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乔布斯:苹果公司的救世主(1)

来源:可可英语 编辑:Kelly   可可英语APP下载 |  可可官方微信:ikekenet

In high school, a student interested in taking apart and rebuilding machines approached the CEO of Hewlett-Packard and asked for some parts to help him complete a class project. Duly impressed, the CEO made arrangements for the student to get the parts. And years later, he was probably thrilled to be able to say he took the time to do so. The confident, driven student who asked for the parts was Steve Jobs, a man who would go on to become the CEO of Apple Computers and a pre-eminent figure in the tech industry...

有一个高中学生对拆机和重组很感兴趣,他接触到惠普的首席执行官,想要一些零件来完成一个课堂项目。这位首席执行官对这个学生印象深刻,就安排他拿到零件。几年后,他兴奋地告诉别人自己花时间是用来做这个。这个要零件的、既自信又努力的学生就是史蒂夫·乔布斯,他后来成为苹果电脑公司的首席执行官,也是科技行业的杰出人物……
Early Life
早年生活
Steve Jobs was born to two unmarried graduate students in 1955 (curiously, just 9 months before Microsoft founder Bill Gates). His parents gave him up for adoption, and Jobs was 30 years old and well in the midst of tech stardom before he learned about his birth parents, the Simpsons. Growing up, the only family he knew was his adoptive parents, a couple from Mountain View, California who fostered his interest in taking apart and rebuilding machines. His father, Paul Jobs, was a machinist who taught Jobs about electronics from an early age. Working in the family garage, the two spent hours tinkering on projects. During these work sessions in the garage, Jobs' father taught him a lesson that has made its way into Apple products of all shapes and sizes. Don't sacrifice any part of the design no matter where it is on the product. Jobs later described this, saying, "When you're a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you're not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You'll know it's there, so you're going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through."
一对未婚的研究生情侣于1955年生下史蒂夫·乔布斯。奇怪的是,9个月后,微软创始人比尔·盖茨也出生了。乔布斯的父母抛弃了他,交由他人收养,他30岁时正是科技界的明星,之后他才得知亲生父母是辛普森夫妇。在他成长的过程中,他唯一知道的家人就是他的养父母,他们是一对来自加州山景城的夫妇,二人培养了乔布斯拆机和重组的兴趣。他的父亲保罗·乔布斯是一名机械师,在乔布斯很小的时候他就教他有关电子学的知识。二人在家里的车库花了很长时间修理东西。在车库忙碌这段时间里,乔布斯的父亲给他上了一课,这一课促使他后来推出各种形状和大小的苹果产品。不要牺牲设计的任何一个部分,不管它在产品的哪个部位。后来,乔布斯是这么描述的:“如果你是个木匠,做了一个漂亮的五斗橱,你不会在背后用一块胶合板,即便它是朝着墙壁的,而且也没有人会看到。你知道它在那儿,所以你要把一块漂亮的木头放在后面。为了你晚上能睡个好觉,注重美观和质量必须要贯彻到底。”
Though Jobs showed an early interest in mechanics and design, he did not show early promise in school. His mother had taught him to read as a toddler, but he was bored in school and often goofed off, a habit that frustrated one teacher to the point of bribing him to behave. This teacher saw potential in a young Jobs, and Jobs later credited Mrs. Hill with being one of the "saints" of his life. Jobs so excelled in that fourth grade class with Mrs. Hill that he skipped over the fifth grade entirely and headed straight for middle school. This jump ahead was tough for him initially: he was bullied and became a bit of a loner. Indeed, he disliked middle school so much that he told his parents that if he couldn't switch schools he would just stop going to school altogether. To keep Jobs in school, the family moved from Mountain View to Los Altos, and Jobs settled into the Cupertino School District. It was here, that he met and befriended Bill Fernandez, another student interested in electronics. Fernandez later played a critical role in the creation of Apple computers when he introduced Jobs to his neighbor - another electronics aficionado, and someone you might have heard of... His neighbour was Steve Wozniak (more on him in a minute).
