The iPad Downloads Blog

The iPad supports two of the three common audio profiles for Bluetooth: one for stereo audio playback, and another that allows  remote control (pause, play, and stop). Unfortunately, a third profile  for hands-free communication, such as with a Bluetooth headset, isn’t  supported in iPhone OS 3.2 on the iPad.

Note: The technical names for these three profiles—useful if  you’re examining the spec of Bluetooth gear to buy— are Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP), Audio/Video Remote Control Profile (AVRCP), and Hands-Free Profile (HFP).

Once you’ve paired stereo headphones, you can use them just as you  would headphones plugged into an iPhone. You can use the start, stop,  and other controls in an app playing back audio, or, if  your Bluetooth headset has these controls, handle those options remotely.

iPad apps that allow audio playback should display a special Bluetooth destination icon. Tap it to select between one (or more!) active Bluetooth headsets through a pop-up menu. Tap a source to choose it, or it tap Cancel to exit the menu. Audio continues to play  throughout and seamlessly switches when you tap.

When you have multiple audio output choices available, apps should  display the current device in use. iTunes shows the selected output in its upper-left corner; Netflix, using a standard audio control bar, shows the device below the play/pause button.

You can stop using a Bluetooth headset at any time by using one of these three methods:

• Turn off the Bluetooth headset using its power button.
• In Setting-> General->Bluetooth, in the entry for the headset, tab the detail button, tap Forget This Device, and then tap OK.
• Move the iPad or Bluetooth headset out of range of the other. I like  this option least, because Bluetooth can work over quite a long  range. If you leave a headset at home and take the iPad with you, then this option makes sense.

In all cases, audio output reverts to speakers or headphones automatically.

You can have access when you need it without breaking your limits or  paying for more chunks of data if you ration usage. What you need is a strategy.

• Turn Cellular Data on Only When You Need It
  In the Settings app, tap Cellular Data, and then set the Cellular Data switch to Off.
• Limit Your Activities When Using the Cell Network
  Unless you are using Wi-Fi, limit your activities to checking email and Web pages. Don’t use video or audio streaming programs (YouTube, Netflix, and others), or programs that load large amounts of image data, such as the Maps app, or navigation programs that load maps live over the Internet as you move about. Don’t update apps via the App Store, either.
• Find Free Wifi
  There’s an increasingly large amount of free Wi-Fi around North -America, and in some countries in Europe. In the United States, all 12,000 McDonald’s outlets with Wi-Fi charge nothing, and a number of airports (including Seattle-Tacoma and Denver) have free service. Starting on July 1, 2010, Starbucks will offer free Wi-Fi service in all its company-owned stores in the United States, which number about 7,000. Libraries often offer free Wi-Fi.
• Check Data Usage Regularly
  In Settings, you can tap General > Usage to see the current up and down transfer numbers; add them together for the total. To check your carrier’s count of usage, log in at Settings > Cellular Data > View Account. These numbers tend to lag 30 to 60 minutes behind actual usage.

A lot of confusion and misinformation about presentations exists, creating a bad reputation for presentations and presentation software. By looking at these issues, however, you can find out how to avoid problems and how to make your own Keynote presentations more effective and productive.

Presentations differ from other types of documents in that they are not designed for a person to use on their own. A presenter (usually you) controls the pace of the presentation. And, what’s more, because presentations are usually given in a darkened room, you can’t always tell if you’re losing your audience. Here are some tips for avoiding problems in this area:

• Avoid the dark: Use the least amount of room-darkening you can for your presentation. Make certain you can see your audience.
• Use Q&A sections: Use more (and shorter) Q&A sections in your presentations to involve your audience as much as possible.
• Use a roadmap: Let people know where you’re going in your presentation and where they are at any moment. When you’re reading a book, the heft of the unread pages gives you an idea of how far you’ve come. With a presentation, one slide after another can come out of the dark without any clue as to how it fits into the presentation.
• Time and rehearse your presentation: Fortunately, Keynote has excellent presentation tools so that you can make your presentation as efficient as possible. Depending on your topic, your experience with presentations, and who you are, you may find it more important to work on timing or to rehearse your presentation. Some presenters need no more than a few minutes’ rehearsal, but many others need hours to come up with a 15-minute presentation.

iPad’s much touted 10-hour battery life is a wonderful feature, but there are things you can do to extend that battery life even further. Here are a few tips to consider:

• You can judge how much battery life you have left by looking at the Battery icon in the far-right corner of the Status bar at the top of your screen.
• Hmm . . . I wonder why, but when connected to a Mac computer, iPad can slowly charge; however, some PC connections slowly drain the battery. Even so, the most effective way to charge your iPad is to plug it into the wall outlet using the Dock Connector to USB Cable and the 10W USB Power Adapter that came with your iPad.
• The fastest way to charge the iPad is to turn it off while charging it.
• Your battery may lose some power if you leave it connected to the USB port on a keyboard.
• You can use a dock device available from Apple to charge the iPad while it rests in the dock through the connector on the dock itself.
• The Battery icon on the Status bar lets you know when the charging is complete.

