《名人传记》之乔布斯最后一件事

as the two got to know each other,

当他们俩人慢慢了解对方

Sheff realized he had a front row seat

席夫意识到，他对于

On what was then an unimaginable technological future.

难以想象的未来技术有着非常前瞻性的看法

steve started drawing on a place mat.

史蒂夫开始在一块垫东西用的板上画画

We went back and forth, and basically by the end

我们继续调侃，后来，我发觉他画的那个东西

Of that constructed what looks exactly like an ipad.

真的看上去很像是 iPad

Steve said this machine,

史蒂夫说，这个机器，

This small device as big as a book,

这个小设备，这个和书差不多大小的设备

Would allow us to keep in touch with one another,

将会使我们与他人联系

It will replace the telephone and would replace bookstores.

它将会取代电话，取代图书馆

He saw it as a reader on this very small device

他把这个小设备当做一个阅读器，

And read it with editing capacity, note-taking capacity.

通过它阅读和记录东西

I mean, he really envisioned the ipad almost 30 years ago.

我的意思是，他真的在几乎30年前就已经预想到了iPad

jobs and sheff quickly became close friends.

乔布斯和席夫很快成为了亲密的朋友

Through the late sixties and seventies

在60年代末70年代初，

In very similar ways, gong through some of the counter culture,

一些叛逆的文化在传播

You know being, influenced by some of the eastern mysticism,

它们受到西方神秘主义的影响，

Buddhism, the lsd culture, timothy leary.

受到佛教、迷幻药泛滥以及偍摩教的影响

turn on, tune in, rock out.

启动，调试，爆发

He was always so excited about everything,

他总是对任何事物充满激情

And we went to movies together, And we went to the opera together,

我们一起去看电影，一起去听歌剧

And he could talk about everything,

他可以谈论任何事情

And he was this incredibly giving, loyal friend.

他是一个非常乐善好施的忠实朋友

When I was having a hard time, we'd be on the phone,

当我遇到困难时，他会一个电话打过来

He'd drive up from silicon valley,

然后从硅谷开车过来

Take me out to dinner, hang out,

带着我一起吃个饭放松一下心情，

And take walks with me, and, um, that's pretty rare.

然后散步聊天，那真的很令人怀念

in 1984,

在1984年的时候，

they visited the home of yoko ono

他们一起去了约翰列侬家

For the ninth birthday party of sean, Her son with john lennon.

参加他9岁儿子Sean的生日PARTY，

Jobs took along a birthday gift that fascinated

乔布斯带来了一件不仅仅让Sean，

Not only sean but the whole star-studded guest list.

也让在场所有明星友人着迷不已的事情

《乔布斯传》第十八章 NeXT 自由的普罗米修斯112

The Computer

NeXT计算机

During the early months of NeXT, Jobs and Dan’l Lewin went on the road, often accompanied by a few colleagues, to visit campuses and solicit opinions. At Harvard they met with Mitch Kapor, the chairman of Lotus software, over dinner at Harvest restaurant. When Kapor began slathering butter on his bread, Jobs asked him, “Have you ever heard of serum cholesterol?” Kapor responded, “I’ll make you a deal. You stay away from commenting on my dietary habits, and I will stay away from the subject of your personality.” It was meant humorously, but as Kapor later commented, “Human relationships were not his strong suit.” Lotus agreed to write a spreadsheet program for the NeXT operating system.

NeXT公司成立的最初几个月，乔布斯和丹·卢因四处奔波，常常和其他一些同事一起走访校园，征求意见。在哈佛大学，他们遇见了正在Harvest餐厅就餐的莲花软件公司董事长米切尔·卡普尔。卡普尔正往面包上涂黄油，乔布斯看着他问道：“你听说过血清胆固醇吗？”卡普尔回答说：“我们来作个交易，你别评论我的饮食习惯，我也不谈论你的性格。”这是卡普尔的小幽默，莲花公司同意为NeXT操作系统编写电子表格程序，但是正如卡普尔后来评论的那样：“人际关系不是他的长项。”

Jobs wanted to bundle useful content with the machine, so Michael Hawley, one of the engineers, developed a digital dictionary. He learned that a friend of his at Oxford University Press had been involved in the typesetting of a new edition of Shakespeare’s works. That meant that there was probably a computer tape he could get his hands on and, if so, incorporate it into the NeXT’s memory. “So I called up Steve, and he said that would be awesome, and we flew over to Oxford together.” On a beautiful spring day in 1986, they met in the publishing house’s grand building in the heart of Oxford, where Jobs made an offer of $2,000 plus 74 cents for every computer sold in order to have the rights to Oxford’s edition of Shakespeare. “It will be all gravy to you,” he argued. “You will be ahead of the parade. It’s never been done before.” They agreed in principle and then went out to play skittles over beer at a nearby pub where Lord Byron used to drink. By the time it launched, the NeXT would also include a dictionary, a thesaurus, and the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, making it one of the pioneers of the concept of searchable electronic books.

