iPad Most Used Apps: Mail, Notes, Epicurious, Safari, Instapaper, FeedlerPro, PasswordWallet (PW)
Mail & Safari: neither require much explanation. Both apps are mature and reliable. Mail works great for presenting a unified view of my 6 email boxes (iCloud, Gmail, 2 personal, 2 business). Reading mail and browsing on the iPad are more enjoyable. If the iPad is nearby, it gets grabbed before an iPhone.
Notes and I weren’t very fond of each other at first. The awful Marker Felt font and no decent sync consigned it to an unused app screen. When iOS 4 brought sync support, I finally began using the Notes app as well as Notes feature in Mail.app on my Mac. On the Mac, I can change the font. What a relief! Since the two sync, I can make changes on the Mac or iPad.
I enter my recipes as notes on my Mac. Then I view them on the iPad in the kitchen. I often make small edits in the kitchen too. All those, “I should update that…” things actually happen now, while I’m thinking of it. Here’s a few of the notes I have: Apple Pie, Whole wheat pie crust, Gordon’s Chili, Carrot Cake, Yogurt [making] notes, Blackberry Pie. I do use notes for other things, like Perl Best Practices, Javascript Cheat Sheet, W3C DOM, Climbing: Plan Trip, Climbing: Packing List, Seattle Bucket List, and notes I’ve taken while reading numerous books.
Epicurious: I like the Epicurious app. It’s rather poky, but it has a recipe sync feature that makes it worthwhile. I can browse through the epicurious.com site and find recipes, add them to my “recipe box” and then go to the kitchen, pull up Epicurious, and then view the recipe I just chose. The laptop in the kitchen idea never worked well (I tried several times) but the iPad in the kitchen is delicious!
Instapaper: Go get it. Use it for a week. You will love it. Trust me.
Feedler Pro: RSS feed reader. An excellent one. If you subscribe to RSS feeds, it’s indispensable.
Password Wallet: I have 788 passwords. Every web site, computer, app, software registration, etc has it’s own password. Most are randomly assigned by PW. They are stored in an encrypted file that syncs between my Mac, iPhone, and iPad.
Less Used But Great iPad Apps: Twitter, Facebook, AIM, iSSH, Photos, Redfin.
iPhone Most Used Apps: Mail, Grocery IQ, Calendar, Camera, Safari, Notes, PW, FeedlerPro, Instapaper, Google Maps, OmniFocus, USAA (killer feature: deposit checks with my phone), Chase (killer feature: the only business checking with iPhone deposit, else I’d be rid of my TBTF bank account entirely), Scrabble, Facebook, Instagram, Reminders.
I have at least a dozen other apps I love, but only use on occasion. For example, the Airport Utility, for configuring my WiFi. I don’t use it often, but when I do, I’m really glad to have it. Apps like that: Stocks, Vanguard, Waze, AIM, WordPress, Skype, NPR, My TSA, FlightView, iBooks, Kindle, Remote, Youtube, Allrecipes, Dropbox, Zillow, Reunion, Epocrates, WordBook, iGrill (bluetooth remote for my kitchen temp probe), and of course, a handful of games and edu apps for kids.