the makeshift manual: iphone / ipod touch________12 November, 2009
below are a few things i wish someone had told me about my ipod touch. i mean, like, you know, if apple had condescended to make something so distinctly unattractive as a manual with actual information in it. but that is not designy. so here i bring you my hard-earned knowledges!
- scrub rate control: extremely handy. if you’re trying to jump around in a song by scrubbing the bar that indicates where you are in the song but are frustrated by how jumpy the controls are, worry no more! by pressing and holding on the bar (until the ‘scrub ball’ appears) then sliding your finger down on the screen–don’t let go!–and then across, you can control the rate of the scrub. in the middle of the screen, you will scrub slower than if you are directly over the scrub bar.
- scroll to top: tap the status bar (with the battery life and time) in order to scroll to the top of a long page in safari or a very wordy note. no more minutes of dragging your fingers across the screen!
- double tap for caps lock: double-tapping the “shift” (up arrow) key on the keyboard will give you a capslock!
- magic ellipsis: press and hold “.” on the keyboard and … voila! you get a “…”
- double-tap home: this can do a variety of things depending on how you configure it. most importantly, however, it allows you to go instantly to music controls (even if your ipod is asleep!) no more laboriously locking and unlocking your ipod!
- drag shift for uppercase: if you press the “shift” (up arrow) but don’t let go (instead dragging until you are over the letter you want to capitalize and then releasing), you get capitals in … a little less effort!
- press and hold for alternate characters: just like it says. you need an umlaut? press and hold on your “u”! also works for punctuation (< > ! = etc)
- screenshot: press “sleep” and “home” buttons together to take a screenshot!
- pinch to zoom: and … whatever the opposite of “pinching motion” is in order to zoom out. spreading? i don’t know. try it out.
- double tap screen to zoom to fit: yup. works for, say, a column of text.
- add words to dictionary: google any given word (in safari’s google search bar) and it will be entered into your dictionary. (i haven’t actually tried this one out, so let me know if it doesn’t work…)
- actually shut down: if you just press the “sleep” button … your ipod sleeps. if you press and hold, it gives you the option to shut down. neat! saves batteries, i guess.
- force quit: finally. you can force quit an app by pressing and holding the “home” button for 6+ seconds.
- move apps around: press and hold (then drag) apps around on the home screen to rearrange the furniture.
neato! aren’t these things helpful? it would have been great if … ahem … apple had made them clear. neener neener.