iPad starter kit: 100 essential apps

If you are one of the many who unwrapped an iPad this Christmas then you'll need some apps to get the most out of it. Here's our list of 100 to get you started, split across categories from Culture to Sport and News to Food and Drink. There are apps to suit every budget and taste. One thing's for sure: even the biggest iPad won't be able to hold all of these.

Culture
The Sonnets (£9.99)
Like the Solar System and the Waste Land apps before it, The Sonnets is dazzling in scale and ambition; containing the full text of all 154 of Shakespeare’s sonnets, each one is performed by luminaries such as Sir Patrick Stewart, Stephen Fry, Fiona Shaw and Dominic West. There are Arden notes for the scholarly, a facsimile of the original 1609 quarto for the purist, and also poet Don Paterson’s alternative and charming commentary. This is Shakespeare reinvented for the modern age and the sign of literature apps to come.

Timeline World War 2 with Dan Snow (£9.99)
Historian Dan Snow’s app is an in-depth and total look at World War II. Over 2,000 events are easy accessed through the interactive timeline through archive footage (from app partner Pathe), written reports or Snow’s audio commentary. You’ll lose hours browsing the map of Europe, which illustrates invasions, occupations, allegiances and country boundary changes. Entertaining, educative and impressive.

London Unfurled (£7.99)
A leisurely swipe is all it takes to cruise through London with this app, which turns Matteo Pericoli’s two 37 foot long pen-and-ink drawings of the north and south banks of the Thames into an iPad journey. Tap on the landmark to learn more about it and read introductions from Iain Sinclair and Will Self for North and South London respectively.

Telegraph Pictures for iPad, (free)
The clarity of the iPad display is shown off by this simple app that gathers up to twelve extraordinary pictures from that day’s news stories. In case you miss a day, there’s a 14 day archive.

TuneIn Radio, (free)
This slick app reunites radio and the Internet. With beautiful graphics and an easy interface, it makes listening to radio on your phone lovely on the eyes and ears.

Design Museum for iPad, (free)
Learn the stories behind the most influential items in our lives, as chosen by the Design Museum. A good encyclopaedic resource.

The Poetry App (free)
Here are the works of sixteen great poets, including TS Eliot, Kipling, Yeats and Milton, read by 30 actors including Edward Fox, Simon Callow, Ian McDiarmid and Joanna David. There’s even a recording by the late playwright, Harold Pinter. Writer and theatre producer Josephine Hart provides introductions and essays for the poems. There’s also additional hidden material, including interviews with Jeremy Irons and readings by Bob Geldof. You can even write your own poems and record narration. Separate versions are available for iPhone and iPad.

Solar Walk Solar 3D System Model (69p)
This 3D model of the Solar System and the Milky Way is beautiful and fascinating. You can zoom in and out and choose a time and date to see what it looked like then. Pluto, no longer a planet but remains thanks to a popular vote. Which is nice.

Kings and Queens by David Starkey (£1.99)
Historian David Starkey explores the history of British monarchy with text enhanced by family trees, timelines maps and so on. Plus video of Starkey himself. Note that some video is downloaded, some must be streamed.

British Library: Treasures HD (£3.99)
A hundred British Library items including a handwritten draft by Charles Dickens and a recording of suffragette Christabel Pankhurst. Images are supplemented by sound recordings and video. A separate iPhone app is also available.

Entertainment
Spotify for iPad, (subs package required)
Sporting one of the best user interfaces we have seen in an app, Spotify for iPad is a must have for music fans. For £9.99 a month you get access to unlimited tracks on both desktop and mobile, most of which can be streamed at CD quality.

Sky Go, Free (subs package required)
Designed to let you take your Sky subscription with you, Sky Go is the best entertainment app available right now. The app features access to both live Sky TV and Sky’s selection of Anytime+ movie and TV show content. Sky Pay Monthly customers can use Sky Go to watch their packages on up to two different devices. With a clean UI, easy operation and decent video playback, there is more entertainment on offer here than anywhere else.

