iPad apps: best I’ve found so far

@savoieadam was wondering what to get for his iPad, which prompted me to post this (I’d been meaning to anyway, since people keep asking…) To keep this short, I’ll limit it to iPad-specific apps, and leave out the iPhone apps I’m using. As on iTunes, “+” indicates universal iPad/iPhone/iPod apps.

Productivity Apps

• Things for iPad — first iPad app I bought
• Instapaper Pro + — indispensable
• Evernote + — indispensable
• OmniGraffle — very nice; again, takes some getting used to. Steep price, but worth it if you use it on the desktop, too.
• Bento
• Pages/Numbers/Keynote — export is annoying; takes some time to get used to UI conventions
• FlightControl HD — (this is the productivity section, right?)
• mondoSolitaire for iPad — see FlightControl…
• Brushes — iPad Edition — fun; has free Mac companion app
• Adobe Ideas + — Flash-free! (now there’s an Adobe Idea!)
• Stanza + — includes access to the O’Reilly bookstore
• iBooks — only Winnie the Pooh plus Project Gutenberg titles in Canada, so far; desperately needs to lose the fully-justified typesetting-sans-hyphenation. Sorry, Steve: it’s fugly.
• WebEx

News Apps

• BBC News + — best news app I’ve found yet.
• NPR for iPad — very nice
• Editors’ Choice (NY Times) — weird leading issue (extra space before last line of every paragraph) makes it irritating to use. Call me fussy; polish matters.
• WeatherBug Elite — nice; not sure I need the map; still looking for the perfect weather app that does metric.

Utilities

• 1Password Pro + — indispensable
• Dropbox + — indispensable
• iTeleport + — stupidly cool
• Server Admin +
• Awaken + (for getting through long Powerpoint presentations…)

Social Media

• Twitterific for iPad — not bad, but a little buggy; multiple accounts requires a not-unreasonable in-app purchase
• IM+ +
• FryPaper — Stephen Fry’s wit and wisdom
• Tweetdeck for iPad — I don’t use it
• Mashable! for iPad

Reference Apps

• Articles for iPad — Sophiestication‘s Apple Design Award winning app; love it
• IMDb + — indispensable
• Flixster + — indispensable, and actually has local cinema listings, including the Vogue here in Sackville!
• Dictionary
• WolframAlpha + — still trying to figure it out!
• PCalc Lite +
• WebMD for iPad
• Epicurious +
• Jumsoft Money +
• Shazam for iPad
• Google Mobile App — mostly just links out to web sites

Downloaded, installed, deleted

• GoodReader — bizarre interface
• National Geographic World Atlas HD — what is this for??
• Astronomy Picture of the Day
• Globe & Mail’s Globe2Go — indecipherable
• NYTimes Crosswords
• Tweeps
• Reuters News Pro
• Pulse News Reader

Anxiously Awaiting…

• Reeder — currently in Apple approval hell
• MarsEdit for iPad (unannounced, but fingers crossed)
• Analytics Pro
• Twitter (née Tweetie; for Mac and iPad) — currently in development hell
• Billings
• CBC Radio
• CBC News app (mobile sites only get you so far…)
• FlickIt Pro
• Skype
• Pastebot/Convertbot/Tweetbot
• TED

…and why did Apple leave out…

• a clock?
• a calculator?
• a notes app? (not that I like theirs…)
• Messages? (could’ve included it on the 3G model…)
• Compass?
• Weather?
• Stocks? (again, not that I’d use it, but…)

Tags: apps, iPad

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 10th, 2010 at 7:41 pm and is filed under Mobile computing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.