Chapter 7

Eight Indispensible Utilities

In This Chapter

Understanding the calendar’s different views and functions

Unifying the family

Calculating with your iPhone

Using the clock as an alarm, a stopwatch, and a timer too

Leaving voice reminders

Reminding yourself about reminders

Airing it out with AirDrop

Managing Passbook

Paying with your phone

Honing in on health

The iPhone is a smartphone. And, as a smart device, it can remind you of appointments, tell you the time (where you live or halfway around the world), and even help you perform arithmetic.

Over the course of this chapter, we look at a few of the iPhone’s core — and, frankly, unsexy — apps. Indeed, we’d venture to say that no one bought an iPhone because of its calendar, calculator, clock, voice recorder, Reminders app, Passbook/Apple Pay feature, or even clever wireless AirDrop wizardry. And even though we know we should pay attention to health and fitness, the presence of a new Health app is probably not the reason you bought an iPhone either. But having these programs around is awfully handy and in some cases good to your overall well-being.

Working with the Calendar

The Calendar program lets you keep on top of your appointments and events (birthdays, anniversaries, and the like). You open it by tapping the Calendar icon on the Home screen. The icon is smart in its own right because it changes daily, displaying the day of the week and the date.

What’s more, via the interactive notifications that arrived with iOS 8, you can accept or reject incoming calendar invitations without even entering the Calendar app. When you do enter the app, you can display five main calendar views: by year, by month, by day, by week, and by a searchable list view that shows current and future appointments.

You must hold the phone in portrait mode to check out the calendar in yearly, monthly, or daily view. In these portrait views, the current date on your calendar is circled in red. A Today button at the bottom of the screen always returns you to the current date. Next to the Today button are a Calendars button and an Inbox button, which we get to shortly.

To get to list view, orient the phone in portrait mode and then tap a particular day. You see either the day view or the list view, depending on how you last viewed the calendar. To toggle from one to the other, tap the icon at the top of the screen and shown in the margin. To peek at a weekly calendar instead, rotate the iPhone to landscape mode.

Take a closer look at the following sections.

Year view

There’s not much to the yearly view (see Figure 7-1, left), but at a glance you can see the current calendar year, or scroll up or down to see prior or future years. Unfortunately, from this view you can’t tell on which days you have appointments.

Month view

Tap any of the months visible in the yearly view to jump to that specific month, as shown in Figure 7-1 center. When your iPhone is in month view, a gray dot appears on any day that has an appointment or a scheduled event. Tap a given day to see the list of activities on the agenda for that day, which leads nicely into the next section.

Day view

As we just mentioned, you have to tap a date to see what you have going on in a 24-hour period — though to see an entire day’s worth of entries, you’ll have to scroll up or down. You can swipe to the left to advance to the next day of the week and beyond; swipe to the right to retreat one or more days.

In this day view, all-day events, birthdays, and events pulled from your Facebook account (if you provide your Facebook credentials) appear in a narrow strip above the timeline for the day, as shown in Figure 7-1, right. Your daily appointments span the entire time in which they’ve been scheduled on your calendar. For example, if an appointment runs from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., those two hours will be blocked off on the calendar.

You find out how to create calendar entries in a moment, but for now know that you can hold down on an event and drag it to a new time slot should your plans change. If you have overlapping appointments, you’ll see more than a single entry claim a given time slot.

Calendars are color-coded according to the calendar in which you scheduled the appointment to help you distinguish an appointment you made on your work calendar versus, say, a family calendar.

Week view

As mentioned, you have to rotate the iPhone to its side to examine your weekly calendar. In the view, shown in Figure 7-2 (left), you can glance at only five days of entries so you must scroll in either direction to peek at any days that are not initially visible. The view on other models varies: on the iPhone 6, you can see six days of entries. On the iPhone 4s, you see fewer than five days. The current day is circled in red. You can arrange to start your weekly view on any day of the week. Tap Settings⇒Mail, Contacts, Calendars⇒Start Week On, and then tap the day on which you want to start your week.

Ah, but you may be wondering about the view on the iPhone 6 Plus, given its relatively monster-sized 5.5-inch display. Indeed, Apple redesigned the Calendar app so you get a different view when you rotate the phone to its side. You’ll see tabs at the top of the screen for the day, week, month, and year, as shown in Figure 7-2 (right). When you tap the Week tab, you indeed get a full seven-day view.

