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Posts tagged with "developers"

2025 App Store Award Winners Revealed

From a pool of 45 finalists, Apple has named 17 App Store Award winners comprised of apps and games across all of its platforms. This year’s App Store Award honors were presented to:

Apps

iPhone App of the Year: Tiimo from tiimo. 

iPad App of the Year: Detail from Detail Technologies B.V. 

Mac App of the Year: Essayist from Essayist Software Inc. 

Apple Vision Pro App of the Year: Explore POV by James Hustler.

Apple Watch App of the Year: Strava from Strava, Inc. 

Apple TV App of the Year: HBO Max from WarnerMedia Global Digital Services, LLC.

Games

iPhone Game of the Year: Pokémon TCG Pocket from The Pokemon Company. 

iPad Game of the Year: DREDGE from Black Salt Games. 

Mac Game of the Year: Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition from CD PROJEKT S.A. 

Apple Vision Pro Game of the Year: Porta Nubi by Michael Temper.

Apple Arcade Game of the Year: WHAT THE CLASH? from Triband ApS.

Cultural Impact

Art of Fauna by Klemens Strasser

Chants of Sennaar from Playdigious

despelote from Panic, Inc.

Be My Eyes from Be My Eyes

Focus Friend by Hank Green from B-Tech Consulting Group LLC

StoryGraph from The StoryGraph

Tim Cook had this to say about the winners and their apps:

Every year, we’re inspired by the ways developers turn their best ideas into innovative experiences that enrich people’s lives. This year’s winners represent the creativity and excellence that define the App Store, and they demonstrate the meaningful impact that world-class apps and games have on people everywhere.

This year’s list of App Store winners is one of my favorites for a bunch of reasons. There are excellent games ranging from Art of Fauna by indie developer Klemens Strasser to Cyberpunk 2077 by CD PROJEKT S.A., as well as other great titles like despelote, which was published by our friends at Panic, Chants of Sennaar, and DREDGE, whose creators Federico and I interviewed at WWDC this year. There were other excellent apps, too, like Essayist, the academic-focused word processor.

Of course, my favorite app among the bunch is Detail, this year’s iPad App of the Year. Yes, I’m hopelessly biased because my son Finn is part of the team that built the app. But it’s also a great example of an app that lowers the barriers to creativity by leveraging Apple’s hardware in a unique way.

Congratulations to all of this year’s App Store Award winners. Of all the apps on the App Store, it’s quite an honor to be among the 17 apps recognized by Apple’s editorial team.

Finally, the year-end award season isn’t over. We’ll be presenting the 2025 MacStories Selects Awards later this month, so keep an eye out for more award-winning app coverage from us.

Wading Back Into the Liquid Glass Pool: The MacStories OS 26 App Roundup Continued

Last month, we featured 15 great examples of apps that have adopted Apple’s Liquid Glass design language and latest APIs. Today, the MacStories team is sharing nine more of our favorite updates that take advantage of Apple’s latest technologies.

We’ll have additional coverage in the weeks ahead, but for now, let’s dive into even more of the best OS 26 updates we’ve seen this fall.

Denim

John: I remember when Denim was first released. It was a great idea that filled a gap in Apple’s Music app, allowing users to create their own playlist covers. The designs you could make with that first version were nice, though fairly modest. But Denim is one of those indie developer stories that I love. Through relentless iteration, the app has evolved into something very special, being named an Apple Design Award finalist in the Delight and Fun category earlier this year.

With the OS 26 release cycle, Denim is all-in on Liquid Glass. We’ve covered a lot of great Liquid Glass implementations already, but Denim’s is extra special. The design is present in the app’s tab bar, where you’ll see the glass blob effect, but it’s also in the animations, like when you return from the cover picker to your playlists. Similar animations are on display when you tap the ‘+’ button to add a new cover or the ‘…’ button.

Denim’s Gallery interface is an excellent example of Liquid Glass used to display a collection of artwork. The view has a lot in common with apps like Music, but it does a better job of implementing the design without sacrificing legibility, thanks to its buttons’ frosted treatment.

Denim’s Liquid Glass update aside, if you haven’t tried the app in a while, it’s worth taking another look at. I get tired of the auto-generated playlist art in Music, and the alternative covers Apple added a couple of years ago are uninspired. In contrast, Denim offers a wide variety of styles with highly customizable artwork, fonts, and colors. The gallery is incredibly deep, allowing you to make some fantastic covers.

