《名人传记》之乔布斯最后一件事

a new steve jobs was rising out of the ashes

一个新的史蒂夫乔布斯在苹果公司

of the boardroom battle at apple,

董事会会议室里的斗争中诞生

And this time he was ruthless.

而这一次，他毫不留情.

He invested $5 million capital in a corporation called pixar,

他投入了500万美元进入一家叫做Pixar的公司

And he took 70% of the company, and the employees took 30%.

他拥有70%的股份，员工拥有30%

Steve kept investing because we would run out of money

史蒂夫一直在不断在募集资金因为他的钱就快花完了

And he did not want to be embarrassed by failure

而他无法接受失败的窘迫

After having been booted out of apple,

尤其是在被赶出苹果公司以后

So he would put more money in

因此他投入更多的资金

And take more equity away from the employees.

并且从员工那里回购了许多股份

So over the course of about 4 or 5 years, He owned it all.

所以四五年后 他就完全拥有了这家公司

alvy quickly felt he was losing control To the new master.

Alvy很快发觉他正在对他的新东家失去掌控

I would look at my employees looking at steve,

我看着我的员工，他们正看着史蒂夫

And I realized they're in love.

我意识到他们打得火热.

They're just looking up at him with big doe eyes

他们看着他的眼睛就像雌鹿一样，

Just soaking in everything he's saying

相信他所说的任何事情

As if it was true, and it wasn't.

就像那是真的，其实那不是.

So you can see that it was very disruptive.

所以你能想象那多么的具有破坏性

Our management style was to be two hours away from him,

我们的管理风格与他相差太远了

Try not to have him come into the building.

完全不相容.

standing up to jobs could be a painful experience,

面对乔布斯真的是件很痛苦的经历

As alvy found out in one memorable boardroom meeting.

Alvy回忆一次董事会会议的时候如此说道.

He turned on me, total street bully,

他看着我，像一头街上的公牛

In my face, scream we wer and I went crazy.

贴着我的脸，叫嚣着，我们……简直让我抓狂

I'd never been there.

我再也不想那样了.

I don't ever want to be there again.

我绝对不会再想经历一次

That's the reason I got away from him.

那就是我离开他的原因

We were screaming at each other in full bull rage

我们对着彼此的脸颊大声的狂怒地吼叫

With our faces about that far apart,

当时我们的脸就那么一点距离

And during that so he was insulting My southwestern accent.

在那过程中，他侮辱我那西南部的口音

It was just street bully stuff.

这简直就是疯子般的行为

I still don't know what happened.

我完全搞不明白发生了什么事情

Something broke. And during this face-off

在这次撕破脸之后，有些关系破裂了

Literally a face-off

真真正正的撕破脸...

I marched past him and wrote on the whiteboard.

我走过他的面前，然后在白板上写下了

Now it was an unspoken rule

潜规则

Which I hate, unspoken rules

那些我痛恨的，潜规则

That only he could sit in front of the whiteboard And only he could use it.

在那块只有他能使用的白板上面

《乔布斯传》第十八章 NeXT 自由的普罗米修斯116

The Launch, October 1988

1988年10月，NeXT发布会

Jobs had perfected the art of turning product launches into theatrical productions, and for the world premiere of the NeXT computer—on October 12, 1988, in San Francisco’s Symphony Hall—he wanted to outdo himself. He needed to blow away the doubters. In the weeks leading up to the event, he drove up to San Francisco almost every day to hole up in the Victorian house of Susan Kare, NeXT’s graphic designer, who had done the original fonts and icons for the Macintosh. She helped prepare each of the slides as Jobs fretted over everything from the wording to the right hue of green to serve as the background color. “I like that green,” he said proudly as they were doing a trial run in front of some staffers. “Great green, great green,” they all murmured in assent.

乔布斯将产品发布变成戏剧作品的艺术已经登峰造极。NeXT电脑全球首发式定于1988年10月12日在旧金山交响乐堂举行，乔布斯想要超越自己，他要澄清质疑。在发布会前几周，他几乎每天都要开车去旧金山，藏身于苏珊·卡雷的维多利亚风格的房子里。苏珊·卡雷是NeXT的图形设计师，她为麦金塔设计了最初的字体和图标。由于乔布斯操心发布会的每一个细节，从措辞到绿色背景的色调，所以要由卡雷来帮忙准备每一张幻灯片。“我喜欢这种绿。”他自豪地说，当时他们正在一些工作人员的注视下进行预演。“很棒的绿色，很棒的绿色。”众人一致低声说道。乔布斯精心制作、润色并修改了每一页幻灯片，就好像自己是T·S·艾略特，要将埃兹拉·庞德（EzraPound）的建议写进《荒原》（TheWasteLand）一样。

No detail was too small. Jobs went over the invitation list and even the lunch menu (mineral water, croissants, cream cheese, bean sprouts). He picked out a video projection company and paid it $60,000 for help. And he hired the postmodernist theater producer George Coates to stage the show. Coates and Jobs decided, not surprisingly, on an austere and radically simple stage look. The unveiling of the black perfect cube would occur on a starkly minimalist stage setting with a black background, a table covered by a black cloth, a black veil draped over the computer, and a simple vase of flowers. Because neither the hardware nor the operating system was actually ready, Jobs was urged to do a simulation. But he refused. Knowing it would be like walking a tightrope without a net, he decided to do the demonstration live.

