photo credit:  Jesus Belzunce

If you’d like to enjoy the outdoors today, we suggest you stop reading right now.

What follows are five iPad addictive games that maximize screen real-estate with luring graphics, break ground in the handheld gaming sector. They ultimately exemplify why Apple’s tablet device is such an impressive device for gaming.

These games will capture your imagination, demand your attention, and may ultimately destroy your relationships with loved ones if you get too sucked in.

You can’t say we didn’t warn you.

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1. We Rule GOLD

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We Rule is like FarmVille for the iPad. Things start innocently enough in level one, but as you level up and tackle the tutorial challenges, a funny thing happens — the game gets serious and intricate.

Planting and harvesting crops is a key part of gameplay, but your efforts should be focused on trying to level up by accruing experience points. Levelling up allows you to continue expanding your kingdom, unlock more farm patches and grab other essentials like shops, plants, statues, roads and rivers for your kingdom.

Some of this may sound like nonsense, but most of your time will be spent designing your kingdom, and there’s nothing more frustrating than wanting to add a dragon’s lair or prison to your kingdom and not having the funds to do so.

The best part about the game is that everyone from your friends to tech celebrities like Digg’s Kevin Rose is in on the action. This makes for extra enticing gameplay because you can add your friends from real life and web life as neighbors and check out their kingdoms or buy goods from their shops.

After a few short days you’ll be hooked, even going so far as to set up push notifications so you know when your plants are ready to harvest, and your citizens are ready to hand over their tax payments.

A few tips: Build as many cottages as you can so you can collect taxes and earn experience points quicker. Plant the most expensive crops because you make more when you harvest them, and save your mojo to use in higher levels and plan around expansion.

Price Point: Free
Addiction Rating: 4.5 stars

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2. Angry Birds HD

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What’s so great about Angry Birds? How about “everything.” This is one of those games that will continue to nag at your sense of self-worth until you can beat a particular level — which may prove to be futile for some levels. Pick up this game and soon your dreams will be haunted by squawking birds, and the taunting grins of those green pigs that just will not die.

Things begin rather easily: You start with a few angry red birds that you sling at awaiting green pigs. The goal is to kill the pigs either by lampooning them with a bird dead-on, or craftily trying to topple bricks to crush them. In total, there are 105 different levels, each one more difficult than the last.

Beginner tips: Don’t play in front of friends or family because they will try to take the game away from you, sometimes the most obvious strategy is the right one, know your angles and learn the strengths of each bird type.

Price Point: $4.99
Addiction Rating: 5 stars

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3. GodFinger

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Oh the joys of playing God. In GodFinger, you’re a deity with a commanding finger you can use to turn people into followers and put them to work on your planet.

The idea of the game is to create a thriving planet populated with followers to do your bidding. Earning gold, mana, and awe let’s you level up and build better items to help you earn all three achievements as fast as possible.

You earn gold by placing followers at barns or farms. It is used to buy new items in the store. You need mana for rain, sunshine, lightning and the other natural elements required for planet functions. You can earn mana by placing followers at your shrine. Awe is a special element that you earn each time you level up, and you can use it at the Awe Store. You can also buy it if you get desperate.

GodFinger — like We Rule — is an Ngmoco game, so gameplay begins with a challenge-based tutorial. You level up based on the experience points you accrue through in-game actions. Pay attention to each task and prompt in the tutorial mode, as instructions include information that will become vital to the health of your planet and your followers.

Tips for ruling wisely: Wells and taverns are great for faster rejuvenation, gold that you don’t collect erodes, upgrade your shrine to generate mana faster, zoom out to visit neighboring planets and save your awe to buy cooler items in higher levels.

Price Point: Free
Addiction Rating: 4 stars

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4. Plants vs. Zombies HD

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Zombie fan or not, this game will suck the life out of you as you fall victim to each engrossing level.

The ultimate goal of the game is to prevent zombies from entering your home in each level. Should they succeed, you will die.

The game starts out with a few semi-harmless zombies and some less-than-potent plants that you will need to attack and kill the oncoming onslaught of the undead. As you level up, the zombies become more menacing and the plants more lethal.

Your biggest challenges will be deciding how many sunflowers to plant, figuring out how to protect them, and picking plants to use in your arsenal of attack for each level. Don’t forget that you will need the sunflowers to buy the plants you need. Also, the plants you choose for each level will vary on whether it’s day or night, and their ability to kill depends on the zombies you’re fighting against.

Tips to stay alive: Plant as many sunflowers as you can during the first few moments of each level, the double sunflower is a waste of money and space, always buy more slots for plants when you can and make sure you have at least one big attack plant for each level.

Price Point: $9.99
Addiction Rating: 5 stars

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5. Dizzypad HD

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Who knew having frogs leap from lilypad to lilypad could be so addicting? But in much the same way that DoodleJump can entertain and frustrate players for hours at a time, so too can Dizzypad HD for the iPad.

