Apple’s got some great things planned for 2015, but before we get there we need to look back at the year that was 2014.

With that in mind, today marks the release of the company’s annual iTunes Store awards — highlighting the best music, movies, books, podcasts, apps and games from one of Apple”s most eventful years in history.

If you’re looking for the best possible recommendations for enjoyably passing the time this holiday season (at least until Cult of Mac announce our own “best of 2014” lists), you can find out Apple’s list of winners after the jump:

A crooked former Apple manager will serve one year in prison and pay a whopping $4.5 million fine for leaking details of future Apple products.

Paul Shin Devine faced a maximum of 20 years behind bars for selling secrets to suppliers, which allowed them to negotiate more favorable deals with Apple. Devine was a global supply manager at Apple from 2005 until his arrest in 2010.

Three years ago he pleaded guilty to wire fraud, conspiracy and money laundering after his home was raided and investigators discovered more than $150,000 in cash hidden away in shoe boxes — with more cash apparently kept in safety deposit boxes.

A British politician has owned up to sneaking a quick game of Candy Crush Saga during a particularly dull parliamentary debate.

Nigel Mills, a Conservative MP for Amber Valley in the U.K., was photographed getting his Crush on during a Work and Pensions Committee debate. In a statement to tabloid newspaper The Sun, Mills admitted that his attention wandered during the session, at which point he turned to the sugary fun of freemium games for a pick-me-up.

“There was a bit of the meeting that I wasn’t focusing on and I probably had a game or two,” he said, adding that he shall “try not to do it in future.”

Over the weekend, Apple debuted its latest ad for the iPad Air 2, named “Change.” As with all of the ads in Apple’s “Your Verse” campaign for the first generation iPad Air, the upbeat “Change” demonstrates the flexibility of the iPad Air 2, as it’s used by motorbike enthusiasts, teachers and artists to carry out a variety of tasks.

The ad also showcases the thinness of Apple’s slimmest ever tablet, by featuring a clever letter-boxing effect that gradually closes in over the course of the ad — eventually revealing itself to be the thickness of the iPad Air 2. In this way, the ad is reminiscent of Apple’s pencil ads for the iPad Air, in which the extreme slimness of the tablet is likened to a an everyday household object.

Check out the ad after the jump.

I recently decided it was time to get a proper desktop computer. I needed it predominantly for work, but I wanted it to be powerful enough to play the latest games in 1080p without worrying about stuttering or terrible frame rates.

The new Mac lineup didn’t offer a perfect fit — the Retina 5K iMac was too expensive, and the new Mac mini simply wasn’t powerful enough — so I set myself a goal: To build a gaming machine with a dedicated video card, capable of running OS X, for around the price of a Mac mini.

I set a budget of $650 for my build. That’s $150 more than the base model Mac mini, but $50 less than the midrange model. In this piece, I’ll take you through the components I purchased and why I chose them, and how I put them all together. Next week, I’ll show you how I installed OS X to turn my DIY gaming rig into a Hackintosh.

Cult of Mac Deals has a goal of bringing you the tech and related products you want and need at rock bottom prices.

Today we feature six great products whose value is extraordinarily high and we want to make sure you see them so you don’t miss out.

This week: warm up the telly—Woz is getting a tech-tastic reality TV show; we divulge our favorite new iPhone and Mac apps; we answer some ridiculous listener questions in an all-new Get To know Your Cultist; and finally, Steve Jobs denies Leander Kahney’s attempted handshake not once, but TWICE. Leander recounts the tale. We die laughing.

Quietly chuckle your way through each week’s best Apple stories! Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the chuckles begin.

Our thanks to Boom 2 for supporting this episode. Ever needed to turn up your Mac’s volume louder than it could go? Boom 2 can bolster your Mac’s puny volume to righteous levels your ears probably can’t handle. Try it out free for 7 days and save 20% off any a license with code CultCast at checkout.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a drummer. When it came time to assign instruments in elementary school, I started on a practice drumming pad.

The music teacher never let me graduate to a real drum because he knew what he was hearing on the rubber pad would be a disaster on a simple snare. But an aspiring drummer in Japan has mastered the pad — the iPad, that is. His fast-moving fingers earned him the title of “sickest drummer in metal right now” on Digg.

Hot deals are introduced every day at Cult of Mac Deals.

As new ones arrive, older offers must leave. We’ve highlighted 5 such deals that are ending very soon and we wouldn’t want anyone to miss out. Read on to check them out.

NASA’s spaceship of tomorrow might make a critic of skeuomorphic design cringe.

Orion, which flew successfully on an unmanned test Friday and is seen as a critical first step toward flying a crew to Mars, is guided by sophisticated computer control panels.

But instead of a modern digital interface, NASA designed the controls to look like something from the Gemini missions from the ’60s. Orion’s computer screens are full of virtual flip switches and levers that would put Yuri Gagarin at ease.

It’s a little like Apple putting a virtual rotary dial on an iPhone.

Protesters streamed into an Apple Store in New York City on Friday to stage a “die-in” and call attention to a man who died at the hands of a police officer.

The peaceful Apple Store invasion came on the third night of protests after a grand jury failed to indict the cop who killed Eric Garner, a 43-year-old black man who was stopped on the street for selling cigarettes. Garner, who was asthmatic, died after Officer Daniel Pantaleo applied an apparent choke-hold.

What does the bacon above have in common with The Amazing Spider-Man 2? Both were created with 3D animation software called Houdini by Toronto-based Side Effects Software.

The newest release is coming next month, and, as you can see in the stunning video below, it’s going to further revolutionize the world of 3D animation in movies, TV and video games.

