【纽约客】巧匠——史蒂夫·乔布斯的真正才能
译者 噬魂·星野
Not long after Steve Jobs got married, in 1991, he moved with his wife to a nineteen-thirties, Cotswolds-style house in old Palo Alto. Jobs always found it difficult to furnish the places where he lived. His previous house had only a mattress, a table, and chairs. He needed things to be perfect, and it took time to figure out what perfect was. This time, he had a wife and family in tow, but it made little difference. “We spoke about furniture in theory for eight years,” his wife, Laurene Powell, tells Walter Isaacson, in “Steve Jobs,” Isaacson’s enthralling new biography of the Apple founder. “We spent a lot of time asking ourselves, ‘What is the purpose of a sofa?’”
史蒂夫·乔布斯结婚后不久，就和他妻子搬到帕洛阿尔托(美国加利福尼亚州西部城市,靠近旧金山)，入住一幢1930年代，科茨沃尔德式的房子。乔布斯总是很难为他的住所布置家具。他之前的房子只有一床垫，一桌子和若干椅子。他希望一切都是完美的，并且花时间去弄明白什么是完美。这一次，他把他妻子也牵扯进来，但却有一些不同。在艾萨克森为苹果创始人撰写的引人入胜的新传记《乔布斯传》里面，乔布斯的妻子劳伦·鲍威尔，告诉艾萨克森，“我们在理论上谈论家具8年了，我们花了很长时间问自己，‘为什么需要一套沙发？’”
It was the choice of a washing machine, however, that proved most vexing. European washing machines, Jobs discovered, used less detergent and less water than their American counterparts, and were easier on the clothes. But they took twice as long to complete a washing cycle. What should the family do? As Jobs explained, “We spent some time in our family talking about what’s the trade-off we want to make. We ended up talking a lot about design, but also about the values of our family. Did we care most about getting our wash done in an hour versus an hour and a half? Or did we care most about our clothes feeling really soft and lasting longer? Did we care about using a quarter of the water? We spent about two weeks talking about this every night at the dinner table.”
然而，最让人烦恼的原来是关于洗衣机的选择。乔布斯发现，欧洲产的洗衣机和美国产的同类产品相比，用的洗涤剂和水更少，而且对衣服更柔和。但是欧产洗衣机的完成一次洗涤循环要2倍的时间。怎么办呢？乔布斯解释，“我们花时间在家庭成员中讨论我们将如何作出权衡。结果我们谈了很多设计，也谈了我们家的价值观。我们最关心的是洗完衣服需要1小时还是1个半小时吗？还是说我们关心衣服是否柔软耐穿？我们关心用了1/4（吨）的水？我们花了大概2个星期，每天晚餐时谈论这些问题。”
Steve Jobs, Isaacson’s biography makes clear, was a complicated and exhausting man. “There are parts of his life and personality that are extremely messy, and that’s the truth,” Powell tells Isaacson. “You shouldn’t whitewash it.” Isaacson, to his credit, does not. He talks to everyone in Jobs’s career, meticulously recording conversations and encounters dating back twenty and thirty years. Jobs, we learn, was a bully. “He had the uncanny capacity to know exactly what your weak point is, know what will make you feel small, to make you cringe,” a friend of his tells Isaacson. Jobs gets his girlfriend pregnant, and then denies that the child is his. He parks in handicapped spaces. He screams at subordinates. He cries like a small child when he does not get his way. He gets stopped for driving a hundred miles an hour, honks angrily at the officer for taking too long to write up the ticket, and then resumes his journey at a hundred miles an hour. He sits in a restaurant and sends his food back three times. He arrives at his hotel suite in New York for press interviews and decides, at 10 P.M., that the piano needs to be repositioned, the strawberries are inadequate, and the flowers are all wrong: he wanted calla lilies. (When his public-relations assistant returns, at midnight, with the right flowers, he tells her that her suit is “disgusting.”) “Machines and robots were painted and repainted as he compulsively revised his color scheme,” Isaacson writes, of the factory Jobs built, after founding NeXT, in the late nineteen-eighties. “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. . . . 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.”
