Choosing the best iPad applications

Now that you have your super duper iPad tablet computer you have to make some decisions about what you are going to put on it in terms of applications. It might even seem to be confusing and difficult to decide which are the best iPad applications for your needs. There are plenty of lists available to help you get started and the good thing is that there are basic apps that everybody needs that will help you work out your specific requirements. There is an application called AppZap HD which gives information about new applications, apps that are reduced in price or have become free. You could use AppZap to help you decide which are your best iPad applications. When you are using AppZap you can also use it to find free Mac applications.

Working out the top iPad applications

I am a big fan of mind mapping software as a way of generating ideas. Mind mapping can also be used for organising your thoughts that are rolling around randomly inside your head into an outline or a list that you can actually use. I would suggest that you try out iThoughts HD as it is the best iPad and mind mapping software. It is also quite likely that you will be able to use this excellent software for other purposes after you have generated your top iPad applications list.

Throw in some coloured branches on your mind map

From your initial starting point in the mind map you can create branches and some branches going off in directions based upon what it is you want to do using your iPad. You might also make branches in the mind map where the initial thought could be applications that have been recommended for a specific purpose.

Curio can do Mind Mapping too.

So if you expect to use your iPad for business or corporate purposes then you will certainly want some business applications. You might first of all do a search for the * best iPad applications* for business in the Apple iPad application store. There are recommendations in there that could be useful. If your business or industry use is fairly specific then it certainly would make sense to ask colleagues which apps have worked for them. Your fellow workers will be able to guide you in the right direction for iPad office applications and the best applications to use on the iPad in your line of work.

Using the best iPad applications

Considering that there are thousands of apps to choose from in the iPad applications list in the App Store, serendipity will also be a factor in application discovery. In any case, many of the applications are quite inexpensive, less than five dollars and you may be able to try a couple of apps to see which are best for you. There are some applications which are available as a free version that might have some facilities missing or disabled. Using these applications, whether they are business applications or apps for entertainment will help you make your decision.

Downloading the best iPad applications

After you have downloaded a few of the best iPad applications it is a good idea to devote some time to really getting into your new app. Often there will be a help file to get you started, but as with web-based applications or your usual office applications, getting in there and having a play with all of the menus is a good move. It shouldn’t take you long to find out if there are any limitations to the apps that you have. There is a wealth of applications available and you may still need to keep hunting for the best iPad applications.

Must have iPad applications

The iPad versions of the iWork applications could well be in the list of top iPad applications. Without a doubt you will need to have Dropbox installed to use as a way to move files to the iPad. Many top of iPad applications use Dropbox for getting files out of the iPad as well as copied to the iPad.

If you are dealing with text then I would recommend Textastic for note taking. For creating outlines and lists then you have MagicalPad and another app but I liked for this would be ThinkBook.

Social networking with your iPad

The Facebook and Google applications for their respective social networks will be in your iPad applications list to install. You will also need to make it yourself a twitter client and my recommended app for this purpose presently is Tweetbot.

The best iPad applications for entertainment.

Don’t forget to treat yourself to one or two games that you can use for wasting a little bit of time as needed. The World of Goo is one that you can sit down with and you have Scrabble like games such as Words with Friends. Then you have the mindless games such as Bejewelled or Angry Birds, good to play with while waiting in a queue. For listening to podcasts then you could get Downcast. Best iPad applications

When you have been using Apple computers and in particular the iPad for some time, new patch will come to regard Microsoft Word and the documents from it as some kind of legacy entity. As you know from previous posts I am a huge fan of writing in text without all of the extra odds and sods that that Microsoft Word adds to a document. Writing in Markdown I see as a way forward because of the fact that whatever changes are made to document types over the next 10, 20 or even 50 years, markdown text documents will always be able to be read. So how do we deal with Word documents on iPad?

Review of Word 2 Text App for the iPad

This is a very simple application that allows you to pull in Word Documents on iPad and extract the text from that document so that it can be used and edited elsewhere. You may take documents that reside in your Dropbox folders. Word documents that have come to you from e-mail, documents in iCloud as well as documents that you have moved to the iPad via iTunes can all be opened in Word 2 Text. Once the conversion has taken place within the application you can copy the text to the clipboard with one click in the share menu. You may choose to open the converted text in another application which could be an application like Plain Text, SimpleNote, or any of the other text editors available for the iPad.

Convert all types of Word docs

There have been a number of revisions of the Microsoft Word document type and this application will open up both the documents that have the .Doc suffix and also the documents with the .Docx suffix. Once you have the text converted you can do what you want to with it and that might even be to use within Apple’s Pages application. If you already have Pages on your iPad then you might not need Word 2 Text for iPad as you can already open Word files within Pages.

A useful utility to convert Word documents on iPad

Send an e-mail attachment with the text as a file attached to the e-mail or just have the text within an e-mail are a couple options available. You may also share the text by tapping on the save as option in the share menu which will save it as a text file in your document folder. Within the Open In options in the share menu I can send text to mind mapping applications, Goodreader, Magicalpad, ThinkBook and even it is possible to send to my teleprompter application. Sending a large document to the mind mapping application iThoughts HD creates quite a weird looking mind map. I do like the way that I can change the size of the text with the pinch gestures.

Other applications from the same stable

Word 2 Text comes from the same developer that made the Textkraft, 1a Easy Writer and Schreibkraft applications – Infovole. It may well believe that the developers creating this application to be a partner to the other writing apps that they have released to the Mac App Store. Word-2-Text is also worth using to have the text of a word document searchable when in Evernote.

So with Word 2 Text you have an iPad converter for your iPad word documents, Good to know you can get a Word document on iPad and work easily with text on iPad.

Getting it all working again by using the iPad reset button

There are times when there is going to be nothing else that you can do except for hitting the iPad reset button and doing an iPad reset to factory settings. Situations when you might need to do something like this, could be if the iPad won’t turn on or if the display has stopped responding. Perhaps if the iPad doesn’t appear within iTunes or it is not possible for you to synchronise your iPad. There again, another problem could be that you are unable to access e-mail or the web across your Wi-Fi network. Then the best thing to do is to go into the iPad basic troubleshooting process.

Getting ready for doing a round of basic troubleshooting

Things will go a whole lot better if you do have the latest version of iTunes on your Mac or your Windows PC. See that you have your iPad connected, using a good USB 2 port. There are some USB ports which are not as good as others and in general, people find that the USB port which is closest to the power sockets on the MacBook Pro is a better one to use. Changing the USB port that you’re using isn’t always going to have an effect upon how this iPad setup is going to work out, but it might be best not to leave anything to chance. Before you do anything else see that your iPad software is also up to date. To do this, what you do is to, click on the Check for Updates button in the iTunes section, that is entitled Summary. It also makes sense to make sure that the battery is at full charge, so grab your 10w USB adapter for power that you got with your iPad and give it at least a 20 min charge. This will make sure that during the troubleshooting, you’re going to do now will not be affected by a lack of battery power.

Doing an iPad reset if the iPad doesn’t turn on

This is an old favourite with all computers, that all the IT people that work in the help desks will often use if nothing else works – Turn the iPad off and turn it back on again. To do this you have to press and hold the button at the top of the iPad, which is the sleep or wake button, hold it for a few seconds until you see a red slider. When you slide the red slider across, the iPad will completely shut down. To turn it back on again you press the on button until the Apple logo appears on the screen. Then to do the iPad reset, press and hold the iPad reset button and the home button at the same time. You need to hold them down for at least 10 seconds and until the Apple logo appears on the screen.

A problem with connecting the iPad by USB

If you can see your iPad in iTunes and it is proving impossible to synchronise the iPad, then you might want to disconnect all other USB devices and perhaps reconnect the iPad to a different USB port on the computer. This might help, if it doesn’t do the trick, then try turning the iPad on and off again and then afterwards also restart your computer. If none of this has worked then the next step would be to do a reinstall of the latest version of iTunes.

Starting to get a bit desperate when nothing else works

There is still a possibility that the iPad might not respond after you have done the iPad reset to have the iPad reset all settings. A true geek might get out a rubber chicken and start waving it around over the iPad chanting strange voodoo sounds, but there are still other options. One option might be to get the iPad to go into recovery mode, so that you can have the iPad reset to factory settings. It is also possible that if the conditions are right, the iPhone or iPad or iPod Touch will automatically go into the recovery mode if you have had an update or restore difficultly.

Getting the device to go into the recovery mode

First of all unhook the USB cable from your iDevice, but have the USB cable still connected to the computer and ready to use. Turn the device off as per the instructions above, or use the reset buttons if the red slider is not working. The next thing to do is to press and hold down the home button and at the same time reconnect the USB cable to your device. Your device should turn on at this stage. Make sure that the battery is fully charged up before proceeding. What you do then is to continue holding the home button until you see a message saying connect to iTunes, then you can release that button. If it is necessary to do so, when you look in iTunes you should see a recovery mode alert dialogue box. You will then be able to use iTunes to restore the device.

It may all seem a little bit strange, but in truth it is very unlikely that you will need to do all of this iPad reset jiggery-pokery using the iPad reset button. If all else fails and you still need some more help, or you would just rather go and get help in the first place, then don’t forget that those Apple geniuses are in the Apple stores. I would go to the Apple Store Barcelona from here and talk to one of those guys to get help. Hopefully these tips have been useful and your iPad is back up and running again.