Apple chose not to include voice recording, weather, calculator, and stock apps, but luckily the App Store has great alternatives for each one!

When Steve Jobs introduced the very first iPad, one of his big statements was that the 75 million iPhone users in the world already knew how to use it. Well, many of those users were suprised to discover that five of the built-in apps that they had grown to love on their iPhone were missing on their iPad. Namely, Clock, Voice Memos, Weather, Calculator and Stocks. Rumor has it Apple didn't think those apps would scale to look good on the bigger iPad screen. Since then, Apple has added a clock app with iOS 6, but the other four are still missing. Fortunately, many great developers have filled that void and proven that, not only can these apps look good on the iPad. They can look great.

In fact, there are so many great apps in these categories that it can be overwhelming. That's where we come in. We took all the top voice memos, weather, calculator, and stock apps, scrutinized them, and tested them some more and named a single app in each category as the best of its kind. So without further adieu, here they are!

Best weather app - Weather 2x

Weather 2x is a gorgeous way to check the weather. It features a beautiful background that represents the current weather conditions. It also moves pans slightly so that there's a little bit of movement. The information is presented in a very clean, clutter-free way and intuitive gestures will reveal more information and and other sections of the app.

Regarding the including information, Weather 2x will give you 5 day forecasts that are broken down into 3-hour intervals as well as show you sunrise/sunset times, visibility, windspeed, precipitation, and more. You can also store as many locations as you wish so that you can quickly see what the weather is like in other parts of the world.

Living Earth may not be as fully-featured as some other weather apps, but it provides the information that most people want -- and does it beautifully.

• Weather 2x review

$1.99 - Download Now

Best voice recording app -- Audio Memos

If you're looking for a Voice Recorder for your iPad that offer great quality and professional features, look no further than Audio Memos. It in three different versions: a free one that does only the basics, a $0.99 version that does a little bit more with optional extensions available as in-app purchases, and a Pro version that includes all the extensions available in the $0.99 version. So whether you're looking for something basic, middle of the road, or full-featured, Audio Memos has got you covered.

• Audio Memos review

Free - Download Now

$1.99 - Download Now

$9.99 - Download Now

Best calculator app - Calcbot

Calcbot is a great scientific calculator for the iPhone and iPad. It features nice, large keys and a SwipePad that switches between the basic operations (including numbers) and scientific functions. It also keep track of all your calculations on a tape where you can copy and paste into a new calculation. Another nice feature is that it keeps a live history of what you type, so that you never get lost with where you are in your calculation.

• Calcbot for iPhone and iPad review

$1.99 - Download Now

Best stock app - Bloomberg for iPad

Whether you need to casually monitor stocks on your iPad or just find the urge to check out financial news, Bloomberg provides the best of both worlds combined with an easy to use interface. I've found that some of the applications in the App Store are quite hard to navigate and may be confusing for many users to figure out. Sometimes too many charts and graphs can be overwhelming. Bloomberg gives you what you want to know right up front.

If you're more interested in world and financial news than you are stocks, Bloomberg doubles up as a great resource for such information. It ties news and the stock market together in a fluid way that users will appreciate.

• Bloomberg for iPad review

Free - Download Now

Rene Ritchie and Ryan Block of GDGT talk Apple's recent management re-organization, the future of Forstall, the iPad mini launch and where Apple goes from here, and the LTE compromise in the new Nexus 4. This is an iMore show special edition.

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Guests

• Ryan Block (@ryan) of GDGT

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• Rene Ritchie (@reneritchie)

Credits

You can reach all of us on Twitter @iMore, or you can email us at podcast@imore.com or just leave us a comment below.

For all our podcasts -- audio and video -- including the iMore show, ZEN and TECH, Iterate, and more, see MobileNations.com/shows

Westminster City Council has announced that it will soon be rolling out new smart street lighting that can be controlled with an iPad. The new smart street lights will replace around 14,000 central London street lights over the next four years.

There has been much debate around the UK about switching off street lights to save energy and costs, but this was not considered appropriate for Westminster, so an alternative, or 'third way', variable lighting solution has been found.

The council says roll-out means an initial £3.25m investment which will be recouped through energy and maintenance savings within seven years, and the technology will go on saving council tax payers £420,000 a year from 2015/16 onwards.

This is the first system of its kind to be used in the UK and it will offer an excellent way to monitor street lighting levels and reliability. Through the use of an iPad application, engineers will be able to instantly see when a street lamp is not functioning correctly; it even has the intelligence to predict when a lamp is likely to fail too. The iPad app can also be used to raise and lower lighting output levels; although the engineer would have to be standing next to the lamp for this to work.

This new system is sure to be of interest to other local councils in the UK; if the cost savings are to be believed. There are many parts of the country were local councils are already trialling different cost saving schemes for street lighting and most just involve turning them off. This is hardly a great solution and one that has a definite impact on safety. The iPad controlled scheme may offer the savings that the councils need to make without degrading the current levels of street lighting.

Source: West London Today, Image Credit: Travel Wallpapers

Every week, the editors at iMore carefully select some of our favorite, most useful, most extraordinary apps, accessories, gadgets, and websites. This week's selections include a social network for TV and movies, a great drawing app, an app that looks back at past updates you made on your favorite social networks, a fun app filled with random, crazy facts, a horror action game, a classic strategy board game, and a Twitter and ADN client.