艾萨克森的传记写得很清楚，乔布斯是个复杂和纠结的人。鲍威尔告诉艾萨克森，”乔布斯生活中的一部分的确是一团糟，这是事实。你不应该粉饰。“值得称许的是，艾萨克森没有粉饰。他跟乔布斯生涯中的每个人对话，一丝不苟地记录谈话内容，然后时光重返到二三十年之前。我们知道，乔布斯是个混蛋。乔布斯的一个朋友告诉艾萨克森，”他有着不可思议的能力，可以看穿别人的弱点，知道如何让人感到渺小，感到畏缩。“乔布斯让他女朋友怀孕了，后来否认孩子是他的。他停泊在无生育能力的安全区。他对下属大吼大叫。当他无法随心所欲时，像个婴儿一样哭泣。他开车100英里/小时超速，被交警拦下，因为开罚单的时间太长而对着交警愤怒地按喇叭，然后又以时速100英里的速度返程。他坐在餐馆里，再三退回他点的食物。他晚上10点到达纽约的酒店套房，接受报刊的采访，断言钢琴必须重新摆放，草莓不够，所有的花都不对：他要马蹄兰。（他的公关助理在半夜带来了正确的花，他说她的套装很”恶心“。）在乔布斯于80年代后期创立NeXT后修建的工厂，艾萨克森写道，”因为乔布斯强制修改他的颜色计划，机器和机器人被来回涂上不同的颜色。墙面是博物馆白，如同在Macintosh工厂一样，有价值2万美元的黑色皮椅子和定做的楼梯……他坚持机器要配置在165英尺高（50米）的组装线上，在电路板做成时从右向左移动他们，以便访客在参观走廊上观看时，整个流程有更好的视觉效果。“
Isaacson begins with Jobs’s humble origins in Silicon Valley, the early triumph at Apple, and the humiliating ouster from the firm he created. He then charts the even greater triumphs at Pixar and at a resurgent Apple, when Jobs returns, in the late nineteen-nineties, and our natural expectation is that Jobs will emerge wiser and gentler from his tumultuous journey. He never does. In the hospital at the end of his life, he runs through sixty-seven nurses before he finds three he likes. “At one point, the pulmonologist tried to put a mask over his face when he was deeply sedated,” Isaacson writes:
艾萨克森从乔布斯在硅谷卑微的出身开始撰写，他在苹果早期的辉煌，接着丢人现眼地被自己创立的公司扫地出门。他描绘了乔布斯在Pixar和90年代后期他重返苹果时更加璀璨的辉煌，以及我们很自然的期待着乔布斯将会在他大起大落的人生中显露出更睿智和优雅的锋芒。但他从来没有。在他行将就木时住的医院里，他览遍67个护士才找到3个他喜欢的。”有一次，在给他深度注射镇静剂之后，肺脏医生尝试在他脸上戴一个面罩“，艾萨克森写道：
Jobs ripped it off and mumbled that he hated the design and refused to wear it. Though barely able to speak, he ordered them to bring five different options for the mask and he would pick a design he liked. . . . He also hated the oxygen monitor they put on his finger. He told them it was ugly and too complex.
乔布斯摘掉面罩，嘀咕着他讨厌这个设计并且拒绝戴上。尽管几乎无法说话，他命令他们去找5个不同的面罩以供他选择一个他习惯的设计……他还讨厌戴在他手指上的氧气监视器。他告诉他们这很丑而且太复杂。
One of the great puzzles of the industrial revolution is why it began in England. Why not France, or Germany? Many reasons have been offered. Britain had plentiful supplies of coal, for instance. It had a good patent system in place. It had relatively high labor costs, which encouraged the search for labor-saving innovations. In an article published earlier this year, however, the economists Ralf Meisenzahl and Joel Mokyr focus on a different explanation: the role of Britain’s human-capital advantage—in particular, on a group they call “tweakers.” They believe that Britain dominated the industrial revolution because it had a far larger population of skilled engineers and artisans than its competitors: resourceful and creative men who took the signature inventions of the industrial age and tweaked them—refined and perfected them, and made them work.
