乔布斯传 第83期:丽萨的出世(1)

搜索关注在线英语听力室公众号：tingroom，领取免费英语资料大礼包。

一个新孩子

The Apple II took the company from Jobs's garage to the pinnacle¹ of a new industry.

Apple II的问世把苹果公司从乔布斯家的车库推向了一个新兴产业的顶峰。

Its sales rose dramatically, from 2,500 units in 1977 to 210,000 in 1981.

它的销量急剧上升，从1977年的2500台猛增到1981年的21万台。

But Jobs was restless.

但是乔布斯并没有满足。

The Apple II could not remain successful forever, and he knew that, no matter how much he had done to package it, from power cord to case, it would always be seen as Wozniak's masterpiece.

Apple II不可能长盛不衰，而且他知道，无论自己如何从电源线到机箱对其进行包装，人们永远都只会将它视为沃兹尼亚克的杰作。

He needed his own machine.

他需要一台属于他的电脑。

More than that, he wanted a product that would, in his words, make a dent² in the universe.

不仅如此，用他自己的话说，他需要一个在宇宙中留下印迹的产品。

At first he hoped that the Apple III would play that role.

最初，他希望Apple III能承担这个角色。

It would have more memory, the screen would display eighty characters across rather than forty, and it would handle uppercase and lowercase letters.

Apple III内存更大，屏幕可以一行显示80个字符而不是40个，并且能区分大小写字母。

Indulging his passion for industrial design, Jobs decreed the size and shape of the external case, and he refused to let anyone alter it, even as committees of engineers added more components³ to the circuit boards.

沉浸在对工业设计的狂热中的乔布斯，严格限定了机箱的尺寸和形状，并拒绝任何人对其进行修改，即便是在工程师往电路板上增加了更多的部件之后。

The result was piggybacked boards with poor connectors that frequently failed.

其绪果是附加的小电路板因连接不稳定而频繁失灵。

When the Apple III began shipping⁴ in May 1980, it flopped⁵.

1980年55月，Apple III上市，但销量惨淡。

Randy Wigginton, one of the engineers, summed it up: "The Apple III was kind of like a baby conceived during a group orgy, and later everybody had this bad headache, and there's this bastard⁶ child, and everyone says, 'It's not mine.'"

工程师兰迪·威金顿总结道：“Apple III有点儿像集体狂欢时怀上的孩子，事后大家都头痛得厉害，至于这个野孩子，人人都说不是自己的。”

By then Jobs had distanced himself from the Apple III and was thrashing about for ways to produce something more radically⁷ different.

那个时候，乔布斯已经疏远了Apple III项目，正焦急地想办法创造出更加与众不同的东西。

At first he flirted⁸ with the idea of touchscreens, but he found himself frustrated⁹.

起初他想过用触摸屏，但后来又泄气了。

At one demonstration¹⁰ of the technology, he arrived late, fidgeted awhile, then abruptly¹¹ cut off the engineers in the middle of their presentation with a brusque "Thank you."

一次触摸屏技术的演示会上，他迟到了，坐立不安地待了一会儿，然后突然打断了正在演示的工程师，很无礼地说了句“谢谢你们”。

They were confused.

工程师们被他弄糊涂了。

"Would you like us to leave?" one asked.

“你想要我们离开吗？”其中一个问道。

Jobs said yes, then berated¹² his colleagues for wasting his time.

乔布斯说是的，然后就痛斥同事们浪费了他的时间。

Then he and Apple hired two engineers from Hewlett-Packard to conceive a totally new computer.

之后，他和苹果公司从惠普雇来了两名工程师，设计一台全新的电脑。

The name Jobs chose for it would have caused even the most jaded¹³ psychiatrist¹⁴ to do a double take: the Lisa.

乔布斯为新电脑挑选的名字能让最迟钝的精神病医生也闻之一怔，随后恍然大悟：丽萨。

Other computers had been named after daughters of their designers, but Lisa was a daughter Jobs had abandoned and had not yet fully¹⁵ admitted was his.

其他电脑也有以设计者女儿的名字命名的，但是丽萨是被乔布斯拋弃的女儿，他甚至还没有完全承认那孩子是自己的。

"Maybe he was doing it out of guilt," said Andrea Cunningham, who worked at Regis McKenna on public relations for the project.

“他这么做也许是出于内疚吧。”安德烈·坎宁安说，她当时供职于里吉斯·麦肯纳公司，负责丽萨项目的公关事务。

"We had to come up with an acronym¹⁶ so that we could claim it was not named after Lisa the child."

“我们要把丽萨视为一个缩略词，想出和它对应的一句短语。这样就可以宣称这不是以乔布斯女儿的名字来命名的。”

分享到：