Jobs was able to get his first car, with his father’s help, when he was fifteen. It was a two-tone Nash Metropolitan that his father had fitted out with an MG engine. Jobs didn’t really like it, but he did not want to tell his father that, or miss out on the chance to have his own car. “In retrospect, a Nash Metropolitan might seem like the most wickedly cool car,” he later said. “But at the time it was the most uncool car in the world. Still, it was a car, so that was great.” Within a year he had saved up enough from his various jobs that he could trade up to a red Fiat 850 coupe with an Abarth engine. “My dad helped me buy and inspect it. The satisfaction of getting paid and saving up for something, that was very exciting.”

15岁那年，在父亲的帮助下，乔布斯拥有了自己的第一辆汽车。那是一辆双拼色的纳什大都会轿车（NashMetropolitan），他父亲为之配备了一台英国MG公司生产的发动机。乔布斯并不怎么喜欢这辆车，但他不想让父亲知道，更不想错过拥有自己汽车的机会。“现在回想起来，纳什大都会看起来是最酷的车了，”他后来说，“但当时它是全世界最烂的车。不过，不管怎么样它也是一辆车，这就很好了。”不到一年，他通过各种各样的工作攒够了钱，可以换一辆带阿巴斯（Abarth）发动机的红色菲亚特850轿跑车了。“我爸爸帮我买车并检査了车况。把挣的钱攒起来去买东西的那种满足感太让人兴奋了。”

That same summer, between his sophomore and junior years at Homestead, Jobs began smoking marijuana. “I got stoned for the first time that summer. I was fifteen, and then began using pot regularly.” At one point his father found some dope in his son’s Fiat. “What’s this?” he asked. Jobs coolly replied, “That’s marijuana.” It was one of the few times in his life that he faced his father’s anger. “That was the only real fight I ever got in with my dad,” he said. But his father again bent to his will. “He wanted me to promise that I’d never use pot again, but I wouldn’t promise.” In fact by his senior year he was also dabbling in LSD and hash as well as exploring the mind-bending effects of sleep deprivation. “I was starting to get stoned a bit more. We would also drop acid occasionally, usually in fields or in cars.”

也是在那一年夏天，在他结束髙二即将升入高三的时候，乔布斯开始抽大麻。“那年夏天我第一次抽大麻，当时我15岁，之后就经常抽了。”有一次他父亲在他的菲亚特车上发现了一些大麻。“这是什么？”他问。乔布斯平静地回答说：“大麻。”这是他一生中为数不多的一次直面父亲的愤怒。“那是我唯一一次真的和爸爸发生争执。”他说。但他父亲又一次屈从于他的意愿。“他要我保证以后再也不抽大麻了，但我不愿意保证。”实际上，到了高中第四年，他已经同时使用迷幻药和大麻了，并且还在探索睡眠剥夺的致幻效果。“我开始加大吸食大麻的剂量。我们偶尔也会用迷幻药，通常是在旷野中或是在车里。”

He also flowered intellectually during his last two years in high school and found himself at the intersection, as he had begun to see it, of those who were geekily immersed in electronics and those who were into literature and creative endeavors. “I started to listen to music a whole lot, and I started to read more outside of just science and technology—Shakespeare, Plato. I loved King Lear.” His other favorites included Moby-Dick and the poems of Dylan Thomas. I asked him why he related to King Lear and Captain Ahab, two of the most willful and driven characters in literature, but he didn’t respond to the connection I was making, so I let it drop. “When I was a senior I had this phenomenal AP English class. The teacher was this guy who looked like Ernest Hemingway. He took a bunch of us snowshoeing in Yosemite.”

髙中的最后两年，乔布斯的心智也快速发展，他发现自己既沉浸在极客的电子世界中，又喜欢文学和创造性的尝试。“我开始听很多音乐，阅读科技以外的书，例如莎士比亚、柏拉图的作品。我爱看《李尔王》。”他最爱的还包括《白鲸》和迪兰·托马斯（DylanThomas）的诗作。我问他为什么喜欢李尔王和阿哈船长，这两个是文学作品中最固执、最执著的角色，但他没有回答我，我也没有再提。“我髙中第四年的时候上的大学英语预修课非常棒，老师是个长得很像欧内斯特·海明威的人。他会带我们一大帮人去优山美地国家公园（Yosemite）踏雪。”

One course that Jobs took would become part of Silicon Valley lore: the electronics class taught by John McCollum, a former Navy pilot who had a showman’s flair for exciting his students with such tricks as firing up a Tesla coil. His little stockroom, to which he would lend the key to pet students, was crammed with transistors and other components he had scored.

