iPhone: The Missing Manual, 13th Edition

Chapter 11. The Built-In Apps

Eventually, of course, you’ll fill your iPhone with apps you choose yourself, but Apple starts you off with about 25 essential ones. They include gateways to the internet (Safari), communications tools (Phone, Messages, Mail, Contacts), visual records of your life (Photos, Camera), shopping centers (iTunes Store, App Store), entertainment (Music), and so on.

Those core apps get special treatment in the other chapters. This chapter covers the secondary programs, in alphabetical order: Books (formerly iBooks), Calculator, Calendar, Clock, Compass, Files, Find My, Health, Home, Maps, Measure, News, Notes, Podcasts, Reminders, Stocks, Tips, Voice Memos, Wallet, Watch, and Weather.

TIP

You can open any of these apps by hunting it down and tapping its icon. But it’s usually much faster to tell Siri to do it. Say, “Open Compass,” for example.

Book

Books (formerly called iBooks) is Apple’s ebook reading program. It turns the iPhone into a sort of tiny Kindle. You can carry around dozens or hundreds of books in your pocket, which, in the pre-ebook days, would have drawn some funny looks in public.

Most people think of Books as a reader for books that Apple sells on its iTunes bookstore—best sellers and current fiction, for example—and it does that very well. But you can also load it up with your own PDF documents, as well as thousands of free, older, out-of-copyright books.

TIP

Books is very cool and all. But, in the interest of fairness, it’s worth noting ...