iPad tips and tricks for road warriors

It’s amazing what an iPad can do. And it’s dumbfounding when something simple doesn’t seem to work at all. As with any computing device, there are tricks to getting what you want with an iPad, at least some of the time.

I’ve pulled together the tips and tricks I find myself sharing with friends and colleagues repeatedly, the stuff that stumps people who aren’t exactly technophobic. Maybe they stump you, too.

[ Discover the best office apps for the iPad, the best office apps for the iPhone, and the best office apps for Android from InfoWorld’s comparisons. | Keep up on key mobile developments and insights with InfoWorld’s Mobilize newsletter. ]

Using Dropbox or Box with Apple’s iWork suite

These two cloud storage services — Dropbox and Box — are becoming all but standard tools for road warriors, allowing access to work files from any PC, Mac, iOS device, and Android device. There are none of the platform limitations of Microsoft SharePoint, nor the hassles of using FTP. And practically every business app supports these two services, except Apple’s iWork apps: Pages, Numbers, and Keynote.

Keynote is the best slideshow editor for iOS. Even if you favor Quickoffice for text documents and spreadsheets, chances are you’re at least using Keynote of Apple’s iOS iWork app family and, thus, encountering the Dropbox or Box gap.

It turns out that the iWork apps do support these popular cloud storage services, but through the standard DAV file-sharing protocol, not through direct access enabled by these services’ proprietary APIs, which is how other apps make the connection. In the Documents window, tap + and choose WebDAV from the popover. Sign in to your Dropbox or Box account, and you’re now able to open files from and save files to that account. The URL for Dropbox is dropdav.com (Dropbox charges a $5 monthly fee to activate this access), and for Box.net is box.net/dav (no fee!).

Watching Hulu and other restricted video sites on a TV

When you’re away from home and want to watch a favorite show from Hulu, one of the network websites, or other site that disallows streaming of its video to an Apple TV-connected TV, you’re stuck with the over-the-air offerings, right? Nope. If you have an iPad 2 or a third-gen iPad, you can get around the rights management restrictions for AirPlay very easily:

• Use AirPlay video mirroring to send the entire iPad screen wirelessly to the TV (via an Apple TV, of course). Open the multitasking dock (double-press the Home button or use the four-finger up swipe), scroll to the left tap the AirPlay icon button, choose Apple TV, and set the Mirroring switch to On.
• Use a physical VGA or HDMI cable connect to the TV; that automatically mirrors the screen. Apple sells the appropriate VGA and HDMI adapters, which I keep in my travel bag. Remember that VGA doesn’t send the audio, so you’ll need to rely on the iPad’s speaker or use an audio cable if the TV is equipped with an auxiliary jack.

These same techniques also let you do big-screen gaming. On a related note, an Apple TV makes a great conference room addition, so users of the last two generations of the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch can wirelessly present their screens for demos, presentations, and the like.

Quickly resume playback on a locked iPad

If your iPad is set to autolock after a few minutes — a common setting often imposed by your company’s EAS or MDM policies — and you want to adjust the playback volume for a movie, podcast, or song, or pause the playback to take a call, you don’t need to enter your password to get to the controls in the Videos, Music, or other app in use. Instead, double-press the Home button to make the controls appear on the lock screen. On an iPhone, this also gives you a camera button, but not on the iPad.

Use a USB keyboard

I find the onscreen keyboard very easy to use, though it took a couple weeks to achieve that comfort level. But there are times you have a lot of typing to do, and a physical keyboard is the better option. I normally keep a Logitech Bluetooth keyboard in my travel bag for such occasions — it’s light, it has a protective cover that doubles as an iPad stand, and it holds a charge for a month or more. Other users love the ZaggFolio.

But if you forgot that Bluetooth keyboard, you may not be out of luck when you need. USB keyboards do work with the iPad, under two conditions: You have an Apple Camera Connection Kit to connect them through and their power usage is low. The iPad won’t work with USB devices that draw too much power from the iPad, so if a USB keyboard doesn’t work, try another one.