虽然乔布斯早就对机械和设计表现出了浓厚的兴趣,但他并没有早早地希望上学。他的母亲在他小时候就教他阅读,但他在学校感到十分无聊,总是在混日子,这令一个老师非常沮丧,以至于买通他,让他守点规矩。这个老师看到了小乔布斯的潜力,后来,乔布斯说希尔夫人是他生命中的一个“圣人”。在希尔夫人的陪伴下,乔布斯在四年级表现出色,所以他就跳过了五年级的全部课程,直接上了中学。最初,跳级对他来说很艰难:他受到了欺负,变得十分不合群。他的确很讨厌中学,他甚至告诉父母,如果他没法转学的话,他就不去上学了。为了让乔布斯去学校上学,他们从山景城搬到了洛斯阿尔托斯,住在了库布蒂诺学区。他正是在那里遇到了同样对电子学感兴趣的比尔·费尔南德斯,二人也成了朋友。后来,费尔南德斯在创立苹果电脑公司时扮演了重要的角色,他把乔布斯介绍给了他的邻居——另一个电子学爱好者,你们可能听说过他……他的邻居就是斯蒂夫·沃兹尼亚克,我们一会儿会详细介绍他。
Early Work
早期工作
By the time he entered high school, Jobs was already working at Hewlett-Packard, where a cold call to the CEO had earned him a job offer. But while he was in high school his interests began to diversify quite a bit. Jobs discovered a love for the classics and for literature in general - Dylan Thomas and Shakespeare were particular favorites. During his senior year, Jobs was so excelling in English that he was able to take classes at Stanford. When it came time to attend college, though, Jobs opted to attend Reed State in Oregon. But, well, that didn't last long. After only one semester, Jobs' previous aversion to formal education reared its head and he dropped out. He continued dropping in on classes that interested him, though he wasn't earning credits and wasn't paying for anything. Interestingly, one of those drop-in classes greatly affected his future. Something that he explained in his famous 2005 Stanford commencement address (something, by the way, that is well worth watching). "If I had never dropped in on that single calligraphy course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts."
乔布斯升入高中时就已经在惠普工作了,他给首席执行官打的一个意外电话让他得以在那里工作。但他在高中时对许多事物都产生了兴趣。乔布斯发现自己非常喜爱经典著作等文学作品——尤其喜爱狄兰·托马斯和莎士比亚。在乔布斯读高年级的时候,他的英语成绩十分优秀,甚至能在斯坦福大学念书。然而,当乔布斯该读大学时,他选择了俄勒冈州的里德学院。但他并没有读多久。仅一个学期后,乔布斯从前对正规教育的厌恶开始显露,于是他辍学了。他继续旁听自己感兴趣的课程,尽管他不再获得学分,也不再缴费。有趣的是,他旁听的某次课极大地影响了他的未来。他在著名的斯坦福大学2005年毕业典礼上的演讲中解释了这一点。顺便说一句,这个演讲非常值得观看。“如果我没有旁听大学时的那节书法课,苹果电脑就不会有各种各样的字体和间距适当的字体。”
Career Beginning
事业的开始
Despite being a college dropout, Jobs was able to secure a job with Atari computers in 1974. He worked as a tech, assisting the engineers who were doing the heavy duty coding work. Jobs didn't have a lot of money at this time, and he was trying to scrape funds together to travel to India to study Eastern religion - his interests in things outside technology had stuck around. The head of Atari, Niel Bushnell, years later said he thought Jobs was saving money by actually living in the office... "I'm not sure about this but I actually think Steve was living there, so people used to complain that he didn't smell that well... I'd come in on the weekend and he'd be there, I'd come in late at night and he'd be there." The time at Atari also marked a key point in the friendship between Jobs and his old friend Steve Wozniak. Jobs was assigned to design a circuit board for the video game Breakout, and he approached Wozniak to help because Atari was offering a bonus if it could be designed using fewer chips. Jobs also needed the project completed in only four days. What Jobs didn't tell Wozniak was that Atari had offered Jobs a large bonus for using fewer chips - a bonus Jobs received and kept for himself even though Wozniak did the majority of the work. When Wozniak found out about the lie ten years later, he is reported to have cried. But Wozniak didn't know of Jobs' deceit at the time, and the two continued experimenting with technology together.
虽然乔布斯是个大学辍学生,但他依旧于1974年在雅达利电脑公司找到了工作。他是个技术员,协助那些写代码的工程师完成繁重工作。这时的乔布斯并没有很多钱,他正在试着凑钱去印度学习东方宗教——这是他在技术之外的兴趣。雅达利的领导尼尔·布什内尔多年后表示,他觉得乔布斯省钱的方式是住在办公室……“我不确定这一点,但我的确认为乔布斯是住在那里的,以前大家总是抱怨他身上有味道……我周末来时,他就在那里;我很晚来时,他也在那里。”在雅达利的日子也是乔布斯和他的老朋友斯蒂夫·沃兹尼亚克友谊的关键期。乔布斯负责设计视频游戏“Breakout”的电路板,他帮助了沃兹尼亚克,因为如果使用更少的芯片来进行设计的话,雅达利公司就会提供奖金。乔布斯需要在4天之内完成这个项目。乔布斯没有告诉沃兹尼亚克的是,因为使用的芯片较少,雅达利给了乔布斯一大笔奖金——尽管大部分工作都是沃兹尼亚克完成的,但乔布斯还是自己留下了这笔奖金。10年后,当沃兹尼亚克发现了这个谎言时,有报道说他哭了。但沃兹尼亚克当时并不知道乔布斯说谎了,两人还是一起做技术实验。

