《名人传记》之乔布斯最后一件事

a standing ovation for apple ceo steve jobs

人们纷纷起立为这位苹果的CEO鼓掌，

As he greeted the public for the first time In more than a year.

在乔布斯告别人们一年多以后首度露面时

he carried on working,

他完成了工作，

but the years that followed Were a roller coaster of hope and despair.

随之而来的人生如同轮盘赌一样 伴随着希望与绝望

Most poignantly he was asked

最令他感受深刻的便是

What the next few years might hold.

他被告知时日无多

The future is long.

未来还很长.

The last few years have reminded me that life is fragile.

最后的几年提醒了我，生命是脆弱的

Um, you know...

恩，你知道

finally he withdrew from public life.

最后他离开了公众生活.

Only his closest friends saw how he was coping

只有他最亲密的朋友见到他

With the threat of an early death.

整日面对着不断临近的死亡的压力

steve jobs loved to take walks.

史蒂夫乔布斯很喜欢散步

He did a lot of his thinking and his talking

他与他最亲密的朋友们总是在散步的时候

With his close friends like larry ellison

交流很多想法和交谈 比如 Larry Ellison

And a number of other people that he was friendly with In silicon valley,

或者其他硅谷的朋友

and he would go On these long walks sometimes around palo alto,

他有时会绕着他居住的Palo Alto附近

Where he lived, and sometimes in other places.

或者其他地方的路走很长一段

It just was his preferred method of thinking And daydreaming ideas with people.

这是他思考问题与白日梦般点子的特殊方式

One day I was out in silicon valley.

有一天我在硅谷外面

He found out about it, and he conveyed to me

他听说了，然后他来找我，

That he would like me to come over to his house,

让我去他家里

And this was just after his liver transplant,

这是在他刚刚进行肝脏移植手术之后

Which as we all know is a very serious kind of thing

我们都知道，那是很严重的，

That takes a lot of recovery,

需要很长时间才能恢复的

And he wanted me to come over

但是他要我过去，

And just talk about industry gossip In a way or events

聊一聊在他离开这段时间里

that had gone on Since he'd been kind of out of action.

产业中的那些事件或者消息

He was very frail.

他非常虚弱.

We talked about his health,

我们谈到他的健康问题

And he talked about how he felt he was recovering,

他谈到了他康复时的感受,

And in the middle of this, he said, "let's go for a walk,"

就在这时，他说, "我们出去散散步吧"

《乔布斯传》第二十章 凡人 爱就那么回事123

CHAPTER TWENTY

第二十章

REGULAR GUY

凡人

Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word

爱就那么回事

Mona Simpson and her fiancé, Richard Appel, 1991

Joan Baez

琼贝兹

In 1982, when he was still working on the Macintosh, Jobs met the famed folksinger Joan Baez through her sister Mimi Fari?a, who headed a charity that was trying to get donations of computers for prisons. A few weeks later he and Baez had lunch in Cupertino. “I wasn’t expecting a lot, but she was really smart and funny,” he recalled. At the time, he was nearing the end of his relationship with Barbara Jasinski. They had vacationed in Hawaii, shared a house in the Santa Cruz mountains, and even gone to one of Baez’s concerts together. As his relationship with Jasinski flamed out, Jobs began getting more serious with Baez. He was twenty-seven and Baez was forty-one, but for a few years they had a romance. “It turned into a serious relationship between two accidental friends who became lovers,” Jobs recalled in a somewhat wistful tone.

1982年乔布斯还在开发麦金塔时，通过一个为监狱募捐电脑的慈善基金负责人米米·法里纳（MimiFarina）认识了她姐姐——著名的民谣歌手琼·贝兹。几星期后，他和贝兹在库比蒂诺共进午餐。“我本来并没期望太髙，结果她却那么机智风趣。”他回忆道。当时，他和芭芭拉·亚辛斯基的恋情正接近尾声。亚辛斯基是个有着波利尼西亚和波兰血统的美女，曾为里吉斯·麦肯纳工作。他们曾经一起去夏威夷度假，一起在圣克鲁兹山生活，甚至一起去过贝兹的演唱会。当乔布斯与亚辛斯基激情退去，他对贝兹日渐认真起来。他当时27岁而贝兹41岁，但他们的恋情持续了几年时间。“两个人偶然相遇，从朋友发展为情人，认真地谈了一场恋爱。”乔布斯不无伤感地回忆道。

Elizabeth Holmes, Jobs’s friend from Reed College, believed that one of the reasons he went out with Baez—other than the fact that she was beautiful and funny and talented—was that she had once been the lover of Bob Dylan. “Steve loved that connection to Dylan,” she later said. Baez and Dylan had been lovers in the early 1960s, and they toured as friends after that, including with the Rolling Thunder Revue in 1975. (Jobs had the bootlegs of those concerts.)

