Technology

Apple Inc. had hoped that its iPhone eight might demolish the company’s sales records in China as the country’s burgeoning middle class embraced the phone, thanks in part to its name: Eight is considered a lucky number in Chinese culture, signifying wealth and fortune.

Unfortunately for the world’s most valuable company, this calculus isn’t playing out as well as its massive marketing operation had hoped for one simple reason: The price of the phone is simply too high for most members of the company's target demographic.

In what is either a generous act of charity or an unnerving example of the control Tesla exercises over the vehicles it producers, or perhaps both, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has magically unlocked the batteries of every Tesla in Florida to maximize the distance that people fleeing from Hurricane Irma can travel before stopping to refuel at one of the company’s “superstation” charging centers.

Typically, these types of over-the-air upgrades can cost thousands – if not tens of thousands – of dollars.

With only two days to go before the official launch of the iPhone 8 – the first of the company’s famed product launches to be held in the Steve Jobs Theater at the heart of the company’s futuristic new campus in Cupertino – leaks of the new iOS operating system, which surfaced Saturday, have provided some clues about the new iPhones' features.

It is hard to find a bigger Apple stock cheerleader than me. I’ve been writing Apple stock love poems for years. For a long time, it was easy to love the shares because they were unloved by others and it was cheap.

Until recently, when Apple stock was still trading in the low $100s and at single-digit multiples, we were buying current product categories at a discount and were not paying for future product categories.

After Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg earlier this week confirmed allegations that the company had sold at least $100,000 of ads to a Russia-backed troll farm – igniting a firestorm of liberal sanctimony as pundits like Rachel Maddow proclaimed that they had finally found the “smoking gun” proving that Russians had swayed the election in President Trump’s favor – researchers at the University of Iowa have pulled back the curtain on the seedy underbelly of Facebook's illicit influence-peddling economy.