WWDC 2011: Apple Design Award winning apps worthy of your download
Summary: Each year Apple gives away gray, cubic statues for excellence in iOS and Mac OS X app design and development. Here are your 2011 ADA winners:
Each year during WWDC Apple gives away gray, cubic statues for “excellence in iOS and Mac OS X app design and development.” Its Apple Design Award (ADA) winners for 2011 have been announced in the categories of iPhone, iPad, Mac and student. In addition to the trophy (pictured) each ADA winner also receives a MacBook Air, iPad 2, and iPod touch, you know, to develop on.
Apple used three criteria for selecting this year's winner:
- Design. Well-designed apps are delightful, elegant, intuitive, engaging, exciting, compelling, and reliable.
- Innovation. Innovative apps are revolutionary, inspirational, unique, and do things in completely new and exciting ways.
- Technical excellence. Technically advanced apps have excellent performance and make extensive use of the latest Apple technologies to deliver innovative, platform differentiating, and advanced features.
And the winners are...
iPhone
Infinity Blade ($5.99, iTunes, pictured above) - Beautiful, first-person sword-fighting epic.- Golfscape GPS Rangefinder ($9.99, iTunes) - Augmented reality golf rangefinder.
- Cut the Rope ($0.99, iTunes) - Addictive, physics-based puzzle game.
iPad
djay for iPad ($0.99, iTunes, pictured above) - Industry-changing DJ software, normally $20.- Osmos for iPad ($4.99, iTunes) - Gorgeous, ambient physics-based survival game.
- Our Choice ($4.99, iTunes) - Gesture driven, interactive book by Al Gore.
Mac
Capo ($49.99, Mac App Store, pictured above) - Uses sophisticated chord detection to reverse-engineer your iTunes library.- Pixelmator ($29.99 Mac App Store) - Photoshop killer, for the rest of us.
- Anomaly Warzone Earth ($6.99 Mac App Store) - Tower offense game for Mac loaded with OpenGL effects.
Student
Grades 2 (Free, iTunes, pictured above) - Slick GPA calculator app for iOS designed for students.- Pennant ($4.99, iTunes) - Excellent baseball history app with data visualization of 115,000 games.
- Pulse News (Free, iTunes) - Beautiful, thumbnail news and social network browser.
What are you waiting for? Take some time this weekend to try some of these best-of-best iOS and Mac OS apps. There's also this gallery of screenshots from the ADA 2011-winning apps, if you'd like to see more.
Did any of your favorites not make the list?
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RE: WWDC 2011: Apple Design Award winning apps worthy of your download
RE: WWDC 2011: Apple Design Award winning apps worthy of your download
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That's it?!?
You've got one game which is boring; one app that is useless as a professional app, and as a fun app, worth about only 5 minutes of experimentation, but still cost 20x its worth; and a third app that is made by an Apple board member and heavy shareholder. Hmm....
Of all of the iOS apps, the only one that is either useful or fun is Cut the Rope.
RE: WWDC 2011: Apple Design Award winning apps worthy of your download
Osmos is boring? It's won an a remarkable number of awards for a "boring" game.
As for "Our Choice" I think it's well done and well-designed. (I couldn't care less who wrote it, so long as the design & execution is good, and the content is accurate.) You do know that "poisoning the well" - as in comments like "a third app that is made by an Apple board member and heavy shareholder" - is a logical fallacy, don't you?
djay isn't for me, but I do think it's a clever use of Apple's technology.
If I bought all three iPad apps, I'd be out of pocket $30. Wooooh! That's so little that I'd only have to be mildly entertained for a few hours to make the purchase a better proposition than seeing 90% of Hollywood films at a multiplex: "Our Choice" has already provided me with far more than that.
You proved my point
"Osmos is boring?"
Yes, it is. Next question.
"It's won an a remarkable number of awards for a "boring" game."
All in design and "use of multitouch", as is typical for most of these kinds of reviews where the non-gameplayer reviewer tries the thing for maybe 5 minutes, and not in actual gameplay and "fun factor".
"You do know that "poisoning the well" - as in comments like "a third app that is made by an Apple board member and heavy shareholder" - is a logical fallacy, don't you?"
It's absolutely true though. What? Is this news to you? How about that Pixar uses Macs and gets Apple to promote them extensively because Steve Jobs is on the board at Disney? Oh, you didn't know that either?
Yes, my comment may be dick-ish, but it's also accurate. (that's what a logical fallacy is)
It's neither productive for an actual DJ, nor does it maintain its allure for more than about 30 seconds, so as is typical with Apple products being more form over function. It's not useful. It's a tech demo and nothing more - in fact, almost all of these apps are - and when I saw it originally selling for $20, I knew it was just a money grab.
"If I bought all three iPad apps, I'd be out of pocket $30. Wooooh! That's so little that I'd only have to be mildly entertained for a few hours to make the purchase a better proposition than seeing 90% of Hollywood films at a multiplex"
Two things I glean from this:
1. A fool and his money are easily parted.
2. You must be easily amused.
RE: WWDC 2011: Apple Design Award winning apps worthy of your download
Where did you get the misinformtion about Pixar being a strictly Apple shop. In addition to Macs, Pixar uses Linux and Windows boxes extensively.
The rest of your comment amounts to your opinion, which is fine as far as that goes. You're easily bored and not easily amused, and you have lots of time on your hands to be bored and not amused. I get that.
Your opinion is one of many, but should be given due consideration, especially since you give reasons for your discontent. I'd rather read your opinion than someone who is engages in the typical lame bashing. (example: lolzors, apple suxs!)
Still, get your info straight on what computers Pixar uses. They've always used a combination, matching up the right platform for the job at hand.
Re: You proved my point
RE: WWDC 2011: Apple Design Award winning apps worthy of your download
Infinity?
Great for the i4 ot iPad2.
Older models have difficulty running it if they can at all.
Okay... I kept reading.
These look nice, but most for the average user I suspect are aa no-go or a buy and park after a period.
Pixelmator looks nice, but I have Photoshop on a pc where I have fine control. Add to a iPad? not seeing it....
:|
RE: WWDC 2011: Apple Design Award winning apps worthy of your download
I use both (Pixelmator and Photoshop CS5 extended) and Pixelmator is FAST. Photoshop is quick on my high end iMac system and I need Photoshop high end functions occasionally but I truly enjoy using Pixelmator. (BTW, 16 GB of ram, core i7 CPU and all files booted from an SSD. That type of system allows me to drop a graphic file onto the Pixelmator program icon and in less time it takes to blink an eye, Pixelmator has booted and the graphic file is ready to be edited. Photoshop boots in under two seconds and it's editing functions are completed very quickly .. Just for comparisons sake.)
RE: WWDC 2011: Apple Design Award winning apps worthy of your download
RE: WWDC 2011: Apple Design Award winning apps worthy of your download
RE: WWDC 2011: Apple Design Award winning apps worthy of your download
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RE: WWDC 2011: Apple Design Award winning apps worthy of your download
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RE: WWDC 2011: Apple Design Award winning apps worthy of your download
RE: WWDC 2011: Apple Design Award winning apps worthy of your download
RE: WWDC 2011: Apple Design Award winning apps worthy of your download
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