List view

List view isn’t complicated. As you would expect, all your calendar appointments are listed chronologically, as shown in Figure 7-3. If you have a lengthy list, drag up or down with your finger or flick to rapidly scroll through your appointments. If you’re looking for a specific calendar entry, you can search for appointments by typing the titles, invitee names, locations, or notes in the search box above your list of entries (or employ Spotlight to help you search). The search box becomes visible after you tap the search icon.

Tap any of the listings to get meeting or appointment details for that entry. If you tap a person’s birthday, you see his or her contact information. Sorry, but you just ran out of excuses for not sending a card at least. Tap the + in the upper-right corner to add a new calendar entry, discussed in more detail in the next section.

The iPhone can display the color-coding you assigned in Calendar in Mountain Lion, Mavericks, or Yosemite on a Mac. Cool, huh?

If you’re a Mac user who uses Calendar, you can create multiple calendars and choose which ones to sync with your phone (as described in Chapter 3). What’s more, you can choose to display any or all of your calendars. You can also sync calendars with Microsoft Outlook on a Mac or versions of Microsoft Outlook dating all the way back to Outlook 2003 on a PC.

Adding Calendar Entries

In Chapter 3, you discover pretty much everything there is to know about syncing your iPhone, including syncing calendar entries from your Windows machine (using the likes of Microsoft Outlook) or Mac (using Calendar, Microsoft Entourage, or Outlook). You can also add calendar entries from iCloud.

In addition, any calendar entries in Facebook can automatically show up in the Calendar app. You’ll have to visit Settings, enter your username and password, and then make sure the Calendar app in the Facebook setting is turned on.

In plenty of situations, you enter appointments on-the-fly. Adding appointments directly to the iPhone is easy:

1. Find and tap the Calendar icon and launch the year, month, or day view.
2. Tap the + icon in the upper-right corner of the screen.

   The Add Event screen, shown in Figure 7-4, appears.

3. Tap the Title and Location fields in turn and enter as much (or as little) information as you feel is necessary.

   To enter that information, you can finger-type, use dictation, or use Siri. Tapping displays the virtual keyboard (if it’s not already shown). You can manually type a location or tap Current Location to let the iPhone fill in the particulars.

4. To add a start time or end time (or both):
   1. Tap the Starts or Ends field.

      A carousel wheel appears below the field you tapped, like the one shown in Figure 7-5.

      

      

   2. Choose the time the event starts.

      Use your finger to roll separate carousel controls for the date, hour, and minute (in 5-minute intervals) and to specify AM or PM. The process is a little like manipulating a combination bicycle lock or an old-fashioned date stamp used with an inkpad. Regrettably, you’re locked into 5-minute intervals, so you can’t indicate that an event starts at, say, 5:33. You’d have to round up in such a case to 5:35.

   3. Repeat 4a and 4b for the end time, if needed.
   4. To add the travel time, tap the Travel Time field and select a time.

      You can choose travel intervals of 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 1 hour 30 minutes, or 2 hours.

5. To change the time zone, tap the Time Zone field and type the name of the city where the appointment is taking place, assuming the correct location isn’t already present.
6. If you’re entering an all-day milestone (such as a birthday), tap the All-Day switch to turn it on (green will be showing).

   Because the time is no longer relevant for an all-day entry, you won’t see Starts, Ends, or Time Zone options.

7. If you’re setting up a recurring entry, such as an anniversary or a weekly allergy shot, tap the Repeat field. Tap to indicate how often the event in question recurs.

   The options are Every Day, Every Week, Every 2 Weeks, Every Month, Every Year, and Custom. Tap Never if you’re planning to never repeat this entry.

8. If you want certain people to join you, tap Invitees to specify who among your contacts will be attending the event.
9. If you want to set a reminder or an alert for the entry, tap Alert and choose a time.

   Alerts can be set to arrive at the actual time of an event, or 1 week before, 2 days before, 1 day before, 2 hours before, 1 hour before, 30 minutes before, 15 minutes before, or 5 minutes before the event. If it’s an all-day entry, you can request alerts 1 day before (at 9 AM), 2 days before (at 9 AM), or 1 week before. You can also arrange alerts that factor in your travel time.

   When the appointment time rolls around, you hear a sound and see a message like the one shown in Figure 7-6.

   

   If you’re the kind of person who needs an extra nudge, set another reminder by tapping the Second Alert field (which you’ll see only if a first alert is already set).

