My favorite iPad apps - Spring 2012 Edition

Leonardo da Vinci: Anatomy - Explore a remarkable testament to a scientific and artistic genius in this beautiful interactive edition of Leonardo’s complete anatomical works. Lost for over 400 years all 268 pages of drawings from Leonardo's notebooks, which comprise a major 2012 exhibition at Buckingham Palace, are translated into English and brought to the iPad screen in full Retina glory. ($13.99, App Store, Website)

Paper - Paper is a must-have drawing app for the iPad. It features a simple yet stunning UI that stays out of your way until you need it. Organize your drawings in multiple, customizable moleskin-like notebooks and easily pinch and zoom to switch between them. The free version includes the drawing tool and additional tools are available as in-app purchases. I recommend ponying up the $8 for the full suite of tools which allow you to sketch, write, draw, outline and color like a master. They're a intuitive, gorgeous and lots of fun. (Free to $7.99, App Store, Website)

artCircles - Use a novel dual-wheel interface to discover classic and current artwork in a whole new way. Simply spin two wheels to peruse art collections centered around colors, words or featured curators. Each curator share their perspective on the work with an audio narration. You can even share your own collection, if you're so inclined. The newly optimized SuperZoom–Texture Circle is my favorite feature because it allows you to get closer to the art than you ever imagined. (Free, App Store, Website)

The Life of Art - Discover how objects end up in a museum in this beautiful app from the J. Paul Getty Museum. This interesting app makes you feel like an appraiser on The Antique Roadshow. Examine physical clues and retrace the lives of four stunning museum pieces from Getty’s collection, including a lidded bowl, a silver fountain, a side chair, and a wall light. The Life of Art features photography, animation, video, and 360 rotations that bring each object to life. (Free, App Store)

Note Taker HD - The is the best-of-breed note-taking and annotation app on the App Store. Developed by Dan Bricklin, a.k.a. the father of the spreadsheet (because he co-created VisiCalc) this app excels at writing handwritten notes and diagrams and annotating PDFs. Write directly on the page and the "ink" is automatically shrunk down to a manageable size. Auto-Advance allows you to keep writing while the app automatically advances. It has multi-level undo, redo and an eraser to quickly correct mistakes. A recent update adds support for the Retina Display, image cropping and manual PDF page rotation. ($4.99, iTunes, Website, CNET Review)

Filemaker Go 12 for iPad - Remotely access databases created with FileMaker Pro 12 (on the desktop) on your iPad. FileMaker Go databases are full-featured apps with powerful capabilities. With Filemaker Go 12 for iPad you can view, edit, search and share critical business information. With FM Go 12 you can capture signatures, view reports and charts, save information as PDF and Excel and email or print any data. (Free, App Store, Website)

Appetites - There's no shortage of recipe apps out there but Appetites is different because it's actually a series of video cooking classes. It includes 30 step-by-step video recipes (over 8 hours of video cooking classes) with more on the way. Every step of each recipe is broken down into bite size videos to make learning easy. Additional cooking classes can be purchased in-app for between $1 and $2. (Free, App Store, Website)

Fotopedia National Parks - Gearing up for Summer vacation? Check out this beatiful app of over 3,000 gorgeous photos of the 58 National Parks in the United States. Professional photographer QT Luong bears the distinction of being the first person to photograph each of the National Parks with a large format camera. Luong traveled to each park, from Acadia to Zion, including Yosemite, Yellowstone, Grand Canyon and Glacier National Park - a journey that would require several years. (Free, App Store)

Zinio - If you like magazines (and who doesn't?) then you need Zinio, which is a clearinghouse for digital magazines on the iPad -- including ones not available in any other app, including Newsstand. Since my review in April 2012, I've only become more enamored with Zinio. But it’s not just Rolling Stone and Macworld magazine, Zinio boasts an impressive catalog of over 5,000 titles with 2,500 that are exclusive to the platform. (Free, App Store, Website)

NOAA Hi-Def Radar - While Intellicast HD (Free, App Store) is still my primary iPad weather app, I've come to love this $2 radar-only app, almost as much -- especially when there's precipitation in the forecast. This purpose-built app displays real-time animated weather radar images in vivid color on a highly responsive interactive map, with higher resolution images than any other radar app. It's also the only app that allows you to control the loop speed and the interval between individual frames. ($1.99, App Store)