IBM

Buffett goes big in Big Blue

Non-techie Warren Buffett buys more IBM shares for Berkshire Hathaway than Watson could probably guess.

By Carol Loomis, senior editor-at-large

FORTUNE -- A tech stock for Buffett? Yes, a very big tech stock, and a walloping part of it, too.

Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway and up to now a famous avoider of tech stocks, disclosed today on CNBC that his company has accumulated a huge investment in IBM. Berkshire spent about MORE

Apple's headcount, up 30%, still industry's most productive

With one seventh as many employees as IBM, Apple generates 13 times more profit

As of September, Apple (AAPL) had 60,400 full-time equivalent employees, according to the SEC Form 10-K it filed Wednesday, nearly 30% more than the 46,600 it reported in Q4 2010.

But those employees generate more profit per capita -- by far -- than any of Apple's peers in the industry.

In the quarter that ended in September -- not MORE

Apple's Siri: A TV remote that you can talk to?

An analyst may have put her finger on the conversational interface's killer app

In a note to clients issued Friday, Cross Research's Shannon Cross pivots from the Steve Jobs eulogies to take a closer look at Siri, the natural language interface that Apple (AAPL) unveiled the day before he died.

In particular, she singles out an application that wasn't in Scott Forstall's demos or Apple's slick promotional video, but which fits perfectly MORE

Video: Steve Jobs narrating the 1997 'Think Different' TV ad

This one never aired. Richard Dreyfuss provided the voice-over on the broadcast version

The ad and the slogan -- a play on IBM's (IBM) "Think" -- were created for Apple (AAPL) by the Los Angeles office of Chiat\Day.

The spot features, in order of their appearance, Albert Einstein, Bob Dylan, Martin Luther King, Jr., Richard Branson, John Lennon (with Yoko Ono), Buckminster Fuller, Thomas Edison, Muhammad Ali, Ted Turner, Maria Callas, Mahatma Gandhi, Amelia Earhart, Alfred Hitchcock, Martha Graham, Jim Henson (with Kermit the Frog), Frank Lloyd Wright and Pablo Picasso.

Thanks to dogtownmac, who posted MORE

Today in Tech: Are Oracle and Salesforce's CEOs feuding?

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* After months of intense speculation, Apple (AAPL) and CEO Tim Cook announced the comparably-priced iPhone 4S for AT&T (T), Verizon (VZ) and Sprint (S), with the same dual-core processor featured in the iPad, an improved 8-megapixel camera, a major operating system update in iOS5, and Siri, a voice recognition "assistant" MORE

Apple was the safest of safe havens last quarter

Up 13.59% in a quarter in which the NASDAQ fell 12.91%

In his Tech Trader Daily column last week, Barron's Tiernan Ray noted that the three months that ended Friday saw some spectacular flameouts in the tech sector, including Netflix (NFLX) down 56.88% for the quarter, AOL (AOL) down 39.58%, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) down 38.32% and Yahoo (YHOO) down 12.4%.

Amid the carnage, however, there were some relatively safe havens. Ray mentioned Apple MORE

Four things Bill Gates can teach Eric Schmidt

When Google's executive chairman testifies during a Senate hearing on antitrust issues today, he'll be following in the footsteps of another tech titan: Bill Gates. Here's what he should know.

FORTUNE -- When Google's executive chairman testifies during a Senate hearing on antitrust issues today, he'll be following in the footsteps of another tech titan: Bill Gates.

In 1998, Gates appeared before Congress alongside ex-Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy and former Netscape MORE

Apple's brand value rises to No. 2 in the world, after Google

The Apple logo is now worth $39.3 billion according to Brand Finance

Microsoft (MSFT) is down 9% to $39 billion. Google (GOOG) is up 9% to nearly $48.3 billion. But Apple (AAPL) is way up -- 33% -- to overtake, for the first time, Microsoft, IBM (IBM), Wal-Mart (WMT) and General Electric (GE).

Those are the highlights of the interim brand value report issued last week by Brand Finance, a London-based consulting company MORE

Today in Tech: Apple promotes another exec

Fortune's curated selection of the day's most newsworthy tech stories from all over the Web. Sign up to get the newsletter delivered to you every day.

* According to 9to5Mac, Apple (AAPL) iTunes chief Eddy Cue was promoted to Senior Vice President of Internet Software and Services. Cue will report directly to Apple CEO Tim Cook and will oversee all of the company's cloud services, from iTunes and the App Store to the impending iCloud. (9to5Mac)

* MORE

HP's PCs: The handwriting was in Léo Apotheker's resumé

The board sealed the fate of HP's personal systems group when it hired the CEO of SAP

What the hell happened to Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) last week?

The simplest explanation is the one suggested Thursday by Techcrunch's MG Siegler and picked up Sunday by Daring Fireball's John Gruber: HP's board put an enterprise software guy in charge of a low-margin PC business and a high-risk play to outflank Apple (AAPL) in smartphones and tablets. When MORE