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The Essential Apps for iPad & iPhone

Apple due for a correction but going strong
The iPad has hit the world and adoption is high for an expensive tool. Not to mention being locked down in AppleLand (see: MappyLand) but to be fair I'm happy being 'locked in' to Steve Jobs' world. For now.
Apple Fanboy Since '91 still seeing PC
The design of these products is unmatched. Apple's dedication to put user experience first has been ahead of it's time since the beginning. It is only now that the majority are catching up after spending years frustrated by Windows and PCs with cheaper parts in them that broke down more often. At first when I got my iPad I could only marvel at it's design and the art of it's construction. Thin, light, sleek and minimalist the iPad is seeking to move towards a time when we will interface with nothing but a screen.

The best thing I have found with my iPad is that because I cannot open tons of windows and tabs and programs I am more able to concentrate on the work at hand and get it done. Although most of us love to think that doing 10 things at once on a computer makes us more productive the reality is that all of this switching from one application and task to another ends up making things take significantly longer than they should.

For now I will go with what works best and the convergence of some features is making working on multiple platforms nearly seamless. Here is my list of apps that make my iPad, iPhone, MacBook Pro world work together. I could link to these through iTunes and get some resi

Information
Good Reader - This is a great tool for collecting and downloading PDFs to your iPhone or iPad. You can easily download any PDf if you have the URL you can also import PDFs from emails and from the safari browser.
Instapaper - Read things later saves links to a cloud bookmark system with an app for iPad and iPhone as well as an online version this is a great way to save stories from your day for reading at a more convenient time.
NewsRack - RSS Reader
Amazon Kindle: still kicking iBooks butt
Free news apps: NYT, Globe and Mail, etc.

Productivity
iThoughtsHD - Mind Mapping made easier. Still not totally simple.
ToDo: Currently $5 for iPad + $5 for iphone (originally $10 for iphone)
Pages, Keynote, Numbers
Screenshot: Hold home and press power. Grab any image from any tool (video, web, etc.) Then trim it for use in Pages or Keynote
There are better apps for trimming screenshots but CropforFree is free and works.

Social
Twitter - Choose your poison:
Twitter: It's now a native iPad app but it performs well and feels kitchy blown up on iPad.
Hootsuite (New iPad App coming soon) although the iphone app performs much better on ipad. on the iphone it's too much information in a small space for me and I only used it to schedule tweets once in a while.
Twitterific: Native good free for one user and has ads.
Tweetdeck: Native, Unstable but awesome looking and good for devotes\es

Facebook - iPhone is ok but there are only sad alternatives for iPad
Facebook hasn't released a native iPad app although the imitators are hitting the app store hard right now

Entertainment
TuneInRadio - The best Radio app for English stations. Every major city's radio stations from Canada are available.
Netflix - For $8/month and a nice, not huge selection of on demand movies, tv and documentaries it's perfect for me. Requires either or all of: iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, PS3, Wii, AppleTV and soon Xbox360.
AirVideo - watch video from your computer on your iPhone or iPad.
Games - that's a whole other post!

I missed tons of great apps and I want to know what you love using on your iPhone or iPad. Please drop me a comment with your favourite apps!

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