Shortcuts: Create multistep shortcuts you can trigger with your voice.
iTunes Store: Accesses the iTunes Store, where you can browse, preview, and purchase songs, albums, movies, and more.
Translate: Introduced with iOS 14, this app provides a quick (and mostly accurate) translation of voice or text for 11 languages.
Contacts: Stores contact information, which can be synced with iCloud, macOS Contacts, Yahoo! Address Book, Google Contacts, and many more.
Watch: Manages features on your Apple Watch. It’s useless unless you have an Apple Watch.
Tips: Provides tips for using your iPhone and iOS 14.
Inside the Utilities folder
In the Utilities folder, you find these icons:
Voice Memos: Turns your iPhone into a convenient handheld recording device.
Compass: Adds a magnetic needle compass inside your iPhone, but better.
Measure: Measures things. To use this cool virtual reality-measuring tool, you just point it at an object and see its dimensions!
Calculator: Performs addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Give the phone a quarter turn, however, and you’ll find a nifty scientific calculator that does all that and much more.
App library and Home screen widgets
The dock (all Home screens)
Finally, four icons at the bottom of the Home screen are in a special area known as the dock. When you switch Home screens (see Chapter 2), all the icons above the dock change. The four items on the dock, which follow, remain available on all Home screens:
Phone: Lets you use the iPhone as a phone. What a concept!
Safari: Opens Safari, your web browser. If you’re a Mac user, you know that already. If you’re a Windows user, Safari is kinda like Internet Explorer only (much) better.
Messages: Exchanges text messages (SMS) and multimedia messages (MMS) with almost any other cellphone user. The app also lets you exchange Apple-exclusive iMessages with anyone using any Apple device with iOS 5 or higher (iDevice) or a Mac running Mountain Lion (macOS 10.8) or higher, as described in Chapter 6. We’ve used a lot of mobile phones in our day, and this app is as good as it gets.
Music: Unleashes all the audio power of an iPod right on your phone.
Last, but certainly not least: Although you couldn’t delete preinstalled apps in many previous iOS releases, you can delete some of them in iOS 14. See Chapter 15 for details.
Okay, then. Now that you and your iPhone have been properly introduced, it’s time to turn it on and actually use it. Onward!
Chapter 2
iPhone Basic Training
IN THIS CHAPTER
If you were caught up in the initial iPhone frenzy of 2007, you may have plotted for months about how to land one. After all, the iPhone quickly emerged as the ultimate fashion phone. And the chic device hosted a bevy of cool features.
Owning the hippest and most-hyped handset on the planet came at a premium cost compared with rival devices. To snag the very first version, you may have saved your pennies or said, “The budget be damned.”
That’s ancient history now. Well past a decade later, the iPhone went mainstream and, through many versions, you got more bang for your buck. But you also had to part with more of those bucks. The tenth anniversary iPhone, known as the iPhone X, was the first to crack $1,000. Even now, a maxed-out iPhone 12 Pro Max with 512 GB costs $1,399. Not cheap, of course, but plenty of bang too. If that’s too rich for your budget, a new second-generation iPhone SE, as of this writing, starts at $399.
We can list a bunch of prices here, but pricing for the wireless industry, and accordingly the iPhone, is in a state of flux. You used to be able to buy an iPhone for a subsidized and relatively low upfront price that was tied to a two-year contract with your carrier. Such contracts are passé. Instead, wireless companies and retailers are pushing installment pricing options, in which you can choose to put little or no money down but are then obligated to pay for the device over typically a two-year term. In some cases you lease the phone; in others, you buy the phone outright.
Of course you still must pay for cellular and data coverage and data from a wireless carrier. And taxes and fees are extra.
You may also get a nice trade-in deal on your existing phone, from Apple or other retailers.
Activating the iPhone
You will typically activate the iPhone where you bought the thing, just as you do with other cellphones. However, if you buy your iPhone from Apple’s online store, the folks there will ship it to you, and you then activate it at home, likely wirelessly through iCloud or even via an older iPhone you may have lying around. If you’re already a customer upgrading from an earlier iPhone or a different phone, you can convert your plan during the ordering process.
As mentioned, we aren’t going to go through all the wireless options here. Suffice to say that plans vary by wireless carrier and are subject to change. Unlimited data plans are more common than they used to be, thanks to industry competition.
iPhone 12 series model owners may also owe their carrier a bit more for a 5G wireless plan. 5G (fifth generation) promises blazing fast wireless speeds, though speed and coverage were still hit or miss as this book was being published.