Add Bold, Underline, & Italics to Stylize Text in iOS Mail

Stylizing text with bold, underline, or italics in the iOS Mail app is easily done with the same tap-and-hold contextual menu that also allows you to select text, block quote, and insert photos. To access the text styling menu:

• Tap and hold on any text in Mail app, choose "Select" and adjust the sliders to the text you want to select
• Tap the "B I U" button to reveal the text styles (you may need to tap the > arrow button to reveal the option if device is in portrait orientation)
• Choose either "Bold", "Italics", or "Underline"
• Repeat to apply additional styling

As you probably guessed, this litte-known trick works the same in Mail on iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Technically the stylize feature appears in a few other places in iOS too, but we're focusing on the Mail app because this feature is universally supported there, whereas apps like Notes do not yet support it. This could be new from iOS 6 onward, I don't have an older iOS device handy at the moment to give it a try and find out for sure.

We covered a handful of helpful typing tips for iOS and somehow missed this one, thanks for sending in another great tip Mithilesh!

TwelveSouth releases a version of its popular BookBook case for the iPad mini

TwelveSouth has announced and released an iPad mini-compatible version of its popular BookBook case. The case, which we recently reviewed for the iPhone 5 and full-sized iPad, is akin to a vintage style book. It comes in black, brown, and red. It sells for $69.99. We really enjoy the case for our other iDevices, and we're looking forward to reviewing the iPad mini version.

iPhone 5 Launches in 33 New Countries Including China

In line with its announcement from earlier this month, Apple today launched the iPhone 5 in 33 new countries, with the most prominent member of the group being China.


Unlike the chaos that reigned at the iPhone 4S launch earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal reports that the iPhone 5 appears to have been quite subdued. It is unclear, however, how much of the change may be due to lack of interest and how much may have been related to snowy weather and changes in Apple's sales policies designed to reduce scalping and other factors that have led to problems at previous launches.

Friday's iPhone 5 launch was notable for a different kind of white: a rare accumulation of fresh snow that blanketed the nearly empty plaza outside the Sanlitun store.

At 8 am on Friday, when the store opened to hurrahs from employees, only two consumers stood inside a cordon set up by Apple, though they were joined by a desultory snow man someone had made on a bench near the entrance.

Apple's new sales policies require customers to enter a lottery for the right to purchase an iPhone in the store, with winners being given specific windows of time in which to pick up their devices.

Fortune has also collected a handful of videos showing launches in China, Malaysia, and the Philippines that were part of today's major rollout in the following countries: Albania, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, China, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Ecuador, Grenada, Indonesia, Israel, Jamaica, Jordan, Kuwait, Macedonia, Malaysia, Moldova, Montenegro, Panama, Paraguay, Philippines, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Taiwan, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela.