I had an old list of some of my favorite iPhone apps but for the last few months I’ve been using an iPad 2 and have been paying attention to what apps I am actually using.
There have been a lot of great iPad apps released so far. Here is a list of my 10 favorites. This list doesn’t include any games as I will make a separate list for thos. I don’t think there are any surprises here, all of these apps are well known. I think that I will also be creating an alternative list of the best lesser known apps soon so those can get some recognition as well. It’s worth to note that all of these apps have iPhone versions as well as I find that I usually prefer apps that are available on both devices. I also listed any noteworthy competitors that I have tried.
10. Evernote (free, AppStore)
This is a great app for taking text, picture, or audio notes that are synced to your Evernote account and are viewable on all your many devices, your desktop, and the web. Write notes here and read from everywhere instead of using the built in notes app. It automatically makes the text of your notes searchable or can geotag them. Unless you are looking for something a bit simpler just for jotting down notes the competition doesn’t quite measure up to Evernote’s wide range of features.
Competitors: Simplenote, Springpad
9. Snapseed ($4.99, AppStore)
A very high quality photo editing app. You can enhance, adjust, or transform photos easily using a wide range of tools and filters. It is much easier to use than other apps due to it’s simple way of selecting tools and applying selective adjustments. Some of Snapseed’s competition does have more advanced features but I think this wins out with it’s ease of use while still being powerful enough for most tasks.
Competitors: Photogene, Photoforge2
8. NHL GameCenter (free with subscription for premium features, AppStore)
IMO the best app to follow NHL scores, stats, and news. The basic version lets you in on all of this information and will send you push alerts for your favorite teams. The ice tracker is a cool feature to view what is happening on the ice better than most other apps. The premium upgrade ($9.99) lets you watch video highlights, condensed games, and listen to the games. The live upgrade ($119.99) let’s you watch all live games (except for blacked out ones). I think the free version is enough for most users. Other apps will let you follow many other sports but for pure NHL this is my top pick.
Competitors: TSN, ESPN ScoreCenter, SportsTap, Yahoo Sportacular
7. Mint (free, AppStore)
Fantastic finance app. You can add your bank or credit card accounts and Mint will automatically track all of your transactions and try to categorize them as best it can. You can then get an overview of your spending over time by category. You can create budgets to try and reduce your spending or get alerts for large withdrawals, deposits, or when bills are due. For a free application it provides a great service. There are a lot of budget, bills, expense, and other financial apps in the AppStore but Mint’s bank integration make it a lot more automatic and simple to use.
Competitors: Budgets, Bills, BillMinder, MoneyStrands
6. Instapaper ($4.99, AppStore)
Saves pages for offline reading later while optimizing them and stripping away everything else around the article. Many other apps support sending to Instapaper. Also contains a hand curated list of Editors picks for the most popular saved stories. Great for when you find a long article you just don’t have time to read at the moment. Provides great customization of fonts and sizes and has a great tilt scroll feature so you don’t have to touch the screen.
Competitors: ReadItLater, Pulse.me, Apple’s Reading List
5. Netflix(free but requires subscription, AppStore)
Using your Netflix account you can instantly stream TV shows and movies. Shows you new releases and different categories and recommendations. You can resume watching where you left off on your computer or other device. Uses quite a bit of data as it is all streaming but works great.
Competitors: Hulu
4. Epicurious (free, AppStore)
Features over 30,000 recipes from magazines, cookbooks, and professional chefs. You can browse by ingredient, season, or health, Save and sync favorites, read reviews, and even create a shopping list from the selected recipe. Best free recipe app I’ve used.
Competitors: Bigoven, How To Cook Everything, AllRecipes
3. LogMeIn (free for basic features, AppStore)
The easiest to use and simplest to set up remote control software I’ve used. Install the LogMeIn software on your Mac or PC and create an account and you are set. Full control of your machine’s mouse and keyboard, has a built in file manager to get files on your device, and cloud service integration with Dropbox, Google Docs, etc. Very intuitive control and can start sleeping computers with Wake-On-LAN. Any of it’s competitors are not free and some require more complicated set up of a VNC server.
Competitors: Screens, iTeleport, Jump Desktop, Mocha VNC, Splashtop, TeamViewer
2. Reeder ($4.99, AppStore)
My favorite pure RSS news reader. Syncs with Google Reader which is essential for any RSS reader nowadays in my books. Has a wonderful easy to use interface. You can browse by feed or folder, manage starred items or notes, and use offline image caching. Also has a lot of services you can share the current article with (Instapaper, Twitter, Facebook, email, etc). The speed and interface take it to another level over other RSS readers. Mr. Reader is a relative newcomer that comes very close.
Competitors: Mr. Reader, River of News, NewsRack, NetNewsWire, MobileRSS, GoReader,
1. Flipboard (free, AppStore)
My favourite non RSS news reader. Creates a personalized magazine like view out of different categories of aggregated content, curated content, RSS feeds, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or others. Very impress interface with great gestures that is so simple to use. It actually can even sync with Google Reader to replace an RSS reader if you want. This changed the way I read news as it was always just scrolling through a list of RSS feeds, now it is a beatiful print style layout with pictures and headlines. Flipboard also provides great social network sharing features and has Instapaper integration.
Competitors: Zite, Pulse, Google Currents
If anybody has any suggestions for better alternatives to any of these apps I would be glad to read your comments and try them out.
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