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After nuking fears that the iPhone X may be a colossal failure somehow, Apple’s stock price has been on a climb this week with AAPL touching a new high during intraday trading. As CNBC notes, investors responded positively to Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway firm upping its investment in Apple by 75 million shares last quarter. Apple CEO Tim Cook has responded to the news of Berkshire’s investment:

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This week Benjamin and Zac discuss what Ming-Chi Kuo’s retirement from KGI Securities could mean for future Apple rumors, Apple’s latest earnings report and why iPhone revenue was up despite flat unit sales, the current state of AirPlay 2 and some impressive new features coming to iOS 11.4, and our wish list for tvOS 12 and Apple TV.

9to5Mac Happy Hour is available on iTunes and Apple’s Podcasts app, Stitcher, TuneIn, Google Play Music, or through our dedicated RSS feed for Overcast and other podcast players.

Sponsored by DearMob: With our partner DearMob, we’re giving away Apple’s brand new 9.7-inch 2018 iPad and an Apple Pencil this month to one lucky winner. And for a limited time, 9to5 readers can get DearMob iPhone Manager’s latest version for free, normally $59.95.

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I’ve written on a couple of occasions about how Apple’s approach to Siri differs from the intelligent assistants offered by Amazon and Google.

The tl;dr version is that Apple has gone all-in on privacy, while Google takes the ‘hoover up as much data as possible’ approach, and Amazon has opened up Alexa to, well, anyone who wants to make it do something.

But while Apple’s privacy focus explains some of Siri’s limited abilities, it doesn’t excuse them all. HomePod brought Siri’s limitations into sharp focus, and the upcoming introduction of Siri to two new products will further increase the pressure for a smarter Siri …

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Tim Cook touted the success of the iPhone X during this week’s Q2 earnings call, with a couple of notable facts. First, he said, the iPhone X had been the best-selling iPhone every single week of Q1. Second, it was the best-selling smartphone in China.

But today the iPhone X has an even greater claim to fame: it was the top-selling smartphone not just in China, but worldwide …

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The Spanish version of People magazine is this month featuring the ’50 most beautiful people’ of 2018, featuring celebrities including Demo Lovato, J.Balvin, Amara La Negra, and other figures. Each person gets a bio and a portrait. For the first time, all the photos were shot — including the cover photo — with an iPhone X.

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Facebook is actively exploring the possibility of offering a subscription-based option which would remove ads from the feeds of those choosing to pay a monthly or annual fee …

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A statement made by Google could suggest a slowing in the growth of the payments the company makes to Apple to be the default search engine on iOS devices …

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Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate founded and run by Warren Buffett, bought an additional 75 million AAPL shares in the first quarter of the year.

The latest purchase takes Berkshire’s total stake in Apple to 240.3M shares, worth more than $42B …

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Apple’s interest in exclusive video programming is stretching beyond its original content TV show efforts. Digiday reports that Apple paid Buzzfeed to show the first three episodes of its ‘Future History’ video series on Apple News, a week ahead of Buzzfeed’s other distribution platforms.

Apple gave Buzzfeed a cut of the ads shown on the videos, in addition to upfront payment. Apple has highlighted video stories more prominently in Apple News since iOS 11.3 with several video-focused features.

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