Denim, which is iPhone-only, is available on the App Store for $2.99/month, $9.99/year, or a one-time payment of $29.99.

Drafts

Federico: 2025 has been the year that I’ve fully embraced Drafts as my Markdown text editor/notepad of choice, and that’s all thanks to AI. Let me explain: thanks to the advancements in coding for models like GPT-5 and Sonnet 4.5, I’ve been able to turn Drafts into a highly personalized, extensible plain text editor that – unlike Obsidian – is natively integrated with Apple’s design language and latest platform features. That was never the case with Obsidian, which is an Electron app at its core and can’t match the pace of truly native apps for iOS and iPadOS. With Drafts, I get to have my cake and eat it too; I can “vibe-code” my own actions thanks to Claude, and I don’t have to give up on the nice perks that come with an application that is frequently updated for the latest Apple APIs.

Over the past two months, Drafts has received a series of notable updates for the 26 family of OSes. The app has been updated for Liquid Glass, which I think pairs well with Drafts’ UI, but more importantly, it’s also been optimized for iPadOS 26. That means full integration with the menu bar, multi-windowing, and keyboard shortcuts. Greg Pierce has done a solid job integrating with App Intents: Drafts actions can now be triggered from Control Center on the Mac and Apple Watch, and there’s a new ‘Show Capture’ action in Shortcuts that opens the app’s Capture window with the ability to pre-fill some text in it. Last but not least, Pierce also added support for the on-device Foundation model, which can be invoked from Drafts’ JavaScript-based scripting library to access tools that let you query drafts, create new ones, and more.

In a sea of so-called “opinionated” text editors that often use that adjective as an excuse for their lack of features, Drafts has managed to keep its simplicity while unlocking incredible potential for power users. If you haven’t played around with Drafts in a while, its latest updates for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS 26 are a great opportunity to test the app again.

Drafts is available as a free download for iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch, with the full feature set available as part of Drafts Pro for $1.99/month or $19.99/year.

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Apple Announces 45 App Store Awards Finalists for 2025

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Today, Apple announced the finalists for the 2025 App Store Awards. The App Store Awards are Apple’s annual celebration of exceptional apps and games across 12 categories spanning the company’s platforms. It’s an excellent collection that includes solo developers, small indie teams, big companies, and many MacStories favorites.

Here’s the complete list of finalists.

iPhone App of the Year Finalists:

iPhone Game of the Year Finalists:

iPad App of the Year Finalists:

iPad Game of the Year Finalists:

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Apple Beefed Up Its Rule Against Copycat Apps→

Last week, I wrote about Apple’s new policies surrounding mini apps. However, that wasn’t the only change made to the App Review Guidelines last week. Apple also added a new subsection “c” to its rule against Copycat apps:

4.1(c) You cannot use another developer’s icon, brand, or product name in your app’s icon or name, without approval from the developer.

As I wrote earlier this year, this isn’t a new problem, especially for developers of popular games on other platforms. Copycat versions of Blue Prince, Palworld, Wordle, Cuphead, Balatro (before it was released on the App Store), and Unpacking have all appeared on the App Store in recent years.

The update to App Guideline 4.1 shows that Apple is aware of the problem, which is a step in the right direction. Hopefully, the awareness will lead to better enforcement, too.

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Apple Introduces a Mini App Partner Program Featuring a Reduced Commission

Today on its news site for developers, Apple announced a new Mini Apps Partner Program for the App Store. The announcement is brief but backed by a more detailed explanation about the eligibility requirements. Here’s how it works.

As Apple explains, mini apps are “self-contained experiences that are built using web technologies like HTML5 and JavaScript” that are hosted within a native app. That’s not something new. Companies like WeChat and Line have offered this sort of thing for a long time, and Apple has supported mini apps officially since 2017. What’s different is that now, developers who meet Apple’s eligibility requirements can offer those mini apps at a reduced commission. That means for any mini app not made by the developer of the native app that hosts them, the hosting developer will pay Apple a flat 15% commission.

To be eligible for the program, developers must ensure that the mini apps they host support certain APIs, including the Declared Age Range API and the Advanced Commerce API, the In-App Purchase system, and the Send Consumption Information endpoint that enables the processing of refunds. In other words, native app developers who do the work to ensure that mini apps meet the program requirements will pay Apple a reduced commission on mini app sales in return.

