Then he turned to a feature that would prove more prescient. “What we’ve done is made the first real digital books,” he said, noting the inclusion of the Oxford edition of Shakespeare and other tomes. “There has not been an advancement in the state of the art of printed book technology since Gutenberg.”

接著，他開始介紹另一個功能——能更好地證明喬布斯的先見之明。“我們做出了第一批真正的電子書。”他說，并提到電腦里包含了牛津版的莎士比亞和其他大部頭，“自古騰堡以來，印刷書本的技術還未出現(xiàn)過進步。”

At times he could be amusingly aware of his own foibles, and he used the electronic book demonstration to poke fun at himself. “A word that’s sometimes used to describe me is ‘mercurial,’” he said, then paused. The audience laughed knowingly, especially those in the front rows, which were filled with NeXT employees and former members of the Macintosh team. Then he pulled up the word in the computer’s dictionary and read the first definition: “Of or relating to, or born under the planet Mercury.” Scrolling down, he said, “I think the third one is the one they mean: ‘Characterized by unpredictable changeableness of mood.’” There was a bit more laughter. “If we scroll down the thesaurus, though, we see that the antonym is ‘saturnine.’ Well what’s that? By simply double-clicking on it, we immediately look that up in the dictionary, and here it is: ‘Cold and steady in moods. Slow to act or change. Of a gloomy or surly disposition.’” A little smile came across his face as he waited for the ripple of laughter. “Well,” he concluded, “I don’t think ‘mercurial’ is so bad after all.” After the applause, he used the quotations book to make a more subtle point, about his reality distortion field. The quote he chose was from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass. After Alice laments that no matter how hard she tries she can’t believe impossible things, the White Queen retorts, “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” Especially from the front rows, there was a roar of knowing laughter.

有時，喬布斯會幽默地展示自己的自知之明，他用電子書演示來取笑自己。“有一個詞有時會被用來形容我，‘mercurial’。”他說道，然后頓了頓。觀眾們會意地笑了，尤其是那些坐在前排的人，多是NeXT的雇員和原麥金塔團隊的成員。接著，他把這個詞輸進了電腦的詞典，讀出了第一條釋義。“水星的，與水星有關的或來自水星的。”他邊把頁面往下拉邊說，“我想他們說的應該是第三種意思：‘情緒多變’。”笑聲更多了。“如果我們繼續(xù)往下拉，就能看到它的反義詞‘saturnine’。這個詞又是什么意思呢？只要雙擊一下這個詞，我們就能馬上查到它，來看看：‘情緒冷淡穩(wěn)定。行動或改變遲緩。陰郁或陰沉的性格。’”在等待觀眾的笑聲平息之時，喬布斯臉上出現(xiàn)了一點兒笑容。“好吧，”他總結(jié)道，“這么看來，我覺得‘mercurial’這個詞也不是那么糟。”掌聲過后，他用《牛津引語詞典》展示了更巧妙的一點，關于他的現(xiàn)實扭曲力場觀點。他選用的引語來自劉易斯·卡洛爾的《愛麗絲鏡中奇遇記》（ThroughtheLookingGlass）②。當愛麗絲感嘆，不管自己多么努力嘗試，都無法相信不可能的事情。白皇后反駁道：“為什么，有時我都來得及在早餐前想通六件不可能的事。”又是一陣會意的笑聲，尤其是前排的觀眾。

All of the good cheer served to sugarcoat, or distract attention from, the bad news. When it came time to announce the price of the new machine, Jobs did what he would often do in product demonstrations: reel off the features, describe them as being “worth thousands and thousands of dollars,” and get the audience to imagine how expensive it really should be. Then he announced what he hoped would seem like a low price: “We’re going to be charging higher education a single price of $6,500.” From the faithful, there was scattered applause. But his panel of academic advisors had long pushed to keep the price to between $2,000 and $3,000, and they thought that Jobs had promised to do so. Some of them were appalled. This was especially true once they discovered that the optional printer would cost another $2,000, and the slowness of the optical disk would make the purchase of a $2,500 external hard disk advisable.

