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Ask HN: What are your must have apps for iPad?

16 points by mraza007 ↗ HN
Hello HN, I recently bought an iPad Air for taking notes and creative work in general.

I would love to know what are your must have apps for iPad

17 comments

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pier25
ProCreate and/or Linea
mraza007
I think i heard about procreate but I’ll check out linea
jerkstate
Pythonista, Blink (mosh/ssh client), affinity Photo
mraza007
I think I have used pythonista on iPhone but is iPad good for coding can you get git client on iPad
simonh
It’s much easier with the extra space on an iPad. There’s a git client called Working Copy that works well, and an official GitHub client.

Also consider PyTO for Python on iOS. It’s fully open source and in active development, but much less polished than Pythonista which unfortunately has been moribund for several years now.

Further development options include Codea that’s an excellent Lua dev environment, and Apple’s Swift Playgrounds that provides access to SwiftUI, and later this year will enable uploading apps developed in it to the store.

schappim
Re Blink.

I've been a long time Blink user and recently switched to ShellFish:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/secure-shellfish-ssh-client/id...

Like Blink it is fast, but it also has great support for the files app & shortcuts, and widgets. The widgets are actually useful because they have the option to turn on "Location Persistence" which must use an API similar to navigation apps.

[1] I wonder how long this will last before Apple wises up.

Jcowell
Panels. Good reader app for DRM-free comic books. Octal for Hacker News content. Discord. Procreate if you’re an artist. Streaming apps.
simonh
Goodreader is an excellent PDF repository and reader if you have a large library (I’m a TTRPG gamer) although you can get by with iBooks.

I find Google Drive and Google Docs indispensable, but Notability is also excellent. The built in notes app is surprisingly capable though, so you might as well check it out.

partlysean
I use GoodNotes for all of my note taking and non-artistic sketching. Syncs with my iPhone and Mac, so it’s easy to have them everywhere.
tailspin2019
If you have an Apple Pencil, I highly recommend “Concepts” [0]

I use it for general software design/planning like UI wireframes, flowcharts and various other things

[0] https://concepts.app

vr46
A++ for Concepts, single most important app for me working with clients. So good, has helped me help clients for two solid years now.
tailspin2019
I’m trying to make better use of it.

I’m curious what sort of things you use it for if you’re willing to share?

vr46
90% of my use is actually just treating it like a whiteboard. The features that help me are the grid, the smoothness of the tools, the ease of export to slack and so on to quickly share.

For example, I drew a diagram of a river to represent the data flow through the client's company, and was able to shade chunks in yellow to represent team pissing into the river with bad quality data and how that affects the major consumers downstream. They got the idea instantly.

tailspin2019
I didn’t expect such a hilarious response to this question :)