If anyone is in doubt that backdating options is a bad idea, it should be dispelled by the announcement Wednesday that Steve Jobs and other senior Apple executives and directors agreed to pay investors $14 million to end a class-action lawsuit over the practice.

Investors sued after it was disclosed two years ago of accounting problems with stock-option grants made over a five-year period beginning in 1997. Apple didn't account for the grants as compensation, which would have made them legal.

In addition to Jobs, chief operating officer Tim Cook and finance chief Peter Oppenheimer had been named in the case. Two former Apple officials, former finance chief Fred Anderson and former general counsel Nancy Heinen, were named as defendants.

The settlement, which was approved earlier this week by a federal district judge in California, includes $7.3 million in attorney fees and $300,000 to those who brought the suit against iPod's maker. The deal is slated to be finalized on October 31.

Apple had no immediate comment, but the costs apparently won't fall on the shoulders of Jobs and other highly paid executives, but on the insurance companies representing them.

That's because the shareholders filed a "derivative" lawsuit where they sued executives and board members on grounds that their actions harmed the company as a whole.

The deal appears to mark the end of inquiries into any questionable options granting at the digital giant.

Last month, Heinen settled charges brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission that she altered company records to conceal the backdating of nearly 12 million options in two instances for Jobs and some other executives—which would have given them a tidy $40 million profit.

Heinen, who did not admit wrongdoing, agreed to pay $2.2 million in a civil settlement and to professional restrictions.

Anderson settled his case in April, agreeing to give up $3.5 million in options gains and pay a $150,000 fine.

At the same time, though, Anderson blamed Jobs for the practice.

Jobs and the others who settled on Wednesday had been cleared in an internal inquiry. They avoided S.E.C. charges because they didn't exercise options they had received.