Re: Hopefully...
Apple got in very early in the IP-address game.
At some point, they also wanted to launch their own ISP (don't remember the name) - it's long since buried.
When I got my first dedicated server, I got a sheet of paper from my co-lo where I could select the number of IPs I needed. Anything from 1024 to 8 was possible.
That was in 2001.
They could of course have returned them, but they (probably) rightly assumed they would become very valuable. And you don't return IPs unless you know they're more of a burden than an asset.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