Your iPad battery is sealed in the unit, so you can’t replace it as you can with a laptop or cell phone battery. If it’s out of warranty, you’ll have to fork over the money, possibly more than $100 to get a new battery.

iPads don’t grow on trees — they cost a pretty penny. That’s why it’s important that you learn how to take care of your iPad and troubleshoot any problems that might come up so you get the most out of it.

In this article, I provide some advice about care and maintenance of your iPad, as well as some tips about how to solve common problems.

If iPad goes dead on you, it’s most likely a power issue, so the first thing to do is to plug the Dock Connector to USB Cable into the 10W USB Power Adapter, plug the 10W USB Power Adapter into a wall outlet, plug the other end of the Dock Connector to USB Cable into your iPad, and charge the battery.

Another thing to try — if you think an app is hanging up the iPad — is to press the Sleep/Wake button for a little bit. Next, press and hold the Home key. The app you were using should close.

There’s always the old reboot procedure, which in the case of an iPad means pressing the Sleep/Wake button on the top until the red slider is displayed. Drag the slider to turn your iPad off. After a few moments, press the Sleep/Wake button to boot the little guy up again.

If things seem drastic and none of these ideas works, try to reset your iPad. To do this, press the Sleep/Wake button and the Home button together until the Apple logo appears on-screen.

Apple has a set of recommendations for iPad applications, and they also apply to games. Here are some of the ways in which the iPad differs from the iPhone. Keep these in mind when you’re developing your game.

Multiple orientations

Applications need to make an effort to support all orientations — both portrait and landscape need to be supported and upside-down versions of each.

The iPad is a device that adapts itself to how it’s held. When you use an iPad, you often change how you hold it based on what’s comfortable. Additionally, when you pick up an iPad and turn it on, the device needs to be ready for you to use instantly, rather than you rotating it until you can work with it.

This isn’t a hard-and-fast rule: Not all applications make sense in both portrait and landscape modes. Many wide screen applications (such as many racing games, and Apple’s Keynote presentation software) don’t support displaying in portrait mode because those apps don’t make that much sense when squeezed and resized to fit the portrait orientation.

Therefore, design your games with the aim of supporting all orientations. For space reasons, we don’t cover adapting Traffic as a landscape application, but any games that you write need to start out with this idea in mind.

Multiple orientations

The larger screen on the iPad means that there’s more room for hands to move around the screen. Because the physical screen space on the iPhone is small, the user moves her fingers only small distances when she plays games. On the iPad, though, there’s plenty of room, and the user has to move her entire arm to reach from one corner of the screen to the other.

To avoid making your user have to reach too much, keep related controls close to each other. The farther away a control is from the user’s hand, the less likely it is he’ll want to use it, unless he really has to.

This issue is mitigated a little bit by the fact that the user is more likely to use both hands, but it’s still a factor. Design your game so that the user can quickly get at the stuff he cares about!

Two people, one device

Remember this when you’re designing iPad games: The iPad is a great device for sharing game play with other people.

With the large screen, two people have room to play the same game, which can be an incredible experience. In Chapter 20, we show you how to update Traffic to support multiple-person game play on the same screen. Also, think about how you could turn your own games into games you can share with friends.

The best kind of marketing is word of mouth, and the best kind of word of mouth is where your user shares the game experience with their friends. By letting players share the game together, you’re more likely to get another sale!

Think about a typical weekday — it’s 8 a.m., and you’re waiting for your train. You’re bored. You’ve already checked your e-mail more times than is healthy, you’ve checked Twitter and told the world that your train is late, and you’ve checked the latest news headlines in your favorite news application. And you’re still bored.

If only you had a game to pass the time! If you’re using an iPad, you probably do. You take your iPad out of your pocket and touch the icon of your current favorite game to ease your boredom for a moment. Sixty seconds later, your bus arrives. You instantly snap out of the pocket-sized game world you were absorbed in, push your iPad’s Home button, and get on the bus.

On the train, you take a seat and pull your iPad back out. Touching the icon of your favorite game again, you ease right back into play at exactly the same point you left off before you got on the train. Ten minutes later, your train pulls up at your stop, and you hit the Home button, pop the iPad into your pocket, and head into work.

