Ask HN: What should Apple do with their $200B+ pile of cash?

0. Incubate startups - 400 megabucks/year. (Often, less money invested is better because it will be burned more efficiently. Investing isn't an inherently scalable activity because of the limited number of people capable of executing a good pipeline: inbound development, due-diligencing, raising more capital, managing and assisting portfolio co's.)

1. Outfit even more US public and private schools with as many devices and apps as they need - 35 gigabucks/year.

2. Fund all US clean-money politicians blindly via a non-profit so there are less barriers to getting things done - 4 gigabucks/year.

3. Lobby for US grassroots causes like basic income and underserved educational areas: repeal NCBLA and fund civics, history, art and music in spite of De Vos. - 500+ megabucks / year.

4. Grants, mentorships and other social enterprise activities - 200 megabucks / year.

5. Commission some amazing artistic/architectures projects for cities and communities globally - 20 megabucks / year.

Buy Lenovo+Moto and give us a macOS thinkcentre workstation

Donate a bunch to all those BSD and FOSS projects they rely on

Repatriate their offshore funds

Obviously buy 200 Instagrams.

Set it on fire.