Apple has officially announced the winners of its App Store Awards 2025, honouring the best apps and games across iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and other devices. These awards celebrate innovation, design excellence and deep integration within Apple’s ecosystem.
This year, the Best iPhone App of 2025 was awarded to Tiimo, an AI-powered visual planning app. Tiimo uses artificial intelligence to turn daily to-do lists into realistically scheduled, actionable plans — a feature that impressed both users and Apple’s review team.
However, the biggest surprise was the absence of popular AI chatbots such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Grok, despite their massive global user base and millions of daily active users.
Apple’s Focus: Ecosystem-First, Not Just AI Hype
The App Store Awards are not based solely on popularity or emerging technology trends. According to reports, Apple selects winners that are:
Deeply integrated into Apple’s ecosystem
Designed with platform-specific optimisation
Built with privacy-first architecture
Aligned with Apple’s design and user experience philosophy
In contrast, apps like ChatGPT and Gemini operate on external AI infrastructure and large language models (LLMs) hosted outside Apple’s native ecosystem. These platforms involve complex cloud processing, continuous data handling and heightened privacy considerations. As a result, Apple does not classify them as fully “Apple-native” experiences.
Other AI-Powered Winners in 2025
Although standalone AI chatbots were overlooked, Apple did reward apps that use AI as a feature rather than the core product:
Best iPad App – Detail
An AI-powered video editing app offering tools like Auto Edit, automatic captions and intelligent zoom effects.
Best Apple Watch App – Strava
The fitness app leverages an AI assistant to analyse activity history, heart rate, elevation and performance data, delivering personalised insights and workout summaries.
The Bigger Message from Apple
Apple’s selection sends a clear message:
The company values AI that enhances native app functionality, rather than apps built entirely around external AI models. While ChatGPT and similar platforms dominate global usage, Apple’s awards continue to prioritise ecosystem harmony, privacy, and seamless device-level integration over raw AI capability.
Recent Random Post:
