Rather than slogging through a lake of reviews to find something you’re just going to put down after 30 minutes, Cult of Mac has once again waded through the iTunes store to compile a list of the best new movies, albums and books to come out this week.

Enjoy!

Best Albums:

Disclosure – “Settle”

2013 is quickly winding down, which means other than a river of holiday albums, most of the good stuff is already out for the year.  One album that you might have missed that’s definitely worth a listen is “Settle” from the U.K. sibling duo of Guy and Howard Lawrence. The entire album is full of irresistible dance grooves and catchy synth hooks, perfect to mix in during your company’s annual Christmas party once things get really drab.

iTunes – $9.99

Britney Spears – “Britney Jean”

Speaking of dance music, Britney Spears hasn’t been like really relevant in almost a decade, but she’s got a new album out and ya know what? It’s not bad if you just like pop, but it’s great if you like dancing. “Britney Jean” is Spears’ eighth studio album and probably the best thing she’s released since “Circus,” thanks to a loaded deck of glittery pop bangers that feature stars such as will.i.am, T.I., and her sister Jamie Lynn, who’s got her own debut album coming out, too.

iTunes – $13.99

Jake Owens – “Days of Gold”

We never feature any country artists in the magazine, mostly because George Strait and Garth Brooks’ best years are long gone and who else is there? Oh, how about Jake Owen? His new album “Days of Gold” has a nice mix of modern country jams like “Beachin” and “Life of the Party” but he also shows off a bit of old school country charm in “Ghost Town” and “What We Ain’t Got.”

iTunes – $11.99

Best Books

George Washington’s Secret Six: The Spy Ring That Saved The American Revolution

by Brian Kilmeade & Don Yaeger

Thanksgiving is over and I’m just barely crawling out of my turkey comatose, but what better way to be a little bit more thankful for the U-S-of-A than learning about the crazy spy games our illustrious founding fathers used to beat the British during the Revolutionary War?

“George Washington’s Secret Six” plunges readers into the highly sophisticated and deeply secretive intelligence network George Washington organized to infiltrate New York and learn the British’s secret war plans. The Secret Six’s identities were so secret that one spy wasn’t uncovered until the 1900s, while another kept his identity secret from Washington the entire time.

The book details how General Washington rallied from his hasty retreat from New York in August 1776 and used his top-secret group called The Culper Spy Ring to gain the upper hand on the British, making for one of the most interesting Revolutionary War stories you’ve never heard about.

iTunes – $10.99

Undisputed Truth

by Mike Tyson and Larry Sloman

Mike Tyson is a weird dude. He’s gone from being the youngest heavyweight champion ever, to biting opponents ears off in the ring. The guy fought his way out of the poor streets of Brooklyn to become the most ferocious warrior the ring has ever seen, only to lose millions of dollars during the height of his fame leading to years of hard partying and criminal proceedings.

“Undisputed Truth” isn’t just a great autobiography about one of the most iconic boxers of our time, but it’s a raw and honest portrait of what makes Mike Tyson tick. Tyson dishes on what it was like to be a brilliant fighter compromised by reckless behavior as well as how he fought his way back to find success in acting with performances in movies like the “Hangover” films, his one-man stage show, and the relationships he’s built with his family.

iTunes – $14.99

The Walking Dead, Vol. 19: March To War

by Robert Kirkman & Charles Adlard

The Walking Dead TV show on AMC is about to go into its dreaded mid-season break but if you’re looking for more zombie action to enjoy during the holidays, check out the latest issue of “The Walking Dead” graphic novel. Volume 19: March To War is a collection of issues #109-114 that portray the lives of community leaders Rick, Ezekiel, Gregory and Negan as they approach an truly epic battle that promises to completely change the world of The Walking Dead. If you thought the show was an emotional thrill ride, just wait til you peek inside the gory pages of “March To War.”

iTunes – $14.99

Best Movies

Smash & Grab: the Story of the Pink Panthers

Everybody loves a good heist movie, but its so much more thrilling when the stakes of getting thrown in jail for life are actually real. “Smash & Grab” is a documentary about a real life crew of professional jewel thieves called The Pink Panthers who have been responsible for some of the most audacious robberies around the world over the last decade.

