I think the central point of my article stands because the tax burden associated with bringing Apple's significant foreign investments (about 60% of their cash, reportedly) back into the United States would be prohibitive and restrict any kind of heroic or crazy deals from being announced tomorrow. And Apple's investments are not in cash.
If anyone would like more information about the structure of Apple's investments, see page 7 of the most recent 10-Q: http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/AAPL/1738322915x0x536... The parent commenter is correct that the vast majority of holdings are in things like us treasuries and corporate bonds, which can be liquidated immediately.
If Apple had a productive use of $50b in the USA, I think they could raise it.
Securities held by corporations as assets are shown both by type of instrument and by "intent" of the holding. In this case, the types of instruments shown on the latest 10-Q [1] are, as the post describes, cash and cash equivalents, short-term securities and long-term securities. But that only applies to the security itself, not Apple's intent: a 30 year government bond would be classified as "long term," but it could easily be sold tomorrow in one of the most liquid financial markets in the world.
Under GAAP, what is also relevant is a label on the "intent" of the holding: trading, available-for-sale, or held-to-maturity. According to the same 10-Q, all of these securities are classified as available-for-sale. The original post conflates these two ideas and mistakenly assumes that the ~$67B of long term securities will be held until they mature. Were that Apple's intent, they would likely be classified as held-to-maturity, rather than available-for-sale.
(The classification as to intent matters, as it affects how unrealized gains/losses from the securities held flow into the income statement in any given period.)
It's a technical point, to be sure, but the post's conclusion that long term security != ready cash is not quite right.
Regardless, Apple's numbers amaze me every time I look at them.
[1] http://investor.apple.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1193125-12-...