Apple

The biggest news of last week (well actually the previous Friday) was Pangu's release of a jailbreak for iOS 8. If you had a jailbroken iOS 7 iPhone or iPad, now you can get back all of your favorite tweaks, as it is fully integrated with Cydia as of Thursday. If you plan to jailbreak, now is the time, as Apple released iOS 8.1.1 beta on Monday, which includes a patch that blocks the jailbreak.

A mysterious Apple webcrawler was discovered last week by developer Jan Moesson. The bot can be traced back to October 15th, and it seems to only request HTML pages. Its purpose is currently unknown, but there has been speculation that it has to do with improving Spotlight.

Last Thursday, brand consulting firm Interbrand released its annual list of the world's most valuable brands, and for the second consecutive year, Apple topped it. The list valued the Apple brand at $118.9 billion, 21% more than it was valued last year. With a value of $107.4 billion, fellow tech giant Google was the only other brand to be valued over $100 billion. Coca Cola, IBM and Microsoft rounded out the top five.

Apple also received some noteworthy praise in the form of a letter from billionaire investor Carl Icahn to CEO Tim Cook. Titled "Sale: Apple Shares at Half Price," the note urges Apple to buy back more of its shares at a faster pace. Icahn believes Apple shares are currently trading at about half their value. By his estimates, Apple shares should currently be worth $203 a share.

There weren't many notable Apple headlines last week, but one that stuck out was Apple's scheduling of an October 16th media event, to be held at the company's Cupertino campus Town Hall Auditorium.

It is widely expected that the next generation iPad Air (iPad Air 2?) will be announced. It will almost certainly be powered by the A8 processor found in the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, and it will likely have a Touch ID fingerprint sensor. Rumor has it that it will also be available in gold, like the new iPhones. Apple will also introduce a 27 inch Retina display iMac, and, though there has been little talk of it, possibly the next generation iPad mini. OS X Yosemite will likely launch on that Thursday as well.

Apple suffered a pair of black eyes last week when first, "Bendgate" made its way into tech headlines, and second, when it released a problematic iOS 8 update. While neither are serious problems, negative publicity is never a good thing.

Rumors of iPhone 6's bending began to emerge last Tuesday. Anecdotal evidence suggested that keeping an iPhone 6 or, especially, an iPhone 6 Plus in a pocket (front or back) would put it at risk of bending. This is really not a surprise, considering the new handsets are 6.9 and 7.1 mm thick, as compared to the 7.6 mm iPhone 5. Also both handsets are longer than their predecessor, giving them more leverage for

Much of the news over the past week was about Apple's big event this coming Tuesday, September 9th. Apple announced on Thursday that the event would be streamed live on Apple.com. Official invitations were sent out the previous Thursday. The iPhone 6 will definitely be unveiled, and it is almost certain at this point that the company's wearable device (popularly, but unofficially, dubbed "iWatch") will make its debut as well. The event will take place at the Flint Center for Performing Arts, which has about four times the capacity of Apple's traditional venue, the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco.

In addition to the unveiling of the iPhone 6 and iWatch, many analysts believe the next generation iPad Air will be announced as well. Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities believes it will debut next week and will feature an A8 processor, Touch ID fingerprint sensor and an improved camera. You also may be able to get it with a gold chassis.