CHAPTER SIX

第六章

THE APPLE II

Apple II

Dawn of a New Age

新时代的曙光

An Integrated Package

一体机

As Jobs walked the floor of the Personal Computer Festival, he came to the realization that Paul Terrell of the Byte Shop had been right: Personal computers should come in a complete package. The next Apple, he decided, needed to have a great case and a built-in keyboard, and be integrated end to end, from the power supply to the software. “My vision was to create the first fully packaged computer,” he recalled. “We were no longer aiming for the handful of hobbyists who liked to assemble their own computers, who knew how to buy transformers and keyboards. For every one of them there were a thousand people who would want the machine to be ready to run.”

乔布斯在个人电脑节的展厅考察了一番后，意识到ByteShop的保罗·特雷尔说对了：个人电脑应该以整套设备的形式呈现给消费者。他决定，下一代的苹果电脑需要自带一个漂亮的箱子和内置键盘，整合其他关键元素，从电源到软件到显示器。“我的想法是制造第一台整合所有部件的电脑，”他回忆道，“我们的目标客户不再是少数喜欢自己组装电脑、知道如何购买变压器和键盘的业余爱好者。希望电脑拿到手就可以运行的人，其数量是业余爱好者的1000倍。”

In their hotel room on that Labor Day weekend of 1976, Wozniak tinkered with the prototype of the new machine, to be named the Apple II, that Jobs hoped would take them to this next level. They brought the prototype out only once, late at night, to test it on the color projection television in one of the conference rooms. Wozniak had come up with an ingenious way to goose the machine’s chips into creating color, and he wanted to see if it would work on the type of television that uses a projector to display on a movie-like screen. “I figured a projector might have a different color circuitry that would choke on my color method,” he recalled. “So I hooked up the Apple II to this projector and it worked perfectly.” As he typed on his keyboard, colorful lines and swirls burst on the screen across the room. The only outsider who saw this first Apple II was the hotel’s technician. He said he had looked at all the machines, and this was the one he would be buying.

1976年的那个劳工节周末，在他们的酒店房间里，沃兹尼亚克在完善新一代机器的样机——也就是后来的AppleII，乔布斯希望这台机器能将他们的事业带上一个新的台阶。这台机器只被他们带出过房间一回，是在某一天的深夜，他们将它带到了一间会议室，连接上彩色投影电视进行测试。沃兹尼亚克有一个绝妙的想法，可以让机器芯片运行出色彩，他想要看看这种方法在一台使用投影仪显示图像的电视机上能否起作用。“我想，投影仪使用的色彩电路不同，和我的色彩生成方法一起工作的时候可能会发生错误，”他回忆道，“所以我就把AppleII连接到了这台投影仪上，结果运行非常完美。”他在键盘上一番敲击之后，彩色的线条和螺旋图案就在屏幕上出现了。唯一一个见到AppleII的局外人是酒店的技术员。他说他见过所有的机器，但这一台才是他愿意购买的。

To produce the fully packaged Apple II would require significant capital, so they considered selling the rights to a larger company. Jobs went to Al Alcorn and asked for the chance to pitch it to Atari’s management. He set up a meeting with the company’s president, Joe Keenan, who was a lot more conservative than Alcorn and Bushnell. “Steve goes in to pitch him, but Joe couldn’t stand him,” Alcorn recalled. “He didn’t appreciate Steve’s hygiene.” Jobs was barefoot, and at one point put his feet up on a desk. “Not only are we not going to buy this thing,” Keenan shouted, “but get your feet off my desk!” Alcorn recalled thinking, “Oh, well. There goes that possibility.”

