Money makes the world go round and it's certainly been a big theme this week, with stories ranging from mobile payments to Battlefront's pricey season pass, to Sweden becoming the world's first cashless society. Elsewhere, Facebook continues on its quest to become the only website you ever need to visit, and Apple blasts our eyes with 5K iMacs. It's Week in Tech!
Battlefront offensive
Microtransactions are beginning to seep into blockbuster console titles but we still haven't worked out how DLC should work, have we EA? This week we discovered that if you're planning to buy the upcoming Star Wars Battlefront title and want the full galactic experience, you'll need to shell out a lot more money beyond the base game cost. EA is asking for £40 (US$50) for four planned DLC releases, giving you two-week advance access to each and a, erm, "Shoot First" emote. Our advice? Unless you have an exceptionally high Midichlorian count, we'd suggest waiting and buying each DLC separately – we'd be shocked if EA didn't eventually make them available à la carte eventually.
Eye can see clearly now
Apple normally updates its line of laptops and desktop computers at its October iPad event, but as it seems we won't be getting such an event this year, the company is instead refreshing its products with a little less fanfare. This week it announced an upgrade to the iMac family, introducing a new 21.5-inch iMac that rocks a Retina 4K display and a 27-inch iMac with a 5K screen .
Apple has also brought out a Magic Keyboard, Magic Mouse 2 and Magic Trackpad 2. The new Trackpad comes with Apple's Force Touch technology, which appeared in the new MacBook earlier this year.
Facebook gets innovating
Facebook has made no secret of the fact it wants its news feed to be about much more than your friends' babies. The social network wants to be your source of actual world news, a place for you to blog, and now a YouTube alternative, it seems. Facebook this week announced that it has begun working on its own video hub, a place for "people to go when they exclusively want to watch video – whether that's videos they've saved for later, or videos from friends, Pages they follow, and other video publishers on Facebook." It's only being tested on a small scale right now, but expect to see it popping up on your page in the not-too-distant future.
LG's making it rain
Have you heard the news? Mobile payments are a thing that people are actually, finally starting to use, with Apple Pay, Android Pay and Samsung's own service spearheading the wallet revolution. Next up is rumoured to be LG: the South Korean firm is believed to be working on "GPay," which, as a trademark filing reveals, would be used on smartphones and wearables. It'll mean LG gets the payment commissions rather than Android skimming them, and hey, the more the merrier, right?
Hey good lookin'
Speaking of new players, Tag Heuer has teased its upcoming Android Wear smartwatch. The Watch is called Connected, but beyond a slice of bezel and a button we can't tell much else about it. It won't be long before we can, though: the teaser included a countdown that will end on November 9, with Tag Heuer confirming that it will reveal all on that date.
And finally…
With mobile payments becoming more common and easy to use, and contactless cards now commonplace in some countries, it's no surprise that many of us don't carry much cash around in our wallets anymore. This week we learned that the forerunner in becoming a totally "cashless" society is Sweden. Researchers calculated that there are just 80 billion Swedish crowns in circulation in the country's wallets and cash registers right now – it was 106 billion just six years ago.