Netflix, (subs package required)
Think of Netflix as being like the Spotify of movies. Costing just £5.99 per month, you get all-you-can-eat entertainment from an ever increasing library of films. Sure the content might not be the best right now, but if value is your game, you can’t go wrong with Netflix.

BBC iPlayer, (free)
Not only can you now watch iPlayer content over 3G, a major update to the iPlayer app has brought with it the ability to download and store television shows to watch later on. No more being left without something to watch once you lose network connection, as you can download your favourite program and watch it later.

Paper, (free)
Undoubtedly one of the prettiest applications on the iPad, Paper is a simple and effortless way to create drawings using your tablet. If you are a lucky new iPad owner, paper is the way to show it off.

Pinterest, (free)
Pinterest has become somewhat of a talking point among social media fans. Dive in and get sharing your discoveries using this simple app.

GarageBand, (£2.99)
The de facto app on Macs for producing home made music, Apple’s Garageband allows you to record music live using both your iPhone and iPad at the same time.

Aweditorium, (free)
Pick a musician, take all their video, photos, songs and info and group it into one beautiful experience on the iPad. This is Aweditorium

Vimeo, (free)
Vimeo is like the Flickr of video, offering up a huge community of inspiring and high quality video content. Five minutes of exploring the app and you will no doubt stumble across something that impresses. Alternatively use it as a backup of your own video collection, recording straight from iPhone or iPad to the app.

Figure, (69p)
Figure is a totally new way of making music. The app lets you build up layers of drums, rythm and synth by using your fingers to slide various menus and dials.

Food and Drink
Great British Chefs Summertime HD, (£1.99)
Beware, this app will make you hungry. Browse 105 summery recipes from well-loved British chefs such as Marcus Wareing and Richard Corrigan, watch videos to help with tricky techniques and then buy ingredients straight from Ocado. Watch out for their Feastive iPad app - updated with wintry dishes such as Wareing’s venison with chocolate.

Forkly, (free)
Cross Facebook with a foodie Instagram and you have Forkly, the social app for food-lovers. Post photos of what you’re eating where with a rating and become ‘tastemaker’ the more you do so. More of a hit in the US, it has yet to have made a huge impression in the UK.

Goodtoknow What’s for Dinner, (free)
Distilled from the recipe section from the hugely popular website, this app is a bank of 600 easy-dinner recipes such as glazed sea bass or courgette and pea frittata. Also available as a paid app is ‘Cake Corner’, for those wanting dessert.

Ocado 2012, (free)
Grocery shopping becomes a virtual ‘Supermarket Sweep’ affair with the latest Ocado app for iPad; the new trolley view means you can always see what you’ve put in while you’re browsing.

My recipe book, (£1.49)
Cooking inspiration often comes from a variety of sources and this digital scrapbook collects and organises recipes, whether from a site, your own creations or even magazine tears, and includes useful tools such as temperature and weight converters.

Ottolenghi, (£4.99)
This app features 50 recipes from the London-based chef and includes new recipes and favourites from his cookbooks ‘Plenty’ and ‘Ottolenghi: the cookbook’ such as quail stuffed with pork, pine nuts and herbs and chermoula-marinated sea bass.

Platter (free)
Food-bloggers’ favourite Platter lets you snap and proudly share home-cooked creations. Most useful is the tagging feature so that searching by ingredient brings up a ream of dishes and dinner ideas from those you follow. The most popular dishes appear on Platter’s top 100, such as the adventurous rooster scratchings.

Speakeasy Cocktails (£6.99)
This emporium of cocktail recipes and techniques is the essential companion for any budding mixologist. Watch how to shake, strain and swizzle through video tutorials from Joseph Schwartz and Jim Meehan, bartenders from cult New York speakeasies PDT and Little Bar, or dip in to read how to perfect your negroni. Though encyclopedic, the app is accessibly broken down by cocktail base such as gin and vodka, and will inform on the best brands and which cocktails to make. A joy.

