iPad: The Missing Manual, 7th Edition

Chapter 5. Texting & iMessages

Once you’ve savored the exhilaration of making phone calls on the iPad, you’re ready to graduate to one of its fancier tricks: text messages. There are two kinds: traditional (for sending messages to cellphones) and Apple-flavored (for sending messages to other Apple equipment).

Of course, in order to send any kind of message, your iPad has to be online; it has to be in a WiFi hotspot or (if you have a cellular iPad) it has to have cell service.

Text Messages (SMS)

SMS stands for Short Messaging Service, but it’s commonly just called texting. A text message is a very short note (under 160 characters—a sentence or two) that you shoot from one device to another. What’s so great about it?

• Like a phone call, it’s immediate. You get the message off your chest right now.

• As with email, the recipient doesn’t have to answer immediately. The message waits for him even when his phone or tablet is turned off.

• Unlike a phone call, it’s nondisruptive. You can send someone a text message without worrying that he’s in a movie, a meeting, or anywhere else where holding a phone up to his head and talking would be frowned upon. (And the other person can answer nondisruptively, too, by sending a text message back.)

• You have a written record of the exchange. There’s no mistaking what the person meant. (Well, at least not because of sound quality. Understanding the texting shorthand that’s evolved—“C U 2mrO,” and so on—is another matter entirely.) ...