Being one of the earliest of early adopters—I got my first iPad about half an hour after they went on sale on April 3—I’m often asked by friends, family members, and readers about my favorite iPhone and iPad applications. I’ve written plenty of columns about iPhone apps, so now it’s the iPad’s turn.
Given the role that my iPad has assumed in my life, it’s hard for me to believe that the device has only been on the market for 12 weeks. It’s the first gadget I use in the morning and the last one I use at night. It hasn’t fully replaced my laptop (see item 26: WordPress), but it’s my preferred device for processing e-mail, catching up on news, reading, and relaxing. It really is, as Steve Jobs argued, a “third category of device,” carving out new space between the mobile phone and the traditional laptop or PC—and definitely draining my own time away from both. (Let’s not even talk about my Kindle, which I haven’t turned on in months.)
A single iPad screen has room for 26 app icons, if you load it up fully. So my premise for this column was to ask myself which 26 apps I’d want on my iPad if I could only have one page’s worth of them. I’m including the apps that I’ve affixed to the dock on my iPad, but not any of the other apps that come pre-loaded on the device, such as the App Store, iTunes, Photos, Maps, YouTube, Contacts, Notes, and Videos. And I’m only listing apps designed specifically for the iPad. (I think it’s a little bogus for Apple to claim that there are more than 200,000 apps for the iPad, since most iPhone apps look incredibly goofy when blown up to twice their normal size on the iPad screen.)
My essential apps are listed on the following pages in alphabetical order. I’d love to hear about your own favorite iPad apps—so leave a comment below or shoot me a note at [email protected].
For a full list of my columns, check out the World Wide Wade Archive. You can also subscribe to the column via RSS or e-mail, and you can download Pixel Nation, an e-book version of the first 80 columns, as a free PDF file or a $4.99 Kindle edition.
