From League of Legends to LumaFusion, we speak to the four winners about future plans for their apps.<\/b>
\nWith iOS 15.2 and macOS 12.1 Monterey available to all, users can download the updates to their devices, alongside updating any existing apps to take advantage of what these updates bring. Apple\u2019s App Store Awards are the company\u2019s way of highlighting developers who created apps that stood out in their category compared to other apps, in a theme of what Apple calls, connections. Whether that\u2019s in video editing, streaming or games, they take advantage of recent features brought out by Apple and its software in an innovative way. The company announced the year\u2019s winners this month, with Carrot Weather, LumaFusion, DAZN, and League of Legends each winning in their categories for certain devices. We spoke to the developers behind these apps to find out the challenges in designing the apps and their plans for the future. Every developer received an award that mirrors the App Store logo and its icon made from 100% recycled aluminum. During a video announcing the winners, Tim Cook, Apple\u2019s CEO said, \u201cFrom self-taught indie coders to inspiring leaders building global businesses, these standout developers innovated with Apple technology, with many helping to foster the profound sense of togetherness we needed this year.\u201d First up, LumaFusion is a video editing app on the iPad and iPhone for $19.99 \/ \u00a319.99 \/ AU$19.99, that allows you to edit multiple videos at once with transitions and features that make it easy to turn a video into an engaging narrative. Its improvements this year made it the winner of the iPad app of the year award. LumaFusion\u2019s developers, Terri Morgan and Chris Demiris try to approach every release, whether that\u2019s hardware or software, in how its users can benefit from their improvements in the app. \u201cWe couldn\u2019t imagine where the iPad would go after ten years. Now, with Thunderbolt support and the M1 chip, we always see how we can adapt these updates into LumaFusion. Some of these features are easy to implement, such as ProRes and external storage support, but we’re always looking to see which features would benefit users most.\u201d Morgan explains. \u00ab\u00a0We\u2019re inspired by how so many have used the app to help follow their passion, especially during lockdown, and it does help drive us to make the app even better, and more widely available to other users on Apple devices.\u201d League of Legends: Wild Rift was the winner of the iPhone gaming app of the year. Made by Riot Games, it’s one of few franchises that’s successfully made the jump from a console game to mobile with no compromises. Michael Chow, executive producer on the game, reflected on developing the game since the start. \u00ab\u00a0Usually when a game makes the move to mobile, there’s a lot of negativity from their communities, so we wanted to make sure we avoided it with Wild Rift.\u00a0\u00bb With our positive impressions of running Rift on an iPhone 12 Pro earlier this year, we wanted to know how Chow and the team felt about releasing the game after a very long beta-test period. \u201cWe\u2019ve spent the past year rolling out the game across the world, and the results are pretty stellar,\u00a0\u00bb Chow exclaims. \u00ab\u00a0It\u2019s not been an easy journey, as we weren\u2019t sure if it was physically possible to bring League of Legends to mobile, but the results speak for themselves.\u201d \u201cWe quit our day jobs to start the company, and with Apple\u2019s relentless efforts to make the iPhone better, it couldn\u2019t make us more proud to receive this award from the company.\u201d DAZN is a streaming app for sports, and while it\u2019s additionally available on iPhone and iPad, it\u2019s available for AppleTV for which DAZN won the app award for. It allows subscribed users to watch sports such as MotoGP, UFC, UEFA, NFL and more for $19.99 \/ \u00a319.99 \/ AU$19.99 a month. Ben King, Director of DAZN at DAZN Group, explained to us that the aim of the app was to make it accessible, flexible and affordable to those who just wanted to easily access their sports for a price that didn\u2019t lock them into two-year contracts. \u201cWe\u2019re absolutely honoured to receive this award from Apple, but it doesn\u2019t mean we want to stop with how we can offer content to our users in way of features and more kinds of sports.\u201d The app uses push notifications for the latest updates in other matches, such as red cards and goals, while you\u2019re using another app. You can also watch three consecutive sports or games at once, mirroring a scene in Back to the Future Part II when Marty Jr would watches 16 channels at once. Brian Mueller, is the developer of Carrot Weather, and won the 2021 App Award for the Apple Watch. Its complications to allow certain weather forecasts on watch faces, alongside its push notifications for upcoming weather changes, has allowed Mueller to bring the app, and its sass to the watch with no compromise. \u201cWhen the app launched in 2015, it was purely an entertainment app, with its achievements and Carrot\u2019s personality,\u201c Mueller explained. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t until the Apple Watch arrived that forced me to focus on making a really great weather app, instead of relying on Carrot\u2019s jokes and the bizarre imagery.\u201d As the app grew since watchOS 2, Mueller realised that he could add more complications to the watch faces. \u201cI found out a workaround in early versions that could allow me to add more than the one complication per watch face that the operating system allowed.\u201d Mueller reveals. \u201c After this, users were asking me for certain weather sources to add to the watch faces, and I still love that, that fans of the app are giving me feedback to make the watch app better.\u201d While these developers are celebrating their success, they aren’t stopping. We asked what\u2019s coming up for their apps in the near future. \u201cWe have a long list of feature requests, and in the past there’s been features such as CoreML and smart background removal. But we have to pick and choose each time to really focus on how they best fit for LumaFusion.\u201d Morgan explains. \u201cI can see us doing cooperative editing with SharePlay eventually, but in the immediate future, key-frame easing where you can bring in images to videos, alongside subtitling and speed ramping are all coming soon.\u201d We also wanted to know whether there were plans for LumaFusion coming to macOS natively. \u201cWhile you can export a project to Final Cut, we\u2019re aware that there\u2019s a need for LumaFusion on macOS.\u201d Demiris explains. \u201cWe are working on a more complete version for macOS to take advantage of what the Mac brings.\u201d With League of Legends: Wild Rift, Chow was enthusiastic about how the on-screen controls work well on the iPhone. But we asked if keyboard support in games, a feature of iPadOS 15, would come to the game to help users control their character more easily on the bigger tablet. \u201cControl in Rift is something that we spent a lot of time on, so I don\u2019t think we\u2019ll implement keyboard support anytime soon,\u201d Chow explains. \u201cBut gamepad support is something that could work, especially for the Apple TV, so who knows.\u201d With DAZN, SharePlay support is something that\u2019s of interest to King and the rest of the team. \u201dWe\u2019re all about flexibility, and while you can already join with friends in watching a game, SharePlay does bring something to the table. If enough users give feedback to us that it\u2019s a feature they want on their iPad or Apple TV, it\u2019s something we\u2019ll consider for a future update.\u201d Finally, with accessibility a big part of Apple\u2019s focus in software interaction, we asked King if there\u2019s upcoming features to help with those with certain impairments when using DAZN. \u201cWe have some really interesting ideas for accessibility,\u201c King reveals. \u201cWe don\u2019t have to give you one audio stream for instance, so there\u2019s no reason for using sign language as an alternative commentary, but for the moment, subtitles and closed captions for pre-recorded content are something that we\u2019re currently working on. But there\u2019s far more options compared to cable content that we can provide to help cater to someone who is either visually or auditory impaired, and we want to help them.\u201d<\/p>\n