He repeatedly emphasized that Apple’s products would be clean and simple. “We will make them bright and pure and honest about being high-tech, rather than a heavy industrial look of black, black, black, black, like Sony,” he preached. “So that’s our approach. Very simple, and we’re really shooting for Museum of Modern Art quality. The way we’re running the company, the product design, the advertising, it all comes down to this: Let’s make it simple. Really simple.” Apple’s design mantra would remain the one featured on its first brochure: “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

他反復強調蘋果公司的產品會是干凈而簡涪的。“我們會把產品做得光亮又純凈，能展現高科技感，而不是一味使用黑色、黑色、黑色，滿是沉重的工業感，就像索尼那樣。”他朗聲說道，“我們的設計思想就是：極致的簡約，我們追求的是能讓產品達到在現代藝術博物館展出的品質。我們管理公司、設計產品、廣告宣傳的理念就是一句話：讓我們做得簡單一點，真正的簡單?！碧O果奉行的這一原則也在它的第一版宣傳冊上得到了突出：“至繁歸于至簡。”

Jobs felt that design simplicity should be linked to making products easy to use. Those goals do not always go together. Sometimes a design can be so sleek and simple that a user finds it intimidating or unfriendly to navigate. “The main thing in our design is that we have to make things intuitively obvious,” Jobs told the crowd of design mavens. For example, he extolled the desktop metaphor he was creating for the Macintosh. “People know how to deal with a desktop intuitively. If you walk into an office, there are papers on the desk. The one on the top is the most important. People know how to switch priority. Part of the reason we model our computers on metaphors like the desktop is that we can leverage this experience people already have.”

喬布斯認為，簡約化設計的一個核心要素就是讓人能直觀地感覺到它的簡單易用。設計上的簡單并不總能帶來操作上的簡易。有時候，設計得太漂亮、太簡化，用戶用起來反而不會那么得心應手?！拔覀冏髟O計的時候，最重要的事情就是讓產品特性一目了然?！眴滩妓垢嬖V一群設計專家。作為例子，他高度贊揚自己為麥金塔電腦創造的桌面概念：“人們直觀上就知道該怎么處理桌面。你走進辦公室，桌子上有一堆文件。放在最上面的就是最重要的。人們知道怎樣轉換優先級。我們在設計電腦的時候引入桌面這個概念，一定程度上就是想充分利用人們已經擁有的這一經驗?！?/span>

Speaking at the same time as Jobs that Wednesday afternoon, but in a smaller seminar room, was Maya Lin, twenty-three, who had been catapulted into fame the previous November when her Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C. They struck up a close friendship, and Jobs invited her to visit Apple. “I came to work with Steve for a week,” Lin recalled. “I asked him, ‘Why do computers look like clunky TV sets? Why don’t you make something thin? Why not a flat laptop?’” Jobs replied that this was indeed his goal, as soon as the technology was ready.

那個周三下午，在喬布斯演講的同時，另一場演講正在一個小型會議室里進行，發言人是23歲的林瓔（MayaLin）。前一年的11月份，林瓔設計的越南戰爭紀念碑在華盛頓落成，她也因此一舉成名。喬布斯和她成了親密的朋友，并邀請她訪問蘋果公司。有林瓔這樣的人在身邊的時候，喬布斯會有些羞怯，于是他找來了黛比·科爾曼，帶著林瓔參觀。“我和史蒂夫一起工作了一個星期，”林瓔回憶說，“我問他，為什么電腦看上去就像笨重的電視機？為什么你們不把它做得薄一點兒？為什么不做成平板的便攜式電腦？”喬布斯回答說那正是他的目標，只是現在技術還沒有成熟。

At that time there was not much exciting happening in the realm of industrial design, Jobs felt. He had a Richard Sapper lamp, which he admired, and he also liked the furniture of Charles and Ray Eames and the Braun products of Dieter Rams. But there were no towering figures energizing the world of industrial design the way that Raymond Loewy and Herbert Bayer had done. “There really wasn’t much going on in industrial design, particularly in Silicon Valley, and Steve was very eager to change that,” said Lin. “His design sensibility is sleek but not slick, and it’s playful. He embraced minimalism, which came from his Zen devotion to simplicity, but he avoided allowing that to make his products cold. They stayed fun. He’s passionate and super-serious about design, but at the same time there’s a sense of play.”