乔布斯想要在机器中预装出色的内容，于是工程师迈克尔·霍利（MichaelHawley）开发了一部电子词典。一天，他买了新版的莎士比亚作品集，翻阅时发现自己有位朋友在牛津大学出版社并参与了这本书的卩版。这意味着，霍利或许可以拿到他们的排版，而且如果对方同意，就能把这本书存入NeXT。“于是，我打电话给史蒂夫。他说这主意很棒，我们就一起飞到牛津。”在1986年春天的一个美丽的日子，他们在牛津郡中心的出版社大楼见面，乔布斯提出，一次性支付2000美元且每卖出一台电脑支付给出版社74美分，以获得牛津版莎士比亚作品集的版权。“这对你们而言就是轻而易举的收入，”乔布斯表示，“你们将走在潮流的前列，这是别人从来没有做过的事情。”出版社大体上同意了，然后他们一同前往拜伦曾经驻足的小酒馆，喝啤酒玩撞柱游戏。NeXT电脑还将囊括一部字典、一部百科汇编和一部《牛津引语词典》，这使得NeXT电脑成为实现可搜索式电子书概念的先驱之一。

Instead of using off-the-shelf chips for the NeXT, Jobs had his engineers design custom ones that integrated a variety of functions on one chip. That would have been hard enough, but Jobs made it almost impossible by continually revising the functions he wanted it to do. After a year it became clear that this would be a major source of delay.

NeXT电脑没有使用现成的芯片，乔布斯让工程师们设计定制芯片，能够在一个芯片上集成多种功能。这已经够困难的了，而乔布斯还在不断修改他想要的功能，这就使得这项工作几乎不可能完成。一年后，这成了产品延迟发布的一个主要原因。

He also insisted on building his own fully automated and futuristic factory, just as he had for the Macintosh; he had not been chastened by that experience. This time too he made the same mistakes, only more excessively. Machines and robots were painted and repainted as he compulsively revised his color scheme. The walls were museum white, as they had been at the Macintosh factory, and there were $20,000 black leather chairs and a custom-made staircase, just as in the corporate headquarters. He insisted that the machinery on the 165-foot assembly line be configured to move the circuit boards from right to left as they got built, so that the process would look better to visitors who watched from the viewing gallery. Empty circuit boards were fed in at one end and twenty minutes later, untouched by humans, came out the other end as completed boards. The process followed the Japanese principle known as kanban, in which each machine performs its task only when the next machine is ready to receive another part.

乔布斯还坚持建设自己的全自动化和未来派的工厂，就像他曾经对麦金塔项目的设想一样。他并未从那次经历中学乖。这次，他犯了同样的错误，而且有过之而无不及。由于他强迫症似的不断修改配色方案，机器和机器人被喷涂了一遍又一遍。墙壁是博物馆式的纯白色，就和麦金塔工厂一样，工厂里还摆放着价值2万美元的黑色皮座椅，修造了一截定制的楼梯，就和NeXT公司总部一样。乔布斯坚持重新配置总长165英尺的装配线上的所有机器，从而在生产时，可以让电路板从右向左移动，这样在有人来参观时，站在观景台上就会看到更漂亮的生产流程。原始电路板从装配线的一端进入，20分钟后，做好的电路板再从另一端出来，完全无需人工接触。这种流程是学习了日本的“看板管理”（Kanban），只有当负责下一个流程的机器能够处理另一个零件时，负责上一个流程的机器才会开始执行自己的任务。

Jobs had not tempered his way of dealing with employees. “He applied charm or public humiliation in a way that in most cases proved to be pretty effective,” Tribble recalled. But sometimes it wasn’t. One engineer, David Paulsen, put in ninety-hour weeks for the first ten months at NeXT. He quit when “Steve walked in one Friday afternoon and told us how unimpressed he was with what we were doing.” When Business Week asked him why he treated employees so harshly, Jobs said it made the company better. “Part of my responsibility is to be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.” But he still had his spirit and charisma. There were plenty of field trips, visits by akido masters, and off-site retreats. And he still exuded the pirate flag spunkiness. When Apple fired Chiat/Day, the ad firm that had done the “1984” ad and taken out the newspaper ad saying “Welcome IBM—seriously,” Jobs took out a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal proclaiming, “Congratulations Chiat/Day—Seriously . . . Because I can guarantee you: there is life after Apple.”

