One of Atkinson’s amazing feats (which we are so accustomed to nowadays that we rarely marvel at it) was to allow the windows on a screen to overlap so that the “top” one clipped into the ones “below” it. Atkinson made it possible to move these windows around, just like shuffling papers on a desk, with those below becoming visible or hidden as you moved the top ones. Of course, on a computer screen there are no layers of pixels underneath the pixels that you see, so there are no windows actually lurking underneath the ones that appear to be on top. To create the illusion of overlapping windows requires complex coding that involves what are called “regions.” Atkinson pushed himself to make this trick work because he thought he had seen this capability during his visit to Xerox PARC. In fact the folks at PARC had never accomplished it, and they later told him they were amazed that he had done so. “I got a feeling for the empowering aspect of na?veté,” Atkinson said. “Because I didn’t know it couldn’t be done, I was enabled to do it.” He was working so hard that one morning, in a daze, he drove his Corvette into a parked truck and nearly killed himself. Jobs immediately drove to the hospital to see him. “We were pretty worried about you,” he said when Atkinson regained consciousness. Atkinson gave him a pained smile and replied, “Don’t worry, I still remember regions.”

阿特金森的偉大功績之一（時至今日我們已經(jīng)對它習(xí)以為常，感覺不到它的神奇）就是實現(xiàn)了屏幕上窗口間的重疊，這樣一來“上面的”窗口就疊在了“下面的”窗口上。這一功能讓人們可以像堆疊桌子上的文件紙張一樣移動屏幕上的窗口，在你移動上面的窗口時，下面的窗口就會被隱藏起來或者被顯示出來。當然，在電腦屏幕上，并沒有層層像素隱藏在你看到的畫面下，所以在你看到的“上面的”窗口之下，并沒有隱藏的窗口。制造窗口重疊的假象，需要編寫復(fù)雜的代碼，其中運用到了“區(qū)域”（Region）這樣一個概念。阿特金森強迫自己一定要做出這個效果，因為他覺得自己在施樂PARC見過這個功能。而實際上，施樂PARC的人從來沒能實現(xiàn)這個功能，他們后來還阿特金森完成這一壯舉表示了震驚。“我終于知道什么叫無知者無畏了，”阿特金森說，“正因為我不知道這個任務(wù)是如此困難，我才得以完成它。”阿特金森拚命工作，以至于一天早上，他在恍惚之中開著自己的克爾維特撞上了一輛停在路邊的卡車，差點兒送命。喬布斯立刻驅(qū)車前往醫(yī)院探望。阿特金森恢復(fù)意識后，喬布斯對他說：“我們很擔(dān)心你。”阿特金森苦笑了一下，回答道：“不用擔(dān)心，我還記得那些‘區(qū)域’。”

Jobs also had a passion for smooth scrolling. Documents should not lurch line by line as you scroll through them, but instead should flow. “He was adamant that everything on the interface had a good feeling to the user,” Atkinson said. They also wanted a mouse that could easily move the cursor in any direction, not just up-down/left-right. This required using a ball rather than the usual two wheels. One of the engineers told Atkinson that there was no way to build such a mouse commercially. After Atkinson complained to Jobs over dinner, he arrived at the office the next day to discover that Jobs had fired the engineer. When his replacement met Atkinson, his first words were, “I can build the mouse.”

喬布斯還狂熱地追求頁面滾動的平滑。當你滾動瀏覽一個文件時，文件內(nèi)容不應(yīng)該一行一行地滾動，而應(yīng)該十分平滑地予以呈現(xiàn)。“他固執(zhí)地認為，界面上的任何東西都要給使用者留下好印象。”阿特金森說。他們還想要一個可以操縱光標向任意方向移動的鼠標，而不僅僅是上下左右。這就需要使用一個滾球，而不是通常使用的兩個輪子。一個工程師告訴阿特金森，這樣的鼠標是不可能批量生產(chǎn)的。阿特金森在吃晚飯的時候向喬布斯抱怨了這件事，等他第二天上班時，發(fā)現(xiàn)那名工程師已經(jīng)被喬布斯解雇了。接任的工程師見到阿特金森的第一句話就是：“我能做出那種鼠標。”

Atkinson and Jobs became best friends for a while, eating together at the Good Earth most nights. But John Couch and the other professional engineers on his Lisa team, many of them buttoned-down HP types, resented Jobs’s meddling and were infuriated by his frequent insults. There was also a clash of visions. Jobs wanted to build a VolksLisa, a simple and inexpensive product for the masses. “There was a tug-of-war between people like me, who wanted a lean machine, and those from HP, like Couch, who were aiming for the corporate market,” Jobs recalled.

阿特金森和喬布斯在一段時間內(nèi)成為了摯友，大多數(shù)晚上都在美好地球餐廳一起吃飯。但約翰·庫奇和麗薩團隊中的其他專業(yè)工程師們（大多都是惠普工程師那種類型的傳統(tǒng)保守之人），痛恨喬布斯插手麗薩項目，也被他不斷的侮辱所激怒。雙方在觀念上也有沖突。喬布斯想要制造大眾電腦，操作簡單、價格低廉，適合普通人使用。他回憶說：“像我這樣的人，我們想要制造適合大多數(shù)人的電腦，而那幫和庫奇一樣在惠普干過的人，他們的目標是企業(yè)市場，我們之間進行了激烈的拉鋸戰(zhàn)。”

Both Mike Scott and Mike Markkula were intent on bringing some order to Apple and became increasingly concerned about Jobs’s disruptive behavior. So in September 1980, they secretly plotted a reorganization. Couch was made the undisputed manager of the Lisa division. Jobs lost control of the computer he had named after his daughter. He was also stripped of his role as vice president for research and development. He was made non-executive chairman of the board. This position allowed him to remain Apple’s public face, but it meant that he had no operating control. That hurt. “I was upset and felt abandoned by Markkula,” he said. “He and Scotty felt I wasn’t up to running the Lisa division. I brooded about it a lot.”

斯科特和馬庫拉一心要給蘋果公司帶來秩序，也越來越擔(dān)心喬布斯制造分裂的行為。于是，1980年9月，他們秘密策劃了公司的重組。庫奇成為了麗薩項目不容置疑的管理者。喬布斯失去了對以自己女兒命名的電腦的控制。他同時還被解除了研發(fā)部門副總裁的職務(wù)，被任命為董事會的非執(zhí)行主席，也就是說，他依然代表蘋果公司的公眾形象，但手中再無實權(quán)。這深深刺痛了喬布斯的心。“我很難過，感覺被馬庫拉遺棄了，”他說，“他和斯科蒂覺得我無法勝任麗薩項目的管理工作。這件事讓我郁悶地思考了很久。”