In another blow to troubled Canadian smartphone maker Research in Motion, energy drilling giant Halliburton Co. says it will replace its company-issued BlackBerrys with competitor Apple’s iPhone.

A spokeswoman for the Houston, Texas-based firm says the plan will roll out over the next two years as it phases out 4,500 BlackBerrys from its operations.

Yesterday we told you that the Gannet newspaper company is handing out iPhones. We’ll hear more of these stories as time goes on.

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Paul McCartney on iTunes

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This FAQ for Gannett journalists receiving iPhones was distributed today at the chain’s papers.

Q: I like my non- iPhone device. Can I just stay with that?

A: If the company owns the device, the answer is no. iPhone is the only device that can do all the things we want you to be able to do. Also, iPhone is the only device for which we have training, support and unlimited data lined up.

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Since when has Best Buy, the nation’s most well-known electronics retailer, become a player in the Apple rumors game?

We asked, and Best Buy answered: “The customer survey was a routine offer effectiveness survey conducted by one of Best Buy’s research partners. Any brand reference was hypothetical. The survey is no longer available,” Best Buy told us in a statement.

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Apple doesn’t need to pay for Super Bowl ads to get high-profile attention for major announcements.

Why is it that the PC-focused press continues to pretend they know Apple? Ulanoff’s comments show he doesn’t understand how Apple works and perhaps never will.

Apple doesn’t do what other companies do. They don’t have to.

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Apple’s A5 processor includes noise-reduction circuitry licensed from a start-up called Audience, and a chip analyst believes that fact resolves an iPhone 4S mystery and explains why the iPhone 4 lacks the Siri voice-control system.

Audience revealed details of its Apple partnership in January, when it filed paperwork for an initial public offering (IPO) of stock. Teardown work from iFixit and Chipworks revealed a dedicated Audience chip in the iPhone 4, but the iPhone 4S integrates Audience’s “EarSmart” technology directly into the A5 processor, the company’s S-1 filing said.

The explanation make sense even as it disappoints those of us with the iPhone 4 who were hoping to get Siri retroactive on our phones.

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iMovie vs Avid Studio

Avid Studio may be iMovie’s newest competitor for video editing on the iPad, but it’s not a fair competition. Avid Studio is the clear winner. iMovie doesn’t offer any significant features that Avid does not, but Avid can do much more than iMovie. Since they both cost $4.99, it’s almost a no-brainer.

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Apple has updated its iBooks Author app in order to clarify the language of its End User License Agreement. The changes to the EULA clarify that Apple does indeed intend the packaged product to be sold on the iBookstore only, but also makes it clear that it does not lay claim to the content that you use to create the book, nor does it try to limit what you can do with that content elsewhere.

Clarifying what intelligent people already knew.

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An ad out of Taiwan for the Action Pad, which appears to be an iPad-type device produced by a company called Action Electronics.

The presenter might strike you as somehow familiar. It is an actor, dressed to resemble the late Steve Jobs — and equipped with with halo and wings.

Spectacularly tasteless.

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In 1984, Apple defined the Super Bowl Commercial as a cultural phenomenon. Prior to Super Bowl XVIII, nobody watched the game “just for the commercials” — but one epic TV spot, directed by sci-fi legend Ridley Scott, changed all that. Read on for the inside story of the commercial that rocked the world of advertising, even though Apple’s Board of Directors didn’t want to run it at all.

A lot of people don’t realize the reason why this weekend’s Super Bowl commercials will be as talked about as the game is the iconic Apple 1984 ad. It is still considered, almost thirty years later, the greatest commercial ever shown.

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Neither Nokia nor Samsung have anything to fear from Apple for the moment – they’re both way out in front, with 27 and 21.3 percent of the market, respectively, while Apple has carved out a 6 percent share for itself. Apple’s year-over-year growth is

Apple has named former Microsoft Product Marketing chief Robin Burrowes as the head of App Store Marketing for iTunes Europe, becoming the latest games executive to join Apple’s ranks.

Apple’s previously hired executives from Nintendo and and Activision for their PR efforts, according to the

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The update fixes problems with smart cards used to log on to OS X; authentication with directory services; address compatibility issues with Windows file sharing; and improvements to stability, compatibility and security.

Language support has also been added for Catalan, Croatian, Greek, Hebrew, Romanian, Slovak, Thai, and

Crunchie

This year’s fifth annual Crunchies Awards has just finished up at the classy Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, and it was a smashing success. We poked fun #humblebraggers, got cussed at by Siri, honored former TechCrunch CEO Heather Harde, and gave wild monkey trophies to tech’s greatest innovators. Check out the full list of nominees and winners.

Apple took a Crunchie for Siri in the “Best Technology Achievement” category and was nominated for “Best Tablet Application” (Garageband) and “Best New Device” (iPad 2) but lost out to Fotopedia and Nest respectively.

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Tony,

I talked to many people and John was the best by far. I think you will be as pleased as I am. His role isn’t to bring Dixons to Apple, [it's] to bring Apple to an even higher level of customer service and satisfaction.

Tim

If nothing else, Cookie’s emails to customers are longer than Jobs’ ever were.

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I was having such a good day today. Then Apple threatened me in a nasty email.

The question is, are those footers we see in some emails – the ones like “This transmission may be privileged and may contain confidential information intended only for the person(s) named above” – legally binding and/or actionable? Many of us have always assumed they are put there just to satisfy some corporate weenie and can be safely ignored.

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Apple has appealed a Chinese court ruling last December that rejected its ownership of the iPad trademark in the country, and could expose the company to trademark infringement lawsuits from a local company.

The maker of the iconic iPad filed the appeal on Jan. 5 with the Higher People’s Court of Guangdong Province, according to a statement from Proview International, a little known Chinese display monitor company that claims control over the iPad trademark in mainland China.

If Apple loses their appeal, the company may be forced to pay out huge licensing fees or perhaps even change the name of the iPad in China.

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Yesterday, thousands of hopefuls stood for hours outside a labor agency located in the Chinese city of Zhengzhou, the largest city of Henan province in north-central China.

The lines stretched more than 200 meters along the road, and the people who were waiting in line with their applications just hope to get a job at Foxconn, as the electronics contracting giant ramps up its iPhone production at Zhengzhou plant.

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