Several notable iPad apps have been updated recently. Here’s a quick report.

Right after I picked up my iPad, I wrote about some experiences and some ultra quick reviews of apps. Many of those have been quickly updated, likely a result of the developer getting a real iPad in house.

The Walt Disney Corp. let me know right away that the release version of the ABC Player had been updated. “John — version 1.0.1004 was the update that became available on Sunday night. [April 4.] The initial version available for download was 1.0.1003” It was version 1.0.1003 that crashed on me at the launch of almost any video on April 3, and I’m happy to report that has been corrected. I’ve been able to do extensive viewing of ABC’s Castle and Lost since the update.

ABC Player

Star Walk 4.1 was released on April 9. It has a great summary Splash Screen before you enter the planetarium, and the 4.1 version adds the ability to mute sounds and music separately — and more. Star Walk just keeps getting better and better. So far as I know, there is no iPad specific version of Sky Voyager.

Star Walk

The USA Today app, which seemed stable on April 3 and looks great started crashing on me at launch last week. Version 1.0.1, released on April 9, fixed that problem. The USA Today app is a beautifully done newspaper app, but goes paid only in July. Depending on the price, it may be one of those “half dozen” I just have to pay for.

USA Today

I’ve since downloaded the International Movie Database (IMDB) app. It’s also beautifully done and reinforces the case that you should always have an iPad on your lap when watching any movie at home, VOD, broadcast, or Netflix, etc. It’s far more nicely laid out than the Website you see on a Mac.

The Netflix app, at version 1.0.0, which got people all wound up at first, turns out have some serious limitations. You can’t rate a movie from your queue list or drag move movies around in your queue to re-prioritize. Let’s hope future versions will be on par with the Mac/Windows version. By the way, Netflix confirmed, in case there was any doubt, that the app uses “HTML 5 and HTTP live streaming” to deliver your movie.

A slightly modified version of the Skype app, version 1.3.1, for iPad was released on April 6. (It’s still not full screen.) It claims to have been tested with the iPad, but I found that I couldn’t edit a land line number. I had to delete it and re-enter. But that’s the only problem I’ve found so far. Making land line calls from an iPad with Skype Credit is cheap — and a lot of fun for some reason.

I haven’t found an iPad native version of a Twitter client that I like. I may have to go back and reload Twittelator Pro for the iPhone and use it until Twittelator iPad is revised. Take a close look at the screen shots of the iPad version before you spring; the interface is totally different. Personally, I’d rather have more of the screen used for the timeline in the iPad version.