10. If you want to assign the entry to a particular calendar, tap Calendar, and then tap the calendar you have in mind (Home or Work, for example).
11. If you want to indicate whether you’re busy or free, tap Show As. If you’re invited to an event, you can tap Availability and then tap Free (if it’s shown on your phone).
12. If you want to enter a web address, tap the URL field (at the bottom of the Add Event screen). Type the web address.
13. If you want to enter notes about the appointment or event, tap the Notes field (bottom of the screen). Type your note.

    A virtual keyboard pops up so that you can type the note.

14. Tap Done after you finish entering everything.

We can’t think of any easier way to add a calendar entry than by using Siri. You can instruct Siri along the lines of “Set a lunch appointment for tomorrow at noon with the Smiths.” Siri is pleased to comply.

Choose a default calendar by tapping Settings⇒Mail, Contacts, Calendars, and then flicking the screen until the Calendar section appears. Tap Default Calendar and select the calendar that you want to show up regularly.

If you travel long distances for your job, you can make events appear according to whichever time zone you selected for your calendars. In the Calendar settings, tap Time Zone Override to turn it on, and then tap Time Zone. Type the time zone location using the keyboard that appears. When Time Zone Override is turned off, events are displayed according to the time zone of your current location.

Tap Alternate Calendars in Settings if you want to display a Chinese, a Hebrew, or an Islamic calendar alongside your English calendar.

To turn off a calendar alert, tap Settings⇒Sounds, and then make sure that the selected alert tone is set to None. (You see only the last calendar alert sound that you selected. To see your other choices, tap Calendar Alerts.) You can also set default alert times for birthdays, all-day events, when it’s time to leave (new to iOS 8), and certain other events. Tap Settings⇒Mail, Contacts, Calendars, and scroll down to Default Alert Times.

Back in the Calendar app, if you want to modify an existing calendar entry, tap the entry, tap Edit, and then make whichever changes need to be made. To wipe out a calendar entry, tap Edit⇒Delete Event. Then tap Delete Event (again).

Calendar entries you create on your iPhone are synchronized with the calendar you specified in the iTunes Info pane.

Current and future Calendar events can be synchronized automatically through Apple’s iCloud service. In Settings, you can also sync past events. Your options are to sync events 6 months back, 3 months back, 1 month back, or 2 weeks back. Or you can sync all your events.

You can use iCloud to keep your calendars updated as well and in sync across all your iOS devices and computers. Tap Settings⇒iCloud and make sure the Calendars option is turned on.

You have a few other Calendar options in Settings. You can choose to start the week on a particular day. You can display invitee declines. And you can display week numbers in the month view.

Letting your calendar push you around

If you work for a company that uses Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, calendar entries and meeting invitations from coworkers can be pushed to your device so that they show up on the screen moments after they’re entered, even if they’re entered on computers at work. Setting up an account to facilitate this pushing of calendar entries to your iPhone is a breeze, although you should check with your company’s tech or IT department to make sure that your employer allows it. Then follow these steps:

1. Tap Settings⇒Mail, Contacts, Calendars⇒Add Account.
2. From the Add Account list, tap Exchange.
3. Fill in the email address, username, password, and description fields, and then tap Next.
4. If required, enter your server address on the next screen that appears.

   The iPhone supports the Microsoft Autodiscovery service, which uses your name and password to automatically determine the address of the Exchange server. The rest of the fields should be filled in with the email address, username, password, and description you just entered.

5. Tap Next.
6. Tap the switch to turn on each information type that you want to synchronize using Microsoft Exchange.

   The options are Mail, Contacts, Calendars, and Reminders. You should be good to go now, although some employers may require you to add passcodes to safeguard company secrets.

If you have a business-issued iPhone and it is lost or stolen — or someone discovers that you’re a double-agent working for a rival company — your employer’s IT administrators can remotely wipe your device clean.

Calendar entries can also be pushed as part of iCloud, of course.

Displaying multiple calendars

By tapping the Calendars button at the bottom of the yearly, monthly, or daily view, you can choose the calendar or calendars to display on your phone. Merely tap the calendar that you want to include so that a check mark appears next to it, as shown in Figure 7-7.

You can tap the Hide All Calendars button when you don’t want any calendars to be visible, or conversely tap Show All Calendars when you want your entire schedule to be an open book. You can also scroll down to turn on Facebook events to display those in your calendar, as well as display birthdays, including those of the people you’ve friended on the social network. You can even tap a switch to display events you’ve declined.

From the Calendars view, tap the i-in-a-circle for even more tricks. You can assign a color to your calendar, share the calendar with a given individual (tap Add Person to do so), make a calendar public (by flipping a switch), or delete the calendar.

