ThePinball

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  • Pinball HD for the iPad: It doesn't get much better than this

    by 
    David Winograd
    David Winograd
    04.30.2010

    Gameprom has taken their three popular iPhone/iPod touch pinball games, The Deep, Jungle Style Pinball and Wild West Pinball (US$.99 each), and rolled them into one amazing iPad app: Pinball HD selling at $2.99. The iPad app is much more than just a simple port with better graphics, it adds so many features and so much additional value over the iPhone apps that I consider the price to be a huge bargain. I haven't played every pinball game out for the iPad at this point, but with some minor technical quibbles, I really can't see pinball on the iPad getting much better than this. At least not for now.

  • iPad apps: defining experiences from the first wave

    by 
    Sean Hollister
    Sean Hollister
    04.02.2010

    There are now over 1,348 approved apps for the iPad. That's on top of the 150,000 iPad-compatible iPhone programs already available in the App Store. When Apple's tablet PC launches, just hours from now, it will have a software library greater than that of any handheld in history -- not counting the occasional UMPC. That said, the vast majority of even those 1,348 iPad apps are not original. They were designed for the iPhone, a device with a comparatively pokey processor and a tiny screen, and most have just been tweaked slightly, upped in price and given an "HD" suffix -- as if that somehow justified the increased cost. Besides, we've seen the amazing potential programs have on iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile and webOS when given access to a touchscreen, always-on data connection, GPS, cloud storage and WiFi -- but where are the apps that truly define iPad? What will take advantage of its extra headroom, new UI paradigms and multitouch real estate? Caught between netbook and smartphone, what does the iPad do that the iPhone cannot? After spending hours digging through the web and new iPad section of the App Store, we believe we have a number of reasonably compelling answers. Update: Now includes Wormhole Remote, TweetDeck, SkyGrid, Touchgrind HD, GoToMeeting, SplitBrowser, iDisplay, Geometry Wars and Drawing Pad.