If you’re wondering what constitutes a mini app, Apple has provided some examples. Mini apps are “software packages, scripts, or game content that are added after app installation and executed on the device, provided such code is written in HTML5 or JavaScript, or another language approved by Apple”, such as mini games, streaming games, chatbots, plug-ins, and game emulators. As I mentioned above, it’s also important to keep in mind that mini apps are apps that are not controlled by the developer of the native app that hosts them.

Also, to participate in the Mini App Partner program, developers must apply – that link takes you to a form requesting information about the mini apps a developer wants to offer, so eligibility can be determined.

App Store users stand to benefit from the program, too. APIs like the Declared Age Rating API will help ensure that only age-appropriate mini apps are available to kids. Plus, by supporting the Advanced Commerce API, mini apps will include more metadata, providing users with a richer experience in places like their App Store purchase history.

Mini apps based on web technologies are a growing part of the App Store. The App Review Guidelines have accounted for mini apps since 2017 and the rules around them have continued to adapt to the market ever since. The Mini App Partner Program reflects the further evolution of the category, promoting privacy and transparency for users, while offering the carrot of lower commissions to developers.

What will be interesting to watch is the extent to which developers sign up for this new program. The program isn’t required (although compliance with App Review Guideline 4.7 still applies), so it will come down to whether the reduced commission provides sufficient incentive for developers to further police the mini apps they host.

Proposed Epic–Google Deal Would Expand Access to the Play Store→

Late yesterday, Epic Games and Google announced a settlement of their Google Play Store litigation that, subject to court approval, would open Google’s storefront more widely than ever before.

Like Apple’s revisions to its store in response to the European Commission, Google’s settlement is complex, but here are some of the highlights, as reported by Sean Hollister for The Verge:

  • Whereas the U.S. District Court’s injunction only applied to the U.S. Play Store, the settlement is global.
  • The settlement also runs through 2032, which extends beyond the three years ordered by the court.
  • Google has agreed to reduce its standard fee to 20%, and in some cases, 9% depending on the type of transaction.
  • Google will create a registration system to allow third-party storefronts.
  • Developer fees for using Play Billing, Google’s payment system, will be separated from the transaction fees.

As I said, though, there’s a lot more to the proposed settlement that you can read in full in the PDF linked in The Verge’s story, and it’s subject to court approval, but it does seem to reflect significant concessions by Google.

What does this mean for Apple and its App Store skirmishes with regulators around the world? Nothing technically; however, contextually, if the settlement is implemented, it should add to the pressure on Apple to open the App Store more widely in the U.S. and elsewhere.

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Apple Highlights Apps Using Its Foundation Models Framework

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Earlier today, Apple published a press release highlighting some of the apps that are taking advantage of its new Foundation Models framework. As you’d expect, indie developers and small teams are well-represented among the apps promoted in the press release. Among them are:

It’s a group of apps that does a great job of demonstrating the breadth of creativity among developers who can leverage these privacy-first, on-device models to enhance their users’ experiences.

Apple’s happy to see developers adopting the new framework, too. Susan Prescott, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations, said:

We’re excited to see developers around the world already bringing privacy-protected intelligence features into their apps. The in-app experiences they’re creating are expansive and creative, showing just how much opportunity the Foundation Models framework opens up. From generating journaling prompts that will spark creativity in Stoic, to conversational explanations of scientific terms in CellWalk, it’s incredible to see the powerful new capabilities that are already enhancing the apps people use every day.

Judging what we’ve seen from developers here at MacStories, these examples are just the tip of the iceberg. I expect you’ll see more and more of your favorite apps adding features that take advantage of the Apple Foundation Models in the coming months.

Swift Assist, Part Deux

At WWDC 2024, I attended a developer tools briefing with Jason Snell, Dan Moren, and John Gruber. Later, I wrote about Swift Assist, an AI-based code generation tool that Apple was working on for Xcode.

That first iteration of Swift Assist caught my eye as promising, but I remember asking at the time whether it could modify multiple files in a project at once and being told it couldn’t. What I saw was rudimentary by 2025’s standards with things like Cursor, but I was glad to see that Apple was working on a generative tool for Xcode users.

In the months that followed, I all but forgot that briefing and story, until a wave of posts asking, “Whatever happened to Swift Assist?” started appearing on social media and blogs. John Gruber and Nick Heer picked up on the thread and came across my story, citing it as evidence that the MIA feature was real but curiously absent from any of 2024’s Xcode betas.

