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2021 Apple Design Award Winners: The AppStories Interviews→

Federico and I had the pleasure of interviewing four of the twelve 2021 Apple Design Award winners for AppStories. The awards, which were announced by Apple last Thursday, recognized an app and a game in each of the following categories for their outstanding designs: Inclusivity, Delight and Fun, Interaction, Social Impact, Visuals and Graphics, and Innovation.

For today’s special episode, which is the official kick-off of our Summer OS Preview Series of stories and AppStories episodes, we spoke with the following ADA winners:

  • Winston Chen, the developer of Voice Dream Reader, which won an ADA in the Inclusivity category
  • Esther Huybreghts, Mathijs Demaeght, and Melissa Cash from Pok Pok, the developers of Pok Pok Playroom, which won an ADA in the Delight and Fun category, and we covered when it launched
  • Brian Mueller, the developer of CARROT Weather, which won an ADA in the Interaction category and has been covered often on MacStories
  • Maria Sayans and David Fernandez Huerta from ustwo games, the creators of Alba: A Wildlife Adventure, which won an ADA in the Social Impact category

All four interviews are fantastic conversations that reveal common threads of thoughtful design, innovative approaches that feature the latest Apple technology, and a deep understanding of their users.

Thank you to everyone for taking the time for the interviews, Apple for helping arrange them, and as always, thank you for listening to AppStories. We hope you enjoy the episode.

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Concepts: Sketch, Note, Draw

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AppStories, Episode 226 – Three Features That Set iOS 15 Apart→

This week on AppStories, we cover the three features that will sell iOS 15 to most users: Focus Mode, SharePlay, and Live Text and share some of our recent audio gear purchases for lossless streaming and AirPlay. We also took questions from listeners who watched us record the episode on Instagram Live.

Sponsored by:

  • DEVONthink – The one place for storing and working with all your documents, snippets, and bookmarks.
  • 1Blocker – Remove ads, trackers, and browse faster.
  • Pillow – Sleeping better, made simple.

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Five Years Ago, Apple Released a Comic Book of the App Store Review Guidelines

It has become commonplace for Apple’s App Store Review Guidelines to be revised throughout the year, but WWDC often brings the biggest changes. However, no WWDC brought bigger changes than WWDC 2016. Five years ago yesterday, Apple unveiled a completely rewritten set of guidelines, and to go with it, the company released…

… a comic book.

Read more

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Founded in 2015, Club MacStories has delivered exclusive content every week for nearly a decade.

What started with weekly and monthly email newsletters has blossomed into a family of memberships designed for every MacStories fan.

Learn more here and from our Club FAQs.

Club MacStories: Weekly and monthly newsletters via email and the web that are brimming with apps, tips, automation workflows, longform writing, early access to the MacStories Unwind podcast, periodic giveaways, and more;

Club MacStories+: Everything that Club MacStories offers, plus an active Discord community, advanced search and custom RSS features for exploring the Club’s entire back catalog, bonus columns, and dozens of app discounts;

Club Premier: All of the above and AppStories+, an extended version of our flagship podcast that’s delivered early, ad-free, and in high-bitrate audio.

Learn more here and from our Club FAQs.

MacStadium: The Developer Cloud for Mac [Sponsor]

For nearly a decade, MacStadium has been solely focused on providing developers and Mac enthusiasts with customized Apple-centric solutions. MacStadium provides Mac infrastructure for everyone from solo developers to growing startups to Fortune 100 companies. Its solutions are trusted by iOS developers, mobile testing teams, and DevOps engineers around the world. In fact, MacStories has been running smoothly on MacStadium for years.

MacStadium provides solutions to fit every need. The company offers Intel-based Macs and the latest M1 Mac minis. The company has hundreds of those M1 minis in three different configurations in its data centers, ready for instant activation for your next project.

MacStadium is the only cloud provider to support and scale virtualization on Mac hardware. They can create private cloud environments with VMware, Veertu’s Anka, and their own Kubernetes-based Orka solution. With more teams working from home than ever, having a Mac build infrastructure in the cloud is the perfect way to ensure your app developers can work as efficiently as possible.

Recently, MacStadium announced a partnership with Teradici, the creator of PCoIP technology, to create high-performance remote access for the Mac. Working with Apple, the collaboration leverages MacStadium’s infrastructure to streamline and accelerate the delivery of Teradici CAS with PCoIP support for Mac customers around the world. Stay tuned because a product will be publicly available later this summer.

