Keyboard

The iPad's onscreen keyboard approaches the dimensions of a full-size keyboard (in landscape orientation, at least), but the layout of the keys is not completely standard. One of the most maddening things about the default keyboard is that it lacks an apostrophe key. I'm used to the apostrophe's position on a standard keyboard—all the way to the right just before the Enter key. I keep reaching for it with my right "pinkie" finger and end up hitting the Return key instead. I can enter an apostrophe from the "symbols" keyboard, which is accessed by tapping on the ".?123" key.

When you're entering text into a note or e-mail message, you can end a sentence by going to the Symbol or Numeric keyboard and hitting the period. A faster way is to double tap on the spacebar. It will enter a period followed by a space.

If this feature does not work, you'll need to activate it by going to Settings >General >Keyboard and turning the "." Shortcut switch on. This screen also lets you turn on/off the following:

• Auto-Correction: Suggests words based on the characters you've entered.
• Auto-Capitalization: Capitalizes the first word in a sentence.
• Enable Caps Lock: Lets you tap the Shift key twice to lock it into all-caps mode; tap it twice again to unlock.

When you enter a short contraction (I'm, I'd, etc.) or a longer one where there is no ambiguity (don't, aren't, etc.), don't bother entering the apostrophe. The autocorrect feature will "know" that you're trying to enter a contraction and offer you the correct word as an alternative.

We've mentioned before that if you hold down on a vowel in the iPhone's pop-up keyboard, you are presented with accented variations of the vowel used in other languages.

Undo and redo typing quickly: Shake it, baby!

The new OS takes advantage of the accelerometer to let you do some quick, basic editing in any app that accepts text.

Simply shake the iPhone or iPod touch to undo the text you just entered. A pop-up appears, allowing you to confirm the action by hitting the Undo Typing button, or cancel it. If you decide you didn’t really want to undo the typing, shake the device again. This time, the pop-up will let you Redo Typing.

 You can have more than one keyboard layout active on your device at any time. So, for example, an international executive who did business in the U.K. and Russia could keep an English and Russian (Cyrillic) keyboard active and switch between them when composing notes and e-mail messages.

To activate different keyboards: