I tend to be an early adopter. I’m not a camp-out-in-line-to-get-it-the-first-day guy but I tend to be in possession of the latest device before most folk. Part of me tells myself (and my wife) that I neeeed to stay up to date. It’s part of my job. It’s for my career. The truth is I just can’t resist for very long. My friends and colleagues know this about me and tend to come to me for advice on the latest gadget or web site. When it came to the iPad I was not going to be a guinea pig. I was going to wait for the front-facing camera and the non-AT&T (read.. working) 3G model. I really did try. And I did hold out almost until the second generation (I’m counting the iPad 3G as the 2nd gen.. sue me!)
What did it for me? A combination of things.
It really is a New Platform. I design software and it’s important for me to understand how people use that software, where they use it, and on what sort of devices and in what ways.
It’s a legitimately usable Digital Sketchpad. I am a visual thinker and communicator. If I don’t have a pad in my pocket there’s about a 100% chance I’ll be drawing in the air with my fingers as I talk, either trying to understand something or communicate it. When I started to see some of the sketching apps and what people were doing with them, I knew I had to be part of it.
It’s also an eBook reader. I love to read, and I love to do it on the subway… when I have a book on me.
It’s awesome in the kitchen. I like to cook. I have about 20 recipe books and a stuffed folder of olive oil soaked handwritten or printed recipes.
The iPad lets me do all of this on a little slab of glass. I know lots of people like to go right for the swiss army knife metaphor but that’s not quite how I see it. My mind goes right to the concept of tabula rasa, or blank slate.
It’s a device that has the potential to be filled with capabilities that will allow us to do things we haven’t even conceived of yet.
Of course it comes with a set of apps that allow us to email, read, surf the web.. already an impressive set of capabilities. I guess it’s hard to call it a blank slate.
Adding a set of well-known apps quickly brings the utility up several notches to the point where you’re doing much more advanced things and starting to get the nature of the new platform and what it can do.
I’ve had mine for a few months now and by now I have a pretty good set of apps and am getting much more facile with it in everyday use. I’m going to give you a tour of how I’ve set mine up and how I use it. It’s a constantly changing picture.
Home Page
Go-To Apps
The apps in the tray or dock are always visible so always available. My selection here is pretty straightforward.
Mail – Yup. I read lots of email on the iPad. I read it. I write it. I forward it. All that stuff.
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Twitteriffic – For now my Twitter client of choice is Twitterriffic. It’s free. It works. I like it. I’m not reviewing every app I use here, just giving you a peek into my choices and how I combine them to make my iPad sing.
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Safari – Probably the most used app on the device. I know there are a few alternatives but considering Safari’s integration with so many other apps and that it works just fine I probably won’t be switching to another any time soon.
App Store – There are two reasons the App Store gets task tray placement. First, I hate when I install an app or update and it closes itself and snaps me over to the app I just installed or updated. To combat this I put it in the tray so it’s only a click away to get back into the store. The other reason is… I spend a lot of time in there. I likes me my apps.
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Thinking & Ideation
It’s because of these apps I truly love my iPad. It hasn’t (nor will it) replace paper and pen but it is becoming a first-line tool for digging into a problem and trying to come up with ideas. I use two apps that correspond with the two most important steps in my process: sketching and mindmapping.
Adobe Ideas I absolutely love this app. It’s easy to use, easy to share, flexible but not overly complicated. This is what I break out instead of a sheet of paper when I’m alone or in a discussion.
It’s this app that puts the pad in my iPad.
Popplet – This is my favorite mindmapping app right now. It’s not a “traditional” mindmapping app, if such a thing exists. It calls itself an app for “sharing visual ideas.” I like that. As with Adobe Ideas, it is simple to use and ideas flow quickly. There’s not a lot to figure out and it’s flexible enough to help me wrap my head around things.
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Productivity
These apps expand what I can do with the iPad as a device. There’s not an easy, general, universal way to manage and share files on the iPad but I’ve found this combination of apps lets me do pretty much what I need and want to do with my stuff.
Dropbox – If you don’t already know about Dropbox and you aren’t using it on your desktop and/or laptop you are missing out. Dropbox functions simultaneously as an online backup and synchronized file store across all of your devices. It’s as indispensable on the iPad as it is on my other computers.
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GoodReader – GoodReader not only works as a PDF, text, picture, audio, video, and office file viewer (Microsoft and iWork) but it also acts as a de facto file system, sharing tool, and it allows you to browse the web and download files for offline viewing. It is, as its name states, a good reader.
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Evernote – Besides Evernote’s utility as a never-forget-anything tool, I use it as my simple text editor. It has the added bonus of also syncing with any other device you have the app on. I have it on my iPhone, laptop and desktop. I forget.. um… less stuff with this setup.
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Reading
Even if the iPad didn’t do all the other things it does, it works as an ebook reader and that is a great thing. I am not a zealot on either side of the paper versus digital debate. I love books and paper and bookshelves and libraries. Love em. I also love always having a selection of books on me and being able to download a new book on a whim without having to go to a store or wait for a box to arrive (not always so easy for some of us city dwellers.) I’m also gonna call BS on that study that says people read slower on electronic devices than on “real” books. Not only has that not been my experience but I’ve been reading way more now that I have the iPad than I was before. But that’s just me.
Kindle – Amazon has lots of books at good prices (better than Apples iBook store) and the Whispersync technology that synchronizes our position across devices (iPad, iPhone, desktop) is really nice for when I’m reading a book on the iPad but I can’t get a seat on the subway and I want to continue reading on the iPhone. The biggest downside of the Kindle app, and buying books from Amazon in general, is that it’s not easy to share them. I know it’s possible, but it’s not easy.
iBooks – For now the Kindle app is by far my go-to reader app. Apple’s offering is really nice and the flippy page thing is cool but the books are way too expensive. It’s big advantage over the Kindle app is that it can read PDFs.
