Listen to this blog post!
The iPhone and iPad will read out loud to you. This is more than a party trick; it's very handy to let your iPhone or iPad read a news article or a long email to you while you drive home, or while you pour yourself a bowl of Captain Crunch cereal (for example). It's also sort of fun, and perhaps a learning tool, to highlight a page in an iBooks book and have your iPhone or iPad read that page to you. It's all very easy though you have to be on iOS 5 or higher (Mom, you are).
Here's how you do it. (Screen shots are from an iPhone but it's almost exactly the same on the iPad.)
UPDATED September 2nd, 2014: see end of this post for additional info.
UPDATED September 18th, 2014: iOS 8 gives us new capabilities! Details at the end of this post.
First, go to the Settings. Tap General, then Accessibility, then Speak Selection.
Speak Selection is off by default. You'll be turning it on here. Set the Speaking Rate closer to the turtle and further from the rabbit. It's hard to understand what's being said if it's said too rapidly. When you drag the Speaking Rate knob your device will speak some standard text to you, giving you a good idea of how things will sound.
Now find something that you'd like to have read out loud. Here, I've gone to the Mail app and found an email that is pretty long. Tap and hold anywhere in the text to create an initial selection, then tap Select All.
Remember, the reading feature is called "Speak Selection" so you could drag the selection to include any or all of the text. If you want all, the Select All button is the easier way to go. That's what I did here, and you can see the result.
Tap the Speak button, then sit back and listen. Or pour yourself a bowl of Captain Crunch. Actually it works with any cereal.
I used Mail as an example here but it works similarly with iBooks and Safari. In every case it's tap, hold, drag the selection knobs (or do Select All where available), then "Speak."
There are a few shortcomings (you can't choose the voice, you can't do Select All in iBooks or Safari, and you can't trigger it from Siri), but even so, Speak Selection is worth exploring.
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Up next: I'll show you how to do the same thing on your Mac.
UPDATE September 2nd, 2014: I've just learned about the SoundGecko website. It will read a web page to you. For example, this one! Try it now by clicking below:
Listen to this blog post
It isn't instant, but it's close (about a minute's delay). And, there are lots of cool options (in a nice iOS app, and also on the SoundGecko website), and it's free for the basic service. I'll write a separate blog post on it someday soon.
Here's a SoundGecko feature I could not resist telling you about: it has the ability to subscribe to an RSS feed, giving you an updating set of articles for a particular blog... such as this one! It's easy as pie.
- If you don't have a SoundGecko account yet, create one by clicking here and following the directions. Do it from your Mac (or even a PC)-- it makes the next steps easier.
- Click the tab that says "Service Settings & Feeds."
- Scroll down and click the button that says "Add Custom RSS." Type in ioperating.blogspot.com, click the Add RSS Feed button, and you're done.
You'll want to get the SoundGecko iOS app (free), of course. With it, in addition to being able to listen to blog posts, you can have SoundGecko read a web page to you on the fly. Here's how it looks. 
One advantage of having SoundGecko read a web page for you instead of doing it by selecting and clicking "Play" is that there's no selecting! The selecting is the hardest part as there's no "Select All" in Safari for iOS. Anyhow, give it a try. You don't even need an account to do that. But you'll want a SoundGecko account because you can manage things from your Mac, and have the ready-to-listen-to files show up on your iPhone or iPad. There are other reasons too.
Give it a try and let me know what you think, in the comments section below.
UPDATE September 18th, 2014:
iOS 8 gives us a new read-out-loud capability!
It works in iBooks (hooray!) and in Safari and probably a lot of other places. First, you have to turn it on: Settings/General/Accessibility/Speech/Speak Screen (turn ON).
It is off by default. Now, go to a book, or a web page, and do a TWO-FINGER down-swipe, starting above the screen. You'll get some controls, which can be collapsed, and by golly it reads and reads and reads!
It does NOT stop at the end of the screen in iBooks-- it just keeps going. It does NOT stop at the end of the screen in Safari-- it just keeps going. This is just what we've always wanted.
See my September 22nd, 2014 post about this here. There are links at the bottom of that article to seven other iOS 8 tips, part of my "Eight for 8" series of tips for iOS 8.
