By Graham K. Rogers

Apple recently announced its best apps for the year: the best and most downloaded music, apps, TV shows, movies, books, and podcasts. Periscope was the winner overall and we saw this used to good effect here when there was an attack at the Erawan Shrine in central Bangkok. A live feed was available for a while via Twitter.

However, these awards may not reflect local preferences and use. Apple also has other lists and there is one that focuses on what is available in Thailand. There are two major sections here: App Store; and iTunes, for music.

The App Store "Best of" winners for Thailand are in two sections: iPhone and iPad. Each has an overall winner and a best game. The "Best Of" from each of these is:

• iPhone: Thailand - App of the Year: Enlight. This is one of my must-have apps and I reviewed it in March this year. I often use its mix of filters and editing tools when working on images in the Photos library. Enlight (now version 1.2) accesses these easily and a rich list of tools is shown to the right of the image.

• iPhone: Thailand - Game of the Year: Lara Croft Go. The citation mentions the beauty and clever design of this spinoff from the movies.

  
  

• iPad: Thailand - App of the year: Simple Machines. I had a look at this in May and thought then how useful this was as a way to help students and children understand the physics of machines.

• iPad: Thailand - Game of the year: Implosion. The comments here concern its console-quality graphics and slick controls. This is a game that follows many invasion-fight-back-and-reclaim-the-world scenarios. The graphics here, even on the iPhone where it is quite playable, are just stunning. Scaled up for the iPad Pro, the screens are simply wonderful, with the output from the 4 speakers giving excellent, realistic sound.

The iTunes Store has four sections for its music winners here: Best Album, Best Song, Best New Artist and Best Artist:

• Best Album - Mom & Popshop by 25 hours: an album released by the GMM Grammy label that suggests the group has elevated the standard of Thai music.

• Best Song - P./Again by DCNXTR. The electronic music scene ha grown considerably throughout the world in recent years and is an essential part of the club music scene. DCNXTR has slowed down the pace and put "the devil in the details with each of their songs" with the best being "P./Again". This is regarded as a good example of Thai Indie music.

• Best New Artist - The Parkinson. Despite the band only having been together for a year, the slow mid-tempo with beautiful melody output is going down well with Thai audiences.

• Best Artist - Polycat are rather interesting with the indie-pop and electronic sound and lyrics that seem to come straight from the Thai teenager. A faster number like Ja Aow Arai is nicely put together for example. The group is enjoying considerable success this year.

Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs. He is now continuing that in the Bangkok Post supplement, Life.