8 ms·
Some things Apple could buy, for cash: * SpaceX (market cap $10Bn, AIUI) * Dell (a mere $23Bn!) * Boeing * Ford * The entire global publishing industry (fi
by cstross 14y ago
Some things Apple could buy, for cash:
* SpaceX (market cap $10Bn, AIUI)
* Dell (a mere $23Bn!)
* Boeing
* Ford
* The entire global publishing industry (figures for the top 50 publishers' turnover are here: http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/financial-reporting/article/52677-the-world-s-54-largest-book-publishers-2012.html http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/fi... -- the largest only turns over $8.4Bn)
* A year of Puerto Rico's GDP (roughly $100Bn)
It is really hard to get your head around just how big Apple's cash pile is.
- hawkw 14y agoApple Space is something I'd be entirely behind.
- sliverstorm 14y agoI'm not sure I want to fly on a rocket that isn't user-servicable
- georgemcbay 14y agoAlso, if anything goes wrong with it you have to do a full restore on it by connecting it to a computer running iTunes.
- sliverstorm 14y agoDo you still have to use Firewire to do the restore? We might be hosed.
- Simucal 14y agoIt would be so damn beautiful though.
- Void_ 14y agoYou can get much faster rocket elsewhere for half the price.
- thedrbrian 14y agoIf you could order one... The materials would be crap.... It'd need a ROM from a Russian ICBM to function properly On the flight into space you'd need to reboot it several times..... The manufacturer and the launch pad owners would keep the updates from the pilots.
- caycep 14y agowell...do you want to fly on a plane where any passenger can go fiddle around with the jet engine or avionics?
- pyre 14y agoPlanes are user-serviceable. The user is the owner, which would be the airline. In the case of an Apple rocket, presumably the manufacturer would be the only one that could service it. This would be like all of the major airlines needing to send their planes back to Airbus or Boeing whenever service needed to be done.
- oftenwrong 14y agoJust bring it to the genius bar.
- rayiner 14y agoYou fly all the time on planes that you can't service.
- pyre 14y agoBut you're not the owner. Do the airlines send their craft back to Boeing when they break down, or do they have their own mechanics?
- rayiner 14y agoYou think Boeing lets any schmuck work on their aircraft? The airlines have Boeing certified and trained mechanics that work closely with Boeing to conduct maintenance and repairs. Apple, similarly, allows you to become an authorized maintenance service provider for their products. In any case, the airlines are often not the owners either. A lot of new aircraft are actually leased from Boeing or Airbus. That's kind of how I view my cell phone really. A leased appliance that I'm happy to let the maintenance of which be someone else's problem.
- Steko 14y agoSometimes they do (cf Dreamliner battery problems).
- drcube 14y agoThose aren't users. The owner of the plane is the user. They use it to get paying customers. If American Airlines had to ship broken planes back to the Apple factory for service and repairs, that would be a problem.
- DEinspanjer 14y agoYeah, when the crew of Applo 13 are told they can't repair the air scrubbers because they were glued to the frame of the spacecraft, they would collectively gasp.
- iamrohitbanga 14y agoispace
- wiredfool 14y agoI'm not going to be behind anything that's rocket powered (nor really, do I want to be directly in front).
- syassami 14y ago"Genius Bar, we have a problem"
- shmerl 14y agoYou mean in order to build a death star in a shape of their logo?
- vacri 14y agoOr they could pay their tax bill. On revenues of $6B in Australia, they paid only $40M in tax, claiming only $99M in profit. http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/labor-mp-takes-aim-at-apples-tax-bill-20130206-2dycv.html http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/labor-mp-tak...
- icelancer 14y agoAre they being prosecuted for tax evasion? If not, sounds like they are paying their bill. Take it up with your politicians.
- louischatriot 14y agoThat's a pretty hyprocritical statement. Big companies know how to legally pay almost no taxes, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement And that's probably not "our" politicians who are to blame.
