Silicon Valley

硅谷

The childhood that Paul and Clara Jobs created for their new son was, in many ways, a stereotype of the late 1950s. When Steve was two they adopted a girl they named Patty, and three years later they moved to a tract house in the suburbs. The finance company where Paul worked as a repo man, CIT, had transferred him down to its Palo Alto office, but he could not afford to live there, so they landed in a subdivision in Mountain View, a less expensive town just to the south.

保羅和克拉拉夫婦為他們的兒子創造的童年，從很多方面來說，都是20世紀50年代后期的典型模式。喬布斯兩歲那年，他們領養了一個女兒，取名為帕蒂，3年后他們搬到了郊區的一棟房子里。保羅擔任“回收人”的CIT信貸公司將他調到了帕洛奧圖的辦事處，但他承受不起那里高昂的生活費用，所以他們選擇了在南邊的山景城落腳，那里的生活開銷相對低廉。

There Paul tried to pass along his love of mechanics and cars. “Steve, this is your workbench now,” he said as he marked off a section of the table in their garage. Jobs remembered being impressed by his father’s focus on craftsmanship. “I thought my dad’s sense of design was pretty good,” he said, “because he knew how to build anything. If we needed a cabinet, he would build it. When he built our fence, he gave me a hammer so I could work with him.”

保羅·喬布斯想把自己對機械和汽車的熱愛傳遞給兒子。“史蒂夫，從現在開始這就是你的工作臺了。”他邊說邊在車庫里的桌子上劃出一塊。喬布斯還記得父親對手工技藝的專注曾讓自己印象深刻。“我覺得爸爸的設計感很好，”他說，“因為他什么都會做。要是家里缺個柜子，他就會做一個。給家里搭柵欄的時候，他給我一把錘子，這樣我就能跟他一起干活兒了。”

Fifty years later the fence still surrounds the back and side yards of the house in Mountain View. As Jobs showed it off to me, he caressed the stockade panels and recalled a lesson that his father implanted deeply in him. It was important, his father said, to craft the backs of cabinets and fences properly, even though they were hidden. “He loved doing things right. He even cared about the look of the parts you couldn’t see.”

50年后，當年的柵欄依然包圍著山景城那處房子與院落。喬布斯向我展示的時候，輕撫著柵欄的木板，回想起了父親深深植入他腦中的一課。老喬布斯說，把柜子和柵欄的背面制作好也十分重要，盡管這些地方人們是看不到的。“他喜歡追求完美，即使別人看不到的地方他也會很關心。”

His father continued to refurbish and resell used cars, and he festooned the garage with pictures of his favorites. He would point out the detailing of the design to his son: the lines, the vents, the chrome, the trim of the seats. After work each day, he would change into his dungarees and retreat to the garage, often with Steve tagging along. “I figured I could get him nailed down with a little mechanical ability, but he really wasn’t interested in getting his hands dirty,” Paul later recalled. “He never really cared too much about mechanical things.”

父親繼續著翻新、出售二手車的事業，并在車庫里貼滿了他喜愛的汽車的圖片。他會向兒子介紹車輛設計的細節——線條、排氣孔、鉻合金以及座椅的裝飾。每天下班后，他就換上工作服，窩在車庫里，史蒂夫也常常跟著他。“我原本想讓他掌握一點兒機械方面的技能，但他不愿意把手弄臟，”保羅后來回憶說，“他從沒有真正喜歡過機械方面的東西。”

“I wasn’t that into fixing cars,” Jobs admitted. “But I was eager to hang out with my dad.” Even as he was growing more aware that he had been adopted, he was becoming more attached to his father. One day when he was about eight, he discovered a photograph of his father from his time in the Coast Guard. “He’s in the engine room, and he’s got his shirt off and looks like James Dean. It was one of those Oh wow moments for a kid. Wow, oooh, my parents were actually once very young and really good-looking.”

在引擎蓋下修修補補根本吸引不了喬布斯。“我對修汽車沒什么興趣。但我特別喜歡跟爸爸待在一起。”即使隨著年齡的增長，他越來越意識到自己是被領養的，他還是越來越喜歡跟爸爸黏在一起。喬布斯差不多8歲的時候，有一天他發現了一張父親在海岸警衛隊時的照片。“他在輪機艙里，上身赤裸，看上去很像詹姆斯·迪恩。對一個孩子來說，那一刻只能用‘哇，天哪’來形容了。哇，天哪！我的父母也曾經年輕過，而且長相也很不錯。”

Through cars, his father gave Steve his first exposure to electronics. “My dad did not have a deep understanding of electronics, but he’d encountered it a lot in automobiles and other things he would fix. He showed me the rudiments of electronics, and I got very interested in that.” Even more interesting were the trips to scavenge for parts. “Every weekend, there’d be a junkyard trip. We’d be looking for a generator, a carburetor, all sorts of components.” He remembered watching his father negotiate at the counter. “He was a good bargainer, because he knew better than the guys at the counter what the parts should cost.” This helped fulfill the pledge his parents made when he was adopted. “My college fund came from my dad paying $50 for a Ford Falcon or some other beat-up car that didn’t run, working on it for a few weeks, and selling it for $250—and not telling the IRS.”

