
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
Mac OS X Leopard Developer Showcase




Billings from Marketcircle Inc.
BoinxTV from Boinx Software
Things from Cultured Code
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
Keep Your Fonts Together With Fontcase
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