However, after two weeks with my new iPad, I’m suddenly taking advantage of these gesture functions like never before. In fact, I can think of only three instances that I even need to hit the home button anymore: Waking the device, grabbing a screen shot and getting out of the mode that lets you delete or move apps around.

Gone is the hardware button double-tap to switch back and forth between apps. No more pressing the button to return to the home screen either. After rediscovering these gestures and then making them part of my navigation workflow, I’m getting around the iOS environment far faster on my iPad. Here’s a summary of the multi-finger gestures currently available for iPad navigation; aside from the standard two-finger pinching and double-tap to zoom functions.

Five-finger pinch: Here you just “grab” the screen at any point to get back to the Home screen. It’s quick, fast and simple.

Four-finger swipe up: Want to see the multitasking bar, showing you the most recently used apps? This gesture replaces the double-tap of the Home button. You can pick a different app here or simply swipe four fingers back down to hide the multitasking bar.

Four-finger swipe left / right: Thanks to this gesture, I actually don’t use the multitasking bar much, if at all, anymore. By swiping four fingers left or right, the iPad quickly moves you through your running and most recently used apps. I strategically open my most used apps one after another, so I can quickly swipe between Mail, Safari, and the Kindle app for example.

A few extra hints and helpers

First, you have to make sure that gestures are turned on for your iPad. Look in Settings, General, Multitasking Gestures to set the slider to On if needed.

Second, you can actually remove an app from your multitasking bar with gestures, although you can’t remove an app from the Home screens without the Home button. To do this, use the four-finger swipe up to show the currently running and recently used apps.

Then tap and hold on any of these apps to get into editing mode. Tap the upper left badge — the red minus sign — on any app or apps you want to remove. When done, simply do a four-finger swipe down to hide the multitasking bar and the selected apps are gone!

Again, these gestures first appeared over a year ago and you could have enabled them by a little bit of tweaking effort and a $5 download. But they’re the real deal now and after embracing them these past two weeks, I find the iPad much simpler, intuitive and quicker to use all around.

Maybe I’m just slow to the multi-finger gesture game though. Let me know if you’re using them in this simple little poll as I’m wondering if these gestures are a type of hidden function that some iPad owners don’t know about.

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Since Apple introduced the new device a week and a half ago, we’ve been trying to answer your questions about which device to buy, whether you should upgrade and, once you have it in your hands, what to do from there. Which apps should you get? Which ones will look the best? Which data plan should you pick? Here’s what you need to know.

Details, details

Here’s a scientific explanation of what makes the new so-called Retina display so very bright and unpixelated.

Sure, you might feel silly taking video with an iPad. But Kevin Tofel thinks you might feel differently now that the new iPad has better cameras and useful photo-editing software. Here’s his analysis of the new cameras.

Making decisions

One-stop shop for the most insightful reviews of the new iPad: here’s Om’s meta review of the reviews.

iPad versus iPad: Now that Apple is bringing 4G to the iPad, which carrier should you go with? Kevin Fitchard compares the services and options from both AT&T and Verizon.

Now that you have your iPad

What if you already have a 3G wireless contract? We walk you through the steps to upgrading your 3G data plan to a 4G data plan.

With that 2048 × 1536 display resolution and 264 pixels per inch, the iPad’s most noticeable new feature is the Retina display. Here’s a roundup of the apps available in the iTunes App Store now that have been optimized for the new high-resolution display.

iPhoto, Apple’s photo-editing software for the Mac, is for the first time on the iPad. It’s been reworked for touch-based editing photos and creating Photo Journals pictures, maps, weather and calendar widgets — here are the details.

As our own iPads get delivered, we’ll have more coverage over the weekend and into next week, so stay tuned.

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What You Need to Get Started

To start, you will also need an HDTV with an Apple TV attached, an iPhone 4S and a free Skype account. Why Skype and not FaceTime?  Well there are many more Skype users than FaceTime users. And quite frankly, it is much easier to get all members of the family up and running with a free Skype account than to initialize everyone’s iOS and Mac devices with FaceTime.

Prepare the Car Mount

Most iPhone docks are designed for someone sitting at a desk. What is needed is a better mount that can allow the iPhone to be better positioned for larger settings.  Take any decent smartphone car mount with a suction cup, like this one from Arkon for $15 on Amazon. The suction cup needs a smooth surface to attach to, so try mounting it to any household hand mirror. This set up gives extra stability to the video and the added ability to pass the camera in the mount around easily. The great thing about the car mount from Arkon is that it is just about infinitely adjustable, so no matter how or where you need to place the hand mirror you can angle the iPhone the way you want. And if you happen not to have anywhere to place the hand mirror, just tack up a nail and hang the hand mirror upside down on the wall.  Just don’t lock in the iPhone 4S before you make the video call. (The mount’s quick release allows one to attach and detach the iPhone quickly and easily.) Wait until after the call has been established before you put the iPhone into the car mount attached to the hand mirror.

Initiate the Video Call

Placing a video call on Skype with an iPhone is just as easy as chatting or placing a voice call.  To increase the quality of the video once the call is established, be sure to use the back camera of the iPhone. Then double click the phone’s Home button and swipe left twice to reveal the volume and Airplay buttons. To display the call on the big screen, just click on the Apple TV you want to use and turn on Mirroring. Once you’ve done that, mount the iPhone in the car mount and experience video calls on the big screen. As a side note, I have found that when placing Mac-to-iPhone Skype video calls, it is easier to establish a video connection when the call originates from the Mac.

If this solution works great for you, you can always shop around for a more attractive mounting solution.  You could even invest in a mountable surface that permanently affixes itself to the wall just above your HDTV. For instance, the top shelf of my main entertainment system is made of glass, so I don’t really need a mirror in that room of the house.  There are just as many car mounts on the market as there are solutions on how to mount them on or near an HDTV.

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The new iTunes Match page not only includes a couple of paragraphs describing the service, as did the brief blurb on the iCloud page that used to cover the topic; it also includes a simple four-step procedure for getting started matching your library and a 10-question FAQ featuring most of the things I’ve been asked by confused family and friends about the service. This includes whether or not iTunes Match streams or downloads a track (it can do either on a computer running iTunes; it does both simultaneously on an iOS device; it only streams on Apple TV) and what happens if you don’t renew your subscription. (Downloaded songs on any devices remain yours, cloud access is gone.)

Also included is an iTunes Match walkthrough video, which provides exact instructions for how to find and subscribe to iTunes Match on your Mac, as well as how to turn it on your iOS 5 device and Apple TV. It’s about as straightforward as a screencast gets, and the whole thing is just over a minute long. If relatives are calling about getting iTunes Match set up on their new iPad, this is definitely the direction to point them in.

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Welcome to another installment of Tips and Tricks, the series that aims to teach you something new about your Apple stuff. This time, we’ll be taking a look at Siri on the iPhone 4S and how changing one or two words in your query can produce completely different results.

Dateless reminders

Sometimes, you might want to use iOS 5′s new Reminders app as more of a checklist, rather than being reminded at a certain time for each item. Using the normal Siri query, Remind me to…, you’ll be asked to give a time or place to be reminded. In order to add a ‘dateless’ reminder, you can say one of two things. Either use Add … to my … list, which will add the item to the named list, if you have one set up, or you can use Remember to… to add the reminder to your default list without giving it a date.

Stop Siri tripping over words like Christmas

When setting up reminders, Siri can get a bit confused if your reminder contains words such as ‘Christmas’ or ‘Easter’. Instead of setting the reminder up for the date you say, it’ll ignore that date and set it up for 9 AM on the day you mentioned. However, after a bit of playing around with word order, it turns out that this only happens if you mention the holiday day before the date on which you want to be reminded.

Say Remind me to buy Christmas presents on December fifth, and Siri will create a reminder for Christmas day at 9 AM. However, say Remind me on December fifth to buy Christmas presents, and your reminder will be created exactly as intended. As long as you tell Siri the date for the reminder first, you should have no problems.

Distinguish between a text and an email

When using the syntax Send a message to…, Siri will send either an iMessage or an SMS (depending on whether the recipient has iMessage or not). However, if you start the sentence with Write a message instead of Send a message, then your message will be sent as an email instead.

Change spelling or find alternative interpretations

Perhaps when using Siri or when using the dictation feature, you may have noticed blue dotted lines under select words in the text. This means that either alternative spellings are available, or Siri thinks it’s possible you said something slightly different. Tap the underlined word, and a menu similar to the copy/paste menu will appear, allowing you to select the suggested alternatives.

