Apple broke its way into the top 10 of the Fortune 500 list of top American revenue earners for the first time today, making an impressive leap from No. 17 to No. 6 since last year's rankings. Fortune also lists it as the second most profitable company in the United States after Exxon Mobil. This can only be good news for Apple in the wake of recent concerns about its falling stock prices and its shaky hold on the smartphone and tablet markets, and it stands as a stark reminder of the tech giant's potential for growth in spite of increasingly grim projections.

Alisher Usmanov, the Russian billionaire whom some of you may recall from his jaw-dropping 10-fold return on his investment into Facebook last year, recently announced to Bloomberg that he'd invested as much as $100 million into Apple stock in the belief that it will return to the highs of September 2012 or beyond. That's an impressive gamble. Apple's stock has dropped by close to 40 percent since then due to concerns about competition from Samsung and sluggish sales.

How'd you like to meet Apple CEO Tim Cook? It'll cost you a heck of a lot more than a MacBook Pro. Yesterday the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights posted an auction on Charity Buzz for a one hour-long chat over coffee with Cook, and by Thursday afternoon the 58 bids were sitting at $210,000. And you thought Starbucks was expensive.