Responding to meeting invitations

The iPhone has one more important button in the Calendar app. It’s the Inbox button, located at the bottom-right corner of the yearly, monthly, and daily views. If you partake in iCloud, have a Microsoft Exchange account, or have a calendar that adheres to the CalDAV Internet standard, you can send and receive a meeting invitation, though you’ll also need a compatible email application that lets you not only receive but also respond to the invitation.

If you have any pending invitations, you’ll see them when you tap the inbox, which is separated into new invitations and invitations to which you’ve already replied. You can tap any of the items in the list to see more details about the event to which you’ve been invited.

As noted, you can also accept or decline a meeting invitation that arrives via an interactive notification. In other words, you wouldn’t even have to open the Calendar app to see such an invitation. Suppose that a meeting invitation arrives from your boss. You can see who else is attending the shindig, check scheduling conflicts, and more. Tap Accept to let the meeting organizer know you’re attending, tap Decline if you have something better to do (and aren’t worried about upsetting the person who signs your paycheck), or tap Maybe if you’re waiting for a better offer.

And as we pointed out previously, you can also invite other folks to attend an event that you’re putting together.

Meantime, if you run into a conflict, why not ask Siri to change your schedule? For that matter, you can also call upon Siri to remind you when you have your next appointment. Visit Chapter 5 for more on this clever feature.

As mentioned, if you take advantage of iCloud, you can keep calendar entries synchronized between your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Mac or PC. When you make a scheduling change on your iPhone, it’s automatically updated on your computer and other devices, and vice versa. Choose iCloud from the Add Account screen to get started, assuming you didn’t turn on iCloud when you first activated your phone.

You find out more about configuring iCloud when we discuss the iCloud setting in Chapter 14.

Subscribing to calendars

You can subscribe to calendars that adhere to the CalDAV and iCalendar (.ics) standards, which are supported by the popular Google and Yahoo! calendars and by the Mac’s Calendar app. Although you can read entries on the iPhone from the calendars you subscribe to, you can’t create entries from the phone or edit the entries that are already present.

To subscribe to one of these calendars, tap Settings⇒Mail, Contacts, Calendars⇒Add Account⇒Other. You then choose Add CalDAV Account or Add Subscribed Calendar. Next, enter the server where the iPhone can find the calendar you have in mind, and if need be, a username, a password, and an optional description.

Sharing a family calendar

As part of iOS 8, Apple added a Family Sharing feature that lets you share a calendar with up to six family members. This family calendar shows up in the Calendar app of each participating member of your clan.

The requirements: One adult in the household (a.k.a. the family organizer) invites everyone else to partake. Everyone must be signed into the same iCloud account. Family Sharing works with iOS 8 devices, Mac OS X 10.10, Find My Friends 3.0, Find My iPhone 3.1, and iCloud for Windows 4.0.

Because Family Sharing is designed to be used by only a single-family unit, you can be part of only one family group at a time, and you can switch to another family group only two times a year. (We suppose you might switch, say, if you married into a new family.)

Each participating family member can add or modify events in the family calendar and receive notifications, alerts, and location-based reminders.

Family Sharing extends well beyond the calendar too. Family members can share photos, music, books, apps, their respective locations, and even the location of their iPhones (and other devices). Through the Parental Controls feature, the family organizer can limit the content that minors can access.

To get started, tap Settings⇒iCloud⇒Set Up Family Sharing. The family organizer enters his or her iTunes credentials (and payment method), and send emails to invite family member, who will be invited to participate.

Calculate This

Quick — what’s 3,467.8 times 982.3? Why, the answer is 3,406,419.94 (of course). You, too, can solve the problem quickly thanks to the iPhone calculator. You can find the app on one of your home pages or via Control Center.

Your handy iPhone calculator does just fine for adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing. Numbers and symbols (such as C for clear) are large and easy to see. But are you thinking, “This isn’t the most advanced calculator I’ve ever used”? Well, you’re right. The calculator can’t handle a sine or a square root, much less more advanced functions.

Fortunately, the math whizzes at Apple were thinking right along with you. To see what they came up with, rotate the iPhone (and make sure the portrait lock isn’t enabled). As if by sleight of hand, your pocket calculator is now a full-fledged scientific calculator, capable of tackling dozens of complex functions. Take a gander at both calculators, which are shown in Figure 7-8.

Isn’t it nice to know just how much smarter a smartphone can make you feel?

Punching the Clock

We hear you: “So the iPhone has a clock. Big whoop. Doesn’t every cellphone have a clock?”