乔布斯没有缓和自己对待员工的苛刻方式。“他对施展魅力和公开羞辱这两种方式的运用，在大多数情况下非常奏效。”特里布尔回忆道。但有时候也不尽然。工程师戴维·保尔森（DavidPaulsen）在NeXT工作的头10个月里，每周工作90个小时。之后，他辞职不干了，他回忆说，“一个周五下午，乔布斯走进来，跟我们说，他对我们所正在做的东西非常之不屑一顾。”《新闻周刊》采访乔布斯，问他为什么要对员工如此严厉，乔布斯说，这样才会使公司更好。“我的一部分责任就是衡量质量。有些人不习惯那种追求卓越的环境。”另一方面，他仍然保持着自己的精神和领袖魅力。乔布斯组织了大量的实地考察以及外出集思会，还经常请合气道大师来公司参观。他仍然表现出英勇的海盗气质。苹果解雇了Chiat/Day广告公司，它曾做过1984”广告，以及在报纸上刊登平面广告，上书“欢迎——真的”。乔布斯就在《华尔街日报》买下了一整版版面，宣称“恭喜Chiat/Day广告公司——真的……因为我能保证：离开苹果后是重生”。

Perhaps the greatest similarity to his days at Apple was that Jobs brought with him his reality distortion field. It was on display at the company’s first retreat at Pebble Beach in late 1985. There Jobs pronounced that the first NeXT computer would be shipped in just eighteen months. It was already clear that this date was impossible, but he blew off a suggestion from one engineer that they be realistic and plan on shipping in 1988. “If we do that, the world isn’t standing still, the technology window passes us by, and all the work we’ve done we have to throw down the toilet,” he argued.

苹果和后苹果生活之间的最大共同点便是乔布斯的现实扭曲力场。1985年底，NeXT在圆石滩（PebbleBeach）举行了第一次外出集思会，乔布斯的现实扭曲力场在离开苹果后第一次展现了出来。他对自己的团队断言，第一台NeXT将在18个月内出货。当时情况已经很明显，这是不可能的。一位工程师建议现实一点儿，将出货期改为1988年，乔布斯驳回了这个提议。“世界不会静止不动，如果我们这样做，领先的技术就会把我们甩下，而我们已经做出来的东西就不得不被扔进垃圾桶。”他争论道。

Joanna Hoffman, the veteran of the Macintosh team who was among those willing to challenge Jobs, did so. “Reality distortion has motivational value, and I think that’s fine,” she said as Jobs stood at a whiteboard. “However, when it comes to setting a date in a way that affects the design of the product, then we get into real deep shit.” Jobs didn’t agree: “I think we have to drive a stake in the ground somewhere, and I think if we miss this window, then our credibility starts to erode.” What he did not say, even though it was suspected by all, was that if their targets slipped they might run out of money. Jobs had pledged $7 million of his own funds, but at their current burn rate that would run out in eighteen months if they didn’t start getting some revenue from shipped products.

麦金塔团队的老成员乔安娜·霍夫曼是敢于挑战乔布斯的人之一，她又一次这样做了。“现实扭曲具有激励价值，我觉得这很好。”她说，当时乔布斯站在白板前，“但是，出货日期会影响产品的设计，所以在设定这种日期的时候，如果还扭曲现实就会带来大麻烦。”乔布斯不同意，“我觉得我们必须赌一把，而且，我认为，如果错过了这个肘间，我们的信誉就会受损。”尽管很多人都怀疑之所以不能推迟是因为目标如果没有实现就可能资金短缺，但乔布斯并没有提及这个原因。他自己在NeXT公司投了700万美元，但是按照他们当时的资金消耗速度，这笔钱只能撑18个月；如果那时还无法通过出货获得收入，他们就没钱了。

Three months later, when they returned to Pebble Beach for their next retreat, Jobs began his list of maxims with “The honeymoon is over.” By the time of the third retreat, in Sonoma in September 1986, the timetable was gone, and it looked as though the company would hit a financial wall.

3个月后，即1986年初，他们为又一次外出集思会回到了圆石滩，乔布斯训话时开场说道：“蜜月结束了。”1986年9月，第三次外出集思会，整个时间表已不见踪影，看上去NeXT已经走上了财政末路。