Apple has some cash on hand. Okay, a lot of cash on hand – $15.4 billion dollars to be exact. As Fortune points out, that’s more than IBM, HP, Intel, and yes, even Google. But the question is, what the hell should they do with all that money?

Fortune has a few ideas: dividends or stock buybacks might be an option, buying up some small software companies, building an amazing new Apple headquarters, or maybe even buying something like TiVo, Netflix, or Circuit City.

ArsTechnica tosses out the idea that maybe Apple should buy Nintendo, Adobe, or again, TiVo.

The Nintendo idea would be a very interesting one (and one mentioned before), could you imagine a new AppleTV will a Wii built right inside – or vice/versa? Would anything sell hotter? Maybe just a Nintendo DS/iPhone combo – and Apple is working on some interesting touchscreen ideas for games (sound like anything?).

Apple would go from an afterthought in the digital living room to completely dominating it. Unfortunately Nintendo, thanks to the Wii and DS, now has a market cap somewhere north of $80 billion dollars, quite a bit more than the $15 billion Apple has to spend.

The Netflix idea is interesting as well. Apple is clearly trying to make the same dent in the movie distribution field that it did in the music one, and that is what Netflix does. Netflix is however, like Apple, still relatively weak in terms of digital distribution and that is clearly where Apple is heading. Unless Apple wants to dominate DVD-mailing, this probably won’t happen.

The Circuit City idea just sounds awful. Why the hell would Apple want to buy Circuit City? To convert them all into Apple stores? They’d be way too big.

Likewise Apple buying into any social network – as some people are throwing around – seems silly. Just because something is hot at the moment, doesn’t mean that any company with money should throw their funds into it. It made sense for Microsoft to invest in Facebook for a number of reasons, but first and foremost was to block their new main rival Google from doing the same thing – for Apple it doesn’t make a lot of sense.

TiVo is another one that is very interesting because it would again allow Apple for an inroad into the living room – plus, as ArsTechnica points out, it’s almost a steal at $800 million. TiVo has been struggling on ways to make money, but their box and software are excellent – just imagine what they would be like when combined with Apple. Of course TiVo currently has a deal with Amazon’s Unbox for digital distribution, so that could cause some issues.

With all that cash, it is kind of interesting that Apple didn’t enter the wireless spectrum auction – or at the very least partner up with Google to do so (as was rumored). Maybe they didn’t want to piss off their iPhone partner AT&T or maybe the fact that they didn’t lends some credence to the idea that Google isn’t really planning on bidding to win the spectrum, just put pressure on all the other companies in the telecomm world.

The most likely answer as to what Apple might and probably should do with the money is the very boring one – that Apple will simply use some of its cash to buy up smaller, innovative software companies that will continue to keep Apple and its products ahead of the pack. They could probably use some help with digital video distribution in the coming year as well as maybe some companies good at building automotive systems.

I would also think it would be wise for them to invest in some of the companies at the forefront of Multi-Touch technology to attempt to beat Microsoft’s Surface Computing to the consumer market. Apple did a great job implementing Mutli-Touch functions into the iPhone, but it was just the tip of the iceberg. This could very well be the future of computing and Microsoft is already stumbling with it – the time is ripe to devote massive money to R&D as well as companies already skilled in such technologies.

Or Apple could always listen to Fake Steve Jobs, who thinks they money should go to Real Steve Jobs:

“Best idea I’ve heard, however, comes from our most recent employee survey. Something like 99.9% of Apple workers surveyed believe that since that $15 billion all came about because of my doing and during my tenure as CEO, that the money should just go to El Jobso. I don’t really care about money, that’s totally not why I do this, but on the other hand fair is fair.”

Classic.