工业革命的一个重大疑问是，为什么始于英国，而不是法国，德国？人们提出了很多理由，比如说：不列颠王国有丰富的煤矿供应；较为完善的专利体制；相对较高的劳动力成本鼓励寻找节省劳动力的创新。然而在今年早些时候发表的文章中，Ralf Meisenzahl和Joel Mokyr专注于一个不同的解释：英国人力资本优势的作用——尤其是被他们称为”巧匠“的一群人。他们相信英国领导工业革命是因为，英国熟练的工程师和工匠远多于它的对手：在工业革命时期，技术精湛的有创造力的人在他们的发明上签字，对这些发明微调，精制，使其完美，并让他们运作。
In 1779, Samuel Crompton, a retiring genius from Lancashire, invented the spinning mule, which made possible the mechanization of cotton manufacture. Yet England’s real advantage was that it had Henry Stones, of Horwich, who added metal rollers to the mule; and James Hargreaves, of Tottington, who figured out how to smooth the acceleration and deceleration of the spinning wheel; and William Kelly, of Glasgow, who worked out how to add water power to the draw stroke; and John Kennedy, of Manchester, who adapted the wheel to turn out fine counts; and, finally, Richard Roberts, also of Manchester, a master of precision machine tooling—and the tweaker’s tweaker. He created the “automatic” spinning mule: an exacting, high-speed, reliable rethinking of Crompton’s original creation. Such men, the economists argue, provided the “micro inventions necessary to make macro inventions highly productive and remunerative.”
1799年，Samuel Crompton，一个来自Lancashire已经退休的天才，发明了走锭纺纱，这使得棉花制造业的机械化成为可能。然而，英国的真正优势在于它有来自Horwich的Henry Stones，他在纺纱机中加入了金属滚轴；Tottington的James Hargreaves，他想出了如何使纺纱轮在加速和减速之间平滑过渡；Glasgow的William Kelly，他解决了如何在起模行程中加入水力；Manchester的John Kennedy，他使得纺纱轮适应正确的翻转圈数；最后，同样来自Manchester的Richard Roberts，一个调校机械精准度的专家——”巧匠“中的”巧匠“。他创造了”自动“纺纱机：一个严格的，高速的，可靠的，反思Crompton原版的发明。经济学家认为，这些人，提供了”使得宏观发明得以高度高产和高回报的微观发明需要“。
Was Steve Jobs a Samuel Crompton or was he a Richard Roberts? In the eulogies that followed Jobs’s death, last month, he was repeatedly referred to as a large-scale visionary and inventor. But Isaacson’s biography suggests that he was much more of a tweaker. He borrowed the characteristic features of the Macintosh—the mouse and the icons on the screen—from the engineers at Xerox PARC, after his famous visit there, in 1979. The first portable digital music players came out in 1996. Apple introduced the iPod, in 2001, because Jobs looked at the existing music players on the market and concluded that they “truly sucked.” Smart phones started coming out in the nineteen-nineties. Jobs introduced the iPhone in 2007, more than a decade later, because, Isaacson writes, “he had noticed something odd about the cell phones on the market: They all stank, just like portable music players used to.” The idea for the iPad came from an engineer at Microsoft, who was married to a friend of the Jobs family, and who invited Jobs to his fiftieth-birthday party. As Jobs tells Isaacson:
史蒂夫·乔布斯是Samuel Crompton还是Richard Roberts？上个月，在乔布斯死后的各种悼词里，他被不停地称为一个远大的梦想家和创造者。但是艾萨克森的传记中暗示他不仅仅是一个”巧匠“。乔布斯在1979年那次著名的拜访后，从施乐PARC的工程师那里借来了Macintosh典型的特性——屏幕上的鼠标和图标。1996年，第一款便携式数字音乐播放器问世。2001年，苹果推出iPod，因为乔布斯看到市场上存在的音乐播放器后得出结论：它们”真的遭透了“。智能手机在1990年代开始暂露头角。2007年，乔布斯推出iPhone，迟到了十多年，是因为”他意识到市场上的手机有点不对劲：它们都发出臭味，就像便携式音乐播放器以前那样“，艾萨克森写道。iPad的创意来自微软的一个工程师，他与乔布斯家族的一个朋友结婚，邀请了乔布斯去他的50岁生日party。乔布斯告诉艾萨克森：
This guy badgered me about how Microsoft was going to completely change the world with this tablet PC software and eliminate all notebook computers, and Apple ought to license his Microsoft software. But he was doing the device all wrong. It had a stylus. As soon as you have a stylus, you’re dead. This dinner was like the tenth time he talked to me about it, and I was so sick of it that I came home and said, “Fuck this, let’s show him what a tablet can really be.”