Well, yes, every cellphone does have a clock. But not every phone has a world clock that lets you display the time in multiple cities on multiple continents. And not every cellphone has an alarm, a stopwatch, and a timer to boot.

Let’s take a moment in time to look at the time functions on your iPhone, which you can conveniently get to via Control Center.

World clock

Want to know the time in Beijing or Bogota? Tapping World Clock (in the Clock app) lets you display the time in numerous cities around the globe, as shown in Figure 7-9. When the clock face is dark, it’s dark in the city you chose; if the face is white, it’s light outside.

Tap the + icon in the upper-right corner of the screen and use the virtual keyboard to start typing a city name. The moment you press the first letter, the iPhone displays a list of cities or countries that begin with that letter. So, as Figure 7-10 shows, typing v brings up both Caracas, Venezuela, and Hanoi, Vietnam, among myriad other possibilities. You can create clocks for as many cities as you like, though what you see on a single screen depends on the phone you have; you can see the time in only four cities on an iPhone 4s and up to seven cities on the 6 Plus. To see times in other cities, scroll up or down.

Moreover, if you rotate the iPhone 6 Plus to landscape orientation in the Clock app, you’ll see the selected world cities and their respective times laid onto a map. A bonus, courtesy of the Weather Channel, lets you see the temperatures in these mapped locations, along with tiny icons to indicate whether the locale is sunny, cloudy, and so on.

To remove a city from the list, tap Edit and then tap the red circle with the white horizontal line that appears to the left of the city you want to drop. Then tap Delete.

You can also rearrange the order of the cities displaying the time. Tap Edit, and then press your finger against the symbol with three horizontal lines to the right of the city you want to move up or down in the list. Then drag the city to its new spot.

Alarm clock

Ever try to set the alarm in a hotel room? It’s remarkable how complicated setting an alarm can be, on even the most inexpensive clock radio. Like almost everything else, the procedure is dirt-simple on the iPhone:

1. Tap Clock on the Home screen to display the Clock app.
2. At the bottom of the screen, tap the Alarm icon.
3. In the upper-right corner of the screen, tap the + icon.
4. Choose the time of the alarm by rotating the carousel controls in the upper half of the screen.

   This step is similar to the action required to set the time that an event starts or ends on your calendar.

5. If you want the alarm to go off on other days, tap Repeat and then tell the iPhone the days you want the alarm to be repeated, as in Every Monday, Every Tuesday, and so on.
6. Tap Sound to choose the ringtone (see Chapter 4) to use to wake you up.

   You can even use a custom ringtone you created or choose a song from your Music library.

7. Tap Snooze to display a Snooze button along with the alarm.

   Tap the Snooze button to shut down the alarm for nine minutes.

8. If you want to call the alarm something other than, um, Alarm, tap the Label field and use the virtual keyboard to type another descriptor.
9. When the alarm settings are to your liking, tap Save.

Simple stuff, really. But if you want really simple, ask Siri to set the alarm for you.

You know that an alarm has been set and activated because of the tiny status icon (surprise, surprise — it looks like an alarm clock) that appears in the upper-right corner of the screen.

An alarm takes precedence over any tracks you’re listening to on your iPhone in the Music app. A song momentarily pauses when an alarm goes off and resumes when you turn off the alarm (or tap the Snooze button).

When your ring/silent switch is set to silent, your iPhone doesn’t ring, play alert effects, or make iPod sounds. But it will play alarms from the Clock app. That’s good to know when you set your phone to silent at a movie or the opera. And, although it seems obvious, if you want to hear an alarm, you have to make sure that the iPhone volume is turned up.

If you’ve set an alarm, it takes precedent over the Do Not Disturb feature we discuss in Chapters 4 and 14.

Not all phone carriers support the network time option in all locations, so an alarm may not sound at the correct time in a given area.

Stopwatch

If you’re helping a loved one train for a marathon, the iPhone Stopwatch function can provide an assist. Open it by tapping Stopwatch in the Clock app.

Just tap Start to begin the count, and then tap Stop at the finish line. You can also tap a Lap button to monitor the times of individual laps.

Timer

Cooking a hard-boiled egg or Thanksgiving turkey? Again, the iPhone comes to the rescue. Tap Timer (in the Clock app) and then rotate the hour and minute controls until the time you have in mind is selected. Tap When Timer Ends to choose the ringtone that will signify time’s up.

After you set up the length of the timer, tap Start when you’re ready to begin. You can watch the minutes and seconds wind down on the screen, if you have nothing better to do.

