iPad Tips & Tricks

The iPad and the iPad 2 are amazing and powerful devices. To help you do amazing things with it, we offer this collection of tips and tricks and how-to articles.

Some of these are iPad Basics sort of stuff that are helpful for newer users- for instance, how to instantly jump to the top of a web or email page, how to save images from the iPad web browser or email apps. Others are how-to’s that are useful even for iPad power users – things like how to print from the iPad, or the best ways to get photos and videos transferred from an iPhone to the iPad without having to connect to a PC, or how to disable In-App purchases so your kids can’t inadvertently run up your App Store spending.

I hope some of these iPad tips will help you get the most out of your iPad.

How To Import Instapaper Articles into Pocket

by on in iPad Tips & Tricks

Pocket iPad app

Pocket and Instapaper are two excellent read-it-later apps / services for the iPad, iOS and beyond. I’ve used both services for years, but for the last year or so I’ve been using Pocket a lot more than Instapaper.

So a tip on how to import Instapaper articles into Pocket, from Whitson Gordon at Lifehacker, caught my eye this morning. Since Pocket is the app I look at regularly, it seems a fine idea to pull my Instapaper saved articles into it. And it’s super easy to do. Here’s a few things to be aware of before starting:

– Instapaper export note: If you have more than 2,000 articles, only the most recent 2,000 will be included.

– Pocket Import Note: Instapaper’s export does not provide a list of what items you have ‘liked’ or ‘favorited’. As a result, your ‘liked’ items have been imported into your Pocket archive but will not be marked as favorite.

– It’s also worth mentioning that imported Instapaper articles will go right to the top of your Pocket listing of articles. In an ideal world, I would have preferred them to flow into Pocket based on the date of the items, which would’ve placed them much farther down.

[click to continue reading…]

Share this:

The 3 Fastest Ways to Get Photos from an iPad to a Mac or Windows PC

by on in iPad Tips & Tricks

Photo Transfer App

If you’ve got photos and images on your iPad that you want to transfer to a Mac or Windows PC there are a number of ways you can go about it. Today I’d like to offer a quick rundown of a few methods that I find to be the easiest and the fastest by far:

Here they are:

Photo Transfer App

Photo Transfer App does just what its name would suggest. It has a easy to use interface with no extra bells and whistles – and just makes it fast and simple to transfer photos between your iPads, iPhones, and computers on a local WiFi network.

The app costs $2.99 and can be installed on both the iPad and the iPhone. 

To transfer photos to your Mac or Windows PC you open Photo Transfer App, select the Send button (shown above) and then select which sort of device you want to send to – Windows computer, Mac computer, or another iOS or another device (an iOS or Android mobile device).

Then you just follow a simple on-screen instruction to type an address into a web browser on your Mac or Windows PC, select what resolution you’d like to download your photos at, and click a Download button.

Just as a quick example, it took around 30 seconds to download a .zip file with 75 iPad photos at full resolution.

[click to continue reading…]

Share this:

How To Setup Google Contact Sync on the iPad

by on in iPad Tips & Tricks

Google Contacts

Google has made some changes this year to how Google Contacts sync with iOS devices. For years I had just setup Google Sync as an Exchange account in Settings on the iPad and iPhone and it has worked beautifully for me. It had been especially good whenever I got a new iPad or iPhone – as all I had to do was setup that account and within less than a minute all my Contacts info was up-to-date.

Unfortunately, Google recently shutdown their Google Sync service – but luckily it is still easy to use Google to sync contacts on the iPad and iOS devices. Here’s how you do it:

*** Before embarking on this it is of course a good idea to make sure you backup your existing contacts. This can be done via iCloud or iTunes backup or whatever method works for the service or app you use for your contacts information. You should also note this detail about the CardDav sync method used here:

Syncing via CardDAV is only available over SSL for Apple devices on iOS version 5.0 and above.

[click to continue reading…]

Share this:

How to Sync Google Calendar with the iPad

by on in iPad Tips & Tricks

iPad Calendar

Google has made some changes this year to how Google Calendar syncs with iOS devices. For years I have just setup Google Sync as an Exchange account in Settings on the iPad and iPhone and it has worked beautifully for me. It had been especially good whenever I got a new iPad or iPhone – as all I had to do was setup that account and within less than a minute all my Calendar info was up-to-date.

Unfortunately, Google Sync was shutdown by Google in January of this year. So when I recently bought a new iPad mini I discovered that Google Sync no longer works for Calendar or Contacts. But … there is still a way to sync Google Calendar and Contacts with the iPad – and both are easy to do once you know how. In this post I’ll outline how to get Google Calendar sync working; I’ll soon write another explaining how to setup Google Contacts sync.

Here’s how to get Google Calendar sync working with the iPad:

– Open the Settings app.

[click to continue reading…]

Share this:

iPad Basics: No You Cannot Upgrade Storage Memory or Add 4G Cellular Data After Purchase

by on in iPad Tips & Tricks

Choose iPad model

Here’s a very quick, very basic iPad buying tip. This is common knowledge for most veteran iPad or tablet owners, but I see these questions asked so frequently in online forums that I thought it was worth a short post.

The questions I’m referring to, and the short answers, are as follows:

Can the iPad’s storage memory after purchase? No. The storage space available out of the box is what you get, and cannot be upgraded. The iPad also has no SD or other additional storage ports. So choose wisely when deciding between 16, 32. an 64GB models. My general rule of thumb is to always go for the maximum storage as long as it’s within  my budget.

Can a WiFi iPad be upgraded to add 4G or any Cellular data plan? No. If you buy a WiFi only iPad it is always going to be a WiFi only model. You cannot upgrade any of the internal components of the iPad. If you own an iPhone or another smartphone you can look into tethering options to provide connectivity to your iPad when away from WiFi.

Share this:

How To Turn Off In App Purchases on the iPad / iOS

by on

Recently there’s been plenty of news coverage of young kids running up ridiculous bills on their parents’ credit cards when playing what they thought were free games on the iPad or iPhone. In fact they were playing ‘freemium’ games – games that are free to install but offer numerous In-App purchase options that can quickly [...]

Read the full article →