn’t open automatically, open it manually.
If you have more than one iDevice, the iPad icon becomes a drop-down menu listing all your connected iDevices. Click the icon to display the menu with your devices, and then select the device you want.
This step disables automatic syncing for music and videos.
If you’re happy with automatic syncing and just want to get some audio or video from your computer to your iPad, feel free to skip this step.
To add items from iTunes to your iPad without using the syncing controls or performing an actual sync, first click the icon for the type of media you want to copy to your iPad — music, movies, or TV shows — or click the ellipsis (…) to select podcasts, iTunes U, audiobooks, or tones. Then start dragging the media to the left. As you do, a new pane appears on the left side of the iTunes window. Drag the media to this pane, as shown in Figure 3-10, and the media will be copied to your iPad immediately.
You can add a media file to your iPad without syncing at least one other way. As before, your iPad has to be connected to your computer via Wi-Fi or USB, so you have to see the iPad icon above the picture of your iPad or this (as well as the previous method) won’t work.
The other way to add media to your iPad without syncing is to click the little ellipsis (…) in a circle next to songs, albums, movies, TV shows, books, and other media. Choose Add To from the pop-up menu and a new list appears; choose your iPad in the list and the file will be added to your iPad.
And that’s pretty much all you need to know to sync files automatically or manually. And if you haven’t figured out how to watch movies or listen to audio on your iPad yet, it’s only because you haven’t read Part III on multimedia, where watching and listening to your iPad are made crystal clear.