If you’re doing anything else on the iPhone — admiring photos, say — you hear the ringtone and see a Timer Done message on the screen at the appropriate moment. Tap OK to silence the ringtone.

You can also set a sleep timer in the iPhone to shut down music or video after you’ve shut down. Set the amount of time that you think you’ll want the iPhone to be spitting out sound, and tap When Timer Ends. Then tap Stop Playing. The iPhone will be silenced when the time you’ve set has been exhausted.

Apple considers the Timer app to be so essential that it reserved a spot for its icon in Control Center. And when you open Timer, you can also access the other components of the Clock app: World Clock, Alarm, and Stopwatch.

Voicing Memos

Consider all the times you’d find it useful to have a voice recorder in your pocket — perhaps when you’re attending a lecture or interviewing an important source (that’s a biggie for us journalist types). Or maybe you just want to leave yourself a quickie reminder about something (“Pick up milk after work”). Well, you’re in luck. Apple includes a built-in digital voice recorder.

A bunch of third-party apps add voice recording to the iPhone. Ed uses Recorder from Retronyms and Dragon Dictation from Nuance, and Bob uses iTalk Recorder from Griffin.

Making a recording

After you have that recorder in your pocket, how do you capture audio? When you tap the Voice Memos icon on the Home screen or in the Extras folder, where it typically hangs out, up pops the screen displayed in Figure 7-11. You use the app with the iPhone microphone, whose location varies by model (see Chapter 1 for details), or with a Bluetooth headset mic or an external microphone.

Recordings using the internal mics of the phone are made in mono, but you can record voice memos in stereo if you have the proper external gear.

Tap the red record icon in the lower part of the screen to start recording. The waveform that moves across the screen as Voice Memo detects sounds helps you gauge the recording level. You can pause a recording by tapping the red icon a second time and then tapping again to resume. A timer on the screen indicates the length of your recording session. Tap Done when you’re done to save the recording. It’s that easy.

We recommend speaking in a normal voice. To adjust the recording level, simply move the microphone closer to or farther from your mouth.

Listening to recordings

After you capture your thoughts or musings, how do you play them back?

You can start playback in a couple of ways, and both involve tapping the same icon. Immediately after recording the memo and tapping Done, you’ll get a chance to name your recording. When you do, a list of all your recordings pops up in chronological order, as shown in Figure 7-12, with the most recent memo on top. That memo is the one you just recorded, of course. Whenever you launch the app, you’ll also see a list of the last few recordings you’ve made. To see a more complete list, tap Done. From the list, tap the recording in question and then tap the little play icon to start listening.

You can drag the playhead along the scrubber bar to move ahead to any point in the memo.

If you don’t hear anything after tapping play, tap the speaker icon in the upper-right corner of the screen. Sound will pump through the built-in iPhone speaker.

Trimming recordings

Maybe the person who left the recording rambled on and on. You just want to cut to the chase, for goodness’ sake. Fortunately, you can trim the audio directly on the iPhone.

To do so, tap a recording and tap Edit. Then tap the trim icon (shown in Figure 7-13) and drag the red start and end markers to choose the audio segment you want to keep. To conclude the process, tap Trim — but before doing so, we recommend that you preview your edit by tapping the little play button.

Your edits are permanent. Make sure that you’re completely satisfied with your cuts before tapping Trim — or that you’ve synced the original back to iTunes on your computer so that you’re working with a copy. Apple affords you another protection: You can save your newly trimmed recording as a new recording. Or you can stick with trimming the original.

Adding a title to a recording

When a memo is added to your list of recordings, it shows up with the date and time of the recording and the uninspiring title New Recording. You could have named it something else at that point, but if you didn’t, you may have a tough time remembering which recording was made for which purpose. Fortunately, you can easily create a custom title after the fact:

1. From the list of recordings, tap a recording.
2. Tap the name Apple assigned (New Recording 1, New Recording 2, and so on) or the date.
3. Type your own name for the voice memo.

   Professor Snookins on Biology, for example. That’s it. Your recording is duly identified.

You may want to share with others the good professor’s wacky theories. Tap the share icon for the given voice memo. You then have the option to email the memo or send it in a message. Or you can share it instantly via AirDrop, which we get to later this chapter.

You can also sync voice memos to your Mac or PC by using iTunes, as described in Chapter 3. Recordings synced from your phone to the computer appear in the Music list and in the Voice Memos playlist in iTunes. And memos synced from your computer appear in the Voice Memos app on the iPhone.

