@ Gothmog:

Have you had any experience upgrading your iPad after jailbreak? I feel the same as most that it sucks with all the apple induced limitations on the iPad, but I still want it for all it’s functionality. Jailbreak solves that problem nicely and it’s easy to do, but upgrading looks a pain unless your willing to lose data. (My iPhone4’s iOS is so old, I can’t update most apps due to incompatibility issues – 3/4 way through FFIII and unwilling to risk all my hard earned levels and gear!)

Honestly, jailbreaking the iPad was super-easy & painless. I used the ‘absinthe’ tool and it was as easy as plugging it in and rebooting & wiping the iPad (make sure you back up the iPad before jailbreakage)

@ IceBrain:

Very true. It’s a great little toy, but comes with serious limitations.

@ Garrick:

Yeah, I think I have heard that somewhere else too. The question is: do I really want to stand in front of my class controlling an iPad with an iPhone? By that I mean, the phone is a bit bulky as a clicker… Plus it does not have a built-in laser pointer, whereas most of the clickers I have used so far do. I might need to test this further.

@ Victoria:

Yeah, the lack of flash kinda blows. I’m annoyed that I can’t watch my Escapist videos (zero punctuation, etc..) on the device without shelling out cash for their vip club or whatever it’s called. :(

@ Gothmog:

I have not jailbroken it yet. I’m sort of afraid that I will Jail-brick it instead. Cause that has happened to me before – I have bricked quite a few appliances just by doing updates. Latest casualty was a Barracuda SSLVPN which essentially self-updates. It has a button that you press, it downloads a firmware upgrade, applies it and reboots.

I had a Barracuda tech on the line with me, logged into the box remotely, I had him do a once-over on all the settings to make sure I don’t have any problem-features switched on. He assured me all was fine and I should go ahead and update. Box went down so hard it wouldn’t even boot.

Later I was told I have somehow found a one-in-a-million bug that the developers did not even think was possible to trigger. That’s sort of my luck. So I’m always hesitant to jailbreak new devices. :P

@ Peter:

I love Kingdom Rush! Thanks for the suggestions.

Most of the good apps have been mentioned so far, but here are a few more:
Timeli, a calendar for long events. While the standard calendar app works well, especially the synchronization to other devices, it skeumorphic shit, just like contacts app.
Kingdom Rush is a nice tower defense game. (Also playable for free as Flash game.)
Also, I like the TED app for watching the videos; you can even download them and watch offline.

Welcome to the fold, Luke! I became the apple/iPad admin for my shop a couple of months ago (on top of my other responsibilites, sigh) and just got an iPad 3 two weeks ago.
I gotta say, I agree with you- it fills the gap between phone and laptop QUITE well.
I use it to take notes in Penultimate/Evernote in meetings, browse Reddit with Alien Blue and remote into work systems with ‘Jump’.

Moreso- I’ve been enjoying GAMES on it- it’s kind of shocking.
Draw Something- this game is a blast with the extra real-estate
Plague Inc- Beating the game as a fungus is HARD. Damn fungi.
NS Hex- fun turned based tile placement strategy
Kard Combat- iOS reskin of ‘Spectromancer’, made by the creator of Magic the Gathering
Kingdom Rush- beautiful and HARD tower defense game
SoulCalibur- it’s amazing to me I’m holding a Dreamcast in my hands when playing this
Pinball Arcade- my wife and I have been playing ‘Medeval Madness’ and ‘Tales of Arabian Nights’ like crazy. The fighting over highest score has been fierce!

Of course, none of them are very deep… I don’t think they make deep games on the iPad.

I’ve played TOO MANY games of Battleship (ugh) with my 5 year old. What’s more, he’s watched 3+ hours or Transformer toy reviews using the Youtube client. I’m amazed how quickly he took to the touch interface. I can’t tell if it’s superior apple design or just that he’s 6 and learning interfaces is easy when you’re young. I mean, I learn that kind of stuff no problem, but that’s part of my job. My wife has had a trickier time of it.

I’ve found that Comic Zeal is a brilliantly designed comic reader. I’ve been enjoying Transmetropolitan, Fables and Powers-

There ARE drawbacks- but not many of them hold up once you jail break the device. Have you jailbroken yours yet, Luke? The nerd in me gets a special thrill BENDING a device to my will, instead of being forced to dance to Apples tune.

I am writing this on my iPad :) I owned the 1st one (a present from benevolent boss) and I bought the 2nd one as soon as it came out. I never thought I’d use it as extensively as I do.

Love gaming experience like Sudoku and Zuma and Plants vs Zombies. Desktop doesn’t even come close to touch device for that. I read on iPad too so I gave my old eInk device to my mom. Browsing the net, checking emails – yep. But I do not work on iPad despite having Textastic – which is great (has ssh and ftp and what not).

What is also amazing is Dropbox – I don’t remember when I used itunes for anything.

One of the drawbacks is using passwords – I have 1password set up on my machines but still even logging into app is rather complicated with any decent password. Othen than that and Flash I love iPad experience and I’ll be getting retina one at some point (I fell so hard for the retina MBP with ‘75% less glare’ :) and I’m not even an Apple aficionado).

@ Luke Maciak:
Don’t quote me, but I think the Keynote Remote app for the JesusPho…er…iPhone will control the iPad app as well.

See, your comment is a great example why I don’t particularly want an iPad (though I wouldn’t refuse if someone offered me one :D). I would want to write a Python script that somehow captured the clicker’s input and translate it into a Keynote command, or any other of the hundreds of small automations I did to my laptop and desktop.

@ Garrick:

I actually had this crazy idea to get the Keynote app, see if I can make it reliably run my ppt files, get the VGA connector and use the device for my lectures. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem like there is a presentation clicker that the Keynote supports on iPad. :( Still, I may check it out.

Oh, and I will definitely check out Elements – thanks for the tip.

I couldn’t agree with you more. I pre-ordered the new iPad (iPad 3, JesusPad, whatever) the day they were announced and love it. To be fair, this is my second iPad, I had a 1st Gen 64gb model which I sold to fund the new one.There are plenty of things I still run to my overpowered laptop for, but whenever I can get away with it, I use the iPad instead.
The retina screen is amazing, and makes every other screen I look at seem sub-par. I can’t wait for these high resolution screens to be the norm on all computing devices.

As for creative apps, Sketchbook Pro is great if you like drawing, although has a much steeper learning curve than Paper.
I do much of my writing in Elements which is a plain-text, Dropbox connected, markdown editor.
If I need to do any word processing that needs additional formatting for school, I use Apples Pages app.
I use Prompt if I need to SSH into my home computer or server, and the most excellent Screens VNC client for screen sharing (has saved my ass a few times).
The WordPress app is pretty decent, although I still write most everything in Elements and then copy and paste into WordPress for blogging.
The whole Apple iLife and iWork suite of apps that are available for iPad are top notch (Pages, Numbers, Keynote, iPhoto, Garage Band, and iMovie). There are very few apps better for what they are designed for.

Glad to see you have joined the club. We can now start chanting “One of us, one of us…”