In its list of winners for the Apple Design Awards, Apple has celebrated indie apps and startups over big tech companies, including companies offering AI chatbots.
With the App Store model under question from lawmakers and regulators, Apple's annual list of the best and most technologically innovative software available on its platform has been looking to smaller companies. For example, ChatGPT was not on the list of finalists for Apple's Design Awards. Instead, Apple's Design Awards finalists featured apps from small and mid-sized app makers like Copilot Money, SmartGym, recipe app Crouton, creativity app Procreate Dreams, Gentler Streak, and venture-backed startups like creativity app Rooms and reimagined web browser Arc Search.
The latter incorporates AI with an agent that browses on your behalf and a new feature that lets you ask questions by holding the phone to your ear and “calling Arc,” but it's the only app on this list that explains the technology that's taken the App Store and the tech industry at large by storm over the past year.
ChatGPT was released to record downloads last year, but both Apple and Google avoided naming it their “App of the Year” in 2023. The ADA would have given Apple another opportunity to recognize this innovation, or AI chatbots in general, but once again it was overlooked. (Apple's ongoing partnership with OpenAI may be one reason, but conflicts of interest have never held back the tech giant before!)
The finalists included a number of indie games, including Rytmos from Copenhagen-based Floppy Club, Apple Arcade's match-3 puzzle game finity, The Wreck from Paris-based independent game studio The Pixel Hunt, and The Bear from Germany-based self-described “collection of oddball creators” Mucks Games.
The non-gaming apps that Apple chose to highlight this year were also often indie efforts (in fact, Apple gave Rooms a double blessing by nominating it in two categories), including Meditate, a meditation timer from India-based indie developer RhythmicWorks Software; Sunlitt, a sun-tracking app from a small team led by Italy-based indie developer Nicolas Mariniello; Dudel Draw, a drawing app from US indie collective Silly Little Apps; Bears Gratitude, a journaling app from Australian developer Isuru Wanasinghe; and Rooms from Things Inc., a creative app designed by ex-Googlers and backed by a16z that lets you design imaginative spaces in an 8-bit style.
Wow! We're thrilled and, frankly, utterly unaware, that Rooms has been named a finalist for Apple's 2024 Design Awards. As if this accolade wasn't enough, our app appears to be the only one to be a finalist in two categories.
thank you, @appleto recognize @thing! 🙏https://t.co/4KAIQEffi1
— Jason Toff (@jasontoff) May 28, 2024
That's not to say there aren't bigger developers on the finalists, such as South Korea's Neowiz, which was nominated for Lies of P, Death Stranding Director's Cut from 505 Games, Honkai: Star Rail from Genshin maker HoYoverse, and Activision's Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile, but in those cases, Apple made the selections due to their use of Apple technologies like MetalFX or optimizations for M1 and higher chips (or the use of in-app purchases).
Other titles nominated this year include finalists What the Car?, NYT Games, Hello Kitty Island Adventure, Cityscapes: Sim Builder, How We Feel, Ahead: Emotions Coach, The Bear, Lost in Play, Wavelength and Little Nightmares, as well as several apps and games developed for Vision Pro, including Blackbox, LoĂłna, Synth Riders, djay, NBA and Sky Guide. Notably, several of these were originally developed for iOS and then ported to Vision Pro.
The Inclusive section also celebrates Apple's global app community, including members of the European Union, where the Digital Markets Act is currently in the works. In this section, Apple's nominees include oko (Belgium), an app for the visually impaired, Complete Anatomy 2024 (Ireland), which focuses on diversity, Tiimo (Denmark), an app for neurodiverse users, the game Unpacking (available on digital store Humble Bundle), Quadline by Kovalov Ivan from Ukraine, and Crayola Adventures.
2024 Apple Design Award (ADA) Winners
As for the ADA winners, Apple selected a handful of apps and games that represent the values ​​and features the company endorses, including “joy and fun,” “inclusivity,” “innovation,” “interaction,” “social impact,” “visuals and graphics,” and “spatial computing.”
From these finalists, Apple selected the following winners:
This article was first published on May 28, 2024. It was updated on June 6, 2024 to reflect the winners list.