I recently found the book "Best iPad Apps, The Guide for Discriminating Downloads" offers an interesting paradox -- a print boot about digital apps? When I first started looking through the book I was rather cynical but by the end found it to be useful. I consider myself a pretty tech-friendly, cosmopolitan iPad user and I found a lot of apps to try out that I'd never heard of before.
I'm especially sure that someone like my mom, who isn't an iPad or tech junkie, would benefit from this book substantially. I bought her an iPad for her birthday last summer and while she enjoys the device, she hasn't embraced digging through the app store to find new apps. In fact, I don't think she's installed an app on her own, so whenever I come home I try and ask her what she'd like to have on the iPad and I search out tools, games and other apps for her to use and install them.
As a personal user and a publisher, I know both Apple and Google have massive challenges trying to give their uses better tools for finding mobile apps. Unless you're in that top 10 of a category, finding your app can be challenging. Once you're in that top 10, you're golden because people don't dig deep looking for more apps. This book offers a simple, 'analog' solution to this 'digital' problem.
As a journalist, the sections on creative apps and work apps are especially helpful and there's a lot of opportunity for using these apps for our jobs. I've bookmarked a few apps that we'll be reviewing in more detail through the mindset of a journalist this Spring in the Mobile Journalism Tools guide.
Each two-page summary features a brief review of the app, info about the version reviewed, price, and a full-color screen shot or two. The reviews are light and talk a lot about simple functionality, the user experience and things to look out for (like those in the "Chubby Fingers club," which Myers refers to regularly) -- this is not the book for you if you want hardcore tech specs and code info. In each category the best apps are presented along with a couple honorable mentions.
The book is broken down into topic areas: At Home, At Work, At Leisure, At Play, Creative Corner, Out and About and Health with specific categories of app picks ranging from "Best App for Reading Shakespeare" to "Best App for Tracking Baby's Stats." So it does get pretty granular with the categories and the variety is good in the 230 pages of this book.
The biggest challenge I think for this book is going to be keeping up to date with the rapidly iterating iPad development world. Apps are regularly updated with new features and fixes, so the shelf-life of this book is probably going to be relatively limited as that evolution takes place much quicker in the digital world, than in the analog print book publishing world. And that's where we have another interesting paradox with this analog solution to the iPad app store's digital problem.
But for the time being, this is a valuable, colorful and easy to read resource for finding new app experiences, especially for those non-tech savvy iPad users.
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Will Sullivan is a 2010-2011 Reynolds Journalism Fellow studying mobile & tablet development. He blogs on the RJI Mobile Blog and Journerdism.com. He can be reached at will @ Journerdism.com, on Twitter @Journerdism or on Facebook.
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