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iOS Today 808: Apple Design Awards 2026
00:27:06
Apps & Games That Won Over Apple!
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iOS today, Rosemary Orchard and I, Micah Sargent, talk about the Apple Design Awards. Stay tuned.
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This is twit. This is iOS Today episode 808 with Rosemary Orchard and me, Micah Sargent. Recorded Tuesday, June 16, 2026 for Thursday, 6-25-20 Apple Design Awards hello and welcome to iOS Today, the show where we talk all things iOS, iPados, WatchOS and all the OS's that Apple has to offer us. I am one of your hosts. My name is Micah Sargent.
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And my name is Rosemary Orchard and I think it's a very awarding show to be part of mica. So I'm glad that I get to be here today.
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I love a good segue and that is the perfect one because yes, today we are talking about the Apple Design Awards. Now Apple, every year we talk about how there are, there are multiple kind of awards that the company gives out. And the Design awards are an opportunity for Apple to acknowledge and appreciate along with us, the companies and developers that are making apps that sort of play well with Apple's platforms. So oftentimes Apple will come out with new features or new things that you. Well, I mean those are features, new things that you could do with your apps. And in that year the best uses of those features tend to be the the apps that get recognized at this time. So Apple will recognize different categories. Innovation, ingenuity technical achievement in both app and game design. And typically we have the opportunity to kind of see how Apple thought about these apps, which I always appreciate as well. So the categories this year include delight and fun, inclusivity, innovation, interaction, social impact, and then visuals and graphics. So we'll start with delight and fun. Apple says winners and finalists in this category provide memorable, engaging and satisfying experiences enhanced by Apple technologies. So in this category, the apps that got to participate were apps called Grug, Blippo plus and Meta Bowls. And the winner was Grug. So Grug is an app that kind of. Let me just read a little bit about this. This playful app delivers daily wisdom in Neolithic grunts and looks good doing it. Reading daily Grug affirmations like only walking Grug Find breakthrough Sitting Grug Find nothing is a primal joy, but it's the scribbled design that really pops. It's a little masterpiece of clever simplicity that never takes itself seriously. Appropriately for an app from the Stone Age. There's no login, no cloud syncing, nothing extraneous. Just a simple idea that smart developer do good. I think this is an adorable little app if you, you know, sometimes I think about people. There's, there's true psychology like science backed understanding to daily affirmations, but for some people they're a little bit cringe and understandably so. The idea of kind of, of making daily affirmations a little more playful so that we both feel like we're in on the joke and that it can be just something that's sort of, it's almost subtly gets to us.
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I kind of love that.
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I love that idea. Very well done with the, the copywriting here that has taken place and the clever use of, of whimsy. I guess that that plays into it as well.
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That's the that's the apps. But each category also features games. And I have to say, Rosemary, I'm a little sad that Power Wash Simulator was not the winner there. That's because I certainly love Power Wash Simulator. I've been cleaning so much in Power Wash Simulator.
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So satisfying in the oddest of ways. But like the best of ways.
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Yeah. In fact, the the little blip for it says for a particular type of person, there can be no greater joy than blasting caked on grime off an old van. I would say I am a particular type of person. Absolutely. Because I want nothing more than to blast caked on grime off of an old van. But the winner is is this seat taken. Which it's a puzzle game. It's. I think I'm also a little averse to logic puzzles because from being a kid and doing logic puzzles with other students and then not being the fastest, it was always like, what's taking you so long. So logic puzzles, they don't make me feel too calm. I get a little bit over overworked, like, oh no, I've got to fit, I've got. So for me, is the seat taken? Not my favorite, but I have heard good things about it. And congratulations to Potty Potty Studio for their win there. Do you want to tell us about the next category, Rosemary?
