Apple has announced the Design Awards for this year, noting winners such as Marketcircle Inc. (Billings), MLB.com (MLB.com At Bat 2009), iPhone developer ngmoco:) and Elias Pietil, with his famous Wooden Labyrinth 3D iPhone game.
“The Apple Design Awards recognize technical excellence, innovation, and outstanding achievement in iPhone and Mac software development. Each year, winning products set new standards for usability, performance, technology integration and adoption. This year’s winners raise the bar even higher.”
The categories and their respective winners were:
iPhone Developer Showcase
– MLB.com At Bat 2009 v1.0.1; – Postage v1.0; – Topple 2 v1.1; – Tweetie v1.3.1.
Mac OS X Leopard Developer Showcase
– Billings v3.0.5; – BoinxTV v1.3; – Things v1.1; – Versions v1.0.3.
Best iPhone Student App
– Wooden Labyrinth 3D v1.2.1.
Best Mac OS X Student Product
– Fontcase v1.1.3.
Best iPhone OS 3.0 Beta App – AccuTerra v1.0.0 Beta.
Speaking about the latter, Apple claims, “AccuTerra for iPhone is an excellent example of an app that brings unique functionality to iPhone through use of iPhone OS 3.0 technologies.” While not yet released, iPhone OS 3.0 boasts technologies that this application uses just the way they were intended, Apple says.
“AccuTerra uses many iPhone OS 3.0 beta technologies including StoreKit to allow In-app purchase of maps, Push Notification for notifying friends of new hikes, OpenGL ES and MapKit to render high fidelity maps, Audio toolbox for custom sounds, clicks, vibrations and chime, CoreLocation for the GPS functionality allowing users to record their adventures, UIKit, Core Animation, and SQlite3.0 to store hikes, places and points, photos, and other user-generated data,” the Mac maker shares.
Apple itself notes that AccuTerra is not yet purchasable through the iTunes App Store, as iPhone OS 3.0 isn't yet out. Still, the software will likely be compatible with all iPhone and iPod touch models.