Apple's official iPad apps hit the UK App Store

While international users have been able to download most of the iPad's few thousand odd apps for some time now, Apple has waited until the last possible second to chuck its official programs onto iTunes.

Just two days before the company's new device hits Apple Stores in an extra nine countries, and with some customers already receiving their iPads by post, Apple has put Pages, Numbers, Keynote, and iBooks onto the store.

iBooks is the iPad's official digital book reader, and comes packed with a bookshelf to show off your collection, and the iBookstore to buy books, get free public domain literature, and read samples of best sellers. Like the American launch, the app comes with a free copy of Winnie the Pooh by A. A. Milne.

iBooks is free, but the individual tomes will cost you cash. Obviously.

Pages, Numbers and Keynote are iPad equivalents of Apple's suite of Mac productivity tools that let you handle documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. For us Windows users, they're Word, Excel, and Powerpoint.

All three desktop publishing (well, not desktop, but you get the idea) apps are £5.99 each.