Apple got to this point by notoriously never paying out dividends. Paying out dividends obviously takes away money usable for growth. I don't see any competitio

Apple got to this point by notoriously never paying out dividends. Paying out dividends obviously takes away money usable for growth. I don't see any competition between these two models. You issue stock to get capital to compete with other behemoths. If not for having contributed cash to the endeavor, the investors function more like parasites that want to extract the maximum they can from the host. Such massive payouts will probably stop Apple from becoming a major conglomerate with varied tech/science/engineering interests in the distant future and limit them to high end consumer electronics. They got to this point by acting more like Google, and they will likely degrade like HP or IBM now. A very silly article comparing two companies with similar money-management history and acting like some competition exists between the models because investors recently got an upper hand with Apple. They wouldn't have gotten their market position doing this. It strikes me like comparing two athletes when one recently acquired a disability and suggesting that the disability contributed to their historical success and suggests some new model for the sport going forward.