“Not a Ferrari, that’s not right either,” Jobs countered. “It should be more like a Porsche!” Jobs owned a Porsche 928 at the time. When Bill Atkinson was over one weekend, Jobs brought him outside to admire the car. “Great art stretches the taste, it doesn’t follow tastes,” he told Atkinson. He also admired the design of the Mercedes. “Over the years, they’ve made the lines softer but the details starker,” he said one day as he walked around the parking lot. “That’s what we have to do with the Macintosh.”

“法拉利也不對，”喬布斯反駁，“應該更像保時捷！”這么說并不奇怪，喬布斯當時就擁有一輛保時捷928。（費里斯后來離開了蘋果公司，到保時捷擔任廣告經理。）一個周末，比爾·阿特金森來了，喬布斯把他帶到外面去欣賞那輛保時捷。他告訴阿特金森：“偉大的藝術品不必追隨潮流，它們自身就可以引領潮流。”他還十分欣賞奔馳汽車的設計。“多年來，他們把汽車的線條做得更加柔和，但細節之處的用心依然清晰可見，”一次他在停車場周圍散步時說，“這正是我們要在麥金塔電腦上實現的目標。”

Oyama drafted a preliminary design and had a plaster model made. The Mac team gathered around for the unveiling and expressed their thoughts. Hertzfeld called it “cute.” Others also seemed satisfied. Then Jobs let loose a blistering burst of criticism. “It’s way too boxy, it’s got to be more curvaceous. The radius of the first chamfer needs to be bigger, and I don’t like the size of the bevel.” With his new fluency in industrial design lingo, Jobs was referring to the angular or curved edge connecting the sides of the computer. But then he gave a resounding compliment. “It’s a start,” he said.

大山特里擬出了一個初步設計方案，并制作了一個石膏模型。Mac團隊的成員們聚集到一起觀看展示然后發表自己的看法。赫茨菲爾德大贊“可愛”，其他人似乎也很滿意。但喬布斯卻給出了猛烈的批評：“這造型太方正了，必須再多一些曲線美的感覺。第一個倒角的半徑要再大一點兒，斜角的尺寸我也不大喜歡。”他把剛剛熟練掌握的工業設計術語用上了，其實指的就是電腦相鄰兩個面之間的彎曲過渡。但緊接著，喬布斯還是給出了一句響亮的稱贊。他說：“這是一個開始。”

Every month or so, Manock and Oyama would present a new iteration based on Jobs’s previous criticisms. The latest plaster model would be dramatically unveiled, and all the previous attempts would be lined up next to it. That not only helped them gauge the design’s evolution, but it prevented Jobs from insisting that one of his suggestions had been ignored. “By the fourth model, I could barely distinguish it from the third one,” said Hertzfeld, “but Steve was always critical and decisive, saying he loved or hated a detail that I could barely perceive.”

每一個月左右，馬諾克和大山都會將這樣的流程重復一次，當然是根據喬布斯前一次的枇評進行了改進。每次最新的模型都會像變戲法一樣現出廬山真面目，而前幾次的模型則在它旁邊一字排開。這不僅有助于大家對改進之處給予評價，也能防止喬布斯堅稱自己的某條建議或意見被忽視了。“到第四個模型的時候，我已經很難看出它跟上一個之間的不同了。”赫茨菲爾德說，“但史蒂夫總是很挑剔也很肯定地說，他喜歡或者討厭某個細節，而他說的東西是我幾乎無法覺察到的。”

One weekend Jobs went to Macy’s in Palo Alto and again spent time studying appliances, especially the Cuisinart. He came bounding into the Mac office that Monday, asked the design team to go buy one, and made a raft of new suggestions based on its lines, curves, and bevels.

一個周末，喬布斯去了帕洛奧圖的梅西百貨，又開始研究各種電器，特別是廚藝公司的產品。周一，他沖進辦公室，讓設計團隊去買了一臺廚藝公司的電器，然后根據它的輪廓、曲線和斜角提出了一系列新的建議。于是大山嘗試了一種新的設計，但看上去就像是一臺廚房電器，喬布斯覺得行不通。這讓整個進程停頓了一個星期，最終，喬布斯還是批準了Mac的機箱設計。

Jobs kept insisting that the machine should look friendly. As a result, it evolved to resemble a human face. With the disk drive built in below the screen, the unit was taller and narrower than most computers, suggesting a head. The recess near the base evoked a gentle chin, and Jobs narrowed the strip of plastic at the top so that it avoided the Neanderthal forehead that made the Lisa subtly unattractive. The patent for the design of the Apple case was issued in the name of Steve Jobs as well as Manock and Oyama. “Even though Steve didn’t draw any of the lines, his ideas and inspiration made the design what it is,” Oyama later said. “To be honest, we didn’t know what it meant for a computer to be ‘friendly’ until Steve told us.”

喬布斯一直堅持電腦的外形必須友好。所以，它不斷地改進，看上去就像一張人臉。磁盤驅動器安裝在屏幕的下方，使得整臺機器比大多數電腦都要狹長，使人聯想到一張臉。靠近底座有一塊凹進去的地方，就像是下巴；喬布斯還把頂端的塑料邊框變得更細，這樣麥金塔就不會像麗薩那樣有個克魯馬努人（Cro-Magnon）般的額頭，外形更加好看。這款蘋果機箱的設計專利屬于史蒂夫·喬布斯、杰里·馬諾克和大山特里。“雖然這個設計不是史蒂夫親手畫出來的，但正是他的思想和靈感成就了這個設計。”大山后來說，“老實說，在史蒂夫告訴我們之前，我們根本不知道電腦的‘友好’指的是什么。”

Jobs obsessed with equal intensity about the look of what would appear on the screen. One day Bill Atkinson burst into Texaco Towers all excited. He had just come up with a brilliant algorithm that could draw circles and ovals onscreen quickly. The math for making circles usually required calculating square roots, which the 68000 microprocessor didn’t support. But Atkinson did a workaround based on the fact that the sum of a sequence of odd numbers produces a sequence of perfect squares (for example, 1 + 3 = 4, 1 + 3 + 5 = 9, etc.). Hertzfeld recalled that when Atkinson fired up his demo, everyone was impressed except Jobs. “Well, circles and ovals are good,” he said, “but how about drawing rectangles with rounded corners?”

喬布斯對于屏幕上顯示的內容也同樣癡迷。有一天，比爾·阿特金森興奮地沖進德士古塔。他剛剛想出了一個絕妙的算法，可以在屏幕上快速畫出和橢圓。要在屏幕上畫圓，通常需要計算平方根，而68000微處理器并不支持這個功能。但阿特金森想出了一個變通的方法，因為他發現，一組奇數序列相加，可以得到一組完全平方數序列（例如，1+3=4，1+3+5=9,等等）。赫茨菲爾德回憶說，在阿特金森演示的時候，所有人都震驚了，除了喬布斯。“圓和橢圓挺好的，”他說，“不過，要是能畫出帶圓角的矩形，你覺得怎么樣？”

“I don’t think we really need it,” said Atkinson, who explained that it would be almost impossible to do. “I wanted to keep the graphics routines lean and limit them to the primitives that truly needed to be done,” he recalled.

“我認為我們用不著這個。”阿特金森說道，他解釋說那幾乎是不可能做到的。“我想把圖形程序做得精簡一點，能滿足基本的需要就可以了。”他回憶道。

“Rectangles with rounded corners are everywhere!” Jobs said, jumping up and getting more intense. “Just look around this room!” He pointed out the whiteboard and the tabletop and other objects that were rectangular with rounded corners. “And look outside, there’s even more, practically everywhere you look!” He dragged Atkinson out for a walk, pointing out car windows and billboards and street signs. “Within three blocks, we found seventeen examples,” said Jobs. “I started pointing them out everywhere until he was completely convinced.”

“圓角矩形到處都有啊！”喬布斯說著就跳了起來，顯得更加激動，“你就看看這個房間里！”他指出白板、桌面和其他一些東西都是帶圓角的矩形。“你再看看外面，更多，基本上哪兒都有！”他把阿特金森拖出去轉了一圈，指著車窗、廣告牌和街道指示牌給他看。“走了3條街，我們發現了17處這樣的例子，”喬布斯說，“走到哪里我都能指出來，后來他完全信服了。”