You’ve most probably seen Apple’s tear-jerking “Misunderstood” Christmas commercial: an ad about a seemingly isolated teenager who spends the holidays with their face buried in their iPhone — only to reveal at the end that they’ve been using the device’s camera to create a touching tribute to family togetherness.

Well, it seems that someone from Universal Studios Orlando’s ad agency David&Goliath also watched it (or else this whole thing is an amazing coincidence) because the theme park’s new ad — embedded above — bears an uncanny resemblance to Apple’s much-lauded commercial.

Steve Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson appeared on CNBC’s Squawk Box yesterday — and had a few things to say about the state of the high tech nation.

Isaacson — who is currently crowdsourcing editorial comments for his new book on digital innovators throughout history — claimed that Google is outgunning Apple when it comes to innovation.

Google has finally released its official iOS app for the Movies & TV section of its Play Store. The universal app is available for free in the App Store, but it comes with several severe limitations.

First off, you can’t buy content through the app due to Google not wanting to give Apple a 30 percent cut of all in-app purchases. Another con is the lack of offline playback, meaning you can’t cache a video to watch later when Wi-Fi isn’t available. And for some odd reason, video only plays back in standard def on the iPhone.

The app is pretty barebones, but it is nice for the Chromecast, Google’s little streaming dongle that plugs into the TV. Chromecast users with iOS hardware have previously been limited to Netflix and Hulu Plus, but Google Play offers more recent movie and TV selections.

Source: App Store

Apple released iOS 7.1 beta 3 to developers today, and like always, many have already combed through the new software to find what’s new. The second beta of 7.1 brought a few additions and UI tweaks, and beta 3 also includes several noticeable changes.

Here are 8 design changes Apple made in the latest iOS 7.1 beta today:

Apple seeded the third beta of iOS 7.1 to developers today as a direct download and OTA update. The release comes after beta 2 was seeded in the Apple Dev Center on December 13.

Apple hasn’t said what new features are in beta 3, but rest assured that we’ll let you know. New betas for the Apple TV and Xcode were also released alongside 7.1 beta 3 today. The public release of iOS 7.1 hasn’t been revealed, but this new beta is a sign that the software is getting closer to prime time.

Having beaten out Apple TV as the most-used streaming set-top box in the United States, Roku is set to debut its own smart TV — called Roku TV.

“That’s right, actual TVs, designed to give consumers a simple and powerful entertainment experience in today’s connected world,” Roku CEO Anthony Wood noted in his company’s announcement. “We’ve applied the same principles that have made Roku the most popular streaming players in America to TVs.”

2013 was an enormous year for Apple.  Yes, there were hyped keynotes galore, fabulous new products, record breaking sales, and much, much more. But 2013 was about more than just hardware for Apple Inc. During Tim Cook’s second full-year reigning over Apple we saw the CEO really settle into his role helming the largest tech company in the world while Jony Ive’s influence grew to greater heights than in the Jobs-era as he spread his design tentacles from hardware to software.

Jony and Tim weren’t the only stars of 2013 though. There was the up-and-coming VP of software engineering Craig Federighi and Craig Federighi’s Hair, while Apple’s hiring of Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts received heaps of praise from both the financial, tech, and fashion markets. Oh and don’t forget about goons like David Einhorn, Carl Icahn and even cranky old John McCain getting their jabs in at Apple throughout the year.

Here’s Cult of Mac’s look back on Apple in the year 2013:

It was widely reported in January that Apple was in talks to buy Waze, an Israeli startup with a hugely popular maps app. Waze was rumored to be asking Apple for $750 million. The same outlet that broke the acquisition rumor quickly backpedaled and said no such deal was taking place. Google ended up buying Waze in June for $1 billion.

And so goes the buyout game in Silicon Valley, a power play where tech giants like Apple and Google court hot startups with the hopes of adding them to their war chests.

Apple had its biggest year ever for acquisitions in 2013, with a record 15 smaller companies joining the fold. A dozen of them have now been publicly disclosed.

For an entity as secretive as Apple, examining the companies it buys is one of the only ways to peek into its future plans. When AuthenTec, a company that specialized in fingerprint readers and identification software, was purchased in July 2012, speculation immediately followed. What did Apple want with fingerprint sensors? The answer ended up being obvious, and the technology debuted in Touch ID in September 2013.

Often the outcome of an Apple acquisition isn’t so immediately apparent.

Historically, Apple acquires far fewer companies than its competitors. But the line is starting to blur. Google publicly bought three times as many companies as Apple in 2012 and not even twice as many in 2013. Apple bought more companies than Microsoft in 2013.

So what does all of this say about Apple’s future?

There are more than a few people who would claim that not much happened with Apple in 2013. After all, they spent the first six months of the year without releasing a single product, didn’t they?

Maybe that’s true, but in actuality, 2013 was one of the most exciting years in the Apple space in recent memory.

Don’t believe us? First of all, check out our round-up of the biggest stories in 2013, and then, take a detailed look at this incredible infographic by Kevin Choi, beautifully showing the most important milestones in Apple’s fiscal 2013, from the introduction of the 128GB iPad to the App Store’s 50th Billionth App Download, and beyond.

We can only show a small snatch of the infographic, due to its hugeness, but you can see the whole thing here on Google Drive.

Apple, Google and Microsoft all want to be your phone company. But with both competitors’ communication offerings in disarray, Apple has an opportunity to offer the best, most elegant and integrated communication platform.

All they have to do is keep moving in their current direction, make a couple of key rumors come true and keep Steve Jobs’ promise about FaceTime.