(Image source: Cult of Mac )



BY EVAN THOMAS

ANCHOR CHRISTINA HARTMAN



What’s Apple up to? Maybe a better question is what isn’t Apple up to? CEO Tim Cook was on stage at a Goldman Sachs conference Tuesday, talking about a little bit of everything.

This was an investor meeting, so a lot of Cook’s focus was on Apple’s finances. According to CNBC , Cook says Apple is going to move carefully with its mountain of money.

“He said, ‘we have more cash than we need to run the business on a daily basis.’ Well, everybody knows that.... He then said investors need to have a little patience so that Apple can act prudently and figure out what to do with that cash.”

That’s already a departure from the way Steve Jobs handled Apple’s money , says GigaOM.

“Jobs was very adamant that no dividend or share buybacks or large acquisitions be made, in order to keep Apple totally out of debt... Cook has signaled he’s not nearly as extreme in his position — several times, including Tuesday, he’s reminded investors he’s “not religious” about keeping cash or not.”

Apple’s stock prices recently cleared $500 — though that comes amid increasing concern about working conditions at Apple’s manufacturing contractors. Cook said Apple is committed to improvement. CNN reports the company’s first step was to dispatch independent investigators to different plants.

“Apple invited them to come and assess what’s going on there. What these folks are doing is they’re interviewing thousands of people who work at this plant, to assess what the work and living conditions are, what their pay is, what kind of hours they are working...”

ZDNet suggests Apple may be looking to nip problems in the bud as much as possible.

“The big question is whether this transparency will work. Apple’s bet is that it will get ahead of concerns about working conditions by leading the tech industry in disclosure.”

And it wouldn’t be an Apple event without a rumor or two. Cook didn’t comment on the speculation about an eight-inch iPad, but Bloomberg reports he did sound surprised by the popularity of the tablet format.

“What was very clear from Tim Cook is this market is way bigger than they ever though it would be. To get to 55 million Macs, he said it took them 22 years, and they’ve already gotten to that point with the iPad.”

According to CNET, that explosive growth is thanks to Apple’s ruthless market priorities .

“Apple saw a tremendous opportunity in tablets and worked on turning the iPad into a global phenomenon, even at the Mac's expense. The gamble is paying off.”

Cook didn’t say anything about when to expect the next iPad, but rumor has it a debut may come as soon as March.