- icelancer 14y ago>legally So it sounds to me like they are paying their tax bill. The fact that it's not as high as vacri or you may like is not their fault.
- rednukleus 14y agoBig corporations lobby to have tax laws that result in a low tax liability for themselves. Tax laws for large multinational corporations are also tend to get into grey areas, where it's hard to tell if something is legal or not (not saying Apple are necessarily in that grey area). The fact that big multinationals are not paying as much tax as many people think is fair is undeniably the fault of both those companies and politicians.
- icelancer 14y agoThe corporations are just acting on their incentives. The opportunity exists, therefore they're going to take advantage of it. Returning maximum value to shareholders is something that most (all?) corporations are trying to do. To not take advantage of government loopholes would be neglecting fiduciary duty. It's not the corporation's job to police morality. That responsibility theoretically belongs to the state. If they're inept and/or corrupt, so be it.
- brandonb927 14y agoGood-guy Apple: Makes too much money; Gives some of it back.
- iamrohitbanga 14y agoSo you can buy new iphones.
- inigoesdr 14y agoThey aren't giving it back to all of the end-users that purchased their products. They are performing huge shareholder payouts to people that already own their stock.
- shmerl 14y agoBuying SpaceX to turn it into another evil empire? No thanks - we don't want slavery on Mars. Some useful things Apple could do with extra cash: * Completely buy and open up H.264/H.265 video codecs and stop hindering open video adoption on the Web and beyond. * Push for more open hardware. And etc. I doubt they'd do anything useful with that cash though.
- tobylane 14y agoBuying out all patents related to something up and coming sounds dangerous, we already dislike submarine patents and this sort of act could make them even more likely.
- shmerl 14y agoIt's not dangerous if they are all opened up - completely the opposite. That's what Google did with buying On2 and opening up VP8. That is really useful way to spend extra cash - it benefits everyone.
- kbutler 14y agoBut the side effect of apple giving billions of dollars to these patent holders will just cause a gold rush to create similar patents.
- shmerl 14y agoNot really. Since there is no guarantee the same thing will happen with any other given patent. It's not like each patent has a great value. The ones which affect the critical markets are important. But trolls already push for making such patents to extort money so it doesn't really change the incentive for making more of them. Was there any higher patent rush after Google bought On2?
- tedunangst 14y agoDoes it benefit Apple? Is the lifetime cost of H264 patent licensing more than the cost to buy out all the patents?
- praptak 14y ago> SpaceX (market cap $10Bn, AIUI) Market cap is not the purchase price of a company.
- jholman 14y agoYeah, the market cap of SpaceX is undefined. And since Musk owns 2/3 of the company, and seems to be a man with a mission, it's not at all clear that he'd sell to anyone. Then again.... SpaceX was apparently built on around one billion dollars. So for $10B (Charlie's suggested figure), you have a fair shot at building a SpaceX from scratch. Start by offering to triple the salary of everyone at SpaceX if they come work for you.
- duck 14y agoI doubt many folks work at SpaceX for the money, so even if it was 10x I doubt many would leave. You don't build a SpaceX from scratch unless you have someone like Musk driving it.
- jonnathanson 14y agoOr maybe sink a significant portion of that cash into hiring the world's brightest scientists and engineers, and doing some crazy, next-gen R&D at the sort of level only governments are able to fund. Maybe fund some university research and claim first patent rights on the results, too. Hell, might as well buy the future for the next 50-odd years. To the extent that Apple's success is predicated on staying a couple steps ahead of the market, seems like a decent investment.
- gwright 14y agoApple has been ramping up their R&D spending. Here is a chart from last fall: http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/31/apples-rd-spending-climbs-1-billion-to-3-4-billion-during-fy-2012/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/31/apples-rd-spending-climbs-1.... Their most recent quarterly filing showed a quarterly expense of $1 billion on R&D, a 33% increase from the same quarter a year ago.