2015 Apple Design Award Winners Announced: Fantastical 2, Workflow, Crossy Road, and More

[MacRumors]

Following today's Worldwide Developers keynote, Apple held an event to announce the winners of its prestigious Apple Design Awards. Apple's Design Awards are handed out each year and highlight a selection of the year's best apps available on iOS and Mac, honoring all kinds of apps from utilities to games.

Apple created its design awards to recognize high-quality apps that combine design and technology in creative, compelling, and powerful ways. Along with significant recognition and a trophy, Apple gives its Design Award winners a selection of Apple products each year.

This year's winners include popular calendar app Fantastical 2, personal automation tool Workflow, and stock trading app Robinhood. Games recognized included Shadowmatic and Crossy Road.

iOS and Mac
- Shadowmatic [iOS]
- Robinhood [iOS]
- Crossy Road [iOS]
- Workflow [iOS]
- Does Not Commute [iOS]
- Vainglory [iOS]
- Pacemaker [iOS]
- Metamorphabet [iOS]
- Fantastical 2 [Mac]
- Affinity Designer [Mac]

Student Winners
- Jump-O [iOS]
- Elementary Minute [iOS]

2014 winners of the Apple Design Awards included Threes!, Leo's Fortune, Blek, and Monument Valley. 2013 winners included Letterpress, Yahoo! Weather, and Evernote.

Article Link: 2015 Apple Design Award Winners Announced: Fantastical 2, Workflow, Crossy Road, and More

 

[AustinIllini]

Fantastical 2 is incredible. Totally deserving. Particularly considering the price on iOS

 

[ck2875]

Nice. I really look forward to this list each year. Hopefully all of these developers will see a nice sales spike for getting an award.

 

[umbilical]

crossy road needs pay copyrights to frogger Konami?
is the same thing... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frogger

 

[ErikGrim]

Fantastical is certainly worthy. Especially good to see them recognised as they are in direct competition to one of Apple's core apps. Something that wasn't even allowed back when the App Store started.

 

[CFreymarc]

Nice. I really look forward to this list each year. Hopefully all of these developers will see a nice sales spike for getting an award.

Typically an Apple design award makes the app in the Top 10 of its category for at least a month. Monument Valley went crazy after its award last year. Can see Shadowmatic do the same thing.

 

[CFreymarc]

crossy road needs pay copyrights to frogger Konami?
is the same thing... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frogger

Frogger is nearly public domain. Doubt if any clam can be as as the game came out over 30 years ago.

 

[AustinIllini]

Fantastical is certainly worthy. Especially good to see them recognised as they are in direct competition to one of Apple's core apps. Something that wasn't even allowed back when the App Store started.

You can see influence of Fantastical and similar "smart" apps in Siri's smarter implementation.

 

[PJL500]

Fantastical 2 is incredible. Totally deserving. Particularly considering the price on iOS

Yes, but way overpriced (update) on Mac.

 

[John.B]

Hilarious that Fantastical wins, despite Apple not sharing the Travel Time API with the developers.

 

[ErikGrim]

Hilarious that Fantastical wins, despite Apple not sharing the Travel Time API with the developers.

Huh? They clearly demoed a third party complication responding to Time Travel. Also: how is that relevant?

 

[ginkobiloba]

Well deserved for Affinity Designer. It's the first real competitor to Adobe's Illustrator, and with a ten times more elegant interface.( and an insanely low price )

 

[jayducharme]

Well deserved for Affinity Designer. It's the first real competitor to Adobe's Illustrator, and with a ten times more elegant interface.( and an insanely low price )

I completely agree. Affinity has a good UI team. I'm currently beta-testing the upcoming Affinity Photo and it's impressively powerful yet with a much more intuitive interface than any other similar app on the market.

 

[darkfiber]

crossy road needs pay copyrights to frogger Konami?
is the same thing... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frogger

The same can be said for countless other video games that were inspired by other games if Konami can sue Crossy Road.

 

[John.B]

Huh? They clearly demoed a third party complication responding to Time Travel. Also: how is that relevant?

Neither the OSX nor iOS versions of Fantastical 2 support Travel Time, allegedly because the API for it is private and so not available for developers. According to the UI, the Travel Time is nonexistent. Though the alerts do go off at the correct time.

Also: how is that relevant?

It's relevant because it puts them at a decided disadvantage, selling calendar apps on the various App Stores that aren't able to support all the features available in iCloud-based calendars.

Sheesh!

 

[markyr17]

Great to see vainglory in the list

 

[mrxak]

Neither the OSX nor iOS versions of Fantastical 2 support Travel Time, allegedly because the API for it is private and so not available for developers. According to the UI, the Travel Time is nonexistent. Though the alerts do go off at the correct time.



It's relevant because it puts them at a decided disadvantage, selling calendar apps on the various App Stores that aren't able to support all the features available in iCloud-based calendars.

Sheesh!

Travel Time is very different from Time Travel. You shouldn't get mad at him for your mistake in communicating.

 

[NomadicTy]

I love using Fantastical 2 on my mac. But geesh, you have to keep it running or it won't update, nor send you reminders. I hope they fix that, because that surely is not a feature. A little applet on up on the bar should be fine, but not the whole app running all the time.

 

[Trahearne]

I love using Fantastical 2 on my mac. But geesh, you have to keep it running or it won't update, nor send you reminders. I hope they fix that, because that surely is not a feature. A little applet on up on the bar should be fine, but not the whole app running all the time.

What's the real problem with this? When you hide the window or make it invisible in any way, it goes into App Nap mode. When you close the window, generally the window gets destroyed and only the background stuff is running. Just like Windows, but (for most cases) all under the same dock icon instead of stacks of windows in the task bar, sometimes a tray icon and perhaps some invisible processes. Well, it is a different convention in UX from Windows.

"A little applet up on the bar" wouldn't be something radically different, frankly. You may lose the little dot on the dock (oh, Fantastical 1), but anything else? If the software properly releases unused resources, unlikely.

 

[Aniseedvan]

Really pleased Workflow is on there. Was in a meeting with my work PC instead of my iPad yesterday and taking meeting minutes was so clunky compared to the workflow/drafts set up I have..
(I deliberately didn't take it in incase the conversation sidelined into a BYOD for the client which we're not ready to have yet....)
Fantastical 2 has rather slipped off my usage. I'm constantly fighting one time password alerts for my google calendars on my MBA (MBP is fine) and (at least when I'm on my own!) reverted to siri on my AW to create new calendar events...