I admit it, I’m an Apple fan-boy. I’m also a techno geek who has fully embraced the 21st Century for all its gadgety goodness. So me, plus my iPhone and iPad equals a match made in heaven. I use my iPad every day, without fail, for a number of tasks from checking my email to surfing the internet to writing posts for this very site. As you can imagine, I have accumulated a number of iPad apps over time, and with the iTunes store currently rocking over 600,000 apps, I thought it would be good to share my favourite apps with you that I use the most on the iPad.
Tweetbot
By far the best Twitter app I have ever used, and believe me I’ve used a lot of them. Tweetbot is user-friendly, does exactly what you want it to do and syncs across platforms. If you read up to a certain point on your timeline on your iPhone, your iPad will automatically sync to that point rather than have to go through the whole list again. Another reason I love Tweetbot is that it makes it easy for you to utilise the ‘list’ function in Twitter, which makes it a lot easier to find the tweets from the people you want, when you want them. If you are a frequent user of Twitter and haven’t tried Tweetbot, I strongly recommend you give it a whirl.
Comics by ComiXology
Hands down the app that has cost me the most money overall, the Comics app by ComiXology is an amazing digital comic reader and store front which gives you instant access to your digital collection. Now I’m sure a lot of comic purists would argue that it’s not the same if you don’t have the hard copy, which is true to a point, but isn’t that the same with buying a book through the Kindle store or downloading an album through iTunes? For me, the Comics app has reinvigorated my love for comics, and put a rather large dent in my monthly cash-flow in the process.
Reeder
One thing I had never really bought into with internet technology was the RSS feed. I always wondered what the point of them was when I could just bookmark the site in question? Our deputy editor, Sarah (Blissbubbley) told me how useful she finds them and I decided to give it a whirl. I have never looked back, and my Google Reader account now boasts over 60 feeds that I check regularly for information. Reeder is my Goole Reader portal app and it makes my checking of RSS feeds extremely quick and easy to manage. With Reeder, you can change the way your information is viewed, send an article to a plethora of other platforms like Twitter, Facebook or Instapaper (another favourite of mine), favourite an article or mark it as read. As a writer for two websites, its essential for keeping unto date with latest news and I couldn’t write without it.
Spotify
It may have taken them a while but they finally released it, and boy was it worth the wait. The Spotify app for the iPad is like the perfect cross between the desktop version and the iPhone app. It has increased usability and functionality than the rather restricted iPhone app has, whilst not loading it up with so much function that it becomes laborious to use. If you have a premium account, its perfect for storing your music to listen on the go, something that makes Spotify a wondrous and cost-effective way to access new music.
Pages
Apple’s very own Word Processor, Pages, is my weapon of choice when it comes to writing articles for either of the sites I run. It’s not as powerful as Microsoft Word, but for an Apple user its extremely useful as it syncs between platforms and allows you to access your articles on your desktop or iPhone (as long as you buying the app on them). There are a number of issues with Pages which will stop it from ever being a serious contender to Word, and its very annoying that you can’t store your file in Dropbox or a similar platform, but it’s still a country mile over the WordPress app.