This just isn't true, Apple has sold debt for as long as their Non US cash position has been material, so they could access their non US cash without having to repatriate(pay US taxes on it) their cash.
A simple look on a Bloomberg terminal shows they have outstanding debt from 2014
I think the point still stands as a whole though. When you see things such as "Of the $10 billion on offer, the $1 billion five-year tranche was issued at a coupon of 0.45%, the lowest coupon seen on a U.S. corporate bond at that maturity, according to Refinitiv data, which goes back to 1980." It's worth highlighting the rarity of these circumstances. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-alphabet-bonds/google-own...
Seriously thought, this is a landmine. If the company faces cashflow issues and they can't pay their bond payments, then the company can be sent into a negative feedback loop where their stock price continues to fall, making it harder to borrow, which eventually leads to bankruptcy.
This is the situation that happens a lot with companies who are otherwise profitable. They just have too much debt as the result of a leveraged buyback. So they are operating on the edge, and one bad quarter throws them into a tailspin.
The corporate bond yield has since recovered as the stock market doing better and money moved out of bond into stock.
eg. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-pulls-in-pricing-joi...
If you're wondering who's buying 30year corporate bonds that have yields lower than pretty much any current inflation predictions, the US Federal Reserve has a new directive under the CARES act to buy into corporate bonds. https://www.marketplace.org/2020/06/16/the-fed-starts-buying...
If you are in a position to sell corporate bonds right now you can set the rates to well below inflation predictions and they will still sell thanks to government intervention. The real kicker is that the more this is done the more inflation will kick in making it an even better deal.
For the common person the only way to get advantage from this ridiculous situation is to own shares in these corporations that are issuing low rate bonds and buying back shares.