You can almost hear the sigh of relief from the global Sega fan community. The new Sonic the Hedgehog movie trailer, which Paramount released this morning, is a giant improvement. From a report: Our spiky hero no longer looks like a nightmarish experiment in avant garde taxidermy. The human teeth have been extracted. He has big doe eyes, not the sinister mini-peepers of the original trailer. The new design genuinely captures a lot of what original character designer Naoto Ohshima set out to achieve -- a cool but cuddly mascot, infusing Japanese kawaii sensibilities with American attitude. His fur is bright, mimicking the famed Sega blue of the company's classic arcade games. He is no longer absolutely terrifying, an important achievement for a family film.

Disney Plus launched early Tuesday, and users are already complaining of service failures. From a report: So far, Disney Plus complaints are clustered in big cities in the Eastern US and Canada, lining up with the the areas likely to experiencing peak demand early Tuesday morning, according to outage tracker DownDetector. The tracker also showed complaints in the Netherlands, where Disney Plus launched as a subscription service Tuesday after operating as a free beta app for weeks. Disney said that demand for Disney Plus has exceeded its "high expectations."

"We are pleased by this incredible response and are working to quickly resolve the current user issue. We appreciate your patience," the company said in a statement. The complaints run a gamut of errors, including difficulties logging in, inability to stream, app failures, shows and movies disappearing from the library and other problems.

Luke Skywalker wasn't going to be the only Jedi in the final Star Wars movie, reports Yahoo Entertainment: In the original version of the ninth and final installment, The Rise of Skywalker, his sister, Leia (played by Carrie Fisher), was going to emerge as a full-fledged Jedi warrior, complete with her very own lightsaber. That's according to no less an authority than Fisher's real-life brother, Todd Fisher, who filled us in on what the plan was for his sister's iconic character prior to her sudden death in December 2016. "She was going to be the big payoff in the final film," Fisher reveals exclusively to Yahoo Entertainment. "She was going to be the last Jedi, so to speak. That's cool right....? People used to say to me, 'Why is it that Carrie never gets a lightsaber and chops up some bad guys,'" Fisher says, noting that Alec Guinness was roughly the same age when Obi-Wan Kenobi battled Darth Vader in A New Hope. "Obi-Wan was in his prime when he was Carrie's age...!"

Unfortunately, a version of The Rise of Skywalker where Leia picks up her father and brother's chosen weapon can only exist in our imaginations. After Fisher's death, her alter ego's arc had to be re-conceived by returning director J.J. Abrams, who previously directed the actress in 2015's The Force Awakens. "The truth is that J.J. Abrams was great friends with Carrie... he had an extraordinary sense of love for her," her brother says. It was that love that led the filmmaker to make a bold, and creatively risky decision: take unused footage of Leia left over from The Force Awakens and make it part of The Rise of Skywalker. "They had eight minutes of footage," Fisher tells us. "They grabbed every frame and analyzed it... and then reverse-engineered it and [got] it into the story the right way. It's kind of magical."

"The news just keeps getting worse for Terminator: Dark Fate," reports CinemaBlend: It had a disappointing opening last week and a sharp drop in its second weekend at the box office. It also had the worst Friday-to-Friday drop of any other Terminator sequel in the franchise... According to Forbes, it made only $2.8 million on Friday, November 8, marking a 73% drop from opening day on November 1...

[A]t this point, Terminator: Dark Fate is only expected to make just over $10 million this weekend, which would be a drop of 65% from last weekend. That is pretty big considering Dark Fate only started with a $29 million opening weekend. To go back to Terminator Salvation, that movie opened to $42.5 million 10 years ago, so even a slightly bigger week-to-week percentage drop gave it more money than Dark Fate...

