Set Up and Get to Know Your New iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

You've just been given an iDevice: a magical entity that bestows the gift of more apps than you can fathom. We'll help you make sense of it all with some great apps, tips, and tricks for your shiny new Apple toy.

Before you dive in, here are a few things you should do with your new iDevice first:

• Update to the Lastest Version of iOS: There's a decent chance your new iDevice isn't running the latest version of iOS, even if it's just a very minor upgrade that's necessary. Before you sync for the first time, check for updates in iTunes or in your iDevice's Settings app, if your device is running iOS 6.0.1. If there's an update available, iTunes (or your phone) should tell you automatically but it's always good to double check. It's okay to update now that Google Maps is available.
• Get to Know iOS 6: Once you've updated, you ought to know what you're in for. We can teach you everything you need to know. Our guide features a rundown of new features, in-depth looks at how to use the most popular ones, and answers to common questions about the mobile operating system.
• Sign Up For Free Find My iPhone: You don't need to pay to use Apple's great Find My iPhone app. Just download it from the iTunes App Store and follow the signup instructions. You'll need to create a MobileMe account to get it to work but you will not have to pay for it. Once you're all set up, you'll be able to find your lost or stolen iPhone much more easily.
• Install Google Maps - When Apple released iOS 6, everyone complained about the problems with their new Maps app?and for good reason. Fortunately, Google came to the rescue and released Google Maps with turn-by-turn navigation. Do yourself a favor and install it, then learn how to integrate it with Siri.
• Organize Your Home Screen - When you start downloading a bunch of apps, your home screen is going to get cluttered very quickly. Stay ahead of the game and start organizing. As you download apps it'll be easier to keep track of where every app is and will be stored. Check out these reader tips for some ideas.

Download Some Killer Apps

One of the iPhones primary draws is the high quality of apps in the iTunes App Store. Here are some app suggestions to get you started.

• Lifehacker Pack for iPhone: Our List of the Best iPhone Apps: Looking to power up your iPhone with the best free and cheap apps out there? Our second edition of the Lifehacker Pack for iPhone rounds up our favorite must-have iPhone applications.
• The iPhone App Directory: Our App Directory is a new and growing directory of the best applications and tools for various platforms, and in this case the iPhone. If you're looking for the best app in any category, this is where you want to look. Visit the iPhone App Directory
• The Best "Evil" Apps for iPhone: Locked down for your "safety," your iPhone is designed to operate the way Apple intended. With recently relaxed app store policies and great strides within the jailbreaking community, however, you can add great functionality that Apple never wanted you to have.

Supercharge Your iPhone

There's a wide world of fun beyond apps. Check out these posts to learn all about the awesome things you can do to supercharge your iPhone's capabilities.

