The full list can be viewed on the App Store from iOS. Unlike Google, Apple seems to have ordered its selection, ranking the apps to create a list of the 25 most innovative and popular developer success stories in 2015.
At the top is Periscope, Twitter’s live-streaming app that lets its users broadcast video of their life to the world. The app launched earlier this year and became an instant hit, bringing live-streaming away from gaming and media broadcasts and into the real world. Anybody can follow Periscope users and like and comment on each live stream.
Periscope is followed by Enlight, a new $3.99 photo editing app that provides a wide range of filters, effects and manual controls to let photographers fine-tune the look of their images. In third place is real-time no-fee trading app Robinhood, built with the aim of simplifying the stock market.
The $2.99 action processor Workflow is next up. It works in a similar manner to popular online service IFTTT, letting you assign series of actions that run automatically when a certain event occurs. You could make your phone email out meeting notes before a calendar appointment, or tell it to respond on its own to important but time-consuming notifications.
The fifth and sixth spots are taken by established photo-sharing platform Instagram and video-streaming app HBO Now respectively. In at number seven is flight finder Hopper, an app that works in a different way to other members of its genre by letting you work out the best time to fly to any destination. It prioritises low cost convenience.
Popular photo editor Darkroom claims eighth place. Users can make and share their own filters to customise their photos and can edit images directly from the camera roll without having to import directly to the app.
Darkroom is trailed by Lark, an artificial intelligence to help you manage your fitness. You can have conversations with Lark in a messaging interface, allowing you to tell the AI how much exercise you’ve done and get a response back on how to achieve your goals. In tenth place is the award-winning Everything Machine, an app that teaches children how to program within a highly-visual interface.
The rest of the list is as varied as the top 10 items are. From DJ deck Pacemaker to Fit Men Cook’s selection of healthy recipes, Apple’s collection of year-defining apps covers many different tastes and spans several iTunes categories. The official Reuters TV Video app sits alongside meme maker Giphy Cam, savings platform Jet next to news-reader Timeline.
Most of the apps are free and available worldwide but some may be region restricted or paid-only. Others will include in-app purchases to let you buy more content. Apple’s full list can only be viewed from iOS devices from within the App Store.
Google has also curated a collection of the best Android apps in its Play Store this year, covered in a separate article on Digital Journal. Like Apple, the company has included apps from every category to represent the best of Android in 2015.
