madison

The Apple Core

Jason D. O'Grady & David Morgenstern
Home / News & Blogs / The Apple Core

My favorite iPad apps - Fall 2011 Edition

By | October 10, 2011, 12:01am PDT

Summary: A roundup of my favorite iPad apps de jour. I presented a few of these over the weekend at the Main Line Mac User Group but ran out of time. Here’s the full list.

I gave a talk at MLMUG on Saturday on iOS 5 and my favorite iPad apps. After I demo’d iOS 5 and my favorite feature: AirPlay video mirroring I only had enough time for the first four apps below. But, as promised, I’ve included a full list of my favorite iPad apps below.

Gallery: Top iPad apps available now - images and brief descriptions

Emerald Observatory iPad app - Jason O'Grady

Emerald Observatory ($0.99) — A desk clock that displays a wealth of astronomical data.

Solar Walk ($2.99) a stunning way to explore the Solar System and the Milky Way galaxy.

Star Walk ($4.99) A mind-blowing augmented reality app for astronomy. Just point your iPad into the night sky and see a live map of the constellations above. Star Walk is one of my all-time favorite iPad apps. Period.

Planetary (free) — Creates a beautiful 3D universe from your music library that you can fly through. Artists are stars and albums are planets and tracks are moons. Touch an artist’s star to “fly in” closer where you’ll see their albums as orbiting planets. Touch an album to fly into the planet and you’ll see its tracks orbiting as moons. Load up your iPad with a bunch of classic rock discographies (Stones, Beatles, Zeppelin, whatever) and prepare to have you mind blown!

Following are a list of my favorite iPad apps that I didn’t have time to present on Saturday (although a few were demo’d at lunch afterward):

Games

News/Weather

Productivity

Painting/Drawing

Books/Magazines

Video/Entertainment

  • Apple’s Music & Videos apps - for movies, TV, audiobooks, podcasts, etc.
  • HBO Go (free for subscribers)
  • XFINITY TV (free for subs)
  • TiVo (free, only works with Premiere TiVo hardware)

Music

What of your favorite iPad apps did I miss?

Kick off your day with ZDNet's daily e-mail newsletter. It's the freshest tech news and opinion, served hot. Get it.

More from “The Apple Core”

Topics

Apple iPad, Corporate Communications, Podcasts, E-books & E-Readers, Notebooks, Marketing, Internet, Personal Technology, Hardware, Notebooks & Tablets, Jason D. O'Grady

Jason O'Grady is a journalist and author specializing in mobile technology. He has published six books on Apple and mobile gadgets and his PowerPage blog has been publishing for over 15 years.

Disclosure

Jason D. O'Grady

Jason D. O'Grady is the creator and editor of O'Grady's PowerPage, which has been publishing mobile technology news since 1995. He maintains an advertising relationship with the following legacy advertisers on the PowerPage:

  • Amazon Associates
  • Google Adsense
  • Tekserve

    • Advertising on the PowerPage is brokered by a third-party agency (BackBeat Media) and he recuses himself from these negotiations.

Biography

Jason D. O'Grady

Jason D. O'Grady developed an affinity for Apple computers after using the original Lisa, and this affinity turned into a bona-fide obsession when he got the original 128 KB Macintosh in 1984.

He started writing one of the first Web sites about Apple (O'Grady's PowerPage) in 1995 and is considered to be one of the fathers of blogging. He has been a frequent speaker at the Macworld Expo conference and a member of the conference faculty. He also co-founded the first dedicated PowerBook User Group (PPUG) in the United States.

After winning a major legal battle with Apple in 2006, he set the precedent that independent journalists are entitled to the same protections under the First Amendment as members of the mainstream media.

O'Grady is the author of The Nexus One Pocket Guide, The Droid Pocket Guide, The Google Phone Pocket Guide, and The Garmin nuvi Pocket Guide (Peachpit Press), the author of Corporations That Changed the World: Apple Inc. (Greenwood Press), and a contributor to The Mac Bible (Peachpit Press). In addition, he has contributed to numerous Mac publications over the years, including MacWEEK, Macworld, and MacPower (Japan).

When he's not writing about Apple for ZDNet at The Apple Core, he enjoys spending time with his family in New Jersey.

Talkback Most Recent of 15 Talkback(s)

Talkback - Tell Us What You Think

Formatting +
BB Codes - Note: HTML is not supported in forums
  • [b] Bold [/b]
  • [i] Italic [/i]
  • [u] Underline [/u]
  • [s] Strikethrough [/s]
  • [q] "Quote" [/q]
  • [ol][*] 1. Ordered List [/ol]
  • [ul][*] · Unordered List [/ul]
  • [pre] Preformat [/pre]
  • [quote] "Blockquote" [/quote]
Click Here

The best of ZDNet, delivered

ZDNet Newsletters

Get the best of ZDNet delivered straight to your inbox

Facebook Activity

Blog Roll

Blog Archive

White Papers, Webcasts, & Resources