Whatever your Mac infrastructure needs, you owe it to yourself to give MacStadium a look today.

Our thanks to MacStadium for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Join

Access Extra Content and Perks

Founded in 2015, Club MacStories has delivered exclusive content every week for nearly a decade.

What started with weekly and monthly email newsletters has blossomed into a family of memberships designed for every MacStories fan.

Learn more here and from our Club FAQs.

Club MacStories: Weekly and monthly newsletters via email and the web that are brimming with apps, tips, automation workflows, longform writing, early access to the MacStories Unwind podcast, periodic giveaways, and more;

Club MacStories+: Everything that Club MacStories offers, plus an active Discord community, advanced search and custom RSS features for exploring the Club’s entire back catalog, bonus columns, and dozens of app discounts;

Club Premier: All of the above and AppStories+, an extended version of our flagship podcast that’s delivered early, ad-free, and in high-bitrate audio.

Learn more here and from our Club FAQs.

MacStories Unwind: WWDC Recap: OS Overviews, Shortcuts on the Mac, Spatial and Lossless Audio, and Apple Design Awards

AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps
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AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

Sponsored by:
* Daylite – The CRM with Apple Fans in Mind.
* Raycast – Goodbye Spotlight. Hello Raycast.

This week, Federico and John look back at all of the WWDC announcements and coverage at MacStories, AppStories, and the Club, plus news about spatial and lossless audio, and game and music Unwind picks for the weekend.

MacStories

Club MacStories

  • MacStories Weekly
    • Coming Saturday, a WWDC themed issue for Club members.

AppStories

Unwind Picks

You can follow all of our WWDC coverage through our WWDC 2021 hub, or subscribe to the dedicated WWDC 2021 RSS feed.

Join

Access Extra Content and Perks

Founded in 2015, Club MacStories has delivered exclusive content every week for nearly a decade.

What started with weekly and monthly email newsletters has blossomed into a family of memberships designed for every MacStories fan.

Learn more here and from our Club FAQs.

Club MacStories: Weekly and monthly newsletters via email and the web that are brimming with apps, tips, automation workflows, longform writing, early access to the MacStories Unwind podcast, periodic giveaways, and more;

Club MacStories+: Everything that Club MacStories offers, plus an active Discord community, advanced search and custom RSS features for exploring the Club’s entire back catalog, bonus columns, and dozens of app discounts;

Club Premier: All of the above and AppStories+, an extended version of our flagship podcast that’s delivered early, ad-free, and in high-bitrate audio.

Learn more here and from our Club FAQs.

2021 Apple Design Awards Given to Twelve Developers

The annual Apple Design Awards were handled a little differently this year. On June 1st, the company, for the first time, announced finalists in six categories: Inclusivity, Delight and Fun, Interaction, Social Impact, Visuals and Graphics, and Innovation. For each category, Apple picked six finalists for a total of 36 ADA contenders.

As a part of sessions held at WWDC today, Apple announced the 12 winners, an app and game in each category:

Inclusivity

App Winner: Voice Dream Reader

Apple picked Voice Dream Reader as the winner for the app Inclusivity ADA for its use of VoiceOver technology. The app is a text-to-speech reader that can turn any document or ebook into audio.

Game Winner: HoloVista

In the game Inclusivity category, Apple chose HoloVista, a game where you explore a mysterious mansion, filled with secrets you need to uncover.

Read more

Join

Access Extra Content and Perks

Founded in 2015, Club MacStories has delivered exclusive content every week for nearly a decade.

What started with weekly and monthly email newsletters has blossomed into a family of memberships designed for every MacStories fan.

Learn more here and from our Club FAQs.

Club MacStories: Weekly and monthly newsletters via email and the web that are brimming with apps, tips, automation workflows, longform writing, early access to the MacStories Unwind podcast, periodic giveaways, and more;

Club MacStories+: Everything that Club MacStories offers, plus an active Discord community, advanced search and custom RSS features for exploring the Club’s entire back catalog, bonus columns, and dozens of app discounts;

Club Premier: All of the above and AppStories+, an extended version of our flagship podcast that’s delivered early, ad-free, and in high-bitrate audio.

Learn more here and from our Club FAQs.