iPad App Review Marathon

We're going in and reviewing as many iPad apps as possible - LIVE - right now and updating throughout the day. We'll start with the essential apps.



Marvel Comics Good, but not fantastic. Portrait mode is good for reading the entire page, and you can double-tap to zoom in to a specific panel, which is great for landscape. Then swipe forward (or backwards) and it'll advance or go back panels. The major omission I see is the lack of double-page mode in landscape, so you can see two-page layouts (when something crazy or dramatic happens) the way they were meant to be seen in comic books. Otherwise, the screen is great for reading comics and the interface works fine. Comics are $US2 each, app is free. What they should really do is have a subscription service - something like $US20 a month and you can read as many comics as you can without vomiting. [iTunes]

Good initial effort, but there are definitely functionality holes Marvel can patch in the coming weeks.

Geometry Wars Touch Geometry Wars! It's hard to complain when one of the best dual-stick shooters comes to another platform... but we've got some. The game looks fantastic, even though it's graphically less impressive - fewer particle effects and shapes are more pixelated - than the XBLA version. The controls are damn good for a touchscreen, but if you're comparing to two physical sticks, you lose out on the twitch action that advanced players need. But being able to put your thumb down anywhere on the left and right side to activate move and shoot sticks dynamically is a really good new paradigm. One huge loss is that the bomb button is in the middle of the screen, meaning that you can't quickly hit it when you're in trouble, making it mostly useless in extreme situations. Also, you can't resume games if you exit the app and come back. But otherwise, pretty fantastic. $12.99. [iTunes]


NYT Editor's Choice If you liked the NYT app on the iPhone, know that NYT Editor's Choice evolves the experience of a newspaper on a mobile screen in a tasteful, natural manner. Toggle between the newspaper-style front pages' five categories: News, Business, Technology, Opinion and Features. View it all in portrait or landscape mode while flicking smoothly from one page to another - it looks great either way. But the perfect, subtle detail on such a large screen? Click on a story and you'll cross-dissolve to the full article. You can even email articles - the only thing it's missing is the option to search. [iTunes]

If you like the NYT, it's a free must-have without that obtrusive advertising.

TweetDeck Like we said when we first saw the screenshots, TweetDeck makes good use of that wider screen to put more information in front of your face - the entire point of TweetDeck in the first place. It's fast and you can rearrange columns easily by double tapping, then dragging. So far it's a pretty damn solid Twitter implementation, on par with the desktop version of TweetDeck. [iTunes]

Daddy like.

Epicurious Functionally speaking, Epicurious on the iPad is not much different than on the iPhone (you browse by the same categories along with shopping list support). But that's the point - you have a unified library across iPlatform. And on the iPad, layout makes all the difference. Viewing lists simply makes more sense than browsing through recipes Cover Flow-style. And the sheer speed and fluidity (over Wi-Fi, granted) of navigation, adding recipes to your collection and then saving those recipes as itemised shopping lists - you'll be impressed. What can I say other than that this doesn't feel like a V1 iPad app. This is polished, functional and wonderful, if you're the cooking type. Heck, it's free, so that alone makes it worth a shot. [iTunes]

I've used Epicurious on the web and iPhone extensively already, but the iPad implementation is already my favourite.


Fun music app by guys who know fun music apps.

AIM It's AIM for iPad and it's free. The actually AIMing part works great in both landscape and portrait, even if you should probably use it in landscape mode to have both active IMs and your buddy list visible at all times. Typing is what it is - not fantastic, but good enough - and most everything is pretty responsive.


Good for AIMing, not so good for everything else.

Adobe Ideas A free sketch app from Adobe, which looks powerful enough for someone who actually knows how to draw to produce some good content. This is what I pulled out in three minutes. It's pretty simple, but has opacity, colour and brush size and compatibility with Illustrator and Photoshop on the desktop. It's free and decent so you can't complain. [iTunes]



If you're the type of person who wants to carry their iPad everywhere to control their computers, this is a must.

Digits Calculator

It's a calculator app. It's also $1.19. It works nice, and it looks good, but there should be free ones soon. You should wait. [iTunes]

Wait for a free calculator app.


It definitely looks nice, with the portrait view showing current weather (plus other meteorological data), a two-week forecast and the landscape mode showing just the forecast. There are also other slick views, like a circular hourly mode, video weather forecasts and the weather map. What's goofy are the settings: There are a couple bugs here, like not being able to properly add a city in the landscape mode, which should be worked out quickly. Otherwise, it's a good free app, with the only downside being that the stupid ad pops up from the bottom occasionally. If you want, you can pay $1.19 to get rid of the ads. [Free, Paid]

Very pretty, and worth paying the $1.19 to get rid of ads.


Good and pretty, but ads.

