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Antennagate: Design versus Engineering
天线门：设计与工程谁说了算
In many consumer product companies, there's tension between the designers, who want to make a product look beautiful,
在许多消费类产品企业中，设计师和工程师之间关系紧张；设计师想要产品美观，
and the engineers, who need to make sure it fulfills its functional requirements.
工程师需要确保产品满足功能需求。
At Apple, where Jobs pushed both design and engineering to the edge, that tension was even greater.
在苹果，乔布斯将两者都推向了极致，因此设计师和工程师之间的关系更为紧张。
When he and design director Jony Ive became creative coconspirators back in 1997,
1997年，他和设计总监乔尼·艾弗共同进行创意决策，
they tended to view the qualms expressed by engineers as evidence of a can't-do attitude that needed to be overcome.
他们常常认为，工程师需要克服那种觉得某事做不了的怀疑态度。
Their faith that awesome design could force superhuman feats of engineering was reinforced by the success of the iMac and iPod.
iMac和iPod的成功，让他们更加坚持自己的信念--了不起的设计能够激发工程师做出超人的壮举。
When engineers said something couldn't be done, Ive and Jobs pushed them to try, and usually they succeeded. There were occasional small problems.
每当工程师表示有些事情做不了时，艾弗和乔布斯就会逼迫他们努力尝试，通常都成功了。但偶尔会有些小问题。
The iPod Nano, for example, was prone to getting scratched because Ive believed that a clear coating would lessen the purity of his design.
例如，艾弗认为涂层会削弱自己设计的纯粹性，从而让iPod Nano很容易被刮花。
But that was not a crisis. When it came to designing the iPhone,
但这并没有给苹果公司造成危机。在设计iPhone的时候，
Ive's design desires bumped into a fundamental law of physics that could not be changed even by a reality distortion field.
艾弗的设计欲望撞上一个不可能被现实扭曲力场改变的物理学基本法则。
Metal is not a great material to put near an antenna.
金属不宜放在天线附近。
As Michael Faraday showed, electromagnetic waves flow around the surface of metal, not through it.
物理学家迈克尔·法拉第已经证实，电磁波在传播的过程中会绕过金属的表面，而无法穿过金属。
So a metal enclosure around a phone can create what is known as a Faraday cage, diminishing the signals that get in or out.
因此，用金属外壳包裹手机会造成“法拉第笼”的现象，削弱进出的信号。
The original iPhone started with a plastic band at the bottom, but Ive thought that would wreck the design integrity and asked that there be an aluminum rim all around.
起初，iPhone的设计是在底部使用塑料壳；但是，艾弗认为这会破坏设计的完整性，要求全部使用铝质材料。
After that ended up working out, Ive designed the iPhone 4 with a steel rim.
这样的做法成功了，于是，在设计iPhone4时，艾弗要求使用钢圈。
The steel would be the structural support, look really sleek, and serve as part of the phone's antenna.
钢圈是机身的支撑结构，看上去很圆滑，并部分充当手机天线。
There were significant challenges. In order to serve as an antenna, the steel rim had to have a tiny gap.
这就有个大问题。要作为天线使用，钢圈必须有一个微小的缝隙。
But if a person covered that gap with a finger or sweaty palm, there could be some signal loss.
但是，如果用户的手指或汗湿的手掌遮住了这个缝隙，就会造成信号损失。
The engineers suggested a clear coating over the metal to help prevent this, but again Ive felt that this would detract from the brushed-metal look.
工程师建议在钢圈外部喷上涂层，以防止该问题的出现，但是艾弗认为这会影响拉丝金属的外观。
The issue was presented to Jobs at various meetings, but he thought the engineers were crying wolf.
iPhone团队在各种会议上都向乔布斯反映了这个问题，但是乔布斯认为工程师们只是在玩狼来了的把戏。
You can make this work, he said. And so they did.
他说，你们能行的。他们也确实做到了。
