Comment by marcus_holmes

Yeah, good point. I kinda agree that it would be hard for Apple to spend all their vast cash reserves on R&D. But the point still stands that a company has choices about what to spend its money on, and if the best use it has for the money is buying back shares then it's not really innovating any more. Share buybacks are not creating more product lines, or investing in the company's future; they're (literally) shrinking the company. The executive team is saying "the best thing we can think of to spend this money on is shrinking the company". That's not a good sign, even if they are also spending big on R&D.