经济学人下载:史蒂夫·乔布斯逝世 天才涅槃

Dropping out of his college course and attending calligraphy classes instead had, for example, given Mr Jobs an apparently useless love of typography. But support for a variety of fonts was to prove a key feature of the Macintosh, the pioneering mouse-driven, graphical computer that Apple launched in 1984. With its windows, icons and menus, it was sold as “the computer for the rest of us”. Mr Jobs expected to sell “zillions”of his new machines. But the Mac was not the swift, mass-market success that he had hoped for, and Mr Jobs was ousted from Apple by its board in 1985. Deprived of hallucinogenic drugs though he might have been, Mr Gates emerged as the undisputed champion of the personal-computer era. Most of the world adopted Microsoft-compatible PCs. The Mac became a niche product, much loved by graphic designers, artists and musicians.
放弃大学课程，而参加书法课给乔布斯带来的影响之一就是使他爱上了看似没有什么用处的版式设计。但当1984年苹果公司推出先锋式的鼠标驱动的图形式电脑——苹果机的时候，支持多种字体确实是苹果机的一个关键特征。这款电脑具有独特的视窗、图标以及菜单，它的广告语是“给大家的电脑”。乔布斯期待着销售出无数台新产品，但是苹果机并没有带来他所期望的迅速横扫广大市场的成功。1985年，乔布斯被苹果公司的董事会票选出局。之后他被迫戒掉了致幻药物。盖茨则成为个人电脑时代毋庸置疑的胜者，而乔布斯本可以代替他站在巅峰。（译者注：原文这句话是译者根据上下文推测所译。如有疑问，欢迎讨论。同时，根据有关乔布斯的报道，他是主动戒除毒品的，此处为终于原文，译为被动。）世界绝大部分市场采用了兼容微软系统的电脑。苹果机成了一种特殊产品，深受图形设计者、艺术家和音乐家的喜爱。

Yet this apparently disastrous turn of events proved to be a blessing: “the best thing that could have ever happened to me”, Mr Jobs later called it. He co-founded a new firm, Pixar, which specialised in computer graphics. It eventually went on to produce a string of hugely successful movies, including “Toy Story” and “Cars”. Mr Jobs also established NeXT, another computer-maker, which produced sophisticated workstations. Its products were admired for their elegant software, but the company struggled to make money and changed direction repeatedly.
然而这个似乎是灾难性的转折点最终成为了他人生中的一个福祉。乔布斯后来将其成为“可能发生的最佳情况”。他与别人共同创立了皮克斯，这家新公司专攻电脑制图。后来皮克斯生产了包括《玩具总动员》和《汽车总动员》在内的一连串获得巨大成功的影片。乔布斯还创建了另一家电脑制造公司NeXT，这家公司制造高端复杂的工作站电脑。它的产品由于精良的软件而深受喜爱，但这家公司疲于赚钱，而且频繁改变发展方向。

Mr Jobs’s remarkable second act began in 1996 when Apple, having lost its way, acquired NeXT, and Mr Jobs returned to put its software at the heart of anew range of Apple products. And the rest is history: Apple launched the iMac,the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad, and (briefly, in August) became the world’s most valuable listed company. “I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple,” Mr Jobs said in 2005. When his failing health forced him to step down as Apple’s boss in August, he was hailed by some as the greatest chief executive in history.
乔布斯出类拔萃的第二乐章开始于1996年。那一年，迷失了前行方向的苹果公司收购了NeXT。乔布斯重返苹果，将一系列新的苹果产品的核心软件换上了他的设计。接下来的历史有目共睹：苹果发布了iMac、iPod、iPhone，以及iPad，并在不久前的8月成为世界最有价值的上市公司。“我非常确信假如我不被苹果解雇的话，这一切将不可能发生”，乔布斯在2005年说道。当他由于每况愈下的健康状况而不得不从苹果老板的席位上退下来的时候，他已成为一些人口中的有史以来最伟大的首席执行官。

Three-way marriage 三位一体，让心灵歌唱

In retrospect, Mr Jobs was a man ahead of his time during his first stint at Apple. Computing’s early years were dominated by technical types. But his emphasis on design and ease of use gave him the edge later on.Elegance, simplicity and an understanding of other fields came to matter in a world in which computers have become fashion items, carried by everyone, that can do almost anything. “Technology alone is not enough,” said Mr Jobs at the end of his speech introducing the iPad 2, in March 2011. “It’s technology married with liberal arts, married with humanities, that yields the results that make our hearts sing.” It was an unusual statement for the head of a technology firm.
回溯既往，乔布斯在苹果的第一段时期是一个超越其时代的人。计算机技术早期是为技术指标所主导的。但他对设计与使用舒适度的强调成为他后来所具有的优势。在这个计算机逐渐变为人人拥有而无所不能的时尚潮物的世界，优雅的设计、简便的操作，以及对其他领域的理解开始产生重要作用。“仅有科技已经不够”，乔布斯在2011年3月iPad 2发布会致闭幕辞时说道，“只有科技与文艺、与人性相结合的结晶才能让我们的心灵放声歌唱。”作为一位科技公司总裁，这样的一番话是很不寻常的。