Apple Design Awards - Your picks please

[kilowatt]

Ok, as we all know, the Apple Design Awards are comming!

Take a moment to read the FAQ and the Official Contest Rules, and post your picks!

I'll start you off with a few things I considered but then realized wouldn't work out.

1) Applications like Blender, which present no intense advantage to the user running the application in Mac OS X, and which do not adhear to the Apple Human Interface Guidelines.

2) Modules, Plugins, Drivers, etc. Lots of cool widigits for osx, yes, but these don't count. For example, Konfigurator would be fine, but a module for it wouldn't be eligible.

3) Beta versions, and pre-releases. Applications that aren't finished can't be submitted. Which rules out a lot of software (I was thinking of Camino...)

4) Applications built by Apple (this means you, safari ).

SO lets hear it people! Whats the best?

(mods, if this has allready been discussed, please link to the previous discussion, and lock this thread)

 

[JetwingX]

safari conflicts with rule #3 (it's still in beta)

 

[ddma]

Sony Ericsson Clicker

 

[Durbrow]

NoteTaker 2003 by AquaMind
Life Balance

 

[solrac]

audio hijack by Rogue Ameoba

 

[dracolich]

PixelNhance (even if caffeine is dead)
Audio Hijack
AudioX
PCGen (java-based, multiplatform, the OS X version is WAY better -UI wise- than any other)

 

[powermac]

Can't get to the form to make my choices.

 

[boi]

Sound Studio is grrreat.

 

[hazmat]

Originally posted by boi
Sound Studio is grrreat.

I agree on that. Some of my favorite apps and utilitiers that I use a lot and make my life better I suppose are:

Sound Studio
Adium
FruitMenu
WindowShade X
Kunvert
Adobe Photoshop Elements
Meteorologist
Camino (beta, I know)

 

[kilowatt]

I'll be honest, Safari, X11.app, and Mail.app deserve a huge award (although I don't think apple would award its self..).

You can't beat what apple has done for this platform. I mean, what 'compatability' tools has microsoft released for windows? You can't even pop a mac floppy disk into a pc without thirdy party software, and that software isn't even that good.

Logic 5 Platinum seems pretty sweet though, despite not being perfectly in tune with apple's aqua guidelines. *however*, again, eMagic is now part of apple.....

apple.apple.apple.... what /will/ we do?

 

[hazmat]

Yes, it is indeed great that Apple has released a lot of this stuff, but honestly I think it is in their own best interest. For a lot of this stuff who else is going to? A lot of things support Windows only, so if Apple wants to keep their customer base, unfortunately it seems they have to support stuff on their own. Sucks, too, since I still have no way to sync my cell phone's address book to the Mac. And I'm sure Motorola will never support it. Windows only.

 

[kilowatt]

Couldn't agree more, hazmat - its certainly in Apple's best interests to promote their platform the way they have been.

What developers need to see, however, is that Apple provides a starting place. An example, if you will. Is Apple's X11.app an end-all solution to running x11 applications in Mac OS X? Certainly not. But, hey, its a great example on how to accompilish this and still keep some aspects of osx's Aqua interface (dock, quartz, fonts, etc) working.

Apple's vision is a better user experience. By creating such great applications, they really pathe (sp?) the way for the next generation of applications.