Ten apps every iPad user should own

18.03.2012
There are many thousands of apps available. (As Apple's advertising campaign says, "There's an app for that.") But some apps are simply must-haves--whether for their functionality, interface brilliance, or sheer entertainment factor.

With the third-generation iPad now on retail shelves, chances are there are a lot of newly minted iPad owners out there wondering which apps to download first. Here are my ten must-haves. Note that I left out Apple's own iOS offerings, though many--including the newly updated , , and and the just-released mobile version of --are tremendously impressive and worth a download. (And if you're looking for even more download ideas, a few months ago, my colleagues came up with a list of , which include more than a few dandy iPad-optimized offerings.)

is a $5 RSS reader, and if you're not yet on the RSS bandwagon, you should be. The app, which syncs via Google Reader, presents a gloriously elegant interface for reading the latest articles from your favorite Websites.

(Image Caption: Reading through RSS feeds with your fingertip is simple and elegant with Reeder.)

Tap on a headline, and the article slides into view. If the feed in question shows only a summary, Reeder's built-in Readability support can help: Reverse-pinch on the text (or tap the Readability button), and Reeder quickly loads the rest of the article automatically. Tap and hold on links to bring up a sharing window; Reeder makes it easy to email links, save them to Instapaper (see below), post them to various social networks, and more. There's a separate , too, but the iPad incarnation is simply glorious. You'll never want to catch up on your feed subscriptions with anything else.