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Back in April, Apple announced that the annual Apple Design Awards would only be given to mobile app developers at this year’s WWDC.

Well, one of Panic’s customers wasn’t too thrilled with that. From the Panic blog:

Transmit 4 was a long time coming, and it was well worth the wait. The UI is possibly the best on the Mac, Transmit Disk has instantly proven invaluable to my work, and even the purchasing page on your website is gorgeous. The progress bar and transitions on the credit card icons were something I’ve never seen, and it proves that no developer pays attention to detail as much as Panic.

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A great idea from two awesome, relevant companies.

Oh, never mind.

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Michael Gartenberg:

Android isn’t summer camp for handset vendors and not everyone gets get a trophy for showing up. Google is treating partners equally, but will not slow the rate of innovation so weaker players can keep up. By constantly raising the bar, both in terms of reference devices and software, Google aims to keep innovating and drive that innovation as a differentiator. Google wasn’t looking for volume sales with the Nexus One, it was looking to raise the hardware bar – and arguably the best way to do that is to do it yourself.

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Mike Ryan for Vanity Fair:

Today is the 30th anniversary of the release of The Empire Strikes Back, a film most Star Wars fans consider the best of the franchise’s six films. Just three years after Star Wars revolutionized the blockbuster, Empire redefined it again, proving that a film that took place in outer space and featured light sabers and blasters could also be smart and, yes, depressing. If watching Star Wars was kind of like being on an amusement-park ride—smiles for everyone! — watching The Empire Strikes Back might be more comparable to getting a root-canal. Han Solo would have gladly traded what happened to him in Empire for full set of root-canals. The Empire, seemingly defeated at the end of the first movie when Luke Skywalker blew up the Death Star, struck back in a big way, and it was ugly.

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Daniel Lyons — of Fake Steve fame — is ditching his iPhone:

The new version of Android — version 2.2, a.k.a. Froyo — blows the doors off the iPhone OS. It’s faster, for one thing. It also will support Flash, something Apple refuses to do, mostly out of spite.

The new Android OS will support tethering, meaning you can use your phone as a portable Wi-Fi hotspot, connecting your computer to the Internet. Apple and AT&T say they’re going to offer tethering—someday. It’s just not clear when. Which is why today, just to be mean, Google showed an Android phone tethered to an Apple iPad. Big laughs all around.

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Laura June:

We, the people who buy and love gadgets, who write about them, who obsess over their design and minutiae, must think about what this means. We should go into our purchases knowingly – the way most of us think with more knowledge than our ancestors about what we put in our mouths and how we clothe ourselves. Would I prefer that Apple assembled my iPhone in the US of A? Yes: there’s greater oversight and better working conditions here. Would that mean I would have to pay more? Yes, exponentially. Companies like Apple know that their images matter. It’s why they’re all scrambling to “green themselves up” and prove that their products don’t end up contributing to the toxic garbage dump that we call Earth. We shouldn’t accept companies’ meaningless “we’re looking into it” press releases, because at the end of the day, we should come to terms with the fact that they don’t actually care about the workers at Foxconn, not really – as long as the factories keep churning out the goods.

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Ross Miller:

We have to say, it’s really something to have a mobile browser that doesn’t pop up little cubes with question marks all over the web, but we found that rediscovering Flash was much like reuniting with a high school friend; at first you’ve so much to catch up on, but then you realize how far you’ve grown apart. Adobe’s pre-vetted list of Flash-enabled sites do a good job of showing off the technology, but we still can’t help but think the interactive elements still have a lot of catching up to do. As for video, the stream is good quality but gets fairly choppy – especially when you check out something “not optimized for mobile viewing.” Some of the HTML5 footage we’ve seen via the same device shows up in crisper detail and fluidity. Battery and heat are also of concern: the pre-release beta we have, according to Adobe, lacks hardware acceleration. Ergo, our beloved handset got piping hot after about 30 minutes of heavy video watching, and the battery indicator in the upper right had a sizable dent.

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From the Iconfactory blog:

When Twitter recently announced they were purchasing Atebits’ popular Twitter application, Tweetie, many critics wrote off all 3rd party apps, including Twitterrific. Well, we’re here to say that not only is Twitterrific alive and kicking, but it’s being actively developed with love by the Iconfactory. There are some exciting changes coming to the ‘Little Blue Bird that Could’ and we wanted to give you a wing up.

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Pretty neat. Features include Google search for content (present and future), DVR integration, Hulu, Netflix, content downloads from Amazon and more.

The AppleTV looks even sillier now.

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NY Daily News:

British Petroleum - desperate for ideas - gave the okay to test six of Costner’s gizmos Wednesday, after the Army Corps of Engineers gave the machine a thumbs-up.

Costner’s $24 million centrifuge machine has a Los Angeles-perfect name, “Ocean Therapy.”

Placed on a barge, it sucks in oily water, separates out the oil and spits back clean water.

“It’s like a big vacuum cleaner,” said Costner’s business partner, Louisiana trial lawyer John Houghtaling.

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Google Vice-President of Engineering Vic Gundotra:

If we did not act, we faced a draconian future. Where one man, one company, one carrier was the future.

Update: John Paczkowski quipped:

But we’re just fine with the two men, one company, one search engine model.

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John Paczkowski:

Here’s a stunner of a data point: Apple is selling more than 200,000 iPads per week. Which means, according to RBC Capital Markets analyst Mike Abramsky, that sales of the company’s new device have outpaced those of the Mac in the United States and are closing in on those of the iPhone 3GS.

Wow.

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