10 Best Apps For The HP TouchPad - PC Magazine

The highly anticipated HP TouchPad tablet will be released with more than 300 apps, according to the company. We counted just 256 on our review device the day before the launch, and the TouchPad can also run about 70 percent of the more than 8,000 apps designed for HP's WebOS phones. But they run in a little phone-sized box on the tablet's 9.7-inch screen.

HP has done a good job nurturing developers, but it's an uphill battle as this is the first WebOS tablet, and WebOS phones have never been able to reach critical mass in the market. Of the TouchPad's apps, many are games and productivity apps, but you'll find some entries in all of the usual-suspect categories. Some big names are represented, but not others: Kindle, Facebook, and Angry Birds are all on board. Slacker Radio, Autodesk Sketchpad, Fruit Ninja, and other popular iPad apps haven't made it over yet. On the other hand, the iPad doesn't have a dedicated Facebook app yet, while the TouchPad does.

Discovering TouchPad apps is much simpler than it is on Android devices, although it's not quite as foolproof as on the iPad, but with more than 90,000 iPad-specific apps, it has to be easy or you'd never find anything. Peering through the HP App Catalog, just look for the little gray words "for TouchPad" below titles; those apps show up at the top of each category list on the TouchPad. That's superior to Google's frustrating, undifferentiated jumble, but it would be nice to be able to hide the not-for-TouchPad apps entirely.

The TouchPad's app catalog comes with one major unique feature: Pivot, an "app discovery magazine" with articles by professional journalists seeking out interesting apps that may not appear on top or new lists. Pivot wasn't yet live on our review device, but we're intrigued by the concept of an easy way to discover more apps than may be obvious.

The relatively thin app catalog gives some developers room to stand out. Typewriter, for instance, is a good-looking and ingenious text-entry app that uses the simple formatting language, Markdown. Spaz, a popular Twitter app on the Palm Pre, takes on Tweetdeck's columnar approach on the TouchPad.

Many apps in HP's catalog—especially the games—are paid, and prices are similar to what you'll pay for similar iPad apps. This bodes well for developers. Every TouchPad must be associated with a Palm Profile, and setting up your profile includes adding a credit card. After that, it's just two clicks to buy apps—quick and seamless. Developers get paid via PayPal, which works to deliver money in about 100 countries.

It's still early, but here are our picks for the best TouchPad apps so far.