B minor

Every few weeks another person I know gets an iPad and asks me about apps for the device. I’ve already written my thoughts about the iPad as a product, but now, in anticipation of the iPad being a hot item this holiday season, I’m throwing together a list of 10 apps that I love and get a ton of mileage out of:

Productivity

Evernote – Evernote is a world-class note taking application. It is cross-platform (desktop, web, mobile, tablet), syncs over the air, supports tagging and a whole host of input formats – voice, text, photo, etc. It is my go-to place to record important information and non-task-oriented lists. There’s a reason its logo is an elephant – it is very hard to forget anything when you store it in Evernote. (free)

OmniFocus – I used to use Cultured Code’s Things for my task management/to-do lists. Unfortunately, they dragged their feet for too long on cloud sync, so I gave up and switched to OmniFocus over the summer. Couldn’t be happier. They make a great suite of products (tablet, phone, desktop) for managing your chores – and they are very heavily influenced by the GTD framework. They come in on the pricier side, but the peace of mind the product buys by freeing up mindshare for things other than remembering chores is well worth it. ($39.99)

iA Writer – This is a beautiful, distraction-eliminating, prose-writing application. If you write seriously, you must have this. ($4.99)

Social

Twitter – the web’s favorite micro-blogging platform, available in a beautiful iPad-native interface. (free)

Flipboard – Flipboard pulls the highlights from your social networks (Facebook, Twitter) and presents pictures, articles, and status messages in a compelling, digi-zine format. It’s a great way to dive deeper into the content your friends are sharing – perfect for end-of-day or Sunday morning reading and browsing. (free)

Entertainment

Netflix – The awesome of Netflix, tabletized. You can stream the same stuff you’d stream to your computer or set-top box to your iPad. The video quality is surprisingly good. Fair warning, though – Netflix can quickly turn into a black hole, sucking all your available time into it. At $7.99/month for unlimited streaming, it’s hard to remember why I ever paid for cable subscription. (free, subscription required.)

Travel

FlightTrack – If you travel even *somewhat* frequently, FlightTrack is a must-have. It has a dead-simple interface for tracking your upcoming flights, including separating the airline’s arrival/departure times from the FAA’s wheels-down/wheels-up times. You’ll have a much better sense of when you’re actually going to leave or arrive with this app. The Pro version integrates with TripIt to pull in your itineraries automagically – which is pretty awesome when you have multi-leg or recurring itineraries. (Unclear how long this lasts, though, as FlightTrack’s developer, Mobiata, was just acquired by Expedia.) ($4.99 standard) ($9.99 pro)

Communication

BeejiveIM - If you use multiple instant messaging services, this is a must-have. Even if you don’t, but are looking for a dead-simple IM client with push alerts for the iPad, this is a great find. I realized recently that IM was one of the reasons I wasn’t using my iPad as frequently, so I was pleasantly surprised to find the iPad version of this app I’ve used on my iPhone for so long. ($9.99)

Fun

StarWalk – One of those great “impress your friends” apps. A must-have if you are an outdoors person or have ever been fascinated by what lies out there in space. A should-have if you ever find yourself outside with friends at night. This app will use your location and give you a 3D rendering of the night sky, perfectly mapped to the current time. Makes identifying stars, constellations, and other nighttime phenomena a breeze. Packed with fun information about everything you might encounter in the night sky. ($4.99)

Osmos HD – The quintessential iPad game. It’s beautifully designed and skirts the line of maddeningly challenging. (You may find yourself googling how to solve certain levels.) But it’s fun and really brings the power of the iPad’s interface to bear. ($4.99)

I know I said 10, but this one’s too good not to include, so consider it a bonus:

Uzu – Trust me on this. Buy it. Your imagination will thank me, your productivity will hate me. [And remember when you use it, you have 10 fingers.] ($1.99)

If you have comments about these apps or want to add your own recos, please do so below!

I’ve now spent 24 hours with the iPad. Everyone keeps asking what I think of it, so I’m formalizing my thoughts and posting them here:

The device:

It’s pretty. This is no shock, coming from Apple, though I do find myself impressed with the quality of the display every time I fire it up.

The battery is good. Pogue said 12 hours of straight video play. Haven’t tried that myself but at the rate things are going, I’d believe it.

Downside: it does not charge when plugged into my mac (older machine) and the cord isn’t really long enough to plug into wall and continue playing with it, so you do have to take a break when you want to charge it. Fortunately the battery seems good enough that that shouldn’t be a problem.

The thing is heavier than a kindle and holding it for a while, while not painful, can get awkward. I got a case. I’d recommend it.

The content:

The Apple apps (mail, calendar, etc) are top notch. They feel like they are the full incarnation of what the iPhone version wanted to be. Disappointingly, Apple does not provide a native chat application (still) which feels like a missed opportunity for the device – perhaps that will come in the next OS.

The third party apps I’ve tried so far are also quite impressive. There does seem to be a thinness around the offerings at the moment though, particularly among the free ones. Also, there is no Facebook app, which seems weird to me. I’ve been much less active on Facebook because of that.

File handling is an annoyance. I can’t download a PDF from the web to view later (I can bookmark it and view it in safari – but there is no way to get the file in an offline state – and no way to mark up the PDF unless it’s imported into Pages – which I can only do if I email myself). Access to Mobile Me iDisk (available on the iPhone) is also noticeably absent.

One would presume the apps will catch up as they begin approving in the iTunes Store again this week.

The experience:

The thing moves fast. I imagine that the next iPhone will also process this quickly and finally we will have a powerful smartphone instead of just a smartphone. The apps all load quickly, video runs beautifully, the speaker is good enough quality to watch tv shows with.

Most importantly though, is the lack of multitasking. This will upset power users, but I found myself consistently more relaxed as I was doing only one thing at a time instead of the usual 4 or 5. I wonder if this will help combat ADD overall – I doubt it.

(I should also add, that while typing is obviously not as good as with a keyboard, it is lightyears better than with the iPhone. I can type at near keyboard pace on the iPad screen.)

So what?

Ya, I agree with the sentiment that this device is more about consuming than creating. But I’m okay with that. It’s been a pleasure to consume with it so far and I do now understand the middle zone between the phone and the laptop that this device will serve – I was skeptical about it before.

The verdict: if you like toys and consume a lot of media, it’s worth the add. But yes, there will likely be a slightly cheaper, better one in 12 months. (That said, this does not seem to suffer from the bugginess or rough first outing effects that iPhone 1 did – so don’t make that the excuse.) I like mine, and it’s been an excellent couch companion for the past day.

This post was written from the iPad.

Feel free to ask specific questions in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer.