We’ve said it before, but it’s worth saying again: Apps are big business. Last year this time, it was reported that 1.2 billion apps were downloaded from Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store in a single week. 509 million of those downloads came from the U.S. Apps are as big a part of the mobile fabric as the phones and tablets on which they run. This year, more apps than ever were released to the various mobile markets. We saw some big players snatch up smaller players; big networks retool their efforts to better compete with small networks; and apps we thought may be illegal. We even saw a dope app come from a site we’re not too fond of. As we close in on 2013, let’s look back at the best apps that dropped over the past 365 days. REVIEW THE LIST