22 iOS 4.2 Tips, Tricks and Features
22 iOS 4.2 Tips, Tricks and Features
Posted 11/22/2010 at 10:32am
| by Roberto Baldwin
32
Comments
Print Finally, the iPad, iPod touch and iPhone are on a level iOS field. Multitasking, folders, printing, all the big ticket items are there. But what about some of the smaller tweaks to the OS?
We jumped right in to the latest iOS update and have emerged with a list of tips, tricks and features that'll help you get the most out of your iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.
UPDATES!
You need to update iTunes and OS X to update your iPhone, iPod or iPad to iOS 4.2. If you haven't already updated, go ahead, update. We'll wait.
Backup Your iPhone, iPod or iPad
Before you upgrade your device it's always a good idea to back up all of your data. This is especially important when you haven't synced your device in a while. While the chances of a error occurring and forcing you to go full restore are slim, it's always a good idea to backup your stuff.
Plug your device into iTunes, right click on your device in the left panel. Select Back Up from the drop down menu. It might take a while, but it's worth it if things going horribly wrong.
Multi-tasking for iPad
Run more than one app at a time with the multitasking feature. To see which applications are running and to quickly switch between them double tap on your iPhone's Home Button.
Quit Apps
Apple may say that you shouldn't have to mess with quiting apps on your iOS device. That doesn't mean that you don't have the ability to actually quit apps.
Double-tap the home button to see the app drawer. Tap and hold on one of the ope apps and they'll get the jigglies. Tap on the red circle in the other left hand corner of the offending app and it'll quit.
Folders for iPad
The iPad now joins the iPhone and iPod touch with folder support.
Tap and hold on an app to start your apps jiggling. Drag two apps together to create a folder. Your iPhone will create a folder and automatically give the folder a name based on the category of the apps. You can can change the folder name to something more appropriate. You can then drag up to 20 apps into your folder.
To remove an app from a folder. Open the folder, tap and hold on the app you want to remove. Drag it out of the folder.
Find My iPhone
If you've lost an iPhone and you haven't signed up for MobileMe, you know the pain and misery of trying to track it down without Find My iPhone. with iOS 4.2 you get free, that's right free, Find My iPhone. There is a catch, you need to set it up with an iPhone 4, iPad, or 4th generation iPod touch. Once that's done, you can find all your iOS devices.
Print
Before you fire up the email client and start printing all those emails from Steve Jobs, we got some bad news for you.
As of press time, only AirPrint-compatible printers will work with your iOS 4.2 device. The shared printing feature Apple showed off before, it's not in this release.
HP ePrint enabled printers are ready for AirPrint. So if you're in the market for a printer and you really want AirPrint, there ya go.
Hopefully, we'll see shared printers in AirPrint soon.
What can print and what can't
While Apple has asked app developers to add printing support to their apps, Apple hasn't flipped the printing switch on some of their own apps.
Here is a list of Apple apps that support and don't support printing. Some of the apps that don't support printing are just confusing.
You can print from Photos, Email, and Safari.
You can't print from Calendar, Notes, Messages, Maps, and Contacts.
Open in…
If you navigate to a PDF or other document format, like ASHX, in Safari you can tap on the page and it'll give you the option to Open in…
Tap it and it gives you a list of apps that can handle the file type.
App tray
Double tap to show the app tray.
Swipe to the left once and you'll see:
iPad: The Orientation lock, the brightness, iPod controls and volume control.
iPhone: Orientation lock, iPod controls
Swipe again on the iPhone and you get:
iPhone: Swipe left again AirPlay and volume
Speaking of Orientation Lock
You've probably seen the hubbub abut the orientation lock button on the iPad turning into a mute button. Well it's true. To lock the orientation of your iPad you have to double tap the home button to enter the app tray and swipe left.