Why does all this matter? This scenario reflects the way most people play the best of the games available on the iPad. They want to be able to listen to their music while they play, and they don’t want the game to demand so much of them that they’ll miss their train, or worse.

People play their iPad games in potentially loud, bright, and distracting environments while they wait for something else to happen or while they talk to people. They play them for a minute or two before switching to something else, and they expect their iPad to know what they were up to when they finally come back to the game.

The iBookstore, not surprisingly, is designed to encourage you to spend money on books, but plenty of free books are available for download. To access the iBookstore, tap the Store button at the top left of the iBooks library screen. Like Apple’s other online stores, you can browse featured titles, search for a book using the Search field, or tap the Categories button to browse deeper into the catalog by genres.

The iBookstore keeps track of which books you’ve downloaded through your iTunes Store account, whether to your iPad or to another Apple device. If for some reason you don’t have a book on your iPad—maybe you deleted it to save storage space, or you had to replace your iPad, or you first downloaded it to your iPhone—you can get a new copy:

1. In the iBookstore, tap the Purchases button on the tab bar at the bottom of the screen.A list of your purchased (including free) books appears. If you don’t see the list, make sure you’ve logged in using your iTunes account; tap the Sign In button and enter your email address and password.
2. Tap the Redownload button for any books that are not currently stored on the iPad.

The book appears in your library.

iBooks stores your location in a book and any bookmarks you made, even for books you’ve deleted. When you re-download a book, the page you last read and your bookmarks are all retained.

I’m quite fond of text-expansion utilities that automatically replace  short abbreviations with boilerplate text, such as your name or address, or even multiple paragraphs. I’ve purchased two such apps for my iPad, and I like them both a lot, for different reasons:

• TextExpander (SmileOnMyMac, $4.99)
  TextExpander is a customizable typing shortcut tool that saves time and keystrokes. With TextExpander, you can define abbreviations for frequently-used text strings and images, also known as snippets. When an abbreviation is typed, it expands automatically to the full snippet.You can use your TextExpander touch snippets directly in over 100 apps that support it, including Twittelator, TwitBird Pro, Elements, Simplenote, WriteRoom, Circus Ponies NoteBook, DEVONthink To Go, BusyToDo, Things, and Zendesk.
• TapIt4Me (Ettore Software, $4.99)
  TapIt4Me can use TextExpander and TypeIt4Me snippet files. While TypeIt4Me will insert snippets directly into any desktop application, TapIt4Me makes you compose your messages entirely within special “notes” pages. Once your note is completed, though, a simple tap of an icon will send the entire text block to the Mail app.Armed with TapIt4Me, you’ll no longer have to wrestle with Apple’s quirky baked-in Auto-Complete suggestions to turn your thoughts into notes on the screen, one word at a time.

As I write this, both of them has been updated already to take advantage of the iPad’s larger screen. They work well, I presume they’ll both appear new features in iPad-friendly versions soon, and I recommend keeping your eye out for them. They’re sure to be must-have tools.

You may be wondering, as many other people are, whether having an iPad means you can leave your laptop at home — at least some of the time. That depends, of course, on a lot of variables. But instead of trying to answer that question abstractly, you can gather experimental evidence to figure it out for real.

Try this.

For the next two weeks, take your iPad with you everywhere you possibly can. It’ll fit in any backpack or briefcase and many purses. It’s so light that if you’re already planning to carry pretty much anything else, you’ll barely notice having your iPad along as well.

If you think you might need your laptop too, no problem. Do as I do: slip your iPad into a spare pocket in your laptop case! But also make a point of carrying it when you go out without your laptop. One way or another, have it with you wherever you go. (Naturally, make exceptions when going to the pool, riding a rollercoaster, or running a marathon—common sense applies as usual!)

The point of this experiment is to make your iPad available to yourself in as many situations as possible. You can’t use it if it’s not there, but if it is there and you try to get some work done, you may find that your creativity kicks in, and novel uses or techniques occur to you. You may think to yourself, “If only there were an app that did such-and-such,” and then find that there is indeed such an app.

And, if you have your laptop too, try using the iPad first. See for yourself what’s possible, what’s awkward, and what’s out of the question. With a couple weeks’ experience, you should have a good feel for when and to what extent the iPad can be the only device you need—perhaps with the addition of some software and an accessory or two.

Best of all, you may discover that you can now get “real” work done in places you never could before—on the subway, while waiting in line, or even (you know you’re thinking it) in the bathroom.

Do be careful not to get your iPad wet, though!