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I agree. Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't share buybacks exactly what you'd do if you believed your stock was undervalued?

Exactly. It's company-sponsored arbitrage.

If markets, according to company insiders, are not behaving rationally (AAPL P/E is amazingly 9.21, compared to ~15 for MSFT and ~24 for GOOG), then buying when you think it's cheap is a wise move.

Cliche at this point, but got to be said.

"The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent." John Maynard Keynes, (attributed) English economist (1883 - 1946)

That's probably true if you don't have >$100B in the bank

…and generate tens of billions in free cash flow per year!

For Apple it is. “We acknowledge that our growth rate has slowed,” Tim Cook.

Because the market they created is now saturated, with Apple dominating the profits.