这个家伙困扰着我，微软将要如何通过tablet PC完全地改变世界，淘汰所有的笔记本电脑，而且苹果必须购买微软的软件。但是他的这个设备全做错了，它配了触控笔。一旦你有了触控笔，你就死定了。这次晚餐好像是他第十次跟我说这件事，我烦死了然后我回到家就说：”你妹的，我们让他看看平板电脑可以做成什么样。“
Even within Apple, Jobs was known for taking credit for others’ ideas. Jonathan Ive, the designer behind the iMac, the iPod, and the iPhone, tells Isaacson, “He will go through a process of looking at my ideas and say, ‘That’s no good. That’s not very good. I like that one.’ And later I will be sitting in the audience and he will be talking about it as if it was his idea.”
甚至在苹果内部，乔布斯剽窃别人的创意广为人知。Jonathan Ive是iMac，iPod和iPhone幕后的设计师，他告诉艾萨克森，”乔布斯会走一遍看我创意的步骤，然后说’这不好，那不好，我喜欢那样子。‘然后我就会坐在观众席上，而他（在台上）谈论这个创意，就好像是他自己提出的一
Jobs’s sensibility was editorial, not inventive. His gift lay in taking what was in front of him—the tablet with stylus—and ruthlessly refining it. After looking at the first commercials for the iPad, he tracked down the copywriter, James Vincent, and told him, “Your commercials suck.”
在乔布斯的才能是善于发现，而非发明。他的天赋在于将面前的事物——有触控笔的平板电脑——拿来然后无情地改造它。看到iPad的第一支广告之后，他找到创意人James Vincent，告诉他”你的广告烂透了。“
“Well, what do you want?” Vincent shot back. “You’ve not been able to tell me what you want.”
“I don’t know,” Jobs said. “You have to bring me something new. Nothing you’ve shown me is even close.”
Vincent argued back and suddenly Jobs went ballistic. “He just started screaming at me,” Vincent recalled. Vincent could be volatile himself, and the volleys escalated.
When Vincent shouted, “You’ve got to tell me what you want,” Jobs shot back, “You’ve got to show me some stuff, and I’ll know it when I see it.”
”那你想要什么？“Vincent反问他。”你之前没有告诉我你想要什么。“
”我不知道，“乔布斯说，”你必须给我点新鲜的东西，你给我看的这些都还差很远。“
Vincen反驳他，突然间乔布斯暴走了。”他开始对我大吼大叫，“Vincent回忆道。Vincent也起火了，矛盾升级。
当Vincent喊道，”你必须告诉我你要什么，“乔布斯反喊一句，”你必须给我看些东西，然后当我看到了我就知道我要什么。“
I’ll know it when I see it. That was Jobs’s credo, and until he saw it his perfectionism kept him on edge. He looked at the title bars—the headers that run across the top of windows and documents—that his team of software developers had designed for the original Macintosh and decided he didn’t like them. He forced the developers to do another version, and then another, about twenty iterations in all, insisting on one tiny tweak after another, and when the developers protested that they had better things to do he shouted, “Can you imagine looking at that every day? It’s not just a little thing. It’s something we have to do right.”
当我看到了我就知道我要什么。这是乔布斯的信条，在他看到之前，他的完美主义将他逼到悬崖边上。他看到标题栏——横跨窗口和文档顶部的栏目——是软件开发队伍设计给最初的Macintosh的，他表示他不喜欢。他强迫工程师们做出另一个版本，一个又一个，一共反复了20次，坚持一个又一个小小的改善，当工程师们抗议说他们有更重要的工作时他吼道，”你能想象每天看着那样的标题栏吗？这不是一件小事，这是我们必须纠正的事情。“
The famous Apple “Think Different” campaign came from Jobs’s advertising team at TBWA\Chiat\Day. But it was Jobs who agonized over the slogan until it was right:
著名的苹果”Think Different“论战发生在乔布斯的广告队伍TBWA\Chiat\Day。但在弄对之前折磨着口号的是乔布斯：
They debated the grammatical issue: If “different” was supposed to modify the verb “think,” it should be an adverb, as in “think differently.” But Jobs insisted that he wanted “different” to be used as a noun, as in “think victory” or “think beauty.” Also, it echoed colloquial use, as in “think big.” Jobs later explained, “We discussed whether it was correct before we ran it. It’s grammatical, if you think about what we’re trying to say. It’s not think the same, it’s think different. Think a little different, think a lot different, think different. ‘Think differently’ wouldn’t hit the meaning for me.”
