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Apple could lower its cut of subscription fees on video apps
Earlier this year Apple sweetened the split with iOS developers on subscriptions, by promising to halve its usual 30 percent cut -- once a user has been signed up for a year. Now, Bloomberg reports rumors that the company will move to an 85/15 split for all subscription video apps, with no time restriction. That could make partners and customers alike happy, since some services like Spotify, Netflix and YouTube have tacked on an extra buck or two whenever customers sign up via iTunes, just to cover the extra costs.
Apple TV's 'TV guide' app expected to appear tomorrow
Add one more thing to our list of anticipated announcements during Apple's launch event tomorrow: a new "guide" for Apple TV. First reported by Recode in August, now sources tell it and USA Today that an app built to help people discover TV shows from multiple services at once will be revealed.
Latest Apple TV rumor points to a TV guide for video apps
At the WWDC 2016 event, Apple revealed a number of improvements on the way for the Apple TV, including a new feature called single sign-on. That would let cable TV subscribers log in once, and immediately have all their supported apps authorized without needing to log in (often repeatedly) within each individual app. Now Recode cites industry sources saying that Apple is working on "digital TV guide" for the Apple TV and its other devices that would display content from sources like Netflix and HBO all in one place.
Sky+ gains a Top Picks section and more binge-watching features
As the viewing habits of its customers change, Sky has overhauled its programme guide and planner to better serve shows that people want to watch. The company's new box, Sky Q, built on that by introducing Top Picks, a human-curated catalogue of programmes and movies that are too hot to miss. Now it's rolling out to more customers as part of a new Sky+ update that makes it even easier to go on a binge-watching spree.
Yahoo's new app is your guide to streaming
We've all been there. You decided on a movie or TV show and fired up Netflix only to find it wasn't available on the service. Next, you tried Hulu. Nope. Then it's on to Amazon, where you had to rent the movie because it wasn't in Prime's free library. Bummer. Rather than waste time hunting for what you're after, Yahoo's Video Guide app searches across a host of streaming services, in addition to iTunes and Google Play, to find the content you're after.
Know Your Lore, TFH Edition: Unraveling Azeroth
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. What a map, huh? I've gotten plenty of mileage out of it -- only it was an older edition of the map, before we took Mists of Pandaria into account. Now the map has slightly changed, along with the meaning involved, and I guess there's sort of a star, although it's six pointed, now -- which means we've got another puzzle to unravel, one I've been trying to untangle for a very long time. And while I don't have all the answers (I never seem to, in these articles), we have enough information to ask some really interesting questions, and come up with some really crazy theories. Not just about Azeroth, about the Warcraft cosmos -- that strange expanse of universe that involves a mighty battle we still don't quite understand. Draenor's involved, Azeroth's involved -- according to Algalon, there are millions of worlds that have been involved -- but how do they interlink? When I first created this map, oh so long ago, it was under the presumption that there were five old gods, which correlated to the five Dragon Aspects of Azeroth. I wasn't quite wrong, as I discovered in Thrall: Twilight of the Aspects, but I wasn't quite right either. We have a sixth star, in Pandaria. I'm a fan of correlation -- so else what do we have six of? But before we get into that, let's talk about the naaru. Because that seems like a good place to begin. Today's Know Your Lore is a Tinfoil Hat edition. The following contains speculation based on known material. These speculations are merely theories and shouldn't be taken as fact or official lore.
Know Your Lore TFH: First the ripples, then the stone
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. For my last KYL, a hat made of tinfoil. You know the drill - for the farewell of this column, Anne and I are going to go out speculating. This one's mine. You might want to read this old KYL to get a handle on the concepts I'm going to be throwing around. The idea is simple enough to start with, however. We know that at some point in the distant past, over twenty five thousand years ago, the fallen Titan Sargeras sought out a world whose inhabitants were powerful, with great potential for magic. Their culture was ancient - so very ancient that it had already risen and fallen and risen again, creating not one, but two golden ages. They were the eredar. Sargeras's offer was accepted, and the majority of the race along with two of the three triumvirs that ruled Argus entire became man'ari, corrupted. Barely a tenth of the race resisted and escaped, led by Velen and aided by the naaru, who sent the mighty Genedar, a dimension ship, to rescue them from this corruption. Velen first contacted the naaru using the Ata'mal Crystal, an ancient artifact of their people which was said to be a relic of their distant past. This has always interested me - the Ata'mal Crystal is said to be an eredar relic, yet it summons the naaru and their dimension ship, and when it is used in this fashion it shatters into seven fragments, each of which manifest strange new powers when used properly. Where am I going with this? Well, Sargeras was a Titan. Like all Titans, he has strange and almost unfathomable powers, and he seeks to undo the works of his fellow Titans, his former friends and allies in the Pantheon. He sought out the eredar - he went looking for them. This has always struck me as interesting, because the eredar resemble a race created by the Titans here on Azeroth, namely the mogu.