Wine Search (£1.49)
Use this app to help find where to buy wine you’ve previously enjoyed, and what the retail price is. Though the price is not always accurate, it’s a useful tool when trying to find an elusive wine, or avoiding bottles based on its mark-up.

GDA Calculator, (69p)
This is the app for the nutritionally-aware. Plug in the values of sugars, fat, saturates and salt per 100g of any food to see whether you’re over or under your Guideline Daily Allowance according to your sex and age. It’s slightly fiddly, but is a simply effective tool.

Games
Infinity Blade, (69p)
Lavishly conceived and gloriously detailed, Chair Entertainment’s rapier-sharp role-playing game was one of the first mega budget smartphone titles released, and it remains one of surprisingly few offerings from a major games studio to really engage with designing for a touchscreen device. Swing your sword, defeat monsters and explore a wonderfully evocative ruined fantasyland: this is as clever as it is pretty, and its cyclical structure hides a wealth of depth and replayability.

Groove Coaster, (£1.99)
Part beat-matching puzzle game, part oddball musical instrument, this is a shockingly compulsive app with a wonderfully luminous art style.

Drop7 Free, (free)
Drop7 isn’t just the best game on any smartphone, it’s also one of the greatest puzzlers ever made, with a simple rule-set that leads to some devilishly warrennous depths. A sugary blend of Sudoku and Tetris, this rather homely block-dropper will take over your spare time if you let it, resulting in missed appointments, broken friendships, and complex dreams filled with high score tables and numbered disks. Download it only if you’re feeling brave.

Quarrel, (free)
Denki’s hectic word game mixes Scrabble and Risk to infuriatingly clever effect. Expand across a range of chunky and colourful playing fields, taking out your rivals by solving simple anagrams. The AI’s brilliant, the sound effects are hilarious, and the battles can be wonderfully unpredictable. The whole thing feels disarmingly educational, too.

Temple Run, (free)
Imangi Studios hit on a smart idea with Temple Run: a game that focuses in on that bit in every Indiana Jones film when the hero’s running away from a collapsing archaeological site being pursued by something unspeakable. A 3D twist on the voguish autorunner, genre this is thrillingly pulpy stuff.

Osmos, (£1.99)
A simple physics-based puzzler with a suite of devious levels, Osmos is elevated to great heights by its Hubble telescope-influenced art style.

Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP, (£2.99)
Beneath the cloyingly hipsterish presentation lurks an adventure game of quiet elegance: Superbrothers isn’t for everyone, but it might be for you.

Spelltower, (£1.49)
Anagrams get seriously tactical in this claustrophobic puzzle game in which you frantically make words as your stack of lettered tiles moves closer and closer to the ceiling of the playing area. Anagrams get seriously stylish, too, which a minimalist art design that ensures the screen’s always clear and readable.

Super Hexagon, (69p)
Designer Terry Cavanagh’s latest arcade master class looks like Op Art and plays like a tumble down Alice’s rabbit hole. Dodge to the left and right as quickly as you can to avoid being trapped within this frightening geometrical maze: this is tough as they come, and a modern classic in ever way.

Angry Birds, (69p)
Now that it’s slapped across everything from smartphone cases to childrens’ pyjamas, it’s hard to remember that Angry Birds only became a phenomenon because it’s a truly brilliant game. A physics toy as much as an arcade puzzler, Rovio’s catapult-based challenges encourage you to lose yourself in the cartoon action.

Kids
Flying Books of Morris Lessmore, (£2.99)
The story of a love of books told through beautiful images and a deep, soothing voice in which the interactive elements feel like part of the story rather than tacked-on rewards for stabbing repeatedly at the screen, hoping for a reaction. Genuinely touching and well told, this is a book app you can really enjoy sharing.

