The reason buybacks are disconcerting (aside from the debt driven buybacks the article focuses on) is precisely because of what you're saying. Buybacks are oft

The reason buybacks are disconcerting (aside from the debt driven buybacks the article focuses on) is precisely because of what you're saying. Buybacks are often a signal that a company has run out of ideas for what to do with with their money, other than what they're already doing. Especially for a tech company, that's a very bad sign. For instance you refer to Apple as a mature company yet the interesting thing is that today they are basically 'the iPhone company' - making the wide majority of their profits from a product type that didn't exist 11 years ago. And this is a typical pattern with tech and electronics. Times and trends change very quickly and the winner tends to be the company that's on top of the change. If Apple doesn't manage to move beyond the iPhone they will stagnate (which is arguably already happening) and inevitably decline.