斯蒂夫·喬布斯
The magician
魔術師
The revolution that Steve Jobs led is only just beginning
WHEN it came to putting on a show, nobody else in the computer industry, or any other industry for that matter, could match Steve Jobs. His product launches, at which he would stand alone on a black stage and conjure up an “incredible” new electronic gadget in front of an awed crowd, were the performances of a master showman. All computers do is fetch and shuffle numbers, he once explained, but do it fast enough and “the results appear to be magic”. Mr Jobs, who died this week aged 56, spent his life packaging that magic into elegantly designed, easy-to-use products.
說到產品展示，在計算機產業(yè)和其他相關產業(yè)領域，沒有人能像史蒂夫•喬布斯做得這樣好。他的產品發(fā)布會就是一場大師級的個人秀——獨自站在黑色的舞臺上，像變魔法一樣，在充滿敬畏的人群面前召喚出某種“令人驚嘆的”新型電子產品。他曾經說，電腦所作的就是調用、混洗數據，只要做得足夠快，“結果看起來就像變魔術一樣”。喬布斯于本周逝世，享年56歲。他一生致力于將這種魔法融入到設計優(yōu)雅、使用便捷的產品中。
The reaction to his death, with people leaving candles and flowers outside Apple stores and the internet humming with tributes from politicians, is proof that Mr Jobs had become something much more significant than just a clever money-maker. He stood out in three ways—as a technologist, as a corporate leader and as somebody who was able to make people love what had previously been impersonal, functional gadgets. Strangely, it is this last quality that may have the deepest effect on the way people live. The era of personal technology is in many ways just beginning.
人們把蠟燭和鮮花放在蘋果商店外面，網上到處都是政治家的悼詞——人們對喬布斯逝世的反應表明，他的重要性已經遠遠超過一個聰明的生意人。他在三個方面表現出色——技術專家、公司領袖，他讓人們喜歡上了之前沒有人情味兒和小玩意。奇怪的是，正是這最后一點特性對人們的生活方式產生了最深遠的影響。個人科技時代全面到來。
Apple of his eye
他眼中的蘋果
As a technologist, Mr Jobs was different because he was not an engineer—and that was his great strength. Instead he was obsessed with product design and aesthetics, and with making advanced technology simple to use. He repeatedly took an existing but half-formed idea—the mouse-driven computer, the digital music player, the smartphone, the tablet computer—and showed the rest of the industry how to do it properly. Rival firms scrambled to follow where he led. In the process he triggered upheavals in computing, music, telecoms and the news business that were painful for incumbent firms but welcomed by millions of consumers.
作為一名技術專家，他與眾不同之處在于他不是工程師——這正是他最大的長處。他癡迷于產品設計和美學，沉迷于使高科技更加使用便捷。他一次次地拾起現存的半成型創(chuàng)意——如鼠標驅動的電腦、數字音樂播放器、智能手機和平板電腦——然后告訴其他業(yè)內人士如何恰當地實現這些創(chuàng)意。競爭對手狼狽地跟隨他。他引發(fā)的計算機、音樂、通信和新聞產業(yè)變革廣受百萬消費者歡迎，也讓其他業(yè)內公司苦不堪言。
Within the wider business world, a man who liked to see himself as a hippy, permanently in revolt against big companies, ended up being hailed by many of those corporate giants as one of the greatest chief executives of his time. That was partly due to his talents: showmanship, strategic vision, an astonishing attention to detail and a dictatorial management style which many bosses must have envied. But most of all it was the extraordinary trajectory of his life (seearticle). His fall from grace in the 1980s, followed by his return to Apple in 1996 after a period in the wilderness, is an inspiration to any businessperson whose career has taken a turn for the worse. The way in which Mr Jobs revived the ailing company he had co-founded and turned it into the world’s biggest tech firm (bigger even than Bill Gates’s Microsoft, the company that had outsmarted Apple so dramatically in the 1980s), sounds like something from a Hollywood movie—which, no doubt, it soon will be.
在更廣闊的商界中，他喜歡自詡為嬉皮，他總是和大公司對抗，最終被這些公司譽為他所在的時代的最偉大的CEO。這部分歸功于他的才能：表演技巧、戰(zhàn)略眼光、對細節(jié)驚人的關注和另其他老板羨慕的獨裁管理方式。不過最重要的是他不同尋常的人生軌跡。他在八十年代曾誤入歧途，在漂泊了一段時間后，于1996年回到蘋果公司，這對任何經歷事業(yè)挫折的商人來說都是一種鼓勵。喬布斯將聯(lián)合創(chuàng)建、日薄西山的蘋果公司變成世界上最大的科技公司——甚至比在1980年代擊敗蘋果公司的微軟還要大——聽起來像是好萊塢電影的情節(jié)，但是毫無疑問，很快就會有這樣一部電影。
But what was perhaps most astonishing about Mr Jobs was the fanatical loyalty he managed to inspire in customers. Which other technology brand do you ever see on bumper stickers? Many Apple users feel themselves to be part of a community, with Mr Jobs as its leader. And there was indeed a personal link. Apple’s products were designed to accord with the boss’s tastes and to meet his obsessively high standards. Every iPhone or MacBook has his fingerprints all over it. His great achievement was to combine an emotional spark with computer technology, and make the resulting product feel personal. And that is what put Mr Jobs on the right side of history, as the epicentre of technological innovation has moved into consumer electronics over the past decade.
