I was recently asked what apps I’d recommend for a home iPad.  I’ve looked at work apps, and how to use tablets, but what would I recommend for home use?  Well, I thought I’d look at some best of breed solutions for a range of things!  I won’t cover games, as thats largely down to taste.

DropBox

You need DropBox (http://www.dropbox) to use an iPad.  Its the best way to get files to and from your desktop, particularly if you want to send files back to your computers.  Oddly, you don’t necessarily need the dropbox application itself on the iPad- most applications that you’d use with it have those hooks built in.  Doesn’t hurt though!

Music

Just use itunes and the built in player!  You probably don’t need a lot more than that!  If you want access to massive amounts of music, then for £10 a month with Napster (http://www.napster.com) you can get access to 15 million tracks and can either stream them or download them for offline playback.   Of course, if you finish your subscription …. all that music goes.  It depends if you want to own tracks or get music as a service.  Theres a free seven day trial for you to make up your mind if its worthwhile.

Video

The built in video player is superb if you just have mp4 files (or a converter and a lot of time and patience).  Of course, in the real world, we don’t all have that luxury, so a video player that has API hooks to allow downloads to be grabbed, and allows itunes uploads is pretty important.

Of the few available, I’d recommend Azul. (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/azul-media-player-video-player/id404452499?mt=8)  It handles a very wide range of file types, does a reasonable job, and is reasonably priced.

Comics

The standard for comics (or any collection of graphical pages) has become the CBR or CBZ formats, created by simply renaming a RAR or ZIP file full of images.  The best viewer for the iPad, by a considerable margin, seems to be ComicZeal. (http://www.comiczealapp.com/).  It allows great control, zooming, and the files can be dropped straight in through the itunes interface.

Magazines

There are a lot of magazines available for the iPad, often through separate applications.  I check ScifiNow using one of these apps, for example, but the best big magazine app has to be Zinio.  (http://zino.com).  With most of the major magazines available here for reasonable subscription prices, its extremely practical.

Books

There are two very useful ebook readers for the iPad, and neither of them is iBooks!  If you have a kindle and buy books from Amazon, their kindle for iPad(http://www.amazon.com) is brilliant.  If you have a range of ebooks, and use calibre for your library, then Stanza (http://www.lexcycle.com/) is invaluable, plugging straight into your library over the local network.

Remote Access to PCs

Although dear, the king of remote PC access has to be LogMeIn Ignition (http://www.logmein.com).  Allowing both effective remote control of the screen can be very useful, though touch screens aren’t always the best interface for a long remote session.  More importantly from my perspective, it allows complete remote file access to your desktop, letting you grab that vital PDF without messing around with iTunes!

PDF Reading and Highlighting

I use Highlighter (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pdf-highlighter/id400191310?mt=8) pretty exclusively for PDF viewing – its simple, hooks into drop box and other apps, and just works well.  You can annotate a PDF, with sketching, highlighting and note adding, but its also a really effective viewer.

Dictation

Nuance’s Dragon Dictation for the Ipad  (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dragon-dictation/id341446764?mt=8) is brilliant – simply speak into the iPad, let the service convert your speech to text via the cloud, and copy and paste it into anything … such as a blog like this!  Its a great app.

With the announced release of the iPad, and everyone rushing to say whether or not the product will work for them (even though they generally haven’t tried it), I thought it would be worth taking a step back, and looking at what I’d actually really like from tablet technology in terms of working professionally.  Lets face it, the iPad is designed for home users first and foremost, as a convenient mechanism for consuming content.  That might be good or bad, depending on what you were hoping for … but what should we be hoping for?

Well, for one thing, I don’t want to replace my laptop.  I’m not looking for something to do everything my computer currently does.  Much like Apple targeted the home user, I want a device that will let me work closely with my office computer to consume corporate content, no (in general) for producing content.

Wouldn’t it be brilliant to have a tablet on the desktop, paired with your computer?  If you want to read a document, just select a “send to tablet” option, and read it in comfort, rather than struggling with a fixed screen, or printing hundreds of pages.  Wouldn’t it be great to make basic corrections, and then send it back to the PC for any in depth formatting or major revisions?  I don’t think I want to write many, if any, serious documents from scratch on a tablet … its easier to type a large amount of text onto a fixed computer, with a large screen.  I might scribble basic notes in a meeting, so decent handwriting recongition might be nice, but thats still a way off, I feel.

With the larger screen, and touchscreen, wouldn’t it be great as a input device?  Have it hooked up to the PC, and you’ve potentially got a decent graphics tablet for marketing teams or more complex document editing, in conjunction with the main monitors and keyboards.

One complaint I keep reading about the iPad is the lack of multi-tasking.  Like the iPhone, it only runs a single application at a time.  You don’t have twitter running in the background, with an IM session running with potential popups jumping on the screen, and links between applications, like integration between email and a custom DMS, or a word processor and a DMS.  To be honest, the way I see a tablet device functioning most effectively in the office isn’t to do that – thats the PC or laptop’s job.  If I pick up my tablet to review a document, or view a podcast, I don’t want to be interrupted.  I don’t want the constant alerts, or skype calls, or email and IM notifications.  My main computer has all of that.

If I’m travelling, and just bringing a tablet device with me, its a different equation.  I’ve two conflicting needs at that point – I need the device to be damn reliable!  I need it to work if I’m around the world in Tokyo without IT support to hand.  I also need to be able to do everything I can do in the office – write full documents, record digital dictations, file my documents and emails into the document management system.  I see the way round these conflicting needs being a simple, dedicated platform for basic corporate tasks like email, combined with a virtual desktop client, allowing me the full resources of an office PC without needing the complexity on my tablet.  If I have issues with applications crashing, and I can’t get hold of IT, I can still handle basic tasks like email reliably – I’m never totally of touch, and unable to work.

Nothing can handle all that at the moment.  Windows Tablet PCs are hugely over complex, trying to be a full desktop replacement.  Its not needed, and leaves you with a heavy, expensive device that doesn’t get used.  The Apple iPad (I say, speculatively) seems too consumer based and PC independent – its great for reading a magazine at home, but I can’t send a word document to it for annotation easily, and I can’t use it for more monitor space or as a graphics tablet.

What we need is something in the middle, designed as a peripheral on the desktop, rather than a desktop replacement.  Something I can use on the go, with enough connectivity to let me hook into virtual services in the office easily and reliably.  Something without hundreds of irritating consumer applications to distract staff, or at least something locked down at a corporate level.  At the moment, no one wants to fill that gap, and I think its where we need to go to start actually reducing paper consumption.

Just my thought for the day!