New to iPad? Overwhelmed by the app store? Here are some to get you started.
Given that Apple flogged some 7 million of them leading up to Christmas, it wasn’t surprising that many of my friends ended up with a shiny iPad in their stockings. What was surprising was how many of them were not Mac users but instantly fell in love with the iPad and as a result have either switched to Macs or are planning to do so.
Needless to say I’ve had calls or emails from several of them asking how to do one thing or another. Most of them, faced with the overwhelming choice of the App Store, simply want to know what are the best apps to get. Obviously what apps you like will naturally depend on your interests and lifestyle (I’m not much of a gamer for example, although I’m rather partial to FIFA 11, Brothers In Arms and Scrabble on the iPad) but here (in alphabetical order) are the apps that I find myself using most often:
Allowabank ($0.99) – As our kids are too young to have bank accounts, I use Allowabank for keeping track of their weekly allowances. You can set it up for regular weekly or monthly allowances (we automatically add “interest” to encourage them to save) and any time they spend anything, we mark it in Allowabank and they can see exactly how much they have. A useful tool for helping them understand the value of money.
Apple iBooks and Amazon Kindle (free) – I use both these book readers depending what books are available. I prefer the options and technical wizardry of iBooks (download Alice In Wonderland to see what I mean) but the Kindle has more choice and allows you to share books with other Kindle users.
Apple Remote (Free) – Essential if you have Apple TV. Easy to use and great for controlling iTunes playback to any Apple device on your wi-fi network.
Evernote (Free) – I’ve been a long time user of Evernote which allows you to quickly clip text, images, links and documents for later use. I already have it on my desktop and iPhone so extending it to the iPad and being able to have them automatically sync between each other is a no-brainer.
The Economist (Free, optional paid content) – Arguably the best publication on the iPad right now. If you’re an Economist reader, the $110 annual subscription is well worth it – plus you get access to online content, archives and you can listen to an audio version of the whole edition. Alternatively, download the free Editors Highlights version for the week’s best stories. Like the ST you have to manually download each edition.
Epicurious (Free) – The excellent cooking website is even more useful on the iPad. We use it constantly as an interactive cookbook – you can also enter ingredients to come up with recipe suggestions and shopping lists. Well worth buying a Griffin stand for.
Interesting piece from 
Breezeblog 