Free Best Productivity Apps for iPad

Although the iPad already has fantastic native apps that perform a number of tasks admirably, the App Store holds many more applications that greatly extend the functionality of your tablet. Here are some FREE of the latest and Best utility apps to increase your productivity with.

Paper by FiftyThree
A hot jotter with more tools than it lets on
Price: Free, Developer: FiftyThree Inc
Rating ★★★★★

Anyone who has read the biography of Apple founder Steve Jobs will know he was very much interested in creativity. For him, it was all about empowering the user to produce something in the simplest of ways. And it is clear that this is also the aim of Paper by FiftyThree. Although it’s a very unusual name for an app, what it does is offer a blank canvas on which to draw freehand, and it provides a series of books into which you can put your artistic skills to good use.

The first book is called Making Paper, and it shows what you can do with the app. The other two are labelled Ideas and Sketches. On these blank pages you can add pages and sketch out your thoughts so that you have a great showcase of your talents. Opening a fresh page can be rather daunting, with only a blank screen in front of you. But the magic comes when you swipe up from the bottom edge. Now you have access to the Tool Tray. From here, you are able to choose a pen and a colour and begin.

Pay attention to that opening instruction screen. This shows you how to undo mistakes. It’s a rather unique method of taking two  ngers and moving them anti-clockwise. It’s a very quick and intuitive method once you get used to it – although if you want to backtrack quite a few stages, you may find it a pain.

Although the actual app is free, if you want to go beyond the basic toolkit, you have to pay. It can start to get expensive, even though you are able to control what you do and don’t want from the package. Given you only have a palette of eight colours to start with, you may wish to splash your cash on tools like Sketch, Outline or Write, which come to £1.49/$1.99 each. Otherwise you will be limited. What we do like, however, is a try-before-you-buy option so that you can work out what you do and don’t want to add to your package. A basic package to start, but the customisation options mean this can turn into a nice paint app.

30/30
Organise your life
Price: Free, Developer: Binary Hammer LLC
Rating ★★★★★

There are plenty of apps in the store helping you to plan, make lists, and generally become more organised, but none function in quite the same way as 30/30. The app is a simple time planner, but a brilliant one. Add tasks, customise their icons, titles and colours, then start the timer. The circular display will start to tick around, and when you reach the end of one task, the app reminds you to switch to the next.

You control the app through a series of simple gestures that take a little time to learn, but once you’ve got them, the app’s functions are stunning. Pinch, swipe and tap to alter your tasks fast. The interface is clean and simple, and the app’s neat little touches, such as a work/break timer repeating until you stop it, show the love that’s been put in. 30/30 is the perfect app for organising yourself. Its brilliant options like iCloud syncing with other devices make it practically unmissable.

taken from :
iPad App Directory Volume 5
Imagine Publishing Ltd