News: Apple's plans for its cash balance, location-based reminders, Andy Ihnatko's OS X, and more!

Apple has announced that they will be starting a stock buyback to the tune of US$10 billion starting September 1st, along with a per-share dividend of US $2.65 beginning July 1st.

Tim Cook has been quoted as saying how Apple already has more than enough money in the "war chest" for strategic opportunities, not to mention enough cash to run their business for the foreseeable future. The second developer preview of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion contains a little feature best described as iOS-like location based reminders.

For those familiar with Apple's plans for the Mac in the past few days this shouldn't be completely unexpected, but still, like Notes, it's great to see Apple adopting stand-alone apps for at least a few features here and there — and that they integrate a few of the more useful iOS features is nothing but a good thing, in my eyes.

Over at Macworld, Andy Ihnatko talks about what he wants in OS X. He discusses quite a few ideas — not just iterations on current features, but everything from an "easy mode" to having an OS that does a lot of the thinking for you. Everything from a revamp of the Finder to what comes after 10.9 is included in his wish-list, and it makes for a good read.

There are many distraction-free writing apps on the Mac, but lightweight word processing is something that could be considered new territory for Mac apps. Write is one such app — it cuts down on the bloat of Word or Pages, and means that a bare-bones writing interface could be exactly what you needed to get stuff done.