With the year winding down, Apple picked its favorite podcasts, books and audiobooks of 2020. The offerings “kept us entertained, made us think, provided a much-needed escape, or filled our hearts up,“ noted Apple.

All the recommendations are, of course, available through Apple Podcasts or Apple Books.

Apple is offering users in the U.S. (and hopefully elsewhere soon) a selection of free books and audiobooks to help while away the hours while in self-isolation.

A push notification Apple sent out Sunday advises customers to “enjoy a good book, on us.” It reads as follows:

Our new book about the Apple community, The Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition, is finally available in book stores and on Amazon.

To celebrate, we’re throwing a book-signing party tonight at the publisher’s HQ in San Francisco — and all Cult of Mac readers are invited. Please join me and the book’s award-winning designer, Derek Yee, at the No Starch Press offices. There will be a big sale (and free Chinese food, too)!

Designer Derek Yee asked himself why there weren’t any books about Macs that looked like MacBooks.

So when the assignment came across his desk to design The Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition, he thought that making the upcoming book’s cover look and open like a silvery MacBook Pro was a winning idea.

His colleagues at No Starch Press weren’t so sure.

Whether you’re buying for yourself or a friend or family member, there’s no shortage of great books about Apple. But with so many millions of words written about the Cupertino company over the years, which books most deserve your time?

Allow Cult of Mac‘s gift guide to fill you in on the 10 Apple books that deserve space on your shelf.

Apple fans run on their own colorful OS that seems nearly impossible to hack. This growing subculture is worthy of study — and a place on your coffee table! You can get to know some of the world’s biggest Apple fans, thanks to the rich stories and colorful photographs in The Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition, by Leander Kahney and David Pierini.

The book, which hits stores Dec. 17, is much more than an update to Kahney’s 2006 book, The Cult of Mac (which gave this blog its name). Now available for preorder from Amazon, the second edition is a companion volume crammed with new stories and pictures. All told, they paint a picture of a uniquely devoted community.

Excerpted from Live from Cupertino: How Apple Used Words, Music, and Performance to Build the World’s Best Sales Machine by Michael Hageloh and Tim Vandehey.

Prologue: What were once devices are now habits

When I set out to write this book, one of my goals was to see if I could insult fifty million people in one sentence. Here goes. Years ago, before I was excommunicated from New York City and became a resident of Texas (a state so backward that someone in our town once asked my wife and me if being Jewish was like being Catholic), I lived in Florida, which is so appealing to the unbalanced that when I took the “Florida Challenge” (where you google “Florida man” and your birthday to see what kind of headlines pop up) for April 24, the first result read, “Florida man kisses venomous snake and is immediately bitten on the lips.”

Mission accomplished. Now, let’s move on.

Oprah’s Book Club has landed in Apple Books, connecting readers worldwide to “stories that truly matter by today’s most thought-provoking authors.”

Its arrival comes weeks before Oprah’s new TV show kicks off on Apple TV+. A new episode will air every two months, and every title selected will be available from Apple Books.

The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates is Winfrey’s first selection, and you can preorder it now in ebook and audiobook formats ahead of its debut tomorrow, September 24.

Apple’s plan to ditch iTunes starts this fall with the release of macOS Catalina, which will offer standalone apps for Music, Podcasts, and TV.

WWDC offered a brief glimpse at how other things — like syncing iOS devices — would work after the update. Now Apple has published a new support document that explains everything for those who are still confused.

The document promises that “all of your favorite iTunes features” will still be available in Catalina. And it tells you where they will be.

iOS 13 is expected to be the star of WWDC 2019, but this year’s conference could unleash some of the biggest changes for the Mac we’ve ever seen.

The rumor mill has been dishing out tons of details about macOS 10.15 in the lead up to WWDC 2019. We’ve already seen screenshots of some of the new apps and gotten some good details on how iOS apps are making their way onto the Mac. There’s still plenty of room for Apple to surprise us when it reveals the full details of macOS 10.15 on June 3, but here’s what we know about it so far.