Kino is the iPhone App of the Year

A lot of anticipation and excitement and some time later, we arrived in New York this week for a meeting where we were told we were not a finalist, after all…

In fact, Kino has won the App Store Award for iPhone App of the Year!

We started developing Kino about a year ago. Ben shared a video answering our top Halide feature request: no, we we never going to add video to Halide. We were going to make a new app: Kino, our pro video camera app.

The development was a whirlwind, with both of us being new dads and Ben’s baby son being born around the time we hoped to ship our first version — but six months ago we released what we considered an ambitious, fun and powerful first version.

We did things a little differently: we wanted to keep things simple, but powerful like we did with Halide, but target even the most casual users with features so you could download the app and shoot impressive, cinematic video with no editing or experience necessary. A camera with batteries included.

We got help, of course. We were supported endlessly by friends new and old in video that contributed advice, time, effort and even Instant Grade presets. I want to thank Stu Maschwitz, Adam Lisagor and the folks at Sandwich, Tyler Stalman, Evan Schneider, and Kevin Ong, and our longtime creative collaborator Jelmar Geertsma as well as our friends at Apple for the tremendous support in making Kino.

It came out just six months ago, and we were absolutely thrilled and blown away with the response. Kino launched to the number one spot on the App Store charts for several days. We immediately set out to map out our many plans for updates, and have shipped several big releases since.

We are humbled and still somewhat in disbelief at this incredible award from Apple’s App Store team. It supports our dream as two friends to make apps for creatives because we love doing so, with a focus on craft and accessibility. We love how much this year’s awards are a mix of app makers both big and small, with products we love and use like Lumy and Adobe Lightroom. We’re incredibly proud to be taking this big App Store icon home!

A huge thanks to our families for supporting us through long nights, weekends and days. And the biggest thanks to you, our users and supporters, for making this possible.

Kino — made with love, with friends.