What is Apple going to do with its $90 billion pile of cash? That’s what conference attendees wanted to know from the iPhone 4 maker on Tuesday. VentureBeat.com reports:
At the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference Tuesday, CEO Tim Cook was asked why the company has not taken the usual moves of buying back stock or issuing a dividend to shareholders. Investors, while happy with the epic stock price, are eager for a payout.
Cook acknowledged that deciding how to best spend that money is a major topic being discussed within Apple.
“I only ask for a bit of patience so we can do this in a deliberate way and do it in a way that’s best for shareholders,” said Cook. “We’re judicious, we’re deliberate, we spend our money like its our last penny … We’re not going to go have a toga party or do something outlandish.”
When a company is sitting on a huge pile of cash, as Apple is, it is expected to shell out a dividend to investors and to spend money on things that will make it even more money. Cook said that so far, the company has spent billions of dollars on its supply chain, intellectual property, acquisitions, retail, and the Apple infrastructure. He acknowledged that those big dollar items still aren’t making a big of a dent.
The conference attendees weren’t the only ones who wanted to know something from Apple. On Wednesday federal lawmakers asked the company about its privacy practices. The Post’s Cecilia Kang reports :
Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.) sent a letter on Wednesday to Cook asking if Apple’s policies ensure developers can’t share or collect user data — such as iPhone contact lists — without permission.
The concern comes after Path, an online diary, said it collected and stored users’ iPhone contact lists without explicitly asking for permission to do so. When launching the app, Path automatically uploaded contact data in order to “find friends” to connect to on the social networking app.
Twitter has also admitted it collects and stores users’ contact lists from devices without specific permission, according to this story by the Los Angeles Times.
The lawmakers say the practice “raises questions about whether Apple’s iOS app developer policies and practices may fall short when it comes to protecting the information of iPhone users and their contacts.”
Cook acknowledged that deciding how to best spend that money is a major topic being discussed within Apple.
In Apple product news, Siri, the company’s voice recognition feature, could be coming to the ‘iPad 3’. As Post Hayley Tsukayama reports :
Siri, Apple’s AI personal assistant, could be poised to make her debut on Apple’s next iPad. At least, that’s what the folks at SlashGear are reading into a software update that also makes it impossible for hackers to install Siri on an unofficial device, which right now means anything but the iPhone 4S.
The new update, the blog speculated, could be to enable the iPad 3 to use Siri as well. It would be no surprise if Apple incorporated its personal assistant in its next tablet given how well the feature has taken off on the iPhone 4S. The software is far from perfect — ask anyone with an unconventional accent — but is a great add to the latest iPhone and is certainly a pop culture hit. And since Siri is one of the rare products that Apple has released in beta, it’s likely to keep improving.