Apple announces 2014 Apple Design Award winners, Threes and Monument Valley among selected

AppleInsiderAppleInsider
Posted:
in General Discussion edited June 2014
After the WWDC keynote wrapped up on Monday, Apple announced the winners of its annual Apple Design Awards that recognizes the most innovative and technically superior OS X and iOS apps of the year.



In a ceremony at Moscone West, awards were handed out for iPhone, iPad and Mac apps that "raise the bar in design, technology, and innovation," with this year's list including 12 apps across both OS X and iOS.

2014 Apple Design Award winners:

iOS Apps Mac Apps Along with a trophy, winners of the prestigious award received a copy of nearly every device Apple makes, including a Mac Pro, iPad, iPhone and more.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 9
    craigl303craigl303 Posts: 3member
    Sad commentary on the state of Mac apps:
    iOS: 9
    Mac OS: 2
  • Reply 2 of 9
    hmmhmm Posts: 3,405member

    The artwork in these is absolutely beautiful.

  • Reply 3 of 9
    richlrichl Posts: 2,213member
    I've only played/used Threes and Device 6 but they're both worthy winners. Especially good to see Threes get some recognition after they had their idea ripped off by 2048.
  • Reply 4 of 9
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,322moderator
    richl wrote: »
    I've only played/used Threes and Device 6 but they're both worthy winners. Especially good to see Threes get some recognition after they had their idea ripped off by 2048.

    2048 is based on someone else's app 1024 though:

    https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.veewo.a1024
    http://www.veewo.com

    but then you can see how many apps veewo has copied too. The App Store is full of these clones. Originality is hard, milking someone else's original idea is much easier.
  • Reply 5 of 9
    richlrichl Posts: 2,213member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Marvin View Post





    2048 is based on someone else's app 1024 though:



    https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.veewo.a1024

    http://www.veewo.com



    but then you can see how many apps veewo has copied too. The App Store is full of these clones. Originality is hard, milking someone else's original idea is much easier.

     

    No matter what Veewo say, 2048 is based on Threes. The developer of 2048 has admitted this in interviews. 1024 is just another clone of Threes.

  • Reply 6 of 9
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,322moderator
    richl wrote: »
    Marvin wrote: »
    2048 is based on someone else's app 1024 though:

    https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.veewo.a1024
    http://www.veewo.com


    but then you can see how many apps veewo has copied too. The App Store is full of these clones. Originality is hard, milking someone else's original idea is much easier.

    No matter what Veewo say, 2048 is based on Threes. The developer of 2048 has admitted this in interviews. 1024 is just another clone of Threes.

    I thought I'd read somewhere that 1024 had been the original but no, Threes was the first one:

    http://www.ibtimes.com/what-2048-convoluted-origin-threes-1024-game-clone-topping-app-store-charts-1568533

    It's a shame Apple doesn't enforce some anti-copying measures in the App Store. They know the publish dates of the apps so they can see which ones are derivatives. They don't necessarily have to ban them but either take a portion of revenue to give to the original or just promote the original visibly on the same page.

    Candy Crush ripped off Candy Swipe and they make billions from it and it's not the first time:

    http://metro.co.uk/2014/02/13/candy-crush-saga-makers-to-sue-game-they-copied-4303096/
    http://metro.co.uk/2014/01/24/candy-crush-maker-accused-of-stealing-from-indie-developer-4275642/

    I don't suppose Apple has the time to police all these infringements and wouldn't be able to easily prove originality beyond their own store.
  • Reply 7 of 9
    gqbgqb Posts: 1,934member

    I'm actually playing Monument Valley for the second time, simply because its such a beautiful environment to live in for a couple of hours.Its almost meditative.

    Hope they do more games like this.

  • Reply 8 of 9
    rattlhedrattlhed Posts: 155member

    Monument Valley is the best iPad game I've ever played.  As I played along, I continued to ask myself "how did they do that".  It's such an original design and so much fun.  I sure hope they do a follow up.

  • Reply 9 of 9
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,322moderator
    rattlhed wrote: »
    Monument Valley is the best iPad game I've ever played. As I played along, I continued to ask myself "how did they do that".  It's such an original design and so much fun.  I sure hope they do a follow up.

    It looks like a very neat idea. They use isometric projection so that when objects are rotated, they connect in different ways. The popular game Fez does something similar but is just flat on and not as nice graphically. Monument Valley has done pretty well sales-wise:

    http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/14/monument-valley-android-game-sales

    "At £2.49, that means £1.24m of gross revenues on Apple's App Store in just over a month, with just over £871k going back to ustwo after Apple's 30% cut."

    They made back development costs in the first week and have sold 500,000 copies. They have 3 studios worldwide with some big clients and they're hiring iOS and Android developers:

    http://ustwo.com

    They just ported it to Android and put it on the Play store yesterday - it was developed in Unity so porting shouldn't have been too much trouble. They said they'd add levels to the game later on.
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