Chapter 15

Apps-O-Lutely!

In This Chapter

Browsing for cool apps

Searching for specific apps

Getting apps onto your iPhone

Deleting and organizing your iPhone apps

Getting the scoop on newspapers, magazines, and books

One of the best things about the iPhone 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, other apps cost money; some apps are useful, other apps are lame; some apps are perfectly well behaved, 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 iPhone apps. Don’t worry: We have plenty to say about specific apps in Chapters 17 and 18.

You can obtain and install apps for your iPhone in three ways:

• On your computer
• On your iPhone
• By automatic download

To switch on automatic downloads on the iPhone, 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 iPhone.

Consider also enabling automatic downloads for Music, Books, and Updates while you have the iTunes & App Store settings on your screen.

To use the App Store on your iPhone, it must be connected to the Internet. And, if you obtain an app using iTunes on your computer, it won’t be available on your iPhone until you sync the iPhone with your computer — unless you’ve turned on automatic downloads, as just described.

But before you can use the App Store on your iPhone or computer, you have to have an iTunes Store account. If you don’t already have one, we suggest that you launch iTunes on your computer, click Sign In near the upper-right corner of the iTunes window, click Create Apple ID, and then follow the on-screen instructions. Or if you prefer to create your account on your iPhone rather than on your computer, follow the instructions near the end of Chapter 8.

Let’s put it this way: If you don’t have an iTunes Store account, you can’t download a single cool app for your iPhone. Enough said.

Using Your Computer to Find Apps

Okay, start by finding cool iPhone apps using iTunes on your computer. Follow these steps:

1. Launch iTunes on your Mac or PC.
2. Click the Apps icon (shown in margin) in the upper-left corner of the iTunes window, and then click the iTunes Store tab near the top-center of the iTunes window.

   The iTunes App Store appears.

3. Click the iPhone tab (not the iPad tab) below the iTunes Store tab.

   The iPhone App section of the App Store appears, as shown in Figure 15-1.

Looking for apps from your computer

After you have the iTunes App Store on your screen and have clicked the iPhone tab so that you’re looking at iPhone (not iPad) apps, you have a few options for exploring its virtual aisles. Allow us to introduce you to the various departments available from the main screen.

Browsing the iPhone App Store screen

Like most retail stores, the iPhone App Store rearranges things in its windows (ha!) all the time. Names of departments and even the layout can change from week to week. For the most part, the main departments are down the middle of the screen (interspersed with some ads), with Quick Links to ancillary departments and the Top Paid, Free, and Grossing App lists appearing to the right of the main departments.

We start with the middle:

• The Best New Apps department has nine visible icons (from Sago Mini Friends to Fetchnotes Shared Notes in Figure 15-1), representing apps that the store’s curators feel are, well, the best new apps.

  Only nine icons are visible, but the Best New Apps department has more than that. Look way to the right of the words Best New Apps. See the tiny See All link? If you click it, the screen will fill with all the apps in this department (though you may have to scroll to see them all). Or you can drag the scroll bar below the Best New Apps section to the right to see more icons.

• The Best New Games department also displays nine icons in Figure 15-1. These apps are the bestselling games at the time. Note the See All link and scroll bar for this department, either of which you can use to see more of the best new game apps.
• The Best New Game Updates department has nine visible icons in Figure 15-1. These represent games that have been — what else? — updated recently.

Apple has a habit of redecorating the iTunes Store every so often, so allow us to apologize in advance if things aren’t exactly as described here.

You also see three large display ads at the top of the screen (Amazing Productivity Apps, You’re More Powerful Than You Think, and Rules! in Figure 15-1) and featured links (that is, ads) between the Best New Games and Best New Game Updates departments. Sometimes these ads link to specific apps (such as Autodesk Sketchbook Mobile in Figure 15-1); other times they link to groups of apps with a theme, such as Games or App Store Exclusives.

Three lists appear to the right of the main departments: Top Paid Apps (shown in Figure 15-1), plus Top Free Apps (our favorite) and Top Grossing Apps, neither of which is visible in Figure 15-1. The number-one app in each department is displayed with its icon; the next nine apps show text links only.

Finally, above the Quick Links section on the right is a drop-down menu (All Categories in Figure 15-1); click it to see apps in a specific category, such as Books, Entertainment, Music, Navigation, News, or Finance (as shown in Figure 15-2).

The menus won't work if you’ve disabled JavaScript in your browser.

