2.1. Finger Moves for the iPad

The “brain” behind the iPad—its operating system—is smart enough to respond to a series of very different touches. The ones you make depend on what you want to do. These are the moves:

• Tap. Take the tip of your finger and directly touch the icon, thumbnail, song title, or control you see on-screen. The iPad isn’t a crusty old calculator, so you don’t have to push down hard; a gentle press does the trick.

• Drag. Keep your fingertip pressed down on the glass and slide it around to scroll to different parts of the screen. This way, you can set volume sliders or pan around a photo. A two-finger drag scrolls a window within a window (like the floating window that pops up over your Facebook screen when you call up your Facebook Friends List).

• Slide. A slide is like a drag, except that you use it almost exclusively with one special control—the iPad’s Unlock/Confirm button, which sits in a “track” that guides your slide as you wake your iPad from sleep or confirm a total shut-down.

  
  

  

  
  

• Flick. Lightly and quickly whip your finger up or down your screen and watch a web page or song list whiz by in the direction of your flick. The faster you flick, the faster the screen scrolls by. In a photo album, flick side-to-side to see your images parade triumphantly across your screen.

• Finger Spread and Pinch. To zoom in on part of a photo, document, or web page, put your thumb and index finger together, place them on-screen where you want to zoom in, and make a spreading motion across the glass. To zoom out, put your spread fingers on-screen and pinch them together.

  
  

  

  
  

• Double-Tap. This two-steppin’ tap comes into play in a couple of situations. First, it serves as a quick way to zoom in on a photo or web page. Second, if you’re watching a video, tap the screen twice to toggle between aspect ratios—the full-screen view (top, right), where the edges of the frame get cropped off, or the widescreen, letterboxed view (bottom, right), which movie lovers favor because it’s what the director intended a scene to look like.