NEXT: AirPlay, Ringers and new Text Tones>>
Related Articles
lilsproutnlou
November 29, 2010 at 9:49am
Find the search word or phrase on the current webpage: Scroll to the bottom of the
results list, then tap the entry below On This Page to find the first occurrence of the
search word or phrase. To find subsequent occurrences, tap Next.As I posted three days ago, this does NOT work on my iPhone 4- can someone,anyone point me to an answer/fix?
There is no "next" option.
Thanks!
racassady
November 27, 2010 at 7:47am
The deal with the text tones is this, Apple went from having 6 lame text tones to 25 lame text tones. They need to start selling text tones and let 3rd party companies create the because at this point, Apple doesn't know how to create a good one!
lilsproutnlou
November 26, 2010 at 5:56pm
Just purchased iPhone 4 on the twenty-fourth. When I am searching in Safari my search says,"0 matches on this page". However, there ARE multiple choices, yet I cannot "choose" any of them. They are not in black bold type they are grey in color. Any suggestions? Thank you!
MrMcQ
November 23, 2010 at 4:10pm
iOS 4.2 also kills my iPad's memory allocation. Just saw it drop to 3.83MB. Yikes! Crash alert!
MrMcQ
November 23, 2010 at 2:53pm
iPad cannot do the rocker thingy that was mentioned here:
Controlling Ringers and Alerts
You can adjust what is controlled by the volume rocker button on the outside of the iPhone and iPad.
sambopr
November 23, 2010 at 2:42pm
Anyone know were I can get that cool little monster wallpaper for my iPad. My kid wants it bad. Thanks iin advance!
Howard Brazee
November 23, 2010 at 7:18am
Quitting an application all the way is way more unfriendly than it has to be. Not at all what I would expect from Apple.
We need a way to choose how we exit an application - whether we exit all the way or just move to a different app. Right then.
And shutting down the iPad then re-starting it still leaves the dozens of apps on the multi-task screen.
Chris CA
November 29, 2010 at 5:39pm
@Howard Brazee
"And shutting down the iPad then re-starting it still leaves the dozens of apps on the multi-task screen."
The task bar shows recently launched apps, not only running apps.
If the app is not enabled for multitasking, it is not running. It is simply an icon in the task bar.
nhbeast
November 23, 2010 at 4:45am
@fckdapress - For the default wallpaper, click Settings>Brightness & Wallpaper>Wallpaper the defualt should show up in there, just select it.
matracy68
November 23, 2010 at 4:15am
Two issues for my iPhone 4. First is the screen lock. It will only allow me lock in at portrait, not landscape. Second is tethering. My phone will not tether anymore with 4.2.1 on it. I have it selected on turned on but it is not working. There is no more blue tethering banner at the top and I can no longer get to any web site on my MacBook Pro.
Anyone else having these same issues?
As for the iPad 'mute' I too have the same issues above. I have Pandora on right now and put it on mute and got the screen to say mute but the music still plays. Shouldn't a mute actually mute everything?
matracy68
November 24, 2010 at 8:34am
I think I cracked the code on tethering. I did some research on other Apple forums and this is what I came up with. First off, I am in the US and I am a paying AT&T tethering customer. My iPhone 4 has never been jail broken or unlocked. I was able to set up Bluetooth tethering to my MacBook Pro. That went pretty easy. I wanted the USB cable tethering option back. I read that some overseas iPhone 4 tethering customers went into their Cellular Data and made some changes. The options that the overseas customers had in settings are not available in the US. Here's what worked for me. Go to Settings-General-Network. From there I toggled Cellular Data from On to Off and then back On. I didn't reboot the phone after I did this. iTunes did a sync and then my USB iPhone back to being an option in Network Preferences on my MacBook Pro. The blue tethering band came back on and everything is working back to normal. This may or may not work for you if you too have tethering problems with 4.2.1.
jjayfe
November 23, 2010 at 1:00am
Hey how do you think I feel about this new update. Doesn't do a stinkin' thing for me. My HP printer is about 7 years old, and yes it's on the network, but I can't access network printers.