Using the search field

Browsing the screen is helpful, but if you know exactly what you’re looking for, we have good news and bad news. The good news is that there’s a faster way to search than browsing: Just type a word or phrase in the search field in the upper-right corner of the main iTunes window, and then press Enter or Return to initiate the search. Figure 15-3 shows the result of a search for camera.

The bad news is that you have to search the entire iTunes Store, which includes music, television shows, movies, and other stuff in addition to iPhone apps.

Ah, but we have more good news: Your search results are segregated into categories — one of which is iPhone Apps (refer to Figure 15-3). And here’s even more good news: If you click the iPhone Apps category, only iPhone apps that match your search word or phrase appear.

Click an app’s icon to see complete information about that app.

Click the little downward-pointing triangle to the right of each item’s price to display a drop-down menu, as shown for the Camera+ app in Figure 15-3. This menu lets you give the app as a gift, add it to your wish list, send an email with a link to it, share the link on Twitter or Facebook, or copy the link to this product to the Clipboard so you can paste it elsewhere.

Getting more information about an app

Now that you know how to find apps in the App Store, this section delves a little deeper and shows you how to get additional info about an app that interests you.

Checking out the details screen from your computer

To find out more about an app icon, a featured app, or a text link on any of the iTunes App Store screens, just click it. A details screen like the one shown in Figure 15-4 appears.

This screen should tell 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 the app is presented in, and the system requirements to run the app. Click the blue More button to the right and below the Description section and the What’s New to expand them and see additional details.

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 the next section, we show you how to find reviews of the app written by people who have used it.

Note that this app is rated 4+, as labeled in Figure 15-4. Here’s a list of the ratings:

• 4+: Contains no objectionable material.
• 9+: May contain mild or infrequent occurrences of cartoon, fantasy, or realistic violence; or infrequent or mild mature, suggestive, or horror-themed content that may not be suitable for children under the age of 9.
• 12+: May contain infrequent mild language; frequent or intense cartoon, fantasy, or realistic violence; mild or infrequent mature or suggestive themes; or simulated gambling that may not be suitable for children under the age of 12.
• 17+: May contain frequent and intense offensive language; frequent and intense cartoon, fantasy, or realistic violence; mature, frequent, and intense mature, suggestive, or horror-themed content; sexual content; nudity; depictions of alcohol, tobacco, or drugs that may not be suitable for children under the age of 17. You must be at least 17 years old to purchase apps with this rating.

One other feature of the details pages that’s worth mentioning is that most apps include one or more useful links, which you’ll find in the Links section near the bottom of the column on the left. You can see the top of the Links section in Figure 15-4; scroll down to see the link to the developer’s website; we urge you to explore such links at your leisure.

Reading reviews from your computer

If you click Ratings and Reviews (above the screenshots of the app), you find a series of reviews by the folks who own the app. Each review includes a star rating, from zero to five; if an app is rated four or higher, it’s probably well liked by people who own it. The star rating and number of reviews also appear on the left side of the details screen (four and a half stars; 450 reviews for Real Racing 3).

Downloading an app to your computer

Downloading an app is simple. When you find an app you want to try, just click its Free or Buy button. At that point, 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 the app has finished downloading, click the Apps icon in your iTunes library, and then click the My iPhone Apps tab, as shown in Figure 15-5.

You're viewing iPhone apps in Figure 15-5, but you can view your apps in other ways by clicking one of the other tabs near the top of the window: iPad Apps, List, or Updates.

Downloading an app to your iTunes library on your computer is only the first half of getting it onto your iPhone. After you download an app, you have to sync your iPhone (see Chapter 3) before the app will be available on the phone, unless you’ve enabled automatic downloads, as described earlier in this chapter.

Updating an app from your computer

Every so often, the developer of an iPhone app releases an update. Sometimes these updates add new features to the app, or squash bugs, or both. In any event, updates are usually a good thing for you and your iPhone, so it makes sense to check for them every so often. To do this on your computer using iTunes, click the Apps icon and then click the Updates tab.

If you click the Get More Apps button at the bottom of the screen, you find yourself back at the main screen of the iTunes App Store (refer to Figure 15-1).

Using Your iPhone to Find Apps

Finding apps with your iPhone is almost as easy as finding them by using iTunes. To browse, search, download, and install apps, the only requirement is that you have an Internet connection of some sort — Wi-Fi or wireless data network.

