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【紐約客】真正的天才—2000字喬布斯傳（上篇）?

Isaacson begins with Job’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:
艾薩克森從喬布斯在硅谷卑微的出身開始撰寫，從他早期在蘋果的輝煌到顏面盡失地被自己創(chuàng)立的公司掃地出門。他描繪了喬布斯在Pixar和90年代后期重返蘋果時更加璀璨的輝煌，以及我們自然而然的期待著看到喬布斯會在經(jīng)歷過他人生中的大起大落之后，而顯露出的更加睿智和優(yōu)雅的鋒芒。他是絕不會那樣做的。在他人生最后一段在醫(yī)院中的日子，他走馬燈似的看了67個護士才找到3個喜歡的。“有一次，在注射鎮(zhèn)靜劑后的恍惚狀態(tài)下，胸腔內(nèi)科的醫(yī)生嘗試給他戴上一個面罩”，艾薩克森寫道：

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.
喬布斯扯掉面罩，含糊不清地說著他討厭這個設計，拒絕戴它。雖然幾乎無法說話，他還是命令工作人員去找5個不同款式的面罩，以供他選擇一個他習慣的……此外，他手上佩戴的氧氣監(jiān)視器也使他很反感。他告訴他們這個東西既沒有美感又太復雜。

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 喬布斯是克倫普頓還是理查德羅伯茨？上個月，在喬布斯死后的各種悼詞里，他被不停地稱為一個遠大的夢想家和創(chuàng)造者。但是艾薩克森的傳記中暗示他不僅僅是一個“巧匠”。喬布斯在1979年那次著名的拜訪后，從施樂PARC的工程師那里借來了Macintosh典型的特性——屏幕上的鼠標和圖標。1996年，第一款便攜式數(shù)字音樂播放器問世。2001年，蘋果推出iPod，因為喬布斯看到市場上存在的音樂播放器后得出結論：它們“真是遭透了”。智能手機在1990年代開始暫露頭角。2007年，喬布斯推出iPhone，遲到了十多年，是因為“他意識到市場上的手機有點不對勁：它們發(fā)陳舊乏味，就像便攜式音樂播放器以前那樣”，艾薩克森寫道。iPad的創(chuàng)意來自微軟的一個工程師，他與喬布斯家族的一個朋友結婚，邀請了喬布斯去他的50歲生日party。喬布斯告訴艾薩克森：

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.”
這個家伙對著我一頓狂轟亂炸，說微軟將要如何通過平板電腦完全地改變世界，淘汰所有的筆記本電腦，而且蘋果必須購買微軟的軟件。但是他的這個設備全做錯了，它配了觸控筆。一旦你有了觸控筆，你就死定了。這次晚餐他好像和我說了不下十次，惡心！我一回到家就說：“呸，咱們要讓他看看平板電腦究竟什么樣的！”

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.”
甚至在蘋果內(nèi)部，喬布斯剽竊別人的創(chuàng)意廣為人知。Jonathan Ive是iMac，iPod和iPhone幕后的設計師，他告訴艾薩克森，“喬布斯會完整看一遍我創(chuàng)意的步驟，然后說這不好，那不好，我喜歡那樣子。然后我就會坐在觀眾席上，而他（在臺上）談論這個創(chuàng)意，就好像是他自己提出的?！?/div>

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.”
喬布斯的才能是善于發(fā)現(xiàn)，而非發(fā)明。他的天賦在于將面前的事物——有觸控筆的平板電腦——拿來然后無情地改造它?？吹絠Pad的第一支廣告之后，他找到創(chuàng)意人詹姆斯 文森特，告訴他“你的廣告爛透了?！?/div>

“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.”
“嗯，那你想要什么？”文森特反問他?！澳阒皼]有告訴我你想要什么。”
“我不知道，”喬布斯說，“你必須給我點新鮮的東西，你給我看的這些都還差很遠?！?br> 文森特反駁他，突然間喬布斯暴走了。“他開始對我大吼大叫，”文森特回憶道。文森特也起火了，矛盾升級。
當文森特喊道，“你必須告訴我你要什么，”喬布斯反喊一句，“你必須給我看些東西，然后當我看到了我就知道我要什么?！?/div>

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.”
當我看到了我就知道我要什么。這是喬布斯的信條，在他看到之前，他的完美主義將他逼到懸崖邊上。他看到標題欄——橫跨窗口和文檔頂部的欄目——是軟件開發(fā)隊伍設計給最初的Macintosh的，他表示不喜歡。他強迫工程師們做出另一個版本，一個又一個，一共反復了20次，堅持一個又一個小小的微調，當工程師們抗議說他們有更重要的工作時他吼道，“你能想象每天看著那樣的標題欄嗎？這不是一件小事，這是我們必須糾正的事情?！?/div>

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:
著名的蘋果“Think Different”論戰(zhàn)發(fā)生在喬布斯的廣告隊伍TBWA\Chiat\Day。在品牌口號確定之前，喬布斯精神上一直飽受折磨：

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.”
他們爭論著語法問題：假設"different"用來修飾動詞"think"，那么它應該作為副詞，就像"think differently"。但是喬布斯堅持要用"different"作為一個名詞，就像"向往勝利"或"向往美麗"。況且，這也符合口語用法，就像"大膽去想"。喬布斯隨后解釋道，在使用之前，我們討論它是否符合語法規(guī)則。如果你想的是我們要說點什么，它就符合語法規(guī)則。不是墨守成規(guī)，是不同凡響。從些許不同到很獨特再到非同反響。'想法不同'表達不出我想要的含義。"

聲明：雙語文章中，中文翻譯僅代表譯者個人觀點，僅供參考。如有不妥之處，歡迎指正。

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