Apple proves this is not your father's Silicon Valley Can a company still be lovable when it has $100bn in the bank? For Apple, this is starting to become a serious question. The maker of iPhones and iPads arouses some of the warmest feelings among consumers of any brand in the world, thanks to a string of breakthrough gadgets and classy marketing. Something changes, though, when the underdog comes out on top - and there's nothing like unrivalled corporate wealth to drive the point home. Steve Jobs was fond of saying that he wanted to sail with the pirates, not the navy. In any popularity contest between the establishment and the lovable rogues, the latter always win hands down. But what happens when the pirates have made off with all the gold? The question was thrown into sharp relief this week as Mr Jobs" successors made a halfhearted attempt to deal with their embarrassment of riches. At first blush, Apple has come up with what sounds like a suitable response to the pressure building on Wall Street to do something with the money: it will pay out an average of $1.25bn a month in dividends and share buybacks over the next three years. If chief executive Tim Cook was looking to recast Apple as a responsible - even boring - corporate citizen, this was a good start. But that won't make any dent at all in a cash pile that was growing by $1.23bn a week in the final three months of last year. At this rate, Apple will end 2012 with something like $130bn (and rising) in the bank. In an era that frowns on corporate excess, this prompts some uncomfortable questions, and not just about whether Apple is using its massive wealth responsibly. Included among them: should it be able to keep so much in the first place? Compared with bankers" undeserved bonuses, Apple's executives at least do not rank highly on the greed charts. Steve Jobs paid himself only $1 a year and whatever personal wealth his lieutenants have made - almost all of it from stock - is the result of business success that has seen all shareholders profit handsomely. Yet, even here, there are reasons to question whether excessive corporate wealth has started to distort the normal strictures of pay for performance. To keep Mr Cook for the long term, the company last year handed him shares that have soared in value to more than $600m as the latest bout of Apple-mania has grabbed Wall Street. Apple's reasons for hoarding so much of its money also raise questions. It has resisted paying out more to its shareholders because two-thirds of its cash is held outside the US: it would face a big tax bill if it brought the money home to use for dividends or buybacks. Sensible tax-planning, perhaps. But Apple executives said this week that they had lobbied Washington for tax concessions that would relieve them of much of their tax liability if they repatriated the cash. That smacks of corporate welfare and hardly induces sympathy for a company that is minting money, particularly at a time of such big fiscal deficits. Apple has not been alone in this, or even the most egregious in its special pleading: other Silicon Valley companies have been more vociferous, promising to use a tax break to boost investment - and jobs - in the US. But as the richest, it will be Apple and its shareholders that benefit most from any unseemly deal with Washington. More broadly, Apple has come to exemplify the conspicuous wealth - both corporate and personal - that is coursing through Silicon Valley. Facebook's IPO is set to create a new batch of young multimillionaires; the latest symbol of the runaway success that only the tech industry seems capable of producing. A handful of others - including Google, Microsoft and Cisco - are sitting on an unrivalled amount of money. The social obligation this creates has so far been ignored. The wider corporate sector has been hoarding money rather than investing or hiring more workers. Apple and its peers stand apart in their financial resources yet with their extended global supply chains, they have multiplied jobs abroad rather than at home. Silicon Valley's success has largely failed to reverberate to the wider benefit of the society that created it. The Apple cash mountain will also, inevitably, raise questions about its business practices. Its wealth throws into sharp relief the conditions endured by workers at its Chinese suppliers. Is it doing enough to raise safety standards and alleviate the plight of workers who, by its own admission, are sometimes forced to work excessive overtime or suffer other privations? Class action lawsuits and heightened political criticism are the least it can expect as scrutiny of conditions in its supply chain intensifies. Ambitious lawyers and politicians know how to build careers by attacking rich companies with Achilles heels such as this. This suggests that the Apple that will emerge from its current period of growth - rich, powerful, able to exert its influence over a large part of the tech world and beyond - will be viewed very differently from the scrappy and creative underdog over which Steve Jobs once presided. It need not necessarily become the big, ugly multinational. Unusually for a company of such size, it continues to surprise and delight its customers with products that stand apart from the competition. But it will be judged by different standards, and held more strictly to account. Mr Cook appears to understand all of this. He has already shown the direction, trying to keep the innovation engine firing on all cylinders while smoothing out some of the rougher edges - for instance by starting to pay dividends and opening the company's suppliers to a degree of independent inspection. Who knows, Apple might even become something new on the corporate landscape: a truly lovable mega-corporation. That $100bn burning a hole in its pocket, though, already points to the perils that lie ahead from unbridled success. The writer is the FT's San Francisco bureau chief