Music has the Grammy Awards, movies have the Academy Awards. For developers of OS X and iOS, there are the Apple Design Awards. Yesterday, developers of a handful of apps were honored for their work in creating the top apps of the last year.
The awards include a trophy, as well as recognition in front of a crowd of developers and on a special page on the Apple Developer website. Apple uses the awards as a way to spotlight high-quality apps that provide that special mix of technology and design to make lives better… or at least more fun. Here are the winners for 2015:
iOS
- Shadowmatic (see screenshot at the top of this post)
- Robinhood
- Crossy Road
- Workflow
- Does Not Commute
- Vainglory
- Pacemaker
- Metamorphabet
OS X
- Fantastical 2
- Affinity Designer (see screenshot above)
Student Winners
Congratulations to this year’s ADA winners, and to all of the other developers who have delighted us with their work during the past year.
Are their other awards to be announced later? I checked. Almost all the iOS ones are games or entertainment. Alas, that reinforces my sense that Apple had begun to see its customers as children with short attention spans.
Too bad the writer’s tool, Scrivener for iOS, isn’t out yet. If it’s anything like the marvelous OS X version, it deserves an award as a productivity tool.