A UPS truck parked outside a San Francisco Apple store has been robbed of more than 300 iPhone Xs, just one day before the flagship's release.

In broad daylight, at around 11.15am local time, three hooded men managed to rob 313 iPhones at a total value of $370,000 (£283,000).

Apple CEO Tim Cook has weighed on the spread of "fake news" on social media saying the trend poses a bigger threat to the US than online ads bought by foreign governments. During an interview with NBC's Lester Holt on Wednesday, Cook said social media is being exploited to "divide" and "manipulate" users.

This week, representatives from Facebook, Google and Twitter are being grilled by lawmakers in US Congressional committee hearings over the role their platforms played in Russia's interference and misinformation campaign during the 2016 election campaign.

An Apple engineer has allegedly been sacked after his daughter leaked a video of the new iPhone X prior to its launch.

Brooke Peterson had lunch with her father at the Apple campus cafeteria and recorded footage of the iPhone X, which her father was given early because of his job.

Researchers from the University of Washington (UW) have devised a new kind of smart fabric that can store data and does not require any electrical power to run it.

The fabric can be used to store passcodes, keys, and other such information, but will not need a battery or other forms of power or sensors to operate it.

Apple has designed iPhones and iPads that would drop chips supplied by Qualcomm Inc according to two people familiar with the matter, Reuters reports. The change would affect iPhones released in the fall of 2018, but Apple could still change course before then, these people said. They declined to be identified because they were not authorized to discuss the matter with the media.

A Facebook executive has denied the social network uses a device's microphone to listen to what users are saying and then send them relevant ads.

Rob Goldman, the tech giant's vice-president of ads, was responding to a tweet by PJ Vogt, the presenter of a tech podcast called Reply All.