所有细节都很重要。乔布斯亲自核查了邀请名单，甚至还有午餐菜单（矿泉水、牛角面包、奶油乳酪、豆芽）。他挑选了一家视频投影公司，并支付了6万美元聘用他们负责视听支持。他还聘请了后现代主义戏剧制作人乔治·科茨（GeorgeCoates）筹划这次发布会。不出所料，科茨和乔布斯决定采用庄重而极为简单的舞台外观。一个极简主义的舞台，背景是黑色的，桌子上罩着一块黑布，黑色遮布披在电脑上，旁边摆着一瓶简单的花，完美的黑色立方体将在这种布置中掲晓。由于硬件和操作系统都没有真正完成，有人提议用模拟展示。但乔布斯拒绝了。他决定现场示范，尽管他知道，这会像走钢丝而没有安全网一样。

More than three thousand people showed up at the event, lining up two hours before curtain time. They were not disappointed, at least by the show. Jobs was onstage for three hours, and he again proved to be, in the words of Andrew Pollack of the New York Times, “the Andrew Lloyd Webber of product introductions, a master of stage flair and special effects.” Wes Smith of the Chicago Tribune said the launch was “to product demonstrations what Vatican II was to church meetings.”

3000多人来到了现场，他们在发布会开始前两小时排队进入交响乐堂。他们没有失望，至少这次展示表演没有令他们失望。乔布斯在台上待了3个小时，他再一次成为《纽约时报》记者安德鲁·波拉克口中的“产品发布界的安德鲁·劳埃德·韦伯（AndrewLloydWebber）①，舞台风格和特效大师”。《芝加哥论坛报》（ChicagoTribune）的韦斯·史密斯（WesSmith）称，NeXT的发布会“之于产品演示，就像梵蒂冈第二届大公会（VaticanII）之于教会聚会一样”

Jobs had the audience cheering from his opening line: “It’s great to be back.” He began by recounting the history of personal computer architecture, and he promised that they would now witness an event “that occurs only once or twice in a decade—a time when a new architecture is rolled out that is going to change the face of computing.” The NeXT software and hardware were designed, he said, after three years of consulting with universities across the country. “What we realized was that higher ed wants a personal mainframe.”

“很髙兴能回来。”乔布斯以他一贯的开场白引发了观众的欢呼。他开始述说个人电脑架构的历史，并向现场观众承诺，他们即将见证一个“10年中才会发生一次或两次的历史性事件——一个新的架构即将推出，并将改变计算机的面貌”。乔布斯说，在经过3年对全国高校的咨询后，公司设计出了NeXT软件和硬件。“我们意识到，高等教育行业的人需要的是个人大型主机。”

As usual there were superlatives. The product was “incredible,” he said, “the best thing we could have imagined.” He praised the beauty of even the parts unseen. Balancing on his fingertips the foot-square circuit board that would be nestled in the foot-cube box, he enthused, “I hope you get a chance to look at this a little later. It’s the most beautiful printed circuit board I’ve ever seen in my life.” He then showed how the computer could play speeches—he featured King’s “I Have a Dream” and Kennedy’s “Ask Not”—and send email with audio attachments. He leaned into the microphone on the computer to record one of his own. “Hi, this is Steve, sending a message on a pretty historic day.” Then he asked those in the audience to add “a round of applause” to the message, and they did.

同以往一样，他的演讲有些溢美之词。乔布斯说，该产品“令人难以置信”，是“我们所能想象的最好产品”。他甚至称赞机器内部看不到的部件也工艺完美。他用手指托着一个1平方英尺见方的电路板，这个电路板将放在NeXT1英尺见方的机箱中。他热情地说道：“我希望你们一会儿能有机会看看这个东西。这是我一生中见过的最漂亮的印刷电路板。”乔布斯接着展示了这台电脑播放讲话的功能，他播放了马丁·路德·金的《我有一个梦想》和肯尼迪的《不要问》（AskNot）,以及发送加载音频附件的邮件的功能。他俯下身，对着电脑的麦克风，录下了自己的声音。“嗨，我是史蒂夫，在这个极富历史性的一天，我发出了这条消息。”然后，他叫观众给这个消息加上“一片掌声”，观众们照做了。

One of Jobs’s management philosophies was that it is crucial, every now and then, to roll the dice and “bet the company” on some new idea or technology. At the NeXT launch, he boasted of an example that, as it turned out, would not be a wise gamble: having a high-capacity (but slow) optical read/write disk and no floppy disk as a backup. “Two years ago we made a decision,” he said. “We saw some new technology and we made a decision to risk our company.”

乔布斯的管理理念之一就是，不时地孤注一掷，“把公司压在”一些新点子或技术上，这样做至关重要。NeXT发布时，他炫耀了一个例子：采用高容量（但速度慢）的读写光盘，而不是用软盘来备份数据。后来，事实证明这是一场不明智的赌博。“两年前，我们作出了一个决定，”乔布斯说道，“我们见识到一些新的技术，并决定赌一赌。”