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Yeah. So the next category is one very near to Micah and my heart, which is inclusivity because there is nothing worse than somebody feeling excluded from things just because, you know, they, they may not have the same access to everything as everyone else. The winner of the app section here is Guitar Wiz, which is an all in one toolkit for guitarists, which includes things like robust voiceover, which provides spoken information on instructions from everything from pitch to chord guidance according to this, and that is including where players need to place their fingers on the frets. It does also do things like support dynamic type to increase or decrease the font size, increase contrast and differentiate without color, which all of those things are really important to make guitar accessible to way more people. The other two apps in this category which were nominated as well are Hearing Buddy, which was created by a solo developer with hearing loss and it uses the Foundation Models framework. So that's the AI models and on device speech to text to generate real time captions and summaries of spoken conversations, which I personally feel is lovely and potentially useful for people. More than just people with hearing loss, actually. That's very cool. And the third app is one I've actually used on and off in the past. I go through phases of needing it and not needing it. The last one is called Structured, which is by a company called Unorderly, which I absolutely love that there's just such a contrast there. But essentially it's a daily planner that prioritizes downtime as much as productivity. Really important for that work life balance. Um, and it excels at optimizing open source on your calendar and helping you find time to take breaks. And yeah, it, it's particularly targeted at people who are neurodivergent in any way, to be clear, because it's got a really good simple layout which can help you not be distracted and just focus on things and not be overwhelmed with too much information. Uh, and it, it has been using AI to help suggest and pre fill tasks that you need to do and, and you know, like plan your day for you essentially using AI, when you say, oh, I need to get these three things done or these Five Things done or whatever it is, and it's very, very cool. I. Unfortunately, I'm not using it as much as I. I was because I can't put my work calendar onto my phone anymore. So it, it assumes that I'm free from nine to five, which is not the case. Uh, so I. I probably just need to schedule work from 9 to 5 to avoid that issue. Anyway, moving on. In the games category we have obviously the winner, which is Pine Hearts. So this is a game where main character Tike returns to a nature preserve to revisit memories of his late father. It's got a sweet and sensitive vibe and you level up by lending a helping hand to other park goers. And the game communicates all the inclusivity options before you even start playing through settings that let you enhance text legibility, customize the controls, and ease both motion and sense sensory feedback. So, yeah, I feel like this is a really great app that I should definitely give a try because it sounds very wholesome. And then there are two runners up. Sego, Mini Ginger, Guard Ginger's Garden, which is it basically, as far as Apple is concerned, I believe includes everything in from the inclusivity perspective. It relies on swipe to move controls and interactions that don't require reading. So it's. It's a playground essentially for children. And it. The inclusivity features are organically included so you don't even necessarily notice them. So kids can play. I'm gonna call it football, not soccer because I'm British. Chase the mouse for cheese, try on a party hat. No timers or to do lists. It's just fun, essentially. And then the last one is one I have played for way too many hours. And if I tell people just one more turn. If you've played the game, you probably know it. It's Civilization seven. It is a surprisingly inclusive app for a massively mainstream game. I'm really pleased that it is actually inclusive because any big company that creates big games should. They have the money to do it. They should be doing it. But it's really great to see the Civilization 7 where your goal is world domination, should you choose to accept it. So you need to figure out how to deal with that. It's an inclusive thing. So there we go. That was inclusivity and I'm going to pass back to you for innovation. Maika.
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Yes. So I always love the innovation category. It's obviously the place where we get to see kind of different ways of doing things. Apple describes it as folks that are providing a state of the art experience and doing so in a novel use of Apple of Apple technologies. And so whenever you're going through these, you get to see more about, like, what it was that was unique about them. The NBA Live Games and Scores app was the winner this time. And this was specifically for Vision os. Not surprised to see, given that this is Apple's sort of newest platform, that this is where a lot of the innovation has happened. But it says this. Watching five games at once in the NBA app, or pairing your marquee game with player and team stats the size of a wall is a revolution for sports fans on Apple Vision Pro. And I certainly did hear that folks who checked this out and tried it really enjoyed it and found that that experience was delightful. I want to also mention Detail, which is an AI video editor available on iOS, iPados and even WatchOS. And in they say Detail combines the simplicity of a camera app with the power of a professional AI video editor. You can easily, excuse me, it's easy to learn for editors of all levels, but what's cool about it is that you can kind of take these camera moments, just do these takes and then boom, it will remove silence, it will auto edit them, it will even put together a single shot from multiple angles and then uses foundation models, which again, Apple's AI tools to take a draft or an outline that you have and then turn it into a teleprompter script that can play back while you're reading it. So sort of speeds up the process a little bit for you. In the game category, one that I want to give a shout out to is Pickle Pro, because this was built with RealityKit and it is what Apple calls one of the