Apple Now Accepting Design Award Nominations

Nominations are now open for Apple's annual Design Awards, which celebrate the best iOS and OS X apps on the market today.

Judges for this year's contest are looking for apps that are well-designed, state-of-the-art, and innovative. The apps should be easy to use and engaging, take advantage of the latest hardware and OS releases, and inspire users in "new and creative ways," according to Apple's Design Awards Web page.

To be considered for this year's award, an app must be available in the iOS App Store or Mac App Store by May 1, Apple said.

The winners will be announced Apple's annual Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), which . Developers looking to buy a ticket to the conference are too late — this year's event sold out less than two hours.

Last year's Design Awards winners for the iPhone developer category included the sword-fighting game Infinity Blade, Golfscape GPS Rangefinder, and physics puzzle game Cut the Rope. In the iPad developer category, winners included the music mixing app djay, physics-based game Osmos, and book app Our Choice.

Winners in the Mac developer category last year included music app Capo, image editor Pixelmator, and tower offense game Anomaly Warzone Earth. In the student developer category, winners included GPA calculator Grades 2, baseball history app Pennant, and news and social network browser Pulse News.

Developers can nominate an app for an Apple Design Award, though winners are not selected based on the number of nominations they receive. In fact, an app doesn't even need to be nominated to win.

The Apple Design Awards have been running since 1996.