CHAPTER SIXTEEN

第十六章GATES AND JOBS

盖茨与乔布斯

When Orbits Intersect

当轨道相交

Jobs and Gates, 1991

The Macintosh Partnership

因麦金塔而合作

In astronomy, a binary system occurs when the orbits of two stars are linked because of their gravitational interaction. There have been analogous situations in history, when an era is shaped by the relationship and rivalry of two orbiting superstars: Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr in twentieth-century physics, for example, or Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton in early American governance. For the first thirty years of the personal computer age, beginning in the late 1970s, the defining binary star system was composed of two high-energy college dropouts both born in 1955.

在天文学中，当两颗星体轨道交织，由于引力相互作用，就会出现双星系统。在人类历史上也有类似情形，同领域两位超级巨星之间的关系与竞争谱写出他们所属的时代之音。例如，20世纪物理学界的两位巨匠阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦和尼尔斯·玻尔（NielsBohr）,以及美国建国初期的政治家托马斯·杰斐逊（ThomasJefferson）和亚历山大·汉密尔顿（AlexanderHamilton）。20世纪70年代末，人类步入了个人电脑时代。在其发展的头30年中，出现了两位重量级人物，他们都生于1955年，都中途辍学，精力充沛，他们演绎了个人电脑领域的“双星系统”。

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, despite their similar ambitions at the confluence of technology and business, had very different personalities and backgrounds. Gates’s father was a prominent Seattle lawyer, his mother a civic leader on a variety of prestigious boards. He became a tech geek at the area’s finest private school, Lakeside High, but he was never a rebel, hippie, spiritual seeker, or member of the counterculture. Instead of a Blue Box to rip off the phone company, Gates created for his school a program for scheduling classes, which helped him get into ones with the right girls, and a car-counting program for local traffic engineers. He went to Harvard, and when he decided to drop out it was not to find enlightenment with an Indian guru but to start a computer software company.

这就是比尔·盖茨与史菴夫·乔布斯。尽管两人对技术和商业的融合都抱有相似的雄心，但是他们背景不同，个性迥异。盖茨的父亲是西雅图一位杰出的律师，母亲是一名民众领袖，并担任众多著名机构的董事。他就读于当地最好的私立学校湖滨中学（LakesideHigh），并从此走上技术极客的道路。但盖茨绝称不上反叛者、嬉皮士和灵性追寻者，也不是反主流文化人士。他没有做过“蓝盒子”去盗用电话线路，而是为学校编写排课程序，在这个程序的帮助下，他得以和自己心仪的女孩上同样的课程；他还为当地交通管理部门编写了一个车辆计数程序。进入哈佛大学之后不久，盖茨决定綴学，但并非因为要跟随印度灵性导师寻求启蒙，而是为了创立自己的软件公司。

Gates was good at computer coding, unlike Jobs, and his mind was more practical, disciplined, and abundant in analytic processing power. Jobs was more intuitive and romantic and had a greater instinct for making technology usable, design delightful, and interfaces friendly. He had a passion for perfection, which made him fiercely demanding, and he managed by charisma and scattershot intensity. Gates was more methodical; he held tightly scheduled product review meetings where he would cut to the heart of issues with lapidary skill. Both could be rude, but with Gates—who early in his career seemed to have a typical geek’s flirtation with the fringes of the Asperger’s scale—the cutting behavior tended to be less personal, based more on intellectual incisiveness than emotional callousness. Jobs would stare at people with a burning, wounding intensity; Gates sometimes had trouble making eye contact, but he was fundamentally humane.

与乔布斯不同，盖茨懂计算机编程；他更务实、更有原则，且拥有很强的分析处理能力。乔布斯则更相信直觉，更浪漫，并且在技术实用化、设计愉悦感和界面友好方面有着更高的天分。乔布斯狂热地追求完美，以致他为人非常苛刻，他的管理主要依靠自身的领袖魅力和四溢的激情。盖茨更有条理；他会频繁召开产品评估会议，并在会上精准地切入问题核心。乔布斯和盖茨都可能做出粗鲁无礼的举动，但是盖茨的无礼刻薄通常并不针对个人，更多的是出于对技术的深刻理解，而非情感上的麻木不仁。在职业生涯的早期，盖茨似乎就和那些典型的极客一样，有些阿斯伯格综合征的倾向。乔布斯会用能灼伤人的眼神盯着对方，而盖茨有时会无法与人进行眼神接触，但他很富有人情味儿。

“Each one thought he was smarter than the other one, but Steve generally treated Bill as someone who was slightly inferior, especially in matters of taste and style,” said Andy Hertzfeld. “Bill looked down on Steve because he couldn’t actually program.” From the beginning of their relationship, Gates was fascinated by Jobs and slightly envious of his mesmerizing effect on people. But he also found him “fundamentally odd” and “weirdly flawed as a human being,” and he was put off by Jobs’s rudeness and his tendency to be “either in the mode of saying you were shit or trying to seduce you.” For his part, Jobs found Gates unnervingly narrow. “He’d be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger,” Jobs once declared.

“两个人都觉得自己比对方聪明，但是史蒂夫总体上认为比尔比自己稍逊一筹，尤其在品位和风格上，”安迪·赫茨菲尔德说道，“比尔瞧不起史蒂夫则是因为史蒂夫不会编程。”从两人结识起，盖茨就被乔布斯所吸引，并有些嫉妒他蛊惑人心的能力。但同时，他也认为乔布斯“极其古怪”，而且“作为一个人，有着奇特的缺陷”。盖茨反感乔布斯的无礼，以及他的那种倾向——“不是觉得你狗屁不如，就是在试图引诱怂恿你”。而在乔布斯看来，盖茨太狭隘。乔布斯曾说：“如果他年轻的时候嗑过药或是进行一下禅修，那整个人的心胸就会更为开阔。”

Their differences in personality and character would lead them to opposite sides of what would become the fundamental divide in the digital age. Jobs was a perfectionist who craved control and indulged in the uncompromising temperament of an artist; he and Apple became the exemplars of a digital strategy that tightly integrated hardware, software, and content into a seamless package. Gates was a smart, calculating, and pragmatic analyst of business and technology; he was open to licensing Microsoft’s operating system and software to a variety of manufacturers.

个性和性格上的差异，终究使他们走上了对立面并引发了数字时代的根本分立。乔布斯是个完美主义者，渴望掌控一切，并且很享受艺术家这种不妥协不让步的性情；他和苹果公司将硬件、软件和内容无缝整合，铸成一体，这种数字化战略堪称典范。盖茨则是商业和技术领域里精明务实、深谋远虑的分析师。他愿意将微软的操作系统和软件授杈给各种不同的制造商使用。

After thirty years Gates would develop a grudging respect for Jobs. “He really never knew much about technology, but he had an amazing instinct for what works,” he said. But Jobs never reciprocated by fully appreciating Gates’s real strengths. “Bill is basically unimaginative and has never invented anything, which is why I think he’s more comfortable now in philanthropy than technology,” Jobs said, unfairly. “He just shamelessly ripped off other people’s ideas.”

两人相识30年后，盖茨对乔布斯产生了有所保留的敬意。“他真的对技术了解不多，但他有一种惊人的天赋，知道什么东西能成功。”盖茨说道。但反过来，乔布斯从来没有充分肯定过盖茨的长处。“比尔基本上缺乏想象力，也从没创造过什么东西，这就是为什么我觉得他更适合像现在这样做慈善，而不是留在技术领域。”乔布斯是这么说的，尽管他的说法并不公允，“他只是无耻盗用别人的想法。”