• How to Break Down the Barrier Between Your iPhone and Computer: Your iOS device is a killer pocketable computer; your desktop is more powerful with a bigger screen. They need to play better together. Here's how to break down the barrier between the two and shuttle text, files, media, and more seamlessly between your desktop and iPhone.
• How to Create a Visual Speed Dial Folder on Your iPhone: Visual speed dial is a nice idea, but when you have to launch a separate app to make a phone call it's a little annoying. Here are two ways to add visual speed dial to your home screen.
• Top 10 Handy iOS Tweaks That Don't Require Jailbreaking: Jailbreaking your iPhone has a ton of benefits that give you actual control over your device-but it isn't always possible. If you're tired of waiting for the next version of iOS to be jailbroken, check out these tweaks and customizations you can make whether you're jailbroken or not.
• Turn Your Smartphone Camera into a Pocketable Photographic Memory: Several apps exist to help you remember the many things you'd otherwise forget, but perhaps none are quite as useful and efficient as your camera. Typing takes time. napping a photo only takes a moment, and there are so many ways you can remind yourself better with nothing but a picture.
• How to Turn Your Phone Into a Mind-Reading Personal Assistant: Smartphones, despite their name, are actually pretty dumb. They only do what you tell them to, and constantly inputting information can get tedious. However, with a few apps, you can not only make your phone smarter, but turn it into a mind-reading personal assistant that lets you know of important information as you need it: like traffic for your commute, a reminder to pick up milk as you pass the grocery store, and even automatic text messages to your friends when you're driving to meet them. Here's how to do it.
• Make Your Smartphone's Ringtones and Alerts Actually Useful and Informative?: Don't settle for the same ringtone for every contact and every app. Make your tones actually useful so you know what kind of notification you're getting without the need to look at the screen.
• Do Yourself a Favor: Set Up These Custom Typing Shortcuts on Your iPhone Right Now: It seems Apple added text expansion to iOS 5 and decided not to mention it. This is a great, highly-desired feature that can save you tons of time typing frequent phrases and long words. Here's how to set it up and some phrases you'll want to add right away.
• How to Take Great Holiday Photos with Your iPhone: Holidays are the perfect time to capture magic moments with friends and family and take the time get creative with your photography. Here are some simple tips to get the best photos from your iPhone.
• Use Your iPad or Android Tablet as a Second Monitor for Your Computer: Want to eke out a little more value out of that tablet? Turn it into a second monitor for your PC or Mac and extend your screen real estate.
• How to Migrate All Your Data to iCloud from Google with Minimal Fuss: While most of us use Gmail for all our cloud computing needs, Apple's iCloud actually has some really nice things going for it-especially if you're a heavy Mac and iOS user. I've walked through why you might want to switch from Google's apps to iCloud, so whether you're migrating all your data over or just a few choice items, here's how to move from Google to iCloud without losing any of your existing email messages, contacts, calendars, and documents.
• How to Turn Your iPod touch into an iPhone: 4G Edition: The latest iPhone and iPod touch are nearly identical devices on the inside, ignoring the pesky reality that the latter isn't a phone. We can fix that. Here's how to turn your iPod touch into a viable (and cheaper) iPhone alternative out of the box.
• How to Google-ify Your iPhone: Got Android envy? Just wish Apple handled sync, the web, and openness a bit better? You can't have it all, but if you want to bring more Google paradigms to your iPhone, here's how to do it.
• How to Make Music in GarageBand with iOS: Want to lay down some tracks but all you've got is your iOS device and a Mac? With an OpenSound Control (OSC) app on your iPhone and server on your Mac you can record a virtual keyboard over Wi-Fi.

Fix Common Problems

• How to Stop Your Smartphone from Secretly Wasting Data in the Background: Unlimited data plans are an endangered species nowadays, so most of us have to watch our limits in order to avoid excess charges on our bill. That's easy enough when we know how much cellular data we're using on our smartphones, but becomes problematic when our smartphones eat up our precious megabytes in the background. This doesn't just happen on Android, but iPhone, too. Here's how to stop it.
• How to Improve Your iPhone's Battery Life: If you're looking to improve your iPhone's daily lifespan, we've got a few tips that can help you squeeze a little more juice out of your iDevice.
• Fill Out Your Address Book to Make Siri Work Better: Out of the box Siri can do a few common things, but it struggles when you try to get too complicated with it. GigaOM offers up a few clever address book customizations to make Siri work more naturally.
• How to Copy Music from Your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to Your Computer for Free: Apple, true to form, makes it simple to put media and files on your iDevice but the road really only goes one way. It can be pretty difficult to copy anything (or everything) back to your computer without a lot of trouble and sacrifice, but it's even harder to find a good, free solution to that problem amongst the many choices available. You could spend the better part of your holiday sifting through your options, or you could just read this guide instead.
• How to Sync Documents and Other Files to Your iPhone or iPad Without iTunes: If you use a word processor, comic book or PDF reader, video player, or other app that requires syncing files through iTunes, you know how slow and awful it can be. Here's a simple, fast alternative.
• How to Encode Video for All Your Mobile Devices: With H.264 solidly planted as the codec of choice for just about every mobile device, we've come to a point where you can encode a video once and play it back on pretty much anything.
• Printopia Enables iOS-to-Mac AirPrint Support Hack-Free, Adds Virtual Printers: You could use AirPrint Hacktivator (or do it manually) to add AirPrint support to your Mac, but if you don't want to modify your system files and would like virtual printers, you should check out Printopia.
• How to Open Compressed Files on Your iOS Device: iOS does pretty well with handling various file types, but when it comes to compressed files you run into problems. Fortunately, with the aid of a file browsing app you'll be able to view compressed files easily.

Images by ecco (Shutterstock), kirillov alexey (Shutterstock), and PixelBin.

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/QVSoTk18wqI/set-up-and-get-to-know-your-new-iphone-ipad-or-ipod-touch

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