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Apple today released the 2014 version of its iTunes Store awards, which highlights the best music, movies, TV shows, apps, books and podcasts of the year.
Here are some of the top-level winners for 2014:
Apps:
iPhone App of the Year: Elevate - Brain Training
iPhone Game of the Year: Threes!
iPad App of the Year: Pixelmator
iPad Game of the Year: Monument Valley
Music:
Best Artist: Beyoncé
Best Album: 1989 by Taylor Swift
Best Song: Fancy (feat. Charli XCX) by Iggy Azalea
Best New Artist: Sam Smith
Movies:
Best Blockbuster: Guardians of the Galaxy
Best Family Movie: The LEGO Movie
Best Director: Richard Linklater
Best Discovery: Obvious Child
TV Shows:
TV Show of the Year: Fargo
Best Performances: True Detective, Season 1
Best Discovery: The Honorable Woman
Best Breakthrough: Key & Peele, Volume 4
Books:
Best Fiction: All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Best Nonfiction: The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace by Jeff Hobbs
Apple has also given its end of the year charts for the most downloaded and top grossing iPhone and iPad apps. For the iPhone, Heads Up!, Facebook Messenger, and Clash of Clans finished as the top paid, top free, and top grossing app, respectively. For the iPad, Minecraft - Pocket Edition, YouTube, and Clash of Clans finished as the top paid, top free, and top grossing app, respectively.
As customary for its end of the year listings, Apple has also highlighted various games and apps from a wide variety of categories. The company is also featuring content across the various genres and categories for each content type.
A list of previous winners are also available here: 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009
Top Rated Comments
(View all)Music:
Best Artist: Beyoncé
Best Album: 1989 by Taylor Swift
Best Song: Fancy (feat. Charli XCX) by Iggy Azalea
Best New Artist: Sam Smith
I'll correct for you
Music:
Best Artist: U2
Best Album: U2
Best Song: U2
Best New Artist: U2
Seriously Apple? This isn't music...
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Beyonce and TS? They must mean most sold...which does not mean the best.
But they are the best for somebody.
I so hate this new wave of corporate manufactured 'music'. It's just Milli Vanilli with a thicker coat of paint.
What about Mac App Store too?
*cough*Affinity Designer is runner up*cough* and the winner is Notability.
For Mac games the winner is Tomb Raider and the runner up is Transistor.
For transparency please note I work with the Serif team that makes Affinity Designer :).
Affinity needs to focus on what they do best. What they do best is vector based graphics.
There's lots happening; Affinity Photo and Affinity Publisher are already part-written and on a common code base with Affinity Designer. When the suite is complete the apps will share around 80% of their code and this will be one of the suite's strengths. Serif has already been making graphics, image editing and desktop publishing software for decades so hopefully you will soon see that Affinity Designer is only the start of the new era, not a single competency.
Thanks again for the kind comments and support you're all showing the team!