2010 iOS Apps of the Year

About two weeks ago, Apple posted their iTunes Rewind 2010 - a roundup of the best and most popular Apps of the year. As I did last year, it’s also time for my 2010 Apps of the Year list, but this year, I’m also adding a boos & bravos section. Enjoy!

Games of the year:

1. Angry Birds & Angry Birds Seasons
2. Cut the Rope
3. Reckless Racing
4. Infinity Sword & Epic Citadel
5. Real Racing
6. Parachute Ninja
7. Osmos
8. Card Shark Solitaire
9. Wispin
10. Jenga

Game Honorable Mentions:

• ZenBound 2
• Plants vs Zombies (Apple’s game of the year, but still no retina display support though)
• Flight Control and CroMag Rally (Updated with GameCenter multiplayer)
• DoodleJump (for the free, frequent updates)

Apps of the year:

1. Reeder
2. PlainText / Notesy
3. Remoter
4. Navigon MobileNavigator (Traffic in-app purchase is great, panorama view is a bit of a rip-off)
5. TuneIn Radio
6. 1Password Pro
7. Twitter (formally Tweetie - free)
8. DropBox (free)
9. AppShopper (free)

App Honorable Mentions:

• Boxcar 2.0: for attempting to bring order to iOS’s horrendous notification system
• VLC
• Google Voice Apps (GVMobile + and Google’s official Voice app for finally being allowed into the App Store)
• Netflix
• Facebook
• ReaddleDocs
• Articles
• TextExpander

Boos and Bravos:

• ID and Epic/Chair - for pushing the iOS platform and hardware to the max

• Gameloft - for updating many (maybe most) of their existing (popular) games (like N.O.V.A., Uno, Let’s Golf 2, Shrek Kart, etc) for the retina display (EA has yet to update most of their lineup)

• Firemint - for being at the forefront of iOS game development, releasing updates for Real Racing (and Flight Control) to add support for the retina display and gyroscope very soon after the iPhone 4’s release (one of the first to support either), and GameCenter with multiplayer support.

• Rovio - for continuing to bring new content to both Angry Birds and Angry Birds Seasons without requiring additional purchases.

• Apple - for making Find My iPhone free for iPhone 4 & iPad owners and for relaxing/clarifying App Store rules (finally allowing Google Voice, for example). Boo for removing shared AirPrint functionality, making AirPrint practically useless (unless you have a new HP printer) and not bringing iWork to the iPhone.

• Chase, USAA, and PayPal - for remote check deposits. Boo for taking so long to process them (7 days for PayPal)

• Developers for making separate iPad “HD” versions, instead of bundling them as a Universal app.