在上周五举行的Business Insider大会上，前iPod硬件主管托尼•法德尔称赞苹果（Apple）首席执行官蒂姆•库克是一位创新者。

不过，法德尔所说的创新，并不是指iPhone或iPad这样的新型科技产品。库克专长在于运营，在于生产iPhone和iPad的供应链。

法德尔举例称：“（库克）对库存进行的调整是惊人的。这是一种创新。”

似乎是为了强调这一点，上周三，彭博社（Bloomberg）的亚当•萨特里亚诺发表长文，大谈苹果公司在2014财年拨出105亿美元资本性支出，用于购置铝铣床、激光抛光机以及工业机器人等，其金额之高，创下历史纪录。

调研机构Asymco的贺拉斯•德迪欧称：“苹果公司将资金作为一种竞争优势来部署。”德迪欧绘制了本文所附的图表，将苹果与三星（Samsung）两家公司各自一年的支出与美国海军12年建造一艘航空母舰的花费相比较。

德迪欧的一位笔名为“龙女王”的评论人士清楚的解释了蒂姆•库克的意图：

三星公司的供应链很大一部分是自有的，如果我没记错的话，三星有自己的工厂，自己制造屏幕，还有其它一些部件很可能也是自行生产。

苹果公司的供应链并非自有——苹果无意涉足半导体或显示屏制造业务，也不愿拥有摄像头或电池生产厂。

但苹果想同三星一样，掌握控制权，并实现纵向一体化。因此，苹果签署了大量的合作伙伴协议，并购置了许多机床。苹果对供应商说：“我们给你这些钱去建一座新厂房，在厂房里用我们买的机床（进行生产）。你们在这家工厂里生产的产品，都要卖给我们，不许卖给别人。”就这样，这家供应商，或者其旗下的一家分公司，成为了苹果公司的契约仆役。苹果能享受纵向一体化企业集团的所有好处，而无需负担任何相应的责任。

苹果这种做法在整个供应链中一以贯之，从屏幕（夏普公司的IGZO技术）到铝合金外壳的生产都是如此。唯有芯片（目前还）是个例外。不过，苹果花钱让供应商为其建造和运营芯片工厂，只是早晚的事。（财富中文网）

译者：项航

At a Business Insider conference Friday, ex-iPod hardware chief Tony Fadell praised Apple (AAPL) CEO Tim Cook as an innovator.

But he wasn't talking about whizzy new products like the iPhone or iPad. Cook's expertise is in operations -- in the supply chain that produces those iPhones and iPads.

"The number of turns he did on the inventory was amazing," said Fadell, by way of example. "That's a kind of innovation."

As if to underscore that point, Bloomberg's Adam Satariano posted a long piece Wednesday about the record $10.5 billion in capital expenditures that Apple has earmarked in fiscal 2014 for things like aluminum milling machines, laser polishers and industrial robots.

"Apple deploys capital as a competitive advantage," says Asymco's Horace Dediu, who produced the attached chart comparing what Apple and Samsung each spend in a year with what the U.S. Navy spends in a dozen year to build a single aircraft carrier.

One of Dediu's commentators, writing under pseudonym Glaurung-Quena (literally, "dragon queen"), explained with admirable clarity what Tim Cook is up to:

Samsung owns big chunks of their supply chain -- if I recall correctly, they have their own fabs, they make their own screens, and probably a bunch of other parts too.

Apple doesn't own their supply chain outright -- they don't want to be in the semiconductor or screen making business, they don't want to have a camera or battery factory on their balance sheet.

But they want the control and vertical integration that Samsung enjoys. So they are signing oodles of partnership agreements and buying gobs of machine tools. Apple goes to a supplier and says, "Here is money to build a new factory building. Here, fill it with these machine tools that we own. Now what you make in this factory you will sell to us and only to us." And that company, or a branch of it, becomes Apple's indentured servant. Apple gets all the benefits and none of the liabilities of being a vertically integrated conglomerate.

And they're doing this across their entire supply chain -- from screens (sharp's IGZO tech) to those aluminum enclosures, about the only part that they aren't doing this with (yet) are the chips, and it's only a matter of time before they pay someone to build and operate fabs for them.