News

Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) shares hit record highs on almost every day last week, and closed Friday at a record $127.08. Tuesday's $122.02 close brought Apple's market capitalization to nearly $711 billion, making it the first U.S. company to surpass a $700 billion market cap. That's over twice Microsoft's $350 billion valuation and not quite twice that of Google's $365 billion.

Analysts and investors alike were bullish, and continued the trend of raising Apple shares' target price. Analyst Keith Bachman of BMO Capital Markets raised his target price from $130 to $135, speculating that there are still a lot of iPhone owners who have not yet, but will upgrade to the iPhone 6, and that the Apple Watch will sell 19 million units in 2015. Canaccord Genuity raised its

What began early last week as an unconvincing rumor that Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) is working on an automobile gathered steam and, by Friday, it seemed that something is definitely afoot.

After multiple sightings over the last several weeks of Apple minivans laden with cameras and other equipment, rumors began to fly that Apple was working on a self-driving vehicle. Then, last Monday, a report emerged that an anonymous Apple employee had emailed BusinessInsider that the company was working on

Fans of Nintendo can look forward to the release of an iOS app in the coming months. Satoru Iwata, president of Nintendo confirmed to Nikkei that the app was currently in development. An announcement is expected after the fiscal year ends in March.

While this may break new ground for Nintendo, Iwata described a social app based on Mii characters, not a gaming app. This is in line with previous statements from the company, signaling it has no intention of bringing popular game titles to smartphones or tablets. Nintendo will continue to make games only for its own devices and consoles.

The jailbreak app store Cydia has received a long-anticipated cosmetic update. The redesign launched automatically, so users need only to open the Cydia app to see the changes. The new look brings a clean, flat design to the interface much like iOS 7 and iOS 8.

The redesign hits every corner of Cydia, however functionality and options remain the same. The last time the jailbreak app store had a significant redesign was after the launch of iOS 7, when the Sources and Installed tabs were added. The Cydia home screen icon was also updated to match iOS 7.

A lot went on on with the App Store this week, but unfortunately it was a slow week for app releases. Apple added a Pay Once & Play section to the App Store highlighting "great games with no in-app purchases." Hopefully the new section will teach App Store customers that it is worth spending a few dollars on a decent mobile game instead of encouraging the freemium model.

Apple this week also increased the maximum app size on the App Store from 2GB to 4GB. This will give developers more leeway when creating high-quality games that take advantage of Apple's newer hardware and larger iPhone displays. Here's the announcement from Apple's developer portal:

"The size limit of an app package submitted through iTunes Connect has increased from 2 GB to 4 GB, so you can include more media in your submission and provide a more complete, rich user experience upon installation. Please keep in mind that this change does not affect the cellular network delivery size limit of 100 MB."