This year, Jason Snell and I had a mini reunion of sorts during another developer tools briefing. This time, it was just the two of us. Among the Xcode features we saw was a much more robust version of Swift Assist that, unlike in 2024, is already part of the Xcode 26 betas. Having been the only one who wrote about the feature last year, I couldn’t let the chance to document what I saw this year slip by.

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Hands-On: How Apple’s New Speech APIs Outpace Whisper for Lightning-Fast Transcription

Late last Tuesday night, after watching F1: The Movie at the Steve Jobs Theater, I was driving back from dropping Federico off at his hotel when I got a text:

Can you pick me up?

It was from my son Finn, who had spent the evening nearby and was stalking me in Find My. Of course, I swung by and picked him up, and we headed back to our hotel in Cupertino.

On the way, Finn filled me in on a new class in Apple’s Speech framework called SpeechAnalyzer and its SpeechTranscriber module. Both the class and module are part of Apple’s OS betas that were released to developers last week at WWDC. My ears perked up immediately when he told me that he’d tested SpeechAnalyzer and SpeechTranscriber and was impressed with how fast and accurate they were.

It’s still early days for these technologies, but I’m here to tell you that their speed alone is a game changer for anyone who uses voice transcription to create text from lectures, podcasts, YouTube videos, and more. That’s something I do multiple times every week for AppStories, NPC, and Unwind, generating transcripts that I upload to YouTube because the site’s built-in transcription isn’t very good.

What’s frustrated me with other tools is how slow they are. Most are built on Whisper, OpenAI’s open source speech-to-text model, which was released in 2022. It’s cheap at under a penny per one million tokens, but isn’t fast, which is frustrating when you’re in the final steps of a YouTube workflow.

An SRT file generated by Yap.

An SRT file generated by Yap.

I asked Finn what it would take to build a command line tool to transcribe video and audio files with SpeechAnalyzer and SpeechTranscriber. He figured it would only take about 10 minutes, and he wasn’t far off. In the end, it took me longer to get around to installing macOS Tahoe after WWDC than it took Finn to build Yap, a simple command line utility that takes audio and video files as input and outputs SRT- and TXT-formatted transcripts.

Yesterday, I finally took the Tahoe plunge and immediately installed Yap. I grabbed the 7GB 4K video version of AppStories episode 441, which is about 34 minutes long, and ran it through Yap. It took just 45 seconds to generate an SRT file. Here’s Yap ripping through nearly 20% of an episode of NPC in 10 seconds:

Replay

Next, I ran the same file through VidCap and MacWhisper, using its V2 Large and V3 Turbo models. Here’s how each app and model did:

App Transcripiton Time
Yap 0:45
MacWhisper (Large V3 Turbo) 1:41
VidCap 1:55
MacWhisper (Large V2) 3:55

All three transcription workflows had similar trouble with last names and words like “AppStories,” which LLMs tend to separate into two words instead of camel casing. That’s easily fixed by running a set of find and replace rules, although I’d love to feed those corrections back into the model itself for future transcriptions.

Once transcribed, a video can be used to generate additional formats like outlines.

Once transcribed, a video can be used to generate additional formats like outlines.

What stood out above all else was Yap’s speed. By harnessing SpeechAnalyzer and SpeechTranscriber on-device, the command line tool tore through the 7GB video file a full 2.2× faster than MacWhisper’s Large V3 Turbo model, with no noticeable difference in transcription quality.

At first blush, the difference between 0:45 and 1:41 may seem insignificant, and it arguably is, but those are the results for just one 34-minute video. Extrapolate that to running Yap against the hours of Apple Developer videos released on YouTube with the help of yt-dlp, and suddenly, you’re talking about a significant amount of time. Like all automation, picking up a 2.2× speed gain one video or audio clip at a time, multiple times each week, adds up quickly.

Whether you’re producing video for YouTube and need subtitles, generating transcripts to summarize lectures at school, or doing something else, SpeechAnalyzer and SpeechTranscriber – available across the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Vision Pro – mark a significant leap forward in transcription speed without compromising on quality. I fully expect this combination to replace Whisper as the default transcription model for transcription apps on Apple platforms.

To test Apple’s new model, install the macOS Tahoe beta, which currently requires an Apple developer account, and then install Yap from its GitHub page.