The Queue: This should be somber and dignified
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Anne Stickney (@Shadesogrey) really wishes she could keep answering questions forever. Honestly though the thing I loved best about Fraggle Rock was that it was really, really weird. Red asked: Q for Loremaster Anne: can you sum up the entire Warcraft story in a single paragraph? I think I'll borrow a perfectly applicable quote from one of my favorite authors: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
The Queue: Let's talk about Fraggles and Warcraft
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Anne Stickney (@Shadesogrey) is answering all kinds of questions today! You know what? I loved Fraggle Rock when I was a kid, and I still do today. When I was a kid, it was all about the music and the story, and as I grew older, it was all about the slow and astonishing realization that a few pieces of felt and a couple of ping-pong googly eyes felt really real. It wasn't the felt or the googly eyes, it was the person operating that device as a vehicle for delivering authentic emotion. More importantly, it was the wide-eyed audience that watched it all and somewhere in their heart of hearts held the little spark of belief that it all was real. Basically what it boils down to is this: You can set the stage and build the parts, but without that genuine exchange between actor and audience, you've got nothing but a shell. Shells are nothing. The rest of it, that's the really amazing part, the part that can't be easily replaced. With that, let's answer some weekend questions, why don't we? BaronoftheLake asked: QFTQ: Where is the Exodar on Draenor? I haven't seen any Draenei ships in Draenor, and I thought that was rather strange. The Exodar was originally one section of Tempest Keep -- but Tempest Keep didn't arrive on Draenor until after it had already shattered into Outland. It's not a draenei ship, it's a naaru vessel -- it's the ship A'dal and the rest of the Sha'tar arrived on. There is one other naaru vessel on Draenor, but it's half-buried in Nagrand and falling apart.
The Queue: Dinosaurs, Twitter Questions, and a hug
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Matthew Rossi will be your host today. I don't really have a favorite dinosaur. Or it's more like I have so many favorite dinosaurs I can't pick one. And to be honest when I do sit down and think about my favorite dinosaurs, my opinion changes with the research to a degree. At the moment, I'm fond of Deinocheirus with those massive arms. But a lot of people ask me what's the deal with all the dinosaurs, like there's a proper age to like them, and I'm way, way over the limit. So I'll try, just this once, to explain what the deal is with the dinosaurs. They were our superiors. They were better suited to life on Earth than the mammals. This is indisputable. They first arose 231 million years ago during the Triassic, at a time where our own therapsid ancestors were recovering from a mass extinction that nearly wiped out all life on Earth, just as the mammals were starting to evolve. Our ancestors. Us, in potential. And our ancestors, with their highly evolved teeth, with the start of the mammalian body plan that we see today in everything from tigers to dogs to sheep to cattle, lost the competition with the archosaurian dinosaur clans. It's just that simple. For over one hundred and thirty five million years, mammals went head to head against dinosaurs in the evolutionary arms race. And in all that time no mammal larger than a modern housecat thrived. The dinosaurs won. Their dominion was so total that even after the extinction at the end of the Cretaceous, it was birds that first evolved into truly massive predators feeding on our mammal ancestors. So that's it. Dinosaurs are proven winners. They lasted for one hundred and thirty five million years, and they still exist today in the form of birds. And you'll notice that no mammal has managed to push birds out of their aerial niches. So yeah, I like dinosaurs, and I see no reason not to keep liking them for the rest of my life. I realize this was a huge digression, but to be honest, it simply wouldn't have been right for me not to talk about dinosaurs in this edition of The Queue. This edition of the Queue will likely be very, very long. I got quite a few questions on Twitter, and there's 981 comments, so we're going to try and get through as many of those as we can. Sean Boyle asks: Here's one for you Rossi. Why haven't we seen any Naga or Ethereals on Draenor? Naga are native to Azeroth. The ones we saw on Outland were part of Lady Vashj's contingent, pledged to Illidan's service. Etherals are also not native to Draenor, but were cosmic exiles whose native world of K'aresh was destroyed by Dimensius the All-Devouring, and in the process of trying to save their people from his arcane devastation the Ethereals lost their corporeal forms. Neither group was on Draenor thirty five years ago in our timeline, and as a result, they aren't on the alternate Draenor we now explore.
