I bought the wife an iPad for Christmas.
What are the must have apps?
She is into:
Cooking
Crafts
Cross stitch
Knitting
Puzzle games
Sewing
So what are your suggestions?
I’m a fan of home cooking. My favorite apps include:
- How To Cook Everything: An electronic version of the famous cookbook by Mark Bittman, of the same name. Excellent guide to how to take basic ingredients and do interesting things with them, with lots of recipe variations. (There’s also a version called How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, in case she’s a vegetarian like me.) $10 I think.
- Paprika: If she wants to create her own cookbook, this is superb. It has a built-in web browser where you can import recipes off the web via their automatic recipe recognition system. You can also type in favorite recipes yourself. There’s a version for Mac computers that can sync with the same database as on the iPad (I use PCs so I have no experience with it), and you can back up your recipe database to their own free “cloud sync” service. I have it on my iPhone and my iPad, and can sync between them via this service. I think this was $5.
- Epicurious: Similar to Paprika (with sync service, add your own recipes, etc.) and also has access to recipes from magazines like Gourmet, Bon Appetit, and Self, plus those of various chefs and others. Free.
- Jamie’s Recipes: (Don’t confuse this with his older app.) Recipes from Jamie Oliver, British “celeb” chef. Free with some basic recipes added, and new recipes can be bought in packs; sometimes they have recipe sales. Nice step-by-step instructions, with video tutorials for parts.
For knitting I just use the free iPhone/iPad app Stitch Minder - it’s just a 4-items-at-a-time stitch counter app that lets you track things like what set of repeats you’re on, that sort of thing. It’s not optimized for iPad so there aren’t any fancy graphics, but it does its job.
What kind of puzzle games? Sudoku, crosswords, riddles, etc?
Puzzle Agent and Puzzle Agent 2 are pretty awesome games. They combine a hand-drawn drawing look with a mystery in a little town in Minnesota and lots of puzzles to figure out along the way. Math, logic, spatial, all kinds of puzzles. (Rather like the Professor Layton series if you’re familiar with that.) They have great voice acting. An X-Files-like mystery is involved in each story.
I’ll check out your suggestions. As far as games go she likes crosswords and puzzle solving games like Myst.
If she likes puzzles, check out Cut The Rope. Plants vs Zombies is very popular, but it isn’t really a puzzle game.
If you want to watch videos, get AVPlayer HD, iPad’s video player is very hard to use.
I’m not a huge fan of Martha Stewart but the apps for Martha Stewart Living and Everyday Food are gorgeous. If you subscribe to the print magazines you get the apps and whatever issues you’ve paid for are included. Actually you get them from the Newsstand store. Back in November I got a deal where I got both Living and Everyday food (print version) for something like $20 and now I get the electronic versions included. I’d opt out of the print version if I could. Martha also has Cookie and Cocktail apps. You buy the base app and it comes with some starter sections (bar cookies, drop cookies, etc.) and you can buy additional sections for a couple of bucks as you like. The Cocktail app works the same way and also includes appetizer recipes. The Holiday cocktails section was free recently. It might still be.
Food52.com also has a pretty holiday cooking app. They had it on sale for $5 on Black Friday so I got that, too. I think the regular price is $10. I wouldn’t have paid that for it. Not that it’s not worth it, I’m just stingy that way.
Even though it’s not on the list of her interests, I have to recommend Star Walk just because it’s so damn cool. Point the iPad up and you get a map of the constellations, planets, moon and whatever else is up thar. You can also put it on your iPhone for wonderful portability and instant skywatching wherever you may be
I’m going to follow this thread, as I got an iPad too! I’m interested in most of what **Mrs. Rick **likes, except knitting.
All the cool kids knit.
One of us…one of us…one of us…
Puzzle Quest and Puzzle Quest 2 are both RPGs where the fights are essentially a game of Bejeweled.
I second Star Walk…one of the best apps ever!!!
Zite - it’s essentially a feed reader but you choose the things you’re interested in and it searches the web for recent articles. Mine gathers travel, pets, world news, psychology, celebrity gossip, gadgets, gaming, technology and cooking just to give you an idea of the breadth of categories. I’m sure there’s probably a knitting category too. And it’s free!
I recommend World of Goo.
Flipboard is awesome
I’ve got a bunch of games, including iPad versions of some classic board games, like Monopoly, Risk, Trivial Pursuit and Scrabble. I like to joke that it’s the world’s most expensive Scrabble board. I also like the New York Times app for the iPad and also Tapatalk for reading threads on the SDMB.
Jim and Frank Mystery is also a cool puzzle game.