So. Dad got an iPad2 as a gift for completing some training (no, I don’t get it either, but anyway) and Mom already has one (and apparently he didn’t want his own), so they gave it to me. Score! I’ll admit, it’s a pretty cool little gadget.
I’ve only had it two days, and have been playing with it some, and I’m afraid I’m at the “now what?” stage. So, give me your recommendations as to what I should put on it. What are the iPad apps I just can’t live without?
As some background, I have a Kindle as well, so I have the Kindle app, and have also downloaded the free Books app. I’ve got Shazam and Pandora, Groupon (though I don’t use it much), OpenTable and Urban Spoon, NPR and CNN news apps, HBO Go (I’m a subscriber because of Game of Thrones), and the games I bought for my iPod Touch - Angry Birds, Crush the Castle, and Cut the Rope. (These last two are the free demos, and all three are the small size on the iPad.) Google Earth is on there, too.
We also bought a projector for the patio and tried to watch some StrongBad emails last night through the HDMI adaptor, but I forgot about the no Flash thing on the iPad. Is there some way or some app available that’ll let it play Flash?
I’m a cook, so I’d be interested in cooking apps - what are the best ones?
What else can it do that I’m totally missing? Help me load this up. (It’s the 16 G WiFi only model, if that’s important.)
Zinio is great if you’re looking for a magazine reader
Zite is my new favorite app. It accumulates news articles on topic you are interested in and presents them in magazine format
Fotopedia National Parks is great if you want to look at beatiful nature photos
Rebuy your games in iPad format instead of iPhone. The full screen view is much better.
Plants vs Zombies is a fun tower defense type game
I use Bittman’s “How to Cook Everything” app all the time. Ruhlman has a Ratio and Bread Baking app that I use on occasion. Cook’s Illustrated also has one, but it’s formatted to iPhone and not quite as good.
But the #1 app I use for cooking isn’t really a cooking app at all - it’s Evernote. I use Evernote to store my personal recipes and also clipped recipes from the web. It’s great, because I can be sitting at my computer browsing the Internet, find an interesting recipe, and copy it to Evernote. It’s automatically on my iPad, and I can use it in the kitchen to cook from. I also have an iPhone with the Evernote app, so when I’m in the grocery store thinking “boy, those tomatoes look good. I should make that tomato thing I made a couple months ago. What else do I need?” and I can whip out my phone and look up the recipe and get whatever ingredients I might not have.
Also very handy for notes and modifications, like “Good recipe, but next time cut the salt” kind of stuff.
In the sense that you can watch Netflix stuff on it, yes.
If you’re using it as a way to figure out what Netflix movie to watch on your TV, it sucks. Really bad UI, no way to look at reviews that I can tell, and a million ways you can accidentally start watching a movie on the iPad instead of browsing the catalog. I hate that app.
Get all the book readers: iBooks, Kindle, Google Books. They have different book selections, and many books are free. I like the iBooks one because of the cool shelves it puts up for your library, and its animated page turning.
– Google Earth is a must have.
– So is Good Reader (for PDFs)
– I’m still looking for a good note taking app. The best so far is Notes Plus, but it’s a bit clunky.
– Skype is really terrible for iPad, but what’s the alternative? I want to talk with my nieces, and they don’t have Facetime.
– Dropbox is a good place to store stuff online and free up to 2 GB or maybe 5. My work blocks it though.
– Star Walk for star gazing is great. It will recognize the iPad being tilted up, and effectively superimpose info right over the sky.
– Friendly is a good interface for Facebook if you’re into that.
Plus games! My favorites so far are Angry Birds, Rag Doll Blaster, Spirits, World of Goo, NY Time Crosswords, and many of the Big Fish hidden pictures games even though they’re all lame.
I don’t know how mobile your iPad is - but I’ll tell you the apps I love for my iphone:
Angry Birds
Cat Psychics
Urban Spoon (when you don’t feel like cooking)
Words with Friends (i’m giddygeeker)
tweetdeck
meetup
cardstar (probably better for your iphone)
craigsphone (craigslist goes mobile!)
bump (great for sharing info)
Didja know Adult Swim has an app? I didn’t. Now I do. There’s not a ton out there yet, so there is that. The Xfinity app is also pretty keen (I have Comcast), but I was hoping it would let me watch what’s on my DVR through the iPad. I know, I know - how would they even accomplish that? But it would still be nice. Didn’t try watching live TV through it, but the On Demand works.
I’m also a subscriber to Self magazine (fat lot of good it’s doing me, but I guess the motivation has to come from within, hey? The magazine can only do so much), and they just told me that they’ve an app too, included with my subscription. So I might go download that as well.
You can use iSwifter for Flash on the iPad. It’s a browser that allows Flash content, e.g., games, video, movies, etc… on websites to be played on your iPad. It does what it says, but it is slow, at least the free version is.
I haven’t paid the $2.99 for the pay version and probably won’t. I keep hoping Apple will come to their senses and allow Flash to be played natively.
I’m chiming in to recommend Radarscope. It’s an excellent weather radar app (which is a nice thing to have in the Midwest in the spring!). I use it all the time.
Hope away, but it ain’t gonna happen. Steve Jobs has made it abundantly clear multiple time that he hates Flash and wants people to finally use HTML5 already. Apple will do anything in their power (which, in this segment, is significant) to kill Flash. Really, there’s nothing you can do with Flash that can’t be done as well or better on HTML5.
I bought Penultimate based on good reviews, but I don’t see the appeal. Even with a stylus, you can’t write much smaller (or neater) than a five year-old on a “Luv u mom!!!” note. You also can’t mix in typing, pictures, or voice. All you can do is change the color of the lines, and the thickness (from sharpened crayon to dull crayon).
Cat Psychics sounds like a great game, but after some searching, I found that mel probably meant, Cat Physics. I’ll have to check that out, at least while I’m waiting for Cat Psychics to appear in the app store.
Please don’t feel I’m starting an argument with you, but it doesn’t matter that developers can do the same things with HTML5 as they can with Flash. It’s going to take time, and for some developers quite some time, to recode. In the interim, those of us who have become comfortable with certain Flash sites and components, and rely on them, are forced to a different platform.
If Apple has such a philosophical, or even legitimately technical, aversion to all things Flash, I find it somewhat hypocritical that they preloaded a separate YouTube app on the ipad, and that they allow developers to market work arounds for online applications and other components that require Flash capabilities to run. Why doesn’t Apple simply play nice until HTML5 finds its way into developer’s toolkits organically, instead of being royal dicks about it?