Here’s another cool trick you can do with a recording. Email the recording to yourself, download it to a Mac or PC, change the extension to .m4r, and put the recording in iTunes. Presto, you’ve added a ringtone.

When you have no further use for a recording, you can remove it from the Voice Memos app by tapping it in the list and then tapping the trashcan icon. Alternatively, slide your finger from right to left and tap Delete.

Reminding me

The Reminders app isn’t just any ordinary to-do list: Reminders on the iPhone can be tagged to your location, and it also works nicely with Calendar and Reminders on a Mac running Mountain Lion, Mavericks, Yosemite, or iCloud. You can keep reminders just on the iPhone, or iCloud can keep reminders in sync across all your iOS devices and computers.

Consider the power of tying a reminder to your location. You’ll be notified of the items you must pick up at the supermarket the moment you drive into the grocery parking lot. Or perhaps a reminder to call your spouse will pop up when you land following a business trip. If you take advantage of the Family Sharing feature, each family member will also receive certain reminders, including some based on location.

Reminders are organized in lists, as shown in Figure 7-14. Apple supplies a general Reminders list and a list that reveals the items you’ve completed. (We love the sense of accomplishment that peeking at that list affords us.) You let the app know that you’ve completed a chore by tapping the little circle next to the task.

You can create your own lists, of course, perhaps one for groceries and another for the tasks you must do for the PTA. Simply tap New List, and name your list anything you want. If you want to color-code your new list, tap a color dot.

When you go into a list, you’ll see any due dates you’ve assigned plus the location (if any) where you can act upon the task.

To add a reminder to a list, tap the list in question. (For example, we tapped Groceries to summon the list shown in Figure 7-15.) Tap a blank line in the list, and type the next item to add to the list.

If you want to remove any items, tap Edit and then tap the red circle that appears. As an alternative, swipe to the left on an item and tap Delete. You can change the order in which an item appears by dragging the three horizontal lines next to the item.

When you tap Edit, you can also delete the entire list.

As we just mentioned, when you swipe to the left on an item, a Delete button is summoned. But another button appears right next to it, labeled More. Tap More to display a Details screen. You can get to this same screen when you tap a reminder and then tap the i-in-a-circle. From here, you are presented with several choices: You can tap the name of the item in the list to rename it. You can assign a priority to the reminder (using one, two, or three exclamation marks for emphasis). You can add notes to the task (“When you get milk, make sure to buy Lactaid”). You can also choose a date and time to be reminded, and tack on an alarm if need be.

But the feature that we think is especially cool is that you can also request to be reminded at a given location. The location can be your current whereabouts (where you can choose When I Arrive or When I Leave) or a designated address that you type in a search box. (Remember to turn on Location Services in Settings, if it’s not already on.)

Please note that the location feature doesn’t work with Microsoft Exchange or Outlook accounts or in every locale. And if your phone is locked, you may experience reminder delays.

Reminders are a great reason to call on Siri. Ask Siri to remind you of something and she (or he) will do your bidding.

Reminders is another app that exploits the extra-large display on the iPhone 6 Plus. Rotate the 6 Plus to landscape mode, and you get two panes of information, not one. On the left, you see a list of your Reminder headings. On the right, you see the actual reminder within a selected heading.

You can view your reminders and see alerts in Notification Center. And we want to add our own little reminder that with iOS 8, you can take immediate action on any interactive notification pertaining to reminders that you receive. From those notifications, you can mark a reminder as having been completed, or tap Snooze to be reminded again.

In Settings, you can turn on Do Not Disturb (see Chapters 4 and 14) if you don’t want to be nagged by a reminder. While in Settings, you can also choose a default reminders list, and determine how far back to sync reminders (from 6 months back to 2 weeks back, assuming that you don’t want to sync all your reminders).

Packing Passbook

We reckon that most of you never leave the house without three things: your keys, your cellphone, and your wallet. That’s a habit unlikely to change anytime soon. Nor do we expect most of you to ditch the plastic credit cards in your physical wallet for digital versions. That said, the tech and financial worlds are combining efforts to turn modern smartphones such as the iPhone into a version of a digital wallet.

Apple’s own relatively early push in this area was with the Passbook feature, which arrived with iOS 6. The introduction of Apple Pay, which launched in October 2014, placed Apple smack in the middle of the mobile payments space, with what potentially is a big deal, especially in the long term. Hey, it takes time to change human behavior.

