Metal Gear Solid Touch





Ok, the iPad was the device this game was meant to be played on. Metal Gear Solid Touch, which was released last year and drove die-hard Metal Gear fans half insane from trying to play their favorite game on the iPhone’s small screen, improves exponentially with the iPad’s larger screen space. Here, the graphics shine, the sound is impressive, the animations seem less jerky and there’s room to smoothly move the heads-up display to the next target, smoothly pinching the screen to zoom in and out with the gun sight as necessary. Accept no substitutes, this is how it was meant to be.

Implode! XL





You spent part of your childhood building cities out of wooden blocks and that was fun. Arguably the better part was knocking them down, as seen in Implode! XL for the iPhone and iPad, where you must demolish a series of buildings using only a limited number of explosive devices. And as fun as this is on the iPhone, it’s only better on the iPad, which offers a large, responsive screen, amazing sound and just the sheer joy of seeing your plan work in front of you. It’s good on the iPhone, awesome on the iPad and annoyingly hard to stop playing. Snag it. Now.

iSSH – SSH / VNC Console





It’s not the prettiest way to go about things, but sometimes you just need an SSH or VNC program. Fortunately, iSSH for the iPhone and iPad is there to help, complete with the full emulator goodness you need from this kind of program. It works on the iPhone and becomes that much better on an iPad, the larger screen helping the situation while the improved typing area makes entering commands significantly easier. Fire up the app, open a configuration, type comfortably and you’re where you need to be.  

Air Hockey





It’s simple, it’s fun, and man does it get a boost from the iPad. Acceleroto’s Air Hockey lets you play a computer or human opponent in classic arcade style air hockey with multiple difficulty settings and up to two pucks in play at the same time. Where the iPhone’s touchscreen feels compressed, the iPad version gives you more room and greater precision with movements and literal elbow room. Not a bad thing for a video game.

Google Mobile App





It’s not perfect, but it’s getting there, especially on the iPad. Google Mobile App brings together the entire collection of Google applications (Mail, Talk, Buzz, Reader, YouTube, Earth, etc.) and delivers them in one program. When an application isn’t available in a native iPad format, Google Mobile will launch the emulated iPhone version, which remains useful though not as pretty.

Even with this shortcoming and a bug that seems to prevent the app from rotating with the iPad, you appreciate the added space the iPad provides as well as the additional room to type and navigate. For their next trick, let’s see iPad native versions of the apps, which can’t be that far behind.

Wikipanion for iPad





It’s been debated as to whether Wikipedia actually knows everything, but it’s a good place to start. Wikipanion was a great app for the iPhone and only gets better on the iPad, the additional screen space lending room for a beautiful contents menu in a left hand column while the main article flows in the right hand column. Easily accessible history menus make past searches easy to dig up and this is Wikipedia in its best possible form, plain and simple.