iNow might be the productivity app the iPad has been waiting for

Productivity apps are two-a-penny, but productivity is one of the major boons of the iPad’s large touchscreen interface. Tapping and moving things around is a very natural human way to approach things. And yet productivity apps often remain stuck in the click and point world of the mouse, and refuse to make the best of a visual and spacial approach.

Indeed, on a laptop I often find myself resorting to a fast, simple text-based To-Do list just because I can cut and paste items on the list up or down depending on priority.

But I’ve recently tried out a productivity app on the iPad which might actually convert me over.

iNow [iTunes link] is an iPad app which does one simple thing. It lets you create a To Do list you can move around and re-order very, very simply and easily. And the developers, Stone Soup Software, have taken a clever approach, that of air traffic controllers. Say what?

It’s smart if you think about it. Even today many air traffic controllers use wooden blocks to order the lists of aircraft they are controlling on their radar screens. It’s a human-friendly interface that has often withstood computerisation.

That’s exactly the same interface at iNow, which allows you to order your to-do list and physically dump it in the trash when the task is complete.

You can trash thinks, email things you need to delegate, move blocks up and down, and change the size of blocks to give you a visual priority.

The app is designed to be fast and tactile, so ordering priorities can be done with a flick of the finger.

Right now the app could use one or two more features like more email integration to email tasks, but the basic principles are there.

The app costs $2.99 but we have 20 freebies for random commenters on this post.