Terminator: Dark Fate cost between $185-$195 million to make, not including marketing costs. According to Deadline, the movie will have to make $470 million worldwide to break even. If it were making a killing at the international box office, that might happen. But it's not exactly crushing overseas either. Going into this second weekend, the film was only at $135 million worldwide, with $94M of that from the foreign box office. That's a lot more than domestic, but the addition of this weekend's numbers, and whatever comes next week and beyond, probably won't be enough to hit that break even point... [E]ven if you too think you know where James Cameron was going with his Terminator trilogy plans after Dark Fate, it's unlikely now that those plans will see the light of day.
Forbes calls it "a sign that making a better sequel couldn't save a franchise for which general audiences stopped caring decades ago... [I]t's an example of the studios looking at the threat posed by video-on-demand and streaming and giving theatrical audiences exactly what they don't want."

Meanwhile, they write, the movie Joker has become the most profitable comic book movie of all time, earning $958.7 million worldwide on a budget of just $62.5 million.

Two VFX companies are bringing James Dean back to the big screen to star in the Vietnam era action-drama Finding Jack. Dean passed away in a 1955 car crash at the age of 24. From The Hollywood Reporter: Directed by Anton Ernst and Tati Golykh, the project comes from the filmmakers' own recently launched production house Magic City Films, which obtained the rights to use Dean's image from his family. Canadian VFX banner Imagine Engine will be working alongside South African VFX company MOI Worldwide to re-create what the filmmakers describe as "a realistic version of James Dean." Adapted by Maria Sova from Gareth Crocker's novel, Finding Jack is based on the existence and abandonment of more than 10,000 military dogs at the end of the Vietnam War. Dean will play a character called Rogan, considered a secondary lead role.

While Finding Jack will be live action, The Hollywood Reporter understands that Dean's performance will be constructed via "full body" CGI using actual footage and photos. Another actor will voice him. Preproduction on Finding Jack starts Nov. 17, with a goal for a worldwide release on Veterans Day 2020. Magic City Films is handling the foreign sales. "We searched high and low for the perfect character to portray the role of Rogan, which has some extreme complex character arcs, and after months of research, we decided on James Dean," said Ernst, who also produces with Golykh for Magic City Films alongside Donald A. Barton of Artistry Media Group. "We feel very honored that his family supports us and will take every precaution to ensure that his legacy as one of the most epic film stars to date is kept firmly intact. The family views this as his fourth movie, a movie he never got to make. We do not intend to let his fans down."

Dustin Curtis writes about Apple TV: Apple TV is a hardware device. Apple TV is an app on Apple TV that curates content you can buy from Apple and also content you can stream through other installed apps (but not all apps, and there is no way to tell which ones). Apple TV is an app on iOS/iPadOS devices that operates similarly to Apple TV on Apple TV. Apple TV on iOS/iPadOS syncs playback and watch history with Apple TV on Apple TV, but only if the iOS/iPadOS device has the same apps installed as the Apple TV -- and not all apps are available on all platforms. Apple TV is also an app on macOS, but it does not show content that can only be streamed from external apps on an Apple TV or iOS/iPadOS device.

Apple TV is an app or built-in feature of other devices, like smart TVs and streaming set-top boxes, but when Apple TV is running on a third party device, it does not show content from other installed apps on that device. Apple TV Channels is a feature on all Apple TV apps that lets you subscribe to external services like HBO and Showtime, which then display content within Apple TV. When Apple TV is on Apple TV or iOS/iPadOS, though, most Apple TV Channel services also have their own app. If you are logged into the app, the service's content already shows up in Apple TV. Apple TV Channels can only be viewed within Apple TV; you cannot watch an Apple TV Channel service's content on any non-Apple TV device, app, or the web. [...] Apple TV+ is a subscription streaming service from Apple that functions like an Apple TV Channel but is not an Apple TV Channel. Apple TV+ content can also be viewed in a web browser at tv.apple.com; no other Apple TV apps, devices, or features can be used in a web browser. He adds, "other than that, though, Apple TV is relatively straightforward."

