Apple Now Accepting Entries For 2009 Design Awards

With the World Wide Developers Conference quickly approaching, developers probably have a lot on their minds.  With all sorts of deadlines to meet, flights to schedule, and hotels to book the last thing they need right now is to worry about a contest.  But this isn't just any old contest, this is the 2009 Apple Design Awards.  Apple has just started accepting entries for the contest, so if you are a developer with a great application, I would put the rest of my plans on hold and get that baby submitted before it's too late. Apple is accepting entries for the best designed applications for the iPhone OS and Mac OS X.  Since this is an iPhone site, we will only be listing the iPhone information.  If you want to find out more about the Mac OS X portion, just follow the links. The categories for the iPhone are:

• Up to four winners who have designed applications using iPhone SDK for iPhone SDK 2.2.1 (applications must be released versions and available on the App Store).
• One winner who has designed an application using iPhone OS 3.0 beta (application must be a pre-release version)
• One student winner who has designed an application using iPhone SDK for iPhone SDK 2.2.1 (application must be a released version and available on the App Store).

The applications will be evaluated using these six criteria: platform innovation, technology integration and adoption, connectedness, localization, design and quality, and finally performance tuning and optimization. As for the what's at stake this year, Apple is offering some fantastic prizes:

Winners will receive two 15-inch MacBook Pros (best configuration), two 30-inch Apple Cinema Displays, two 16GB iPhone 3Gs, two 16GB iPod touch, an ADC 2009 Premier Membership, and reimbursement of their WWDC 2009 E-ticket. Student category winners will receive one 15-inch MacBook Pro, one 30-inch Apple Cinema Display, one 16GB iPod touch, one 8GB iPhone 3G, one ADC 2009 Student Membership, and reimbursement of their WWDC 2009 E-ticket.

Entries are being accepted now through Monday, May 4th.  The official rules are listed on their page as well, so check them out so you don't get disqualified. Good luck to those who are entering!

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