The Apple Design Awards 2010 recognize iPhone OS applications that demonstrate technical excellence, innovation, superior technology adoption, high performance, and outstanding design. Each year, winning products set new standards for the developer community to follow. Read about what made this year’s winners stand out above the rest.
Well-deserved, though I think there are too many games represented in the iPad group. Star Walk is particularly awesome.
Gizmodo’s Joel Johnson, responding to Cory Doctorow:
The old guard has The Fear. They see the iPad and the excitement it has engendered and realize that they’ve made themselves inessential—or at least invisible. They’ve realized that it’s possible to make a computer that doesn’t break, doesn’t stop working, doesn’t need constant tinkering. Unlike a car, it’s possible to design a computer that is bulletproof. It just turns out that one of the ways to make that work is to lock it down. That sucks, but it certainly appears to be a better solution than design by committee gave us for the last couple of decades.
Stuff like this is why the iPad excites me. Not only is it going to be dead simple to use, it’s the first truly new paradigm in interface design we’ve seen since… well, the iPhone. It really is like personal computing’s Wii.
An awesome write-up on how the brand-new, released-on-launch-day iPhone app came to be from Raanan:
Back in late February I met up with Raven Zachary and his team from Small Society as well as our own Matt Mullenweg, to figure out if we could get an iPad app for WordPress ready in less than 30 days.
The team at Automattic pulled it off, and iPad users will be rocking the official WordPress app starting tomorrow morning. Check out the full post, which includes one of WordPress.com’s fancy new slideshows, and this shot of the plan behind the app:
So cool.
My iPhone is a relative newcomer to my stable of gadgets, and I’ve taken the opportunity to use it to capture a lot of photos basically whenever I can. It’s certainly an interesting feeling having a camera of decent quality with me at all times, and it gives me a measure of spontaneity in capturing some of the moments of my life.
The gallery I’ve embedded after the cut is a small collection of my favorites so far into my mobile life. I hope some of them are appreciated.
If you haven’t cleared the photos off your iPhone in a while, take a moment to do so and leave a link in the comments. I’d be happy to see what others have been capturing as well.
I’d heard of The Best Camera for a while now, but it wasn’t until I read this article from Phil Coffman (hat tip to Gruber) that I decided to start playing around with my iPhone camera and see what I could do with it. It’s very rare that I have a full-size camera around with me, but the iPhone is in my pocket all day long.
The tools I used to create the images in these sets were TiltShift Generator, Mill Colour, and The Best Camera. I’m sure there are more out there that could prove to be useful, but I went with recommendations from someone who has been playing with the available apps for a while and was a little surprised at what could be accomplished with such simple utilities and effects.
After playing with it for a couple of days, I’m convinced that you could do quite well and create some great shots taking pictures with the iPhone camera and processing them well—and it also strikes me how much the iPhone really is a tiny little computer in your pocket.
A quick preview:
What I get in a speed test while on 3G here in the Metro East area of the St. Louis metro.
This is a good example of why I’m happy to have my iPhone’s camera with me all the time.
This weekend was exactly what I needed. My mother-in-law was in town from Chicago, and we took the kids up to Grant’s Farm (pictures to come from that trip). I managed to get a lot of really productive work done on a few WordPress projects in the late nights, but mostly the days were spent having good times with family.
And my phone broke. But it’s OK now.
I have an iPhone 3GS. I’ve been playing with it for the better part of the day and I do have to say that this thing is about to become as indispensable as my Moleskine and my wallet.
Having this much communicative ability and utility with me everywhere I go is something that I should have done a long time ago. What an awesome little device. Considering the fact that I didn’t even have a texting plan on the old phone, this is a massive shift.
I plan on posting up more detailed thoughts on the blog after I’ve had some time to play with it.
This post is brought to you by the 3GS I picked up to replace my busted RAZR.