Do you have any tips of your own for using Siri more effectively? Share them below in the comments.

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To add a new word to the dictionary, tap Settings, then navigate to General > Keyboard. At the bottom of the screen, you should see a Shortcuts heading. Don’t be put off by the name; this is the place to teach iOS new words, but it’s called shortcuts because it’s primarily used to create typing shortcuts, similar to TextExpander.

Next, tap the Add New Shortcut… button. You’ll be taken to a new screen with two text fields, labelled Phrase and Shortcut. The important one is Phrase, at the top. This is where you need to type the word you want to add to your dictionary. The Shortcut field, as it says, is optional. That’s where you’d add a shortcut that expands into the phrase you added (more on that in a minute).

After typing in a word or phrase in the first field, tap Save at the top of the screen and your word will be added to the auto-correct dictionary. Now, when you type that word anywhere on your device, auto-correct should leave it alone, and if you spell it slightly wrong, it should suggest that word, too.

My username for almost everything is jobbogamer, so I added it to my dictionary.

If you’d like to enable TextExpander-like functionality, you can fill in the Shortcut field. For example, you could type “eml” as the shortcut, and set the phrase to your email address. After tapping save, whenever you type “eml”, auto-correct will suggest your email address. It’s very useful for words and phrases you type a lot, and since the feature is baked into iOS, it works in every app, not just those with support for TextExpander Touch, which was the way to get this functionality before iOS 5.

Some useful words to add to the dictionary

I’ve found it incredibly useful to add some words to my iPhone’s and my iPad’s dictionaries. For instance, I’ve added all my email addresses (I have quite a few!) with different shortcuts; my main email address is “eml”, my iCloud email address is “ieml”, and my Gmail address is “geml”.

Other helpful words to add are words you’ve made up yourself – I have a few of those, too – and nicknames for people. That way, you won’t have to battle auto-correct to type words that don’t really exist.

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Do I need iCloud to use iOS 5?

No, you don’t need to have your Apple ID associated with any of Apple’s iCloud services in order to use your iOS 5 devices. Signing up for iCloud is an optional step that you can take after the iOS 5 upgrade process. However, if you don’t sign up, you will limit access to some great iOS 5 features that do require an iCloud account. These features include:

• Reminders sync (you can still use local reminders, you just can’t sync them)
• Bookmarks sync (syncing your Safari bookmarks across iOS 5 devices and Macs running Lion 10.7.2 or higher)
• Photo Stream (you can still take photos and create multiple albums)
• Documents and Data Sync (which may be required by an increasing number of apps to take advantage of key features)
• Find My iPhone, iPod or iPad or Find My Friends
• iOS device backup to iCloud

If you want the above features, you’ll need to associate an Apple ID with the iCloud service. Keep in mind that you don’t need to use the same Apple ID with iCloud that you use to make your iTunes purchases. You can create a new Apple ID just for use with iCloud, if you are sharing a family account for making iTunes purchases, for example.

Also, if you are an existing MobileMe subscriber and aren’t in a hurry to migrate just yet, some of the above services like Bookmarks syncing and Find My iPhone will continue to work through MobileMe on your device running iOS 5, but you will need to consider migrating to iCloud sometime before June 12, 2012.  You don’t have to migrate as part of the iOS 5 upgrade.

Do I need a .me email address for iCloud to work?

The simple answer is no. This may come as a surprise, due to the way Apple has crafted the configuration screens for iCloud. Mail, Contacts, Calendar and Notes are all part of the configuration screen for your iCloud services.  It just so happens that I have an Apple ID that I created some time ago, using a yahoo.com address. I had no problem using this Apple ID to enable iCloud services on an iPhone running iOS 5. This also applies for other third-party email accounts (i.e., Hotmail, Gmail, etc.), as long as they’re associated with an active Apple ID.

On the surface, it appears I’m using my Yahoo account with iCloud. But I’m not. It just so happens that the ‘name’ I decided to use with this particular Apple ID is the  as the name of my Yahoo account.

The only two iCloud services that you can’t turn on with a non-Me.com iCloud account are Mail and Notes. All other iCloud services should work fine.