他们讨论的是语法问题：如果”different“是用来修饰动词”think“，那应该作为副词，就像”think differently“。但是乔布斯坚持说要要用”different“作为一个名词，就像”think victory“或”think beauty“。而且，这也响应了口语用法，就像”think big“。乔布斯后来解释道，”在我们使是符合语法的。这不是think the same，这是think different. Think a little different, think a lot different, think different. ’Think differently‘表达不出我想要的含义。“
The point of Meisenzahl and Mokyr’s argument is that this sort of tweaking is essential to progress. James Watt invented the modern steam engine, doubling the efficiency of the engines that had come before. But when the tweakers took over the efficiency of the steam engine swiftly quadrupled. Samuel Crompton was responsible for what Meisenzahl and Mokyr call “arguably the most productive invention” of the industrial revolution. But the key moment, in the history of the mule, came a few years later, when there was a strike of cotton workers. The mill owners were looking for a way to replace the workers with unskilled labor, and needed an automatic mule, which did not need to be controlled by the spinner. Who solved the problem? Not Crompton, an unambitious man who regretted only that public interest would not leave him to his seclusion, so that he might “earn undisturbed the fruits of his ingenuity and perseverance.” It was the tweaker’s tweaker, Richard Roberts, who saved the day, producing a prototype, in 1825, and then an even better solution in 1830. Before long, the number of spindles on a typical mule jumped from four hundred to a thousand. The visionary starts with a clean sheet of paper, and re-imagines the world. The tweaker inherits things as they are, and has to push and pull them toward some more nearly perfect solution. That is not a lesser task.
Meisenzahl和Mokyr的论点在于这些微调在过程中是至关重要的。詹姆斯·瓦特发明了现代蒸汽机，它的效率是之前的发动机的两倍。但是当巧匠们接手之后，蒸汽机的效率一下子变成了四倍。Samuel Crompton要为被Meisenzahl和Mokyr称为工业革命中”不可厚非的最高产的发明能力“负责。但是，几年之后工人们的一次罢工，才迎来了纺纱机的关键时刻。纺纱厂的老板们在寻找一种方法来取代没有熟练技术的工人，而且需要一种不需要纺纱工人操作的自动纺纱机。谁解决了这个问题？不是Crompton，而是一个没有野心的人，仅仅因为公共利益没有让他隐居而懊悔不已，却让他获得了精巧和毅力的成果。正是Richard Roberts，巧匠中的巧匠，他挽救了时间，在1825年制造了原型机，然后在1830年做出更好的解决方案。不久以后，在传统的纺纱机上的纺锤数量从400跃升至1000。巧匠传承着技术，推动着机器发展出更接近完美的解决方案。这不是一项简单的工作。
Jobs’s friend Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, had a private jet, and he designed its interior with a great deal of care. One day, Jobs decided that he wanted a private jet, too. He studied what Ellison had done. Then he set about to reproduce his friend’s design in its entirety—the same jet, the same reconfiguration, the same doors between the cabins. Actually, not in its entirety. Ellison’s jet “had a door between cabins with an open button and a close button,” Isaacson writes. “Jobs insisted that his have a single button that toggled. He didn’t like the polished stainless steel of the buttons, so he had them replaced with brushed metal ones.” Having hired Ellison’s designer, “pretty soon he was driving her crazy.” Of course he was. The great accomplishment of Jobs’s life is how effectively he put his idiosyncrasies—his petulance, his narcissism, and his rudeness—in the service of perfection. “I look at his airplane and mine,” Ellison says, “and everything he changed was better.”
