Apple Design Award Winners for 2004 Presented Last Night at WWDC.

The Design Award presentations were made last evening at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in the Presidio Room of San Francisco's Moscone Center West. The event began at 7:30 p.m. following pizza provided to the attendees. Ron Okamoto, Apple's Vice President for Developer Relations, welcomed the crowd who stayed for the pizza, Awards and a session of Stump the Experts.

Apple's John Geleysne explained the program and noted that the Design Awards are given in three categories: Applications, Performance Demo and QuickTime Content. Apple's Christy Wyatt and Brian Johns presented the Application Awards, Frank Casanova and Lauren Black presented the Performance Demo Awards and Frank Casanova and Rhonda Stratton presented the QuickTime Content Awards. The award itself is an engraved matte silver cube, about 6" on a side, with a glowing Apple logo on its top side. Award winners also got some great Apple equipment.

Here are the winners and runners up:

Best Product New to Mac OS X

W: Contribute 2 by Macromedia; RU: GraphViz 1.12 by Pixelglow Software

Most Innovative Mac OS X Product

W: ToySight 1.0 by Freeverse Software; RU: Swordfish Express 2.0 by buyolympia.com

Best Mac OS X User Expression

W: Unison 1.0.2a by Panic, Inc.; RU: SOHO Business Cards 1.0 by Chronos Ltd.

Best Mac OS X Technology Adoption

W: Big Bang Chess 1.0 by Freeverse Software; RU: PulpFiction 1.0 by Freshly Squeezed Software

Best Mac OS X Open Source Product

W: GraphViz 1.12 by Pixelglow Software; RU: PureFTPd Manager 1.2 by Jean-Matthieu Schaffhauser

Best Mac OS X Server Solution

W: iNquiry 4.05d by The BioTeam, Inc.; RU: gridMathematica 1.1 by Wolfram Research

Best Mac OS X Entertainment Product

W: Unreal Tournament 2004 by MacSoft; RU: Warcraft III by Blizzard Entertainment

Best Mac OS X Scientific Computing Solution

W: Mac TetrUSS by NASA Langley Research Center; Volocity 2.6.1 by Improvision

Best Mac OS X Student Product

W: 4Peaks by Alexander Griekspoor and Tom Groothuis; RU: Curvus Pro by Simon Bovet

Best Mac OS X Product

W: Big Bang Chess 1.0 by Freeverse Software; RU: Unison 1.0.2a by Panic, Inc.

Best Performance Demo of a Shipping Product

W: Animusics "Pipe Dream" by ATI; RU: "Rendering with Natural Light" by ATI

Most Innovative Apple Technology Performance Demo

W: Freefall by Advanced Analytic Systems Design; Symbiont's iSims

Best QuickTime Content for Education

W: Rotunda by Conflict Lab, Inc.; RU: Commanding Heights by WGBH Interactive

Best QuickTime Content for Promotion

W: "Robbie Williams Live at Knebworth" by Bluish, Ltd.; RU: Yamashiro Restaurant Virtual Tour by Axis Images

Best QuickTime Content for Entertainment

W: FreeCaster Sports by Barsark AB; RU: Bright and Shine by Antonio Hui

That's quite a list and the presentations went quickly. We apologize for any missing names or misspellings. We'll make any needed corrections when the awards come out in print. [Update: Apple's web page announcing the winners is now available.]