Every time you try to turn on Mail or Notes, when using a non-Me.com Apple ID, you’ll be prompted to create a Me.com email address. If you want to access Yahoo (or other third-party) mail on your phone, add it as a separate account under Mail, Contacts, Calendars in Settings, as I’ve done above. You can also use your non-Me.com ID for FaceTime and iMessages, too.

One Apple ID for iCloud, another for iTunes

You aren’t forced to use the same Apple ID for iCloud and the iTunes Store on the same device. Not having to do this is a good thing, since Apple does not offer any means of consolidating or merging two Apple IDs into one, so you could lose past purchases if you were forced to use only one identity.

Another benefit of this is that you can manage all of your family’s iTunes purchases from one iTunes account.  You can configure several Apple products to all share and use the same iTunes account for the App, iBook and iTunes Stores. In the past, you were allowed an unlimited number of iOS devices, and only five Macs. Now, you’re allowed up to 10 Apple products total for each iTunes account, and that can be any mix of iOS and Mac devices. At the same time, you can use a different Apple ID for iCloud on each family member’s device; plus the head of the family can still use that iTunes Store Apple ID for iCloud, too, if they’d rather keep things simple on their own private device.

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What you’ll need

• A Mac with at least 2 GB of RAM and at least 20 GB of free hard drive space.
• A disc burned using the ISO of the Windows 8 preview, available to download here, with a burning program such as Toast.
• A hard drive backup, in case everything goes pear-shaped.

Method

1. First, open the Boot Camp Assistant, which can be found at Applications > Utilities > Boot Camp. Once opened, you’ll see a screen explaining what Boot Camp does, and warning you to make a backup.
2. After clicking Continue, you’ll be asked whether you want to download Windows support software or if you have it on a CD or DVD. Make sure to select the second option; you won’t actually be installing the support software, since it won’t work with the Windows 8 preview. Then click Continue again.
3. The next step is to choose how large to make the Window partition on your hard drive. A Boot Camp operating system must be installed on a partition of your internal drive; it can’t be used on an external drive. The partition you create should be at least 25 GB in size, so there’s enough room for the OS and anything extra that might end up there, like files or applications. Next, click Partition.
4. Once your drive is partitioned, it’s time to install Windows. Again, the Windows 8 preview needs to be burned to a disc in order to install. Boot Camp should detect the disc once it’s inserted and allow you to continue installing. Click Start Installation. Your computer will now restart and boot from the Windows disc.
5. Follow the instructions on screen. When the installer asks you where to install Windows, select “Disk 0 Partition 3 BOOTCAMP” and then click Drive options (advanced). Choose Format from the options that appear to format the partition to NTFS, the file system Windows requires.
6. Follow the onscreen instructions again. Once Windows has installed, your Mac will automatically restart into Windows.

Since the Boot Camp support software for Windows won’t work with the developer preview, you won’t be able to install the Boot Camp tools on Windows. That means that to boot back into your OS X partition, you’ll need to restart your Mac with the Option key on the keyboard held down. You’ll be shown a list of available startup drives, from which you can choose your main partition where OS X is housed.

Remember this is a developer preview version of Windows 8. That is, it’s essentially alpha software, so things could go very wrong when you use it. Just as Apple suggests when using developer previews of OS X, you might not want to install Windows 8 on your main computer, and make sure to back up before you do any installations.

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Welcome to another instalment of Tips and Tricks, the series which aims to teach you something useful about one of your Apple products. This time, we’ll be focusing on Mail 5, the new version that ships with OS X Lion. There a few new tips that apply specifically to Mail 5, and also some existing tricks that should come in handy no matter which version you’re using.

Show your own messages in Conversation View

The new Conversation View (View > Organize by Conversation) in Mail 5 is great for keeping up with, well, a conversation. However, by default, it doesn’t show messages you’ve sent in reply during the conversation, which makes it harder to follow exactly what is being said and why.

To show your own messages in the thread along with those you receive from others, open Mail’s preferences, either under the Mail menu in the menu bar, or by pressing Command-comma. Then go to the Viewing tab, and under the ‘View conversations’ header, check the Include related messages option. Your sent messages will now show up in Conversation view.

Use Rules to color emails from certain people

If you’d like to highlight emails which came from someone important, like your boss, perhaps, Mail has a perfect way to do so. Using Rules, you can set the background color of an email in the list.

