What do all Apple app developers have in common? Nothing more than an almost supernatural enthusiasm for Apple’s platform and the opportunity to reach millions of customers in the Apple ecosystem. What increases their excitement 11x is the chance to be named one of the best apps of the year. Recently, I had the opportunity to meet and talk with some of his 14 developers of the award-winning app. Naturally, I asked about their apps, but what I really want to know is how they are preparing for spatial computing with his Apple’s Vision Pro. To my surprise, some of them answered me.
A week after Apple’s App Store editorial team named 40 finalists, the Cupertino Institute of Technology giant has named 14 Apps and Games winners: Best iPhone, Best iPad, Best Apple Watch, We’ve announced the best Mac apps. Apple also added something new this year: Cultural Impact Honorees. Apple also selected this year’s app trends. This was, of course, Generative AI, but not his particular Generative AI app won the award.
The app winners I’ve seen each have their own unique vision and style, but most leverage Apple’s unique device features to accomplish amazing things.
The winners are diverse. The complete list can be found below. When I spoke to some of the winners, who are still basking in the glow of their App Store awards, physically represented in nearly 10-pound blue Apple Store icon trophies, they offered insight into Apple’s app development process, He shared his thoughts on the future of Vision Pro. .
The outstanding winner is Prêt-à-Makeup by Prêt-à-Template. This iPad app is for professional makeup artists and allows them to build a makeup look on their tablet before applying it to their subject. It sounds like a very simple idea, not too different from the life-size Barbie doll makeup styling heads that kids loved in the 80s, but to me this app is so much more than that. I understand that.
The demonstration I saw had hundreds of different makeup kits and dozens of facial samples. Every face looks like a line drawing, but there’s a detailed 3D map hidden inside. As soon as I applied digital makeup using both touch and Apple Pencil, my skin came alive and even reflected light as I rotated the tablet from side to side. That’s an impressive effect.
It seemed like a powerful tool, but it’s my job and I’m always thinking about the future. I asked how this app applies to spatial computing on Apple’s next big platform plan, Apple Vision Pro. The developers didn’t hold back and revealed that they were, in fact, the launch partner, adding that they plan to embrace spatial computing in the future.
NEOWIZ’s P’s lie. It was a rare AAA game developed on consoles and Mac at the same time, and won Mac Game of the Year. Having played an immersive game based on Carlo Collodi’s original Pinocchio story on my 14-inch MacBook Pro (M3 Max), I agree with that choice. This clearly takes advantage of the M3 Max’s native rendering capabilities. Justin Carnahan, his lead on the Neowiz team, said that although he initially had concerns that it would be difficult to build games for the Mac, it was actually “very smooth”. . Additionally, Apple Silicon is powerful enough to handle difficult in-game tasks such as volumetric fog effects.
In fact, the game is so immersive that I couldn’t help but wonder if they too had an idea of what it would be like to play on the Vision Pro. Carnahan said that bringing the game to Vision Pro was a “possibility,” but he quickly said, “They just released the game two months ago and they’re thinking about what they’re going to do next.” That’s where I am,” he added. However, there are already plans for DLC and a sequel.
I enjoyed my brief participation in Sunblink’s Apple Arcade Game of the Year Hello Kitty Island Adventure, which has a huge appreciation for Animal Crossings: New Horizons. Still, I’ve never seen anything quite like this with Hello Kitty, so I can understand why fans and Apple love it so much. In fact, Sunblink founder and CEO Julian Farrior told me that Apple was so excited about the game’s success that it convinced Sunblink to continue building it as a subscription-based platform. Ta. This means that the game will receive new updates every 6 weeks.
Such an open-world, immersive environment feels, at least to me, tailor-made for Vision Pro’s full immersion spatial computing.
Farrior said the company is happy with Apple Arcade games so far. That being said, they are looking into “Vision Pro hooks” and considering “what it will take technically.” Personally, I’m excited about the idea of swimming with Hello Kitty mermaids.