Happy Babies: Ladybird Baby Touch, (£1.49)
A curiously narcoleptic sounding narrator and endlessly looping music might grate slightly on any nearby adults, but babies and young toddlers are irresistibly drawn to this colourful parade of animals and their babies. ‘Hello Mr Seahorse. Where are your babies? Hello baby seahorses,’ will stick in your mind for years.

Around the Clock, (£1.99)
Twenty-four mini games accessed through a clock face, making learning to tell the time a slightly more enjoyable proposition. Usefully for very young children who haven’t yet got the hang of reading the games have no text and are simple and fun to play.

Another Monster at the End of this Book, (£2.99)
It’s difficult not to love Sesame Street, and despite a rather counterintuitive navigation system this book app is as much fun as the television programmes. Elmo and Grover go on an adventure, building up to the last page which might or might not have a monster waiting on it. It sounds like fun already.

DK The Human Body, (£2.49)
A highly detailed and exquisitely presented atlas of the human body from Dorling Kindersley, makers of several excellent reference book apps as well as printed editions. This is one for older children but is a fantastic resource for anyone with an interest in biology.

The Going To Bed Book by Sandra Boynton, (£1.49)
The printed Going to Bed Book has eased bedtimes in houses everywhere. The idea of adding music, limited interactivity and a glowing screen might seem antithetical to a slow drift into peaceful sleep but it is still surprisingly effective. Relaxed, happy and soothing.

LEGO Minifigure Ultimate Stickers, (£1.49)
Stickers on the iPad might seem strange, let alone Lego, but the two come together brilliantly in this clever app from Dorling Kindersley. The main objective is to match the sticker with its silhouette. Doing so will unlock new scenes and stickers that children can use to create their own scenes. Young children will soon get stuck in.

Pocket Universe, (£1.99)
Crisp, clear nights looking up at the stars can be a magical time with a child, spoiled only by parental umming and aahing over what that star is called, whether that bright bit is the Milky Way or just a cloud, or where Pegasus is. Make up for the shortcomings in your astronomical knowledge with this well-labelled and intuitive app. Hold your phone up to the sky and you’ll be Professor Brian Cox for a few wonderful moments.

Peppa Pig Stars, (£2.49)
Peppa and her family are as diverting as ever, and this story of a trip to Grandpa and Granny Pig’s house to look through a telescope is charming and educational, but children used to cartoons will wonder why their favourites are standing around blinking quite so much when they normally move. There’s also an awful lot of burping which can be annoying after a while.

The Wrong Book, (£2.49)
Peanut-strewing elephants, farting monsters, troublesome pirates, rats and puppets crowd onto the pages of this hilarious book app, getting in the way of little Nicholas Ickle telling his story. The narration is very good but you can replace it with your own voice if you choose.

Sport
Live Score Addicts (free)
Some might find this app a bit stat heavy, but for the true football fan there can be no other. Acting like a constant stream of results, scores and other team info, Live Score Addicts will most definitely keep you posted. The Facebook and Twitter sharing is a nice touch as well.

Sky Sports for iPad (£4.99 per month, free to Sky customers)
Like Sky Go, Sky Sports for iPad comes as part of your Sky subscription, although you can purchase a separate membership at £4.99 per month. For that you get access to an unlimited amount of live video, photos and stories. The app is beautifully laid out and boasts some innovative features like an interactive F1 race control.

Premier League 20 Seasons (£1.99)
Fancy seeing every single classic football moment from the last 20 seasons of the Premier League? This app does exactly that. Throw in some great football quizzes and you have a great time waster app.

Everyday Golf Coach (£3.99)
Packed with tips videos and clever golfing tricks, this is a handy app to carry with you while out on the fairway. All the tips you would need for every aspect of your game and a clever swing analyser to boot.

CoachNote (£1.49)
For those who fancy themselves as a bit of an amateur football coach, this app lets you draw and design plays on your iPhone or iPad screen.

F1 2012 Timing App CP (£20)
It’s not cheap but for the true Formula One fan there can be no other. Live timing and track positioning on the fly is certainly good, better though is the app’s presentation. It also makes a great compliment to watching the race on TV.

