Rumors have been saying for the past two years that Facebook is working on its own smartphone. According to The New York Times today, Facebook has been hiring former Apple engineers who worked on the iPhone and iPad. The new talent will reportedly help Facebook try to build its own smartphone by next year, according to the report.

Not only does Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster see Apple’s and its investors’ financial outlook as essentially rosy for the foreseeable future, but he’s taking it one step further. He’s convinced that he has at least ten reasons to stay bullish on Apple stock over the next three years. He also thinks the stock price is going to hit $1000 per share.

The site Patently Apple Wednesday posted a detailed analysis of a new Apple patent application for an iPen, a vibrating pen that makes noise.

The application describes a haptic stylus containing a tiny speaker, which is designed to be used on touch screens.

Apple watchers are scratching their heads over this one. Apple is going to sell tablets with pens like the Microsoft Tablet PC, or phones with pens like the Samsung Galaxy Note?

Not exactly.

But the iPen patent does hint at amazing and brilliant things to come — for Apple and the entire PC industry.

Yesterday, Apple yanked Airfoil Speakers Touch for unspecified reasons. A little birdie told us it was because Airfoil Speakers Touch duplicated inherent functionality in iOS 6. It’s possible that that’s still true, but if it is, it’s not why Airfoil Speakers Touch was pulled, as Apple has now gone on record saying it was actually because Rogue Amoeba violated a developer guideline against non-public APIs.

TSA is the latest U.S. federal agency to make a significant investment in Apple technologies in what may be a move away from RIM’s BlackBerry and Windows PCs. The agency is set to start a pilot program that will run over the next three years and will involve heavy investment in Macs, iPhones, iPads, and even Apple TVs.

According to federal documents (PDF link), the security agency plans to spend $3 million on Apple products and has an amazingly wide range of uses for them in mind. The plans go well beyond the scope of Apple investments made by other U.S. government agencies like the EPA and FAA, which focus primarily on iPhones and/or iPads.

Apple has begun airing two new ads for Siri and the iPhone 4S titled “Joke” and “Life.” Both spots feature actor John Malkovich. The new ads are similar to other recent Siri commercials starring celebrities like Zooey Deschanel and Samuel L. Jackson.

These two new commercials show Malkovich using Siri for a variety of tasks, such as checking the weather and his calendar. Malkovich also asks his iPhone for a joke, and Siri classically replies with “Two iPhones walk into a bar, I forget the rest.”

One way to look at the consumerization of IT is as a democratization of workplace technology decisions. Executives and employees alike have become much more sophisticated users of technology. Through iPhones and iPads, they see how well-designed devices, platforms, and apps can create enjoyable and, more importantly, productive user experiences. As a result, they don’t tolerate clunky business systems and slow IT responses as much as they did a few years ago.

Many executives and pundits believe this has already changed the balance of power between the CIO/IT management and the CFO and other executives. A recent Gartner survey found that overall, CFOs are leading IT decision-making more than they were just two years ago. One could even argue that in addition to disrupting industries like music and mobile technology, Apple is subtly disrupting IT and business itself  (with some help from other tech and business innovators).

Apple is renowned for obsessing over tiny details and making its products as beautiful on the inside as they are on the outside, and the company maintains that design policy for everything it creates, whether it’s a $1,200 MacBook Pro, or a $30 iPhone charger.

In fact, Apple has gone to great lengths to ensure those tiny iPhone chargers are safe and efficient, and it uses state of the art technology to do that — which is why its chargers are more expensive than most.

American television has been infested with ridiculous singing shows – American Idol, The Voice, X Factor, Sing Off, and now Duets. It’s become too much. Why won’t everyone just enjoy watching Walter White run his meth empire instead? I dunno, but the newest singing show, Duets, is looking to set themselves apart from other shows by ripping off Apple’s classic ‘1984’ commercial in order to get people to plop down and listen to Kelly Clarkson screech for two hours. Sounds like a great marketing plan.

Oh, and they got Jennifer Nettles to join the show too. I guess Toni Basil wasn’t available.

Thanks: Jacob

Sometimes just a few words can make humongous impact – something that DoubleLine Capital’s Jeffrey Gundlach proved spectacularly Wednesday afternoon when a statement he made caused Apple’s market value to drop 2.2% – an acceleration of a much milder downward  trend that Apple’s stock has been on since its record high in early April. Gundlach comments added to that trend, causing Apple stock to plummet so much that it is down $96 billion since April 9th.

For those that weren’t following Apple’s stock price on Wednesday, just after 3 p.m. Apple’s stock price dropped sharply by 2.2% to just over $540. That’s about when Gundlach took the stage at a meeting of hedge fund managers in New York and said that he was shorting Apple because he didn’t see the company being able to sustain the massive consumer excitement generated by the new iPad and other hit products.