Typically, the number of shares available on the public market at IPO time won't give anyone a controlling share- even if they bought all of the available shares.
What on earth would Apple do with Facebook? Apple, by virtue of actually making things people want to buy, has massive profit margins compared to Facebook, and can more usefully spend their horde of cash on, say, cornering the market on NAND flash.
To retro-paraphrase your question: "What on Earth would Apple do with NeXT?"
Sometimes it's not about the product, but the people. Maybe the current Apple board /really/ wants Zuck to run the show. Best way to do that is to buy FB.
I agree with you, though. Apple buying FB would be a not-so-small mistake.
Use their software holdings to become a major success story? I'm sure the people helped, but Apple wouldn't be anything like they are today without ownership of NeXTStep. And it was no secret at the time that Apple was looking for software as they were also courting Be.
In 1997, Apple desperately needed an operating system, which is why they bought NeXT. Having Steve Jobs as CEO wasn't actually what either party had planned on.
Considering CNBC on the TV near my desk just said Facebook is going to be valued between $75 billion and $100 billion, I would say Apple is not going to make that acquisition.
Wouldn't happen. You can't just make huge purchases on the stock market. They'd have to iceberg that over such a long time I could never imagine it, and even then it would definitely get noticed. They'd have to do a heck of a lot of paperwork too, it would need a lot of scrutiny.
That's not a piece of cake. Buying a company is not just buying its assets —employees, database, source code etc, but also acquiring its culture and it is really hard to sustain a culture. There should be a reason behind why Apple buys Facebook. Does it want user base, for what? Does it want employees or the project idea? Not that simple as many of you already know.