Football Manager Handheld 2013 (£6.99)
Football Manager isn’t just the best sports app on the iPhone and iPad, it’s one of the best apps there is. Guilty of many an extreme app addiction, think of it like a stripped down version of the PC game. The app comes with everything up to date; leagues, players and all the rest. Apple TV mirroring also lets you play Football Manager Handheld on your television, letting you take your team onto the big screen

NBA Jam (69p)
One of the all time great sports games re-designed for the iPhone and iPad. Still plays as good as the first time round, with all the classic moves there. Addictive basketball based fun.

Stick Tennis (free)
An iPhone classic, stick tennis is one of the most addictive apps on the App Store. Packed full of game modes and professional players, it is fun as it is authentic.

Flick Kick Football (£1.49)
A bit of an iPhone classic, simple as it is addictive. Use your finger to swipe a ball into a goal across varying degrees of difficulty.

Travel
Triposo, (free)
Though there are travel-guide apps from existing publications (such as Wallpaper* City Guides and Conde Nast Traveler), none are so optimised for mobile as Triposo. International information can often be outdated, but this app from two ‘ex-Googlers’ who claim to ‘have an algorithmic approach to travel’ has access to information on 8,000 destinations using sources from wikitravel and openstreetmap, and is remarkably accurate. An internet connection is not needed to access the guide and useful features include a currency converter, phrasebook and active suggestions for exploration dependent on the day, weather and opening hours.

TripIt, (free)
Whether your journey is for a few days or several months, keeping track of trip details is a universal pain. TripIt offers an easy solution, saving your itineraries in a simple, scannable format on your smartphone. Simply email your flight, hotel, or car rental confirmations to TripIt and the app will organise everything for you. Say goodbye to the tattered folder and endless paper jumbled at the bottom of your bag.

Urbanspoon, (free)
Urbanspoon scans your location and helps you find the closest restaurants, bars and more. You can search by type, price and rating. Good for anyone looking to try something new on the fly. Urbanspoon is fantastic for London but contains data on several other cities as well.

XE Currency, (free)
XE Currency is the ultimate financial companion for world travellers. It gets live currency data and includes a calculator so you know exactly how much that 20 reais taxi journey is costing you or what kind of deal you're getting at the bank. Saves data for offline use as well.

Spanish Dictionary Pro Free, (free)
You may find you know the basic words of a language, but what about all the unfamiliar vocabulary? This app lets you search by English as well as Spanish words. The developers, iThinkDiff, have make similar dictionary apps in several other languages as well.

HotelTonight, (free)
Every day at noon, three deals from trendy hotels are released in this same-day booking app. It only takes three taps to book, and discounts can range up to 70 per cent off. The deals are available US, Canada and only London in the UK, but there are plans to expand to more British cities.

Jetsetter Hotel and Travel deals, (free)
Members’ only website Jetsetter is known for their luxury flash sales and their slick app only precipitates more impulse travel-buying. Search by location, or by ‘collection’ - trips curated by their team - with cheeky titles such as ‘three day escape plan’ or ‘where the fashionistas sleep’. Every trip and hotel has a considered review from the prolific Jetsetter team.

Outdoors GPS Great Britain with National Parks OS Maps, (£4.99)
With complete OS mapping combined with GPS in your mobile device, this app is the locational companion for the rambler or road-tripper. The road atlas and National Parks maps come with the app, and you can buy the full range of OS maps and recommended walks. Be warned - they are pricey and will take up lots of memory.

The Cartographer, (£2.49)
Plan your trip with vintage-style maps that are designed to inspire the intrepid traveller. Using Google’s mymaps, outline the route before downloading the maps to your device which can be accessed through the app.

Google translate (free)
This app translates between 64 languages, and can deliver audio translations for certain one. It doesn’t always get the translation right, but is probably the most comprehensive translation app out there.

