CHAPTER THIRTEEN第十三章

BUILDING THE MAC

制造Mac

The Journey Is the Reward

過程就是獎(jiǎng)勵(lì)

Competition

競爭

When IBM introduced its personal computer in August 1981, Jobs had his team buy one and dissect it. Their consensus was that it sucked. Chris Espinosa called it “a half-assed, hackneyed attempt,” and there was some truth to that. It used old-fashioned command-line prompts and didn’t support bitmapped graphical displays. Apple became cocky, not realizing that corporate technology managers might feel more comfortable buying from an established company like IBM rather than one named after a piece of fruit. Bill Gates happened to be visiting Apple headquarters for a meeting on the day the IBM PC was announced. “They didn’t seem to care,” he said. “It took them a year to realize what had happened.”

1981年8月，IBM推出了他們的個(gè)人電腦，喬布斯讓自己的團(tuán)隊(duì)買了一臺(tái)并進(jìn)行了詳細(xì)的分析。大家一致認(rèn)為這是個(gè)很糟糕的產(chǎn)品，克里斯·埃斯皮諾薩稱其“性能低下、毫無創(chuàng)新”，這話不無道理。它使用的是過時(shí)的命令行提示符，屏幕也只能顯示字符，而不是圖形界面的位圖顯示。蘋果的員工顯得過于自信了，他們沒有意識(shí)到，企業(yè)的技術(shù)經(jīng)理也許更愿意從IBM這樣的老牌企業(yè)購買產(chǎn)品，而不是他們這家以水果命名的公司。IBM發(fā)布個(gè)人電腦的那天，比爾·蓋茨恰巧在蘋果公司的總部參加一場會(huì)議?！八麄兛瓷先ジ静辉谝?，”他說，“他們用了一年時(shí)間才意識(shí)到發(fā)生了什么?！?/span>

Reflecting its cheeky confidence, Apple took out a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal with the headline “Welcome, IBM. Seriously.” It cleverly positioned the upcoming computer battle as a two-way contest between the spunky and rebellious Apple and the establishment Goliath IBM, conveniently relegating to irrelevance companies such as Commodore, Tandy, and Osborne that were doing just as well as Apple.

有一件事情表現(xiàn)出了蘋果公司狂妄的自信：他們在《華爾街日報(bào)》上刊登了一幅整版廣告，標(biāo)題是：“歡迎你，IBM。真的歡迎。”它把即將來臨的電腦產(chǎn)業(yè)大戰(zhàn)定位成了兩家公司之間的競爭：生氣蓬勃而又叛逆的蘋果和老牌巨頭IBM。而當(dāng)時(shí)和蘋果公司表現(xiàn)同樣出色的康懋達(dá)公司、坦迪公司（Tandy）以及奧斯本，則被歸入了“不相干公司”的行列。

Throughout his career, Jobs liked to see himself as an enlightened rebel pitted against evil empires, a Jedi warrior or Buddhist samurai fighting the forces of darkness. IBM was his perfect foil. He cleverly cast the upcoming battle not as a mere business competition, but as a spiritual struggle. “If, for some reason, we make some giant mistakes and IBM wins, my personal feeling is that we are going to enter sort of a computer Dark Ages for about twenty years,” he told an interviewer. “Once IBM gains control of a market sector, they almost always stop innovation.” Even thirty years later, reflecting back on the competition, Jobs cast it as a holy crusade: “IBM was essentially Microsoft at its worst. They were not a force for innovation; they were a force for evil. They were like ATT or Microsoft or Google is.”

喬布斯在整個(gè)職業(yè)生涯中，都喜歡把自己看做對(duì)抗邪惡帝國的反抗者，一名與黑暗力量作斗爭的絕地戰(zhàn)士或是佛教武士。IBM是他的完美陪襯。喬布斯把即將到來的產(chǎn)業(yè)戰(zhàn)爭看做商業(yè)競爭和精神較量的結(jié)合體?！叭绻?yàn)槟硞€(gè)原因，我們犯下了巨大的錯(cuò)誤，贏了我們，那我個(gè)人的感覺就是，我們將進(jìn)入計(jì)算機(jī)領(lǐng)域長達(dá)20年的黑暗時(shí)代。”他告訴一個(gè)采訪者，“一旦IBM控制了市場，他們幾乎總是會(huì)停止創(chuàng)新?！奔词?0年后的現(xiàn)在，在回顧那場競爭時(shí)，喬布斯還是把它當(dāng)做神圣的改革運(yùn)動(dòng)：“IBM本質(zhì)上就是最差狀態(tài)下的微軟公司。他們不是創(chuàng)新的力量，而是邪惡的力量。IBM就像AT&T、微軟或者谷歌一樣。”

Unfortunately for Apple, Jobs also took aim at another perceived competitor to his Macintosh: the company’s own Lisa. Partly it was psychological. He had been ousted from that group, and now he wanted to beat it. He also saw healthy rivalry as a way to motivate his troops. That’s why he bet John Couch $5,000 that the Mac would ship before the Lisa. The problem was that the rivalry became unhealthy. Jobs repeatedly portrayed his band of engineers as the cool kids on the block, in contrast to the plodding HP engineer types working on the Lisa.

對(duì)于蘋果公司來說不幸的是，喬布斯還將矛頭對(duì)準(zhǔn)了麥金塔的另一個(gè)競爭對(duì)手：蘋果公司自家生產(chǎn)的麗薩。這么做一定程度上是心理原因。他曾經(jīng)遭到過麗薩項(xiàng)目的驅(qū)逐，現(xiàn)在他要打敗它。喬布斯還認(rèn)為，良性的競爭也是一種激勵(lì)下屬的方法。正因如此，他才跟約翰·庫奇打賭5000美元，賭Mac會(huì)在麗薩之前上市。問題是，競爭逐漸變成了惡性的。喬布斯總是把自己手下的一幫工程師描繪成酷小孩，與麗薩團(tuán)隊(duì)那群惠普工程師風(fēng)格的無趣之人形成了鮮明對(duì)照。

More substantively, when he moved away from Jef Raskin’s plan for an inexpensive and underpowered portable appliance and reconceived the Mac as a desktop machine with a graphical user interface, it became a scaled-down version of the Lisa that would likely undercut it in the marketplace.

更實(shí)質(zhì)性的問題是，他當(dāng)初放棄了杰夫·拉斯金生產(chǎn)廉價(jià)、低性能便攜電腦的計(jì)劃，將Mac重新定義為擁有圖形用戶界面的臺(tái)式機(jī)，這樣一來“狀就成為了小尺寸版本的麗薩，很有可能削弱麗薩的市場影響力。當(dāng)喬布斯敦促伯勒爾·史密斯圍繞摩托羅拉68000微處理器來設(shè)計(jì)Mac，并讓Mac的運(yùn)行速度超過了麗薩時(shí)，這一點(diǎn)顯得愈加真實(shí)。

Larry Tesler, who managed application software for the Lisa, realized that it would be important to design both machines to use many of the same software programs. So to broker peace, he arranged for Smith and Hertzfeld to come to the Lisa work space and demonstrate the Mac prototype. Twenty-five engineers showed up and were listening politely when, halfway into the presentation, the door burst open. It was Rich Page, a volatile engineer who was responsible for much of the Lisa’s design. “The Macintosh is going to destroy the Lisa!” he shouted. “The Macintosh is going to ruin Apple!” Neither Smith nor Hertzfeld responded, so Page continued his rant. “Jobs wants to destroy Lisa because we wouldn’t let him control it,” he said, looking as if he were about to cry. “Nobody’s going to buy a Lisa because they know the Mac is coming! But you don’t care!” He stormed out of the room and slammed the door, but a moment later he barged back in briefly. “I know it’s not your fault,” he said to Smith and Hertzfeld. “Steve Jobs is the problem. Tell Steve that he’s destroying Apple!”

負(fù)責(zé)管理麗薩電腦應(yīng)用軟件的拉里·特斯勒意識(shí)到了一件很重要的事情，就是讓許多軟件在兩款機(jī)器上都能使用。于是，為了促成兩個(gè)團(tuán)隊(duì)間的和平，他安排史密斯和赫茨菲爾德來到了麗薩的工作區(qū)，展示一下Mac的樣機(jī)。25名工程師聚到了一起，正當(dāng)大家在認(rèn)真聆聽、演示進(jìn)行到一半的時(shí)候，門被猛然推開了。沖進(jìn)來的是里奇·佩奇（RichPage）,他負(fù)責(zé)麗薩的大部分設(shè)計(jì)工作，是一個(gè)反復(fù)無常的工程師。“麥金塔會(huì)毀了麗薩的！”他吼道，“麥金塔也會(huì)毀了蘋果公司！”史密斯和赫茨菲爾德都沒有作出回應(yīng)，于是佩奇繼續(xù)咆哮：“喬布斯想要?dú)Я他愃_，就因?yàn)槲覀儧]讓他來管，”他說著，好像要哭出來一樣：“沒人會(huì)買麗薩的，因?yàn)榇蠹叶贾繫ac就要問世了！但你們根本不在乎！”他沖出房間，砰地關(guān)上了門，但過了一會(huì)兒又闖了進(jìn)來。“我知道這不是你們的錯(cuò)，”他對(duì)史密斯和赫茨菲爾德說，“史蒂夫·喬布斯才是問題所在，告訴史蒂夫，他正在毀掉蘋果公司！”

Jobs did indeed make the Macintosh into a low-cost competitor to the Lisa, one with incompatible software. Making matters worse was that neither machine was compatible with the Apple II. With no one in overall charge at Apple, there was no chance of keeping Jobs in harness.

喬布斯的確把麥金塔變成了麗薩的低價(jià)競爭者，并且使用的是麗薩不能兼容的軟件。更糟糕的是，這兩款機(jī)器與AppleII都不兼容。蘋果沒有人全面管理公司，也就沒有人能管得住喬布斯。