Martin Scorsese, writing at The New York Times: [...] In a way, certain Hitchcock films were also like theme parks. I'm thinking of "Strangers on a Train," in which the climax takes place on a merry-go-round at a real amusement park, and "Psycho," which I saw at a midnight show on its opening day, an experience I will never forget. People went to be surprised and thrilled, and they weren't disappointed. Sixty or 70 years later, we're still watching those pictures and marveling at them. But is it the thrills and the shocks that we keep going back to? I don't think so. The set pieces in "North by Northwest" are stunning, but they would be nothing more than a succession of dynamic and elegant compositions and cuts without the painful emotions at the center of the story or the absolute lostness of Cary Grant's character. The climax of "Strangers on a Train" is a feat, but it's the interplay between the two principal characters and Robert Walker's profoundly unsettling performance that resonate now.

Some say that Hitchcock's pictures had a sameness to them, and perhaps that's true -- Hitchcock himself wondered about it. But the sameness of today's franchise pictures is something else again. Many of the elements that define cinema as I know it are there in Marvel pictures. What's not there is revelation, mystery or genuine emotional danger. Nothing is at risk. The pictures are made to satisfy a specific set of demands, and they are designed as variations on a finite number of themes. They are sequels in name but they are remakes in spirit, and everything in them is officially sanctioned because it can't really be any other way. That's the nature of modern film franchises: market-researched, audience-tested, vetted, modified, revetted and remodified until they're ready for consumption.

[...] In the past 20 years, as we all know, the movie business has changed on all fronts. But the most ominous change has happened stealthily and under cover of night: the gradual but steady elimination of risk. Many films today are perfect products manufactured for immediate consumption. Many of them are well made by teams of talented individuals. All the same, they lack something essential to cinema: the unifying vision of an individual artist. Because, of course, the individual artist is the riskiest factor of all. [...] Today, that tension is gone, and there are some in the business with absolute indifference to the very question of art and an attitude toward the history of cinema that is both dismissive and proprietary -- a lethal combination. The situation, sadly, is that we now have two separate fields: There's worldwide audiovisual entertainment, and there's cinema. They still overlap from time to time, but that's becoming increasingly rare. And I fear that the financial dominance of one is being used to marginalize and even belittle the existence of the other. For anyone who dreams of making movies or who is just starting out, the situation at this moment is brutal and inhospitable to art. And the act of simply writing those words fills me with terrible sadness.

An anonymous reader shares a column: Derek Thompson, writing in the Atlantic last month, highlighted the ways in which contemporary millennial lifestyles are in many ways subsidized by venture capital. Unprofitable businesses are currently offering up great deals to urbanites who otherwise would be unable to afford their fancy city-living in large part because of losses incurred as the cost of buying up market share. "If you wake up on a Casper mattress, work out with a Peloton before breakfast, Uber to your desk at a WeWork, order DoorDash for lunch, take a Lyft home, and get dinner through Postmates, you've interacted with seven companies that will collectively lose nearly $14 billion this year," Thompson wrote of the "Millennial Lifestyle Sponsorship." He doesn't mention it, but there's another key player in the MLS field: Netflix. As Richard Rushfield has noted in his excellent newsletter on Hollywood business, The Ankler, Netflix is in a tricky position. The vast majority of Netflix's viewers (upwards of 80 percent, according to him) watch licensed content ("Friends" and the like) and in order to create a library of programming audiences will pay for, they've gone massively in debt: "Netflix is currently in the hole for about $20 billion in debt and obligations and still operating at a loss."

