評論
打印
Things Fall Apart
萬物解體
When Jobs unveiled the NeXT computer in 1988, there was a burst of excitement.
當喬布斯1988年首度推出NeXT計算機時，引起了熱烈反響。
That fizzled when the computer finally went on sale the following year.
可是到第二年計算機最終上市時，市場熱情卻退去了。
Jobs's ability to dazzle, intimidate, and spin the press began to fail him, and there was a series of stories on the company's woes.
喬布斯那種讓媒體眼花繚亂、心生敬畏、趨之若鶩的才能開始失效，負面新聞也層出不窮。
"NeXT is incompatible with other computers at a time when the industry is moving toward interchangeable systems,"
“NeXT跟其他計算機不兼容，而當時，這個行業正向操作系統可互換的方向發展，”
Bart Ziegler of Associated Press reported.
美聯社記者巴特·齊格勒報道說，
"Because relatively little software exists to run on NeXT, it has a hard time attracting customers."
“因為相對來說，可以在NeXT上使用的現有軟件很少，所以它很難吸引消費者?！?/p>
NeXT tried to reposition itself as the leader in a new category, personal workstations,
NeXT試圖將自己重新定位為一個新產品類型--個人工作站的領跑者，
for people who wanted the power of a workstation and the friendliness of a personal computer.
目標用戶是那些希望兼顧工作站的強大功能與個人計算機的友好性的人。
But those customers were by now buying them from fast-growing Sun Microsystems.
但是這類消費者當時已經從快速發展的Sim公司買到了這樣的產品。
Revenues for NeXT in 1990 were $28 million; Sun made $2.5 billion that year.
NeXT在1990年的收入是2800萬美元，而同年Sun公司的收入是25億美元。
IBM abandoned its deal to license the NeXT software, so Jobs was forced to do something against his nature:
IBM放棄了向NeXT授權軟件的協議，所以喬布斯被迫做了一件違背他本性的事情：
Despite his ingrained belief that hardware and software should be integrally linked,
雖然他根深蒂固地認為硬件和軟件應該是一個不可分割的整體，
he agreed in January 1992 to license the NeXTSTEP operating system to run on other computers.
但是在1992年1月，他同意授權NeXTSTEP操作系統在其他品牌的計算機上運行。
