New to Mac

To answer your main question: from the homescreen, tap the 'Settings' icon, then in the list look for 'General.' Under General, pick 'Keyboard' and you'll see on/off switches for all the different autocorrect behaviors.

• Auto-Capitalization is what makes the first letter automatically capitalized when you start a new sentence, or if you type 'i' alone.
• Auto-Correction is the little 'did you mean' type popups. This is the one that's driving you mad.
• Check Spelling will underline words in red if they're misspelled, allowing you to tap the word to pop up the correction box from above (instead of having it appear as you type).
• Enable Caps Lock allows you to tap the Shift key on the virtual keyboard twice to turn on caps-lock.
• "." Shortcut allows you to tap the spacebar twice to enter '. ' This is really useful when writing long things out; just end a sentence, tap space twice, and you've got your period and your space and it's automatically hit shift for you, for the first letter of the new sentence.

Hope that helps!

To answer your second question, yes. 'Macintosh' (or Mac for short) is specifically Apple's desktop and laptop line of computers, all running 'Mac OS X.' 'iOS' is their mobile operating system, which is what iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch all use. It's like how Microsoft makes Windows, but they also make Zune and Xbox 360, neither of which actually works like a Windows desktop box. So, 'New to Apple' (or 'New to iPad') would probably have drawn help quicker.

By the way, you can also keep autocorrect on, and there's a way to keep what your type instead of the "suggested replacement."

When you type, say, "toi," the pop-up may suggest "top." There's an "x" in the pop-up. Simply click that to keep "toi." If you accidentally click space bar (thus accepting the suggestion), simply hit the backspace "x" and it will revert back to what you typed.

You need to train the iPad; there are a lot of auto correct suggestions at first, but it learns based on what you do, and the false suggestions dramatically disappear.

Yes, the blackberry learned too, and I'm glad iOS does as well. It gets smarter over time. So it's good to keep it turned on so the system can learn your usage.... however, if you really have no use of autocorrect (if you're a great speller), it's okay to turn it off.

The results can be comical, though.

For instance, if you frequently use the word 'shit,' then typo 'screenshot' as 'screenshit' it may well decide you meant two separate words, 'screen' and 'shit.' And 'celebate' (celebrate missing an 'r') could be 'celibate' and so on. It will weight the words you use commonly, however, and will start learning unique spellings and terms you use. For instance, my phone now knows VERY WELL how to spell the name of the product I work on for my day job! (Since I write the iPhone version of our software, I have typed the name A LOT on my iPhone.)

Generally, I don't get that many typos anymore; I've been using iOS since the original iPhone, so I have 3.5 years of dictionary training, and my device knows my typing habits pretty well by now. Now, my Android phone's speech-to-text... THAT is some comedy gold.

There are STT apps for iOS, too and yeah, tons of laughs.