iPad 4th Generation and iPad mini Portable Genius

From the Author: Six Surprising (and Surprisingly Useful) iPad Features

iPad and iPad mini Portable Genius explores the hidden depths of Apple's tablets, but I'd like to give you a taste here by highlighting a half dozen iPad features that I hope you'll find useful.

If you have a second-generation (or later) Apple TV, you can use AirPlay mirroring display your FaceTime calls on your TV:

1. Turn on Apple TV.
2. On your tablet, use four or five fingers to swipe up and display the multitasking bar.
3. Swipe right to reveal the playback controls.
4. Tap the AirPlay button (to the right of the Next/Fast Forward button).
5. Tap your Apple TV device.
6. If prompted, type the AirPlay password and then tap OK.
7. Repeat steps 2 to 4 to return to the AirPlay dialog.
8. Tap the Mirroring switch to On.

With Siri activated (tap Settings, tap General, tap Siri, and then tap the Siri switch to On) and your iPad or iPad mini signed in to your Facebook account, follow these steps to update your Facebook account with Siri:

1. Press and hold to Home button to launch Siri.
2. Say "Post to Facebook."
3. Dictate your message.
4. Say "Post." Siri posts the status update to your Facebook account.

If you have your Tunes library set up for sharing, configure your iPad with the same Home Sharing Apple ID and password:

1. Tap Settings.
2. Tap Music.
3. In the Home Sharing section, type the same account information that you used to set up Home Sharing in iTunes.

Now open the Music app, tap More, and then tap Shared Library icon near the upper left corner. Tap the library you want to access, and the Music app displays that library's media instead of your iPad's media.

Did you know that you can configure Do Not Disturb to automatically start and stop at a scheduled time! How sweet is that? Very. Tap Settings, tap Notifications, and then tap Do Not Disturb. Tap the Scheduled switch to On, tap the From/To control, use From to set the start time, use To for setting the end time, and then tap Do Not Disturb.

There's a really useful feature of the keyboard that hardly anyone uses: virtual keys. These are keys that are, in a sense, hidden "behind" some of the existing keys. For example, tap and hold the E key and you see a set of virtual keys that show various accented E's. After you tap and hold, slide you finger into the virtual key section, place your finger over the virtual key you want to enter, and then release.

You can save a draft of an email message, although it's not even remotely intuitive how you do this. To save a draft, you must first tap Cancel. Mail then displays two options: Delete Draft or Save Draft. Tap the latter to save your work. When you're ready to resume work on the message, tap Inbox, tap Mailboxes, tap Drafts, and then tap the message you were working on.