After years of rumors and speculation, the iPad is finally in our excited little hands. Now developers are falling all over themselves to create iPad versions of their popular iPhone applications. They can either create an entirely new application exclusive to the iPad, or create a hybrid app that runs on both devices. The hybrid apps recognize the device it's running on and launches code specific to the device being used. Let's take a quick look at some of our favorite iPad apps and see how they differ from their iPhone cousins:

Pandora





Perhaps the best Internet radio app out there, the iPad version provides the same functionality with a more attractive interface. Accounts are easy to set up, streaming works well and the service is able to find similar music to create radio stations with relative ease. Not bad for a free app, even if it does feature the occasional ad unless you buy the Pro version…

Shazam for iPad





Shazam for iPad still works as beautifully as its iPhone counterpart and is as simple and functional as you could ask for. Simply hold the device up to a radio or speaker, let it listen to, match and identify the song and then offer a quick way to purchase the track through the iTunes Store or locate other works by the artist.

The conflict here may be the idea of portability on two levels. Shazam for the iPhone succeeds in that the iPhone is constantly tied into AT&T’s network and can readily go online and identify the track from the sample taken. This may be a harder go until the 3G iPad hits, thereby leaving the user to be inside and on a Wi-Fi network to identify a song. Form factor will also come into play even when the 3G iPad hits and it may be a clumsier task to hear a cool song on your car’s radio, whip out the much-larger-than-an-iPhone-sized iPad, take the sample and see what comes back.

IMDB Movies & TV





You’ve got to hand it to the Internet Movie Database: It’s useful, it contains just about every scrap of information you’d want to know about whatever you might happen to be watching. While the iPhone app makes great use of a simple interface, the iPad version seems to relish in the larger screen real estate, offering a list of popular categories to the left that proves useful but can’t be removed. Even with this fault, the app is still speedy and useful on a Wi-Fi network, though an option to use the entire screen for searches would be appreciated in a future update.

Now Playing





Now this is useful. Simply set up your location in Now Playing’s preferences, give it a movie or location to search for and it’s off to the races, displaying local theaters, upcoming and past offerings, trailers and ratings from the mighty rottentomatoes.com meta review site. Navigation proves to be easy and the iPad version of the app makes beautiful use of the added screen real estate, though one wishes they could have done more with the trailer feature (such as allowing for options to see trailers at larger screen sizes). Finally, a bug in the trailer feature occasionally showed trailers for the wrong movie (i.e., the original “Iron Man” trailer as opposed to the updated “Iron Man 2” trailers), which the developers might want to look into.

Instapaper Pro





One of the most useful apps for the Mac, the iPad version of the Instapaper Pro app allows for a clearer reading space that iPhone users dreamed of. Simply create an account on instapaper.com, log in and begin tagging articles you’d like to read but don’t have time to via the "Read More" button on your Mac’s web browser. The Instapaper Pro app for iPad can then log in and look over your “Read Later” list when you get a few free moments.

From here, the reading experience is clean, inviting and everything you could want when you find the time to sit down and put your feet up with your iPad. Unfortunately, the current version of Instapaper Pro doesn’t allow users to tag articles for later reading via the iPad’s version of Safari, thereby making tagging an article and reading it on your iPad a two machine process. This may change in the future, but until then, Instapaper Pro is its own useful, nifty creation.

Plants vs. Zombies HD





Some games were just meant to be used on a nice, large touchscreen. Enter PopCap’s Plants vs. Zombies HD, where you must use plants to help defend your home from assorted zombie invaders. The graphics are beautiful, the controls responsive, the sound as clear as you could ask for and the entire play experience feels completely easy and casual. Need to dig up a plant and replace it with another unit? A few quick taps and this is pulled off.

Controls on the iPad feel almost effortless and if any title benefited from the additional screen real estate as opposed to the tighter confines of the iPhone, this did. Perhaps one of the finest games available for any platform, try it now and see what you think.

Papers

If you ever needed to both hunt down academic papers as well as keep them in order, the cool cats at mekentosj.com have felt your pain and done something about it. Papers for the iPad functions as an academic journal location and sorting utility. Need to find a technical paper on nanotechnology and file it away? Simply use the search engine, and then use the “Flag” or “Import” options to tuck the article away into a custom library.

Yes, there are a zillion articles on the Internet about the thing you need to learn about, but at least you can file the useful ones away for later, or until after the caffeine takes effect.

Real Racing HD





Even if you’re not the biggest racing fan or can’t name any drivers that have ever competed in NASCAR, there’s a certain primal thrill in a good racing game. Firemint’s Real Racing HD is everything an iPad user could want in this kind of title. Complete with beautiful graphics, terrific sound, incredible responsiveness, superb controls and unlockable cars and levels, just enter a race, tilt the iPad as necessary and the game practically plays itself.

Firemint came out the gate in almost record time with the iPad version of the game and the results stand for themselves, even if you might look a bit silly holding what appears to be a large square plate with a racing game on it near your head. Still, the game revels in the large screen space, the end result is impressive and the people behind the code should be proud of their work.

WolframAlpha





Perhaps one of the oddest, yet coolest and most useful things on the Internet, the WolframAlpha search engine has striven to provide better scientific results than anything else on the market. Simply put, if you liked the iPhone version, you’ll like the iPad rendition, which is just as speedy, useful and perfect for bringing together very technical data results in an approachable order. Yes, the app may attempt to answer the question of “What is love?” by returning the nine mathematical formulas it thinks best answer this, but it runs well on the iPad and that’s a start.

PCalc RPN Calculator





Where Apple left an iPad version of its iPhone calculator app out of the initial software release, PCalc fills in and in an even better style than its iPhone counterpart. Simply open the app, sit back, enjoy the added screen real estate and begin inputting numbers as needed. The iPad’s large and responsive screen makes the act feel less constrained than doing this on an iPhone, sub-menus are easier to access and the app is a joy to use, even if you never approach everything it’s capable of. Score one for James Thompson, this math geek knows what he’s doing and it shows.