trishussey
on - last edited on by
ElizabethS
If there is one thing that makes iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches awesome it’s the apps. Yeah iOS might be cool. Yeah the hardware might be so elegant that “art” isn’t much of a stretch. Yeah none of those matter a wit without great apps. So when our fearless leader Laura asked if I would do a top 5 apps post, I said “of course” right off. And then she sweetened the pot by giving me a Future Shop gift card to buy an iTunes card so I could buy some apps that I’ve been dying to try (and so I have).
Since I’ve had an iPad for over a year now and an iPhone for 8 months (ish), I have a pretty impressive collection of apps. So the problem with picking 5 great apps is just that—picking just 5 apps—so I’m not gonna. I’m going to give you my top 5 apps for iPhone and iPad (yes there will be overlap) plus a few “gimme” apps that I would have to include as awesome apps. See I want to include a few more than just the usual suspects, I want you to find a couple apps that you’ll say “hey that’s pretty cool, I’m getting that now…”.
And thus…
The gimme’s:
- Dropbox (free, all, easy)
- Hootsuite (free, all, medium)
- Kobo (free, all, easy)
- Find My iPhone (free, all,easy)
- CBC Radio (free, all, easy)
I think everyone should have these apps. Yes, even Kobo, because even if you don’t use Kobo to buy ebooks, it’s a great PDF reader. No, it’s not a “I can use this to fill in my PDF forms” app, it’s great for a PDF version of a book, magazine, or manual that you want to have around.
iPhone/iPod Touch apps
These are a few apps that are awesome on the iPhone (and maybe the iPad too—keep reading), ones that make using the iPhone pretty darn awesome.
- Camera+ ($, easy) I have, erm, “a lot” of photography apps (I’m sure Brad Grier has more), but this is my go to app for taking picture. I thought it was so awesome that I told my wife she should get it. She did and suddenly started to love taking pictures on her iPhone. Why? Because Camera+ helps you make your pictures look better. What else do you need to know?
- MetalStorm (free, easy) Yeah I didn’t think I’d put a game on my top apps list, but it isn’t that it’s a game that makes it amazing, it’s how well it uses the motion detection features within iOS. And it’s free. You want to blow jets away, screaming through the skies? Totally. Sure, you can pay for more credits to upgrade your plane, but I haven’t and it doesn’t make it any less fun. Yep, it’s even Game Center enabled and mutli-player aware too.
- Star Walk ($, easy) This is my third star watching app, but I think it’s going to be my fav in short order. We might not be able to see too many stars here in Vancouver, but you know we can see them sometimes. It’s awesome that I can go outside, hold my iPhone up and have the sky match what I’m seeing. It’s augmented reality that makes these apps. There is an iPad-specific version of this app that really takes advantage of the iPad screen.
- CBC News (free, easy, iPad too) I love being able to read news on the go. The CBC is really a leader in iOS development (the CBC Radio app is developed in Vancouver) for news. I like how I can quickly skim some headlines and catch up.
- TuneIn Radio (free & $, easy, iPad too) I love listening to the radio. It’s just one of those things that helps me get work done. The problem is that I like listening to radio that sounds great. Unfortunately, my little portable radio (great for power outages), isn’t really awesome in the sound quality department. TuneIn Radio fixes that problem. While I listen to local stations, you can listen to stations from around the world playing pretty much anything you would want to listen to. I took an old iPhone 3G and turned it into a “always stays in the music dock” music device using this app. There is a free version and a pro version, so try the free and if you want the extra features for pro, go for it, but you might find that free is enough.
iPad apps
Why a separate category for my fav iPad apps? Simply because there are some apps that are awesome on the iPhone, even if they have a real iPad version, that just don’t work as well on the larger area of the iPad. Now, also, I have a first gen iPad so, no camera for me. This also means that while iMovie might have been an app on this list, I can’t install it without hacking a bit.
- GarageBand ($, medium) Yeah the instruments are cool, but it’s the recording on the fly, especially with the USB connector so I can connect a pro mic to my iPad, that makes it an amazing app. Yeah it’s in all the commercials, but play with it in the store. Try it. You’ll love it.
- MetalStorm (free, easy). What? A duplicate? Yeah, and this is one of the coolest things about this app. It looks and plays great on the iPhone and the iPad. Angry Birds is awesome on the iPad, but I find it frustrating on my iPhone. MetalStorm is just awesome on both devices.
- Vancouver Sun (free, easy) You can pick any of the Postmedia group papers, but I happen to like the Sun. I think Postmedia sets the bar for newspaper apps. It’s the first thing I read every morning. I sit down, have my breakfast and catch up on the news. No doubt you’ll like this app, no matter where you live in Canada.
- PDF Expert ($, medium) I have to deal with a lot of PDFs that I need to read, annotate, and sync. Heck I even need to sign some of them too. Having tried a ton of PDF apps, this is the one I hit when I need to fill in a form, annotate, and share. PDF Expert syncs with Dropbox so you can read, sign, and sync in a moment.
- Penultimate ($, easy) I have, as you know a ton of note taking apps but while I could have picked the iWork suite or Elements for my notes app, Penultimate is an app that got out of the gate early and hasn’t looked back since. It’s just the perfect app to jot something done or sketch or … whatever.
Oh yeah, I have a ton more favs, but I think giving you 14 different apps instead of a measly 5 is a pretty good deal. And I know I probably missed some great apps that I don’t have and forgot to look for, so if you have more suggestions…fire away.