但是，最令人驚奇的是喬布斯激起了消費者對蘋果的狂熱忠實。你曾經在汽車保險杠貼紙上看到個哪個其他的品牌？許多蘋果用戶認為自己是喬布斯領導的共同體的一員。這里面確實有一點個人關系。蘋果的產品是根據老板的口味設計的，并且迎合了他對高標準的癡迷。每一臺iPhone或MacBook都布滿了他的指紋。他的偉大成就是將激情的火花和電腦技術結合在一起，使最終產品人性化。正是這一點讓喬布斯站在了歷史正確的一邊，技術革命的中心在過去十年中移到了消費性電子產品。
A world without Jobs
世上已無喬布斯
As our special report in this week’s issue (printed before Mr Jobs’s death) explains, innovation used to spill over from military and corporate laboratories to the consumer market, but lately this process has gone into reverse. Many people’s homes now have more powerful, and more flexible, devices than their offices do; consumer gizmos and online services are smarter and easier to use than most companies’ systems. Familiar consumer products are being adopted by businesses, government and the armed forces. Companies are employing in-house versions of Facebook and creating their own “app stores” to deliver software to smartphone-toting employees. Doctors use tablet computers for their work in hospitals. Meanwhile, the number of consumers hungry for such gadgets continues to swell. Apple’s products are now being snapped up in Delhi and Dalian just as in Dublin and Dallas.
正如本期“特別報道”（喬布斯逝世之前付?。┧?，創(chuàng)新曾經遍布軍隊、企業(yè)實驗室和消費者市場，但是現在卻反過來了。許多人家里的設備比辦公室里的更加強大、靈活；消費性產品和在線服務比大部分公司系統(tǒng)更智能更方便。公司、政府和軍隊也采用類似的消費性產品。公司建立了內部的“臉書”（Facebook）和自己的“應用商店”，給配備智能手機的員工提供軟件。醫(yī)生使用平板電腦完成醫(yī)院里的工作。同時，渴望得到這種設備的消費者越來越多。蘋果的商品在德里、大連和在都柏林、達拉斯一樣暢銷。
Mr Jobs had a reputation as a control freak, and his critics complained that the products and systems he designed were closed and inflexible, in the name of greater ease of use. Yet he also empowered millions of people by giving them access to cutting-edge technology. His insistence on putting users first, and focusing on elegance and simplicity, has become deeply ingrained in his own company, and is spreading to rival firms too. It is no longer just at Apple that designers ask: “What would Steve Jobs do?”
喬布斯有著“控制狂”的名聲，批評家以易用性為理由，抱怨他設計的產品和系統(tǒng)封閉且不靈活。但是，他使數百萬人能夠接觸到前沿科技。他堅持用戶第一，以優(yōu)雅和簡潔為中心，這些觀念在不僅在蘋果公司根深蒂固，并且還傳播到了競爭對手那里。“史蒂夫•喬布斯會怎么辦？”——現在不僅是蘋果公司的設計師才這么問了。
The gap between Apple and other tech firms is now likely to narrow. This week’s announcement of a new iPhone by a management team led by Tim Cook, who replaced Mr Jobs as chief executive in August, was generally regarded as competent but uninspiring. Without Mr Jobs to sprinkle his star dust on the event, it felt like just another product launch from just another technology firm. At the recent unveiling of a tablet computer by Jeff Bezos of Amazon, whose company is doing the best job of following Apple’s lead in combining hardware, software, content and services in an easy-to-use bundle, there were several swipes at Apple. But by doing his best to imitate Mr Jobs, Mr Bezos also flattered him. With Mr Jobs gone, Apple is just one of many technology firms trying to invoke his unruly spirit in new products.
蘋果和其他科技公司的差距似乎正在縮小。蒂姆•庫克（Tim Cook）八月份取代了喬布斯的位置。本月，他帶領的團隊召開的新版iPhone發(fā)布會被認為有一定競爭力但是不能鼓舞人心。沒有了喬布斯的星光四射，活動就像是另一家科技公司在發(fā)布另一種產品。杰夫•貝索斯（Jeff Bezos）的亞馬遜公司在最近的一次平板電腦發(fā)布會上對蘋果公司揮出幾記老拳。這家公司緊隨蘋果公司，將硬件、軟件、內容和服務整合成一個易用平臺。但是貝索斯盡力模仿喬布斯的行為也給喬布斯臉上貼了金。喬布斯走了，蘋果現在成了眾多將他的不羈精神放進新產品里的科技公司中的一個。
Mr Jobs was said by an engineer in the early years of Apple to emit a “reality distortion field”, such were his powers of persuasion. But in the end he conjured up a reality of his own, channelling the magic of computing into products that reshaped entire industries. The man who said in his youth that he wanted to “put a ding in the universe” did just that.
蘋果發(fā)展早期的一位工程師曾經說過，喬布斯的說服能力在于它能散發(fā)出一種“現實扭曲力場”。但是，他最終創(chuàng)造了他自己的現實，將計算機的魔力引入產品中，改造了整個產業(yè)。那個年輕時說要“在宇宙中制造點兒動靜”的人兌現了他的承諾。
