“Hall of Fame” is a tricky moniker in the tech space, often overused and applied to things that haven’t been around very long. We disagree: If a developer, designer, or app makes a Hall of Fame, it should matter.
It should take time to qualify, so impact and importance can be weighed with the context and clarity of history. It should also be a exclusive, giving well-deserved recognition to those who truly change the way we think and feel, who inspire and innovate, and who challenge and redefine.
25 years are required, following a recording’s debut, before it can qualify for the rock and roll hall of fame. 5 years are required, following a player’s retirement, before they can qualify for the baseball hall of fame. And only a handful are inducted each year.
Our hall of fame is modeled similarly. Apps have to be on the market for at least five years before they, and their developers or designers, can be inducted into the iMore Hall of Fame, and we’ve limited our selections to just five inductees per year.
To date, those inductees have all been drawn from iOS. This year, we’re thrilled to announce we’re adding a Mac Hall of Fame as well.
We’ll be using the same criteria for the OS X as we use for iOS. However, in recognition of the Mac’s long history, we’ll be inducting ten entrants a year and next.
Without further ado, here are our 2014 inductees into the iMore Hall of Fame.
2014 — iOS
Sophiestication Software: Sophia Teutschler
Sophia Teutschler doesn’t just make apps — she crafts them. While Cover Sutra for the Mac is a classic, it's the work she did for the iPhone and iPad that helped inform and inspire the very first generation of mobile application development. Teutschler co-founded tap tap tap and founded Sophiestication Software; her On this day…, Tipulator, Groceries, the Apple Design Award-winning Articles, and Magical Weather are all examples of thoughtful design, delightful interaction, and what can be achieved through focus and dedication.
Teutschler is currently working at Apple where her sensibilities will no doubt influence many more developers and designers, for many more years to come.
Tapbots: Paul Haddad and Mark Jardine
Paul Haddad and Mark Jardine met at Oakley, where they decided to try their hand at making an iPhone app. From there, Haddad's code and Jardine's designs sparked into Weightbot. Their incredible mix of finely honed functionality and personality-infused design made it both enjoyable and unmistakable. Convertbot, Pastebot, Calcbot, Weightbot and Tweetbot all followed. Each a character in their robot-themed world. And much like Buffy's acclaimed Hush episode did for dialog, Tweetbot 3 showed their skills were far more than heavy-design deep.
Haddad, Jardine, along with Todd Thomas continue to work on Calcbot, recently releasing the Mac version, on Tweetbot for iPhone and Mac, and on whatever comes next.
Firemint: Rob Murray
Rob Murray's studio, Firemint, made mobile games for years, and even did some contract work for the iPhone in the early days. Then Murray decided to take some time for himself. And the result was Flight Control, one of the first very simple, very addictive casual games for the iPhone. Next came Real Racing, a racing game so powerful it pushed the platform to the limits. Every time Apple released a new iPhone, Firemint would make Real Racing faster, more in depth, and more extensible. Long before the big gaming engines hit, Real Racing was the state of the art of mobile gaming. And they won Apple Design Awards for both apps along the way.
Murray merged Firemint with Iron Monkey in 2012 to create Firemonkey, which later sold to Electronic Arts. Real Racing 3, and other projects, continue under the EA banner.
MLB At Bat
At WWDC 2008 Jeremy Schoenherr showed off something that seemed miraculous — live baseball brought straight to the iPhone in the form of updates and video highlights. It was called MLB at Bat. In 2009, they added audio and won an Apple Design Award, but they also won the hearts of everyone who loved the game.
Now, MLB at Bat brings streaming video from multiple games to a nationwide audience and they do it so well companies like HBO have sought them out to help jump-start their own online efforts.
Rovio
Rovio, originally Relude, was founded in 2003 by Niklas Hed, Jarno Väkeväinen, and Kim. They changed their name in 2005 but they didn’t sling-shot themselves to fame until 2009, when they released Angry Birds. It created not only a franchise but a new global brand, including cartoons and toys. Oh. So. Many. Toys.
