The Shape of My Heart

《經濟學人》這篇文章寫得真好，忍不住想翻譯出來跟大家分享。我稱不上是賈伯斯的信徒，只不過是擁有二樣Apple的商品。不過我非常折服於他的個人魅力，以及感念他所發展出的各種改變3C生態的產品。

藉此譯文，紀念於10/05/2011去世的史蒂夫．賈伯斯。

原文：《The Economist》Oct 8th 2011
翻譯：Esther Chang

Steve Jobs
The magician
The revolution that Steve Jobs led is only just beginning

When it came to putting on a show, nobody else in the computer industry, or any other industry for that matter, could match Steve Jobs. His product launches, at which he would stand alone on a black stage and conjure up an “incredible” new electronic gadget in front of an awed crowd, were the performances of a master showman. All computers do is fetch and shuffle numbers, he once explained, but do it fast enough and “the results appear to be magic”. Mr Jobs, who died this week aged 56, spent his life packaging that magic into elegantly designed, easy-to-use products.

話說在「作秀」這件事情上，無論是在電腦業或是其他行業，沒有人能比得上史蒂夫．賈伯斯。他的新產品發表會簡直就是一場個人秀 － 獨自站在黑色的舞台上，將不可思議的新款電子產品，如同變魔術一般呈現在充滿驚嘆的觀眾面前。他曾經解釋說：電腦不過是取得數字再重新組合，但電腦做得夠快，以致於「所展現的結果就像是魔法一樣」。賈伯斯先生在這個星期去世了，享年56歲，他的一生都在變出結合設計優雅和易於使用的產品中度過。

The reaction to his death, with people leaving candles and flowers outside Apple stores and the internet humming with tributes from politicians, is proof that Mr Jobs had become something much more significant than just a clever money-maker. He stood out in three ways—as a technologist, as a corporate leader and as somebody who was able to make people love what had previously been impersonal, functional gadgets. Strangely, it is this last quality that may have the deepest effect on the way people live. The era of personal technology is in many ways just beginning.

世人對於他逝世的反應 － 一般人在蘋果專賣店外點上蠟燭和獻上鮮花，政客們在網路上留下致敬的話語 － 在在證明了，賈伯斯的象徵意義並不僅止於是一個聰明的賺錢商人。他身具三種讓人注目的身份：一名技術專家、一位企業領導人、以及一個能讓那些曾經使用過不夠人性化的產品的人們所愛戴的人。奇怪的是，第三項特質對於人們的生活方式影響至深。個人技術的時代，就許多方面來說是由他開啟的。

Apple of his eye

As a technologist, Mr Jobs was different because he was not an engineer—and that was his great strength. Instead he was obsessed with product design and aesthetics, and with making advanced technology simple to use. He repeatedly took an existing but half-formed idea—the mouse-driven computer, the digital music player, the smartphone, the tablet computer—and showed the rest of the industry how to do it properly. Rival firms scrambled to follow where he led. In the process he triggered upheavals in computing, music, telecoms and the news business that were painful for incumbent firms but welcomed by millions of consumers.

作為一個技術專家，賈伯斯的不同之處在於他並不是一個工程師，這也是他最大的力量。相反的，他執迷於產品設計和美學，以及讓先進技術變得簡單易用。他多次將已存在但半成型的產品加以發揮，讓另一半的功能完整呈現 － 例如以滑鼠驅動的電腦、數位音樂播放器、智慧型手機、平板電腦等。競爭者莫不爭先恐後地跟隨著他所領導的趨勢。在這個過程中，他在電腦、音樂、通訊和新聞業務上，讓許多對手企業感到痛苦，卻受到百萬消費者的歡迎。

Within the wider business world, a man who liked to see himself as a hippy, permanently in revolt against big companies, ended up being hailed by many of those corporate giants as one of the greatest chief executives of his time. That was partly due to his talents: showmanship, strategic vision, an astonishing attention to detail and a dictatorial management style which many bosses must have envied. But most of all it was the extraordinary trajectory of his life (see article). His fall from grace in the 1980s, followed by his return to Apple in 1996 after a period in the wilderness, is an inspiration to any businessperson whose career has taken a turn for the worse. The way in which Mr Jobs revived the ailing company he had co-founded and turned it into the world’s biggest tech firm (bigger even than Bill Gates’s Microsoft, the company that had outsmarted Apple so dramatically in the 1980s), sounds like something from a Hollywood movie—which, no doubt, it soon will be.

在廣泛的商業世界裡，一個人把自己視為一個嬉皮，長期地在對抗大企業，反而卻被眾多企業巨頭譽為最偉大的執行長。部分原因是由於他本身的才華：舞台魅力、策略遠景、精細入微和讓許多老闆羨慕的獨裁式管理風格。但最重要的是他非凡的人生經歷（見文章）。他於1980年代（1985年）失寵下野，緊接著又在1996年重回蘋果，這件事鼓舞了任何一個曾從事業的谷底翻身的生意人。賈伯斯重振這個即將倒閉的、他所合創的企業，並將它轉變成全世界最大的高科技公司（甚至超過比爾蓋茨的微軟 － 它在1980年代曾戲劇性地擊敗蘋果），這個過程聽起來就像是好萊塢電影，無疑地，它很快就會被拍成電影。

But what was perhaps most astonishing about Mr Jobs was the fanatical loyalty he managed to inspire in customers. Which other technology brand do you ever see on bumper stickers? Many Apple users feel themselves to be part of a community, with Mr Jobs as its leader. And there was indeed a personal link. Apple’s products were designed to accord with the boss’s tastes and to meet his obsessively high standards. Every iPhone or MacBook has his fingerprints all over it. His great achievement was to combine an emotional spark with computer technology, and make the resulting product feel personal. And that is what put Mr Jobs on the right side of history, as the epicentre of technological innovation has moved into consumer electronics over the past decade.

