蘋果內憂外患: 誰導演了"驅逐庫克船長"鬧劇

The last time we wrote about Doug Kass -- a small hedge fund manager with a large presence on CNBC -- it was to document a neat little trick he played on his Twitter feed in February, the day before Apple's annual shareholder meeting.

我們上一次提到道格•卡斯還是在今年 2 月，蘋果年度股東大會的前一天。卡斯是一家小型對衝基金公司的經理，在美國全國廣播公司財經頻道（CNBC）頗有影響力。當時那篇文章提到了他在Twitter上玩的一個小把戲。

Apple's (AAPL) share price was down and Kass was long the stock. He tweeted a rumor that the company was about to announce a split, the stock went up, he sold his shares at a profit, tweeted that the rumor was baseless and then spent the rest of the day hurling insults at his critics. (See A day in the Twitter life of Doug Kass.)

當時，蘋果（Apple）股價下跌，而卡斯正在做多蘋果股票。他在Twitter上發佈傳聞稱，蘋果即將宣佈分拆。受此消息影響，蘋果股價出現上漲，而卡斯在盈利之後便拋售了所持股票。他隨後又發佈消息稱傳聞並無依據，隨後遭到了大量指責。（參閱道格•卡斯在Twitter上的一天。）

Well, Kass is at it again. On Sunday, citing the same "Gnome" that was the source for his stock split story, he tweeted:

如今，卡斯又故伎重施。他援引與其股票分割傳聞爲同一個消息來源的“Gnome”的說法稱：

Kass, it turns out, is not alone in suggesting that the solution to Apple's woes on Wall Street is to fire its CEO. We've been hearing whispers to that effect from disgruntled shareholders for weeks, but now -- two days before Cook is scheduled to report Apple's March quarterly earnings -- they've come to the surface.

爲了取悅華爾街，蘋果應該炒掉庫克，持這種觀點者不僅僅只有卡斯一個人。數週以來，不滿的股東們都在私下議論紛紛，大體意思都是要求庫克下臺。如今，距離蘋果發佈 2013 財年第二財季財報還有兩天，這些不滿情緒正在浮出水面。

And who's doing that? Let's take a look:

我們來看看放出這些風聲的都是誰：

We've got the tweet from Doug Kass, whose main Apple-related claim to fame was to publish his "Bear Case for Apple" the day before the stock began a nosedive that lopped $300 billion off the market cap of the world's most valuable company.

我們已經知道了道格•卡斯通過Twitter發佈的消息。而真正使他備受關注的是在蘋果公司股票暴跌，使這家全球最有價值公司市值縮水3億之前，他所發表的《看跌蘋果》一文。

We've got The impossible task of fixing Apple by Rob Enderle, a consultant for Dell (DELL), Microsoft (MSFT), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and others, who has made a career of bad-mouthing Apple in print and on TV. (For background on Enderle, you can start with John Gruber's 2003 Putting the 'anal' in 'analyst'.)

知名科技行業顧問羅博•恩代爾撰寫了一篇題爲《修復蘋果，不可能完成的任務》的文章。他是戴爾（Dell）、微軟（Microsoft）和惠普（Hewlett-Packard）等公司的顧問，長期以來一直在紙媒和電視上唱空蘋果。（關於恩代爾的背景資料，可從2003年約翰•格魯布的《堵住‘大嘴分析師’的嘴》一文開始查閱。）

We've got Sunday's Is Apple Looking For A Replacement For CEO Cook? in , the online arm of a once-respected business publication whose experiment in what it calls "incentive-based, entrepreneurial journalism" has led to what Macworld calls "a relentless clown show of anti-Apple contributors."

《福布斯》網站上週日刊登了一篇題爲《蘋果是否正在尋找 CEO 庫克的接班人》的文章。作爲一家商業期刊的網絡版，這個網站一度倍受尊敬。不過這篇文章被 Macworld 雜誌指責爲“代表反蘋果作者的小丑表演”。

Make no mistake, the people who want Tim Cook's head on a spike are not friends of Apple. As far as I know, he still has the deep respect of the analysts who know the company best and -- most important -- the confidence of the board of directors who granted a million restricted shares of Apple as an incentive for him to stick around for at least a decade.

毫無疑問，希望庫克下臺的投資者並不是蘋果的朋友。據我所知，瞭解蘋果的分析師對庫克仍然非常尊重。更重要的是，蘋果董事會向庫克提供了 100 萬股受限股，作爲吸引庫克留在蘋果的激勵措施。它體現了董事會對庫克的信心。

For the record, Apple is still trading higher today than it was when Cook replaced Steve Jobs. The forces that drove the stock up to over $700 and then down to below $390 seem to me to have more to do with a dysfunctional securities market than anything Cook has done as CEO.

目前，蘋果股價仍高於庫克接替喬布斯出任蘋果 CEO 時的價格。我認爲，蘋果股價上漲至 700 多美元，隨後回落至 390 美元，更多的是因爲股票市場的機能失調，與庫克擔任 CEO沒有什麼關係。

"The market is crying uncle and something has got to give," says Oracle Investment's Laurence Isaac Balter, who has been banging the "Cook must go" drum for weeks.

投資公司Oracle Investment 的勞倫斯•艾薩克•巴爾特過去幾週中一直在鼓吹“庫克必須離開蘋果”。他說：“市場已經投降，必須有所作爲。”

"If a stock rally hits on this rumor before earnings it will be a sign for sure."

“如果在財報發佈前股價受這一傳聞刺激出現上漲，那麼將是肯定的信號。”

Now that's rich.

這可真夠搞笑的。

UPDATE: Rocco Pendola, who blows hot and cold on Apple, weighed in to say he's been publicly lobbying for Cook's ouster in his column on The Street since last Wednesday, including a piece Monday morning that called the decision to recommend Cook as CEO the worst decision Steve Jobs ever made.

最新消息：對蘋果的態度一直搖擺不定的知名投資人洛克•彭多拉也在 The Street 網站的專欄上發佈消息稱，他從上週三開始一直在公開遊說蘋果驅逐庫克。他在本週一的一篇文章中表示，選擇庫克作爲 CEO 是喬布斯一生中最大的決策失誤。