Check the video out below, and try not to lick your screen when the bacon shows up.

The holidays are less than 3 weeks away. Are you prepared?

Shop for your gifts the easy way at Cult of Mac Deals. Today we feature 5 desirable deals for under $75 that anyone on your list would love to receive, like a quadcopter drone, Bluetooth speakers, and more.

The $350 million class action lawsuit against Apple might not even have a legitimate plaintiff anymore, but the trial continued in Oakland today with one of the key witnesses being none other than Steve Jobs himself.

The late Apple CEO appeared on a TV monitor in court today in an unreleeased deposition video that was filmed six months before his death in 2011. CNET reports that in the video Steve Jobs maintained the same stance as Eddy Cue and Phil Schiller earlier this week, that Apple wasn’t trying to block competitors and hurt customers by removing some songs off of iPods. It was simply protecting iTunes from hackers and trying to not violate its record label contracts.

Jobs’ demeanor and responses reportedly suggested he wasn’t taking the antitrust case very seriously, and that Apple didn’t perceive any competitors as legitimate threats.

The only thing missing from Friday’s Orion test flight was a black-and-white live stream and the voice of Walter Cronkite calling the moment of the capsule’s splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

Orion may be the future of deep-space travel, with ambitious missions planned for an asteroid in the next decade and eventually Mars, but the event had a nostalgic feel, like a 1960s or ’70s living room with all eyes on a black-and-white television set.

Google has been tightening up its policies on piracy services the last few weeks and today it just gave The Pirate Bay one its biggest blows on Android by banning its apps from Google Play.

Pirate Bay developers were sent an email from Google today notifying them that their apps had been removed. Apps that provided optimized browsers for the Pirate Bay were Google’s main target in the ban. Many of the apps, which included “The Pirate Bay Proxy,” “PirateApp,” and “The Pirate Bay Premium,” also had proxy sites for users to circumvent ISP restrictions.

The sudden banishment apparently came without a DMCA takedown notice, reports TorrentFreak, who spoke with one of the developers that claims his app really isn’t any different than Google Chome.

Smartphones have been linked to rising crime in New York and San Francisco thanks to their allure among thieves, and according to the FCC it’s getting even worse, with a new study finding 10% of all robberies now involve the theft of a smartphone.

For iPhone owners there is some good news though. The FCC says theft of iOS devices has been on the decline ever since Apple added Activation Lock in iOS 7. Thieves in San Francisco are reportedly passing up on the iPhone now that users have a kill switch, leading to a 38% decline in iPhone robberies.

iPhone thefts in New York City were also down 19% in the first five months of 2014, and in London they’ve dropped 24%. Android owners aren’t as lucky though.

Just like The Force, the Internet has both dark and light sides. How you see the possible spoilers for Star Wars: The Force Awakens that just leaked is mostly a matter of perspective.

If you read on, you’ll be exposed to an embarrassing wealth of spoiler-y plot and character details about J.J. Abrams’ upcoming film. But be aware: Whether true or not, the sheer volume of close-up detail and conflicting information will change you.

If you want to go in unspoiled, read the following rumors at your own risk.

As for the supposed insider who leaked the information? Who knows their motivation? Even the Sith think they’re doing “the right thing.”

Apple has been fighting an iPod-related class-action lawsuit for nearly a decade now, but just as the trial is heating up in Oakland, the New York Times reports that the lawyers suing Apple have suddenly found themselves down to just one plaintiff.

The $350 million case accuses Apple of stifling competition on iTunes from competing music services by deleting songs off users’ iPods from September 2006 to March 2009. But lawyers in the case have withdrawn one of the named plaintiffs today, after they discovered her iPod wasn’t purchased during the time period in question.

Eddy Cue and Phil Schiller have both testified this week at the trial regarding Apple’s use of DRM.  Evidence from Steve Jobs is also expected to be presented, however, there might not even be a case by the time they get to it.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has lashed out at Tim Cook’s privacy policy, calling it “ridiculous,” and knocking Apple for pricing its products as highly as it does.

Zuckerberg’s rebuttal follows comments made by Cook in September, in which he noted that, “When an online service is free, you’re not the customer. You’re the product.” While the message was most likely meant for long-time rival Google, Facebook’s head honcho definitely took it personally.

Read Zuckerberg’s impassioned response after the jump:

After an expansion into China that is nothing short of spectacular, Apple next has its sights set on India, with its vast population of 1.2 billion citizens and rapidly-growing smartphone market.

With that in mind, the company is reportedly finalizing plans to open 500 “iOS stores” in the country, ranging from smaller 300-600 square foot retail outlets, to ones over 2,000 square foot in larger locations.

These stores will likely be run as a franchise model, and operated by Redington, one of Apple’s two distributors in India, which supplies Apple devices to regional stores. Remington currently accounts for around 70 percent of Apple sales in India.

We all like our email signatures to look fantastic. Apple Mail began letting you make your special mark with an HTML-style email signature with OS X Lion back in 2011.

The process of setting up an HTML signature in Apple Mail has only gotten more complex over the years, unfortunately. Now it takes a bit of patience and a sturdy sense of adventure, but it’s not too difficult.

If you want to create your own HTML signature for Apple’s Mail app on OS X Yosemite, keep reading.

This week: the oddly uplifting tale of Apple co-founder Ron Wayne, who sold his stake in the company for $800. Plus, road-ready gifts for bicyclists, killer Vainglory strategy guide, and awesome iOS 8 widgets you won’t want to miss. That and more in this week’s Cult of Mac Magazine!

Dig into Cult of Mac Magazine December 5 Edition, Free on iTunes