The object of the game is to get the frog from one lilypad to the next, by carefully timing each leap so as not to land in the water and lose a life. Unfortunately, this is one of those games that is deceptively simple: It will lure you in with its easy premise and then make you feel like a fool when you can’t beat your own high score.

Unlike most great games on the iPad, this one comes completely free of charge — but only if you’re fine with just playing the classic mode. If you’re anything like me, you’ll fork over the $1.99 (each) to add sliders, memory, and battle modes. They’re definitely worth the extra cash.

Pro tip for leapers: Learn to leapfrog as many lilypads as you can early on. For each lilypad you leapfrog, you earn an extra life. Those extra lives will come in handy as lilypads become harder to reach.

Price Point: Free
Addiction Rating: 3.5 stars

I guess you can say that we’re a sucker for a ridiculous video – such as the one recently provided for us by a certain VJ named Franz K. The unholy spawn of Jerry Only and that ShamWow! guy, his latest creation is called the Mantaray iTar.

Essentially it’s an iPad dock with a shoulder strap, but wait — there’s more! You can also mount effects processors (such as the Korg Kaoss pad), essentially transforming your tablet into a kludgey keytar. As our man says, “gadget music is the new punk rock!” But seriously, Franz — do you expect us to pay $225 for the privilege of performing with iElectribe? Either way, this video must be seen to be believed.

On Monday, Steve Jobs will take the stage for WWDC, Apple’s yearly developer conference. Anticipation is rapidly rising for the event, where the Apple CEO is expected to make major announcements, most notably about the iPhone. We’ll be on-site, covering the entire conference live.

Things are a little more complicated this year though, thanks to the lost iPhone prototype case. It’s a virtual certainty that Apple will announce the new iPhone, but could Apple surprise us with a Verizon iPhone? What about a cloud-based iTunes? Could Apple TV be getting some air time next week?

Here’s our preview of what we think Steve Jobs will drop next Monday at WWDC.

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The New iPhone

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We’d be beyond shocked if Apple doesn’t announce a new iPhone next Monday. In all likelihood, it’s going to be almost exactly like the prototype phone that Gizmodo got on its hands on in April. That means it’s going to have a front-facing video camera, HD video recording, an LED flash, and a more industrial look and feel.

It’ll also come loaded with iPhone OS 4.0 and its many features. Multitasking, folders and enterprise features will all come with the new iPhone. We also bet that Apple will also include some video chat software to take advantage of that front-facing camera.

As for the actual release date, a month ago we were told that the new iPhone could be released next week. We’ve been digging for more information since then and, after talking with our sources, we believe the most likely sale date for the new iPhone is now June 25, about three weeks from today.

Predicting the sale date of an Apple product is always tough, but you can expect your local Apple and AT&T stores to have the device before the end of June.

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Verizon iPhone?

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Don’t expect Apple to say much, if anything, about a Verizon iPhone. There are countless rumors surrounding a potential iPhone collaboration between Apple and Verizon, with launch dates set as later this year to 2012 and beyond. However, recent comments from Verizon suggest that there will be no iPhone in the immediate future.

We haven’t heard much new information on a Verizon iPhone. Our bet is that this event will be focused on the new iPhone itself and that a Verizon iPhone will get its own event later this year. Even if it were to be announced next week, it likely wouldn’t be available this month.

We’re hoping that we’re wrong about the Verizon iPhone, but we suggest you don’t get your hopes up.

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iTunes Live, Mobile Me and the Cloud

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Earlier this week, Apple shut down Lala, a music streaming service the company acquired late last year. At the time, we speculated that the closing of Lala might indicate that a cloud-based version of iTunes could launch next week. Discussions over a web-based iTunes have been going on for months.

With Google’s Android OS now offering users the ability to stream their music collection from their desktops, next week seems like the right opportunity for Jobs to reveal Apple’s new cloud initiatives. Not only do we think it’s like you’ll hear iTunes.com announcements next week, but Mobile Me could get some major enhancements to keep it competitive with Android.

This is the year Apple takes the cloud seriously.

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Other Potential Announcements

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While the focus will be on the next-generation iPhone, it doesn’t mean that Steve Jobs won’t pull a few other surprises out of his hat. The MacBook Air hasn’t been upgraded in a year, making it a prime candidate to get some attention at this year’s WWDC. There are also rumors that Safari will finally get extensions.

What do you hope Apple announces during next Monday’s keynote? Let us know in the comments, and be sure to tune in on Monday for our live coverage of WWDC.

photo credit: kyz

Yesterday at the D8 conference in Los Angeles, Steve Jobs laid out his vision of what’s to come. While Apple’s CEO went in-depth on a plethora of interesting subjects (e.g. Adobe Flash, the lost iPhone, iAds), he spent much of the stage time talking about the future of computing, specifically the PC.

Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg of AllThingsD asked Jobs whether the tablet is going to replace the laptop. Jobs’s response was an analogy:

“When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks. But as people moved more towards urban centers, people started to get into cars. I think PCs are going to be like trucks. Less people will need them. And this is going to make some people uneasy.”