GetGlue - Ally Kazmucha

I've used GetGlue for a long time and still continue to enjoy using it almost on a daily basis. The premise is simple; check into what you're watching, reading or listening to. From there you can view others comments, accumulate stickers you can actually get physical copies of, and converse with others. It may seem like FourSquare for entertainment and it pretty much is but my favorite part of GetGlue is that I've found many interesting shows, music artists, and other media I may not have found otherwise. It can also lay out all your tv shows in one place somewhat like your own personal guide.

Once you start adding friends on GetGlue you can view their activity. I frequently find myself browsing people's profiles that have interests similar to mine. A lot of the shows I watch on a regular basis I've actually found out about through friends on GetGlue. It's a great service and something I'd highly recommend checking out if you're on the hunt for good shows, music, books, video games, and more.

• Free - Download Now

Paper by FiftyThree - Joseph Keller

Paper is one of my all-time favorite apps. It occupies. Now, I'm not an artist by any stretch of the imagination, but I find something relaxing about drawing. That's what makes Paper a perfect app for someone like me. There's a certain elegance in Paper's simplicity, and it allows you to focus on getting your ideas down rather than obsess over every granular detail of how you should get them down. Paper was recently updated with a Mixer tool that lets you make custom colors, along with an expanded palette of preset colors. If you haven't tried this app before, now would certainly be a good time to do so.

• Free - Download Now

Timehop - Chris

This week I have gone for an app that will take you for a daily trip down memory lane. Timehop is a free app that will send you a push notification everyday and tells you what you were saying or doing on the same day on years gone by.

When you install the app, you can grant it access to your Facebook, Foursquare, Instagram, Twitter and Flickr accounts and it then goes and finds what you said or posted on the same day in years gone by and presents it to you each day. I have only been using it for a few days and each day when I see the content it always makes me smile. It is a lovely way to be reminded of what you got up to in the past. If you are a big user of social networks, this app is a must for you; try and I bet it puts a smile on your face each morning.

Free - Timehop

Weird But True - Chris Parsons

Yup! It's an app for kids and uh.. big kids who have a thirst for useless knowledge like me! It has a ton of cute sounds and funny facts built into, over 300 if you need the exact number. You can bookmark your favorites or even search out specific topics like animals, space, science and more. The app is free to download and fun to use. Can't really ask for much more than that. Just know, on your next car trip you may have your kids reading you all 300 of those facts aloud.

• Free - Download Now

Bladeslinger - Simon Sage

Bladeslinger is a fresh new action game that mashes up western, steampunk, and horror genres with Infinity Blade-style gesture-based melee combat. Players take on the role of William Glaston, a soldier returning from war only to find his hometown full of demons and ominous sigils. It's at this point that he opens up a can of whoop-ass with this six-shooting short sword and electrically-charged mechanical fist. Because those alone aren't enough of an arsenal, the town's spooky new energies start imbuing William with supernatural powers.

The game's graphics are absolutely stunning, the swipe and tap-based control provide a ton of tactical flexibility, and the wide range of special moves and unlockables keep the game extremely fresh. Bladeslinger is one of the more promising games I've played in awhile; pick it up while it's still free.

• Free - Download now

Carcassonne - Leanna Lofte

I have been playing Carcassonne on the iPad for a couple years now. I never really enjoyed playing on my iPhone's small screen, but the experience is great on the iPad mini. If you aren't familiar with the game, Carcassonne is a famous strategy board game where you must take turns placing tiles with your opponent(s). The objective is to build cities and roads and claim cities and cloisters with the goal of getting as much points as possible. You can play locally on your device or against opponents online. I'm by no means a "hard core" Carcassonne player, but take my turns every 1-3 days. It's fun, challenging, and social. If you're a fan of strategy board games, you'll love Carcassonne.

-$9.99 - Download Now

Watercooler - Rene Ritchie

Watercooler is a Twitter and app.net (ADN) client by InfinitApps that, while it can't cross the streams (not due to the laws of Twitter, not Ghostbusters), it can let you quickly switch from one to the other while staying in the same app. Visually, it looks a lot like Buzz Anderson and Neven Mrgan's Birdfeed, which was one of my favorite Twitter clients before it was sold and perverted into something unrecognizable and unusable (yeah, still bitter).

That's the reason, when I saw John Gruber of Daring Fireball mention it, I bought it immediately. While Watercooler feels a little slow when loading any particular stream for the first time, once the load is done it's quick and clean. It also has an option to view the global ADN feed. Most everything else is there as well, along with a bunch of really interesting stuff, like tapping on your tweets to see conversations, favorites/stars, and more.

There's no push notifications, far as I can tell, and no direct messages for Twitter, which will be a deal-breakers for some. but if you use both Twitter and ADN, or just ADN, and remember Birdfeed as fondly as I do, check out Watercooler.

• $4.99 - Download now

Your choice?

Now that we've chosen our favorites for the week, we want to hear yours! Did you pick up a killer app, accessory, or game this week? Let us know in the comments below!