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* Side note on reading apps. I thought Barnes and Noble’s reader had potential, especially since it has sharing functionality but when I bought a book on it (shopped, purchased, downloaded) it turned out that the book was not yet “ready” for the iPad. I had to call and verify this in order to get a refund, which they pointed out was a one-time courtesy even though there was no way to tell in advance if a book would not be readable on the iPad. This turned me off so much I uninstalled it. Sorry Barnes & Nobel. My preference when buying books now is to buy from a seller that offers print and electronic versions bundled. Rosenfeld Media and O’Reilly are my two favorites because of this.
Feeds
Keeping up with the many feeds I follow is sometimes a losing battle. Between social media feeds, shared articles, and the 20-50 RSS feeds I subscribe to I spend a lot of time scanning, bookmarking, sharing, starring, and hopefully reading a ton of great content. These particular apps rise above the fray when it comes to consuming that content. They are inspirational as well as functional.
FlipBoard – In a nutshell, FlipBoard takes content from feeds and presents it in beautiful magazine layout style. I must confess, I haven’t gotten to use it yet for its advertised use, to read shared Twitter and Facebook content, because initial interest has overwhelmed their servers. I do use it to read the twitter feeds from a few sources (The Onion, Datavzs, Good magazine, and Smitten Kitchen) I’m on the wait list to import my social feeds.. when that happens I may love this app even more..
Guardian Eyewitness – This is a page one app just because it’s so damned beautiful. It’s a simple app.. One picture a day. Big. Beautiful. You get a description of the photo and a pro-tip on how the picture was composed or shot.
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Pulse Newsreader – This newsreader is just a joy to use. In the current version you can subscribe to 20 feeds. You can import from Google news but it does not sync. The beauty of this app is how they display the articles in thumbnail image format with a row of pics for each feed. It’s snappy, snazzy, and will only get better when it can sync with your Google news account.
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News
Besides books, feeds, and web pages I consume a fair amount of news on the iPad. This collection of apps serves it up in a way I can’t get on a web page and there are a couple of twists I really like about this set.
Newsy – Newsy is a neat little news aggregator that presents video recaps of stories that are in the news. What I really like about it is that it references, and links to, the source materials and usually presents multiple different points of view on the stories. It’s debatable whether or not an unbiased news source exists (I think not) but this at least gives me access to different, and sometimes opposite, views on the same story.
NYT Editor’s Choice – Solid presentation of Times content on the iPad. I have my problems with the app as it stands but I know the crew over at the Times will continue to improve it. As it stands it’s an interesting take on the lean-back sort of interaction with the news.
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Bloomberg – The Bloomberg service is an amazing beast. There is such an incredible amount of content in such a wide range of areas, finance or otherwise, that it can be overwhelming. If you’ve ever seen a Bloomberg terminal you know what I’m talking about. However, their iPad offering gives a glimpse at how satisfying easy access to their information can be. While it is a tiny fraction of the information Bloomberg offers financial pros, this app is inviting to use and easy to navigate.
Financial Times – I had no idea what I was missing until I flipped through this app on someone else’s iPad. I thought “What do I need to read the Financial Times for?” Well, besides the fact that I design software for the financial industry, this app is a huge step in the right direction towards what newspapers can be on the iPad. I’m not saying it’s the final destination but it’s a step in the right direction. And the content is really good too.
The Weather Channel – Truth be told, I actually use three different weather apps. What can I say? I’m a geek that way. The Weather Channel’s app is my first choice though. It has a nice simple and clear local conditions & forecast section and access to the video clips for your local area, region, and country. The map section isn’t the best. For that I prefer WeatherBug‘s map. I go to WeatherStation when I just want the current details in their full, simple glory.
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Answers & Information
In a slight shift from the consumption apps above, these two apps are almost magical. They are the sci-fi Star Trek apps I thought about as a little boy (along with the much anticipated facetime for iPad that I’m sure will arrive a little sooner than my bank account cares for.) These apps harness and focus the information in the internet tubes to squirt out answers and information with fire hose like efficiency. They kinda blow my mind.
Wikipanion – To be fair it’s wikipedia that provides the juice here. I’ve just found Wikipanion to be the cleanest, simplest way to navigate this amazing resource.
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Wolfram Alpha – Wolfram Alpha is really amazing. They call it a “computational knowledge engine.” What is that? Well.. I’m not totally sure but it does some amazing stuff. Ask it a question involving math, finance, geography, food, history, and see what you get. It also has an amazing calculator and you can ask questions in plain English. This is another service that will only get better (when we all figure out how to use it.)
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Planning & Communication
If you have an iPhone or you manage your calendar and contacts in the cloud (that means online) the iPad provides a pleasing take on interacting with your calendar and contacts in various ways.
IM+ Lite – I don’t do a ton of instant messaging on the iPad but when I do this app does the job. My biggest problem with using the iPad’s virtual keyboard is I constantly hit the ‘B’ button instead of the space bar. It’s really annoying. Know what I mean b?
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Contacts – When set up to sync with an iPhone and an online contact list this is a serviceable pleasant contact app. Not much to say here. You got it. You use it.
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Calendar – The nice thing about the calendar app is that you can sync with multiple online calendars including exchange and google. There are some minor problems, like not being able to select the color of a calendar’s items but hey… it’s a calendar and it works.
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Second Page
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The iMarketRisk RIA won’t be using OData since it requires push 
I wonder how long before we see trader in meetings (which they hate because it forces them to leave their desks and screen) with iPads allowing them to watch their position in the market rather than ask their mate on the desk to call them in anything happens in the market. 
