IIRC the reason companies focus on growth over paying dividends is due to the tax structure.
Another POV is, that when company pays dividends, they are not sure what to do with the money, they have nothing interesting in pipeline and therefore they can not provide better return on investment than the investors individually can.
I think it makes (common) sense that this is a signal of ending innovation, however, Apple has so much cash, it is difficult to fathom what they could possibly do with it other than return it to the shareholders (which they ARE doing).
That is the other strange thing I see about all of this, they ARE returning value to the shareholders in terms of dividends, are these big shareholders (Einhorn et al) just not happy with the rate at which they're being paid?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dividend_tax#United_States
It's more of a strategy question.