To get started, tap the App Store icon on your iPhone’s Home screen. After you launch the App Store, you see five icons at the bottom of the screen, representing five ways to interact with the store, as shown in Figure 15-6.

Looking for apps from your iPhone

The first four icons at the bottom of the screen — Featured, Top Charts, Explore, and Search — offer four ways to browse the virtual shelves of the App Store.

Tap the Featured icon and you’ll see a miniature version of the iTunes App Store (shown in Figure 15-1), with the same departments, namely Best New Apps, Best New Games, and Best New Game Updates.

Top Charts, Explore, and Search offer different ways to view the App Store’s shelves. Explore, which is kind of new in iOS 8 (it was called Near Me previously), is perhaps the most interesting — it suggests apps that are popular near your current location. The Top Charts section works much the same as the Featured section. Its three departments — Top Paid, Top Free, and Top Grossing — represent the most popular apps that either cost money (paid and top grossing) or don’t (free).

Each page displays dozens upon dozens of apps, but you see only a handful at a time on the screen. Remember to flick up and down and left and right to see all the others.

Know exactly what you’re looking for? Instead of simply browsing, you can tap the Search icon and type a word or phrase. Or use the Categories button (at the top of the Featured and Charts sections), which works a little differently because it has no apps. Instead, it offers a list of categories such as Books, Business, Catalogs, and Education, to name a few, as shown in Figure 15-7.

Tap a category to see either a page full of apps of that type or a list of subcategories for that type. For example, the Games category offers subcategories such as Action, Arcade, Kids, Music, and Puzzle. Other categories have no subcategories — you’ll go directly to the page full of apps when you tap them.

If you’re wondering about Updates, the fifth icon at the bottom of the screen, we discuss it a little later in this chapter in the imaginatively named “Updating an app from your iPhone” section.

Finding more information about an app

Now that you know how to find apps in the App Store, the following sections show you how to find additional information about a particular app.

Checking out the details screen from your iPhone

To find out more about any app on any page, tap the app. You see a details screen like the one shown in Figure 15-8.

Remember that the app description on this screen was written by the developer and may be somewhat biased.

Reading reviews from your iPhone

Tap the Reviews button (between Details and Related in Figure 15-8) to see the star ratings and reviews for that app. If you see a More Reviews button at the bottom of the page, tap it to see (what else?) more reviews.

Downloading an app to your iPhone

To download an app to your iPhone, tap the price button near the top of the app's details screen. (In Figure 15-8, the price button is the rectangle that says Free.) You may or may not be asked to type your iTunes Store account password before the App Store disappears and the Home screen, where the new app’s icon will reside, appears in its place. The new icon is slightly dimmed, and appears with a clocklike progress indicator and the word Loading or Installing, as shown in Figure 15-9.

By the way, if the app is rated 17+, you see a warning screen after you type your password. You have to tap the OK button to confirm that you’re 17 or older before the app will download.

The app is now on your iPhone, but it isn’t copied to your iTunes library on your Mac or PC until your next sync — unless, of course, you’ve turned on automatic downloads, as described earlier in the chapter. If your iPhone suddenly loses its memory (unlikely) or you delete the app from your iPhone before you sync (as described later in this chapter), that app is gone forever. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that after you’ve paid for an app, you can download it again if you need to — from iTunes on your computer or the App Store app on your iPhone — and you don’t have to pay for it again. And, if you’ve enabled Home Sharing or Family Sharing, your family members can download copies at no charge! See Chapter 8 for details on this pair of money-saving features for families.

The preceding tip holds true as long as the app is still available in the App Store. Apps disappear from the store for any number of reasons. So if an app is no longer available in the store, you may not be able to download that app again for free.

After you download an app to your iPhone, the app is transferred to your iTunes Apps library on your computer the next time you sync your phone.

Or, if you’ve turned on automatic downloads in iTunes (the setting is in the iTunes Preferences Store pane on your computer), the app will appear automatically in your iTunes library almost immediately after you purchase the app on your iPhone.

Updating an app from your iPhone

As mentioned earlier in this chapter, every so often (or, for some apps, far too often), the developer of an iPhone app releases an update. If one (or more) of these is waiting for you, a little number in a circle appears on the App Store icon on your Home screen as well as on the Updates icon at the bottom of the screen. Tap the Updates icon if any of your apps need updating.