這些歡呼聲都是糖衣炮彈，為了轉(zhuǎn)移觀眾對于壞消息的注意力。當宣布新機器的價格時，喬布斯采用了自己在產(chǎn)品演示中的常用伎倆：一口氣說出產(chǎn)品眾多的特點，將它們描述成“價值成千上萬美元”的東西，讓觀眾想象這個產(chǎn)品真的該有多貴。這樣抬髙觀眾的心理預期后，他就開始宣布定好的價格，讓產(chǎn)品的真實價格看起來比較低。“我們打算以每臺6500美元的價格賣給髙等教育人士。”大廳里晌起了稀稀拉拉的掌聲，來自忠實的追隨者。但是，他的學術顧問小組一直在努力將價格維持在2000~3000美元；而且他們認為喬布斯也承諾過。他們中有些人震驚了。一旦他們發(fā)現(xiàn)可供選購的打印機又得花2000美元，并且，由于光驅(qū)速度緩慢，最好再配一個外部硬盤，這又需要2500美元時，大家會更吃驚的。

There was another disappointment that he tried to downplay: “Early next year, we will have our 0.9 release, which is for software developers and aggressive end users.” There was a bit of nervous laughter. What he was saying was that the real release of the machine and its software, known as the 1.0 release, would not actually be happening in early 1989. In fact he didn’t set a hard date. He merely suggested it would be sometime in the second quarter of that year. At the first NeXT retreat back in late 1985, he had refused to budge, despite Joanna Hoffman’s pushback, from his commitment to have the machine finished in early 1987. Now it was clear it would be more than two years later.

而NeXT還有一個令人失望之處，最后喬布斯竭力含糊其辭。“明年初，我們將會推出0.9版，適于軟件開發(fā)者和勇于嘗鮮的終端用戶。”喬布斯緊張地笑了笑。他的意思是，機器和軟件的真正發(fā)布，即1.0版，不是1989年初。事實上，他還沒有設定確切日期。喬布斯只是表示，1.0版將會在1989年第二季度推出。1985年底第一次NeXT外出集思會回來時，喬布斯曾拒絕喬安娜·霍夫曼推后發(fā)布日期的提議，他承諾要在1987年初完成機器。現(xiàn)在，很明顯，這款電腦的發(fā)布會要推遲兩年多。

The event ended on a more upbeat note, literally. Jobs brought onstage a violinist from the San Francisco Symphony who played Bach’s A Minor Violin Concerto in a duet with the NeXT computer onstage. People erupted in jubilant applause. The price and the delayed release were forgotten in the frenzy. When one reporter asked him immediately afterward why the machine was going to be so late, Jobs replied, “It’s not late. It’s five years ahead of its time.”

某種意義上講，發(fā)布會在一個較為樂觀的基調(diào)中結(jié)束了。喬布斯請來一位舊金山交響樂團的小提琴手，同臺上的NeXT—起演奏巴赫的《A小調(diào)小提琴協(xié)奏曲》。人群爆發(fā)出歡快的掌聲。狂熱中，人們忘記了價格和推遲發(fā)布的不愉快。就在此后，一位記者問喬布斯為什么這款電腦會推遲這么久，喬布斯回答說：“并不遲，它領先了時代5年。”

As would become his standard practice, Jobs offered to provide “exclusive” interviews to anointed publications in return for their promising to put the story on the cover. This time he went one “exclusive” too far, though it didn’t really hurt. He agreed to a request from Business Week’s Katie Hafner for exclusive access to him before the launch, but he also made a similar deal with Newsweek and then with Fortune. What he didn’t consider was that one of Fortune’s top editors, Susan Fraker, was married to Newsweek’s editor Maynard Parker. At the Fortune story conference, when they were talking excitedly about their exclusive, Fraker mentioned that she happened to know that Newsweek had also been promised an exclusive, and it would be coming out a few days before Fortune. So Jobs ended up that week on only two magazine covers. Newsweek used the cover line “Mr. Chips” and showed him leaning on a beautiful NeXT, which it proclaimed to be “the most exciting machine in years.” Business Week showed him looking angelic in a dark suit, fingertips pressed together like a preacher or professor. But Hafner pointedly reported on the manipulation that surrounded her exclusive. “NeXT carefully parceled out interviews with its staff and suppliers, monitoring them with a censor’s eye,” she wrote. “That strategy worked, but at a price: Such maneuvering—self-serving and relentless—displayed the side of Steve Jobs that so hurt him at Apple. The trait that most stands out is Jobs’s need to control events.”

