Apple Announces 2016 Apple Design Award Winners
Apple has announced the winners of Apple Design Awards for 2016, recognizing 10 apps, plus 2 student projects. The winners are the education app Complete Anatomy, a to-do list app aimed at helping users develop good habits called Streaks, a fitness training app called Zova that also works on the Apple TV, the video collaboration platform Frame.io, the multi-platform text editor Ulysses, an iOS and Apple TV running game called Chameleon Run, the puzzle game Lara Croft GO, an interesting take on pinball called INKS, Auxy Music Creation, and a DJ app called djay Pro that won an award back in 2011 as well. The two student apps were both games, the puzzle-based Linum, and Dividr, a 2D arcade game written entirely in Swift. Congratulations to all the winners!
Seems like good design is mostly in games and fitness. Maybe there should be a special category for apps that make our experiences on the Mac better and easier.... -C
Keep in mind that the Apple Design Awards are meant to focus on apps that showcase Apple technologies. So a lot of the kind of apps you suggest wouldn't qualify in general because they can't be sandboxed and are trying to extend the user experience in ways that Apple doesn't. We'd need a different award for what you want. Or just get Keyboard Maestro and LaunchBar and TextExpander. :-)