alt Hacker NewsHuh?
Ofc they could afford to, but they don’t. They could alo afford to if they had unlimited money, but in the latter case by definition they’d lose nothing by actually buying.
Given the absurdity of the scenario and its contrivance though I’m not sure what your point is. More money spent on security is good is my point. And if they had more money they’d have more money to spend on security. And if they didn’t spend money on dumb shit like virtue signaling then they’d have more money. That’s the reasoning.
My point is that it’s silly to say that Apple doesn’t have enough money left over after spending money on marketing to pay off people who find security vulnerabilities if they have $110 billion in profit after spending money on marketing.
If you had to spend 0.5% of your income for something in a year, would that adversely affect how you chose to spend the other 99.5%?