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The 10 Most Exciting Apps Of The Year: Apple Design Awards 2018

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The annual Apple Design Awards (let's call them Ada for short) have been going in one way or another for almost 20 years and celebrate the best in app design. This year, in the voluminous room that earlier hosted the Apple keynote, thousands of developers gathered to cheer for their favorites and, you know, themselves.

David Phelan

The first winner was the Finnish Bandimal from Yatatoy, a composing app for children which is sensational. A sheep, a panda and, I think, a buffalo, are your companions as you create a tune with multiple instruments. It's easy to use and highly enjoyable, though the tunes can be a little overwhelming if you don’t get it just right.

The next winner was Agenda, the note-taking app for Mac and iOS that focuses on dates. It's dreamily designed, with great versatility and efficiency. Now, let's be clear, Apple's own Notes app is awesome and something I use every day for everything from the flight and schedule details for my next holiday to My 20 Favorite London Restaurants. (Actually, it's now up to 43, list available on demand).

But the Dutch team behind Agenda, Momenta BV, has taken this to a new level with the timeline orientation paying dividends when it comes to creating projects that are ongoing instead of static.

David Phelan

Then there was iTranslate Converse, a speedy and efficient translator designed for conversations (as you’ll have guessed from the name). It’s fast, effective and works offline.

David Phelan

One of my very favorites, Alto’s Odyssey, from Canadian developer Snowman, was a winner. At its heart it’s a simple, dashingly designed endless runner, although here you sandboard down dunes avoiding rocks, chasms and chasing lemurs. But look closely and there is real depth, from the birds of paradise which accompany you, perhaps because they recognize a kindred spirit, to the rising-from-nowhere hot air balloons that save your fall.

The app was praised for its elegant way of teaching gamers how to play, pausing the game and explaining mechanics as people actually play.

Actually, many of the other winners were games and there were some very worthy ones. Like Playdead’s Inside (I think there’s something in everybody’s contract that they can’t just call it Inside without saying it belongs to Playdead) which has the elegant simplicity, meaningful moodiness and potent sense of dread which the company’s earlier game, Limbo, made so enjoyable.

Much joy attended the announcement that Florence had won an award. If you don’t know it, then, who are you? Anyway, catch up now, it’s an interactive storybook that tells a story of first love with such joy and emotional depth that it repays continued attention and is hugely immersive.

David Phelan

Calzy 3 is a powerful calculator, not least because it has cut and paste so that items you want to remember are saved. Once you have this memory option you wonder why it’s not a feature on every calculator. There are also colors and customizable icons so it looks just as you want it to. This is a neat addition to the world of sums and the like.

Austrian puzzler Frost won for its graceful and addictive gameplay: draw paths to encourage particles to flow in a particular direction and, well, that’s it, but it is so perfectly crafted you keep coming back for one more go. Only Metal, the Apple graphics API is capable of doing something as mesmerizing as this app, the Awards people said,

Triton Sponge is a serious app and the only winner from the USA. It is used in medical operating rooms to measure blood loss collected by surgical sponges and suction canisters. It uses several iOS mechanisms and machine learning to master these calculations and is a remarkable and important app.

The last winner was the Turkish platformer, Oddmar by Mobge. New to me, but, oh boy, I’ve been playing it and it’s a fun game with an enjoyable soundtrack, classy design and plenty of bouncing and jumping action.

The Apple Design Awards show the ingenuity and expertise app developers can employ in their creations. Some give us emotional responses, some provide fun, and some, like Triton Sponge, can save lives.

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