I bought an iPad 2! What apps do I need?

[JuddWack]

I've been a faithful Android supporter since my G1 landed on my doorstep on launch day. The Xoom was a massive disappointment for me and I returned it. This is my first iDevice. I haven't used iTunes in years, so this is all a big change for me. What are your favorite apps and games for the iPad?

[Specially Cork]

Let's see:

Games:

World of Goo (very famous indie game available on many platforms, just feels made for the iPad)
Mirror's Edge HD (similar to the PS3 game, but sidescrolling. Well presented and put together)
SimCity Deluxe (better than iPhone version thanks to the big screen)
Civilization Revolution (better than iPhone version thanks to the big screen)
Zen Bound 2 (relaxing puzzle game where you wrap rope around 3D wooden objects)
Puzzle Quest 2 (Same match-3 RPG you've seen elsewhere. Packed with features and looks crisp on iPad)
Across Age HD (2D 16-bit Zelda-esque RPG. Well polished and looks great)
Dominion HD (Risk. Much better than the other version most people recommend - LuxTouch)
Lara Croft & The Guardian of Light (Port of the XBLA/PSN game, very different from other Tomb Raider games)
Plants vs Zombies HD (very famous tower defense game, again, just feels made for iPad)
Infinity Blade (Beautiful 3D slashy RPG kinda thing. Very popular)
Sword & Sworcery (Indie point & click experience. Amazing artwork and soundtrack. Very unique)
GTA: Chinatown Wars (you might've played this on PSP/DS. If not, this version looks and plays great. Huge game)
Carcassone (never heard of this boardgame before but it's really good relaxing fun)
Broken Sword HD: Director's Cut (great point & click adventure)
Worms 2 (simple worms port, works pretty well. Only downside is DLC offers more than the main game)
Infinity Field (very nice Geometry Wars clone)
NOVA HD, NOVA 2 HD (Halo rip-offs, but great FPS games in their own right, including full multiplayer)
Dungeon Hunter 2 HD (Diablo clone)
Battleheart (interesting multi-touch action RPG)
Space Invaders Infinity Gene (another famous reboot, ported well to iPad)
The Incident (you're a guy, junk falls from the sky, jump on it, climb up forever, don't die)
PewPew 2 (simple shooter)
Wispin HD (fun little colour-changing action arcade game)
Cut The Rope HD (puzzler with many levels)
Angry Birds HD, Angry Birds Seasons HD, Angry Birds Rio HD (catapult birds through hundreds of pointless levels)
Beyond Ynth HD (nice platform puzzler, well presented)
Asphalt 6 (Burnout clone, really nice)
Monpoly
Scrabble
Aralon Sword & Shadow (an attempt to clone Oblivion. Dodgy production values but loads to do)
Drop7 (great number-based tile puzzler)
Canabalt (the king of runner games)
Forget-Me-Not (A mix between Pac-Man and Dungeon Crawling)
Super Stick Golf (2d crazy golf game)
100 Rogues (dungeon crawling)

You can also try playing iPhone games on it. They don't always look great blown up to 2x, but these ones look OK:
Dodonpachi Resurrection, Espgaluda II (Cave's bullet hell shooters)
Fast Striker (simple bullet hell shooter, homebrew DC game port)
Quickhook (sidescrolling grapple hook game)
Eliss (beautiful multi-touch puzzler)
Fare City (clever taxi management game)
Doom, Wolfenstein 3D
League of Evil (8bit style platformer)

Apps:
Atomic Web Browser (better than Safari)
VLC Streamer (Uses VLC on your PC to stream any video you have to your iPad)
Orb Live (same as above, but with all media, works well over internet too)
iBooks (just get .epub files from "somewhere else" and load them on)
Manga Rock Unity (great manga reader if you're into that sorta thing)
Pages (Apple's own word processor. Somewhat limited but works well enough - also Numbers and Keynote if you need them)
QuickOffice Mobile Connect for iPad (cheaper than Apple's offerings, but more for viewing and editing rather than starting from scratch)
GoodReader (best PDF reader)
Whitenote (great note-taking app with loads of features)
Sketchbook (pretty powerful graphics app, also try Brushes)
Garageband (not sure if this comes with iPad 2 out of the box or not, but it's great)
Pulse (newsreader, allows offline reading which might be good if you don't have 3G)
BBC News (updates and downloads stories for offline reading)
Tweetdeck (Twitter & Facebook updates)

[not just souLLy now]

Writer is an excellent stripped down writing tool

[Specially Cork]

Why are so many things "stripped-down"? I'm pretty sure I've owned computers that are far weaker than the iPad but ran programs capable of far more.

[Quzar]

Why are so many things "stripped-down"? I'm pretty sure I've owned computers that are far weaker than the iPad but ran programs capable of far more.

Because these things are being written from scratch (how many different word processing suites are there out there?) and features take time to add and develop. This here is my main gripe with this app-revolution.

[Specially Cork]

Why are so many things "stripped-down"? I'm pretty sure I've owned computers that are far weaker than the iPad but ran programs capable of far more.

Because these things are being written from scratch (how many different word processing suites are there out there?) and features take time to add and develop. This here is my main gripe with this app-revolution.

Perhaps, but Apple's office apps don't really have that excuse. Pages is the best full word processing app available, but it still does fuck all. Perhaps I'm not allowed to expect a lot for $10, which is fair. But thats my main problem with the app revolution; nothing is allowed to cost double digits. I thought that was great at first, but then you realize nobody is making anything worth more than that price, so rather than saving money you're just buying subpar programs. I would pay more for more.

[melancholy]

Why are so many things "stripped-down"? I'm pretty sure I've owned computers that are far weaker than the iPad but ran programs capable of far more.

