Tesla-SolarCity CEO Elon Musk went Hollywood Friday night, showing off tiles on a Universal Studios backlot that looked like regular roofing but acted just like solar panels - which, indeed, they were.

More so than ever, the elusive consumer is a moving target if yesterday's Alphabet results are any indication. And since the Google parent's services are just about ubiquitous on all smartphones, whatever the operating system may be, it quite literally is.

Microsoft put on a display in Manhattan yesterday - to be precise, its new Surface Studio desktop PC sports a thin, 28-inch, high-resolution touchscreen with a zero-gravity hinge that allows the machine to lay out at a 20-degree angle. Bottom line: The enabler of Excel spreadsheets and Word memos is going after creative types. Indeed, Uncle Satya wants you.

Christmas - and new MacBooks - are coming in the nick of time for Apple, which yesterday revealed that it had a quarterly sales and profit decline for the first time in 15 years.

As individual investors grow increasingly wary of actively trading stocks, discount brokerage TD Ameritrade put a buy order on its smaller rival, Scottrade, yesterday for $2.7 billion in cash and stock. Meanwhile, Toronto-Dominion, which owns about 42% of TD Ameritrade, is purchasing Scottrade's online bank for $1.3 billion in cash.

Time Warner CEO Jeffrey Bewkes is being hailed as a patient and prescient numbers guy and dealmaker this morning for the $85.4 billion deal he struck with AT&T Saturday but whether the alliance will pass regulatory muster or have legs as a wise consolidation of programming and distribution entities is the subject of much speculation this morning.

After more than three decades as MetLife's spokespooch, Snoopy has been grounded as the brand is "moving away from a traditional product-development model to one driven by customer insights," says CEO Steve Kandarian.

The ladies are bringing a bit of pre-holiday-season cheer to Mattel, with Barbie sales soaring 16% during its third quarter and American Girl rising 14%. Although the results exceeded most analysts' expectations, worldwide net sales for all of its brands combined - which include Fisher-Price, Hot Wheels, Matchbox, Construction and Arts & Crafts Brands, Radica and Games - were flat, the company reported.

Rob Stringer has been named CEO of Sony Music Entertainment, succeeding music-industry Doug Morris, 77, who will become chairman of SME in April 2017. Stringer, 54, has been in the Sony Music family for his entire career and is the brother of Sir Howard Stringer, the retired CEO of Sony Corp.

PepsiCo yesterday announced plans to further reduce the amount of added sugars, saturated fat and sodium levels in its product lineups, as well as environmental and social-impact initiatives in an "agenda designed to foster continued business growth in a way that responds to changing consumer and societal needs."