As of this writing, Apple Pay works only with the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. With any of the credit cards stored in Passbook, you can press the Touch ID button on the phone to make a payment at a participating merchant — 220,000 retail locations have contactless payments terminals with the NFC (near field communication) capability required to complete such transactions in physical stores. NFC technology is built into the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. (Apple Pay works also with online transactions.)

At a retail store, you can use a credit card stored in Passbook to make a payment by pressing your finger against the Touch ID button as you hold the phone within about an inch of the terminal — we think the requirement to use your own fingerprint to transact is a darn good security measure. Meanwhile, Apple is kept in the dark about the details of the transaction: The company doesn’t know how much you spent or what you bought. Instead, payment information is stored on a chip on the phone called the Secure Element.

Even ahead of Apple Pay, some people used the iPhone to scan boarding passes at the airport or to pay for coffee in a Starbucks through a third-party app. Passbook provides a single repository for all these items, along with movie tickets, coupons, and gift cards. No more fumbling through printouts, apps, or emails to find the right ticket, coupon, or pass.

Moreover, Apple has made it so that Passbook is time and location based. In other words, the boarding pass appears when you get to the airport, even on the iPhone Lock screen, and you’re notified of any gate changes. Or walk into the coffee shop and the appropriate gift card pops up.

You can find Passbook-capable apps in the App Store, as shown in Figure 7-16. You may also see an Add to Passbook link on a merchant’s website — just make sure you’re signed in to your iCloud account to add passes to the Passbook app. And you can scan Passbook barcodes with the iPhone camera.

To use a given pass, tap it in the Passbook app and then point it at the barcode reader or scanner at the terminal, neighborhood multiplex, hotel, department store, or whatever other place you frequent.

To show a pass on the Lock screen, tap the i-in-a-circle at the bottom-right of the pass and make sure that the Show on Lock Screen switch is on.

You can share passes using Mail, Messages, or AirDrop. And speaking of which …

Dropping in on AirDrop

At various points in this book, you encounter AirDrop, a fast, safe, and secure (through encryption) wireless method of sharing photos, videos, contacts, documents, and more with people you are close to physically. You just tap the share icon when it is available in an app.

AirDrop exploits both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. No advanced setup is required.

To be part of an AirDrop exchange, you and the recipient must be using iOS 7 or iOS 8 and have an iPhone 5 or later, a fourth-generation iPad or later, an iPad mini, or a fifth-generation iPod touch. (There was no “or later” at the time we wrote this book.)

Taking advantage of this clever feature involves three simple steps:

1. Turn on the AirDrop feature (if it’s not on already) in Control Center.

   You have the option to make your phone visible to Everyone (within the vicinity) or just to your contacts.

2. Tap the share icon when it presents itself in an app and choose the file or files that you want to share.
3. Choose the recipients of those items by tapping the circle for the person, as shown in Figure 7-17.

   Yes, you can choose more than one person. People in range who are eligible to receive the file are represented on your iPhone by a circle. (The circles may even contain their pictures.)

The AirDrop process hath begun. The people on the receiving end will get a prompt asking them to accept the picture, video, or whatever it is you’re offering them. Assuming they take kindly to your offer and grant permission (by tapping Accept rather than Decline), the file lands on their devices in short order, where it is routed to its proper location. That is, a picture or video ends up in the Photos app, a contact in the Contacts app, and the aforementioned Passbook pass in the Passbook app.

If you use a Mac computer, you’re probably familiar with an OS X feature that carries the same name and operates similarly. But with the iOS version of AirDrop, unlike the version on the Mac, folks can transfer files even if they don’t share the same wireless network. The two AirDrop implementations did not interact initially. That changes with iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, and we think that is terrific.

Keeping in Good Health

With iOS 8, Apple supplies a new app called Health along with a tool designed for developers called HealthKit. The Health app is a repository for your health data, with places to add blood sugar levels and other lab results, medications, nutritional intake, calories burned, and more, as shown in Figure 7-18. (HealthKit was delayed by a bug at the time of this writing. We hope and suspect that it will be back in good health by the time you read this.)

You can collect data from third-party health and fitness apps or devices; third parties can request permission to supply data to the Health app. And the iPhone supplies its own data. A barometer added to the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus can even factor in elevation to figure out how many stairs you’ve climbed. Selected data can be viewed in the Health app dashboard.

You can also display your Medical ID card revealing your birthdate, blood type, any medical conditions you may have, emergency contacts, and other vital information. In an emergency, you can arrange for this information to be shown even when the phone is locked. You can even choose which data to share with your doctor.

As your mom always told you, you should always be in good health.