10 Essential iPad Apps That Let You Leave Your Laptop At Home

I recently had the experience of being away in New York and decided to leave my Laptop at home. Instead, by my side would be my trusty iPad. Great in theory; lighter, longer battery life, great web and email experience but can you really do everything you need on just an iPad? I think you can…with these 11 apps (that’s right, 11, one is a game!)

To give some perspective… I have a couple roles in the world right now. I’m CTO of Corkbin; a wine memory and sharing platform, CoFounder of Launch Team; an alternative incubation concept in London and consult on various technological areas in-between. My days are spent mixed between endless emails, development, basic design, release management, concept planning etc…

So the Apps that have made me reach for the iPad and not the MacBook air are:

1. Pages, Numbers and Keynote

Notes will often do the job, but leave you having to copy and paste content out with no formatting etc… These three apps let you have an office suite on your iPad to get the job done and ticked off – not 70% done with some finishing off to be done when you can get to a computer. Technically 3 Apps but it’s one suite so I’ll let it go!

2. FTPOnTheGo Pro

This may or may not be necessary for you, but for anyone working on a web project, direct access to your FTP Server with a built in (basic) editor is invaluable. This lets you make quick edits to your web content wherever you are or share things to the web.

3. Team Viewer

There are times when you just really do need a computer. And for those times, Team Viewer can let you connect to your computer at home and achieve that task. A file you need to add to the Dropbox, a quick iOS recompile etc…

Read the full review of Team Viewer.

4. Drop Box

Are all of your files in Drop Box? No…? Well they should be! Drop Box lets you access and keep up to date, your files on all your devices. You Can even open the file in the appropriate editor and save it back! Genius! Works great with Pages, Numbers and Keynote!

Read 10 Best iPad Apps for Business.

5. WordPress

If you blog then you need this App.

6. Things (or Producteev)

Task management is super-important and both Things (flat cost) and Producteev (subscription) do a great job of tracking your tasks, projects etc… And most importantly, keeping those tasks in-sync with the mother ship and between devices!

7. Skype  

Conference calling with video on your iPad. Enough said.

8. AppCooker

Another one which may be quite specific to my role, but if you prototype iOS Apps then this is a no-brainer… Just as good as mocking them up in XCode!

Read the full review of AppCooker.

9. Twitter

If you use twitter, then this is the best iPad experience going. Manage your companies twitter account – the push notifications make it easy to know when people are mentioning your brand and manage your reputation online! 🙂

Read 5 Really Cool iPad Apps For Free.

10. Photoshop

Its relatively basic, but most image manipulation tasks are catered for; resizing images, altering colours, cropping, adding text and more… Great for when you need to quickly edit an image for an Article, presentation or document.

Read 5 Really Cool iPad Apps For Free.

11. Angry Birds HD 

Because… All work and no play makes Chris a dull boy!

Read 10 Most Addictive iPad Game Apps Ever Made.

So these are mine. What tools let you leave the laptop at home and lean on the iPad alone…?