[tweetmeme]Our last roundup included the best designed apps of the year 2009. Well 2010 is almost finishing its first quarter, and we already have a few apps showcasing some amazing work. Time to dig in…
Here, File File!
A way to remotely access all your files on all your Macs, Here File brings in wood finish, dark textures, and vibrant icons, designed by Buck Wilson (coded by Adam Wulf and Benjamin Sherman). The application icon however has been made by Sebastiaan de With, the story of which has been told here. Quoting from Brandon’s review:
You set up a server on your Mac that runs in the menu bar, and you can get your IP address that you need from there. I love how the iPhone app will show your specific model of Macintosh and the actual wallpaper you have on it. It’s totally unnecessary, but it’s the icing on the cake of an already great package. The first tab in the app starts at the root directory of your hard disk, and you can drill all the way down to get plist files in the library if you need them.
Billings
Launched in the first week of 2010, Billings Touch is a sign that everything’s going to be beautiful in 2010. Designed by Brandon Walkin, Billings Touch is a mixture of simple, beautiful, and powerful. You can time your work, manage expenses, and keep track of all your clients and projects on your iPhone. The client is a free download, but you need to shell out $15 for invoicing and sync capabilities.
TaskPaper
Good is as little design as possible. Or something like that. Jesse Grosjean has been heading the minimal camp for years now—with Writeroom and TaskPaper on the Mac—and has brought his simple to look at but powerful to use task manager to the iPhone. Enter tasks as simple lists and have them sync over to your desktop over the air, using the SimpleText.ws service.
Vlingo 2.0
The jury is still out on Vlingo. On one hand I just love its vibrant background and excellent typography. But on the other hand, there’s too much clutter on the screen for a speech to text converter. It’s free though, so it can’t hurt to try it out.
Bills
Kind of the reverse of financial tracking apps, Bills let’s you keep track of bills you need to pay. It could be a monthly gym membership, or your credit card, and even access it via a web browser. Bills will then notify you via Push notifications when payments are due, so you don’t get locked out of your building for forgetting to pay the rent. In terms of pixels, Bills comes with a brown wood finish, with vibrant shiny labels on the dashboard, and general indescribable UI goodness throughout. $2.99 at the App Store.
Reportage
A new way to interact with Twitter, Reportage lets you ‘tune in’ to specific Twitter feeds, mimicking a radio tuner. Granted it’s not a 2010 app (what is doing here then!) but it’s new to me. Reportage has got some really well placed pixels. The pulsing loading bar, the sharp profile screen, the grid of user icons, the timeline of tweets; it’s all done to perfection. And even apart from its gorgeous looks, it’s actually a useful app to keep track of some special twitter feeds. I’m still trying to understand the app for what it is, and will soon have my proper review up on SA. Till then, it’s $2.99 at the App Store.
Cinema Times
We’ve already been spoilt by Movies Now! by Kodu, when another local movie listing app shows up with some stunning pixel treatment. Before you say anything, yes, it’s been designed by Iconlicious, and I suspect Marcelo Marfil had a large part to play in this. Everything from the tab bar, to the tabs, are custom, yet feel completely at home on the iPhone. There is one caveat to this app however—it’s currently only available in the UK store, and is UK specific.
Attic
The most beautiful way to catch up with music you haven’t paid attention to. Attic automatically pulls your least played tracks from the iPod library, and allows you to play the album by dragging its disc into the slot. So fucking cute. The design has been a joint venture between David Ross of Tapku Software, and Taptivate. At just $0.99, it’s quite an experience, even if it’s not going to be an app you launch every day.
Flickit Pro
Mike Bernardo has taken his free Flickit app, which was just cute Flickr uploader, and transformed it into a full blown app that rivals even Flickr’s own application. A beautiful tiled dark background makes images pop out of the screen. Bernardo has implemented some amazing ways to browse images, his list view is like nothing I’ve seen before, and I couldn’t recommend it enough. Read Brandon’s review, if you want to know what it’s all about.
Headquarters for Basecamp
Basecamp users are gonna love this. Another dark UI, much like the Squarespace iPhone app, Headquarters brings with it a major part of Basecamp’s functionality. We’re still evaluating it against other apps (Outpost for instance supports offline access while Headquaters does not), but in terms of pure UI goodness, Headquarters is without question the winner of the Basecamp apps.
Seen any new apps we might have missed? You can always email us at our ‘anything email address‘.
6 Comments
Great collection, although I’m sure the best of 2010 is still yet to come!
@Ninhurt: Counting on it! Those iPad apps are definitely going to blow our minds…
@Milind Just when we thought it couldn’t get any better… along comes an iPad. I was wondering, apps that already exist will work on the iPad BUT when they are expanded to full screen, will the resolution become choppy/blocky?
My guess would be yes.
also, there is a new app out called “Music ID” which works much the same as Shazam but with a much cooler, more eye pleasing UI. Check it out.
Depends on what kind of graphics were used to draw the UI. I think Apple depended on bitmap graphics (I could be wrong on this) so making them 2x would definitely result in scaling issues. Custom UI of course will go bad at full screen. I wonder if text scales properly though—from what I’ve heard, no.
Perhaps Apple could issue a vector fix for Xcode and make everything look good at 2x.
Huge thanks for the mention! I should point out that Buck Wilson (@buckwilson) did the HFF design, and both Benjamin Sherman (@ben_jamin_s) and I did the dev work.
Cheers!