一個新孩子
The Apple II took the company from Jobs's garage to the pinnacle of a new industry.
Apple II的問世把蘋果公司從喬布斯家的車庫推向了一個新興產業的頂峰。
Its sales rose dramatically, from 2,500 units in 1977 to 210,000 in 1981.
它的銷量急劇上升,從1977年的2500臺猛增到1981年的21萬臺。
But Jobs was restless.
但是喬布斯并沒有滿足。
The Apple II could not remain successful forever, and he knew that, no matter how much he had done to package it, from power cord to case, it would always be seen as Wozniak's masterpiece.
Apple II不可能長盛不衰,而且他知道,無論自己如何從電源線到機箱對其進行包裝,人們永遠都只會將它視為沃茲尼亞克的杰作。
He needed his own machine.
他需要一臺屬于他的電腦。
More than that, he wanted a product that would, in his words, make a dent in the universe.
不僅如此,用他自己的話說,他需要一個在宇宙中留下印跡的產品。
At first he hoped that the Apple III would play that role.
最初,他希望Apple III能承擔這個角色。
It would have more memory, the screen would display eighty characters across rather than forty, and it would handle uppercase and lowercase letters.
Apple III內存更大,屏幕可以一行顯示80個字符而不是40個,并且能區分大小寫字母。
Indulging his passion for industrial design, Jobs decreed the size and shape of the external case, and he refused to let anyone alter it, even as committees of engineers added more components to the circuit boards.
沉浸在對工業設計的狂熱中的喬布斯,嚴格限定了機箱的尺寸和形狀,并拒絕任何人對其進行修改,即便是在工程師往電路板上增加了更多的部件之后。
The result was piggybacked boards with poor connectors that frequently failed.
其緒果是附加的小電路板因連接不穩定而頻繁失靈。
When the Apple III began shipping in May 1980, it flopped.
1980年55月,Apple III上市,但銷量慘淡。
Randy Wigginton, one of the engineers, summed it up: "The Apple III was kind of like a baby conceived during a group orgy, and later everybody had this bad headache, and there's this bastard child, and everyone says, 'It's not mine.'"
工程師蘭迪·威金頓總結道:“Apple III有點兒像集體狂歡時懷上的孩子,事后大家都頭痛得厲害,至于這個野孩子,人人都說不是自己的?!?/div>
By then Jobs had distanced himself from the Apple III and was thrashing about for ways to produce something more radically different.
那個時候,喬布斯已經疏遠了Apple III項目,正焦急地想辦法創造出更加與眾不同的東西。
At first he flirted with the idea of touchscreens, but he found himself frustrated.
起初他想過用觸摸屏,但后來又泄氣了。
At one demonstration of the technology, he arrived late, fidgeted awhile, then abruptly cut off the engineers in the middle of their presentation with a brusque "Thank you."
一次觸摸屏技術的演示會上,他遲到了,坐立不安地待了一會兒,然后突然打斷了正在演示的工程師,很無禮地說了句“謝謝你們”。
They were confused.
工程師們被他弄糊涂了。
"Would you like us to leave?" one asked.
“你想要我們離開嗎?”其中一個問道。
Jobs said yes, then berated his colleagues for wasting his time.
喬布斯說是的,然后就痛斥同事們浪費了他的時間。
Then he and Apple hired two engineers from Hewlett-Packard to conceive a totally new computer.
之后,他和蘋果公司從惠普雇來了兩名工程師,設計一臺全新的電腦。
The name Jobs chose for it would have caused even the most jaded psychiatrist to do a double take: the Lisa.
喬布斯為新電腦挑選的名字能讓最遲鈍的精神病醫生也聞之一怔,隨后恍然大悟:麗薩。
Other computers had been named after daughters of their designers, but Lisa was a daughter Jobs had abandoned and had not yet fully admitted was his.
其他電腦也有以設計者女兒的名字命名的,但是麗薩是被喬布斯拋棄的女兒,他甚至還沒有完全承認那孩子是自己的。
"Maybe he was doing it out of guilt," said Andrea Cunningham, who worked at Regis McKenna on public relations for the project.
“他這么做也許是出于內疚吧。”安德烈·坎寧安說,她當時供職于里吉斯·麥肯納公司,負責麗薩項目的公關事務。
"We had to come up with an acronym so that we could claim it was not named after Lisa the child."
“我們要把麗薩視為一個縮略詞,想出和它對應的一句短語。這樣就可以宣稱這不是以喬布斯女兒的名字來命名的?!?/p>
來源:可可英語 http://www.ccdyzl.cn/Article/201508/393460.shtml