He's a venture capitalist. To that lot, altruism is an evil thing. Ask Ayn "People who take social security are parasites but look the other way while I take it in my husband's name because I got ill" Rand. Her supporters might want to read up on some of her statements, since she was ironically anti-wealthy as well:
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/middle_class.html
Somewhat OT, but Ayn Rand did write a piece in the 1960s about accepting government payments or working for the government. The gist of it was that since we have a mixed economy it could be acceptable in certain circumstances. E.g. if accepting Social Security was a return of taxes, or Medicare because the government effectively monopolized health insurance for the elderly, or working at a university that receives government assistance (i.e. virtually all of them) because you are a researcher, it could be justified. Just because we don't have a perfectly capitalist society doesn't mean an advocate of capitalism needs to be a martyr.
Anyway, I'm not sure what she'd think of someone like Icahn. She wasn't anti-wealthy at all, but she was anti-cronyism. It's become common to associate capitalism with "big business," but it's pretty explicit in Atlas Shrugged that big business is often anti-capitalist in that they lobby governments to get contracts, or drive out competitors. I think she'd be pretty comfortable with much of the tech sector, though, since there are a lot of self-made people like Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs, as those are/were the type of people represented by her character Hank Rearden.
As for Icahn, he's a mixed bag. TWA still leaves a bad taste for many, but the airline industry is an unusual case. It was coddled under a government-sanctioned oligarchy for nearly 50 years, and since Carter de-regulated the industry (probably his biggest accomplishment) it has taken until now for them to develop a sustainably profitable business model. It's no accident that every major airline today that existed prior to deregulation has gone through bankruptcy except Southwest (which wasn't a major airline back then). TWA was a high risk/high reward attempt at financial restructuring. It didn't work out, but neither did just about every other airline deal.
"Corporate raiders" usually are best when a company is struggling (e.g. Dell), although there are always risks, too (witness Bill Ackman with JC Penney). Apple is an unusual case since they are healthy, but they are just the latest company to deal with the question of what to do with a cash pile bigger than what they need. Google is running into the same issue, and if trends continue Samsung will have this "problem" in a few years, as well. It's more money than they need to grow organically, and so one temptation when that much money is burning a hole in a company's pockets is to do a massive acquisition, which could be a mistake. A buyback is a way to return cash to shareholders in a tax-efficient manner.