Apple Announces Plans to Initiate Dividend and Share Repurchase Program
I hate to say this is a bad idea, but dividends signal to the market that you have no better way to spend your money than just giving it back to investors to spend elsewhere.<p>Combining a stock buyback plan is smart at least because perhaps they can balance the two and counteract the dividend effect by buying up shares.<p>In reality Apple could probably just become a private company by buying back most/all the public shares, but I doubt they want to do that. There are obvious PR benefits to being the "most valuable" or "most profitable" public company in the world.<p>Also, as far as space travel and exploration, that makes no sense for Apple. Apple is not a company that invests huge in R&D projects that won't pay off for decades. It would ruin their incredible focus on what they are doing now and for the next 5 or so years. If you get too far out ahead, you build things the world isn't ready for yet or you stop executing on the here and now products and services.<p>Apple's still got a ton of room for potential growth on phones, pc's, and tv's. There are also a whole slew of "post pc" computing interfaces and devices that haven't even been dreamed up yet. Space travel would be a distraction.