Uh, Wow. (Apple Design Awards)

So the Apple Design Awards were announced today, and the biggest news from it, of course, was Inventive / Widget Machine co-developed iClip lite taking home the award for Best Dashboard Widget.

But wait, going back a bit, this was the first ADA ceremony I had the opportunity to attend, and the whole thing was a pretty awesome experience. The event was held in a pretty atmospheric room, complete with a fog machine, purple lighting, and thumping music, and the second coolest part (besides accepting the award) was the opening video sequence, which featured all of the entered applications flying past the screen. Really, really cool.

After each of the winners were announced, runners up first, winners second, the winners were demoed by Apple User Experience Evangelist John Geleynse, who did a pretty good job showing off all of the winning apps. (I wouldn't have wanted to be in his shoes, demoing Scientific Solution winner, EnzymeX! (By the way, the developers of that application have a great article about the infamous ADA "cube" trophy which is a pretty interesting read.)

Accepting the award with John was unreal. That's about all I can say at this point, I'm still recovering. I really wish UI designer for iClip lite Piotr Gajos and programmer Chris Willis could've made it out here to experience it.

So anyway, more photos and more reactions to come soon, for now, a complete list of the winners, listed in chronological order of announcement:

Best Student Application:
Runner-Up: PhotoPresenter by Arizona Software
Winner: LineForm by Tribar Software

Best User Experience:
Runner-Up: Boinx FotoMagico by Boinx Software
Winner: iSale by equinux

Best Widget:
Runner-Up: WeatherBug Widget by WeatherBug
Winner: iClip lite by Inventive and Widget Machine

Best OS X Graphics:
Runner-Up: Unity by Unity
Winner: Modo by Luxology

Best Automator Workflow:
Runner-Up: Lecture Recording Workflow 1.2 by the University of Michigan School of Dentistry
Winner: Build Real Estate Catalog/Ultimate Productivity Action Pack

Best Developer Tool:
Runner-Up: F-Script by F-Script
Winner: TextMate by MacroMates

Best Game:
Runner-Up: Wingnuts 2 by Freeverse
Winner: Sims 2 ported Aspyr

Best Scientific Computing Solution:
Runner-Up: FuzzMeasurePro by Christopher Liscio
Winner: EnzymeX by Mekentosj

Again, more on this tomorrow, but wow, pretty amazing experience!