Guess How Much Each Apple Store Costs (AAPL, MSFT)

Between $8.5 and $10 million.

And that's just for the physical stores -- not including the leases, the inventory, or the site selection.

That's according to Horace Dediu at Asymco, who ran the numbers today.

He looked at Apple's spend on "leasehold improvements" over the last six years, which amounted to $1.9 billion, then divided them by the 220 stores opened. He came up with an average of $8.5 million, but it's been increasing lately, so $10 million seemed more likely.

His point: if Microsoft (or, someday, Google) wants to match Apple's footprint, it will have to spend $2 billion just to open the same type and number of stores.

But unlike Apple, which sells hardware at a heavy per-unit markup, Microsoft makes much less money per item sold in its stores, so will have a harder time recovering those costs. Maybe that's why Microsoft has been so slow to roll out its stores, although it now says it will build 75 new stores over the next three years.

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Guess Who Made The Highest Bid For Hulu (GOOG, DISH, YHOO, AMZN)

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Remember how a group of bidders was circling around Hulu a couple weeks ago? Whatever happened with that?

Two sources tell us that satellite TV provider Dish was the highest bidder, coming in around $1.9 billion. It beat out both Amazon and Yahoo.

Google bid much more -- something in the range of $4 billion. But that bid came with special conditions, as has been previously reported -- Google wanted more content for a longer period of time, and perhaps other concessions as well.

Rumor has it that Larry Page personally flew down to Los Angeles to make Google's case.

Hulu's owners are still deciding what to do. They were hoping for a higher bid, and were disappointed that no company would offer more than $2 billion with the conditions they set.

But the bidders all figured out pretty quickly that the TV companies who own Hulu now want to phase out free ad-supported content completely. So as soon as the current set of Hulu contracts expire in a couple of years, it would be back to the negotiating table.

Dish was probably willing to bid more because, as we previously reported, it was also interested in Hulu's back-end technology -- not just the content.

What happens next is anybody's guess, but Dish or Google will probably end up with the prize. Unless Hulu's owners change their minds and reopen the bidding with a more lenient set of conditions. Or decide not to sell at all.

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Guess Which City Has The Worst Drivers In America

There are plenty of good things about our nation's capital, but driving skills are not one of them.

Washington, DC again came in dead last on Allstate's annual list of the 193 safest driving cities in America (via Jalopnik).

According to the insurance company, drivers in the city go an average of 4.8 years between accidents.

That's pretty frequent when you consider that in the safest driving city, Fort Collins, Colo., drivers have accidents every 14 years, on average.

And drivers in DC are more than twice as likely to get in a wreck than the national average rate.

Props to drivers in Fort Collins; Boise, Idaho; Lincoln, Neb.; Chandler, Ariz. and Huntsville, Ala., whose hometowns were ranked the safest.

Phoenix was the safest city with a population over 1 million.

And to drivers in DC; Baltimore; Glendale, Calif.; Newark; and Providence, RI, which ranked at the bottom of the list, please, keep an eye on the road this Labor Day weekend.

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