If you tap the Updates icon and don’t see a Pending Updates section at the top of the screen, none of the apps on your iPhone requires an update at this time. If an app needs updating, it will appear in the Pending Updates section with an Update button to its right. Tap the Update button to update the app. 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.

If you try to update an app purchased from any iTunes Store account except your own, you’re prompted for that account’s ID and password (unless you’re part of a Family Sharing group). If you can’t provide them, you can’t download the update.

One last thing: The Updates icon conceals another useful tool for working with apps: the Purchased button. Tap it and a list of every app purchased using this account ID appears. Better still, you can search for apps by name, or tap the All Apps tab or the Apps Not on This Phone tab to find a particular app even faster.

Deleting and Organizing Your Apps

That’s almost everything you need to know about installing apps on your iPhone. However, you might find it helpful to know how to delete and organize apps.

Deleting an app

You can delete an app in two ways: in iTunes on your computer or directly from your iPhone.

To delete an app in iTunes, click the Apps icon and then do one of the following:

• Click the app’s icon to select it, and then choose Edit⇒Delete or press Delete/Backspace.
• Right-click (or Control+click on a Mac) the app’s icon and choose Delete.

Either way, you see a dialog asking whether you’re sure 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 iOS device that syncs with your iTunes library.

You can download any app you’ve purchased again, for free, from the App Store. So deleting it means that it's gone only from your device or computer. You can always get it back by downloading it again.

You can’t delete the Apple apps that came with your iPhone, but here’s how to delete any other app:

1. Press and hold down any icon until all the icons begin to jiggle.
2. Tap the little x in the upper-left corner of the app you want to delete, as shown in Figure 15-10.

   A dialog appears, informing you that deleting this app also deletes all its data, as shown in Figure 15-11.

3. Tap the Delete button.

Did you notice that the apps in the top row are jiggling but don’t have little x’s? All four are preinstalled by Apple, which means they can’t be deleted.

If you rarely or never use one of Apple’s bundled apps, you can’t delete it but you can hide it in a folder and move it off your first screen. Lucky for you, making folders and moving apps is covered in the next section.

But we digress. Just remember that deleting an app from your iPhone this way doesn’t get rid of it permanently. The app remains in your iTunes library until you delete it from iTunes, as described earlier in this chapter. If you want to get rid of an app for good and for always after you delete it on your iPhone, you must also delete it from your iTunes library. Even then it’s not really gone forever because you can download purchased apps again for free. And, of course, you can download free apps again for free because, well, they’re free.

If you see a warning that deleting the app also deletes any associated data, you may want to save the data before deleting the app. Different apps have different schemes for importing and exporting data; the important thing is that if you create documents with an app (notes, images, videos, and such), deleting the app will delete any files you’ve created with that app unless they’re saved to iCloud or elsewhere. Forewarned is forearmed.

If you delete an app and later change your mind and want it back on your iPhone, just tap the Updates button in the App Store app and then tap Purchased. Then just tap the little cloud icon (shown in the margin) to reinstall the app on your iPhone.

Organizing your apps

You can have up to 19 Home screens (or pages) of apps. And if you’re like many iPhone users, you’ll soon have a substantial collection of apps in your iTunes library and on your iPhone. So let’s look at a few ways to organize those apps for easy access.

On your computer (in iTunes)

First things first: On your computer, make sure you’ve clicked your iPhone’s icon near the top-left corner of the iTunes window, and then click Apps in the list on the left (labeled in Figure 15-12).

You can organize your apps in the following ways:

• In the Home screens section, double-click any Home screen to click and drag an app icon to a new location on the same screen.
• You can drag an app from the Apps list on the left to any of the 19 available screens in the scrolling list of Home screens on the right, as long as the screen has no empty screens preceding it. In other words, you can drag an app to screen 7 as long as at least one app is on each of the screens numbered 1 through 6.
• You can add new Home screens by clicking the + icon.
• You can change the order of screens in the Home screens grid by dragging it to a different position on the grid. After you have a few pages' worth of apps, give it a try — it’s easy and kind of fun.

  

You can change the order of Home screens only in iTunes. No mechanism exists for reordering Home screens on your iPhone.

You can also create folders to organize your apps by dragging one app onto another app. After that, folders work a lot like Home screens:

• You can click and drag an app icon to a new location in a folder or on any page.
• You can drag an app from the Apps list on the left to any folder.
• You can change the order of pages in folders much the same way you change the order of Home screens. First, scroll down past your last Home screen, where you’ll see all folders on your iPhone (if you have any folders), as shown in Figure 15-13. Then click the page you want to move, and drag it to its new location.
• You can add new pages to folders by clicking their + icons.