Those benefiting from the "Netflix and Chill" branch of the Millennial Lifestyle Subsidy tree don't care. And it's all well and good for a Silicon Valley unicorn, one of those rare tech beasts whose valuations do not match profit-loss statements because there's no real competition yet and everyone believes first-mover status is an insurmountable advantage. But with the rapid rise of vicious streaming competition -- the ascendancy of Hulu and niche programmers such as Criterion; the creation of streaming services by Disney, Warner Brothers and Apple, to name a (very) few -- Netflix's advantage seems to be fading. One can already sense a sort of nostalgia for the golden age of bingeing while reading the Hollywood Reporter's roundtable with seven studio heads. "Doesn't it bum you out that you can't make 'The Irishman?'" asked THR's Matthew Belloni. And while one might expect studio heads to go the diplomatic route and say no -- everyone in Hollywood believes in their own product, after all, and there are no regrets ahead of time -- you believe the execs when they answer in the negative. "You know, it actually doesn't. It would bum me out if no one made the movie," Universal's Donna Langley said. "It's never been a better time for filmmakers and storytelling and for things to find their way into the world that were getting squeezed over the last five or six years or even longer."

Microsoft has teamed up with Warner Bros. to text. The collaboration, which was unveiled at Microsoft's Ignite 2019 conference in Orlando, Florida Monday, is a first test case for a new storage technology that could eventually help safeguard Hollywood's movies and TV shows, as well as many other forms of data, for centuries to come. From a report: "Glass has a very, very long lifetime," said Microsoft Research principal researcher Ant Rowstron in a recent conversation with Variety. "Thousands of years." The piece of silica glass storing the 1978 "Superman" movie, measures 7.5 cm x 7.5 cm x 2 mm. The glass contains 75.6 GB of data plus error redundancy codes. Microsoft began to investigate glass as a storage medium in 2016 in partnership with the University of Southampton Optoelectonics Research Centre. The goal of these efforts, dubbed "Project Silica," is to find a new storage medium optimized for what industry insiders like to call cold data -- the type of data you likely won't need to access for months, years, or even decades. It's data that doesn't need to sit on a server, ready to be used 24/7, but that is kept in a vault, away from anything that could corrupt it.

Turns out that Warner Bros. has quite a bit of this kind of cold data. Founded in the 1920s, the studio has been safekeeping original celluloid film reels, audio from 1940s radio shows and much more, for decades. Think classics like "Casablanca," "The Wizard of Oz" or "Looney Tunes" cartoons. "Our mission is to preserve those original assets in perpetuity," said Brad Collar, who is leading these efforts at Warner Bros. as the studio's senior vice president of global archives and media engineering. And while the studio is deeply invested in these classics, it also keeps adding an ever-increasing number of modern assets to its archives, ranging from digitally-shot films and television episodes to newer forms of entertainment, including video games. To date, the Warner Bros. archive contains some 20 million assets, with tens of thousands of new items being added every year. Each of them is being stored in multiple locations, explained Collar. "We want to have more than one copy."

"Terminator: Dark Fate once again failed to avoid Judgment Day because audiences just don't care about the Terminator as a brand, an IP or a franchise," writes a box office pundit at Forbes.

He points out the newly-released film earned just $10.6 million on its opening day: The sci-fi sequel, directed by Tim Miller, produced by James Cameron, and starring franchise vets Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger alongside newbies Mackenzie Davis, Natalia Reyes and Gabriel Luna, was the third attempt to revive the Terminator series in a decade... Terminator has become a metaphor for itself, with filmmakers trying different things only to face the same outcome: Judgment Day is inevitable.

Hollywood may yet figure out that audiences who aren't die-hard sci-fi geeks have little interest in additional Terminator movies... The pitches change, the hooks differ, but the result is always the same. Just because folks liked The Terminator in 1984 and lost their minds over Terminator 2: Judgment Day in 1991 does not mean they have any interest in additional Terminator movies. Just because something was once popular doesn't mean audiences care for a new iteration.

