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The 2015 Apple Design Award Winners

Every year at WWDC, Apple celebrates excellence in mobile and desktop software with the Apple Design Awards. Apple recognizes apps that demonstrate technical excellence, innovation and outstanding design to provide an immersive, fun, and compelling experience.

These apps raise the bar in design, technology and innovation with rich functionality and high performance, taking advantage of the latest features in iOS and OS X to provide unique experiences that enrich the App Store and customers’ lives. This year, Apple is recognizing “state of the art iOS, OS X, and Apple Watch apps that reflect excellence in design and innovation”.

After evaluating the broadest set of apps possible from the App Store and Mac App Store, Apple has picked this year’s winners with a dedicated event at Moscone West on WWDC 2015 opening day. We have compiled the full list of 2015 Apple Design Award Winners below.

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OS X El Capitan Overview

OS X El Capitan

OS X El Capitan

This morning at Apple’s WWDC 2015 keynote event, SVP of Software Engineering Craig Federighi took the stage to announce OS X El Capitan. The next major version of Apple’s Mac operating system, El Capitan has two major areas of focus: Experience and Performance.

Experience

The improved experience in OS X El Capitan revolves around three main categories: Spotlight search, built-in apps, and window management.

Improved Spotlight search

Improved Spotlight search

Spotlight search has greatly improved search functionality, making the feature smarter and more powerful by building in natural language processing and integrating it with more services. Now you can perform searches with phrases such as “big sur sunset,” and Spotlight will surface videos from the web that show the sunset in Big Sur. Spotlight has also gained some other nice touches such as the ability to resize or move the spotlight window around on your screen and integration with weather, stocks, sports, transit, and the aforementioned web video.

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Apple Posts WWDC 2015 Keynote Video

For those who didn’t follow the live stream or announcements as they unfolded on Twitter and blogs, Apple has now posted the video of its WWDC 2015 keynote held earlier today at Moscone West in San Francisco.

The video can be streamed here, and a higher quality version should be made available in a few hours through iTunes (on the Apple Keynotes podcast). To avoid streaming errors, Safari is recommended for the best viewing experience.

Apple has also posted a film and a TV ad for its new music service, called Apple Music. Both are available on the Apple Music website.

For more coverage, check out our WWDC 2015 news hub and follow @MacStoriesNet on Twitter for updates.

The Numbers from Apple’s WWDC 2015 Keynote

Apple CEO Tim Cook walked on stage today and kicked off the company’s 2015 Worldwide Developers Conference with his usual opening remarks, but the entire keynote was filled with interesting facts and statistics.

From adoption rates to apps downloaded from the App Store, these numbers are interesting as they’re typically shared throughout the year in dedicated events or press releases; at WWDC, Apple can provide a mid-year overview before switching gears to talk about new iOS devices in the Fall.

We’ve compiled the most important numbers from Apple’s WWDC 2015 keynote below.

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Apple’s Tim Cook Talks Diversity, Women→

Cook doesn’t subscribe to the idea that women just don’t want to be involved in tech — calling that argument a “cop-out.”

“I think it’s our fault — ‘our’ meaning the whole tech community,” he says. “I think in general we haven’t done enough to reach out and show young women that it’s cool to do it and how much fun it can be.”

Christina Warren interviewed Tim Cook about Apple’s diversity efforts, women and app development, and gender/racial equality in tech. As Cook suggests, it sounds like women will be on stage at Apple’s WWDC keynote today – a “finally” is appropriate in this case.

I asked Cook about the lack of women at WWDC keynotes. he smiled. “Look tomorrow,” he said. “Look tomorrow and let me know what you think.

Speaking of which, Jean MacDonald is currently running a crowdfunding campaign for App Camp For Girls 3.0. This is an important mission and you can show your support here.

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Automatic: Your Smart Driving Assistant on Your Smartphone [Sponsor]

There’s a mountain of data inside your car waiting to be unleashed, and all you have to do is plug in a quick little connector and download a mobile application.

Automatic is a smart driving assistant that plugs into your car’s data port and lets you connect your smartphone (either iPhone or Android) with your car. By  talking to your car’s onboard computer and using your smartphone’s GPS and data plan to upgrade your car’s capabilities, Automatic will allow you to easily diagnose your engine light, never forget where you parked your car, and save hundreds of dollars on gas.

Automatic learns your driving habits and gives you suggestions through subtle audio cues to drive smarter and stop wasting gas. Thanks to a map view available on your phone, Automatic can display a trip timeline after every driving session, showing you how you’re doing with a Drive Score; the app can even track local gas prices and tell you how much you’re spending.

In case of engine problems, Automatic can decipher what the “check engine” light means and show you a description of the issue with a possible solution. And thanks to a feature called Crash Alert, Automatic can detect many types of serious crashes and automatically alert local authorities as well as your loved ones when you can’t.

Automatic is currently available in the US for iPhone and Android devices, with a 45-day return policy and free shipping in 2 business days.

MacStories readers can go to automatic.com/macstories to get $20 off and buy Automatic at just $79.99. For more information, check out Automatic’s website.

Our thanks to Automatic for sponsoring MacStories this week.

TestFlight, One Year Later→

Nick Arnott has taken a look at TestFlight a year after its relaunch and I agree with his overall take. I write about apps for a living (I currently have 74 betas in my TestFlight), and the simplicity of Apple’s system is unparalleled. I just need to give developers my email and that’s it.

I also agree with Nick’s comments on frustrations with using TestFlight. I hope that Apple will continue tweaking these aspects going forward.

I’ve experienced a few minor frustrations with as a user though. For example, I can’t accept an invitation from my computer — I have to accept an invitation from the device I want to test on. Also, TestFlight emails don’t contain any release notes. With other services like HockeyApp, developer release notes are included in the email, so you can decide from the email if you care about the update or not. Lack of these release notes from TestFlight means you’ll have to tap through to the app and view on your testing device to see if you want the update or not.

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“Laughing and Crying My Way Through the New Google Photos”→

My first watch of this video hit me emotionally in a way that’s hard to articulate. The film itself is a new kind of uncanny valley for digital artifacts: Assistant and its algorithms combined these clips in a way that no reasonable person would attempt. Ever. The result is surreal, random, creepy, sad, and oddly funny. It had to be a coincidence of timing that I had only just returned from visiting Grumpy on his deathbed. But partly because of that timing, this video present came at a moment when I was primed to appreciate it. Maybe it won’t be long before services try (and fail) to do this sort of thing on purpose, offering us narratives that highlight timely memories, or videos designed to fill anticipated emotional needs. My photos are still uploading.

Ryan Gantz has shared a personal story about photos he took at family events and how Google Photos put them all together automatically. The result is indeed funny and weird at the same time, but Ryan ended up appreciating it anyway.

There have been some interesting discussions about privacy and the value of Google Photos over the past week. So far, I agree completely with Manton Reece:

My family photos are the most important files I have on my computer, and I very rarely share any photos of my kids publicly. But ironically I’m willing to overlook some of the privacy concerns around this exactly because the photos are so valuable to me. I want multiple copies in the cloud, and I want the power of search that Google has built.

“Kind of creepy but I appreciate it” seems to be a common theme around Google Photos.

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Connected: Intellectual Ambiguity→

This week, Stephen and Myke talk to Russell Ivanovic about Google Photos and then go on to make their WWDC predictions.

I couldn’t join Myke and Stephen this week, and, as usual, they did a great job at covering Google’s announcements and predictions for WWDC 2015. You can listen to the episode here.

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