但賈伯斯最驚人之處是消費者對他那種狂熱的忠誠度。你幾曾看過車子的保險桿上貼著別家科技品牌的貼紙？許多蘋果使用者自認為他們是社群中的一員，而賈伯斯就是他們的領袖。的確是和賈伯斯有關，蘋果的產品是根據老闆的品味所設計，以滿足他所堅持的高標準。每個 iPhone或MacBook都著有他的指紋。他的偉大成就是結合了情感之火與電腦科技，使電子產品具備了人性。在過去十年間，技術創新的重心已經轉移到消費性電子產品上，這正是賈伯斯正面的歷史地位。

A world without Jobs

As our special report in this week’s issue (printed before Mr Jobs’s death) explains, innovation used to spill over from military and corporate laboratories to the consumer market, but lately this process has gone into reverse. Many people’s homes now have more powerful, and more flexible, devices than their offices do; consumer gizmos and online services are smarter and easier to use than most companies’ systems. Familiar consumer products are being adopted by businesses, government and the armed forces. Companies are employing in-house versions of Facebook and creating their own “app stores” to deliver software to smartphone-toting employees. Doctors use tablet computers for their work in hospitals. Meanwhile, the number of consumers hungry for such gadgets continues to swell. Apple’s products are now being snapped up in Delhi and Dalian just as in Dublin and Dallas.

本期的專題報告中（賈伯斯世前已付梓）提到，創新通常是由軍方和企業實驗室轉往消費市場，但最近這個過程已經逆轉了。許多人家裡擁有的設備，比他們辦公室裡的更強大、更靈活；消費性產品和線上服務比起大多數公司的系統還要聰明、更容易使用。大家熟悉的消費電子產品正由企業、政府和軍方所採用。公司導入 Facebook的內部版本，並創建自己的「應用程式商店」提供軟體給攜帶智慧型手機的員工。醫生在醫院裡將平板電腦應用在工作上。同時，渴望著這些產品的消費者人數持續擴張，目前，不管在德里和大連，或是都柏林和達拉斯，都同樣在搶購蘋果公司的產品。

Mr Jobs had a reputation as a control freak, and his critics complained that the products and systems he designed were closed and inflexible, in the name of greater ease of use. Yet he also empowered millions of people by giving them access to cutting-edge technology. His insistence on putting users first, and focusing on elegance and simplicity, has become deeply ingrained in his own company, and is spreading to rival firms too. It is no longer just at Apple that designers ask: “What would Steve Jobs do?”

賈伯斯被視為是一個控制狂，而且他的批評者抱怨說，他所設計的產品和系統，以易於使用為名，其實是封閉且僵化的。然而他也讓數以百萬計的人得以擁用尖端科技產品。他堅持使用者優先，專注優雅和極簡風格，在自己的公司中已成為根深蒂固的觀念，並且也蔓延到競爭者的公司。不只是蘋果的設計師會問：「如果是史蒂夫賈伯斯會怎麼做？」

The gap between Apple and other tech firms is now likely to narrow. This week’s announcement of a new iPhone by a management team led by Tim Cook, who replaced Mr Jobs as chief executive in August, was generally regarded as competent but uninspiring. Without Mr Jobs to sprinkle his star dust on the event, it felt like just another product launch from just another technology firm. At the recent unveiling of a tablet computer by Jeff Bezos of Amazon, whose company is doing the best job of following Apple’s lead in combining hardware, software, content and services in an easy-to-use bundle, there were several swipes at Apple. But by doing his best to imitate Mr Jobs, Mr Bezos also flattered him. With Mr Jobs gone, Apple is just one of many technology firms trying to invoke his unruly spirit in new products.

目前，蘋果和其他高科技公司之間的差距可能會縮小。八月份接手賈伯斯成為蘋果總裁的提姆庫克與他所領導的管理團隊，在本週發表了新版iPhone（iPhone 4S），一般被認為是表現稱職，但缺乏魅力。發表會上少了賈伯斯的星塵閃爍，感覺上就像是另一個科技公司的另一項產品發表。最近由亞馬遜的傑夫．貝佐斯所發表的平板電腦，其公司致力於追隨蘋果路線，將硬體、軟體、內容和服務結合在一個易於使用的平台上，給了蘋果幾拳重擊。但貝佐斯是藉著盡全力去模仿賈伯斯來向他致敬。隨著賈伯斯的離去，蘋果成了試圖引用他不羈特質去發展新產品的眾多科技公司之一。

Mr Jobs was said by an engineer in the early years of Apple to emit a “reality distortion field”, such were his powers of persuasion. But in the end he conjured up a reality of his own, channelling the magic of computing into products that reshaped entire industries. The man who said in his youth that he wanted to “put a ding in the universe” did just that.

早期在蘋果工作的一名工程師曾說賈伯斯能散發出「現實扭曲力場」(Reality Distortion Field，RDF**)，這就是他說服眾人的力量。然而最終他成就了屬於他自己的現實，開啟了電腦的神奇之處而發展出許多重塑整個行業的產品。這個人在他年青時代曾說，他想要「在這宇宙發出一個叮聲」，而他的確是做到了。

**蘋果Macintosh電腦的設計者崔柏（Bud Tribble）在1981年開始使用這個說法。“套用《星際迷航》（Star Trek）的用語，賈伯斯就是有現實扭曲力場。他在場時，現實是可以改變的，幾乎任何事情他都可以說服大家相信。他不在場時，力場效果就開始變弱了，這讓人很難訂出切合實際的時間表。”