伊丽莎白·霍姆斯是乔布斯在里德学院时的好朋友，她认为乔布斯跟贝兹交往的原因之一——除了她美丽风趣、天生丽质之外——是她曾经是鲍勃·迪伦的情人。“史蒂夫喜欢这种与迪伦的关联。”她后来说。贝兹和迪伦在20世纪60年代初曾经相恋，后来他们作为朋友一起巡演，包括1975年的滚雷巡演（RollingThunderRevue）。（乔布斯还有这些演唱会上非法录制的唱片。）

When she met Jobs, Baez had a fourteen-year-old son, Gabriel, from her marriage to the antiwar activist David Harris. At lunch she told Jobs she was trying to teach Gabe how to type. “You mean on a typewriter?” Jobs asked. When she said yes, he replied, “But a typewriter is antiquated.”

结识乔布斯时，贝兹已经有了一个14岁的儿子加布里埃尔，是她与前夫反战活动家戴维·哈里斯（DavidHarris）所生。午餐中，她告诉乔布斯她正在教加布如何打字。“你是说在打字机上打字？”乔布斯问。她说是，他跟着说：“可是打字机都老掉牙了。”

“If a typewriter is antiquated, what does that make me?” she asked. There was an awkward pause. As Baez later told me, “As soon as I said it, I realized the answer was so obvious. The question just hung in the air. I was just horrified.”

“打字机老掉牙了，那么我呢？”她问道。一阵尷尬的沉默。贝兹后来告诉我：“当我说出那句话时，就意识到答案是那么显而易见。这个问题就那样悬在空中。我感到恐惧。”

Much to the astonishment of the Macintosh team, Jobs burst into the office one day with Baez and showed her the prototype of the Macintosh. They were dumbfounded that he would reveal the computer to an outsider, given his obsession with secrecy, but they were even more blown away to be in the presence of Joan Baez. He gave Gabe an Apple II, and he later gave Baez a Macintosh. On visits Jobs would show off the features he liked. “He was sweet and patient, but he was so advanced in his knowledge that he had trouble teaching me,” she recalled.

令麦金塔团队大吃一惊的是，有一天乔布斯带着贝兹冲进办公室，向她展示麦金塔的样机。他对保密问题是那么在意，却会把这台计算机曝光给一个局外人，这令他们目瞪口呆，但更令他们意外的是这个人居然是琼·贝兹。他送给力口布一台AppleII电脑，后来又送给贝兹一台麦金塔。乔布斯会去贝兹家显摆他喜欢的那些特色功能。“他很和善很耐心，但他的知识太高深了，要教会我不太容易。”她回忆说。

He was a sudden multimillionaire; she was a world-famous celebrity, but sweetly down-to-earth and not all that wealthy. She didn’t know what to make of him then, and still found him puzzling when she talked about him almost thirty years later. At one dinner early in their relationship, Jobs started talking about Ralph Lauren and his Polo Shop, which she admitted she had never visited. “There’s a beautiful red dress there that would be perfect for you,” he said, and then drove her to the store in the Stanford Mall. Baez recalled, “I said to myself, far out, terrific, I’m with one of the world’s richest men and he wants me to have this beautiful dress.” When they got to the store, Jobs bought a handful of shirts for himself and showed her the red dress. “You ought to buy it,” he said. She was a little surprised, and told him she couldn’t really afford it. He said nothing, and they left. “Wouldn’t you think if someone had talked like that the whole evening, that they were going to get it for you?” she asked me, seeming genuinely puzzled about the incident. “The mystery of the red dress is in your hands. I felt a bit strange about it.” He would give her computers, but not a dress, and when he brought her flowers he made sure to say they were left over from an event in the office. “He was both romantic and afraid to be romantic,” she said.