乔布斯的朋友拉里·埃里森，甲骨文的创建者，有一架私人飞机，他设计机身内部使其更加舒适。有一套，乔布斯决定也要买一架私人飞机。他学埃里森那样做。然后他打算把他朋友的设计全部复制过来——一样的发动机，一样的组装，客舱之间一样的门。实际上，不是全部复制。埃里森的飞机，”客舱之间的门上面有一个开门按钮和关门按钮，“艾萨克森写道。”乔布斯坚持他只要一个按钮来开关“他不喜欢按钮用抛光不锈钢，于是他换成了金属拉丝的按钮。”聘请了埃里森的设计师，“很快他会逼疯她。”当然他做到了。乔布斯一生最大的成就是他追求完美时，如何高效地灌注他的本质——他的暴躁，自恋，无礼。埃里森说，“当我看到他的飞机和我的，所有他改变的都更好。”
The angriest Isaacson ever saw Steve Jobs was when the wave of Android phones appeared, running the operating system developed by Google. Jobs saw the Android handsets, with their touchscreens and their icons, as a copy of the iPhone. He decided to sue. As he tells Isaacson:
艾萨克森见过的乔布斯最生气的一次是，搭载着Google开发的操作系统的Android手机的发布浪潮。乔布斯看到Android设备，有他们的触摸屏和图标，就想iPhone的复制品。他决定起诉。正如他告诉艾萨克森：
Our lawsuit is saying, “Google, you fucking ripped off the iPhone, wholesale ripped us off.” Grand theft. I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go to thermonuclear war on this. They are scared to death, because they know they are guilty. Outside of Search, Google’s products—Android, Google Docs—are shit.
我们的起诉状这么写，“Google，你妹的抄袭iPhone，大量地抄袭我们。大盗。如有必要，我会用我最后一口气，用尽苹果银行里400亿美元的最后1美分，来纠正这件事。我将要毁掉Android，因为他是个剽窃的产品。对此，我不惜发动核战争。他们怕得要死，因为他们知道自己有错。除非搜索，Google的产品——Android，Google Docs——就是一坨屎。“In the nineteen-eighties, Jobs reacted the same way when Microsoft came out with Windows. It used the same graphical user interface—icons and mouse—as the Macintosh. Jobs was outraged and summoned Gates from Seattle to Apple’s Silicon Valley headquarters. “They met in Jobs’s conference room, where Gates found himself surrounded by ten Apple employees who were eager to watch their boss assail him,” Isaacson writes. “Jobs didn’t disappoint his troops. ‘You’re ripping us off!’ he shouted. ‘I trusted you, and now you’re stealing from us!’ ”
1980年代，当微软发布Windows时，乔布斯有相同的反应。它运行相同的GUI——图标和鼠标——跟Macintosh一样。乔布斯非常愤怒，把盖茨从西雅图叫到苹果的硅谷总部。”他们在乔布斯的会议室会面，盖茨发现自己被10个苹果雇员围观，他们迫不及待地等着看他们的老板抨击他。“艾萨克森写道，”乔布斯没有辜负他的部队。’你在抄袭我们‘他吼道，’我曾经相信你，现在你却在抄袭我们！‘“ Gates looked back at Jobs calmly. Everyone knew where the windows and the icons came from. “Well, Steve,” Gates responded. “I think there’s more than one way of looking at it. I think it’s more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it.”
盖茨反过来看着乔布斯，淡定地。所有人都知道Windows和它的图标来自哪里。”史蒂夫，“盖茨答道，”我觉得看待它不止一个方式。我认为这更像我们俩有个富有的邻居施乐，我闯进他的房子偷了一部电视，并发现你已经偷了。“Jobs was someone who took other people’s ideas and changed them. But he did not like it when the same thing was done to him. In his mind, what he did was special. Jobs persuaded the head of Pepsi-Cola, John Sculley, to join Apple as C.E.O., in 1983, by asking him, “Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the world?” When Jobs approached Isaacson to write his biography, Isaacson first thought (“half jokingly”) that Jobs had noticed that his two previous books were on Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein, and that he “saw himself as the natural successor in that sequence.” The architecture of Apple software was always closed. Jobs did not want the iPhone and the iPod and the iPad to be opened up and fiddled with, because in his eyes they were perfect. The greatest tweaker of his generation did not care to be tweaked.