On your iPhone

To rearrange apps on your iPhone, first press and hold down on any app until all the apps begin to jiggle and dance, and the little “delete me” x’s appear. Figure 15-14 shows the screen before (left) and after (right) moving the PhotoSync app from the last position on the screen to the first.

The app you press and hold down to start the jiggling doesn’t have to be the one you want to move — any app will do.

To move an app after the jiggling starts, press it, drag it to its new location (other apps on the screen will politely move out of its way to make space for it), and release it.

If you move an icon onto another icon and pause for a second, a folder will be created. If you move an icon onto a folder and pause for a second, the folder will open so you can place the icon inside the folder.

Folders can have more than one screen; if you see two or more little white dots at the bottom of the folder — one for each additional screen — swipe left to see the next screen or swipe right to see the previous one.

To move an app to a different Home screen after the jiggling starts, press the app and drag it all the way to the left or right edge of the screen. The preceding Home screen or next Home screen, respectively, will appear. Keep dragging the app to the left or right edge of each successive Home screen until you reach the screen you want. Then drop the app in its new location on that screen. If the screen already holds 20 apps (16 if you have an iPhone 4s), the last icon on the page will be pushed to the next Home screen. Be persistent — sometimes it takes a few tries to make the screens switch.

All these techniques for iTunes and iPhones work with apps on the dock (Phone, Mail, Safari, and Music by default), as well as with apps on Home screens and folders.

You can even add apps beyond the 19th Home screen. To do so, just keep selecting check boxes for apps in the Apps section after all 19 Home screens are filled. You won’t be able to see the icons for these apps on any Home screen, so you’ll have to access them with a Spotlight search.

You use the same technique — drag one app on top of another app — to create folders in both iTunes and on your iPhone. And to place an app into an existing folder, you drag that app on top of the folder. If you’ve forgotten how to create folders, refer to the section on organizing icons into folders in Chapter 2.

A few more facts about Home screens. We mention this elsewhere, but in case you missed it: The little dots above the four apps on the dock indicate how many Home screens you have. The white dot denotes the Home screen you’re currently looking at. So, for example, the dots in Figure 15-12 indicate that you're looking at screen 3 of three Home screens.

And last but not least, we’d be remiss if we didn’t at least provide the following reminders. You can create folders that hold up to 36 apps each (four pages with 9 apps each). Put Spotlight to work to quickly find and launch apps no matter which Home screen they’re on or folder they’re in. And take advantage of multitasking (by double-tapping the Home button) to quickly switch between recently used apps. If you’re hazy on any of these three concepts, we suggest that you flip back to Chapter 2, where they are expounded upon in full and loving detail.

There you have it — you now know everything you need to know to find, install, delete, and organize iPhone apps!

Books, Newspapers, and Magazines

Before we leave the subject of apps and the App Store, we want to tell you how to find, buy, and read books and magazines on your iPhone.

We’ve run into plenty of skeptics who beg the question, “What’s so wrong with paper books, which folks have been reading for centuries, that we now have to go digital?” The short answer is that nothing is wrong with physical books — except that paper is fragile over the long term, and books tend to be bulky, a potential impediment for travelers.

On the other hand, when asked why he prefers paper books, Bob likes to drop one from shoulder height and ask, “Can your iPad (or Kindle) do that?”

Having read that, consider the electronic advantages:

• Forget weight constraints: You won't break your back if you cart a whole bunch of e-books around when you travel. And you’ll always have your reference library in your pocket or purse when you need it.
• Switch genres at will: Go for it. Rather immerse yourself in classic literature? Go for that. You might read a textbook, cookbook, or biography. Or gaze in wonder at an illustrated beauty. What’s more, you can switch among the various titles and styles of books at will, before finishing any single title.
• Change fonts and type sizes: With e-books, or what Apple prefers to call iBooks, you can change the text size and fonts on the fly, quite useful for those with less than 20/20 vision.
• Get the meaning of a word on the spot: No more searching for a physical dictionary. You can look up an unfamiliar word on the spot.
• Search with ease: Looking to do research on a particular subject? Enter a search term to find each and every mention of the subject in the book you’re reading.
• See all the artwork in color: Indeed, you’re making no real visual sacrifices anymore. For example, the latest iBooks software from Apple lets you experience (within certain limits) the kind of stunning art book once reserved for a coffee table. Or you can display a colorful children’s picture book. Although artwork is even more stunning on an iPad, it’s still impressive on the iPhone’s smaller screen.
• Read in the dark: The iPhone has a high-resolution backlit display so that you can read without a lamp nearby, which is useful in bed when your partner is trying to sleep.

