Every year during WWDC, Apple recognizes new, especially innovative apps.
This year’s 10 Apple Design Awards winners are a mix of fun and addictive games, some productivity apps, and two cool apps from student developers.
They will join the more-than-700,000 apps in the App Store.
Let’s start with a beautiful iPad app from the World Wildlife Fund.
Apple commended the World Wildlife Fund’s iPad app—WWF Together—for its attention to detail and beautiful aesthetics, as well as the original music used.
The app tells the stories of endangered species—pandas, tigers, and polar bears—via amazing photos and illustrations.
Download for iPad (Free)
Badland is an atmospheric action-adventure platform game that has novel, physics-based gameplay and beautiful Retina graphics and audio. It uses side-scrolling.
In single-player campaigns, you have 50 unique levels to explore. Or you can play with up to four friends using the same device over 16 levels.
Apple commended the production values and integration with Game Center and iCloud.
Download for iPhone and iPad ($3.99)
Procreate is an art studio app for iPad-toting artists, and is packed with 48 brushes, including pencils, inks, and digital-only tools.
Procreate runs on a proprietary engine called Silica, which renders strokes in 64-bit. It also has blend and decay brushes you can use in real time.
You can preview brushes before buying them with in-app purchases and also share your art with Photoshop or on social media.
Download for iPad ($4.99)
Yahoo’s new Weather app stands out from the crowd because it uses Flickr photography to match the current weather conditions from any place or time of day.
And if not for the smart-photo matching, you could say that Apple was inspired by Yahoo Weather in the new iOS 7 weather app announced this week.
Download for iPhone (Free)
Deceptively simple but strangely addictive, Letterpress was commended by Apple for its blend of entertainment and strategy. Simple gestures and subtle animation make this letter game fun.
Incorporating Game Center and in-app purchases, Letterpress is an iOS exclusive.
Download for iPhone and iPad (Free)
Ridiculous Fishing takes you through an infinite arcade world, where you fish with weapons, chainsaws, or toasters among other wacky utensils.
It’s retro-style but with an engaging physics-based gameplay, a dash of humor, and a lot of fun.
There are no in-app purchases but there are hours of gameplay across the continents as character Billy is on his quest for redemption.
Download for iPhone and iPad ($2.99)
Sky Gamblers: Storm Raiders takes you to an arcade-style game world set during World War II, where you take part in dog fights, protect ships, and attack enemy bases.
There is a huge selection of planes from the historic WWII fleet, and you can also play with your friends in cooperative or competitive modes, and beam the game on your TV via AirPlay—if you have an Apple TV.
Download for iPhone and iPad ($0.99)
Apple commended Evernote for its support across iPhone, iPad, and Mac to keep your notes organized and synced across devices.
Evernote lets you store notes, photos, to-dos, voice memos, and even sketches and drawings with free companion apps like Penultimate and Skitch, or keep track of your contacts with Hello, and your culinary experiences with Food.
Download for iPad and iPhone (Free)
Finish is a to-do app developed by Ryan Orbuch and Michael Hansen while they were sophomores at Boulder High School in Colorado.
Their task manager app uses gestures to break up your to-dos into short, medium, and long-term tasks and integrates with Facebook and Twitter, where you can share your tasks with colleagues.
Download for iPhone($0.99)
Another iOS exclusive, Mosaic.io was developed by self-taught developers and MIT students Ishaan Gulrajani and Alex List and University of Pittsburgh student Zain Shah.
The app connects two or more iPhones or iPads around a single image to create a photo mosaic, using each device’s relative position to another.
Download for iPhone and iPad (Free)
Coda is a wide-ranging Web development editor. It offers a tabbed interface that let you write and edit HTML and other code, create and modify CSS, do command-line work, generate live previews, look up code references, and transfer files back and forth via SFTP, FTP, or WebDAV—all within a single app.—Lex Friedman
Download for Mac ($75)