Extend the battery life

The iPad gets nine hours of battery life or more — just as Apple promises. If you’re a laptop user who has learned the hard way to cut the vendors’ battery-life estimate in half, you don’t have to do that for the iPad. But there are a few ways to push that battery life to 11 or more hours — and prevent it from falling below nine hours.

The biggest battery life variable on the iPad is its set of radios: 3G (or, on the third-gen iPad, 4G), Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. The iPad’s iOS is good about putting these radios in low-power mode when not in use, so I routinely leave them all on. But if you want to stretch your iPad’s battery life, such as for a trans-Pacific flight with no power source or an all-day seminar in some remote resort, turn off the unneeded radios in the Settings app. (Turn them all off by turning Airplane Mode to On.)

If you’re traveling in an area with only GPRS or EDGE service — the status bar’s cellular icon will switch from 3G or LTE to a circle or E — turn off the Cellular Data switch in the Settings app, or go into airplane mode. The iPad uses much, much more power for such sub-3G cellular connections and can end up reducing your battery life to just six hours, as I once discovered in a trip along California’s Interstate 5 highway. By contrast, streaming a video over Wi-Fi for an hour does not noticeably shorten battery life, so it’s really the cellular radio you need to manage for power savings.

If you have a third-gen iPad, turn off the LTE portion of the 3G radio in the Settings app’s Cellular Data pane; LTE consumes much more power than 3G, which is why the third-gen iPad’s battery is bigger and heavier.

The other big consumers of battery power are the CPU and graphics circuitry, but you have to be doing sustained gaming or visualization via apps that push the iPad to its limit. Chances are you’re near a power source in such cases, so plug the iPad in. Just remember that the iPad needs a 10-watt or better power supply, and smartphone chargers, older computers’ USB ports, and many powered USB hubs don’t deliver that.

Helping tired eyes

If you work long hours or are in flight much of the day, your eyesight may suffer a bit — especially if you use contact lenses and your eyes are dry from extended wear. The iPad’s iOS has a nifty capability to help out. You can select text and have the iPad speak it to you, such as when you’re not quite able to focus on specific text. After you select the text, tap Speak in the contextual menu that appears. But note this feature is not enabled by default. To turn it on, go to the Settings app’s General pane, then tap Accessibility to open the Accessibility pane. Then set the Speak Selection switch to on.

Entering special symbols

If you use special symbols, such as accented letters and currency symbols, switching to the Symbols keyboard can be a pain, as you must first tap the ?123 key to get to the Numbers keyboard, then tap the #+= key to get the Symbols. Finally, you must hit the ABC key to get back to the alphabet.

There is an easier way: Many keys display a contextual menu if you tap and hold on them. From there, you select a special character and continue typing from the regular alphabet keyboard. These are the keys with extra characters available via this method: a, e, i, o, u, y, c, l, n, s, z, 0, &, $, %, – (hyphen), . (period), and , (comma), as well as .com when in URL fields.

There’s also an Undo key in the Numerals keyboard and a Redo key in the Symbols keyboard for your most recent text actions.

Dealing with foreign time zones

The iPad is a very convenient personal information manager tool when you’re making and monitoring appointments. When you’re adding a new appointment, you don’t have to translate the proposed time zone to your current one. Instead, in the Start & End popover when creating an appointment, tap Time Zone to enter the other person’s time zone and let the iPad make the adjustment to your calendar. Note that this option appears only if you enable Time Zone Support in the Settings app’s Mail, Contacts, or Calendars pane in the Calendars section.

With Time Zone Support enabled, as you travel, your calendar’s display remains in your local time zone, and your appointments and alarms will adjust accordingly. For example, if you’re on the West Coast and your home time zone is Eastern, your calendar will show the appointments in Eastern time, while your alerts and so forth will adapt to West Coast time. Thus, your appointment shown at 9 a.m. Eastern will alert you at 6 a.m. Pacific. The consistent time-zone display is meant to help you stay in your everyday schedule context.

This article, “iPad tips and tricks for road warriors,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Galen Gruman’s Mobile Edge blog and follow the latest developments in mobile technology at InfoWorld.com. Follow Galen’s mobile musings on Twitter at MobileGalen. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.