Tap Tap Radiation



Fieldrunners This is the same Fieldrunners you know and love from the iPhone, it's just had its resolution jacked up for the iPad. And it looks beautiful. Gameplay is smooth, the sound effects are great, and having that extra screen real estate keeps you from accidentally tapping the wrong turret when you're upgrading them. Tower defence games don't get much better than this, really. $10. [iTunes]


Labyrinth It's like Labyrinth on the iPhone (you can even play iPhone levels), but in 3D and on a bigger screen. The 3D is pretty awesome, and you can even play user-created levels. There's a free version and an $10 version. Try the free one first to see if you like it. [iTunes]

Why not.



IMDB A very clean and snappy interface. Looking up movies and actors is extremely intuitive and elegant since you can easily scan through top titles on the splash page or dive into the search bar up top. Taping the Browse button accesses TV schedules, Top 250 Lists and Moviemeter. Photo galleries are fine-tuned to play well with the iPad and produce crisp, clear images that can be browsed as easily as your local photo collection. But it's not without a few glitches. When switching from portrait to landscape mode the lower IMDB and Browse buttons seem confused where to position themselves and end up flickering back and forth between the left and and centre of the screen. Movie trailers fail to launch and if you quit the app it does not resume where you left off, making for a tedious few moments while you renavigate. We'll have to see how soon this gets patched, but it's off to a fantastic start. [iTunes]

Great interface and intuitive navigation, although trailers fail to launch.




Unique, but definitely weird.


Better in theory than in practice, not worth the $13.

Wikipanion for iPad Straight up Wikipedia. The iPad version of the world's most popular iPhone Wiki is as speedy as ever and should keep time wasters or pub trivia cheats extremely satisfied. Bookmarking pages is a snap and quitting out of the app is without qualms since you can resume right where you left off. Browse the main page for something that suits your interest or stumble around with the infamous random page button to read about the most obscure stuff ever. The article text itself can be tweaked to suit your style - big or small, serif or sans, there's no wrong way to read your favourite entries. The more 3G centric geolocation feature lets you be your own tour guide and read up on relevant articles from around your immediate area. Switching from portrait to landscape is not as snappy as I would have liked, but that's really a minor gripe. Spend six bucks on the Plus version and you get offline viewing capabilities. [iTunes]

Classic Wikipedia. Six bucks for the Plus version nets you offline viewing.



Command and Conquer Review here.


It's like Flight Control for the iPhone, but better in every way.




iDisplay. Use your iPad as a second monitor! Review here.


Really good comic reader, but pricey.

Delivery Status Touch If you needed proof that the iPad could make anything beautiful, look no further than Delivery Status Touch, a bigger, shinier version of the iPhone app that is dedicated solely to tracking your packages. The premise is pretty straight forward: if you're a person who's buying or selling a lot of stuff online, Delivery Status will keep track of all those tracking numbers, from the big guys like UPS and FedEx, Apple and Amazon, all the way down to the nobodies like Sagawa Express and Aramex. It shows each tracked item in a side pane with colour-coded tabs and provides large, multitouch maps of their whereabouts on the right. If you create a free account with the developer, Junecloud, it'll sync your tracking numbers between a desktop widget, iPhone and iPad, which is pretty nice. All of this, though, seems like overkill unless you routinely have at least four or five incoming shipments at a time. And for $6, it's almost certainly an unnecessary extravagance. [iTunes]

Delivery Status achieves the seemingly impossible task of making package-tracking gorgeous, but at $6 it's only for serious powershippers.




Only for die hard Stumbleupon fans.



ESPN ScoreCenter XL If the iPad is going to be your new newspaper, then it has to replace box scores, too. ESPN ScoreCenter XL does that and more, letting you put together a custom package of the sports and teams you care about, enhanced with video, play-by-play rundowns and live stats. The app is a gateway to a wealth of information, but the layout isn't super intuitive, so it still seems like a wealth of information - too much, at some points. The basic things - stats, scores, standings - are all laid out plain and simple, but there doesn't seem like there's a unifying element that brings it together as a manageable package. And at $6, it might be best to wait and see how the sports app scene shakes out. [iTunes]


NPR Every Giz writer is loving the NPR app, and it's obvious why: You can't question the app's sheer robustness. You can scroll through tons of content on the mainpage, look up any NPR station to livestream and even play some of the most premium content like This American Life on demand. Plus, the iPad's speaker makes for the perfect, cheap radio effect - allowing you to ditch AM receivers once and for all. But if the app fails in one place, it's that there's simply too much content presented in too many different ways. Flip through icons, use forward and back functions, scroll through lists, search by radio station to find more lists - everything is jumbled. We'd just love one simple view option for every major show. [iTunes]

It's the most robust NPR app yet - we'd just like someone to chop down the interface.



