经济学人下载:史蒂夫·乔布斯逝世 天才涅槃

IT WAS always going to be a hard act to follow. On October 4th Apple staged a press conference to launch its latest iPhone and other gadgets. Tim Cook, the computing giant’s new chief executive, and his colleagues did a perfectly competent job of presenting its latest wares. But it was inevitable that comparisons would be drawn between Mr Cook’s understated approach on stage and that of Steve Jobs, his predecessor, whose sense of showmanship had turned so many Apple product launches into quasi-religious experiences. The news the following day that Mr Jobs had finally died following a long battle with cancer turned the feeling of disappointment into one of deep sadness.
大师的后继者注定要相形见绌。10月4日，苹果举办媒体发布会，推出其最新版的iPhone及其他设备。这家计算机巨头的新首席执行官提姆·库克（Tim Cook）联同他的同事们非常称职地完成了最新产品的发布。然而，人们难免要将库克先生在台上低调的表述方式与其前任史蒂夫·乔布斯（Steve Jobs）所具有的将众多苹果产品发布会变幻成为近乎宗教仪式的强大展现力进行比较。而次日关于乔布斯先生在与癌症长期抗争之后去世的消息则将失望的情绪演化成为一抹深深的哀伤。

Many technologists have been hailed as visionaries. If anyone deserves that title it was Mr Jobs. Back in the 1970s, the notion that computers might soon become ubiquitous seemed fanciful. In those days of green-on-black displays, when floppy discs were still floppy, he was among the first to appreciate the potential that lay in the idea of selling computers to ordinary people. More recently, under his guidance,Apple went from being a company on the brink of bankruptcy to a firm that has reshaped entire industries and brought rivals to their knees. Rarely incorporate history has a transformation been so swift. Along the way Mr Jobs also co-founded Pixar, an animation company, and became Disney’s biggest shareholder.
很多科技人员都被称作具有远见卓识。如果说有谁是当之无愧的，那就是乔布斯。回首20世纪70年代，那时候计算机很快会走入千家万户的信念看似是一个空想。当电脑显示还处在黑底绿字的时候，当软盘还是软塌塌的时候，他就已站在深信要将计算机卖到寻常百姓家的先驱者行列中。若干年后，在他的引领下，苹果从一个处于破产边缘的公司一跃成为重塑整个行业、让竞争者臣服的黑马。在公司发展史上，能够实现如此迅速的转变实属罕见。其间，他还与别人共同创建了皮克斯动画公司，并成为迪士尼的第一大股东。

Few corporate leaders in modern times have been as dominant—or, at times, as dictatorial—as Mr Jobs. His success was the result of his unusual combination of technical smarts,strategic vision, flair for design and sheer force of character. But it was also because in an industry dominated by engineers and marketing people who often seem to come from different planets, he had a different and much broader perspective. Mr Jobs had an unusual knack for looking at technology from the outside, as a user, not just from the inside, as an engineer—something he attributed to the experiences of his wayward youth.
现代的公司领导者鲜有像乔布斯一样主宰市场，甚至在某些时刻成为市场的独裁者的。他的成就源于他在技术才能、战略远见、设计天赋以及纯粹的性格力量方面的非凡结合。此外还应归因于在这个由工程师和市场销售这两个鸡同鸭讲的人群主导的产业中，他所具有的与众不同的更为广阔的视角。乔布斯具有站在消费者的角度，从外部观察科技的独特能力，而不仅仅是像工程师一样将研究囿于科技内部。他将这一特点归因于多舛的年少经历。

An adopted child, Mr Jobs caught the computing bug while growing up in Silicon Valley. As a teenager in the late 1960s he cold-called his idol, Bill Hewlett, and talked his way into a summer job at Hewlett-Packard (HP), where he met Steve Wozniak (pictured above with Mr Jobs). But it was only after dropping out of college, travelling to India, becoming a Buddhist and experimenting with psychedelic drugs that Mr Jobs returned to California to co-found Apple with Mr Wozniak, in his parents’ garage, on April Fools’ Day 1976. “A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences,” he once said. “So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions.”His great rival, Bill Gates, he suggested, would be “a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger.”
乔布斯是个被收养的孩子，他成长在硅谷。其间，他找到了计算机程序错误。20世纪60年代末，少年乔布斯主动打电话给并不认识他的偶像比尔·休利特，并且说服他提供了一个惠普的暑期职位。在惠普，他遇到了Steve Wozniak（上图与乔布斯合影者）。但是与Wozniak共同创建苹果公司是乔布斯在经历了从大学辍学、去印度旅行、成为佛教徒，试过致幻药物之后，重返加州时才着手去做的。他们在1976年愚人节那一天在乔布斯父母的车库里创建了苹果。乔布斯曾说过：“在我们这个产业里，很多人不具有丰富的阅历。这导致他们缺少丰富的思考角度，最终只能得出线性结论。”对于他强大的竞争对手比尔·盖茨，他曾暗示道，“假如他能有一次不那么刻薄，或者在他年轻些的时候去静修”，他会成为“一个更为豁达的人”。