I am so stoked to get my first iPad on Friday. Here at the office FedEx and UPS both deliver before 9am.
What apps should I buy? What are essential and used daily by most folks?
I don't know what your interests are, but if you like reading news, by far the best app is Zite. It lets you build custom feeds based off interest, but it isn't locked down to exact sites like RSS readers (a good RSS app is should be on there though!), so it adds a pleasant serendipity to the content you are served. It's been spot on for me, and has quickly become my favorite way to browse. It's free.
Dropbox is kind of a no-brainer. Free additional cloud storage that a ton of apps are tying into via their API. This is probably the #1 app and first thing you should download on your iPad & desktop/laptop if you have not yet. Did I mention free?
iPhoto which the just released. I've already downloaded and played around with it on my iPhone 4. It puts every other photo editing app to terrible shame. Terrible terrible shameful shame. It's that good. Well worth the 5 bucks.
Photosynth. Free panaoramic app developed by Microsoft. Let's you take a series of pictures and it automatically stiches them together. I don't know if you're going to hold your iPad up and take pictures with it instead of your phone, but if you do, this is a nice free app that fills a role.
TuneIn Radio. Nice free internet radio app that lets you search by station or category. Thousands upon thousands of stations, and a section for podcasts as well. I like it for listening to my local stations and tech podcasts.
Yelp. I think this needs no introduction.
Google Earth. The ultimate Map-lapedia. This application shine on an iPad more than any other platform in existence. So good and free.
Evernote. A cross-platform cloud based productivity tool. I use this for work a TON. You may not need it (I don't know your use-case), but it does what it does better than any of it's competitors. Free.
Do you have a cable subscription? Then check out the CNN app. It let's you enter in your subscriber info to gain the ability to live-stream CNN on your iPad. Don't get me started on our completely ineffectual bought and paid for corporate media here in the states, but in the event of some actual newsworthy live, breaking event, it's nice to have the option to watch it live on CNN on your device. I guess. Sort of. Ugh. At least it's not Fox or MSNBC, right?
Imgur. Let's you create a quick link that you can paste to share any image-media on your iPad. Very useful if you like to post in forums. Otherwise, meh.
Those are some of the apps I really like. By no means an exhaustive lists obv.