&gt; out-of-touch &quot;activist&quot; investors clamoring for short term growth and dividends<p>The company has 230 billion in the bank, they can surely remunerate their investors.  OR invest in their own company more, quality is down over the past 5 years, they can invest in more engineers.  The hardware lives extremely lengthy update cycles (on average 3 years? MacBook?)  There is a lot they can do with their capital that will provide them with long term growth.  Products like the Apple Watch wont do it.