Director Havana Marking makes use of incredible security footage and in-depth interviews with police and even some anonymous Panthers about some of the clever techniques the gang used in some of their incredible heists, showing that you don’t always have to go the expensive “Oceans 11” route just to steal gigantic diamonds.

iTunes – $9.99

Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters

Families should find a lot of enjoyment  in the latest Percy Jackson movie over the Christmas Break. “Sea of Monsters” follows Percy Jackson – the half-human son of Poseidon – on his quest to prove that he’s not just a “one-quest wonder” after saving Olympia and the rest of civilization in the last flick.

Fans of the book series might be a bit disappointed in the screen adaptation of “Sea of Monsters,” but if you’re a fan of Greek mythology or just need a good family-friendly action movie with a bunch of monsters in it, you’ll enjoy watching Percy and his demigod friends save the world again on their quest to find the fabled Golden Fleece.

iTunes – $14.99

Kick-Ass 2

After taking out Frank D’Amico in the first movie, self-made superhero Kick-Ass is trying to return to life as normal with his new foul-mouthed assassin friend Hit Girl, but pretty soon the world of superheroes pulls them into a new deadly challenge.

Red Mist – son of the deceased Mr. D’Amico – has gained control of his family’s wealth after accidentally killing his mother, so he decides to reinvent himself as the aptly name “Motherfucker.” Armed with new arsenal of deadly toys, The Motherfucker becomes the leader of a gang of super-villains sworn to take out Kick-Ass. To defeat the evil villains Kick-Ass and Hit-Girl find some new friends of their own in Colonel Stars and Stripes (Jim Carrey) and Night Bitch. Needless to say the film is stocked full of colorful language and catastrophic levels of violence that are sure to delight you in completely inappropriate but oh-so-funny ways.

iTunes – $14.99

Browsing the App Store can be a bit overwhelming. Which apps are new? Which ones are good? Are the paid ones worth paying for, or do they have a free, lite version that will work well enough?

Well, if you stop interrogating me for a second, hypothetical App Store shopper, I can tell you about this thing we do here.

Every week, we highlight some of the most interesting new apps and collect them here for your consideration. This time, our picks include a map of the moon, a big green button, and a diary for your dog.

Here you go:

Dog Diary — Lifestyle — Free

Dog Diary is an app that helps you keep track of all the people and events in your canine friend’s life. You can store important, pet-related contacts, expenses and photos. You can also create entries for multiple animals to keep everything organized. It’s an address book, a photo album and a bookkeeping program all in one. You can also track measurements like body temperature, provided you’re not shy about pulling out your phone as soon as the vet pulls out the thermometer.

I’m still waiting for an app that will walk the little guy for me once it gets snowy out, but we might need a robot for that.

Dog Diary

Mobile Support by Sony — Utilities — Free

Owners of Sony products might want to check out its new mobile support app, which will hopefully save you from having to click around a website looking for the right troubleshooting or contact page.

It contains links to forums, troubleshooting, documentation, and support areas, and it will take you directly to the page you need in Safari and it covers information for TVs, computers, cameras, software and a bunch of other things. You can also get Sony news updates and press releases, if that’s your thing, but the app’s main value is preventing users from falling into bottomless Net-holes.

Mobile Support by Sony

Moon Chart — Reference — $2.99

If you’re looking for a quick, easy-to-use reference guide for that giant rock in the sky, Moon Chart is a pretty good one. It’ll show you the phase and point out what scientists have named all those holes and fiddly bits and it’s all indexed. So if you have a bet with your buddy as to where Flammarion is in relation to Sinus Medii, this app will help you settle that weird, random thing I just made up.

Moon Chart

TimeStamp — Productivity — Free

I’m a fan of apps that are basically just a giant button that does one thing easily, so TimeStamp really appeals to me. It’s a productivity tracker that independent contractors can use for invoicing purposes. It may also be of interest to people trying to figure out where their time goes. It’s just a big green button that you touch to stop and start, and when you’re done timing whatever it is, you can just drop your results into the appropriate category on the second tab.

