Saturday, October 8, 2011

Best iPad Apps

These top apps will turn your iPad into a life-changing companion.
There's no doubt about it, the iPad is an amazing entertainment device. Thanks to its touchscreen, the range of games has exploded on the platform since its launch in 2010, and now encompasses everything from strategy and solitaire to first-person shooters, plus a selection of games that are iPad-only. However, it's not only in gaming that the iPad excels. You can also watch TV and movies, listen to the radio and read comics, thanks to a huge selection of apps. Whatever you like to do when you're away from work, there's almost certainly an app to help you do it.

The iPad and iPad 2 are the ultimate entertainment devices, enabling you to watch live TV and listen to the radio. We pick the best iPad apps to entertain you.

Best Entertainment Apps

Adobe Ideas
Price: $5.99
Adobe's first - and so far only - iPad app is a basic sketchbook enabling you to quickly sketch out concepts and designs, as well as trace photos and sample colours from them. You can also export files in PDF format, ready to edit vectors in Illustrator.

Remote Potato HD
$6.99
Stream movies, music and pictures located on your home PC or laptop on your iPad. This app allows all this to be done without syncing. The latest video and audio formats are supported so you need not to worry about compatibility. The program works fine in both Mac and Window environments.

Best Utilities Apps

Air Display
Price: $9.99
A delightfully simple yet brilliant iPad app that enables you to use the iPad as an extra display for your Mac or PC - as long as you have a wi-fi network set up. Although video content is unwatchable, it's brilliant for housing all your Photoshop palettes and generally extending your desktop.

Price: $2.99
Air Video enables you to stream videos in almost any format to your iPad (except those with DRM attached). You can stream over local networks or over the internet (including 3G). A nice app for checking files remotely, or just helping you avoid filling up your iPad's flash drive.



Best iPad Apps for Productivity

Keynote for iPad
Price: $9.99
Presentations are a great way to make a point explain an idea or make a case and Apple has managed to adapt most of the features of the desktop app into the iPad's touchscreen interface.

Toodledo - To Do List
Price: $2.99
A todo list and task management app in the same vein as Things and Todo, Toodledo is a good solution. It enables you to do all the things you would expect - including setting the priority, start date, due date, lengthy and status of a task.

FastFinga
Price: $1.99
FastFinga is a neat app for quickly taking handwritten notes. The idea is simple: you write at full size and the app shrinks this and puts it in a tidy note format. Actually, this is quite excellent for £1.19.

Best Photography Apps for iPad

PixelMagic
PixelMagic is a photo-editing tool, enabling you to add black-and-white, sepia and a range of other filter effects. It also enables you to tweak colour adjustments and add frames to your photos.

CameraBag for iPad
Price: $1.99
CameraBag enables you to simulate all kinds of different camera effects, directly on your iPad. From Helga to cross-processing to faded, tinted ‘70s effects, this is a versatile and well-executed app that is well worth the $1.99 asking price.

Price: $3.99
Filterstorm includes a comprehensive set of tools for editing photos on your iPad. Pro-like features such as curves, colour correction, noise reduction, unsharp masking and good quality black-and-white conversion make it a very good value app at $3.99. You can also apply filters using a brush-based system.

Best iPad Games

Royal Envoy HD
$4.99
Royal Envoy HD is a game specially designed for iPad screens. If you like playing strategy games and are a bit of a builder yourself, you are in for a treat. Royal Envoy has nine delightful maps with over 90 missions within them. The story is quite appealing and one can easily get used to the controls. The graphics are beautiful and the sound is nice, with or without headphones.

Sketch Nation Shooter
$0.99
Remember those arcade fighter plane shooting games you used to play on Atari and Nintendo? Sketch Nation Shooter is a similar game but placed in a sketched-out world with the latest graph¬ics. It is like playing a game within a comic strip. Quite enjoyable.

Angry Birds
$4.99
Angry Birds may be the game that comes to define the iPhone era by being one of the most popular downloads. And now the HD version brings those annoyed feathered friends and evil pigs to the iPad. The story remains the same: the pigs have stolen the birds' eggs and the birds are none too pleased. It's your job to fling various birds at the pigs to destroy them. Unfortunately, the pigs are protected by a complex assortment of fortifications.
The game makes full use of the iPad's large screen; aiming is now easier since your ringer doesn't block out as much of the screen when pulling back on the slingshot. New levels are included, making it definitely worth the purchase for existing fans of the game.

Other top Games:

Top Drawing Apps

Brushes
Price: $7.99 
High-quality, customisable brushes, layers with blending modes, a great colour picker, zoom level of up to 32 per cent, and a high-resolution export makes this a versatile and fully-featured painting app for iPad.

Typedrawing
Price: $2.99  
Like type? Like drawing? Well, unsurprisingly Typedrawing fuses the two things enabling you to type out a sentence and then using your finger draw using those characters. A simple, fun app with 49 fonts available to choose from.

SketchyPad
Price: $4.99 
Ever wanted to create website and app mockups on your iPad? Well, SketchyPad is the answer, providing a huge amount of stencils to realise your vision for your website or app. Rivals iMockup for functionality and usability.

Best News Apps

Not only does the iPad version of The Telegraph make it easier to carry under your arm, but it builds on its pulp cousin with interactive multimedia content and crosswords. In addition, each issue can be downloaded automatically onto the iPad every day from 5am. Getting the morning paper has never been more convenient.

Instapaper
$4.99
A rival to Flipboard, Instapaper lets you save articles, blogs and even emails for later offline reading. The iPad version of Instapaper automatically adjusts text fonts, sizes and layouts for tablet viewing. It incorporates a dictionary, article sharing, dark mode for night reading and crucially is supported by more than 140 other iPhone and iPad apps.

You didn't think we could leave this off the list, did you? The digitised version of your favourite science and technology publication brings every issue to life. Building on the magazine's winning formula you will find interactive graphics, interviews with experts and 360-degree views of the latest gadgets. Focus subscribers get it free.

Flipboard
Free
This clever app creates a customised magazine by pulling content and pictures from your Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, RSS feeds and favourite blogs and websites. Then just flick through it as Flipboard beautifully organises the pages.

2 comments:

  1. Awesome list! My husband and I needed some help looking for some new apps for our iPads so I really appreciate the ideas, thanks! There are definitely more than a few that we will be downloading! One app that we've had for a while now that I highly recommend checking out is the DISH Remote Access app from our TV provider (my employer) DISH Network. That app with DISH's Sling Adapter at home lets us watch all of our subscribed live or recorded programming from our iPads anywhere on 3G or WiFi. It's pretty cool and comes at a great value since they are for a limited time practically giving the Adapter away for free. I made sure to pick one up and love it! :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. nice blog, i like it. I was wondering how you got so good. thanks for sharing this.
    best iphone apps

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