What to Do With a New iPad

You've just taken the iPad out of the box. Now what? The iPad isn't that hard to set up, but getting to know its extra settings, and discovering what apps are available that can transform your experiences with it, can take some serious time investment.

Here are the first things to do when you take a new iPad out of its crisp white box. At the least, these tips should help you get on your fee

1. Restore your old backup if you have one, and get to know iCloud. If this is your first iPad, you have nothing to restore. But, if you have an iPad already and are upgrading, you can get your basic settings and saved data on your new iPad by restoring from a backup on iTunes, or wirelessly via iCloud if you've already set that up. The initial set-up screens you see when you start your iPad for the first time ask if you're restoring from a backup.
2. Get your free iWork and iLife apps. iPhone, iPod and iPad buyers now get a suite of Apple productivity and media-creation apps for free that used to collectively cost a fair amount of money. Definitely download these -- in fact, when you're setting up your iPad for the first time, you're prompted to begin downloading all the free Apple-created software. 

3. Add Twitter/Facebook. Ever since iOS 6, you can bake in your Twitter and Facebook log-in so that you can share directly from your Camera Roll, or post links that you link directly from Safari. Twitter and Facebook are the social networks to fill the gap that Apple, unlike Google, doesn't natively provide. Go to Settings and look for the separate listings for Facebook and Twitter, and enter your info.
4. Tweak your notifications and privacy. Every app likes to scream out all its information all the time via banners and other annoying pop-ups on your home screen. You can override this by going to Notifications and unchecking all the various notifications options.Make sure you examine your Privacy settings, and deactivate (or activate) any location or information sharing you'd like on certain apps.
5.Make folders. Until there's a better way to organize apps on iOS, folders are there for you. You can drag over a hundred apps into a single folder in iOS 7, which at least means fewer folders cluttering the screen. Name them after categories you use a lot (Video, Games, Writing), or by user (Son, Wife, Mom). Properly named, folders can help you feel less cluttered.u may not want your photos to be geotagged on social networks.
6. Get a few good apps. There are tons of options, obviously, and tons of use cases, but I like the Kindle App for e-reading, Flipboard for news, YouTube/Netflix/Hulu Plus, Pages for writing, Google Maps as a must-have Apple Maps replacement, Evernote for general note-taking, and Plants vs. Zombies, Ticket to Ride, and Angry Birds Space as must-have first-day games
7. Get a good case. Or a bag. The iPad just comes with a Lightning cable for syncing and charging, nothing more. You need some sort of protection. Apple's own Smart Cover is a clever multi-use accessory that protects the screen, but not the back.If you're a large-iPad owner, consider something that docks easily with a keyboard. For the Mini, a booklike folio cover feels best