乔布斯中英文简介

Jobs

Nobody

else

in

the

computer

industry,

or

any

other

industry

for

that

matter,

could put on a show like Steve Jobs. His product launches, at which he would stand

alone

on

a

black

stage

and

conjure

up

a

“magical”

or

“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”.

He

spent

his

life

packaging

that

magic

into

elegantly designed, easy to use products.

He had been among the first, back in the 1970s, to see the potential that lay in

the

idea

of

selling

computers

to

ordinary

people.

In

those

days

of

green-on- black

displays, when floppy discs were still floppy, the notion that computers might soon

become ubiquitous seemed fanciful. But Mr Jobs was one of a handful of pioneers

who saw what was coming. Crucially, he also had an unusual knack for looking at

computers

from

the

outside,

as

a

user,

not

just

from

the

inside,

as

an

engineer

—

something he attributed to the experiences of his wayward youth.

Mr

Jobs

caught

the

computing

bug

while

growing

up

in

Silicon

Valley.

As

a

teenager in the late 1960s he cold- called his idol, Bill Hewlett, and talked his way

into a summer job at Hewlett-Packard. But it was only after dropping out of college,

travelling to India, becoming a Buddhist and experimenting with psychedelic drugs

that Mr Jobs returned to California to co-

found Apple, in his parents’ garage, on April

1

Fools’

Day

1976.

“A

lot

of

people

in

our

industry

haven’t

had

very

diverse

experiences,” he once

said. “So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end

up with very linear solutions.” Bill Gates, he suggested, would be “a broader guy if

he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger”.

Dropping out of his college course and attending calligraphy classes instead had,

for example, given Mr Jobs an apparently useless love of typography. But support for

a

variety

of

fonts

was

to

prove

a

key

feature

of

the

Macintosh,

the

pioneering

mouse-driven,

graphical

computer

that

Apple

launched

in

1984.

With

its

windows,

icons

and

menus,

it

was

sold

as

“the

computer

for

the

rest

of

us”.

Having

made

a

fortune from Apple’s initial success, Mr Jobs expected to sell “zillions” of his new

machines. But the Mac was not the mass-market success Mr Jobs had hoped for, and

he was ousted from Apple by its board.

Yet this apparently disastrous turn of events turned out to be a blessing:

“

the

best

thing

that

could

have

ever

happened

to

me

”

,

Mr

Jobs

later

called

it.

He

co-founded

a

new

firm,

Pixar,

which

specialised

in

computer

graphics,

and

NeXT,

another

computer-maker.

His

remarkable

second

act

began

in

1996

when

Apple,

having lost its way, acquired NeXT, and Mr Jobs returned to put its technology at the

heart of a new range of Apple products. And the rest is history: Apple launched the

iMac,

the

iPod,

the

iPhone

and

the

iPad,

and

(briefly)

became

the

world’s

most

valuable

listed

company.

“I’m

pretty

sure

none

of

this

would

have

happened

if

I

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hadn’t been fired from Apple,” Mr Jobs said in 2005. When his failing health forced

him

to

step

down

as

Apple’s

boss

in

2011

,

he

was

hailed

as

the

greatest

chief

executive

in

history.

Oh,

and

Pixar,

his

side

project,

produced

a

string

of

hugely

successful animated movies.

In retrospect, Mr Jobs was a man ahead of his time during his first stint at Apple.

Computing

’

s early years were dominated by technical types. But his emphasis on

design

and

ease

of

use

gave

him

the

edge

later

on.

Elegance,

simplicity

and

an

understanding

of

other

fields

came

to

matter

in

a

world

in

which

computers

are

fashion items, carried by everyone, tha

t can do almost anything. “Technology alone is

not enough,” said Mr Jobs at the end of his speech introducing the iPad, in January

2010. “It’s technology married with liberal arts, married with humanities, that yields

the results that make our hearts sing.

” It was an unusual statement for the head of a

technology firm, but it was vintage Steve Jobs.

His interdisciplinary approach was backed up by an obsessive attention to detail.

A carpenter making a fine chest of drawers will not use plywood on the back, even

though nobody will see it, he said, and he applied the same approach to his products.

“

For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the

way through.” He insisted that the first Macintosh should have no internal c

ooling fan,

so

that

it

would

be

silent

—

putting

user

needs

above

engineering

convenience.

He

called an Apple engineer one weekend with an urgent request: the colour of one letter

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