Not all app winners are this deeply immersive or action-packed. Fein Games’ Finding Hannah is a cultural award-winning film that uses the large canvas of the iPad to create a colorful portrait of three women’s lives in three different eras: the 1940s, 1970, and the present day. It tells an interesting story. What’s interesting about this game is that it’s actually a relatively simple puzzle game, using puzzles as entry points to the overall story. It becomes a journey of discovery about the lives of these women and the world in which they live.
Elena Resko, art director at Fein Games, agreed with me that such a game could be brought to Vision Pro. She said, “It might be possible. We don’t know what the interaction will be like. I think it would be exciting to bring this new technology to older style games.”
UAB Pixelmator Team’s Photomator not only won Best Mac App, it also works on iPhone. A powerful image editor powered by machine learning that excels at simplifying complex image editing tasks. The developer showed us how to instantly upscale low-resolution images and transform his SDR Shutterstock images into full HDR glory with just one tap.
Of all the developers I spoke to, Simonas Bastys, lead developer on the Pixelmator team, was probably the most excited about the prospect of developing for Vision Pro, but with a caveat. He said his last stop before spatial computing is HDR.
He added, “I think Photomator works beautifully with spatial computing.” He added that they are also his Vision Pro launch partners and “will be working on spatial photography.” I interpreted this to mean that future versions of his Photomator could run inside or outside of Vision Pro and allow you to edit original photos. 3D spatial photography. I’m really looking forward to it.
We found the Cultural Award winner “Unpacking from Humble Bundle” to be one of the most reflective and interesting apps. There are no people or characters at all, instead just his 8 stages and his 32 rooms where you can unpack someone’s luggage. It sounds boring, but it’s actually fascinating, a little sad, but also relaxing. You can learn a lot about a person by unpacking their luggage.
I envisioned a future game where I would manually unpack and place things on larger virtual shelves on a larger Vision Pro stage. The developer smiled at me and said that he wasn’t ruling anything out, but that perhaps now was not the time for him to think about porting Unpacking to yet another platform. Basically, after all the work to bring this to iPad, iOS, and consoles, they’re taking a “break.”
There were other cool and inspiring apps like Too Good To Go’s food waste app, Too Good To Go. As the name suggests, this free app is designed for both consumers (or diners) and restaurants who are discarding food at the end of the day and preparing to sell expired food at a deep discount. Connects bakeries and supermarkets. The service boasts 85 million users and his 150,000 stores in 17 countries. The app was free and seemed very easy to use, so I thought I’d give it a try that night, but then I didn’t have time to write this article.
We also checked out Hoyoverse’s anime-inspired Honkai: Star Rail, which won iPhone Game of the Year. It’s a space fantasy RPG, and while the action may not be enough for me, there’s clearly enough depth to keep me going for hours with multiple worlds, planets, and players.
Will a game like this work on Vision Pro? The developer has no clear plans, but admitted that “we’re all excited.”
Will Apple have added this year’s Vision Pro app by this time next year?
Winner
The full list of winners is below:
App:
iPhone App of the Year: AllTrails, AllTrails, Inc.
iPad App of the Year: Prêt-à-Makeup, from Prêt-à-Template.
Mac App of the Year: Photomator, from the UAB Pixelmator team.
Apple TV App of the Year: MUBI, MUBI, Inc.
Apple Watch App of the Year: SmartGym, by Mateus Abras.
game:
iPhone Game of the Year: Honkai: Star Rail, from COGNOSPHERE PTE, Inc.
iPad Game of the Year: Lost in Play, from Snapbreak Games.
Mac Game of the Year: Lies of P, from NEOWIZ.
Apple Arcade Game of the Year: Sunblink’s Hello Kitty Island Adventure.
Cultural Impact Award Winners:
Pok Poku Pok Poku
AssistiveWare’s Proloquo
Too Good to Go from Too Good to Go
Unpacking from Humble Bundle
Find Hannah from Fein Games GmbH