News
Telegraph (requires subscription)
The Telegraph’s iPad app provides the best news coverage available and combines it with the best design in the business. Prepared in tandem with the newspaper, it aggregates the best parts of the printed product and provides new ways of viewing pictures and stories. As with many other publications, however, it’s in how the iPad allows you to view multimedia content such as slideshows and graphics, the app really excels. Updated daily, and more often for special events, the app provides the perfect bridge between the immediacy of online news and the unique feel of a quality newspaper.

Flipboard (free)
The world’s largest news aggregation app isn’t a success because it introduces the serendipity of newspapers and magazines with a kind of design that also replicates their luxury. So all you need to do is choose the topics or publications that you’re interested in and the app does the rest. Finally, too, Flipboard is also available for Android users – on the larger screens of Android phones its beauty really shines through, and on tablets it’s almost as good as reading a full-size magazine.

BBC News, (free)
The BBC News app doesn’t have the full depth of the BBC website, but it more than makes up for that with its improved design. You can flick through leading stories or drill down further into topics, and pleasingly the app places a greater degree of emphasis on the pictures.

Pulse News, (free)
One of the original apps that Google first used to show off Android tablets when they launched around three years ago, Pulse news is a simple way of gathering together a host of sources and making them all available in a similar, friendly format.

Instapaper (£2.49)
This excellent app provides a simple but brilliant service – it lets you save web pages for reading later, making them ideal for the tube, a flight or simply keeping your own digital scrapbook. Other similar services are available, sometimes built in, but Instapaper retains a loyal following.

Zinio, (free)
Zinio calls itself the world’s largest newsstand, providing access to a seemingly infinite number of magazines, both famous and lesser known. The latest version offers a combination of free content and a huge range of titles to buy, either on a one-off basis or as a subscriber.

Reeder, (£1.99)
Although it’s a basic reader for RSS news feeds, Reeder is arguably the best in its class, and the top-grossing on Apple’s App Store. It’s simple yet powerful.

Downcast, (£1.49)
Routinely called the best podcast manager and player for iPhone, Downcast has been downloaded by millions of people around the world. It now offers iCloud syncing, too.

The Daily Mash, (prices vary)
Top class satire from Britain’s biggest website. As the team says: “Shiny thing make it all better!” The unique combination of wit and great headline writing is worth the price alone.

Vodio (free)
This clever app essentially aggregates all your sources of video into one place and then allows you to subscribe and watch them from on single place. It’s a real time-saver.

Reference
Leonardo Da Vinci Anatomy (£9.99)
The iPad and iPhone have lots of informative apps presented in dramatic ways, like Leonardo Da Vinci Anatomy. This uses previously lost Da Vinci drawings to show parts of the body, switching at a touch from skeleton to blood vessels to a skin-clad body. The level of detail is intense, down to da Vinci’s written notes which you see in his original backward-style script and in translated form. You can even enhance faded parts of drawings by turning on an ultra violet light effect.

Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (£19.99)
Need to check the pronunciation of a tricky word? Type it in and this dictionary pronounces it with real voice recordings – not text to speech. It’ll say it in British English or North American (try vase, for instance), it has a thesaurus built in and there are 184,500 words and phrases here. It remembers the last 100 words you checked out. There’s help with finding words you’ve misspelt and more. Accessible enough for learning English, but advanced enough for any user.

iBird UK and Ireland Guide to Birds (£6.99)
This is an extensive app – it’s 283MB in size – and has a comprehensive range of birds in the UK. A handy companion to the iBird Pro app which covers birds in the States. It’s attractive and detailed, and lets you search by state, habitat and more. There are lots of photos and bird calls to play.

Knots 3D (free)
Want to see how to tie a lanyard hitch, an alpine butterfly or a cat’s paw? They’re among the 80 knots which tie themselves before your eyes. If it’s too fast you can slow it down. You can spin the knot to see it from all sides even while it’s being tied.

