说说苹果

有空慢慢把我对苹果的一些理解零零星星写下来，供自己思考。顺便说下，今天想起一个从大面上了解都有谁在用苹果产品的办法：新浪微博会把每天的top100的微博单列出来，没事可以数一下用iOS和用android的比例。能够上top100的大概都算意见领袖了，应该有相当的代表性。

Source: http://nteswjq.blog.163.com/blog/static/12699812013124278426/

Talking about Apple

> By Duan Yongping · his NetEase blog (nteswjq.blog.163.com, now closed; read from web archives) · 2013-02-24 · [Original link](http://nteswjq.blog.163.com/blog/static/12699812013124278426/) ([archived](https://web.archive.org/web/20130301082210/http://nteswjq.blog.163.com:80/blog/static/12699812013124278426/))

> This post includes letters from others or quoted material; Duan Yongping's own words are marked separately.

When I have time I'll slowly write down, bit by bit, some of my understanding of Apple, for my own thinking.

By the way, today I thought of a way to get a broad picture of who uses Apple products: Sina Weibo lists the top 100 posts every day, and when you have nothing to do you can count the ratio of iOS to Android users. People who make the top 100 are probably all opinion leaders, so it should be fairly representative.

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Greenlight's iPrefs explained: lowering the cost of capital, maximizing company value _Apple (AAPL) _imeigu

http://news.imeigu.com/a/1361608898048.html

This is rather interesting; it doesn't seem as boring as it looks at first glance. Although I don't think this proposal will add value to Apple, it seems this approach could keep the company from spending money recklessly.

[Translator's note: a quoted passage from Greenlight Capital's description of iPrefs stands here; it is not Duan Yongping's words and is not translated.]

My personal understanding of this passage is that it really means reducing the loss in discounted future cash flow, or letting shareholders decide for themselves what the cash is used for.

However, Apple doesn't look like a company that spends money recklessly; it's just that when cash is used inefficiently, part of it really should be used for buybacks or returned to shareholders. I hope Apple uses more of its surplus cash for buybacks, because dividends are taxed.

In any case, the problem of having too much cash is always better than not having enough.

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Although I have an engineering background, I actually don't understand technology and have never done technical work, so I don't want to give views on technical details.

In fact I've never done management either, so I don't understand management.

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On market share: many people seem to care too much about market share, an indicator that actually doesn't mean much. Raising market share isn't hard, but keeping a meaningful share isn't easy. Nokia back then pushed itself to the brink precisely because it cared too much about market share.

[Translator's note: a quoted passage, Jobs answering a reporter as retold by Kai-Fu Lee, stands here; it is not Duan Yongping's words and is not translated.]

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Yesterday I went to Apple's shareholder meeting and heard Cook say something similar. The gist was: although we could have a button to make the most products at any time, our culture is to make the best products, not the most. But he also mentioned in passing that to build a strong ecosystem you must have a certain volume. So Apple will balance the relationship between the best products and enough share.

Cook also mentioned that the notion of volume is really not just how many are sold, but how much people use them after buying.

Those interested can check what Sina Weibo's active users are all using; maybe you'll find that the proportion of people using Apple actually far exceeds the "market share" you have in mind.

A suggested way to count: look at what the posters in the top 100 trending Weibo posts used to post, what the commenters used to write their comments, and what commenters under Weibo topics used to comment.