Plants Vs Zombies HD It's been widely acclaimed on almost every portable platform known to man, but I admit, I avoided Plants Vs Zombies, much because I knew it was coming to the iPad at a higher resolution. The game is beautiful, and tower defence titles (of which I'm a huge, huge fan) obviously work wonderfully on a large touchscreen. I was quickly suckered into way too much "test" time with Plants Vs Zombies, despite it being far simpler than the hardcore tower defence games I usually play (you don't route enemies through a maze like other games, and towers don't have quite the same rock, paper, scissors effects). It's just charming, addictive eye candy. My only real complaint is that this, along with many other "HD" games don't include a free version for my iPhone. $13. [iTunes]

Great, yet another tower defence game that I'm going to spend hours playing.

National Geographic World Atlas HD I don't know what I expected this app to be, but even at $2.49, World Atlas HD let me down. It's essentially a world map (coupled with limited demographic data) that you can look at in a few different styles. If you've used Google Maps/Earth for more than five minutes, this will feel antiquated and pointless - especially as locally saved maps fail to download, the app crashes and, when you zoom in too far (which you will), you're rerouted to Bing's maps that don't match the old school map experience. $2.49 of app spam. [iTunes]

Just use the Maps app and have fun with Street View.



Voice Memos Voice memos. On your iPad. Pretty much a no brainer and I'm sure you've probably downloaded this already. If you've used any voice recorder ever you know the drill: Record, Stop, Playback, Delete - oh, look, a new VU meter! That's the gist. The trouble is this first version has a HUGE flaw. You can only toggle the playhead in landscape mode and when you try to - let's say fast forward to the 35-minute mark in a 40-minute lecture, the playhead glitches the fuck out and completely fails. Meaning you'd have to physically sit there and listen until the part you wanted cued up. This is sure to be fixed, but renders this app essentially useless in the mean time for practical purposes. Sound-wise it does the job. Audio is crisp and captures voices relatively well. Plug in your iPhone headphones and use the built in mic for more candid functionality. Background noise can be an issue in a crowded setting, so keep that mind if you have to interview the elderly at a dirt bike rally.

Essential app crippled by playhead glitch. Wait for the update.

EXO-Planet EXO-Planet is a local Bluetooth or internet Wi-Fi-based third-person shooter that's actually pretty decent. It has only capture the flag mode, so if you're not a fan of that and would just want to deathmatch or team deathmatch, this isn't for you. But jumping around space in zero gravity and grappling around avoiding gunfire is hard to turn down. $9. [iTunes]

Limited modes (one), but still a fun shooter.

Dungeon Hunter HD


Buy. This. Shit.

Call of Duty: World at War: Zombies for iPad

It's essentially the same game as the iPhone one, complete with the second add-on DLC map and larger-sized screen/controls. It looks better than you'd expect on an iPad - definitely not as good as a 360, but you'd be impressed. Two of the three control schemes are good. The dual stick and the touch screen are usable, but tilt, the best one on the iPad, is really awkward with the increased weight.

Single player is lots of fun, and 4-player multiplayer, both internet and local Wi-Fi, work well. The only problem is that connecting to each other is really finicky and dependent on your wireless connection, so it might not work well for you. It's $18 though, so you have to weigh out how much you really want this game compared to the previous two relatively-similar incarnations. [iTunes]


NetNewsWire for iPad If you use an RSS reader on the Mac, you know NetNewsWire is the best tool for that job. But the $13 iPad version fell short of my expectations. It handled my countless subscriptions smoothly enough - no small feat - but actually browsing the content was cumbersome, largely because the app puts all navigational buttons at the top of the screen (which makes no sense when you actually hold the iPad). Such design elements may seem trivial, but as soon as you want to casually skim your feed, you'll realise that the interface is constantly fighting you. You can share links to places like Twitter, but beyond that, it's just a $13 means to clunkily experience RSS. [iTunes]

Performance is decent, but navigation needs work - especially with its premium app price.

Touchgrind HD Basically a higher resolution port of the popular iPhone game. You have a skateboard and use your fingers as makeshift skater legs to ollie, grind and pop shuvit to your heart's content. The learning curve and turning are a bit hard to grasp initially, but once you get the hang of things the potential for fun really opens up. Sound effects are fantastic and pitch perfect for the most part as you grind from rails to wood to wipe outs, making completed tricks all the more satisfying. Since the game lacks its own music iPod integration is essential - and thankfully present - just create your own custom playlist and skate an endless jam session. The parks are a tad bare and you'll be staring at concrete a lot while you grasp the ins and outs of doing tricks. Unlockable boards are plentiful and keep things engaging while you try to climb the global point leaderboard. Ten dollars is a pretty reasonable price considering some other HD titles are inflated rather ridiculously. [iTunes]


PAC-MAN You've probably bought PAC-MAN five to 10 times by now on various platforms, and the new iPad version is a most barebones classic version. But I enjoyed the experience enough for it to be worth $6. Why? Nostalgia. And not just PAC-MAN-exclusive nostalgia. I mean, playing PAC-MAN specifically on the iPad reminded me implicitly of the old Coleco game from the '80s. Still, for most people, I have a feeling that $6 for another repackaged version of the game feels a little steep. [iTunes]


Zen Bound 2 Review here.


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