乔布斯听的一门课日后成为了硅谷传奇的一部分，这就是约翰·麦科勒姆（JohnMcCollum）教授的电子学。约翰以前是海军飞行员，他像个杂耍艺人般，通过各种小把戏来激起学生的兴趣，比如让特斯拉线圈产生电火花。他会把自己储藏室的钥匙借给他宠爱的学生，这个小储藏室堆满了晶体管之类的零部件。他有一种奇普先生（Mr.Chips）般的魔力，可以给学生解释清楚电子学原理，并把原理联系到实际应用中，例如怎样将电阻和电容串联和并联，然后用这些知识来制作放大器或者无线电设备。

McCollum’s classroom was in a shed-like building on the edge of the campus, next to the parking lot. “This is where it was,” Jobs recalled as he peered in the window, “and here, next door, is where the auto shop class used to be.” The juxtaposition highlighted the shift from the interests of his father’s generation. “Mr. McCollum felt that electronics class was the new auto shop.”

麦科勒姆的教室在校园边缘一座厂房模样的建筑里，紧邻着停车场。“就在这儿，”乔布斯凝视着教室的窗户说，“隔壁就是以前的汽车修理课教室。”这样一种空间上的并列关系也突出了他们这一代与父辈那一代在兴趣上发生的转变。“麦科勒姆先生觉得电子学就是新的汽车维修。”

McCollum believed in military discipline and respect for authority. Jobs didn’t. His aversion to authority was something he no longer tried to hide, and he affected an attitude that combined wiry and weird intensity with aloof rebelliousness. McCollum later said, “He was usually off in a corner doing something on his own and really didn’t want to have much of anything to do with either me or the rest of the class.” He never trusted Jobs with a key to the stockroom. One day Jobs needed a part that was not available, so he made a collect call to the manufacturer, Burroughs in Detroit, and said he was designing a new product and wanted to test out the part. It arrived by air freight a few days later. When McCollum asked how he had gotten it, Jobs described—with defiant pride—the collect call and the tale he had told. “I was furious,” McCollum said. “That was not the way I wanted my students to behave.” Jobs’s response was, “I don’t have the money for the phone call. They’ve got plenty of money.”

麦科勒姆信奉军事化的戒律以及对杈威的尊重，乔布斯则不然。他已经不再隐藏自己对权威的厌恶，他的态度结合了怪异而顽固的激情和超然的叛逆。“他经常一个人在角落里做自己的事情，压根不想跟我或者班上的其他人有任何交流。”麦科勒姆后来说。他从来没有放心地把储藏室的钥匙给过乔布斯。有一次乔布斯需要一样市面上找不到的零件，他就给制造商——底特律的伯勒斯公司（Burroughs）——打了一个对方付费电话，告诉他们自己正在设计一个新产品，想要测试一下那个部件。几天之后，这个部件通过航空包裹寄到了乔布斯手上。当麦科勒姆问他从哪儿弄来的时候，乔布斯带着一种旁若无人的骄傲讲述了事情的经过——他是怎样打对方付费电话并且编故事的。“我很愤怒，”麦科勒姆说，“我不希望我的学生做这样的事情。”乔布斯的反应则是：“我没钱打电话，而那家公司很有钱。”

Jobs took McCollum’s class for only one year, rather than the three that it was offered. For one of his projects, he made a device with a photocell that would switch on a circuit when exposed to light, something any high school science student could have done. He was far more interested in playing with lasers, something he learned from his father. With a few friends, he created light shows for parties by bouncing lasers off mirrors that were attached to the speakers of his stereo system.

麦科勒姆的课程是三年，但乔布斯只上了一年。在一个项目中，他制造了一台带有光感器的装置，光感器遇到光后就会开启电路。任何一个学过科学课的高中生都能做出这样的装置。他更感兴趣的是硏究激光——他从父亲那儿学到的东西。乔布斯和几个朋友一起，通过使用安装在扬声器上的镜面反射激光，实现了用于各种派对的音乐灯光表演。