Just got one and I need to load it up. Anything you find interesting, cool, productive or good time wasters. My ipad is the 8 gig wifi one, but don’t let that stop you from suggesting apps for 3g ipads (are there differences in the apps?). Anything worth jailbreaking for?
I did a search and didn’t find a specific thread for this. Apologies if I’m rehashing an existing thread and do point me to it if I am.
Best game: Plants vs. Zombies. Don’t ask, just buy it. (there’s an iPhone version too, so make sure you get the iPad version).
Second best game: Pinball HD. It has three different pinball games for the price of one, and they’re really well done.
QuickOffice - lets you read and edit Word and Excel files. It can connect to your Google Docs, Dropbox, MobileMe, and others, so that you can share the documents with your home computer or laptop or whatever. Before getting this, I was using Office2 HD, which has similar functionality but is disappointing in its lack of features (it doesn’t even display tabs correctly in a Word doc).
The HD version of AP News is free and has a cool interface.
If you have any need to connect remotely to your home computer, the best of the VNC apps is iTeleport. I tried a lot of the others, and this one is hands down the best. More expensive, but worth it, believe me.
Alpine Crawler HD is pretty cool for a free game.
Pcalc Lite is a very nice free calculator that can switch between “normal” mode and RPN. It makes good use of the iPad screen.
The Weather Channel HD app is free and pretty.
Beat the Traffic is a free app that shows a map with the freeway traffic in green, yellow, or red, depending on severity.
Labyrinth 2 HD Lite is free and worth the download, if only to show off the accelerometer to your friends.
Thanks Roadfood. Lots to look at and try. Hopefully some other folks will weigh in.
Hmm. Maybe this should be in IMHO?
Netflix, ABC, Kindle, WeatherBug, NPR, IMDb, Alice Light (to show off capabilities), Night Stand HD, Aquarium, Pocket Pond, Yahoo Entertainment, NYT Editor’s Choice, NightStand HD to name a few.
It seems like you really like NightStand HD.
I guess I can’t read and type at the same time…
I read that there is a new Dogbert App too, but I haven’t downloaded it yet 
Missed the edit window. To be fair there are two different (or more?) apps with the words night and stand.
You beat me to it! I myself don’t have an Ipad, but my three-year-old behavioral client has one. Yes, really.
I have avoided Plants vs Zombies because I understand it’s very addictive.
However, I’m totally addicted to Flight Control HD. A great game.
For other games, the cream of the crop on my iPad are Pinball HD, Angry Birds HD, Real Racing HD, Zen Bound, and Astraware Solitaire and Sudoku. Astraware has the best UI designers around when it comes to solitaire and Sudoko - their games are filled with little usability tweaks that make them really enjoyable to play. And they’re cheap - $1.99, as I recall. I paid $14 for Astraware solitaire on my Windows Mobile phone, and the iPad version is much better. If you like solitaire or Sudoku, those are the ones to get.
I’ve also got X-plane, a great flight simulator. Again, the iPad version is much cheaper than any other version, and it’s amazingly full featured.
For productivity apps, I’ve got the following:
Pulse - a great visual RSS reader. It caused a recent controversy when Steve Jobs demoed it at WWDC, and the New York Times got mad because the reader was using their paper for its demo and shipping it with a link to the NYT newsfeed. So the Pulse guys took it out. Stupid New York Times. Anyway, it’s a great RSS reader.
Amazon Kindle App. Basically, it turns your iPad into a Kindle, except with a color display and backlight.
Zinio Magazine Reader. The app is free, and you can subscribe to magazines. They’re much cheaper than the newstand versions. I just bought a year of Car and Driver for $8.47, which is not much more than the price I pay for a single issue in Canada. There are hundreds of popular magazines available to buy for various prices.
Weatherbug. Awesome weather display app that integrates with Google Maps and allows you to overlay actual weather radar information.
Dropbox - best way to get documents on and off your iPad
Sketchbook Pro - Autodesk’s sketching/painting application for iPad. Very powerful.
The Elements - the best demo of the iPad you can get. And you can learn a lot from it. But it’s pricey - around $15.
Evernote: A note-taking app that automatically syncs to the cloud. Install the client on your iPad, your PC, and you’re phone, and you’ll always have a database of notes available to you no matter which device you’re using and which one you wrote the note on. For example, i can make a grocery list at home on my PC, then read it on my phone when I’m shopping. No file transfers or computer syncing required.
Thanks for the suggestions Sam Stone. And it’s also nice to get a Canadian perspective. Hurry up with the streaming already zip.ca!
Anybody else?
I use GoodReader for PDFs and ARCreader for comic book CBR files. I’d like to say that comics on the iPad are staggeringly awesome.
For drawing / painting, the iPad is less than ideal because of the lack of pressure sensitivity, but the Layers, Brushes and Sketchbook programs are very strong. I prefer Sketchbook personally.
Adobe Ideas has a nice, simple vector program, although it isn’t very robust, but then again it is free.
I use MyNetDiary to track my workouts and food, it works pretty well. Pocketmoney is a good bill tracker.
For entertainment, Netflix is amazing. ABC player, Justin.tv are good. I like the MyCongress app.
I love the iPad by the way.
Check out StarWalk, Distant Suns, tChess Pro, and Ancient Go. (All of these have iPhone versions as well, so be sure you’re picking up the iPad one). I’m also getting a lot of use out of RadarScope - best weather radar app out there, bar none.