Investor Carl Icahn to Meet with Apple CEO Tim Cook on Monday, September 30

This Icahn guy seems like a pain in the ass.

Tim Cook probably dodges his calls 10 times a day.

This guy is a parasite, he wants Apple to accelerate the buyback for one reason only, it increases the value of his holding. He doesn't give a damn about the long term or Apple as a company, all he cares about is his own wallet.

This is all very bad news for Apple.

Icahn is bad news.

His involvement implies the beginning of the end for any company, including Apple. Just take a look at what happened with Dell.

I just don't understand Tim Cook at all.

Apple went from the industry leader to a company unable to innovate. It can't even get over its fixation on iPhone's tiny screen size.

And it went from a company that lets its stock price speak for itself, to having to rely on someone such as Icahn to cheerlead its stock. How pathetic is this?

And what is all this talk of paying out dividend? The fact that the payment of dividend is already being done now and that there are more talks of higher dividend payout by Apple is extremely, extremely, worrisome.

Payment of dividend by a company like Apple is an admission by Board and Management that Apple has transited from an innovative, growth driven company to a stagnant company relying on revenue generation rather than growth and innovation. It is an admission that Apple is unable to generate more returns using the cash for the shareholder as compared to giving the cash back to the shareholder and have the shareholder generate the returns himself.

Put it another way, if Apple is still the innovative and growth driven company like it used to be under Jobs, it would surely not payout any dividend -- no shareholders would want it to pay dividend -- because by keeping the cash within Apple and have Apple use the cash to generate returns, the shareholders are able to ensure that there is more returns that way -- since there are no other ways to generate a higher return than Apple.

By shifting to a dividend paying company, Apple is in fact admitting that it no longer has the ability to innovate and grow like it did before, and is thus not able to use the cash to generate a higher return as compared to giving the cash back to the shareholders and have the shareholders themselves generate a return.

Again, this is all very bad news.

The sooner Tim Cook is gone, the better.

He is the worst thing to have happened to Apple. We are in danger of a redux of the disaster that happened at Apple after Jobs was first ousted.

If nothing is done to reverse this, I think Apple would become like Microsoft or Dell and become irrelevant in a couple of years time like BlackBerry.

How droll, but I doubt this is intentional satire.

If you equate a bigger screen with innovation, I doubt you've ever endeavored to be innovative.

This needs nipping in the bud now before he starts expecting Apple to bend its business around his interests.

Icahn is a stockholder, and like all stockholders he is legally a partial owner of the company. Stockholders in the aggregate are Tim's boss. Insofar as Icahn's interests are in line with other stockholder's interests, such as wanting for Apple to pay out their unused mountain of cash, Apple should be listening to him very carefully, and doing the best they can for their owners.

Before people start circlejerking saying how it's the end of Apple as we know it, etc...

Carl Iahn is a huge investor, yes, but his net worth is NOT capable of taking over Apple. He might as well be a homeless beggar compared to Apple's value.

You're correct. However he still has the ability to spread influence with other high investors, and could be a problem for Apple if they start meeting his demands. This needs nipping in the bud now before he starts expecting Apple to bend its business around his interests.

Before people start circlejerking saying how it's the end of Apple as we know it, etc...

Carl Icahn is a huge investor, yes, but his net worth is NOT capable of taking over Apple. He might as well be a homeless beggar compared to Apple's value.

What he's doing (attempting to manipulate the value of his own investment) is still wrong and should be highly illegal, but it's not really going to actually effect Apple as a company.