most impressive native gaming experiences for Vision OS because it's a pickleball game. But what happens is it makes use of the most recent Vision OS experiences and tracking tools to give you this mixed reality that you. It's just, it's a unique thing that you can't get anywhere else other than in Vision OS or in another sort of mixed reality space. And so being able to play pickleball but do so in a much more precise way than you would expect, perhaps with these mixed reality experiences. I think they nailed it. They absolutely nailed it. But the winner there was Blueprints, which is a Mac OS game. A little bit of exploration, a little bit of puzzle solving, and you're essentially trying to get inside a room within a mansion that has what you are looking for. So with that you've got puzzles and different, again, bits of exploration that you need to do to be able to get to the. The room where then there's even more that unfurls and so shout out to a Mac OS game for getting the win there. I am so used to seeing the that category devoted to. To vision OS stuff, so that was kind of nice as well. Interaction is another category and I'll cover this one and then we'll have Rosemary cover the next one for interaction. Apple describes it as apps and games that are able to deliver intuitive interfaces and then of course, effortless controls that are tailored to a specific platform. The winner this year was a moon phase tracker called Moonlit. And you know, with this you are able to to kind of look at beautiful, stunning photography of the moon and also see these, these celestial events. So it's not just, you know, the moon itself, but it is this. This was a finalist in 2024, or rather the company that made this one was a finalist in 2024 for the app called Sunlit. And this one is also kind of killing it in the space because one of the first to adopt liquid glass to make that part of the experience and to really lock in there for games. The winner this time is an Apple arcade game called Sego Mini Jinja's Garden, and it is a game for kids ages 3 to 6. So it's one of those where you can pretty much easily pick it up, understand what you're supposed to do, how you play and you don't have to. It doesn't require a lot of overthinking, which is great as well. All right, moving along. Rosemary, do you want to tell us about the next category? Social impact.
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Yes. So social impact is things that have an impact on society, hopefully in a positive way. And the There of course are three apps here and I'm going to start at the bottom, work my way up this time just for. For fun. So Harvey, that's H A R V E E is from Peak Labs here in the UK and they focus on translating Apple watch data, like your heart rate variability and resting heart rate sleep data into an actionable series of guidance for recovery. So essentially it's all about helping you improve things, which I personally feel is a pretty good, great way to try and impact society in the best of ways. So that was where the runners up. The other one is Katha Room. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. So these are bedtime stories from India. With a rich, colorful art and a commitment to cultural representation. The app focuses on stories from Indian folklore and decorates them with a UI from the gond art form with intricate patterns, vibrant colors and yeah, this app genuinely sounds great and I now know a number of children so I will be passing the recommendation on for this app because bedtime stories are a pretty critical part of growing up for most of the kids that I seem to know and I think it would be nice for parents to be able to enjoy having a bedtime story read to them every once in a while as well as doing the reading themselves. And the winner from the apps category is called Primary News in Depth and this is a Vision OS app. So unfortunately I've had no way to download this at all myself. But it was founded by one of the associate press journalists and it's now powered by a team of experienced editors and it shows breaking news and crucial issues without resorting to sensationalism or clickbait with a minimal ui. And that sounds pretty awesome. I would look forward to seeing that on apps on platforms other than Vision os. If any of the developers from Wood Metal Rocks are listening, it would be really awesome if that was available elsewhere. So I guess we're just gonna have to wait and see with that one then for the games in this category once again I'm gonna start at the bottom, work my way up. The first one is Spilled, which is a cozy cleanup game about restoring polluted waterways and it was created by a developer who lives on his helpful sport and is who is passionate about ecological issues. So yeah, every, every time you do something in the game it is intended to be inspiring and encourage you to get out in real life and do these things as well if you're able to. Then we've got Despalote, I hope that I pronounced that correctly. This one is a Mac OS app and it's a mix of of cultural preservation and autobiographical storytelling. And it's set in 2001 in Ecuador as it's on the verge of qualifying for its first World Cup. So it's also very topical right now as the World cup is happening in the US and so you follow the things through the eyes of 8 year old Julian whose decisions, movements and occasional eavesdropping drive the story. And it's a mix of visual styles which got line drawn inhabitants in a lo fi duotone, street photography apparently it is very evocative and yeah, I think that it is great to show how things can bring a culture together, whether that be sports or something else. And then the winner in the games category is also a Mac Os app called Consume Me, which is a deeply personal and autobiographical experience that addresses themes of mental health, body image and self worth. And apparently it does this both depth deftly and playfully. So Consume Me is about the emotional realities of eating disorders and it goes through trying to address that. And hopefully if anybody watching the show has an eating disorder or knows anybody with one, then they can maybe try out Consume Me on Mac Os because I feel like this is a really great app for making you feel like you are worth everything that you are. Because yes, eating disorders I know are a big problem, which a lot of people have stopped noticing recently, which is a real shame.
