Jeff Carlson - Take control of your iPhone apps

• Home screen : Where I describe going to the Home screen, I'm referring to the environment used to launch apps, accessed by pressing the Home button located just below the screen. The "Home screen" can include several screens worth of application icons, so on occasion I mention going to the initial Home screen, which is the screen that corresponds to the left-most navigation dot at the bottom of the Home interface. (From any Home screen, press the Home button again to get to the initial Home screen.)

• Finding settings : I sometimes refer to preferences in the Settings app that you may want to adjust. To open Settings, press the Home button to go to the Home screen, and then tap the Settings icon. When the Settings app opens, tap the name of the pane or application whose settings you want to adjust. I refer to these panes using an abbreviated notation such as "go to Settings > Photos," which brings up the preferences for the Photos app.

• Tap, swipe, and rotate : The iPhone is an incredibly tactile device. I often mention tapping an interface item, such as "tap the camera button," but there are also times when a double-tap is required, which is a swift succession of two taps on the screen. Swiping refers to moving a finger across the screen in a specified direction. And rotate involves turning the entire iPhone or iPod touch 90 degrees, which shifts from portrait (tall) to landscape (wide) orientation.

• iPhone versus iPod touch : Although the title of this ebook is Take Control of Your iPhone Apps , nearly all of the information here applies equally to the iPod touch as well as the iPhone. Because the iPod touch lacks a cellular modem or camera, the sections specific to the Phone app and the Camera app won't apply to the iPod touch. I note important differences between the twoand between iPhone modelswhere appropriate throughout the book.

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I was conflicted about the introduction of the iPhone. On one hand, Apple had finally made a cell phone that people would want to use instead of feel forced to put up with. It exhibited Apple characteristics such as an obsessive level of attention to detail, intuitive controls, and ease of use. Its touchscreen was large and beautiful, and it didn't require a stylus that would break or disappear at some point. And the operating system could be upgraded, so you weren't stuck with outdated software the day you bought the device.

But on the other hand, it was expensive ($600 for the first 8 GB model) and I figured my Palm Treo at the time could do most of what the iPhone offered, even if the Palm OS was starting to get creaky, the screen was small, and the Web browser almost unusable. I didn't need an iPhone, even if I really wanted one.

That sentiment lasted about two months before I finally gave in and bought my own iPhone. That purchase (made just before Apple knocked the price down to $400, darn it) turned out to be one of the best technology acquisitions I've ever madeand believe me there's a lot of competition in that category. I use my iPhone constantly: reading and replying to email, looking up information in Safari, checking in with my wife (on her iPhone) via text messages, reading articles I've saved for later, playing games, capturing and publishing photos, and much, much more.

All of those tasks rely on software, which is the iPhone's hiding-in-plain-sight secret. For years, the software running cell phones has been an afterthought (and it shows). The iPhone and iPod touch feature impressive hardware, but it's the software that makes the difference.