年轻时的史蒂夫·乔布斯.jpg

But, their tinkering was put on hold for seven months, though, when Job's alleged living in the office had saved him enough money to travel to India. He went to India in search of spiritual enlightenment, something that was rather in fashion in the 60s and 70s. He did this trip on an incredibly tight budget - he slept on the street, sweated on crowded buses, and ate the bare minimum... He also must have eaten some pretty sketchy food, reportedly getting dysentery and losing forty pounds. During this time he was also meditating and learning about Zen Buddhism. He wanted to go to Tibet, but after his travelers' checks were stolen he decided to head home to the U.S. Back home, he continued his practice of meditation, as well as another habit he'd picked up ... his use of psychedelic drugs. Jobs was a big fan of LSD, a drug he started using in college and would credit with expanding his creativity and vision of the world: "Taking LSD was a profound experience, one of the most important things in my life. LSD shows you that there's another side to the coin, and you can't remember it when it wears off, but you know it. It reinforced my sense of what was important - creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could."

但是他们有7个月没捣鼓东西,那时,乔布斯据说是用住在办公室的方法来省钱,而这笔钱足够让他去印度了。他去印度寻找精神启蒙,这在六、七十年代是非常流行的。他的旅游预算非常少——他睡在大街上、汗流浃背地乘坐拥挤的公交车、吃的东西也很少……他还必须吃得很少,据说他得了痢疾,体重降了40磅。在此期间,他还进行了冥想并学习了佛教中的禅宗。他想去西藏,但旅行支票被偷后,他决定回到自己在美国的家。回家后,他继续练习冥想,还养成了另一个习惯——使用致幻剂。乔布斯非常喜欢LSD,他在大学时就开始服用这种致幻剂,他甚至把自己的创造力和对世界的认识全都归功于LSD:“服用LSD是一种深刻的体验,它是我生命中最重要的事情之一。LSD告诉你硬币有另一面,当药效消失时你不记得它,但你知道它。它强化了我对重要事物的理解——创造伟大的事物而不是赚钱,尽可能地将事物重新放回历史长河和人类意识流中。”
The Beginning of Apple
苹果的起点
Back in the United States, Jobs had no money and lived in his parents' toolshed that he had converted to a bedroom. But he and Wozniak continued to work on computers, with Jobs convincing Wozniak that at least one of Wozniak's early products was sellable. Wozniak had built a product, known as a 'blue box' that could mimic the tones of a telephone system and essentially trick a phone into making a free long distance call for the user. With technology today we don't think twice about calling someone on the other side of the planet, but in the 1970s this was a big deal. Now, as you might have guessed, these blue boxes were totally illegal, but they still sold well. Yep, Steve Job's first business... Selling illegal devices to make long distance phone calls for free!
回到美国的乔布斯没有钱,于是就住在父母的工具房里,他把这间房变成了卧室。但他和沃兹尼亚克仍继续用电脑工作,乔布斯说服沃兹尼亚克,他至少有一件早期产品是可销售的。沃兹尼亚克打造了一个被称为“蓝盒子”的产品,它可以模拟电话系统的音调,用户可以打一个免费长途电话。拥有着今天技术的我们在打电话给地球另一端的某人时不会再三考虑,但这在70年代就是件大事。现在,正如你们猜测的那样,这些蓝盒子完全不合法,但他们依然卖的很好。没错,史蒂夫·乔布斯的第一笔生意就是……销售可以免费拨打长途电话的非法设备!
Now, the next brainchild that Wozniak had was much more legitimate... It was a product that would become the Apple I. In 1976, Jobs suggested selling it, and he and Wozniak officially started Apple Computers. The company was first run out Jobs' parents' garage, and most of their customers were hobbyists. But enough computer hobbyists were laying out money for the Apple I that Jobs and Wozniak had cash in their pockets. Jobs began searching for investors, and Wozniak kept designing. In 1977, just a year after the company launched, they put out another version of their computer, the Apple II. This time, it had color graphics and was much more user-friendly allowing for it to be used outside of just the hobbiest market. They sold $3 million of the Apple II in their first year alone, but this figure was about to become dwarfed... Two years later, they had sold $200 million worth, but again, this seemingly huge number was about to be dwarfed again... In 1980, only four years after their launch, Jobs and Wozniak went public. By the end of Apple's first day of public trading the company was worth an astounding $1.2 BILLION. Steve Jobs was only twenty-five years old.