Truth is, this backlit story has two sides. The grayscale electronic ink displays on Amazon’s Kindle and several other e-readers may be easier on the eyes and reduce eye fatigue, especially if you read for hours on end. And although you may indeed have to supply your own lighting source to read in low-light situations, those screens are somewhat easier to see than the iPhone screen when you’re out and about in bright sunshine.

iBooks for your iPhone

To start reading electronic books on your iPhone, just tap the iBooks app on your Home screen. The app includes access to Apple’s iBooks Store, which looks and feels almost exactly like the App Store, which is to say it’s an inviting place to browse and shop for books 24 hours a day.

iBooks and the iBooks Store aren’t the only game in town. Check out other e-book options such as the Kindle, Nook, Bluefire, and Stanza apps, which many users prefer over the iBooks experience. Your mileage may vary.

You can buy iBooks on your computer by using iTunes (in the App Store’s Books section) or the iBooks app (Macs running OS X 10.9 Mavericks or later). On your iPhone, you buy books by tapping the Store button at the top of the iBooks app’s main screen.

You can only read iBooks on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Mac running OS X 10.9 Mavericks or later. You can buy an iBook using iTunes or iBooks (Mavericks only) on your Mac or iTunes on your PC, but you can’t read that iBook using iTunes (or any other app we know of other than the OS X Mavericks and Yosemite iBooks app) on a Mac or PC. We hope this anomaly will be corrected, but as we write this you can read iBooks only on iDevices and Macs running Mavericks or Yosemite.

Newspapers and magazines

Those in the newspaper business know that it’s been tough sledding in recent years. The Internet has proved to be a disruptive force in media, as it has in so many other areas.

It remains to be seen what role Apple generally, and the iPhone specifically, will play in the future of electronic periodicals or in helping to turn around sagging media enterprises. It’s also uncertain which pricing models will make the most sense from a business perspective.

What we can tell you is that reading newspapers and magazines on the iPhone is not like reading newspapers and magazines in any other electronic form. The experience can be slick, but only you can decide whether it’s worth paying the tab (in the cases where you do have to pay).

Don’t look for newspapers and magazines in the iBooks app’s iBooks Store. Periodicals are not considered books and are handled differently.

Newspaper and magazine apps

You can follow two paths to subscribe to or read a single issue of a newspaper or magazine. The first includes several fine publishing apps worth checking out, including USA TODAY (where Ed works), The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Thomson Reuters News Pro, BBC News, and Popular Mechanics. We also recommend fetching the free Zinio app, which offers publications including Rolling Stone, The Economist, Macworld, PC Magazine, Car and Driver, National Geographic, Spin, Business Week, and Sporting News. You can buy single issues of a magazine or subscribe, and sample and share some articles without a subscription.

You have to pay handsomely or subscribe to some of these newspapers and magazines, and most (if not all) of them contain ads (somebody has to pay the freight).

Newsstand

The second path to periodicals is the Newsstand app. Its handy icon on your Home screen is a special folder that gathers newspaper and magazine apps from participating publishers in a single convenient location.

To shop for periodicals on your computer, launch iTunes (or iBooks on Macs running Mavericks or Yosemite) and then click the iTunes Store in the sidebar. Next, press and hold down the Apps link near the top of the screen, and then select Newsstand from the drop-down menu.

On your iPhone, you can peruse periodicals in the Newsstand section of the App Store. Tap App Store, tap the Categories icon at the bottom of the screen, and then tap Newsstand. In addition, you can tap the Store button in the Newsstand icon on your Home screen to go to the App Store’s Newsstand section.

It’s too soon to tell how many publications will adopt the Newsstand paradigm, how many will choose custom apps or Zinio, and how many will do both. Stay tuned.

As the late Steve Jobs was so fond of saying in his keynotes, “There is one last thing": If you’re into apps, we are happy to inform you that Chapters 17 and 18, in the famous Part of Tens, are about our ten favorite free iPhone apps and our ten favorites with a price on their virtual heads.