To do this, open up Mail’s preferences again, and this time open the Rules tab. Click the Add Rule button on the right, and a sheet will slide down with some options. Set the condition to From is [the person's email address]. Then underneath, set the action to Set color of background to [the color you want to use]. Click OK, and your rule will be added. From now on, whenever an email arrives from the address you specified, the message will be colored.

Show an unread counter in the Menu Bar

This tip will be useful to those of you who keep the Dock hidden, or have turned off the Dock unread count for Mail. This does involve downloading an extra piece of software, since Mail doesn’t support a menu bar item natively. The software is called Mail Unread Menu, and can be downloaded from MacUpdate. Once downloaded, all you have to do is run it, and you’ll have an unread count in the menu bar. There are also quite a few customization options available, such as the ability to choose the icon displayed in the menu bar for Mail, by clicking the menu item and choosing Preferences.

Change the names of Mail’s flags

In Mail 5, you can assign a colored flag to each message. There are seven colors to choose from, and they can be used for organising messages, since Mail automatically creates Smart Mailboxes for each flag you use. By default, the flags are named after the color of the flag, which isn’t very useful. There is a way, however, to change the names of the flags.

To change a flag’s name, first select a message and add the flag to it. Without adding the flag to at least one message, you can’t change its name. Once you have done so with all the flags you want to rename, you’ll see a new Flagged section in the Reminders area of the sidebar.

To rename a flag once it shows up there, right click it and choose Rename Mailbox from the menu. Then type the new name for your flag and press Enter.

Once you’ve pressed Enter, the flag’s name will change not only in the sidebar, but also in the drop down list of flags in the tool bar. This makes it much easier to remember what each of the colors means.

Flags also remember their names even if there are no messages with that flag applied to them.

Got any other tips and tricks regarding Apple’s default Mail app to share? Let us know in the comments.

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Free menu extras

There are a few icons that are in the menu bar by default, such as the Wi-Fi menu, the date and time display and the volume menu. There are also a lot of built-in system menus available, but not shown by default. To find them, navigate to System > Library > CoreServices > Menu Extras in the Finder. Here you’ll find even more menu items, such as an Eject item, which lets you eject CDs and DVDs from your optical drive, and Universal Access menu. To add one to the menu bar, simply double-click it in the Finder.

Another way to find additional menus for the menu bar is in the Mac App Store. There are hundreds available, but here are a couple which really stand out.

• MenuWeather Lite. This lets you put a weather forecast in your menu bar. You can choose for the icon to display either a temperature (in either celsius or fahrenheit), an icon to show the forecast, or both. The functionality doesn’t stop there, though; if you click on the icon, you can see details about the current conditions, a five-day forecast and access the preferences. MenuWeather Lite is free, and although there is a paid version with a few more features, the Lite version is good enough for my needs. It can be downloaded from the Mac App Store.
• Brightness menu bar. Similar to the built-in volume menu item, this adds a slider which allows you to control the brightness of your Mac’s screen. This is really good if you don’t have an Apple keyboard which has the brightness control keys on F1 and F2. The only downside is, like the keyboard keys, this only controls the brightness of your Mac’s built-in display, not any external displays you may have connected. Brightness menu bar is also free, and again, available in the Mac App Store. If you’re looking for a way to control external display brightness from the menu bard, check out Shades.

Tips and tricks

Here are a few tricks to get more from the menus you already have, without downloading new ones:

• Hold the option key. Nearly all of the built-in menu items have some hidden extras that reveal themselves if you hold “option” before clicking them. For example, if you hold option and click the Wi-Fi menu, you’ll see some extra information about your current Wi-Fi connection, such as the channel the router is set to and the type of security used. Even more useful: Holding option and clicking the volume button will let you quick choose from your available audio input and output options. Some other menu items with extras include the Bluetooth menu, which allows you to see extra information, and the battery menu which tells you the condition of your battery if you hold option.
• Hold the command key. If you hold the command key and drag a menu icon, you can change the order of the icons in the men bar. This only works with the built-in ones for some reason, and excludes Spotlight (which has to stay on the far right). You can also hold command and drag an icon off the menu bar to remove it altogether.
• Make the menu bar opaque. If you don’t like being able to see the desktop through the menu bar, you can set it to be opaque. Open System Preferences and open the Dock & Screensaver pane. Under the Desktop tab is a checkbox called Translucent menu bar; uncheck that to set the menu bar to opaque.

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