乔布斯是个剽窃他人创意并改变他们的人，但是他不喜欢这些事情发生在自己身上。在他看来，他做的是特别的。1983年，乔布斯说服百事可乐的领袖约翰·斯卡利，加入苹果担任CEO。乔布斯问他，”你想一辈子卖糖水，还是改变世界？“当乔布斯要求艾萨克森为他撰写传记时，艾萨克森认为（”半开玩笑“）乔布斯注意到他的前两部传记是本杰明·富兰克林和艾伯特·爱因斯坦，然后他”觉得自己自然是紧随其后的成功者。“苹果软件的结构是封闭的，乔布斯不想让iPhone，iPod和iPad的代码公开被人摆弄，因为在他眼中他们是完美的。在自己的时代里，最伟大的巧匠并不喜欢被微调。 Perhaps this is why Bill Gates—of all Jobs’s contemporaries—gave him fits. Gates resisted the romance of perfectionism. Time and again, Isaacson repeatedly asks Jobs about Gates and Jobs cannot resist the gratuitous dig. “Bill is basically unimaginative,” Jobs tells Isaacson, “and has never invented anything, which I think is why he’s more comfortable now in philanthropy than technology. He just shamelessly ripped off other people’s ideas.”
也许这是比尔·盖茨——在乔布斯同时代的所有人中——适应的原因。盖茨拒绝完美主义的浪漫。艾萨克森常常重复地问乔布斯关于盖茨的事，而乔布斯不会拒绝免费的挖苦机会。”比尔基本上没有想象力，“乔布斯告诉艾萨克森，”而且他没有发明过任何东西，这是我觉得他现在更关注慈善和非技术的原因。他只是不知廉耻地剽窃他人的创意。“After close to six hundred pages, the reader will recognize this as vintage Jobs: equal parts insightful, vicious, and delusional. It’s true that Gates is now more interested in trying to eradicate malaria than in overseeing the next iteration of Word. But this is not evidence of a lack of imagination. Philanthropy on the scale that Gates practices it represents imagination at its grandest. In contrast, Jobs’s vision, brilliant and perfect as it was, was narrow. He was a tweaker to the last, endlessly refining the same territory he had claimed as a young man.
在读了600多页之后，读者会认得这个典型的乔布斯：有远见，恶毒，妄想，缺一不可。确实现在比尔·盖茨是对于尝试根除疟疾更有兴趣，而非审视下一代的Word。但这不是缺乏想象力的证据。盖茨参与的慈善活动的规模，表现出他最丰富的想象力。相反，乔布斯的远见，才智，完美还是一如既往，狭隘。他到最终仍然是个巧匠，无止境地他声称还是年轻在相同领域里面做出改善。
As his life wound down, and cancer claimed his body, his great passion was designing Apple’s new, three-million-square-foot headquarters, in Cupertino. Jobs threw himself into the details. “Over and over he would come up with new concepts, sometimes entirely new shapes, and make them restart and provide more alternatives,” Isaacson writes. He was obsessed with glass, expanding on what he learned from the big panes in the Apple retail stores. “There would not be a straight piece of glass in the building,” Isaacson writes. “All would be curved and seamlessly joined. . . . The planned center courtyard was eight hundred feet across (more than three typical city blocks, or almost the length of three football fields), and he showed it to me with overlays indicating how it could surround St. Peter’s Square in Rome.” The architects wanted the windows to open. Jobs said no. He “had never liked the idea of people being able to open things. ‘That would just allow people to screw things up.’ ”
当他生命垂危，癌症侵蚀他的身体，他的热情在于设计位于Cupertino占地300万平方英尺的苹果新总部。乔布斯投入到细节中。”“一次又一次他冒出新的想法，有时候是整个全新的造型，然后让他们重新开始并提供更多可选方案，”艾萨克森写道。他对玻璃着迷，他从苹果零售店的巨大玻璃窗学到的将会继续扩大。“建筑里不会有一块直的玻璃”，艾萨克森写道，“所有都是有曲线的，并且无缝衔接……计划中的中心广场横跨800英尺（超过3个典型的街区，或者说几乎是3个足球场那么宽），他拿着轮廓图给我看，比手划脚地告诉我它如何围绕罗马的圣彼得广场。”建筑师要求窗口打开，乔布斯不肯。他“从来不喜欢人们可以打开东西的注意，’那只会允许人们把事情弄糟。‘”
from 译言-每日精品译文推荐 http://article.yeeyan.org/view/12093/230354
