Andrew Ross Sorkin is calling for Apple to spend some of its massive $117 billion cash pile on, among other things, Sprint, RIM, Twitter, and mobile-payment doohickey Square.
That’s all fine and good, but as Sorkin notes, even a spending binge like that would leave Apple CEO Tim Cook about $20 billion to play around with.
Here’s how the tech giant should spend the rest of that money:
$2 million: Create two dozen fake iPhone 5 prototypes, place strategically in bars around Gizmodo’s headquarters just to mess with them
$1 million: Send lifetime supply of gift baskets to Mike Daisey, with notes that say, “Thanks for diverting attention from our supply chain to your habit of making shit up.”
$7 million: Erect digital billboard outside Steve Ballmer’s house showing the market cap differential between Apple and Microsoft
$3 billion: R&D for army of robot lawyers who can work 24-hour days devising new tax-avoidance schemes
$500 million: Global PR campaign to alert world to wage hikes at Foxconn factory
$990 million: Global PR counter-campaign to cover up fact that Foxconn wage hikes will be paid in RIM shares
$1.5 billion: Scrooge McDuck–style employee swimming pool filled with gold doubloons
$1 billion: New iPhone 5 feature that releases 200-volt shock every time owner says “YOLO”
$10 billion: Buy Greece, turn into austerity-themed amusement park
Sources
DealBook/NYT$2 billion: Find amber-trapped mosquito that bit Steve Jobs in 1998, use DNA remnants to clone him