That short exchange says a lot about the direction Apple could take computing over the next decade. Apple still sells the Mac and the Macbook, and while the term “PC” is now synonymous with Windows machines, the meaning of PC — personal computer — can also apply to the Mac and Macbook.

Was Apple’s CEO referring to not only Windows PCs, but Macs as well? It’s tough to say for certain, but I think it’s very likely. Jobs clearly thinks PCs are on the way out, in favor of the more portable, less complex tablet and mobile form factors. His iPad has already validated the market for tablets, and we expect many more tablets to enter the market over the next few years.

Apple lost the PC market to Microsoft years ago. If Jobs has his way though, that won’t matter — the market will shift towards mobile computing devices like the iPhone and the iPad, both of which Apple has complete control over. The tech titan doesn’t have full control over the Mac OS or its desktop, which must be frustrating to a man who relishes control.

Will the tablet replace the PC? Not in the next decade, at least. Hell, the Windows XP operating system is still the world’s most popular OS. It takes time for disruptive technologies to take hold.

For now, the tablet will be a complementary device to the PC. The PC has had far more time to be fleshed out and performs countless tasks faster and better than the iPad or any other tablet device on the market. In a decade though, we may be singing a different tune.

The Great iPad Magazine isn’t here yet—but it’s getting closer all the time. Popular Mechanics‘ app, set to launch next month, already looks like the new best magazine on the iPad.

If you’ve used Wired‘s Adobe-developed app, you’ll notice Popular Mechanics’ app looks and feels more like it than any other magazine app so far, even though it was developed in-house at Hearst. Which is interesting, because it means we’ve already established a set of conventions for magazines on the iPad, if you take them, and other apps, like PopSci+, andTime, in aggregate. (A sidenote: PopMech was coded entirely in Objective-C by Hearst’s programmers, and weighs in at just around 60MB. Wired’s app, done with Adobe, is over 500MB—score one for Steve Jobs’ native programming tirade.)

Namely, they mostly reject pinch-to-zoom—what you see is what you get, true to form. (GQand Vanity Fair are the exception, but given that Wired is effectively prototyping for Conde Nast, I don’t expect it to be that way forever.) Which is interesting, in that Apple has taught everybody pinch-to-zoom as the predominant multitouch gesture, so it’s what most people automatically do to anything. The idea, clearly, is fidelity to this idea of the magazine as curated object, unlike something purely digital and flighty, like a web page.

Second, there is a common navigational scheme emerging across magazines, althoughPop Mech breaks it slightly. Articles are read vertically—that is, you scroll up and down—and you move to the next article or section by swiping left or right. Popular Mechanics, on the other hand, goes for page-for-page fidelity, in that you swipe to left to turn every single page. (Except for the handful of pages you don’t, which is kind of confusing.) Swiping for every page, I suspect, will grow tedious, quickly.

They have a nice implementation of a sidebar, though it might also be slightly confusing if you’ve never used it before—essentially the top half of a page will be its own scrolling section that can go ad infinitum, showing all the steps of a DIY process, or other sequential steps magazines love to shove in sidebars. Galleries work like Wired—when you’re presented with one, you tap various areas on the page to progress to the next shot in the sequence. Fine, but somewhat pointless.

Pop Mech does do a few things better than anybody else, though, besides coming in a more economical package. For one, fully embedded, seamless video—videos play on the page, so they feel like they’re part of the magazine, and you’re not interrupted by the iPad’s movie player springing to life on top of the app. This is great. And it feels more future-y. (Apologies for the video looking a little wavy—I was hand-holding a DSLR, and the shaking was pretty bad, so iMovie’s motion stabilization seemed preferable.)

Second, and key to keeping the app feeling alive and relevant, it pulls in new info, so the app doesn’t become a fossil once you’re done with the issue. The mini-app-within-an-app—a living infographic, if you will—that they demoed for me charted seismological data in the US, not only historically, but also using the most recent 7 days of earthquake data from the USGS. Which is really savvy—the mag retains value after you’re done reading the issue. Oh, there’s a built in reader that pulls in the latest articles from the Popular Mechanics website, but I figure you’ll just go to the website anyway. Oh, and you can actually share articles, which you can’t yet with the Wired app.

The upshot of Popular Mechanics releasing what could be the best magazine app yet on the iPad a month after the app we just deemed to be the best is that while the Great iPad Magazine hasn’t arrived yet—to be clear, I don’t think Popular Mechanics is quite it, either, for many of the same reasons John critiqued Wired—it may very well be on the way sooner than we think. Everybody’s still just figuring this thing out, so people are mostly sticking to incrementally reformatting the magazine, instead of reinventing it, which is what we’re waiting for. I suspect the HTML5 Sports Illustrated demoed at Google IO might be a peek in a different way, in that it’s truly cross platform and could live on the web.

I love magazines, and this idea they could be something more than they are, given a totally blank slate to recreate themselves with. But just give it some time. [Popular Mechanics]