My wife and I purchased a new 1999 Montana Van in May of 1999 from a dealer in South West Florida. We had small things wrong with the car from the get go. At 37000 miles the transmission went out. GM would only pay 60%. From then until now we have spent over $10,000.00 on repairs. 2 years ago I wrote the present CEO and some woman called me and said there was nothing they would do. I told her that I would never buy another GM product. By the way, I have owned 25 GM products over the years, but no more. They have no customer service.

I doubt AAPL will annouce a share repurchase plan.  It's not Steve Job's style.  If anything they might do a one time dividend.  They really like having a cash cusion.  And in this economy I don't blame them.  www.generationyinvestor.com

There's absolutely no logical reason at this time that Apple would or should buy back their stock: the stock valuation is currently still way too high for any company to want to bother trying to buy them out and take them over, and using up their cash reserve (huge as it is) would only put them back into a situation where they may somehow need to borrow money, which isn't cost-effective if you can avoid it.

With the world economy having a rather big case of the shivers and looking like at least a recession that may be severe, and many doomsday sayers are even more pessimistic, having 25+ billion in the bank is the greatest possible assurance that regardless of how bad things get, they'll still be around and be able to  be profitable once things return to "normal" when people are more able to buy into less-than-clearance-shelf priced computers/electronics.  Here's a question: how long could Apple go on their current cash reserves, paying all needed workers and contracts, without making any profit in income from sales of goods and various services?

Even if the most pessimistic thing happened economically and buyer demand fell to zero or almost there, Apple has the option of severely cutting their expenses and workers and just sitting on what they've got, able to rebound stronger than ever.  At the same time, how many PC makers could manage to do the same thing?

If Apple is going to use that cash pile for anything other than assurances it won't go bankrupt, I'd expect them to figure out some manner to invest it in something, whether it be a new line of products with mass market appeal, or perhaps investing in other things, like venture capital seed money, to get their fingers in on "The next big thing" as that'd make more sense.

I like Hometown Buffet

I like Jonathan's rationale.  Apple is been very frugal over the years and has put themeselves in a position that others would love to be in.  Most stock buy backs are in some way to appease shareholders; as a Apple stock holder I would not endorse a stock buy at this time, there is no need to, especially in today's financial environment.  Use the money to fund R&D as they are already doing to create the next big thing and improve on the  great things they already have.

of course buy the stock they can always resell

Sam, you share the feelings of a lot of past GM buyers. I tried to get Ford to pay for the milage it took to fix my recall truck. I got the same comment from some woman. It's not in the plan. So they expected me to spend $40 for fuel to get to a dealer to fix one of their problems. Oh, and I might mention that the paint has been peeling off since shortly after I bought the truck. Their comment: that's not in the recall. So I drive the truck that looks like a mess and a lot of people see it and I let them know that Ford or GM does crappy work and will not fix anything. Their recalls are a joke. It is just to get you in to the dealer where he can 'supposedly' find some other problem, not covered by the recall, to make money off of you. Ford is going down.

Lessons learned?  Don't buy American Cars...

Stock buybacks are purchasing air.  There is no guaranteed benefit.  A dividend would be great.  Apple can also invest in all the new technologies and wait for them to pay off.

One of the biggest problems with our economy is that companies borrow money to buy back stock.   We have wasted trillions of dollars on this lunacy.   Those profits should have gone back into the economy in the form of dividends or higher wages.  Talk to any pension manager and ask him if he would like to buy a basket of large cap stocks that pay 5% dividends or more.