Essay Writing Guide (£1.99)
This simple app consists of three wheels – style, content and organisation. Tap one of the sections in each circle and you’ll find extensive descriptions of mechanics, tone, figures of speech and so on. Not cheap, but helpful to visualise the elements you should be thinking of as you write.

Quotebook A Notebook for Quotes (£1.99)
Come across a quote you like and save it in this blank notebook. The app makes it easy for you to organise them and then share them by email, iMessage, Twitter, Facebook and so on. Most importantly, it’s easy to search the quotes you have.

Mars Globe HD (69p)
This is a virtual guide to the red planet. Spin the planet with one finger and it’ll show Mars as it is illuminated at that exact moment, or change the displayed time to see more. A free version is also available.

Chess Openings Explorer (free)
Check through 100,000 chess opening positions (you don’t have to do them all at one sitting). Each one shows the most popular variations and more. A great app for students of chess.

Chambers Deluxe Dictionary and Thesaurus (£6.99)
This dictionary combines a wide-ranging lexicon with brief, accessible definitions. Filters make it easier to find words you can’t quite spell and there are even extra treats like games of Hangman and Word Scramble. It’s only let down by a tab that saves your personal choices in a section it calls “Favorites” – though that’s down to Apple, not Chambers.

Manuals All in One (69p)
Now, where did I put the instruction book? When you need to check where that special button is on the washing machine is hiding, this app can help. It’s biased towards American gadgets and appliances, but there are lots to choose from. You need an internet connection to find the manual but can then save it to your iDevice.

Finance
MoneyWiz (£2.99)
Keeping track of your money is important, you know, so make things easier with an app like MoneyWiz. It can help you plan for bills on an attractive calendar, check how your budget is doing and provide full screen reports of how you’re doing. It saves the data to multiple devices so you’re always up to date. And it makes it easy to import bank statements, and set up alerts for when you’re running short of money. It can’t actually earn the money for you, but that’s its biggest drawback.

HSBC Fast Balance (free)
Banks need to ensure a careful balance of accessibility and security, especially when it comes to banking online. HSBC users can check their balance easily with this app, see the most recent transactions in a mini statement and top up your mobile. But it’s secure because all payments and so on are excluded. Neat and easy to use.

TimeTracker Time Sheet (£1.99)
Make sure you know how long you spend on a job and use this app to help you stay on top of it all. It helps you track whether bills are submitted or paid and has lots of customisation possibilities. There are back-up features so you won’t lose valuable data and you can buy an optional add-on for access to your Dropbox account from the app.

Meter Readings (69p)
Keep track of utilities bills and even check your usage against energy suppliers in your area. Comes with three meters but if you want more, £1.49 makes you a power user (no pun intended, I suspect). Only let down by a tutorial which doesn’t allow you to go back a step and is hard to find.

Debt Manager (69p)
Instead of tracking your money, though it does that too, this app uses something called the Debt Snowball method (which sounds like fun but actually works, too, apparently). It includes calculators for monthly payments, extra payments and so on. You can even check out what would happen if interest rates changed, say.

StockWatch Portfolio Tracking (£1.49)
Keep track of your investments and shares easily with this simple and intuitive app. The number of stocks, funds and futures you can track is unlimited, and prices, gains, costs and values are updated all the time.

VAT Toolbox (free)
It’s easy to work out how much of a particular figure is VAT and it includes the relevant rates for numerous European countries. It even includes Sales Tax rates for American states.

iPin (£1.99)
Now, which PIN did you use on this card? Life’s complicated enough. With iPin you can store PIN codes and passwords. Of course, they’re protected by a clever sensor system – you just have to remember your login pattern. A free version is also available with fewer features.

Pocket Expense (£2.99)
Another powerful personal finance app, this one is good for tracking multiple accounts, supports more than one budget and makes it easy to transfer money between them. Helps to make sure you pay bills on time.

Wonga (free)
The cash advance company has this highly accessible and simple-to-use app. A straightforward slider mechanism lets you see how much it will cost to borrow each amount for how long. You can apply on the app and receive an instant decision.

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