那一時期，喬布斯覺得工業設計領域沒有多少令人興奮的事情。他有一盞理查德·薩珀（RichardSapper）設計的臺燈，這是他很欣賞的一個作品，同時，他還喜歡伊姆斯夫婦（CharlesandRayEames）設計的家具，以及迪特爾·拉姆斯（DieterRams）設計的博朗產品。但沒有人能像當年的雷蒙德·洛伊（RaymondLoewy）和赫伯特·拜爾兩位大師一樣，推動工業設計領域的發展。“工業設計界真的沒有什么激動人心的事情，尤其是在硅谷，而史蒂夫急切盼望改變這一局面?！绷汁嬚f，“他的設計理念是：造型優美，但不能華而不實，同時還要充滿樂趣。他崇尚極簡派的設計風格，這源自他作為一名佛教禪宗信徒對簡單的熱愛，同時他又竭力避免陷入過度的簡單而讓產品顯得冷冰冰的，要使產品的趣味感得以保留。他對待設計充滿熱情、極其嚴肅，同時，其中也帶有一點玩樂精神。”

As Jobs’s design sensibilities evolved, he became particularly attracted to the Japanese style and began hanging out with its stars, such as Issey Miyake and I. M. Pei. His Buddhist training was a big influence. “I have always found Buddhism, Japanese Zen Buddhism in particular, to be aesthetically sublime,” he said. “The most sublime thing I’ve ever seen are the gardens around Kyoto. I’m deeply moved by what that culture has produced, and it’s directly from Zen Buddhism.”

隨著喬布斯設計鑒賞力的不斷提升，他開始尤其青睞日式風格，還漸漸地和三宅一生及貝聿銘這樣的明星人物進行更多接觸，比如他的禪修對此有很大的影響?！拔乙恢倍颊J為佛教——尤其是日本的佛教禪宗——在審美上是超群的。”他說，“我見過的最美的設計，就是京都地區的花園，這一文化的產物深深打動了我，而它們都直接源自佛教禪宗?！?/span>

Like a Porsche

像保時捷那樣

Jef Raskin’s vision for the Macintosh was that it would be like a boxy carry-on suitcase, which would be closed by flipping up the keyboard over the front screen. When Jobs took over the project, he decided to sacrifice portability for a distinctive design that wouldn’t take up much space on a desk. He plopped down a phone book and declared, to the horror of the engineers, that it shouldn’t have a footprint larger than that. So his design team of Jerry Manock and Terry Oyama began working on ideas that had the screen above the computer box, with a keyboard that was detachable.

杰夫·拉斯金設想中的麥金塔電腦就像一只四四方方的手提箱，可以將鍵盤翻起來蓋住屏幕從而合上電腦箱。喬布斯接管項目之后，他決定犧牲便攜性，改用一個不會占用太多桌面空間的獨特設計。他把一本電話簿扔到眾人面前，然后宣布，電腦占用的桌面面積不能超過這本電話簿，這讓一群工程師嚇傻了眼。于是，設計團隊的負責人杰里·馬諾克和他雇來的天才設計師大山特里（TerryOyama）開始研究一個方案：將屏幕放到機箱的上方，再用上可拆卸的鍵盤。

One day in March 1981, Andy Hertzfeld came back to the office from dinner to find Jobs hovering over their one Mac prototype in intense discussion with the creative services director, James Ferris. “We need it to have a classic look that won’t go out of style, like the Volkswagen Beetle,” Jobs said. From his father he had developed an appreciation for the contours of classic cars.

1981年3月的一天，安迪·赫茨菲爾德吃完飯回到辦公室，發現喬布斯正站在一臺麥金塔樣機旁，和公司的創意總監詹姆斯·費里斯（JamesFerris）激烈地爭論著?！拔覀円O計出一個經典的外形，不會過時的那種，就像大眾的甲殼蟲汽車一樣。”喬布斯說。受他父親的影響，他對經典車型的外形輪廓十分贊賞。

“No, that’s not right,” Ferris replied. “The lines should be voluptuous, like a Ferrari.”

“不，不對，”費里斯說，“外形應該很性感誘人，就像法拉利那樣。”