My browse-to-watch Netflix ratio is something like 5 to 1. That’s unsettling.

TimeStamp

To get you in the mood for the holidays, Apple is giving away an 8-song playlist in the Apple Store iOS app. Free iTunes content has been offered in the Apple Store app for a few months now, and this Holiday Cheer playlist will be available until December 31st.

Here’s the tracklist:

Carl Icahn, the richest investor on Wall Street who has been pressing Apple to make a $150 billion stock buyback, has announced the next phase of his master plan. He has submitted a proposal to Apple shareholders that asks them to vote on his buyback, which effectively puts more pressure on Apple to meet his demands.

The question is whether a more aggressive buyback is actually in Apple’s best interest.

Conrad Electronic, an authorized Apple reseller in Germany, has begun taking preorders for the new Mac Pro. Availability is listed for Monday, December 16th.

Apple has said that the Mac Pro would be available before the end of the year, but an exact date has not yet been given. It could very well be that this reseller is hedging its bets and trying to garner some press attention, but this wouldn’t be the first time a third-party reseller has correctly predicted a recent Apple product launch. The date could favorably coincide with the opening of the Apple Store in Düsseldorf, Germany on December 14th.

For the iPad I use at home, I want minimal bulk. I’m willing to sacrifice protection for that privilege, but I want to be able to use my iPad 3 in as close to the original form factor as possible.

For iPads I’ve used with kids in classrooms, or ones that might be used in hospitals or in the enterprise, I’d rather have more protection, even if it means a sacrifice of heavier, bulkier, proportions.

Otterbox has long been the industry standard super-high protection case, but this new entry into the field, the K Kuvs Klover iPad Case is a strong contender for just as much protection for half the price.

iOS 7 has brought some great new gestural support, like being able to swipe from the left side of the screen to go back a page in apps like Settings, Mail, and Safari.

Did you know, though, that you can use the same gesture to peek at your list of email or iMessages from within those specific apps? I didn’t either, so figured I’d pass it along to you.

Steam Punks likes Mega Man, and hopes you do too. Even the description of the game on the App Store says it was inspired from games like Mega Man X. And, boy, does Steam Punks play like a Mega Man game!

You’ll jump, you’ll shoot, and you’ll take out curiously Capcom-like, steam-powered robots in your effort to save kidnapped scientist Professor Clout. You play as Dunns Callahan, an Elite Enforcer assigned to protect Clout. Clearly he doesn’t do a very good job of it as the Bowler Gang easily abducts the professor off a moving train.

TimeStamp — Productivity — Free

I’m a fan of apps that are basically just a giant button that does one thing easily, so TimeStamp really appeals to me. It’s a productivity tracker that independent contractors can use for invoicing purposes. It may also be of interest to people trying to figure out where their time goes. It’s just a big green button that you touch to stop and start, and when you’re done timing whatever it is, you can just drop your results into the appropriate category on the second tab.

My browse-to-watch Netflix ratio is something like 5 to 1. That’s unsettling.

TimeStamp

The Inner World is one of those “throwback, but in a good way” titles that reminds us of how good we have it nowadays. That sounds harsh, but remember that a time existed in which point-and-click adventures were everywhere. Very few of them gave you any help or hints, and all of them required you to play Amateur Psychic with the developers.

This is what I’m saying (slight spoiler, but it’s the first puzzle): I have no reason to believe that a drunken worm would make for a good slingshot.

And it’s a good thing that The Inner World is so cute and sympathetic to its players or that would really annoy me.

We eat, sleep, and dream Mac apps here and that’s why Cult of Mac Deals is stoked to bring you another amazing offer that’s full of useful tools that will help you on a daily basis.

With this exclusive promo – dubbed The Mac Productivity Bundle 6.0 – you’ll get 10 of the hottest apps on the market for only $39.99!

Amazon has today revealed that its family of Kindles brought record sales between Black Friday and Cyber Monday for the third year running. But as usual, the retail giant won’t tell us exactly how many devices it has sold.