喬布斯和媒體打交道已經(jīng)有了自己的標準做法，他給自己欽點的媒體提供“獨家”采訪，但條件是把關于他的報道放在封面。不過，這一次他的“獨家”手段太過分了，雖然并沒有造成真正的傷害。他在產(chǎn)品發(fā)布之前，答應了《商業(yè)周刊》的凱蒂·哈夫納（KatieHafner）獨家專訪的請求；他也和《新聞周刊》和《財富》雜志達成了同樣的協(xié)議。但是，他沒想到的是，《財富》雜志的高級編輯蘇珊·弗雷克（SusanFraker）和《新聞周刊》的梅納德·帕克（MaynardParker）是夫妻。在《財富》的選題會上，當人們正興沖沖地談論喬布斯的獨家新聞時，弗雷克不安地開口了，說自己碰巧了解到《新聞周刊》也拿到了喬布斯的獨家承諾，而且將會比《財富》雜志的報道提前幾天出來。結(jié)果，喬布斯只上了兩家雜志的封面。《新聞周刊》稱他為“芯片先生”，并刊出了一張他俯身靠近美麗的NeXT電腦的圖片，并宣稱這是“數(shù)年內(nèi)最激動人心的機器”。《商業(yè)周刊》放了一張喬布斯身著深色西服的照片，他看上去像個天使，十指相扣如同傳教士和教授那樣。但是，哈夫納尖銳地報道了關于喬布斯對獨家新聞的操縱。“NeXT謹慎地分配著媒體對員工和供應商的采訪，通過審查來控制采訪報道的內(nèi)容，”她寫道，“這個策略奏效，伹也付出了代價；這種行為顯示出史蒂夫·喬布斯自利和無情的一面，也正是這點讓他在蘋果深受傷害。喬布斯最突出的特征就是需要控制權。”

When the hype died down, the reaction to the NeXT computer was muted, especially since it was not yet commercially available. Bill Joy, the brilliant and wry chief scientist at rival Sun Microsystems, called it “the first Yuppie workstation,” which was not an unalloyed compliment. Bill Gates, as might be expected, continued to be publicly dismissive. “Frankly, I’m disappointed,” he told the Wall Street Journal. “Back in 1981, we were truly excited by the Macintosh when Steve showed it to us, because when you put it side-by-side with another computer, it was unlike anything anybody had ever seen before.” The NeXT machine was not like that. “In the grand scope of things, most of these features are truly trivial.” He said that Microsoft would continue its plans not to write software for the NeXT. Right after the announcement event, Gates wrote a parody email to his staff. “All reality has been completely suspended,” it began. Looking back at it, Gates laughs that it may have been “the best email I ever wrote.”

當宣傳炒作平息下來后，市場對NeXT電腦的反應平淡，尤其是它還未上市銷售。比爾·喬伊（BillJoy）是競爭對手Sim公司的首席科學家，聰明幽默，他稱NeXT為“第一款雅皮士終端”，這應該是有保留的恭維。比爾·蓋茨一如既往地對NeXT進行公開批駁。“坦白地說，我很失望。”他告訴《華爾街日報》，“1981年，當喬布斯向我們展示麥金塔的時候，我們真的因此而激動，因為當你把它和別的電腦放在一起時，它不同于以往任何機器。”NeXT電腦不是這樣。“整體來看，它的大部分功能都真的無足輕重。”他說，微軟將繼續(xù)其計劃，不為NeXT編寫軟件。在NeXT的發(fā)布會后，蓋茨給自己的員工寫了一封詼諧的郵件。“所有現(xiàn)實都被完全擱置。”郵件開頭寫道。回想起這封郵件，蓋茨笑著說這可能是“我寫過的最好的郵件”。

When the NeXT computer finally went on sale in mid-1989, the factory was primed to churn out ten thousand units a month. As it turned out, sales were about four hundred a month. The beautiful factory robots, so nicely painted, remained mostly idle, and NeXT continued to hemorrhage cash.

1989年中，NeXT電腦終于開始銷售了，工廠已經(jīng)準備好每月生產(chǎn)10000臺——結(jié)果這款電腦每月的銷量只有約400臺。漂亮的工廠機器人被噴刷得很好，卻只能著，而NeXT還在繼續(xù)燒錢——

注釋：

①安德魯·勞埃德·韋伯，世界知名音樂劇作家。

②《愛麗絲夢游仙境》的續(xù)作。