Apple hands out Design Awards, shows off Moscone Wi-Fi
updated 02:20 pm EDT, Wed June 8, 2011
Developer seeds now online-only
As a part of WWDC, Apple has handed out 2011's Apple Design Awards. Developers are selected for design, innovation and technical achievements, and this year competed in four overall categories: Student, iPhone, Mac and iPad. Winners in the Student category include Tapity for Grades 2, Vargatron for Pennant, and Alphonso Labs for Pulse News Reader. iPhone awards are going to Chillingo for Cut the Rope, Shotzoom for Golfscape GPS Rangefinder, and Chair for Infinity Blade.
The iPad victors are Hemisphere for Osmos, Push Pop for Our Choice, and Algoriddim for Djay. Entry into the Mac category was more restricted this year, as developers had to make a title available through the Mac App Store. The winners though are Pixelmator, SuperMegaUltraGroovy for Capo, and 11 Bit Studios for Anomaly: Warzone Earth.
Apple is meanwhile trumpeting the efforts of its network engineers with a display in Moscone West, which depicts Wi-Fi traffic data including available bandwidth, an evolution of performance over time, and a "heat map" of live hotspots. Apple engineers are said to have installed over a thousand Ethernet jacks in the building to ensure quick downloads of Lion, iOS 5 and Xcode. Developer seeds have become download-only for the first time, unlike past years, when Apple would hand out discs for convenience.
