As 2013 comes to a close, Apple has released its yearly “best-of” list of iTunes content, setting forth what it believes are the best songs, movies, TV shows, books, and apps of the last twelve months.
In the app category, this year’s list toppers are educational software Duolingo, which is designed to help users learn foreign languages, as well as popular indie game Ridiculous Fishing, alongside Disney’s $10 Animated and Frogmind’s $4 side-scroller Badland.
Separately, Apple crowned Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity as the best movie, while the Steve Carell vehicle Despicable Me 2 won best animated movie. The last season of Breaking Bad, featuring everyone’s favorite teacher-turned-drug-kingpin, is unsurprisingly ranked as the best TV series of 2013.
Justin Timberlake, whose album The 20/20 Experience was released last March, was named best musical performer, while the folks from Cupertino picked hip-hop artist Macklemore’s The Heist as best album. Finally, George Saunders’s story collection Tenth of December won as best fiction book, and Walter White makes another appearance at the top of the “best book made for iBooks” list with Breaking Bad: Alchemy.
Notably, the lists differ from country to country, with each store featuring its own set of winners based on the individual performance of each local market.
Author: Marco Tabini
Marco Tabini is based in Toronto, Canada, where he focuses on software development for mobile devices and for the Web.