The sheer hubris, to try to convince audiences three times in a row to want something that they clearly don't want, at great expense, is frankly appalling. The "this time folks will bite" attitude is what has left theatrical moviegoing in grave peril as streaming and television networks have filled the gap for something beyond cover records of yesterday's former glories. It is one thing to try a reboot, strike out and move on... It is another entirely to take the same dead franchise and presume that the same audiences who said "No, thank you" not once but twice will somehow magically embrace it on the third try.
The article harshly concludes that Terminator: Dark Fate is bombing in North America "because audiences didn't want to see it."

Apple launches its TV+ original video streaming service Friday, ending years of anticipation about the company's next act in television. But it will lack what many consumers want: a giant library of their favorite movies and shows. From a report: Over the past decade, the iPhone maker has explored building its own TV set, buying major content firms like Time Warner and partnering with cable companies on new TV set-top boxes. Instead, it landed on a combination of a video aggregation app, on-demand access to pay-TV channels like HBO and Starz and a $4.99 monthly subscription service of original movies and television shows. The subscription service will be available on millions of iPhones, iPads, Macs and Apple TV boxes in 100 countries beginning Friday, just days ahead of Disney+ and months before comparable services from Comcast Corp. and AT&T Apple TV+ is currently focused entirely on original content, but its lack of a library of older fan favorites puts the service behind its rivals.

Apple's original slate of content includes fewer than 10 programs coming Friday and a total of 15 in the initial slate. Disney+ is scheduled to begin Nov. 12, and it, too, is advertising 15 titles from among its first round of originals. Similarly, Peacock from Comcast's NBCUniversal, is coming in April 2020 with 16 titles, while AT&T's HBO Max, launching at $14.99 a month in May 2020, has dozens in the works. Apple has said it plans to add new titles on a monthly basis to its service, meaning the $4.99 value will increase over time. Still, many people subscribe to the top video services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video primarily for their giant back catalogs of content.

Netflix said Monday it is introducing a new test feature to allow viewers to either speed up or slow down content on their smartphones, a move that quickly gained criticism from Judd Apatow and other filmmakers online. From a report: Some users spotted a new feature earlier this month that allows a viewer to choose to slow down a show as much as 0.5x the normal speed, or increase the speed up to 1.5x the normal runtime. Apatow, who co-created the Netflix series Love, slammed the feature, tweeting "No @Netflix no. Don't make me have to call every director and show creator on Earth to fight you on this. Save me the time. I will win but it will take a ton of time. Don't fuck with our timing. We give you nice things. Leave them as they were intended to be seen." He added in a follow-up tweet, "Distributors don't get to change the way the content is presented. Doing so is a breaking of trust and won't be tolerated by the people who provide it. Let the people who don't care put it in their contracts that they don't care. Most all do." A Netflix spokesperson told The Hollywood Reporter, "We're always experimenting with new ways to help members use Netflix. This test makes it possible to vary the speed at which people watch shows on their mobiles. As with any test, it may not become a permanent feature on Netflix."

Netflix is ready to take its lower-cost, mobile-only offering beyond India as it looks to expand the reach of its service in other international markets. From a report: The American on-demand video streaming giant today launched a new price tier in Malaysia that would allow people in the nation to access the video service for RM 17 ($4) a month. The new tier, which is being offered alongside existing regular monthly plans that start from $7.8, limits access to Netflix to just one mobile device and in lower video quality (standard definition, ~480p). (Customers subscribed to this plan are not allowed to watch -- or cast -- Netflix on their TVs and laptops.) The company, which began testing cheaper mobile plans last year in many markets including Malaysia, said it is hopeful that its new plan would "broaden access to Netflix in this truly mobile-first nation." More than 88% of people in Malaysia own a smartphone and 78% of internet users in the Southeast Asian nation -- home to roughly 32 million people -- stream and download media content, according to industry

