Ars is taking nominations for Best New Mac OS X App, Best Mac OS X User Experience, Most Innovative Mac OS X App, Best Mac OS X App for Education, and Best Student-created Mac OS X App. The nominations will be narrowed down to the top five, of which the staff at Ars will choose the winners in each category.

Ars will also be giving a special “Readers Choice” award, selected by the number of votes each of the top 10 nominations receives. All winners will be announced in June during the WWDC.

Even though Apple sometimes leaves developers out in the cold, the great Mac community steps in to fill the gaps. Leaving the Mac OS X Apps out of this years WWDC shows Apple’s focus, but I expect the awards to be back next year to coincide with the release of OS X 10.7. Apple might be all about the mobile devices right now, but we know that the Mac is not going anywhere, and it’s good that we can take the time to recognize the developers who work so hard to bring us the best applications on any platform.

Apple announced the winners of the 2009 Apple Design Awards last night at a special ceremony hosted by John Geleynse, director of Software Technology Evangelism, and Shann Pruden, senior director for Developer Relations. These awards are an annual affair to recognize “technical excellence, innovation, and outstanding achievement in iPhone and Mac software development.”

The depth and breadth of submissions has been accelerating, as interest in the Mac and iPhone has picked up over the last few years. As a point of comparison, the iPhone awards last year were handed out to early pre-release apps because the App Store had not even launched yet. There were about 1,700 web apps in Apple’s online directory, and this year there are over 4,000 web apps and more than 50,000 native apps available in the iTunes App Store.

Rather than being split out into categories for best game, best user experience, best application, and so on as has been the practice in past years, this year’s awards were simply organized into Mac and iPhone showcases. Here are the 2009 winners.

iPhone Developer Showcase

MLB.com At Bat 2009 from MLB.com

Postage from Rogue Sheep

Topple 2 from ngmoco:)

Tweetie from atebits

Mac OS X Leopard Developer Showcase

Billings from Marketcircle Inc.

BoinxTV from Boinx Software

Things from Cultured Code

Versions from Sofa

Student Awards

Wooden Labyrinth 3D from Elias Pietil

Fontcase from Pieter Omvlee

iPhone OS 3.0

AccuTerra Beta from AccuTerra

This last entry is pretty interesting. We saw lots of exciting and innovative apps in the WWDC Keynote on Monday that take advantage of the new features of iPhone OS 3.0, but AccuTerra was not presented there. The technologies utilized in this new hike tracking app are pretty extensive, though. I’m definitely looking forward to checking this out when it becomes available.

For more information about this year’s winners, here are some articles from TheAppleBlog that mention a few of them…

Weekly App Store Picks: March 14, 2009 (Topple 2)

Tweetie for Mac Update: Now With Video Tweeting

Billings 3 Brings Welcome Updates, Fresh Design

BoinxTV: Broadcasting for the rest of us

BoinxTV Now Shipping

Task Management With Things

12 Subversion Apps for OS X

Keep Your Fonts Together With Fontcase

Fonts 201: Font Management Apps for the Mac

Task Management With Things

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Best Leopard Application Winner: ScreenFlow – Again, a sweet screencasting app!
Best Leopard Application Runner Up: TimeLine 3D – Timeline making software. Great for schools and presentations.

Best iPhone Game: Enigmo – Puzzle Game
Best iPhone Entertainment App: AOL Radio – Self-explanatory
Best iPhone Social Networking: Twitterrific – Twitter Client
Best iPhone Productivity App: OmniFocus – GTD app
Best iPhone Health App: MIM – Imaging software for doctors.

Best iPhone Web App Runner Up: Associated Press
Best iPhone Web App Winner: Remember the Milk – GTD mobile App

Best Student Winner: Squirrel – Manage your finances (from a student?)
Best Student Runner Up: Flow – FTP Client

Graphics and Media Winner: ScreenFlow – A very slick-looking screencasting application
Graphics and Media Runner Up: Fotomagico – Pro photo presentation software

Leopard User Experience Winner: Macnification – Ease of use in working with scientific images
Leopard User Experience Runner Up: CheckOut – Point of sale application

Leopard Game Winner: Guitar Hero 3 – Um, if you don’t know about this already, you need to get out more.
Leopard Game Runner Up: Command and Conquer 3 – Real-time strategy game

Add your thoughts on who should have won (or at least runners up) in the comments.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks