Hi all,
Please list any apps that you feel are essential for your iPad 2 here, which some explanation about what they do, and if they are free or not. I realise there is already an iPhone app thread, but I’d like to keep this for the iPad 2 specifically. Of course if you use any iPhone apps on your iPad, feel free to list them here.
The meaning of “essential” is somewhat flexible here.
facetime and calendar (built in). Facetime with my parents (doing the grandparents reading bedtime stories thing… fantastic. Far superior to Skype). Calendar is (almost) everything it ought to be.
flipboard: magazine composed of your favorite feeds. If I didn’t have flipboard, I’d include NYT, The Economist (great app) BBC News, and NPR.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary: very well done.
IM+: instant messager.
dropbox: online storage.
Instapaper: article storage for reading later.
Air Video: for streaming video to the pad.
Pages, DocsToGo, GoodReader: document editing.
Google mobile, also, the standalone Google Translate and Google Earth apps.
Garageband: for giggles. Also, I use it to record and selectively playback student readings and presentations. Ditto iMovie.
Class Organizer for organizing all the classes, homework, etc.
The Monster at the End of this Book: for Willow. Ditto all the Duck Duck Moose apps and Loud Crow interactive books.
[quote=“Jaboney”]facetime and calendar (built in). Facetime with my parents (doing the grandparents reading bedtime stories thing… fantastic. Far superior to Skype). Calendar is (almost) everything it ought to be.
flipboard: magazine composed of your favorite feeds. If I didn’t have flipboard, I’d include NYT, The Economist (great app) BBC News, and NPR.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary: very well done.
IM+: instant messager.
dropbox: online storage.
Instapaper: article storage for reading later.
Air Video: for streaming video to the pad.
Pages, DocsToGo, GoodReader: document editing.
Google mobile, also, the standalone Google Translate and Google Earth apps.
Garageband: for giggles. Also, I use it to record and selectively playback student readings and presentations. Ditto iMovie.
Class Organizer for organizing all the classes, homework, etc.
The Monster at the End of this Book: for Willow. Ditto all the Duck Duck Moose apps and Loud Crow interactive books.[/quote]
Thanks, Jaboney. Are these all free?
Nope. Some free, some free versions available.
Free:
flipboard, the dictionary, dropbox, Instapaper, Google, some versions of the kiddie books.
Most I’ve paid for an app was DocsToGo: $15. All others are $5 at most.
(I’d pay $20 if someone had a word processor that tracked changes the way Word does.)
It seems to me that all the apps you recommended above also work on the original iPad? (I’m sure there are enough of those still out there). I think unless it’s a high end game or an app utilizing either of the cameras, pretty much all iPad 2 apps also work equally well on the original iPad. Just wanted to confirm in case there are original iPad owners out there feeling left out. 
Wacom just put out a new sketchpad app called Bamboo Paper. Its free until July I think. Best sketchpad app I’ve yet to come across.
Here’s my must haves:
Living Earth - Great app for figuring out time differences & weather all around the world
PPG!TWHD - GPS with all the bell’s and whistles like camera notifications. If google maps fails me, this never does.
iCurrencyPad - Best currency converter I’ve come across, includes a calc and running history of price change.
Logmein - Pricy, but if you’ve got an iPad2 and need something from your computer, this is it hands down.
TVUPlayer - Streams a lot of taiwanese local stations and others from around the world. keeps the girlfriend quiet on long trips if one of her soaps just happens to be on.
Note Taker HD ) - Best note taking app, feels just like using paper and has consistently gotten better with each update.
Taiwan Lucky Lotto - Ok, this one is a shameless plug for something I made. I use it everyday though and I know others are too from some of the feedback I’ve gotten. App lets you track your Taiwan receipts that have lottery numbers on them and helps to determine if you’ve got a winner. There’s a free version as well here 
Good Reader - gets you a ton of file support including ZIP files, etc. Also very good at annotation.
LogMeIn Ignition - just did tech support for my folks from the iPad with this. Use it all the time to get to stuff on the home PC.
TouchDraw - for me, faster than Visio
Jot - best hybrid text & ink whiteboard. Can do concurrent people on the same whiteboard. Have done this between TW and USA
Dropbox - No brainer here. This is the defacto file system for iOS.
Pages - Word
Numbers - Excel
Keynote - Powerpoint anywhere. Have already done a few presentations from the iPad using the iPhone as a remote.