While Android may be running away with the lion’s share of the smartphone market, there’s still no doubt about what rules the roost when it comes to tablets. New data from InfoScout reveals that roughly 40% of iPads sold on Black Friday were purchased by Android smartphone users.

For a fun experiment in data visualization, the good folks over at MobileUnlocked have put together a world map showing how the cost of an iPhone 5s varies around the world.

The official iPhone 5c case isn’t exactly Apple’s most widely acclaimed product design ever. Even if you love it, you have to admit it looks a lot like those brightly-colored, foam rubber shoes with the holes in them known as Crocs. And if you’re like me, and think the iPhone 5c case is pure trash, it seems almost insulting that Apple overlooked the iPhone 5c case’s design flaws and released it anyway.

According to a new report, though, Apple wasn’t just about to unleash the so-called ‘Croc’ case on consumers once, but twice. Not only did Cupertino intend for the hole-filled design to be the official case for the iPhone 5c, but they wanted to give the luxury, high-end iPhone 5s the same treatment.

Brazenly calling itself the “ultimate defense” for protecting passwords, documents, credit cards and all your other private stuff, FaceCrypt is being advertised as one of the most secure ways of controlling access to your iOS device.

Instead of asking for an alphanumeric password — or even Touch ID — FaceCrypt requests that users take a “selfie” to prove they are really the person they say they are.

When Apple bought Twitter analytics company Topsy for over $200 million earlier this week, many commenters were taking aback. How does Twitter analytics of all things fit into Apple’s general acquisition strategy?

Although they broke the story, it looks like The Wall Street Journal were wondering the same thing themselves. The result is an excellent breakdown of Apple’s major acquisitions in 2013. Unfortunately, it doesn’t shed much light on why Apple bought Topsy, but it does show Cupertino’s areas of interest.

When people talk about Android’s “fragmentation” problem, what they are referring to is the fact that the majority of Android devices are not running the most current version of Google’s mobile operating system.

The reason this is a big deal is because an ecosystem is only as strong as how many devices are running a current version of the operating system: older versions of Android are not only more vulnerable to malicious exploits that have been patched in more recent versions, but apps running on them can’t make use of newer Android features.

A new chart released by Fidlee shows exactly how bad Google’s fragmentation problem has become. Although iOS 7 runs on almost all Apple iPhones released in the last five years, there are few Android devices that are supported by the most recent version of Android just two years after they are purchased.

The Atlas ID is a waterproof case for your iPhone 5S that lets you use the Touch ID sensor even while the iPhone is in the case (although both you finger and the button cover need to be dry for it to work). However, you can still use the regular unlock when the screen is wet, and you’ll be having so much fun snapping underwater picks that you won;t care anyway.

Earlier this year, the leader and visionary behind Android, Andy Rubin -—the man Apple co-founder Steve Jobs once called an “arrogant f***” — stepped down as head of Google’s mobile OS. What’s he been doing since?

Well, if there’s any accuracy to claims Rubin ripped off Apple to make Android, then this time, it looks like Rubin intends to steal inspiration from Skynet. Rubin’s latest project for Google? Frickin’ robots.

Insert quips about bricking your iPad here.

Lego accessories have been popular for Apple products for a while now, and now that trend continues with Belkin’s new Lego iPad mini Case — which comes with an official grid of Lego studs on the back.

Three U.K. has today announced that customers will now be able to use their U.K. allowances of calls, texts, and data in the United States and three other countries at no additional cost as part of its “fear-free” Feel At Home roaming initiative.

Has it really been less than three months since the roll out of iOS 7?

Well, however long it has been that has clearly been enough time for most users — since new data from online ad network Chitika reveals that iOS 7 is currently running on more than 70 percent of North American iOS devices.

No, it’s not a Mac or an iPhone accessory. It’s not even a camera gadget. But I have no doubt you’re going to love the Victor Wallet from WaterField design. It’s thin, it has a soft, finger-loving lining and it comes with a strap to keep it shut.

Created by London-based university students Carrie Bale, Doug Hindson and Jooyoung Ryo, “Skew” is a charmingly low-fi animation which gently lampoons the monotonous cycle of our day-to-day lives in the digital world.