Apple has announced the winners of this year’s Apple Design Awards (ADA), which unlike the past years are restricted to the iOS platform. We’ve talked about this before.
The Apple Design Awards “recognize applications that demonstrate technical excellence, innovation, technology adoption, and quality.” They represent the best that you can have on iPhone, iPads and iPods.
Even though the website hasn’t been updated yet, we’ve followed the event and you can check out the winners after the break. Congratulations to all the winners!
iPad
- Financial Times
Offering a really great newspaper reading experience on iPad, the Financial Times presents an elegant user interface with animation, shadows, transparency, off-white paper color, nice typography, and intuitive navigation. Integrated photos and video nicely augment printed content. The app’s extensive features and interactions are powered by CoreText, MySQL, CoreData, Cocoa Touch, NSURL, UIwebview, and AV frameworks. The Financial Times also has an application available for iPhone.
- TabToolkit from Agile Partners
TabToolkit is an incredibly powerful music notation viewer with multi-track audio playback. The app includes an audio synthesis engine that enables you to listen to and control the audio for all instrument tracks individually. TabToolkit makes learning how to play your favorite songs on guitar, bass, keyboard, drums and other instruments easier and more fun. It offers a beautiful design with high-fidelity artwork optimized for iPad.
- Flight Control HD from Firemint
Flight Control HD is the landmark game that defined a new genre of games on iPhone. Now available for iPad, Flight Control HD offers more layouts, including a 3D layout, head-to-head and multi-device play options, enhanced Multi-Touch control, and improved game mechanics enabled by the large iPad screen. This game is a great example of innovative gameplay, outstanding use of Multi-Touch, and superb attention to detail. Flight Control is also available on iPhone and is equally addictive.
- Pinball HD from Gameprom
Pinball HD is a real Pinball simulator with high fidelity art and stunning 3D graphics delivered through advanced use of OpenGL ES 2.0. This high-quality pinball game offers unique sound effects, a soundtrack with atmospheric music, and voices played using Core Audio. Its high performance, multiple camera views and support for real-time orientation changes brings you inside the action. Portrait mode gives you a flying-table view with the camera panning and zooming over the action while Landscape mode shows a full table view. Pinball HD delivers a level of realism you won’t believe.
- Star Walk for iPad from Vito Technology
Star Walk is a personal planetarium for anyone who is interested in stargazing. It makes discovering more than 9,000 stars, planets, constellations, and messiers beautiful and easy using OpenGL ES 2.0 to create stunning 3D graphics delivered at 30 fps. Star Walk uses the accelerometer, compass, and Core Location frameworks to accurately determine orientation, bearing, and location to enable viewing of the night sky as it appears from your location. Star Walk also reaches an international audience with versions in English, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Russian.
iPhone
- Doodle Jump from Lima Sky
Doodle Jump is arguably the most addictive game available for iPhone today and is currently rated with 4.5 stars and over 55,000 reviews. Doodle Jump integrates very well with the accelerometer, has innovative progressive leader boards built right into the game screen, has incredible hand-drawn artwork, layered graphics, and visual effects, and offers Facebook, email, and Twitter integration. It also uses innovative cross-promotion with other apps, including sharing themes. Doodle Jump has a large and active fan base largely due to the addictive game play and frequent updates that include new themes and capabilities.
- Brushes for iPhone by Steve Sprang
Brushes is a powerful freehand painting tool for creating original artwork that completely re-defined a genre of apps most people would not have expected on iPhone. It features a painting gallery, balanced painting tools, an advanced color picker, realistic brushes, layers, extreme zooming, an eye dropper tool, and a simple, yet very functional user interface. The painting engine is implemented entirely in Core Graphics and makes heavy use of Core Animation. Brushes reaches an international audience with versions in English, Chinese, French, German, Italian, and Spanish.
- Articles for iPhone by Sophiestication - Review
Articles features a one-of-a-kind presentation of Wikipedia articles, perfectly optimized for iPhone and iPod touch. It is a beautifully designed example of an app that does one thing really well, and shows off the value of a quiet browsing experience. Articles uses Foundation, UIKit, NSURLConnection, libxml2, UIWebView, HTML5, CSS3, Javascript, Core Data, and Map Kit and reaches an international audience with versions in English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish. Articles is also available on iPad.
- Twenty Minute Meals from Zolmo
20 Minute Meals is a self-contained digital mini-cookbook that sets the bar with an attractive interface that demonstrates tremendous attention to detail and high production value. 20 Minute Meals integrates high-quality photos and audio and uses HTTP Streaming to deliver high-resolution video throughout the app to explain kitchen and food preparation techniques. This app shows off the power and mobility of iPhone with integrated shopping lists, unit conversions, audio coaching within recipes, adjusting portion sizes based on the amount of people, and a shake-to-get-a-random-recipe feature.
- Real Racing for iPhone from Firemint
Get into the drivers seat with Real Racing and tear through forests, seaside circuits, and burning deserts. With beautiful track environments, carefully detailed cars and console quality 3D sound effects, Real Racing delivers an exhilarating racing experience. Real Racing, also available on iPad, sets the standard for quality and console-like performance and capabilities on iPhone.