Pages, Numbers and Keynote are now iPhone apps also (free with iPad download) so that’s convenient. I haven’t given a presentation from the iPhone yet, but neat to know it would be useful in a pinch. The one thing we haven’t fully explored yet is using Keynoting as a rapid prototyping platform on the phone for app development.
Can’t wait for Airplay screensharing to go primetime. Finally, someone built the simple wireless screen-sharing feature I’ve been wanting for our office, and sure enough it was Apple.
Thanks, all.
Can any of you let me know ow you go about watching videos on your iPad? Both ones in iPad-friendly format and others.
I have the camera connection kit and if necessary can convert videos on my PC before putting them on an SD card or USB thumb drive, but I’d like to avoid having to transfer things through iTunes from the PC to the iPad.
I’ve been using Airplay to convert videos that aren’t in an iPad friendly format. If I’m at home, I then stream to watch. If not, I load via iTunes, or put the video in Dropbox. When I’ve got decent wifi, I download the video to the Dropbox app and watch through there.
Thanks Jaboney, so it seems Dropbox is the way to go (also recommended by mabagal) if I want to avoid tethering the iPad to the PC.
If I convert to iPad-friendly format, can I then watch a movie from a USB thumb drive or SD card through the camera connection kit? Say, if I stick them inside a folder called DCIM or something?
I don’t suppose any of you have found a free app that will play iPad-unfriendly formats?
I’ve heard Andy Ihnatko say that renaming the file to something that looks like a photo can get your video into the iPad, but it sounds like more pain than it’s worth.
Ahh, cool. I’ll try that. I did find that putting stuff into a folder called DCIM at least got the iPad to have a look rather than totally ignoring it.
Second on Airplay and Dropbox combo. Airvideo will live-convert non-iPad friendly formats for you and stream them to the iPad. It can stream either while at home, like Airplay, or over the Internet if you use a fixed IP. inmethod.com/air-video/features.html
There was also VLC player, but it got pulled from the AppStore a while back, so only the people who managed to get it while it was on the store can use it with iPad 2, since there isn’t a jailbreak for iPad 2 currently.
Does Airplay work with a Windows PC (or better still Ubuntu)? Actually, no need to answer that. If I need to stream from the PC, then I might as well just watch it on the PC. I’m really interested in a portable solution here that will work even when there’s no Internet connectivity. Dare I mention the word “free”? I gotta say, so far I’m much preferring my netbook. It does everything I want and cost about half the price. OK, it doesn’t look as cool, but i don’t really care about that.
I read about VLC. Real shame about that. I guess as soon as I can jailbreak this thing, I’ll be doing it. I can’t live with these restrictions.
If I use Dropbox, it will download a copy to the iPad, right? I won’t need to stream from Internet every time I want to view something, will I?
Oops. Air Video, not Airplay. Right.
Dropbox will store up to 2GB of the Dropbox on the iDevice.
Sure about that? My app says, “The Dropbox app can save as many files as your iPad can hold or Dropbox space allows.” My Dropbox account currently tops out at 10 GB, and I think I’ve got a good deal more than 2 GB stored locally on the pad.
There’s also a Local Storage setting, which tops out at 1 GB, for ‘recently viewed files stored for offline use.’
[quote=“Jaboney”]Sure about that? My app says, “The Dropbox app can save as many files as your iPad can hold or Dropbox space allows.” My Dropbox account currently tops out at 10 GB, and I think I’ve got a good deal more than 2 GB stored locally on the pad.
There’s also a Local Storage setting, which tops out at 1 GB, for ‘recently viewed files stored for offline use.’[/quote]
Actually I was wrong. I was going of that Local Storage setting, which I had remembered as 2GB, but as you mentioned is actually 1GB. Not actually sure how much is on the iPad locally, as it turns out the 64GB is quite a lot when you’re not taking a ton of photos and movies with the device, as you would with an iPhone, so I’ve never actually paid attention to how much storage I have left.
The easy way to figure out whether it goes above this is to unlink the Dropbox, delete the app, and see how much space you freed up.
Hey, that’s good news. I only got the 8GB ipad, so its not like I’ll have a lot of space anyway.
1GB would be good. 2 even better.
So have I got this right? If I want to play a video from dropbox, even if it’s stored locally on the iPad, it’s still considered “streaming”? And could “VLC streamer” also handle that? (Sorry for all the questions - I’m used to using a folder system.)