iPad mini Basic Training - iPad Mini - page 27

Either way, the onscreen slider appears.
2. Drag the slider to the right with your finger.
3. Enter a passcode if you need to.
See Chapter 15 to find out how to password-protect your iPad.
Mastering the Multitouch Interface
With few exceptions, until the iPhone and iPad came along, most every computer known to mankind
has had a physical mouse and a typewriter-style QWERTY keyboard to help you accomplish most
of the things you can do on a computer. (The term QWERTY comes from the first six letters on any
standard typewriter — you remember those? — or computer keyboard.)
The iPad mini, like the bigger iPad and the iPhone, dispenses with a physical mouse and keyboard,
which seemed like such a revolutionary step just a few years ago. By now, a virtual keyboard doesn't
seem novel.
Neither does the fact that the iPads (and iPhone and iPod touch) remove the standard physical but-
tons in favor of a multitouch display. This beautiful and responsive finger-controlled screen is at the
heart of the many things you do on the iPad mini.
In the following sections, you discover how to move around the multitouch interface with ease.
Later, we hone in on how to make the most of the keyboard.
Training your digits
Rice Krispies have Snap! Crackle! Pop! Apple's response for the iPad is Tap! Flick! Pinch! (Yikes
— another ad comparison!) And don't forget Drag!
Fortunately, tapping, flicking, pinching, and dragging aren't challenging gestures, so you can master
many of the iPad's features in no time:
Tap: Tapping serves multiple purposes. Tap an icon to open an application from the Home
screen. Tap to start playing a song or to choose the photo album you want to see. Sometimes,
you double-tap (tapping twice in rapid succession), which has the effect of zooming in (or
out) of web pages, maps, and e-mails.
Flick: Flicking is just what it sounds like — a flick of the finger on the screen lets you
quickly scroll lists of songs, e-mails, and picture thumbnails. Tap the screen to stop scrolling,
or merely wait for the scrolling list to stop.
Pinch/spread: Place two fingers on the edges of a web page, map, or picture and then spread
your fingers apart to enlarge the images. Or, pinch your fingers together to make the map or
picture smaller. Pinching and spreading (or what we call unpinching ) are cool gestures that
are easy to master and sure to wow an audience.