1) I've got two 160 gig apple TV units.... I can't share movies to them from the iphone...
2) I get one thing new.... I can select one pair of speakers in the house and send ipod tunes to it.... try to add more? and it disconnects the one I picked.... If I get a calendar alert, or txt message, it drops the speaker and I have to manually pause and reconnect.
3) This adds no value for me since my music library is already on a home computer that I can access using the app called "Remote," and can use all the speakers on my network, and don't get interruptions when a call comes in.
This is a NON-update update. I get a few stupid ringtones, that's about it. Right now this is just a novelty that a few users can play with..... for the rest of us, it's a waste of time.jay
rjhatton
November 22, 2010 at 7:14pm
Anyone else with an iPad and tried to use the "new" mute switch? The "mute" symbol comes up on the screen but no muting takes place!
Nitsua
November 22, 2010 at 8:12pm
Not true! I have successfully muted almost 10 of my 105 apps currently on my iPad! I just can't mute Youtube, videos, the iPod, music apps or anything with the sole purpose of exporting sound really :P But hey! Now when I'm playing Flight Control I don't have to just tap pause and slide Music from "on" to "off" I can just flip the switch...now if I want to lay on my side and be able to read an article in landscape I have to double tap the home button, swipe to the left, tap the lock button, then tap out of it. That's what I'm talking about! Making it more complicated to do something simple ;D
Chris Thomson
November 22, 2010 at 3:38pm
Apple also made a mistake with the second- and third-generation iPod touches in that image -- they shouldn't have the FaceTime icon, only the fourth-generation iPod touch should.
molotovmouse
November 22, 2010 at 11:39am
Why no home screen wallpaper on the iPod 2nd Gen? Even the little picture of the supported devices seems to indicate that the wallpaper is supported.
sosae22
November 22, 2010 at 11:38am
I don't believe the old Appletv (with the hard drive) works with Airplay to stream the movies and videos from the iPhone...Has any else had the same problem?
metalhaze
November 22, 2010 at 1:37pm
They never claimed it would work with the old Apple TV.
Airplay is only for the new Apple TV's
Raketemensch
November 22, 2010 at 11:05am
There's no quick-access brightness control in 4.2 for iPhone? Just iPad?
Roberto Baldwin
November 22, 2010 at 11:26am
iPad only. I have sensitive eyes and I really wish they had included this with the iPhone.
metalhaze
November 22, 2010 at 1:36pm
Are you aware of the auto-brightness feature on the iPhone?
There are also some more features for easier reading in the Accessibility section of the settings which you can assign to toggle with a triple click of the home button.
Raketemensch
November 22, 2010 at 1:45pm
Yup, I'm all set on auto-brightness, but I fall asleep every night reading in Stanza, and I set the brightness to extremely low, then bring it back up the next day. Auto-brightness doesn't have such a huge range, and digging out Preferences every time is a PITA.
Well, I won't be in such a hurry to upgrade and re-jailbreak, then. Kinda bummed, but now I'm thinking there *must* be a way to do this with sbsettings.
souch3
November 22, 2010 at 11:01am
Anyone with a 3GS able to confirm this for me? I can customize text tones on a per contact basis but I don't have any of the new ones, just the old. Is this a feature only for the iPhone 4?
texthetitan
November 22, 2010 at 9:17pm
I have a 3Gs and the same issue. It looks like only the iPhone 4 gets the new tones. Kind of lame.
texthetitan
November 22, 2010 at 10:59am
I don't seem to have the new text tones. Anyone else having this issue?
Roberto Baldwin
November 22, 2010 at 11:12am
I was hoping it just a beta issue, but it looks like the new text tones are for iPhone 4 only.
LAME!
-Robbie
metalhaze
November 22, 2010 at 1:34pm
While 3G/3GS users may not get the new sounds, can we at least assign the existing sounds to contacts like we can with the ringtones?
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