While spin-offs like Angry Birds Star Wars and Bad Piggies have followed, so have games they’ve published, like Amazing Alex and Tiny Thief, as well as new games like Retry.
2014 — Mac
Bare Bones Software: Rich Siegel
Rich Siegel first released BBEdit in 1992 as a freeware text editor for the Mac when he was still an engineer at printer maker GCC Technologies. Two years and several iterations of BBEdit later, Siegel founded Bare Bones Software with Patrick Woolsey and Michael Fryar. The history of BBEdit is the history of the Mac. From Classic to Carbon to Cocoa, from the web to the Mac App Store and back. Two decades later, and BBedit remains what countless Mac and web developers — and writers — depend on it to make sense of their code.
Bare Bones continues to develop BBEdit and also makes Yojimbo, a powerful information organization tool available for Mac and iPad, and TextWrangler, a freeware text editor that incorporates some of the same powerful features as BBEdit.
Panic: Steven Frank and Cabel Sasser
Steven Frank and Cabel Sasser teamed up to create Panic in 1998. Together, they created an enduring hit: Transmit, an FTP client for Mac as well designed as it was engineered. Over the years they expanded their repertoire with Audion, an MP3 player that gave Mac customers easy access to digital music before Apple released iTunes; Unison, a Usenet newsreader; and Coda, a powerful integrated web-development environment. For their work, they’ve won the Apple Design Award four times and been runner up twice.
This year, Unison's hit the end of the road, but that doesn't mean Panic killed it: They released it for free following a big update that added the most asked-for feature. That sort of loyalty to its customers is why Panic is so beloved by the Mac community.
Rogue Amoeba: Paul Kafasis, Alex Lagutin, and Quentin Carnicelli
Alex Lagutin and Paul Kafasis began working together in 1998 at @soft Software, developers of a Mac MP3 player called MacAMP. When they left, they acquired the MacAMP name and, joined by Quentin Carnicelli, they released a new MP3 player with a plug-in architecture. Lagutin had the idea that a MacAMP plug-in could capture audio from other Mac applications, and the concept of Audio Hijack was born. Lagutin, Carnicelli, and Kafasis started Rogue Amoeba in 2002 with the release of Audio Hijack (achieving its Ultimate Form as Audio Hijack Pro), and Rogue Amoeba has been creating amazing Mac audio software ever since.
Their current apps include Fission, for fast, lossless audio editing; AirFoil, which lets you transmit any audio from your Mac to remote devices including Apple TV and AirPlay speakers; Internet radio station broadcasting tool Nicecast and Piezo, which lets you record audio from Mac apps easily; and more.
AgileBits: Roustem Karimov and Dave Teare
In 2005 Roustem Karimov and Dave Teare founded Agile Web Solutions and in 2006 they launched 1Password, which managed to make web logins on the Mac both more convenient and more secure. In 2010 they bought the Knox from Marko Karppinen & Co. Together, the two products provide for top-notch Mac security: secure and easy to use data encryption; and a "21st century digital wallet" that stores all your passwords so you don't have to remember them.
Agile Web Solutions rebranded as AgileBits in 2011, and while they continue to produce world-class Mac software, they’ve also brought 1Password to iOS, Windows Phone, and Android as well.
Smile Software: Philip Goward, Greg Scown, and Jean MacDonald
Philip Goward, founder of OnMyMac, and Greg Scown, founder of Smile, joined forces in 2003 to create SmileOnMyMac and create renowned business and productivity apps, including PDFpen, TextExpander, and DiscLabel. With former partner Jean MacDonald, they also helped set the standard for Apple community support and sponsorship.
Though they rebranded to Smile Software in 2011 to better reflect their expansion into iOS apps, they remain dedicated to the Mac and to the Apple community.