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All right, that is the. Let me get back to it. Social impact category. And now it's time to talk about visuals and graphics. The kind of final category here. Of course these are apps and games that have stunning imagery according to Apple. Skillfully drawn interfaces and high quality animations with a distinctive and cohesive theme so they look good. And the there's actually a finalist in another category. I think the interaction category is the winner. Yes, in this category and that is Tide Guide charts and tables. I will tell you I have used Tide Guide before in order to back whenever we lived in California and we would go to the Alamir Falls tidefall. You need to know where the tide is, otherwise you can get stuck on the other side and not make it back to to shore and it's kind of scary. And so knowing when the tide's going to come rolling in is important and this is a beautiful way to keep track of it. As the as the writers so helpfully and hilariously say, Tide guides rich full screen charts present a boatload of weather data hour by hour forecasts temperature, swell, height, and those are obviously incredibly important when it comes to people who are boating, people who are swimming, people again who are going out to falls that require you to walk along the shoreline where part of the shore gets wiped away by the tide every single day. So that's important as well. Some of the others in this category include Caradise, which is a obviously different excuse me, Caradice, not Caradise, which of course is upon on paradise and Cars and then Not Boring Camera not surprised to see Not Boring make its way back into the charts. Not Boring has done a great job of making different apps and different categories that are truly not boring. The game winner in this category again, no surprise, Cyberpunk 2077 Ultimate Edition is the winner here. It is a beautiful game and requires incredible graphics and well, doesn't require it has incredible graphics and requires performance to be able to show those incredible graphics. So it's not just that the game is beautifully designed, it's that it's beautifully designed and it runs on macOS. Those two things together are what make it stand out. It says the game takes full advantage of Apple silicon, of metal shaders of Metal fx, frame interpolation and denoising and path tracing on higher end chips. And the for this max setting automatically optimizes frame rate and visual fidelity for each device. So it's kind of set it and forget it situation which is very handy as well. The other games in this category include Arknights, Enfield and then Silt, which were also in the finals. But congratulations to the winners there on an Apple Design Awards of 2026. There's a link in Apple's run rundown that actually has a way to download all of the winners from the App Store so you can go and grab everything from the list. We'd love to hear your thoughts on these different apps and games as we head into the fall and you know, the launch of new iPhones and the full launch of the next versions of iOS, iPados et cetera. So we look forward to hearing more about. You can email us iostodaywit TV that is going to bring us to the end of this episode of iOS today. Thank you all for being here. If you would like to get ad free versions of this and every show on the network. Can I invite you to join our club Club Twit Twit TV Club Twit is where you go to sign up. Or you can use the QR code in the top corner there. Doing so takes you to a page where you can sign up for the club. $10 a month, $120 a year. The big thing there of course is that you are supporting the work we do here. But we don't want you to just support us. We also want to give you something. 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But for you club members, because we don't have ads for you, you get chapter markers. Yes, we recently launched chapter markers. Yay. This is a feature that's been requested for a long, long, long time and it is now another benefit of being a member of the club Twit TV Club Twit to sign up. All right, Rosemary Orchard, if people would like to follow you online and check out all the great work you're doing, where should they go to do so?
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The best place to go is rosemaryorsha.com which has got links to a bunch of things that I am or have been involved in and of course links to my social media. The only social media is not linked is Discord because you'll find me hanging out in the live chat while we record the show and the iOS Today forum after the show. Micah, where can folks find you if
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you're looking to follow me online. I'm icasargent on many a social media network where you can head to Chihuahua Copy that's C H I H U A Hoa Coffee where I've got links to the places I'm most active online. Thank you so much for being here. We appreciate you and we can't wait to be back again next week with more episodes of iOS today. Bye bye.
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