通過汽車，父親讓史蒂夫第一次接觸到了電子設備。“他對電子設備并沒有很深的了解，但他經常在汽車以及其他修理對象上跟電子設備打交道。他為我展示了電子設備的基本原理，我覺得很有趣。”更有趣的是去廢品堆里尋找零部件的過程。“每個周末，我們都會進行一次廢品站之旅。我們會尋找發電機，或者化油器，還有各種各樣的元件。”他還記得看著父親在柜臺前談價格。“他很揸長討價還價，因為他比賣家更清楚零件的合理價格。”這一點對于實現他父母當初領養他時許下的承諾很有幫助。“我上大學的錢是這么來的：我父親會花50美元買下一輛已經開不動的福特獵鷹（FordFalcon）或者其他什么破車，花幾個星期修好它，然后以250美元的價格賣出去——而且他不會去報稅。”

The Jobses’ house and the others in their neighborhood were built by the real estate developer Joseph Eichler, whose company spawned more than eleven thousand homes in various California subdivisions between 1950 and 1974. Inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright’s vision of simple modern homes for the American “everyman,” Eichler built inexpensive houses that featured floor-to-ceiling glass walls, open floor plans, exposed post-and-beam construction, concrete slab floors, and lots of sliding glass doors. “Eichler did a great thing,” Jobs said on one of our walks around the neighborhood. “His houses were smart and cheap and good. They brought clean design and simple taste to lower-income people. They had awesome little features, like radiant heating in the floors. You put carpet on them, and we had nice toasty floors when we were kids.”

喬布斯家的房子位于迪亞布洛大道286號，和他們周圍的房子一樣，都是由房地產開發商約瑟夫·埃奇勒（JosephEichler）建造的，他的公司于19501974年間，在加州的各個地區興建了超過11000座房屋。受到弗蘭克·勞埃德·賴特（FrankLloydWright）“適合美國普通百姓的簡單現代之家”這一設想的啟發，埃奇勒建造了廉價房屋，這些房屋的特點是：落地的玻璃墻、開放式的平面設計、無遮蔽的梁柱構造、混凝土地面以及大量的滑動玻璃門。“埃奇勒做得很好，”喬布斯有一次和我在附近散步時說，“他造的房子整潔漂亮，價格低廉，質量優秀。他們把干凈的設計和簡潔的品位帯給了低收入人群。房子本身有很棒的小特色，比如地板下安裝了熱輻射供曖設施。我們小的時候，鋪上地毯，躺在上面，溫曖舒適。”

Jobs said that his appreciation for Eichler homes instilled in him a passion for making nicely designed products for the mass market. “I love it when you can bring really great design and simple capability to something that doesn’t cost much,” he said as he pointed out the clean elegance of the houses. “It was the original vision for Apple. That’s what we tried to do with the first Mac. That’s what we did with the iPod.”

喬布斯說，他對埃奇勒建造的房屋的欣賞，激發了他為大眾制造設計精良的產品的熱情。“我喜歡把很棒的設計和簡便的功能融入產品中，而且不會太貴，”他一邊向我指出這些房屋的干凈典雅之處，一邊說道，“這是蘋果公司最初的設想，我們在制造第一臺Mac電腦時就嘗試這么做，并在iPod上實現了這個設想。”

Across the street from the Jobs family lived a man who had become successful as a real estate agent. “He wasn’t that bright,” Jobs recalled, “but he seemed to be making a fortune. So my dad thought, ‘I can do that.’ He worked so hard, I remember. He took these night classes, passed the license test, and got into real estate. Then the bottom fell out of the market.” As a result, the family found itself financially strapped for a year or so while Steve was in elementary school. His mother took a job as a bookkeeper for Varian Associates, a company that made scientific instruments, and they took out a second mortgage. One day his fourth-grade teacher asked him, “What is it you don’t understand about the universe?” Jobs replied, “I don’t understand why all of a sudden my dad is so broke.” He was proud that his father never adopted a servile attitude or slick style that may have made him a better salesman. “You had to suck up to people to sell real estate, and he wasn’t good at that and it wasn’t in his nature. I admired him for that.” Paul Jobs went back to being a mechanic.

喬布斯家的對面曾經住著一個成功的房地產經紀人。“他也不是很聰明，”喬布斯回憶說，“但看起來他好像賺了不少錢。于是我爸爸就想：‘我也能干這一行啊。’我記得他拼命努力，去上夜校，通過了執照考試，進入了房地產業。緊接著，房地產市場崩潰了。”結果，喬布斯一家經濟拮據了差不多一年時間，當時史蒂夫還在上小學。他媽媽在生產科學儀器的瓦里安聯合公司（VarianAssociates）找到了一份記賬員的工作，他們家也給房子辦理了第二份抵押貸款。有一天，他的四年級老師問他：“關于這個世界，你有什么不明白的？”喬布斯回答說：“我不明白為什么我爸爸一夜之間就破產了。”雖然如此，喬布斯還是很為父親感到驕傲，因為他從來沒有學會那種卑躬屈膝的態度和圓滑詭詐的作風，盡管這些特質能讓他成為一個業績更好的經紀人。“想賣出房子，你就必須巴結別人，爸爸不擅長這個，他本性也不是這樣的人。這一點我很欽佩他。”保羅·喬布斯做回了老本行——機械師。