The Queue: Archaeology, specs, and a personal note about this column
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky (@adamholisky) will be your host today. A few days ago I was trying to reflect on what my favorite Queue of all time was -- and I think it's the one where I announced my engagement to my wife. First, it was the initial time that I thought to myself, "I really love the community we have here. They're a whole lot better than a lot of the other junk on the internet." Secondly, the post marked such a momentous occasion in my life, and one that I will always hold close to my heart, that it has some major sentimental connotations. Let's jump into the questions, going loudly into that good night. Pvpscrub asked: QFTQ: Is there a catchup mechanism for Archaeology?
The Queue: Twitter Edition
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Anne Stickney (@Shadesogrey) is answering all kinds of questions today! I've had this song stuck in my head for a couple of days, so now you guys get it. Today's Queue is a special Twitter edition, because oh my gosh 1,700 comments and there is no way I'm going to be able to sift through all of that for questions, guys! But let's get to the good stuff, shall we? @WarlockTriqz asked: How do we get that new mount that Blizz announced? Boy I wish I knew! But I really have no idea -- however, the purple color scheme and books/runes on the kitty make me think it might be something legendary quest related. I mean, we have Khadgar, who's all Kirin Tor which is all about the purple and the runes, and we have the Watchers hanging out with him, and they all ride nightsabers, presumably. So maybe something tied into that? Alternatively, maybe a tie-in for Heroes of the Storm, but I'm not sure about that one.
The Mog Log: Final Fantasy XIV 2.5 dungeons
I mentioned a while back that it was kind of neat how the whole setup of Final Fantasy XIV had come full circle. At the start of the 2.0 patch cycle we were scurrying away from tonberries and bashing our heads against Demon Wall; in the final patch, we're back to both of those spots, along with the oft-seen and never-explored Keeper of the Lake in the midst of Mor Dhona's wreckage. It's a neat counterpoint. Having played through all of the dungeons now, well, you get to rescue tonberries. That alone makes the last set of dungeons worthy. As in every set of dungeons, there are winners and losers amidst the bosses, good points and bad ones. The dungeons as a whole are very reluctant to let you do much speeding through, with pulls being pretty aggressively gated. So let's talk mechanics, let's talk atmosphere, and let's carefully coach you through the process of kicking the crap out of your final expert roulette competitors.
Know Your Lore, Tinfoil Hat Edition: The ordering of Draenor and Azeroth
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. According to various accounts, the Titans have had their hands on almost every inhabitable world in the universe. Certainly Algalon had to keep an eye on more than one planet in his impossibly-long life -- he says as much when we stop him from sending the signal that would re-originate our world. This fact alone is enough to indicate that in the Warcraft universe, worlds aren't quite as unique as we'd expect them to be. If the Titans had a hand in their ordering, they're likely going to have at least some similarities. But it doesn't mean that every world we come across is going to be just like Azeroth. We've been presented with the idea, time and time again, that Azeroth is unique in the universe. It's special. There's something about it that sets it apart from every other world. And yet, when you hold Azeroth and Draenor next to each other and take a good long look at what they are, you can see the bare bones of what was once upon a time, a blueprint shared between the two. Unfortunately, the comparison raises more questions that it seems to answer -- but those questions are pretty important. Today's Know Your Lore is a Tinfoil Hat edition. The following contains speculation based on known material. These speculations are merely theories and shouldn't be taken as fact or official lore.
The Queue: Anne's Story Hour
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Anne Stickney (@Shadesogrey) is answering all kinds of questions today! It's Sunday, the day of rest and apparently of rambling on about stories in my head, and as such I'll go ahead and indulge the few people that asked the question below. Don't worry, I've also got plenty of other far more pertinent questions to answer as well! Ligkvaern asked: I made an account just to ask this, damn you! ...What happens in Kharazhan, in your head? robertjamesftw also commented: Anne. ANNE. You may NOT tease us with hints about your head-canon and/or the stories you create in there and not share them! C'mon! Give!! I can take a hint. Please note -- none of this is actually what's going to happen in the next expansion. I have no idea what's coming in the next expansion. This is just stuff I made up in my head that seemed to make sense given what we already know. Okay? Moving on, and continuing from where I left off on Wednesday:
The Queue: I still miss Karazhan
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Anne Stickney (@Shadesogrey) is answering all kinds of questions today! I'm glad so many people liked the fill in job I did with Wednesday's Queue. Fun fact: I've actually given way more thought to the whole tie-in idea than absolutely necessary over the past couple of months. For those that thought the answer was interesting, it's what happens next in Karazhan that is really interesting. Or would be. If it were, you know, real and not made up in my head. I miss Karazhan. adidast05 asked: Did I read that follower upgrades will no longer drop from salvage ? Follower armor set pieces will no longer drop from salvage crates -- the items that equip your follower with an ilvl 615/630 weapon or armor. Weapon Enhancements (the items that simply upgrade your weapon or armor ilvl by a certain number), are still dropping from Big Crates of Salvage as it stands on the PTR.
The Queue: Awesome Werewolf Superpowers
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Matthew Rossi will be your host today. Guys, I love you all as if you were my children. My children who leave a lot of comments in the comment section. So many comments. 737 comments as of this moment. That is a lot of questions, statements, pictures, videos, non sequitur, all sorts of things. I have to admit, on nights when I can't sleep (that's all of them) going through the Queue is like a portal into another dimension. Luckily, they still play WoW over there. Chrth asks: Q4TQ: If you were one of the humans on Fenris Isle, would you have chosen to become a Worgen or to be raised as one of the Forsaken? Consider this from a real life perspective, not game-wise (e.g. "Worgen because I love the Alliance" is not what I'm looking for). Would I rather be trapped in a rotting corpse that's slowly deteriorating, forced to consume the flesh of the living and unable to feel, or would I rather have awesome werewolf superpowers? Yeah, that's a toughie. I guess I'd have to go with awesome werewolf superpowers.
The Queue: I see only darkness before me
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Anne Stickney (@Shadesogrey) is answering all kinds of questions today! The first time my raid guild killed Arthas and this cinematic popped up is also one of the few times in memory that everyone in the guild, including the raid leader, shushed anyone who dared speak up in vent. Someone tried to say something and was immediately silenced. It was pretty cool, actually, given that most of them weren't really anywhere near into the lore as myself. Arthas was just that iconic, I think. Speaking of Arthas, time to answer some questions! Drindaar_Lightkeeper asked: Q4tQ: Do you think Blizzard will ever return to the scourge and Lich King storyline? I know Arthas is dead, but there are still plenty of scourge out there and a new Lich King is sitting on the throne. I feel like there is still a major threat there. We're done with that particular chapter of the story, for now. Bolvar's holding everything in check presumably -- he was the only one with the will to resist the Lich King, even in his deep-fried state. It takes a powerful kind of hero to do that successfully. If, at some point, Bolvar should falter, then we'd have a problem. But I don't think that's really going to be explored anytime soon, there are too many other directions to explore first.
Know Your Lore: Breakers and Primals
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. What is Draenor, exactly? It's a world beset by war on many different levels -- there's the threat of the Iron Horde, of course, and battling clans among the orcs, fighting with the ogres, skirmishes between orc and draenei. But beyond that, there's another layer of conflict on the world, one that seems like a much larger struggle, one far more ancient and primal than anything the orcs, ogres, draenei, or even the arakkoa could conjure up. In the wilds of Gorgrond, a struggle is taking place that almost seems to serve as a backdrop to the main Iron Horde-centered story we're concerned with. While we struggle with the Iron Horde and their plans, massive creatures both plant and rock are embroiled in a constant battle with each other, either unaware of our presence, or so intent on their purpose that we are simply being ignored. Or, to turn that around, we are so insignificant in the face of this conflict that to these giants of the world, we don't even register as being anything of importance at all.
The Queue: Murmur of appreciation
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Anne Stickney (@Shadesogrey) is answering all kinds of questions today! Murmur is still one of my favorite bosses from any dungeon ever, solely for the fact that his sound files are so unique, so weird, and strangely satisfying. Plus, he's essentially an elemental lord of sound, which is a really strange concept -- in a land of demons and dragons and giants and other assorted things that can kill you, a creature that can do so with the sheer force of sound is just a really neat idea. The video above isn't exactly the best video of the fight, but you can hear the strange sounds he makes really clearly. MartinLongpre asked: What is the big lore question that we don't have an answer to yet that bugs you the most? What are the naaru? Where exactly did they come from? But honestly if that question were ever answered, I think it would be revealing too much. The mystery is half the fun, after all -- and it does make for some interesting tinfoil-hat lore articles.