要生产整套的AppleII需要大量的资金投入，于是他们考虑将股权出售给更大的公司。乔布斯去找了阿尔·奥尔康，希望能得到机会向雅达利的管理层进行推销。奥尔康安排他与公司的总裁乔·基南（JoeKeenan）会面，此人相比奥尔康和布什内尔要保守许多。“史蒂夫进去向他推销，但是乔根本无法忍受他，”奥尔康回忆说，“史蒂夫的个人卫生状况让他很不满。”当时乔布斯光着脚，还一度把脚搁到了桌子上。“我们不光不会买你的东西，”基南吼道，“还要请你把脚放下来！”奥尔康回忆自己当时的想法：“完了，没戏了。”

In September Chuck Peddle of the Commodore computer company came by the Jobs house to get a demo. “We’d opened Steve’s garage to the sunlight, and he came in wearing a suit and a cowboy hat,” Wozniak recalled. Peddle loved the Apple II, and he arranged a presentation for his top brass a few weeks later at Commodore headquarters. “You might want to buy us for a few hundred thousand dollars,” Jobs said when they got there. Wozniak was stunned by this “ridiculous” suggestion, but Jobs persisted. The Commodore honchos called a few days later to say they had decided it would be cheaper to build their own machine. Jobs was not upset. He had checked out Commodore and decided that its leadership was “sleazy.” Wozniak did not rue the lost money, but his engineering sensibilities were offended when the company came out with the Commodore PET nine months later. “It kind of sickened me. They made a real crappy product by doing it so quick. They could have had Apple.”

9月，康懋达电脑公司（CommodoreComputer）的查克·佩德尔（OiuckPeddle）来到乔布斯家中观看他的演示。“我们打开了史蒂夫家的车库门，让阳光照射进来，查克走了进来，穿着西装，戴着牛仔帽。”沃兹回忆道。佩德尔非常喜欢AppleII，他于数周后在公司总部为高层人员安排了一场演示。“你也许有兴趣花几十万买下我们公司。”乔布斯到那儿后说了这样一句话。沃兹尼亚克记得当时自己被这个“荒唐的”建议惊得目瞪口呆，但乔布斯坚持要这么做。几天之后，康懋达公司打来电话说，他们认为研发自己的电脑更加省钱。乔布斯并不沮丧，他全面考察了康懋达公司后，认为该公司的管理层太“卑劣”了。沃兹尼亚克对于失去了这笔投资并不感到遗憾，但是当9个月后，该公司推出了他们自己的电脑“CommodorePET”的时候，他作为一名工程师，在感情上受到了极大的伤害。“那玩意儿让我觉得恶心，”他说，“他们太急于求成了，所以做出这么一个蹩脚的产品。他们本来可以拥有苹果的。”

The Commodore flirtation brought to the surface a potential conflict between Jobs and Wozniak: Were they truly equal in what they contributed to Apple and what they should get out of it? Jerry Wozniak, who exalted the value of engineers over mere entrepreneurs and marketers, thought most of the money should be going to his son. He confronted Jobs personally when he came by the Wozniak house. “You don’t deserve shit,” he told Jobs. “You haven’t produced anything.” Jobs began to cry, which was not unusual. He had never been, and would never be, adept at containing his emotions. He told Steve Wozniak that he was willing to call off the partnership. “If we’re not fifty-fifty,” he said to his friend, “you can have the whole thing.” Wozniak, however, understood better than his father the symbiosis they had. If it had not been for Jobs, he might still be handing out schematics of his boards for free at the back of Homebrew meetings. It was Jobs who had turned his ingenious designs into a budding business, just as he had with the Blue Box. He agreed they should remain partners.

对康懋达公司的这次出售未果也让一直暗藏在乔布斯与沃兹尼亚克间的冲突浮出水面：他们对苹果公司的贡献真的一样多吗？他们之间的利益又该如何分配？杰里·沃兹尼亚克一直都认为工程师的价值要远超过企业家和营销人员，他觉得大多数钱都应该归他儿子所有。乔布斯来家里作客时，杰里当面向他提出了自己的不满。“你不配得到这么多他告诉乔布斯，“你没有做出过任何产品。”乔布斯哭了起来，这在他身上是很常见的事情。他一直都不擅长控制自己的情绪——以后也不会擅长。乔布斯告诉沃兹尼亚克，愿意停止他们的合作关系。“如果我们不能对半分账的话，”他对自己的朋友说，“你可以全部收为己有。”然而，沃兹尼亚克比自己的父亲更加了解自己与乔布斯之间的共生关系。如果不是乔布斯的话，他可能还在家酿计算机俱乐部的会议上免费发放自己设计的电路板的原理图，是乔布斯将他的技术工程天赋转化成了蓬勃发展的生意，正如当年的蓝盒子一样。他同意继续保持合作关系。