Your iPad app ideas? | Hacker News Reader

Your iPad app ideas?

6 pointsbemmu8 comments

I thought a bit about what kind of new things iPad makes possible. Real-Time Strategy games will be fun with two people sharing the screen (others suggested this same idea). You could even use the iPad the replace menus in a high class restaurant. What are your ideas?

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I'm not here to hijack this thread or anything but I created a group called 'iPad People' on Facebook this morning to discuss App Ideas. Or rather: to let ordinary people express their wishes for iPad Apps. Please consider joining the group, spreading the word & adding some ideas.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=277104755137

To prove that I do NOT want to hijack the thread here are all the ideas expressed in that group until now:

iShop: I'd like to have a nice shopping list app. iCal todo lists are just not as good. I think there's a whole collection of To-Do / Shopping / Productivity apps that can be built to fit this new form factor. The device encourages a little more interaction than the iPhone but still less than a full computer because of the lack of a decent keyboard.

iFingerpaint: .. for those spoiled kids who got the iToddler app! And for the grown ups a sketching app, and a photo editing app. Was actually preparing a submission for an iDoodle app or something similar to the existing iSteam app. I still like real paper for my brainstorming / doodling though. But the added screen real estate and multi-touch could give some nice interaction patterns, e.g. use the pinch move to crumble the piece of paper and toss it away.

iToddler / iAnnoyMyParents: Ever seen those platic toys with big colorful buttons that make funny sounds when your baby presses them? What about an app that has simple big icons, e.g. farm animals, a car, a plane, ... and when the child touches them with their hands it plays a sound / starts an animation. Guaranteed to drive parents crazy!

Offline Web Content Reader: Do you still print webpages for use in places where you don't have access to the internet? E.g. printing out a webpage or pdf for reading on the train / in the car? What about a simple web/pdf reader app that eats pdf or web archive files (created on your desktop with e.g. print-to-pdf or save-as-web-archive). You drop the files on the iPad app from your Desktop & the iPad can then display it offline in full gorgeous detail. I remember my Palm had such a sync feature now almost 10 years ago.

iClimb: What about an application where you post all of your climbed routes and share them with your friends? It would be nice to also post comments about the route, photo's, ... and a map to locate where the route is situated, so other climbers can get information about that specific route.

iShareMusic: The new SDK has easy file sharing built in. What about a combined Desktop/iPad app that scans your Desktop iTunes library & allows you to 'share' all of your music as a normal thumb drive instead of the annoying locked down iTunes connectivity. Want to copy music from a friends' iPad? Just plug in the iPad to your desktop computer, a thumb/usb drive mounts with all of the music on the device neatly organized in folders for easy copying. (DISCLAIMER: I'm not making any statements about the legality of this. Purely technical discussion.)

iPad for board games: I think one first massive category of apps will be turn-based board games. People have been playing board games for centuries (Think Chess, Go, etc ...). The form-factor is really inviting: it's basically a gaming board on which you can play multiple games. But with a twist: multi-finger & multi-people gestures will allow some really interesting physical gameplay.

Being a college student I think a great note taking app is very necessary for the ipad. It would need to be able to switch from sketching ability (drawing pictures,and writing quick notes with your finger with different colors) to keyboard input with a seamless touch of an onscreen icon. The thing that would make a superior application for taking notes would be multiple-angle keyboard text input. Basically, with a swipe of the finger you should be able to dictate the angle at which text is entered on the screen (e.g. Swiping my finger at a 45 or 60 or 70 or 90 degree angle, or any angle, would thus make the text be input at that angle on the screen). This would be idle for entering text around a picture you have drawn on screen, or entering a note in the margin just like you would if you were taking notes with pen and paper. I think that ability would make the ipad the ultimate school electronic device hands down! Obviously, there should be an elegant start up screen holding multiple notebooks. For that I actually like the startup screen for the iWork apps that have been shown. Finally all this would be for not if there is not a very simple way to put your notes onto a home computer. Well this is my little idea, I think it could be an extremely useful app for the ipad for students as well as the corporate world. Not to mention, that if done write, meaning keeping it simple and not trying to make it more than it should be (because, think about it, a pen and paper doesn't do much, but they do what they do absolutely flawlessly) could be very profitable for the creators of such an app.

I would like to be able to use an iPad at college for class notes and drawings. As well as this while im jotting the lesson is being recorded with the built in mic or a bluetooth one.

It would be nice to be able to group the notes to a Lesson name say 'Maths', 'IT' so you can have more than one and then the dates with a title of your choice (Lesson name). The ability to export the notes as an image and the recorded lesson for review.

This would then allow me to stop using paper in class and if I miss what the teacher said I can review with the recorded audio.

Does that sound any good. MD

I can't wait to use it as an input device for my Mac. A huge touch pad that can connect via Bluetooth and be used to bring multi-touch to my iMac would be excellent.

Here is a site using stackexchange platform for sharing ipad apps ideas.

http://ipad-apps.me/

Ability to play a lot more games with 2 players on a single screen is good. Plus, it would be good for strategy games by linking more than 1 iPad.

I see a lot of classic board games being very fun to play on an iPad. Risk, Monopoly, etc... you can zoom in/around the board when necessary and zoom out to see the entire board. I can see it being much more successful than PC/handheld board game clones.

That, & a better iSteam were the first apps I could think of after watching the demo yesterday

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