Because these things are being written from scratch (how many different word processing suites are there out there?) and features take time to add and develop. This here is my main gripe with this app-revolution.

Perhaps, but Apple's office apps don't really have that excuse. Pages is the best full word processing app available, but it still does fuck all. Perhaps I'm not allowed to expect a lot for $10, which is fair. But thats my main problem with the app revolution; nothing is allowed to cost double digits. I thought that was great at first, but then you realize nobody is making anything worth more than that price, so rather than saving money you're just buying subpar programs. I would pay more for more.

Which brings us to the other problem. Most people wouldn't pay for more now that everything is under $10. Microsoft could port Word in its entirety to the App store and slap a $20 price tag on it, but the vast majority of people would look at that price and go with Pages because it's cheaper. I know personally I have scoffed off most of Square's iPad games just because they cost more than any other games. It's this ridiculous mindset that you just can't help but to have due to the sheer volume of good dollar apps.

[Ex-Cyber]

This also rather obnoxiously happens in the other direction: things that would be free on PC end up costing money in the App Store. Hell, sometimes people just flat-out port freeware/open-source apps/games to iOS and charge money for them (often without the original developer's knowledge/consent).

[Specially Cork]

It's always pissed me off how emulators cost money on mobile devices.

[not just souLLy now]

The stripped-down-ness of Writer is why it's good actually- it does one thing very well indeed without all the guff that distracts you from writing.

[JuddWack]

It's always pissed me off how emulators cost money on mobile devices.

That pisses me off too, but I'm not surprised. What does surprise me is, at least on Android, there is no community of developers releasing decent emulators with regular updates for free.

I've had an amazing urge to play Sim City recently. I'm really happy to know I can do that on my iPad. Its not supposed to be delivered until April 28th. Very excited. Thanks for the recommendations Boney.

[Zealous zerotype]

Trust boney on his game suggestions. He has that shit ON LOCK SON.

Also, if you jailbreak it hit up XBMC. If you've used XBMC in the past well you know whats up. If not start using it on all your computers. You can store stuff on it (supports basically every format), but the streaming is what is bitching.

[ace]

Boney's list is great. Ive got a few to add, if not mentioned previously.

Starfront - awesome RTS in the same vein as Starcraft 2. Easily the best RTS game on iOS, which is sad, since the iPad is absolutely perfect for these games.

Galaxy On Fire - RPG/space shooter. Reminds me of Homefront. Gorgeous visuals.

Rimelands - Norse based turn based on dice rolls RPG.

Death Rally - top down racer with weapons. Whether you played the original or not ( I did, to death), this game is awesome and the secs have updated with new content already.

Infinity Blade - Unreal Engine 3 on iOS. Nuff said.

Real Racing 2 - in my opinion, the best looking and playing game, racing or not, in the app store. A very competent racer in it's own right, you can go arcade style racer, uber pro, or somewhere in the middle. It honestly looks nearly as good as some original Xbox racers, and definitely better than PS2 games. Buy it.

Modern Combat 2 - FPS. great visuals, fun gameplay. Some reviewers have mentioned it reminds them of Goldeneye 007. I tend to agree. Very fun multiplayer too.

Opera Mini browser - great for loading web pages over edge if that's all you have. Almost as fast as safari on 3G at times.

Skyfire browser - watch many (most that I've tried) flash videos. Porn and television websites have both worked. Qualitycan be dodgy at times, by usually not too bad. Does full screen browsing, which I love. Can't stand having bars take up my screen space.

Beehive for chat

Pandora - if you live outside USA use hotspot shield as your VPN. works flawlessly in Canada.

Thats it for now. May Add some more apps and games later. But honestly, there's so much. You'd be better served looking at the best google
Hits for top iOS apps, or something.

Also, you have to jailbreak it. I wOuldnt even bother with iOS If I couldn't jailbreak, and seeing as you're migrating from Android, it's necessary. Really, no further explanation is required than this: NES, SNES, Genesis, Gameboy, PS2 and N64 (not currently working on iOS 4, mind you) emulation.

Why didn't you like the Xoom?

[pixel]

Trust boney on his game suggestions. He has that shit ON LOCK SON.

Also, if you jailbreak it hit up XBMC. If you've used XBMC in the past well you know whats up. If not start using it on all your computers. You can store stuff on it (supports basically every format), but the streaming is what is bitching.

I use the XBMC app as a remote for my Xbox. I can use my iPad or iPod touch to queue up movies stored on my PC's hard drive and watch em from my bed.

[JuddWack]

Why didn't you like the Xoom?

I really thought the force closing of apps would have been taken care of with the new version of android. I understand there are just bad app programmers, but Google Books was crashing every time I rotated the damn screen. Also it was kind of heavy and the screen would get way too smudgy.

[Zealous zerotype]

Trust boney on his game suggestions. He has that shit ON LOCK SON.

Also, if you jailbreak it hit up XBMC. If you've used XBMC in the past well you know whats up. If not start using it on all your computers. You can store stuff on it (supports basically every format), but the streaming is what is bitching.

I use the XBMC app as a remote for my Xbox. I can use my iPad or iPod touch to queue up movies stored on my PC's hard drive and watch em from my bed.

Yeah, I was talking about running actual XBMC on your ipad. I use the remote too (not the free one it fucking sucks) and my god it is so nice. I really like it for music because my desktop is headphones only so for playing music on my stereo system I just select an album on my iphone and I'm good to go. XBMC on the ipad is pretty nice though. A few things don't work or seem a little buggy, but for the most part it is great.

[RyoDC]

Have you read the Licence Agreement before the installment of this apps? If not you will be connected into the human centipede with some asian guy and slutty chick. Be careful, bic boy.