Netflix has always been aware of password sharing and has never seemed to mind it, but that attitude may change as the company says it's looking into "consumer-friendly ways" to address the issue. When Guggenheim Securities' Miachael Morris asked about it, Netflix CFO Spencer Neumann said: "We continue to monitor it. "We're looking at the situation and we'll [look for] those consumer-friendly ways to push on the edges of that." However, Neumann noted that Netflix has "no big plans to announce at this time in terms of doing something different" with how password sharing works. MobileSyrup reports: As it stands, users can sign into Netflix on as many devices as they want, with the only limitation being how many can stream at the same time (depending on the plan). Naturally, this allows people to share their accounts with family or friends. Given how open this is, it's possible that Netflix would want to reduce the number of devices an account can be registered to. For example, Sony allows users to share content between PlayStation 4 systems by logging into the same account, although it limits this functionality to two consoles. Trying to do this with additional consoles could get an account flagged and blocked.

If you plan on streaming content from the new Disney+ streaming service on Linux devices, you'll likely be greeted with Error Code 83. Fedora Linux package maintainer Hans De Goede from the Netherlands first made the unpleasant discovery. gHacks reports: De Goede noticed that Disney+ would not work in any of the web browsers that he tried on systems running Fedora Linux. He tried Firefox and Chrome, and both times Disney+ threw the error "error code 83." Disney+ Support was not able to assist de Goede. It replied with a generic message stating that the error was known and that it happened often when customers tried to play Disney+ in web browsers or using certain devices. Support recommended to use the official applications on phones or tablets to watch the shows or movies. Other streaming services, e.g. Netflix, work fine on Linux.

A user on the Dutch site Tweakers dug deeper and uncovered the response code that the site returned when a device or browser was used that could not be used to play streams. According to the information, error code 83 means that the platform verification status is incompatible with the security level. Disney uses the DRM solution Widevine to protect its streams from unauthorized activity. Widevine supports three different security levels, called 1, 2 and 3, which have certain requirements. The supported level determines the maximum stream quality and may even prevent access to a stream if the requirements are not met. It appears that Disney set Widevine to a more restrictive level than its competitors. The decision affects Disney+ on Linux devices and on other devices that don't support the selected Widevine security standard.

An anonymous reader quotes the Los Angeles Times: "South Park" is the latest beneficiary of Hollywood's rerun mania. The show's creators and media giant Viacom Inc. expect to share between $450 million and $500 million by selling the streaming rights to the animated comedy, one of the longest-running TV series in U.S. history, according to people familiar with the matter. As many as a half-dozen companies are bidding for exclusive U.S. streaming rights to past episodes of the show, which has been available on Walt Disney Co.'s Hulu in recent years. Viacom and the show's creators hope to secure a new deal by the end of 2019 and could decide on the winning bidder as soon as this weekend, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the negotiations are private.

The value of popular TV reruns has skyrocketed, fueled by new streaming platforms seeking programming that can attract subscribers and provide an edge over rivals. Viacom and "South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone expect the multiyear deal to net more than double what Hulu paid in 2015.... One company that probably won't be bidding is Apple Inc., the people said. The tech giant has eschewed controversial programming that could damage its brand, and it's wary of offending China, where it sells a lot of iPhones. "South Park" was just banned in China after an episode mocked the country's censorship of Western movies and TV.

Dream McClinton from The Guardian writes about a new Netflix docuseries, called Unnatural Selection, that "explores the various forms of genetic engineering, as well as the societal and environmental implications of its research and use." An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from the report: Today, we are learning the language in which God created life," said then-president Bill Clinton, alongside the British prime minister, Tony Blair, in 2000. In the grainy archival clip, scientists and dignitaries had just mapped out the human genome, dissecting the complex science of biological being to code sequences of A, C, G and T in a style similar to binary computer code. But almost 20 years later, science has surpassed this once-unimaginable feat with the discovery of technology which can alter that genetic code. This zeitgeist-y innovation is the subject of a new Netflix series, Unnatural Selection, from film-makers Joe Egender and Leeor Kaufman, and explores the various forms of genetic engineering, as well as the societal and environmental implications of its research and use.