沃兹尼亚克推出的第二个产品合法多了……该产品后来成为了第一代苹果电脑。1976年,乔布斯建议将它销售出去,他和沃兹尼亚克正式创立了苹果电脑公司。该公司的办公地点最初是在乔布斯父母的车库,大多数顾客都是电脑爱好者。电脑爱好者们购买第一代苹果电脑的钱足够填满乔布斯和沃兹尼亚克的口袋。乔布斯开始寻找投资者,沃兹尼亚克继续搞设计。1977年,也就是公司成立仅一年后,他们推出了另一个版本的电脑——第二代苹果电脑。这一次的电脑可以显示彩色图形,并且更加人性化,这一次不只是爱好者购买他们的电脑了。他们仅在第一年就卖出了价值300万美元的第二代苹果电脑,但这一数字马上就要降低了……2年后,他们卖出价值2亿美元的电脑,但这一看似巨大的数字将再一次下降……1980年,仅仅是推出后的第4年,乔布斯和沃兹尼亚克的公司就上市了。苹果公司上市首日快要结束时,该公司价值达到12万美元,这一数字相当惊人。这时的史蒂夫·乔布斯才25岁。
Family
家庭
During the nascent years of Apple, Jobs was dealing with much personal turmoil. His longtime on-again, off-again girlfriend Chrisann Brennan had moved in with him, and she got pregnant. Jobs was, by all accounts, not thrilled about this news. He later told Brennan: "I never wanted to ask that you get an abortion. I just didn't want to do that." Brennan had been offered a job at Apple, but given Jobs' reaction to her pregnancy she did not want to take it. She left him and their house, and began working as a cleaner. Despite asking for support from Jobs, he did not provide any support for his child until a paternity confirmed that he was the father. Even then, despite his company being worth over a billion dollars, he was only required to provide $500 a month in child support. Despite these early problems, Lisa and Jobs later reconciled, and Lisa even lived with Jobs during her high school years. She then attended Harvard, and today works as a writer in New York City. Though it took him years to admit to it, Jobs named one of Apple's early products after his daughter. But the LISA computer was not as successful as the Apple II had been. This failure was followed by another - the Apple III, which again failed to live up to expectations (and not just Job's expectations, but everyone's).
在苹果公司成立初期,乔布斯正在处理自己动荡的生活。与他分分合合的女友克里斯安·布伦南搬到他那里去住,然后她就怀孕了。大家都说,乔布斯在听到这一消息时并不激动。他后来告诉布伦南:“我从没让你堕胎,我就是不想当父亲。”布伦南得到了一份苹果公司的工作,但出于乔布斯对她怀孕的反应,她并不想接受。她离开了他,离开了他们的家,找了一份清洁工的工作。除了她向乔布斯寻求的帮助外,他没有为自己的孩子提供任何支持,直到亲子鉴定结果出来,确认他就是孩子的父亲。即便这样,他也只被要求每月必须给孩子500美元,尽管他公司的价值已经超过10亿美元。早先的这些问题过后,丽萨和乔布斯后来便和解了,丽萨甚至在高中时期还和乔布斯一起住。之后她去哈佛读书,如今是纽约的一名作家。乔布斯用他女儿的名字命名了苹果的一个早期产品,尽管他花了许多年才承认这一点。但LISA电脑并不像第二代苹果电脑那么成功。在这一失败经历过后,第三代苹果电脑依然不成功,它并不像期望的那样好,这不仅仅是乔布斯的期望,而是所有人的期望。

重点单词   查看全部解释    
illegal [i'li:gəl]

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adj. 不合法的,非法的
n. 非法移民

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initially [i'niʃəli]

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adv. 最初,开头

 
astounding [əs'taundiŋ]

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adj. 令人惊骇的 动词astound的现在分词形式

 
nascent ['næsnt]

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adj. 新生的,尚不成熟的

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classics ['klæsiks]

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n. 古希腊、古罗马的文学著作 名词classic的复数

 
multiple ['mʌltipl]

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adj. 许多,多种多样的
n. 倍数,并联

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profound [prə'faund]

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adj. 深奥的,深邃的,意义深远的

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stream [stri:m]

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n. (人,车,气)流,水流,组
v. 流动,

 
aesthetic [i:s'θetik]

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adj. 美学的,审美的,有美感的
n. (复

 
turmoil ['tə:mɔil]

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n. 骚动,混乱

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