他是突然暴富的千万富翁，她是个世界名人但活得脚踏实地，也没那么有钱。那时她看不懂他，30年之后再谈起他时，她仍然觉得他让人迷惑不解。在他们恋爱初期一次晚餐时，乔布斯谈起拉尔夫·劳伦（RalphLauren）和他的马球服装店，她承认她从未去过。“那儿有一件漂亮的红裙子，会非常适合你。”他说，然后开车带她直奔斯坦福购物中心（StanfordMall）里的专卖店。贝兹回忆：“我对自己说，这简直太棒了，我跟着世界上最有钱的男人，他想让我拥有一条漂亮的裙子。”到了专卖店，乔布斯给自己买了一大堆衬衫，让她看那条红裙子，说她穿上会棒极了。她赞同。“你应该买下它。”他说。她有一点点惊讶，告诉他她买不起。他没说什么，然后他们就离开了。“难道你不觉得，如果一个人像那样说了一整晚，就一定是去给你买的吗？”她问我，看起来对这件事真的很迷惑不解。“红裙子的秘密交给你来解读吧。我是觉得有一点儿奇怪。”他会送给她计算机，却不送裙子；当他送花给她时，一定会说那是办公室里什么活动剩下的。“他既浪漫，又害怕浪漫。”她说。

When he was working on the NeXT computer, he went to Baez’s house in Woodside to show her how well it could produce music. “He had it play a Brahms quartet, and he told me eventually computers would sound better than humans playing it, even get the innuendo and the cadences better,” Baez recalled. She was revolted by the idea. “He was working himself up into a fervor of delight while I was shrinking into a rage and thinking, How could you defile music like that?”

在NeXT计算机的开发阶段，乔布斯到贝兹在伍德赛德的家，向她展示NeXT强大的音乐功能。“他让它演奏了一曲勃拉姆斯的四重奏，然后告诉我，电脑最终会比人演奏得更好听，甚至连意境和节奏都会更好。”贝兹回忆说，她非常排斥这种想法，“他越说越兴奋，我却越听越偾怒，我在想：你怎么能这么亵渎音乐？”

Jobs would confide in Debi Coleman and Joanna Hoffman about his relationship with Baez and worry about whether he could marry someone who had a teenage son and was probably past the point of wanting to have more children. “At times he would belittle her as being an ‘issues’ singer and not a true ‘political’ singer like Dylan,” said Hoffman. “She was a strong woman, and he wanted to show he was in control. Plus, he always said he wanted to have a family, and with her he knew that he wouldn’t.”

乔布斯会跟黛比·科尔曼和乔安娜·霍夫曼吐露他跟贝兹的关系，他对是否可以跟她结婚这个问题有些烦心：她已经有了个十几岁的儿子，可能巳经过了想再要更多孩子的阶段。“有时候他会说她只是个事件歌手，不是像迪伦那样真正的‘政治’歌手。”霍夫曼说，“她是个个性很强的女人，而他想表现出是他在控制局面。再加上，他总是说他想生儿育女，他知道跟她是不会有的。”

And so, after about three years, they ended their romance and drifted into becoming just friends. “I thought I was in love with her, but I really just liked her a lot,” he later said. “We weren’t destined to be together. I wanted kids, and she didn’t want any more.” In her 1989 memoir, Baez wrote about her breakup with her husband and why she never remarried: “I belonged alone, which is how I have been since then, with occasional interruptions that are mostly picnics.” She did add a nice acknowledgment at the end of the book to “Steve Jobs for forcing me to use a word processor by putting one in my kitchen.”

就这样，过了大约3年，他们终止了恋情，慢慢变成了朋友。“我以为我爱她，但其实我只是非常喜欢她，”他后来说，“我们是注定无法在一起的。我想要孩子，她不想再要了。”贝兹在1989年的回忆录中，谈到了她跟丈夫的分手，以及为什么她没有再婚：“我属于自己，所以从那时起我就一直一个人，偶尔有些小插曲，也大多像是野餐而已。”在该书结尾的致谢辞中，她写了这样一段温馨的话：“感谢史蒂夫·乔布斯，为了迫使我使用文字处理器，硬是在我家厨房里放了一台。”