CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

第十八章

NeXT

NeXT

Prometheus Unbound

自由的普羅米修斯

The Pirates Abandon Ship

海盜棄船

Upon his return from Europe in August 1985, while he was casting about for what to do next, Jobs called the Stanford biochemist Paul Berg to discuss the advances that were being made in gene splicing and recombinant DNA. Berg described how difficult it was to do experiments in a biology lab, where it could take weeks to nurture an experiment and get a result. “Why don’t you simulate them on a computer?” Jobs asked. Berg replied that computers with such capacities were too expensive for university labs. “Suddenly, he was excited about the possibilities,” Berg recalled. “He had it in his mind to start a new company. He was young and rich, and had to find something to do with the rest of his life.”

在一次由斯坦福大學校長唐納德·肯尼迪（DonaldKennedy）舉辦的午宴上，喬布斯結識了生物學家保羅·伯格（PaulBerg）。伯格是諾貝爾獎得主，閑談中對他講述了基因拼接和重組領域取得的進展。喬布斯喜歡攝取信息，尤其是和知識淵博的人在一起的時候。1985年8月，喬布斯從歐洲回來，正在琢磨接下來要做些什么。他打電話給伯格，詢問能否再聚一次。他們在斯坦福大學的校園里散步，最后在一個小咖啡店里吃午飯，探討問題。伯格向喬布斯解釋了在生物實驗室做實驗的困難程度，做一個實驗并獲得結果可能需要數周時間。“為什么不在計算機上進行模擬實驗呢？”喬布斯問道，“這樣不僅你自己能夠更快地開展實驗，而且，有一天，美國的微生物學新生都會用到保羅·伯格的基因重組軟件。”伯格解釋說，對于大學實驗室來說，具備這種能力的計算機太貴了。“突然間，喬布斯就為這種現狀所蘊含的可能性興奮起來，”伯格回憶說，“他想到要創辦一家新企業。他年輕、富有，要為自己今后的生活找點兒事做。”

Jobs had already been canvassing academics to ask what their workstation needs were. It was something he had been interested in since 1983, when he had visited the computer science department at Brown to show off the Macintosh, only to be told that it would take a far more powerful machine to do anything useful in a university lab. The dream of academic researchers was to have a workstation that was both powerful and personal. As head of the Macintosh division, Jobs had launched a project to build such a machine, which was dubbed the Big Mac. It would have a UNIX operating system but with the friendly Macintosh interface. But after Jobs was ousted from the Macintosh division, his replacement, Jean-Louis Gassée, canceled the Big Mac.

喬布斯一直以來都在拜訪學者，詢問他們對計算機工作站的潛在需求。自1983年以來，他就開始對此產生興趣。當時，他造訪布朗大學計算機科學系，向他們展示麥金塔電腦，卻被告知，在大學實驗室里要比這強大得多的機器才能做出些有用的東西。學術研究人員的夢想是擁有一臺強大的個人工作站。作為麥金塔部門的負責人，為了生產這種計算機，喬布斯推出了一個新項目。該項目被戲稱為“大Mac”（BigMac）,將采用Unix操作系統和友好的麥金塔界面。但是1985年夏天喬布斯被逐出麥金塔部門后，他的繼任者讓-路易·加西便取消了這一項目。

When that happened, Jobs got a distressed call from Rich Page, who had been engineering the Big Mac’s chip set. It was the latest in a series of conversations that Jobs was having with disgruntled Apple employees urging him to start a new company and rescue them. Plans to do so began to jell over Labor Day weekend, when Jobs spoke to Bud Tribble, the original Macintosh software chief, and floated the idea of starting a company to build a powerful but personal workstation. He also enlisted two other Macintosh division employees who had been talking about leaving, the engineer George Crow and the controller Susan Barnes.

事情發生后，喬布斯接到了里奇·佩奇悲憤的控訴電話，佩奇之前一直在設計大Mac的芯片組。喬布斯被解除管理職務后，不滿的蘋果員工曾陸續找他談話，力勸他創辦一家新企業來拯救他們，佩奇正是其中之一。勞工節的周末，創辦新公司的計劃開始醞釀。喬布斯同原麥金塔軟件主管巴德·特里布爾談話，并說出了自己的想法——創建一家公司，專門生產強大的個人工作站。他還聯系到其他兩位麥金塔部門員工，工程師喬治·克羅（GeorgeCrow）和總監蘇珊·巴恩斯，邀請他們加盟；這兩人一直都在考慮辭職。

That left one key vacancy on the team: a person who could market the new product to universities. The obvious candidate was Dan’l Lewin, who at Apple had organized a consortium of universities to buy Macintosh computers in bulk. Besides missing two letters in his first name, Lewin had the chiseled good looks of Clark Kent and a Princetonian’s polish. He and Jobs shared a bond: Lewin had written a Princeton thesis on Bob Dylan and charismatic leadership, and Jobs knew something about both of those topics.

新團隊還有一個關鍵的職位空缺：一個可以向高校營銷新產品的人。很明顯，這一職位的合適人選是丹·盧因，他曾在索尼工作，喬布斯研究過那家公司的宣傳手冊。早在1980年喬布斯就聘請了盧因。盧因后來組織了一個高校聯盟，向多家大學批量出售麥金塔電腦。丹·盧因的名字雖然比丹尼爾·盧因（DanielM.Lewin）①少了兩個字母，但卻擁有克拉克·肯特②般輪廓鮮明的外貌、普林斯頓式的優雅，以及大學游泳隊明星成員的魅力。盡管背景不同，盧因和喬布斯卻有著共同的興趣：盧因的大學畢業論文對鮑勃·迪倫和魅力型領導力進行了研究，而喬布斯對這兩個話題都有所了解。

Lewin’s university consortium had been a godsend to the Macintosh group, but he had become frustrated after Jobs left and Bill Campbell had reorganized marketing in a way that reduced the role of direct sales to universities. He had been meaning to call Jobs when, that Labor Day weekend, Jobs called first. He drove to Jobs’s unfurnished mansion, and they walked the grounds while discussing the possibility of creating a new company. Lewin was excited, but not ready to commit. He was going to Austin with Campbell the following week, and he wanted to wait until then to decide. Upon his return, he gave his answer: He was in. The news came just in time for the September 13 Apple board meeting.

盧因的高校聯盟對麥金塔團隊來說是個天賜良機。但是，喬布斯離開后，盧因很泄氣，比爾·坎貝爾也將營銷部門進行了重組，降低了高校直銷的重要性。勞工節那個周末，盧因本打算給喬布斯打電話，結果喬布斯先打了過來。他驅車來到喬布斯的空曠豪宅，與他一邊散步一邊討論創辦新公司的可能性。盧因對此很興奮，不過還沒準備好作出任何承諾。之后一周，他要同比爾·坎貝爾前往奧斯汀，他想在那之后再作決定。從奧斯汀回來后，盧因給出了自己的答案：他決定加入。這個消息來得正是時候——9月13日，蘋果公司即將召開董事會會議。