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The HP TouchPad may have been discontinued, but the thousands of people who picked up tablets in HP's recent sale still have plenty of apps to choose from. HP has hundreds of dedicated TouchPad apps in its store, and the tablet can also run about 70 percent of the more than 8,000 apps designed for HP's WebOS phones. The phone apps run in a little phone-sized box on the tablet’s 9.7-inch screen, though. It remains to be seen if any more apps will be created for WebOS. HP isn't killing the operating system; the company says it wants to keep WebOS alive and license it out to other manufacturers. IF HP succeeds, that means a steady flow of new apps would appear for the TouchPad and other devices, but we wouldn't count on it for now. Of the TouchPad's existing 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. 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. 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. The current issue of Pivot may be its last, but it was a very neat idea. 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. 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. Here are our picks for the best TouchPad apps so far.
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