Apple began accepting entries for its Apple Design Awards program, the company's program for recognizing what it considers excellent Mac and iPhone development. The ADAs are part of Apple's Developer Connection, and are awarded during the annual World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC), which takes place this year on June 8-12 at Moscone West in San Francisco.

Apple is running this year's ADAs with two categories, Best iPhone OS Applications and Best Mac OS X Applications. In each category, the company will award up four winners for software developed for the current shipping OSes (iPhone 2.2.1 and Mac OS X 10.5.x), one winner each for a Snow Leopard and iPhone Software 3.0 pre-release products, and one student winner for each category for the current OSes.

Winners will receive two 15-inch MacBook Pros (best configuration), two 30-inch Apple Cinema Displays, two 16GB iPhone 3Gs, two 16GB iPod touch, an ADC 2009 Premier Membership, and reimbursement of their WWDC 2009 E-ticket.

Student category winners will receive one 15-inch MacBook Pro, one 30-inch Apple Cinema Display, one 16GB iPod touch, one 8GB iPhone 3G, one ADC 2009 Student Membership, and reimbursement of their WWDC 2009 E-ticket.

Developers can find more information at the WWDC Web site under a special page set up for the ADAs.

We'd like to thank the readers who alerted us to the news.