iPad Apps of the Year

17 December 2014

For awhile now I have done pretty much everything from my iOS devices. Since getting the iPhone 6 plus and having my iPad begin to slow down on me, I’ve been using the iPhone more and more. With Christmas coming around the corner I will be upgrading to an iPad Air 2, so it will most likely become an integral part of my everyday life once again. MacStories has put together a list of the top iPad apps of the year, which is extremely useful in preparing for a new iPad.

Federico Viticci:

There’s a few tasks that I still can’t get done on an iPad, but the list is shrinking, and, thanks to iOS 8, developers are coming up with new ways to make working on iOS more feasible and pleasant. I don’t use my iPad as a computer just to prove a point or because it’s a popular topic among readers and listeners of Connected: I need my iPad, the apps it runs, and the workflows I’ve created to automate what I do on iOS.

Viticci hits it on the spot here. With iOS 8 and many of the apps he lists, I am able to get everything done from these portable devices. There are the obvious workflow enhancing apps: Editorial, Workflow, Drafts and Launch Center Pro. There are some that I cannot live without: Fantasical, 1Password, and Dropbox as well as Marco Arment’s old app Instapaper, for saving articles to read later, and his new app Overcast, for podcasts. I use almost everything Viticci lays out so you really can’t go wrong buying everything he lays out for you.

However, there are two apps that I would choose over Vittici’s choices. Newsify is pretty nifty, especially in terms of the quick sharing with iOS 8 extensions but Unread is my preferred RSS reader. It is the cleanest reader and is also beautifully designed. I am hoping the guys at Supertop integrate the extensions a little better in the future. Then there is OmniFocus 2 which is a full-featured task management suite that has it’s own positives and negatives but I prefer it over Todoist. It helps that I do not need a collaborative task manager.

Let’s not forget about games now. Blizzard released Hearthstone earlier this year and I cannot get enough of it. They took the trading card game style, and turned it digital in a way only Blizzard knows how. We also cannot forget Monument Valley and Space Age. Monument Valley released it’s expansion Forgotten Shores. Space Age, a space exploration game with pixel art, was released from the guys that made the Incident way back when. These are definitely games that you need to check out.