Feral Interactive: David Stephen
After a career that included a stint at game giant Sega, David Stephen started Feral in 1996. He saw a Mac market that was desperate for A-list gaming and, today, there’s no part of that market Feral doesn't touch: If you want a LEGO game the entire family can enjoy, Feral has you covered (more than a dozen to date). Strategy games? Feral has everything from Black and White 2 to XCOM Enemy Unknown, the Total War series, and more. Racing games? How about Grid 2 Reloaded Edition and F1 2013. And the list goes on and on. In 2012 they won the Apple Design Award for Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
Thanks to Feral, Mac owners don’t have to look longingly at the games on other platforms. They’re too busy playing them on the Mac.
Realmac Software: Daniel Counsell
Daniel Counsell started Realmac Software in 2002 and in 2004 released RapidWeaver, a template-based website editor, for the Mac. RapidWeaver has been in continuous development ever since, outlasting even Apple’s iWeb.
Today, RealMac also develops Clear, a to do list organizer available on Mac and iOS; Ember, a digital scrapbooking app that enables you to capture and organize images and web pages that inspire you; and most recently, Typed, a minimal text editor that helps remove distractions so you can focus on typing.
The Omni Group: Ken Case, Wil Shipley, and Tim Wood
Omni Development was originally founded by Wil Shipley, Ken Case, and Tim Woods in 1989. They started by creating database software for NeXTStep. After Apple acquired NeXT and made NeXTStep the basis of OS X, Omni started writing Mac software.
Shipley left with Mike Matas to form Delicious Monster in 2004, but Wood and Case continue to steward the company forward, developing software like OmniOutliner, its outlining software; OmniGraffle, its diagramming software; task management tool OmniFocus and project management app OmniPlan. And in the process they’ve won 5 Apple Design Awards and an honorable mention.
Alsoft: Al Dion
Al Dion and Larry Davis were already working for Apple when the Macintosh came out, so they understood the power of the platform and how to get the most out of it. That's one way to build a business that's lasted 30 years. Al's been on his own for many years, and his business publishes the gold standard for Mac disk recovery: DiskWarrior.
In 16 years, DiskWarrior has saved countless Mac users from heartache, not to mention the system administrators, techs and others responsible for keeping those Macs working. Thirty years later, Alsoft's just come out with DiskWarrior 5. The new version of the venerable data recovery and optimization utility has been completely rewritten to take advantage of newer Mac APIs, which should give it another 16 years of life at least.
Aspyr: Michael Rogers and Ted Staloch
Brothers in law Michael Rogers and Ted Staloch started Aspyr in 1996 in a living room. Porting the original Tomb Raider game to the Mac put Aspyr on the map as a publisher of A-list games on the Mac, and making deals with leading PC game companies has kept it there ever since — The Sims wouldn't have come to the Mac if not for Aspyr, along with the Civilization series and countless other big hits. Aspyr's most recent releases include Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth, Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions, and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel.
In 2008, Aspyr won an Apple Design Award for Guitar Hero III. And, to this day, when you see a hot new game hit the Mac, even odds are Aspyr brought it there.
2013
Instapaper: Marco Arment
Marco Arment first gained fame from Instapaper. Both before Instapaper, as the back-end architect behind the social blogging platform Tumblr, and after, as the founder of The Magazine, Arment's skills as a developer, and his thoughtfulness when it comes to interactivity, helped shape the modern form of text-based content on mobile.
Arment currently co-hosts the Accidental Tech Podcast and works on the popular podcast app, Overcast
Smule: Dr. Ge Wang
Smule was created by Dr. Ge Wang of Stanford and Jeff Smith in 2008 with the goal of making music both social and mobile. That first hit was Ocarina, which let iPhone owners blow music around the world. They continued with Magic Guitar, Magic Piano, and brought autotune to the iPhone with I am T-Pain.
Dr. Wang left Smule in 2013 to return to Stanford, but left behind a legacy of mobile music that will inspired years of apps to follow.
Atebits: Loren Brichter
Loren Brichter seemingly came out of nowhere to make Tweetie, a Twitter app that looked and worked as though Apple themselves had made it. Perhaps that’s because Brichter had previously been secreted away on the original iPhone team. With Tweetie, Brichter created pull-to-refresh, which was later integrated into iOS, and overlapping panels, which influenced a generation of iPad apps.
