Turn the lights down low and put on some bad jazz music, because The New York Times is writing some Apple acquisition porn!
The Times’s Andrew Ross Sorkin has “Suggestions for an Apple Shopping List.” As with all these lists, the suggestions are designed to fulfill fantasies of the writer, not Apple.
Question: What would you do if you had $117 billion?
Three words: Diamond studded antlers.
That’s the challenge facing Tim Cook, Apple’s chief, whose company’s cash hoard keeps growing—by about $1 billion a week.
Thank goodness Apple has so many people providing helpful hints about how to solve this massive dilemma. Whatever would the company do without them?
He could hold onto it. He could increase Apple’s dividend, which he instituted this year for the first time.
BOR-ING.
Or he could spend it.
♫ BOW-CHICKA-WACKA-WACKA ♫
What follows is like most Apple acquisition speculation: It’s wooden and lacks any kind of believable motivation. Just like real porn!
Apple has shown that it will make strategic acquisitions of companies that have technologies that fill a need, but that doesn’t get people excited. No …
The real question is whether Mr. Cook would ever spend Apple’s money on an “elephant”—Wall Street parlance for a huge deal.
Once the elephant arrives at the orgy, that’s when the fun starts.
Of course, the real answer is most likely “no,” but “no” doesn’t sell newspapers, people!
Sorkin’s suggestions range from the “meh” to the “OH, GOD, NO.”
RESEARCH IN MOTION Yes, this one may be a head-scratcher…
Uh, actually, that one’s more like a butt-scratcher.
SPRINT Yes, the phone company. This might seem the most out-there idea…
But you know how it is with porn. You start off with the simple stuff and pretty soon it’s balloons, monkeys, watermelons, and an angry badger.
The only one that seems even remotely possible is the most boring: Nuance, a company Apple already licenses technology from. The rest are just the hot and sweaty fantasies of the technology press.
[Editors’ Note: In addition to being a mythical beast, the Macalope is not an employee of Macworld. As a result, the Macalope is always free to criticize any media organization. Even ours.]