With the end of the year comes the cavalcade of best and worst lists, just in case you didn't know what was best and what was worst over the course of the year.

Apple made glassdoor.com's list of "50 Best Places to Work," placing 19th. It scored a 3.8 out of five, and 90 percent of employees approved of the job that CEO Steve Jobs was doing. 303 employees completed reviews at the site, contributing to its score. (The reviews themselves are interesting to read, incidentally, if you have a few minutes to kill.)

On the other hand, Apple made Fortune magazine's list of 21 Dumbest Moments in Business for the year, twice -- but the second time really wasn't its fault.

The first head-smacker, at number six, was for the approval (and subsequent removal) of the "I Am Rich" iPhone application. "The real losers?" Fortune asks: "The eight suckers who bought it."

The second blooper, number 19, actually goes to CNN and Bloomberg for two false stories about Steve Jobs' health. Bloomberg accidentally released an obituary on August 28, and retracted it the same day. In a similar gaffe, a post on CNN's iReport site falsely claimed that Jobs had suffered a heart attack. CNN took down the post -- but not after Apple's stock dipped 10 percent in 10 minutes. Ouch.

[Via Macsimum News and MacNN.]

Apple has rejected another app from the app store because it considers it too similar to one of Apple's own apps, and thus would cause "user confusion."

The app is a front-end for Gmail, called MailWrangler, and allows users to check many Gmail accounts at once (unlike MobileSafari). It offers a similar interface as Gmail's iPhone-optimized web interface, which shows conversation threads in context, and allows for starring conversations (unlike Mail). The app developer says it works much like MailPlane on the desktop.

Nevertheless, Apple rejected the app because of the similarity, in Apple's view, and also due to other issues related to editing account information.

This app's rejection follows that of Podcaster for allegedly similar reasons. As we mentioned in the Talkcast two weeks ago, this could be related to the user backlash from I Am Rich. Whether it's too permissive or too strict, Apple will always have unhappy people when it issues rejections like this.

[Via WebMonkey.]

[YouTube link]

Apparently, eight people actually bought the famed "I Am Rich" iPhone application. If you weren't rich stupid lucky enough to buy the app, or if you are merely curious what the fuss was all about -- the above "guided tour" is for you.

I'll admit, I've found this whole saga pretty unfunny thus far. Don't misunderstand me, I get the joke, the whole thing has just struck me as easy and lacking any real point.

Call me puerile, but I had to laugh at this video. The line that got me, "notice how 'deserve' is fashionably [misspelled]." Classic.

Thanks Neil!