In 2010 Twitter bought Tweetie and hired Brichter. The Atebits apps became the official Twitter apps for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Brichter stayed at Twitter until 2011 when he resurrected Atebits and went on to create a second phenomenon: Letterpress.
Facebook: Joe Hewitt
Early in his career, Joe Hewitt worked on Firebug for Firefox. He joined Facebook in 2007 and released an interface framework for iPhone webapps called iUI. In 2009, he followed it up with a native framework, Three20. Between the two, he managed to capture an incredible amount of Facebook’s social power and put it into an iPhone app — an iPhone app that went on to become the most popular in history.
Hewitt left Facebook in 2011 and is currently gardening.
Ngmoco: Neil Young
Ngmoco was founded in 2008 by former Electronic Arts executive Neil Young. They rose to fame on the App Store thanks to iPhone-centric titles like the Apple Design Award winning Topple 2, the widely-acclaimed Rolando 2, Star Defense, Eliminate, and more. In the days before Game Center, they created their own network called PlusPlus. They also began to experiment with an in-app purchase-based business models, helping start a trend that now dominates the App Store.
Ngmoco was acquired by DeNA in 2010 and folded into their mobile platform system.
2012
Tap Tap Revolution and Tapulous: Nate True, Guy English, and Louie Mantia
Tap Tap Revolution, created by Nate True and later renamed Tap Tap Revenge by Tapulous and rearchitected by Guy English and Louie Mantia, it went on to become the first blockbuster gaming franchise on the iPhone.
True is currently a senior software engineer at Synapse Product Development. English is co-creator of the Mac app, Napkin. Mantia is co-founder of Pacific Helm
Iconfactory: Craig Hockenberry and Gedeon Maheux
Twitterrific, in addition to being the first native Twitter app for iPhone, was the first native Twitter client for Mac, and one of the first on the iPad. It was the first to use a bird icon in association with Twitter, the first to describe a Twitter post as a Tweet. It was first to provide a character counter, the first to support @replies (now @mentions) and conversations. And, while still in beta, Twitterrific won an Apple Design Award. The list goes on and on.
It all began as the work of Craig Hockenberry and Ged Maheux at the Iconfactory, and, along with Sean Heber and David Lanham, it continues to be developed and designed there to this day.
Google: iPhone Web Apps
The first official way to develop for the iPhone was web apps, and Google was born of the web. So, it made complete sense that, in December of 2007, Google took their best-in-class desktop web apps — Google Search, Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Reader — and made them best-in-class experiences for the iPhone as well. All you had to do was go to google.com on your iPhone, and a unified interface made everything else easy to get to and easy to use. It was what the web on the iPhone was supposed to be.
Today Google still makes sure their web apps work great with the iPhone but, recognizing that most people prefer apps on mobile, they’ve also created a full suite of iOS apps as well.
Lights Off: Lucas Newman and Adam Betts
Lights Off was the first native game for the iPhone. It launched in August of 2007, only two months after the original iPhone went on sale, and 10 months before the official App Store launched. Created by Lucas Newman, a developer at Delicious Monster at the time, and designer Adam Betts, it was built in 3 days as part of the C-4 Iron Coder event.
Newman later went to work at Apple. Betts continues to work in interface and graphics design. And Lights Off is now under the care of High Caffeine Content
Mobile Safari: Richard Williamson and team
Back in 2007, web apps were the only way to officially develop for the iPhone, and that made Safari no only a web browser, but a platform. Originally developed by Don Melton and his team under the codename Alexander, Safari was based on WebKit, a fork of Konquerer/KHTML. When time came to get it onto the iPhone, Richard Williamson and his team led the charge. Their work was so good, and so important, when the time came for Google, Palm, BlackBerry, and others to take to the modern mobile web, they all turned to WebKit.
Safari for iOS continues to be one of the best mobile browsers in the industry.
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