The four-part docuseries delves into the burgeoning field of gene technology, made possible by the aforementioned human genome project and the discovery of the Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats or Crispr. Co-discovered by Dr Jennifer Doudna, the gene serves a bit like "a molecular scalpel", she says, essentially removing and replacing gene material in a DNA strand. The technology makes it possible to modify genetics, giving it near unlimited biological potential, or as Salk Institute developmental biologist Professor Juan Izpuisua Belmonte puts it, "... rewriting the book of life." For Egender and Kaufman, the series had to tell the broader, more intricate story of genetic engineering, a story filled with great risk, benefits, consequences, emotions, sentiments and future, to better illuminate the field and further the discussion on the technology. "[M]any are depending on gene therapy treatment to change and possibly save lives," writes McClinton. "But, the series shows, the treatments are expensive, with some emerging drugs costing over $500,000, and patients are often at the mercy of startup genetic therapy companies who choose to weigh the 'meaning' of the treatment versus the cost for the patient, leaving many to fight their insurance companies for the cost of treatment."

CNN has a story about a Chinese prototype helicopter that looks like a UFO. Slashdot reader ClickOnThis shares the report: China has been unveiling a lot of new weaponry lately, but one of their latest reveals looks really, well, out of this world. Called the "Super Great White Shark" by Chinese media, the aircraft conjures up images of 1950s sci-fi movies more than 21st century technology. But China says the "armed helicopter" was designed for the "future digital information battlefield." State-tabloid the Global Times published an image gallery of the aircraft, calling it a fusion of modern, proven helicopter designs -- such as the American AH-64 Apache and CH-53 Sea Stallion as well as the Russian Ka-52 and Mi-26 copters. It also has the blended-wing design employed by stealth aircraft, including the US B-2 bomber. [...] The prototype was displayed last week at the China Helicopter Exposition in Tianjin. It was a static display only. The aircraft is landbound -- at least for now.

An anonymous reader quotes BuzzFeed News: In early 2018 as development on Apple's slate of exclusive Apple TV+ programming was underway, the company's leadership gave guidance to the creators of some of those shows to avoid portraying China in a poor light, BuzzFeed News has learned.

Sources in position to know said the instruction was communicated by Eddy Cue, Apple's SVP of internet software and services, and Morgan Wandell, its head of international content development. It was part of Apple's ongoing efforts to remain in China's good graces after a 2016 incident in which Beijing shut down Apple's iBooks Store and iTunes Movies six months after they debuted in the country.

A spokesperson for Apple declined comment.

Apple's tip toeing around the Chinese government isn't unusual in Hollywood. It's an accepted practice. "They all do it," one showrunner who was not affiliated with Apple told BuzzFeed News. "They have to if they want to play in that market. And they all want to play in that market. Who wouldn't?"

iTunes is officially dead with the release of macOS Catalina today. Apple decided to break apart the app into separate Apple Music, Podcasts and TV apps. "Each is better at its individuals task than it was as a section within iTunes, which was teetering on collapse like the Jenga tower of various functions it supports," writes Dieter Bohn via The Verge.

"In the early days, iTunes was simply a way to get music onto Apple's marquee product, the iPod music player," reports Snopes. "Users connected the iPod to a computer, and songs automatically synced -- simplicity unheard of at the time." It was the first service to make songs available for 99 cents apiece, and $9.99 for most albums -- convincing many people to buy music legally than seek out sketchy sites for pirated downloads. "But over time, iTunes software expanded to include podcasts, e-books, audiobooks, movies and TV shows," recalls Snopes. "In the iPhone era, iTunes also made backups and synced voice memos. As the software got bloated to support additional functions, iTunes lost the ease and simplicity that gave it its charm. And with online cloud storage and wireless syncing, it no longer became necessary to connect iPhones to a computer -- and iTunes -- with a cable."

What did you like or dislike about iTunes? When you look back at the media player, what are you reminded of?