Tom welcomed folks to Mastering iPhone - Fall 2023 class, noting that 40 iPhone models are in use today with a variety of operating systems, iOS ... He will be demonstrating today on an iPhone 13 Pro using iOS 17.2 beta! If you are up-to-date then your Settings > General > About > will reveal you are on iOS 17.1. If your iPhone is older than an 11 model or your iOS is less than 16, we can guarantee that what you see on your device will NOT be part of what we demonstrate. Similar, yes. But features continue to be added and some things will not match. So take a breath and watch. Then read the notes on this website and practice our motto: Touch Every Button!
Answers to Questions from Chat:
- Did you see the stylus that Tom was using during the demo? He mentioned picking it up at Best Buy or Staples, etc. Important: Rubber Tip! You do not use a pen point that might scratch the screen.
- Best place to buy a new iPhone? Your options are retail (Apple Store or Apple online, Best Buy, Costco, and your cellular provider). Apple sells their newest phones but other retailers offer older models that might still be an upgrade from your current device. Also, cellular providers want your business and will sometimes give away phones for a commitment of monthly payments for calls/text/data.
- What version of the iOS are you on? Settings > General > About >...
The Share Button icon looks like a box with an arrow and is full of options that vary depending on the app in use at the moment. There are three tiers to the Share Sheet that pops up: People, Actions/Applications and Functions. What you see on this sheet depends on the apps you have purchased and how you might edit the list to meet your current needs.
Take a few minutes to explore the Share button in ... Mail, Safari and Notes apps.
There is another place where Share is hidden! Go back to Safari and find a webpage with text. Select some of the text on the page by touching the glass and moving your finger down the page - the text under your finger tip (or stylus) will highlight. When you let go, a horizontal menu will pop-up. But what see is just the first of the options that you can do with a selection! Look for the ">" and tap it, tap it again until you see "Share..." Now the Share sheet appears again.
You can personalize the Share Sheet Actions if you swipe all the way to the right and reorder the Functions list by scrolling down to the bottom of the page to Edit Actions...
View / Read / Search the Notes User Guide
Notes app user interface tour: Tap the Notes app to open it to ... Folders view. (Sorry, but I have no clue to what you see if you've never used the app or created a Note!) This view shows you Quick Notes, Shared and then iCloud, On My iPhone and Tags with buttons at the bottom of the screen - on the left tap the folder icon to make a new folder and on the right the box with pen to begin a new note. In the top right corner is "Edit" and you can reorder the list of folders using the "hamburger" lines icons or (...) More to see additional features. Tap "Done" when you are finished perusing the Edit menu.
Storing your Notes in iCloud means they are available on your iPad and Mac computers through syncing. (iCloud is also available for Windows computers.) Storing Notes on your iPhone means that the information is only available on that device. Notes do not take up much space so storing on iCloud has real benefits and fewer headaches.
Tap the new note button, bottom right corner, to open a blank screen. The first line will be the title of the note (shown in a folder list) and the cursor is blinking there, waiting for you to type something meaningful. But pause here, and review the buttons available. On the top left is < Folders, then on the right is Share (icon is gray, dimmed), (...) More and Done. At the bottom left is a globe (other keyboards) and on the right is the microphone for dictating text. Above is the keyboard for typing letters and numbers or adding Smileys, predictive text options and then formatting options for text, checklists, lists and tables. Tap the Camera icon to see a menu of options: Choose a photo, Scan a document, Take a photo or Scan text. Tap the circle with pen icon, Markup, to reveal the drawing tools! Tap the ( + ) to see a menu with more options! Wow! Tap "Done" in the top right to exit the Markup mode.
Notes have two modes, View and Edit. So if you are just viewing a note the keyboard is hiding but at the bottom of the screen are buttons. Are you recognizing what features these icons represent? Tap the screen to bring up the keyboard. Tap "Done" to dismiss the keyboard.
We are encouraging you to make several notes. Be brave and experiment. Tap Aa icon to format text or by making a Checklist, a new note with a 3 column table, try out the Markup drawing tools on another note, add a photo to a note or scan a document. In iOS 17, adding PDF documents is more powerful than ever. You have our permission to ... PLAY!
If you want to clean house and, put your toys away so to speak, there are two ways to Delete notes. From the Folders view where notes are listed, swipe from right-to-left to see two options: Folder and Trash. You can easily move a note to a different folder or delete it. From a note view look in the top right corner and tap (...) More. This menu includes many options including Delete.
In organizing your Notes collection you might 1) take to traditional route of making folders and filing the notes where they belong. Remember, look at a list of notes and swipe right-to-left to see the folder icon and then tap to navigate to the folder. 2) Your iPhone has a powerful Search feature that can display a list of notes because text inside the note was "found." Actually, just taping the Search field brings up interesting filters to help refine your task. 3) Tags are text at the bottom of a note that look like: #masteringiphone #notesapp #scandocuments and using multiple tags beats out filing a note in one folder when the contents might be relevant to multiple folders.
On of my favorite things to do with Notes is to draft an email message. The first line, title, becomes the Subject Line of the email message and the text that follows becomes the body of the email. Use the Share button to bring up all the ways to share this information. Wait! Look at the top to see "Send a Copy" and tap to see the second option - Collaborate. It is a good idea to practice collaborative editing with a friend before you launch a serious multi-editor project.
Other things you can do with Notes include: Pin, Lock, Add Lines & Grids, and dictate text instead of typing.
Do yourself a favor and dive into the iPhone User Guide. For every app you use, Touch Every Button.
Next week is Reminders with Carol. Review that topic in the User Guide .. 😉